Class-consciousness is required for self-liberation

Class consciousness is never more needed than now. To the socialist, class-consciousness is the breaking-down of all barriers to understanding. Without it, militancy means nothing. The class-conscious worker knows where s/he stands in society. Their interests are opposed at every point to those of the capitalist class. Their cause can only be the cause of revolution for the abolishing of classes. Without that understanding, militancy can mean little. Class-conscious people need no leaders. The single, simple fact which all working people have to learn is that capitalism causes capitalism's problems so that the remedy – the only remedy – is to abolish capitalism. In that knowledge they must take hold of the powers of government – for one purpose only: that the rule of class by class shall end. Socialism is not a benevolently-administered capitalism: it is a different social system. Reform is no answer, even though at times – rare times – it benefits working people. The reformer has agreed that capitalism shall continue and is merely trying to alleviate its worst effects. Has poverty been abolished by the reformers? Ask the old, ask the unemployed or the homeless, or the sick. Has life been made more satisfying by the Welfare State?

Working class action must be revolutionary. The workers of Britain have common cause with the workers of every other country. They are members of an international class, faced with the same problems, holding the same interests once they are conscious of them. As class consciousness grows amongst the workers in all lands, co-operative action will be planned. It will not stop at the organisation of marches and demonstrations. It will be co-operation to speed the abolition of capitalism. The Socialist Party does not minimise the necessity and importance of the worker keeping up the struggle to maintain the wage-scale, resisting cuts, etc. If we always laid down to the demands of our exploiters without resistance we would not be worth our salt as a person, or fit for waging the class struggle to put an end to exploitation. More and more of the workers are forced to realise that their interests are opposed to those of the owning and ruling class, in fact, that the continuation of this rule spells disaster to society generally. The class war is far from over. It can only end with the dispossession of the owning minority and the consequent disappearance of classes and class-divided society.

Class struggle without any clear understanding of where you are going is simply committing oneself to a never-ending treadmill. This is where the Leninist parties go wrong. They think mechanistically that a sense of revolutionary direction emerges spontaneously out of "the struggle" thus circumventing the realm of ideology - the need to educate. It doesn't. The workers can never win the class struggle while it is confined simply to the level of trade union militancy; it has to be transformed into a socialist consciousness. Conversely, socialist consciousness cannot simply rely for its own increase on ideological persuasion. It has to link up with the practical struggle. The success of the socialist revolution will depend on the growth of socialist consciousness on a mass scale and that these changed ideas can only develop through a practical movement.

Socialists believe as the workers gained more experience of the class struggle and the workings of capitalism, it would become more consciously socialist and democratically organised by the workers themselves. The emergence of socialist understanding out of the experience of the workers could thus be said to be “spontaneous” in the sense that it would require no intervention by people outside the working class to bring it about (not that such people could not take part in this process, but their participation was not essential or crucial). Socialist propaganda and agitation would indeed be necessary but would come to be carried out by workers themselves whose socialist ideas would have been derived from an interpretation of their class experience of capitalism. The end result would be an independent movement of the socialist-minded and democratically organised working class aimed at winning control of political power in order to abolish capitalism. As Marx and Engels put it in The Communist Manifesto:-
“the proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority”.

Our interest in the Socialist Party lies in pursuing the class struggle and forging our own class agenda - world socialism. The battle between capitalism and socialism is by no means off the agenda. The class war is not yet over. Only by recognising the struggle between capital and labour, and acting to bring about the victory of labour, of the working class, can classes once and for all be abolished, common ownership is established, and real human interests and relationships begin.

The Claymore Communist

John Maclean’s reputation is still well-known in Scotland. This week marks the centenary of the Scottish revolutionary socialist John Maclean’s historic speech from the dock of Edinburgh’s High Court, where he faced charges of sedition following his vocal public opposition to the First World War and attempt to organise a workers’ mutiny against it.

“I wish no harm to any human being,” said Maclean, “but I, as one man, am going to exercise my freedom of speech. No human being on the face of the earth, no government is going to take from me my right to speak, my right to protest against wrong, my right to do everything that is for the benefit of mankind. I am not here, then, as the accused; I am here as the accuser of capitalism dripping with blood from head to foot.”

When a man fights for the workers as hard and as long as John Maclean has, he earns the right to have his mistakes charitably judged. Neither the integrity of John Maclean nor mere sympathy for his fighting spirit is proof against his political fallibility. The man who is honest and dependable will reap disappointment as did John Maclean, and the man who lacks some of his singleness of purpose will soon enough fall to the temptation of getting security by entering the service of the enemies of the workers as shown by many of his Red Clydesider contemporaries in the ILP.

Men and women who clearly recognised the cause of the workers' poverty in the private ownership of the means of production, and who realised that the spreading of socialist knowledge is the only permanent basis for working-class organisation would not have to go into battle as untrained troops, and their activists like Maclean would not risk finding themselves at the end of a life of ceaseless toil for their class, the disappointed leaders of a phantom army. 

 The chief weakness of Maclean's position was his insistence upon a Scottish workers' republic. This demand is both reactionary and utopian. The struggle of the workers of the United Kingdom must be a united one. The workers are under the domination of a class who rule by the use of a political machine which is the chief governing instrument for England, Scotland, Wales, To appeal to the workers of Scotland for a Scottish Workers' Republic is to arouse and foster the narrow spirit of nationalism, so well used by our masters. Economically the demand is utopian, as the development of capitalism has made countries more and more dependent on each other.

 If the worker is to be won for socialism, it is by getting him to understand the principles of socialism, and not by appealing to him to concentrate on Scottish affairs. Socialism is international. Despite his principled stand, MacLean's optimistic illusions about the development of the nationalist and Bolshevik movements show that he did not understand socialism and what was required to achieve it.

A Manifesto of Emancipation

We live in a world dominated by capitalism, which lives by feeding off the sweat and blood of millions and millions of ordinary men and women. Emancipation from the power of capitalism, wage-slavery, and the State, a world without private property or money, will be possible only by the actual alteration of people’s material being. Then and only then will there be ‘freely associated human beings’ and 'a union of free individuals.'

Many have learned by experience that the mainstream parties offer no hope of improving conditions for the workers, and so it is often concluded that the failure of these political parties is evidence of the uselessness of Parliament. This is a wrong conclusion. It is not Parliament as a piece of political machinery which has failed; it is the political parties which have failed. No single M.P. in this country has ever been elected to Parliament as a socialist, for the simple reason that there is no single constituency in which a majority of the workers want socialism. That is the harsh truth of the matter.

We say that when the workers are socialists and are organised in the Socialist Party, they will use their votes to obtain control of Parliament because this will give control of all the machinery of administration and control of the armed forces. While the capitalist class has control of the State their position is secure and we are helpless. Some question our view.

In the modern capitalist democracies, the State has come to control a vast, intricate and continually growing machinery of administration. Not only does it control legislation—the making of laws—but also their administration by hundreds of thousands of civil servants and local government officials, and their enforcement by the courts, the police and, in the last resort, by the armed forces. Every phase of modern life, the ownership and transfer of property, the production of wealth, transport, building, commercial and financial operations, education, hospitals, sanitation, public health, all these activities are carried on under regulations prescribed by the Government and, in the final analysis, under conditions which they determine. The life of modern capitalist society is organised around Parliament as it is the centre of power. Parliamentary control carries with it the power, more or less directly to promote or suspend activity in any and every branch of social life. By organisation and by use, the electorate look to Parliament as the depository of the organised power of society, and by law, by organisation and use, the employees, civil and military, of the central and local authorities derive their authority from the Government which, in turn, is dependent on a Parliamentary majority.

By its very nature, however, this elaborate machine falls if there is an obvious weakening at the centre of things. It is to obtain this enormous advantage given by possession of the central directing machinery, and the authority resulting from control of Parliament, that the Socialist Party seek to gain a Parliamentary majority.

Class distinctions and privileges will disappear together with the economic basis from which they originate and society will be transformed into an association of 'producers'. To live upon other people's labour will become a thing of the past. There will no longer exist a government nor a state distinct from society itself. The Socialist Party calls for the abolition of property, not a new redistribution of it, a free association of producers owning in common their means of production, collectively controlling it, not as any cooperative of small business-owners. Wages, profit, and rent, social relationships peculiar to capitalism are unthinkable in socialism. 

Marxist theory takes it for granted that the members of a socialist community will have to perform certain functions in many ways similar to those performed by their ancestors under capitalism or feudalism. In every social order, men have to produce in order to live. In every economic system, there must be some balance between production and consumption. Every society, if it is not to stagnate and decay, must produce a surplus of goods over and above the sum total of the goods necessary for the upkeep of the producers, the maintenance and replacement of productive equipment and so on. The surplus produce of a capitalist economy takes the form of rent, profit and interest; and this determines the entire mode of life of the capitalist world. In socialism, the surplus produce, belonging to society as a whole, would cease to be profit. The function of that surplus and its impact upon social life would be altogether different from what it was under the old economic system. Reformists and gradualists have taken these socialist visions of the future as either too unreal or too remote to be taken seriously. They have tried to find a compromise between capitalism and socialism and re-shape the capitalist system rather than abolish it. The state would not wither away but would be used by the working masses to protect their interests and those of society as a whole, to nationalize the commanding heights of industry and commerce — banks, railways, heavy industry and much else. Generally, mainstream political parties have stood for the constant extension of the public sector and the consequent increase in state and administrative intervention in all aspects of the community’s fife. They advocated meritocracy in the opening of careers to all talented individuals, an egalitarianism that would reject unearned inherited privilege and authority as sufficient to convert the State into genuine bodies of public servants and the State into what indeed finally became, in some countries, the welfare state.

All left political parties, revolutionary or reformist, applies this model of government as soon as it assumes office. The Left promotes the State and its officials as capable of serving, relatively selflessly, the public interest with or without the owners of private property being expropriated. The Socialist Party has no notion of any ‘workers’ state any political organ standing above society,  the ‘true community’ replacing the capitalist state,  the ‘illusory community.’ Marx would find any idea has been that ownership of the means of production by a bureaucratic state machine would constitute ‘socialism’ as repugnant. Marxism is based upon his conception of communist society as ‘an association of free human beings, working with communal means of production, and self-consciously expending their many individual labour powers as a single social labour power.’

The socialist association of producers and the common ownership are the conditions for universal liberation and emancipation from wage-slavery. 

Where Are We Going?

William Morris is very interesting. His politics were always evolving. We can bandy around various quotations from various time-lines. His critique of parliamentarianism is often over-simplified. One has to be reminded that he was in constant dispute with various anarchists within the Socialist League and then at other times in conflict with reformists of the Social Democratic Federation. It would be a bit inaccurate to describe him as a pure and simple “anti-Parliamentarist”, and he certainly was not an anarchist. Morris’ arguments against parliamentary action can be summed up as (1) that Parliament was a capitalist institution; (2) that reforms obtained through Parliament would strengthen capitalism and would only be passed with this end in view; and (3) that campaigning for reforms would corrupt a socialist party.

In The Policy of Abstention Morris declared:
“The Communists believe that it would be a waste of time for Socialists to expend their energy in furthering reforms which so far from bringing us nearer to Socialism would rather serve to bolster up the present state of things.”

However his arguments were against the policy of using Parliament to try to get reforms rather than against socialist parliamentary action as such and in fact, even during his “anti-parliamentary” period, Morris was not opposed to socialists entering Parliament in the course of the socialist revolution, on condition that they went there not to try to get reforms but ”as rebels”.

“I did not mean that at some time or other it might not be necessary for Socialists to go into Parliament in order to break it up; but again, that could only be when we are very much more advanced than we are now; in short, on the verge of a revolution; so that we might either capture the army, or shake their confidence in the legality of their position”

“I believe that the Socialists will certainly send members to Parliament when they are strong enough to do so: in itself I see no harm in that, so long as it is understood that they go there as rebels, and not as members of the governing body prepared by passing palliative measures to keep ‘Society’ alive. ”
“I admit, and always have admitted, that at some future period it may be necessary to use parliament mechanically: what I object to is depending on parliamentary agitation. There must be a great party, a great organisation outside parliament actively engaged in reconstructing society and learning administration whatever goes on in parliament itself. This is in direct opposition to the view of the regular parliamentary section as represented by Shaw, who look upon Parliament as the means…” (His emphases)

He recognised the necessity for socialists to gain control of political power before trying to establish socialism: “We must try. . . and get at the butt end of the machine gun and rifle, and then force is much less likely to be necessary and much more sure to be successful.” and that “it is necessary somehow to get hold of the machine which has at its back the executive power of the country”

In later life he reviews his early ideas – “We thought that every step towards Socialism would be resisted by the reactionaries who would use against it the legal executive force which was, and is, let me say, wholly in the power of the possessing classes, that the wider the movement grew the more rigorously the authorities would repress it. Almost everyone has ceased to believe in the change coming by catastrophe. To state the position shortly, as a means to the realization of the new society Socialists hope so far as to conquer public opinion, that at last a majority of the Parliament shall be sent to sit in the house as avowed Socialists and the delegates of Socialists, and on that should follow what legislation might be necessary; and moreover, though the time for this may be very far ahead, yet most people would now think that the hope of doing it is by no means unreasonable.”

He describes his vision of a socialist organisation “The organisation I am thinking of would have a serious point of difference from any that could be formed as a part of a parliamentary plan of action; its aim would be to act directly, whatever was done in it would be done by the people themselves: there would consequently be no possibility of compromise, of the association becoming anything else than it was intended to be; nothing could take its place: before all its members would be put one alternative to complete success, complete failure, namely. The workers can form an organisation which without heeding Parliament can force from the ruler what concessions may be necessary in the present and whose aim would be the total abolition of the monopolist classes and rule.”

Elsewhere he states “getting the workmen to organise genuine revolutionary labour bodies not looking to Parliament at all but to their own pressure (legal or illegal as the times may go) on their employers while the latter lasted”

An outline that obviously is not reflected by the run of the mill workers organisations of his time. Morris clearly understood that a change in society could only be brought about with a change in the consciousness of the majority of people. “Practical socialism”, as he called revolutionary socialism, was a question of “making socialists” and therefore it was necessary to “educate the people in the principles of socialism”. Which clearly separates him from the Leninist vanguard concept of The Party. leading the workers.

Nor was he proponent of state ownership – “No better solution would be that State Socialism, by whatever name it may be called”. 

Morris, although not opposed to using Parliament as such, believed that concentrating on these elections would have directed the League away from the essential task of “making socialists” and instead into advocating reforms. The differences led to the Parliamentarists breaking away, leaving Morris and his associates at the mercy of anarchists, who soon dominated the League. When this happened Morris and his socialist friends withdrew to form the Hammersmith Socialist Society.
Morris was quite clear: a socialist organisation should not campaign for reforms or “palliatives” but should concentrate exclusively on socialist propaganda and education. In the beginning, in 1885 and 1886, this was based on a belief that capitalism was soon going to collapse (“when the crisis comes”) and the consequent urgent need to have a strong body of socialists to ensure that socialism would be the outcome. But, after a while, Morris came to question whether his opposition to campaigning for reforms (and campaigning to get elected to Parliament and local bodies on a programme of reforms) was justified. By 1890 this had developed to a full and clear understanding that the establishment of socialism was impossible without there first being a mass of opinion in favour of it and he never wavered on this crucial point.

The problem which Morris had been grappling with was the problem of reform and revolution. In his Socialist League days, he had clearly seen the futility and danger of campaigning for reforms, but had linked this with a virtual rejection of parliamentary action. This was because in his mind parliamentary action and campaigning for reforms were inseparable. So, later, when he came to recognise the need to gain control of political power through the ballot box and Parliament before trying to establish socialism, this was coupled with an acceptance of the policy of campaigning for reforms.

Later proponents of the “Impossiblist” tradition such as the Socialist Party of Great Britain adopted a policy of trying to gain control of the machinery of government through the ballot box by campaigning on an exclusively socialist programme without seeking support on a policy of reforms; while supporting parliamentary action they refused to advocate reforms.

The views of William Morris is worth debating for its relevance for today.

I think we can all accept Morris’s caustic opinion of politicians when he said, “the business of a statesman is to balance the greed and fears of the proprietary classes against the necessities and demands of the working class. This is a sorry business, and leads to all kinds of trickery and evasion; so that it is more than doubtful whether a statesman can be a moderately honest man.”

The Gig Economy

The number of people working temporary jobs has shot up in Edinburgh in the last year, with one in 10 workers now on a non-permanent contract,  leaving people in the city without job security. 

It’s an increase compared to the 7 per cent of workers in this position the year before, and means Edinburgh has the highest proportion of  temporary workers in the country.

Steve Turner, assistant general secretary for Unite said: “Too many  people are eking out an existence in low paid, temporary, insecure work when all they want is a permanent job. Rather than putting workers on permanent contracts we have seen firms such as Sports Directbase their whole business model on exploitative zero-hours contracts and temporary agency contracts. Workers deserve the dignity of knowing from one week to the next whether they will be able to put food on the table and pay the bills. Ministers need to ban zero hours contracts and proactively tackle  bogus self-employment and the use of umbrella companies, which are fleecing workers out of their hard earned cash while bosses get away without paying their fair share of tax.”

UNISON assistant general secretary Christina McAnea said: “Zero hours contracts may be good for employers, but not for all workers. Many face sleepless nights worrying what their take-home wage will be at the end of every week. Insecure employment is a huge issue in the care sector, with staff  too scared to whistleblow for fear hours will be cut. Bosses should guarantee fixed hours to everyone who wants them - and this should be enforceable by law.”

https://www.insider.co.uk/news/edinburgh-tops-scotland-temporary-workers-12513806

Rallying for Socialism

Starvation, hunger, disease, the cries for “food!” – the depths of privation in the midst of an unprecedented abundance of wealth. The Socialist Party views capitalism as a destructive system that hurts, divides and exploits the vast majority of our people for the sake of profits and power for the few.

The Socialist Party advocates and works for socialism–that is, common ownership and collective control of the means of production (factories, fields, utilities, etc.) We want a system based on cooperation, where the people build together for the common good.  Votes obtained by a campaign conducted on the case for socialism mean that those who voted can be counted as sincere votes for socialism but votes obtained by offering all kinds of promises, can shift to some other party the next election with a better menu of reforms. The struggle between individual capitalists to realise profits sets employer against employer. The conflict between national groups of financiers sets nation against nation and produces war. But despite their individual and national conflicts, the whole capitalist class stands united in their common desire to exploit labour. Hence under capitalism, the freedom of the working class consists in the freedom to starve or accept such conditions as are imposed upon them by the employing class. But the freedom of the master class consists in their untrammelled freedom to buy labour to create profit. Thus the workers are not free. Neither owning nor controlling the means of life, they are wage slaves of their employers and are but mere commodities.

Socialism aims at giving a meaning to people's life and work; at enabling then freedom, their creativity, and the most positive aspects of their personality to flourish. Socialist society implies people's self-organisation of every aspect of their social activities. Socialism can be established only by the autonomous action of the working class. The hallmark of socialism is for the first time in history, technology will be subordinated to human needs. We are socialists out of conviction–because we see capitalism as harmful to the vast majority of our own and the world’s people. This system we live under, by its very nature, grinds the poor and working people, sets one group against another, and acts violently against people at home and around the world when they resist. We see in socialism the seeds and the method of achieving a more just, more cooperative and more peaceful society. Socialism offers a future free from the fears of poverty, sexism, racism, dog-eat-dog competition, joblessness, and the loneliness of old age. As the socialist movement grows, we will be nearer to creating a society that allows each person to create and produce according to her or his ability and to obtain what she or he needs. People are the planet's most precious resource.

In opposition to all other parties—Conservative, Lib-Dem, Nationalist, and Labour—we affirm that so long as one section of the community own and control the means of production, and the rest of the community is compelled to work for that section in order to obtain the means of life, there can be no peace between them.

By your neglect you stand for misery, exploitation, greed and war. The eyes of the world are upon you. The choice is the sweeping away of ignorance.

 

The Choice Before Us

Socialism is the road to future prosperity, peace and plenty. All other ways lead to perpetuated poverty. The future of the planet rests on its accepting the path of struggle. So far the working class has been fundamentally reformist, concentrating on getting as much as possible out of the present system.   Gradualism meaning the gradual attaining of the control of the means of production. This we believe to be impossible. Its impossibility has been demonstrated in every country where the workers have been strong enough to try it out seriously as a policy. Socialism cannot be presented as a gift from the Labour Party. It cannot be built down from above, with only the passive consent of the citizens as expressed from time to time by their votes. Nationalisation leaves the worker with no more control or interest in the job than have the employees of any enlightened capitalist employer.  It must come from the active participation and understanding of the people. Many models of socialist society have been constructed on paper. The task is to get the job building socialism into the hands of the working men and women. 

The socialist movement is not weak because we are divided, but divided because it is weak.  “Unity” is justified by the argument that revolutionaries must not separate themselves and become a sectarian minority. Such logic stifles any discussion and prevents any debate or conflict of opinions giving political groups a false feeling of being part of something.

We live in difficult times of pending environmental catastrophe, constant threats of war, intensified repression and suppression by the State. The class struggle between capital and labour is basic to modern society. It is a struggle that goes on all the time The class interests between capitalists and the workers cannot be reconciled. One or the other must triumph. They cannot be harmonised by compromise. The greed for profits knows no limit. The lower the wages paid, the higher the profits made. Capitalists always seek to reduce wages. The lower the wages paid, the higher the profits made. The capitalists always seek to speed up the worker, to intensify his production, to have one worker operate more and more machines and do the work of more and more workers. The more intensely the worker toils, the more value is created, therefore, the more surplus-value; therefore, the more profit.

 Against the ideas of capitalism and reformism, the Socialist Party works for the ideas of socialism. The workers must acquire a clear understanding the nature of capitalist society They must act consciously for their class interests. They must become conscious of the fact that these class interests lead to a socialist society and the need to replace this society with socialism When this takes place, the workers possess socialist consciousness. The Socialist Party makes clear to the workers the full meaning of their fight. It shows how the workers must organise as a class to capture political power, and use it to inaugurate socialism. Socialist Party represents a long and rich tradition, proud of the fact that its principles are founded on Marx and Engels,  principles to achieve socialism that has passed the most rigourous tests a hundred times over. Their analysis of capitalist society has never been successfully refuted. The Socialist Party calls itself Marxist merely to signify that it stands firmly on the basic principles of the greatest teachers in the history of the working class.

The Socialist Party champions the idea of social revolution. What is a social revolution? It is the replacement of one ruling class by another. The socialist revolution is simply the overthrow of capitalist despotism and the establishment of workers’ rule. This revolution can be accomplished peaceably. Socialists are not bloodthirsty maniacs. A socialist would indeed be insane to want bloodshed and destruction when the aim is an orderly society.

Socialism is based upon the planned organisation of production for use by means of the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production, is the abolition of all classes and class differences. Socialism is not a utopian ideal, a blueprint for society that exists in the minds of some people. It is a social necessity; it is a practical necessity. It is the direction that the people must take in order to save society from disintegration, in order to satisfy their social needs. To be a socialist merely means to be conscious of this necessity, to make others conscious of it, and to work in an organised manner for the realisation of the goal. The workers cannot rid themselves of their sufferings without abolishing the domination over them. They must destroy capitalism and proceed with the complete reorganisation of society. No other class is capable of doing this. The working class is the bearer of socialism. The abolition of private ownership would remove the last barrier to the development of production. Production would be organised and aimed at satisfying the needs of society.

 Abundance for all. Freedom for all. A society without a state. Upon socialism, depends the happy future of humanity and of civilisation. The working class is called upon to save society from barbarism, the only alternative to socialism. That is the task of the working class. That is the road to human freedom. 

Scottish Racism

Racist murders are more common in Scotland than in the rest of the UK, according to a shock academic study into the extent of prejudice.

A new book insists the belief Scotland is immune to racism and “culturally different” to England is condemned as a “misleading fantasy”. The authors of No Problem Here: Understanding Racism in Scotland cite official crime figures to prove there is a very real problem.

The analysis shows the rate of racist murders is higher on average in Scotland than in the UK as a whole. Between 2000 and 2013, there were 1.8 murders per million people with a known or suspected race element in Scotland. The equivalent figure for the UK was just 1.3 murders per million people.

Carol Young, senior policy officer for the Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights, said the stats show the idea that Scotland doesn’t have a problem with racism is false.  “There’s a perception that Scotland has less of a problem with racism than other areas of the UK, perhaps best summed up by the phrase, ‘we’re all Jock Tamson’s bairns’.But, regardless of popular opinion, the statistics suggest otherwise. In 2013-2014, 4807 racist incidents were recorded by police in Scotland. That’s equivalent of 92 incidents every week, without accounting for the many cases that go unreported.” Young added: “You could be white-skinned and still identifiably minority ethnic in many circumstances. Skin tone has not protected Jewish people, Irish people, Gypsy/traveller communities or new European migrants from racism.”

Neil Davidson, a sociology lecturer at Glasgow University said: “The idea that there is ‘no problem’, or at least much less of a problem, has grown for three reasons. One is that the Irish-Catholic presence – the largest-ever migrant group to settle in Scotland – tends to be discussed in the context of ‘sectarianism’, a concept which treats Catholics and Protestants as equivalent and ignore the racism directed towards the former. The second is the relatively small size of the migration to Scotland from the Indian sub-continent and especially from the Caribbean, which did not mean that migrants did not suffer racism, just that it was much less visible than in Birmingham or London.

“Finally, the movements for devolution and independence have involved the idea that Scotland is ‘culturally’ different from England, and that part of this difference involves the Scots being more ‘welcoming’, ‘tolerant’ and so on...these are misleading fantasies, which ignore the historical experience of Irish Catholics and the contemporary experience of Muslims, Roma and other BAME groups...'

There is abundance for all

 As capitalism breeds great inequality, it also generates great anger against the system. The trouble is that, instead of workers everywhere uniting against the common enemy, the ruling class, they are turned against one another. People are told that their problems are not the result of the unjust system of capitalism but because of the "others"- the outsiders and outcasts. Workers are told organising for better conditions will cut jobs because the bosses will outsource them elsewhere; people are made to resent foreigners and migrants. It is the employed against the unemployed; it is the old versus the young. The mass media are complicit in this, feeding prejudice directed against other people rather than against capitalism. Suffering from the effects of exploitation workers are ripe to be influenced by populist demagogues who blame other workers such as immigrants or those with darker skin tone. Anything that provokes more division among workers — by sex, ethnicity, caste, — is a benefit to capital because it keeps people from uniting and struggling together for better conditions. The conservative parties and right-wing movements use immigrants as scapegoats, blaming them for the varied problems facing labour.

Marxism is more relevant than ever in understanding capitalism. One of the most significant concepts may be commodity fetishism: the idea that under capitalism, relations between people become mediated by relations between things -- that is commodities and money. The overwhelming focus on exchange value rather than use value means that exchange value gets seen as intrinsic to commodities rather than being the result of labour. The market interaction becomes the "natural" way of dealing with all objects. This is what creates commodity fetishism, an illusion that the centrality of private property determines not only how people work and interact, but even how they perceive reality and understand social change.   Capitalism is a relentless, system, ceaselessly searching the planet for opportunities to accumulate capital. And it looks for elements of our lives that have yet to become commodified and works to create markets for them. Both are made possible by the exploitation of wage labour and the expropriation of land and resources everywhere in the world.

Marx spoke of the creation of the world market, which we now call globalisation, as the natural result of the tendency of the capitalist system to spread and aggrandise itself, to destroy and incorporate earlier forms of production, and to transform technology and institutions constantly.  The tendencies for the concentration and centralisation of production have very strong contemporary resonance, even when such centralisation and concentration is expressed through the geographical fragmentation of production (as in global value chains driven by large multinational companies) or in the sphere of non-material service delivery, or even through the commodification of knowledge and control of personal data for purposes of making profits. Many workers have seen their incomes stagnate while many have been forced to take lower-paying jobs than they previously held, while still others have been rendered superfluous by the forces of automation and outsourcing to lower wage regions within the same country or to other countries. Many discarded workers do not have the resources to move to regions with a better chance of employment. This has left a sizable number of people struggling to live and raise their children, aware that something is very wrong, but not understanding what has caused their predicament. 

Alienation still relevant. For Marx, this was not an isolated experience of an individual person's feeling of estrangement from society or community, but a generalized state of the broad mass of wage workers. It can be expressed as the loss of control by workers over their own work, which means that they effectively cease to be autonomous human beings because they cannot control their workplace, the products they produce or even the way they relate to each other. Because this fundamentally defines their conditions of existence, this means that workers can never become autonomous and self-realised human and social beings under capitalism. Such alienation is blatantly obvious in factory work, but it also describes work that is apparently more independent, such as activities in the emerging "gig economy" that still deny workers effective control despite the illusion of autonomy.

Capitalists have assembled a vast array of mechanisms for control. Some of these are used in workplaces and include monitoring; constant speed-up; systematic hiring and firing; the deskilling of whatever work possible; the threat of dismissal for attempts to unionise; divide-and-rule assigning of workers to pit men against women, black against white, ethnic majority against ethnic minority, one religious group against another. The intentional geographical separation of different aspects of a business’s production processes is another divide and rule tactic, which makes potential antagonists of workers in one country and those in other nations. In every nation, the state serves as a bulwark of capitalism, standing ready to repress and suppress workers' resistance. A continual ideological conditioning is waged by the capitalist class, reflected in patriotism and national chauvinism where we are taught to be suspicious of the “other,” to compete, to act selfishly, to see the system as all-powerful and unchangeable.

The future and survival of humanity depend on the working class struggle once again coming to the fore and oppose the social and ecological problems that result from the drive of capitalists to maximise profits. There is no alternative but to redouble efforts to organise and to carry out socialist education. Many workers instinctively feel a powerlessness and that they are at the mercy of the whims and needs of capital. This is the result of a class war from above that capitalists have been waging while workers have been mostly frightened into submission. The ongoing class war can no longer be one-sided. When people are pushed and pushed down again and as their lives deteriorate, they eventually will resist. We must fight back. Many people are beginning to understand the reality that the various social and ecological problems facing humanity can’t be solved in piecemeal fashion. A bigger view of society is needed, one that unites all those struggling for a more decent and healthy society. The struggles in the workplace for better working conditions and decent pay, the fights for social justice, the striving for ecological harmony, and protests against wars—presently manifested by separate organizations—are all part of the same struggle for a more humane world.  Socialist ideals are now developing again across the world.  The future — if there is to be one — lies with the working class. Capital must be attacked at all times. Class warfare must be waged in all aspects of life. Our fellow-workers  must build an independent politics, without allegiance to any capitalist party. It must fight for the entire working class. We must emphasise solidarity: an injury to one is an injury to all, the “We” is more important than the “I.” The bounty of the Earth belong to all of us. Our goal is to end capitalism’s destruction of humanity, society, and the planet itself.   

What we want and what to do about it

Socialism will then be based on:

1. The abolition of wage labour.
2. The elimination of classes.
3. The disappearance of the state.
4. Full socialist development of the productive forces in the context of world communism.
5. From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.
6.  The abolition of the private ownership of the means of production.
7.  Elimination of competition and production for exchange value and its replacement by democratic planning and production for use.
8.  Workers’ and people’s management of the economy and society.
9.  The creation of mass forms of democracy and free associations. 

Throughout history, the bosses have always tried to keep workers divided, unorganised and weak, in order to intensify their exploitation and thereby grab bigger profits. Society contains many contradictions which have arisen as a result of the fact that production has a social character under capitalism while ownership of the means of production is in private hands. The struggle to resolve all of these contradictions is a part of the socialist revolution. Only through socialism, the common ownership and democratic control of the means of producing wealth, can the people be freed from misery, we declare ourselves a socialist movement, and undertake to conduct propaganda among the people to win them to the need to establish socialism. After the working class has overthrown the capitalists we will establish socialism which will mean the rule of the workers. It will put an end to the exploitation of man by man. It will bring freedom to all those oppressed by capital and open up a new period of history. Socialism represents an enormous historical advance over capitalism. The enormous waste of capitalism will be abolished. There will be no more billions in profits squandered by the competition of rival capitalists.

Socialism is the future of humanity, a radically new society where classes and the state will have been completely eliminated. It is possible to do away with classes and the state since these only exist during a specific period of society’s development. Humanity has not always been divided into classes. In the primitive communal societies, all the members cooperated together to assure their survival. Everything created and valued by men, all wealth has been produced as a result of human labour being applied to the materials supplied by nature. The way human labour has been used through the ages has depended both on the tools available and on the way men have been organised—the social order. Different social orders, like slavery, capitalism, and socialism correspond to different levels of man’s development in. harnessing the materials for his own use.

But as mankind progressed, as the productive forces – the way in which man made his living – developed and it became possible to accumulate wealth, society was split into antagonistic classes. Since that time all of human history has been the history of class struggle; the struggle between slave and slave owner, between serf and feudal lord, between worker and capitalist.

The state is simply an instrument by which one class dominates another. It became a necessity when society split into classes. Just as the ancient slave state served the slave owners to suppress the countless slave rebellions, so too the modern capitalist state is a tool of the propertied class to maintain its dictatorship over the working class. In all the former societies, the state was an instrument for the domination of a minority of exploiters over the vast majority of working people. Socialism means, above all else, that political power has been taken out of the hands of the capitalists and their representatives and placed in the hands of the people.  It means that this political power is used immediately to place the economy in common ownership, taking it out of the hands of unelected capitalists. Industry will be run on democratic lines owned as a whole by the people. Together with this, the workers in particular factories and other public institutions will have their say in the control of those establishments. From the present day organisation of production for private profit, the aim will be changed to production for use, production of what is wanted and needed by the people. Work will become more interesting and more meaningful to millions as its results will go entirely into benefits for the people. As more goods are produced, so working hours will be shortened. Industry will have a completely different purpose under socialism, to serve the people. Priority will be given to improving working conditions, expanding the social services, education and the care for the sick, the aged and the young. The present enormous wastage by which the same goods are sold by different competing companies, which spend millions on advertising to convince you that their product is best, will be replaced by real variety in goods. Choice will be more real and less of an illusion.

Socialism will solve the problem of the poverty of the many by abolishing a system of society based upon the ownership of the means of production by the wealthy few; it will solve the problem of unemployment by abolishing the classes of employers and employed; it will solve the problems of competitive trade by abolishing trade. The wealth of the rich, their ownership and control of our means of life, this is the cause of poverty and unemployment. When world socialism is realised, classes and class inequalities will have been eliminated. The state and its instruments of repression will have ceased to exist; the class antagonisms that necessitated their existence will have ended. There will be no rich and no poor and all members of society will contribute to the common good.  The tremendous abundance of social wealth will allow for the application of the principle: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Each person will contribute to society according to his capacities, while society, in turn, provides for his needs. The differences between workers and farmers, town and country, and manual and intellectual work will have disappeared. Each individual will develop to his full potential. Life for the people will become secure, with the knowledge that there will be new freedoms added to those already won: the freedom to work; to have the proper facilities to bring up a family; to have equal opportunity with all other people in education, training and the like; the freedom to live in peace and friendship with other peoples; the freedom to develop one’s abilities and talents; the freedom to have holidays and leisure-time.  It will release the creative energies of the mass of the people, making it possible to build an industrial base that will be able to meet their needs in food, clothing, and shelter, and will open vast horizons of cultural and educational possibilities for millions. Mankind will be freed from worry about basic material needs as we know them today and will be able to meet new ones of which we as yet have no conception. Different classes will, in fact, cease to exist, as all people make their contribution to the productive life of society. The oppressive functions of the state as we know them will become redundant and will wither away as they fall out of use. What will remain will be only a democratic administration of production in the hands of the people. Men and women will be able to develop their own personality and talents to the full. With the harnessing of science and technology to industry, boring and repetitive work will be eliminated. Work for all will become as it is today for only a very small minority—interesting and satisfying. The essential difference between town and country will be ended, as housing, travel and cultural facilities become available to all people. The boundaries between mental and physical labour will be removed as all people receive the freedom and means by which to exercise their potential, their talents and abilities. But things do not stop there. There will never be a time when man has solved all problems and then sits down to live like a cabbage. What happens is that the problems change. They become more worthy of our time and attention. Life for all will be plentiful, secure, happy and interesting. Stop voting for the parties of want and destitution, stop and consider why social problems exist. The cause is in the organisation of capitalism itself. 

Edinburgh's rich live 21 years longer than the poor

People living in Edinburgh’s wealthiest areas can expect to live 21 years longer than those in its poorest. Poverty can take more than two decades off your life in Edinburgh.

 The life expectancies of men living in the impoverished areas of Greendykes and Niddrie Mains were compared with life expectancies of men from the up-market New Town. A man from Greendykes and Niddrie Mains can expect to live to the age of 63.6 years. In contrast, a man living in the more affluent area of New Town west could expect to live to 85.

People in deprived communities developed “multi-morbidity” – having more than one disease at a time – ten to 15 years earlier than the least deprived.

Professor Alison McCallum, Director of Public Health and Health Policy at NHS Lothian, said, "The figures illustrate the stark inequity in life expectancy and we will continue to work with our partner organisations to tackle the impact of these unjust differences in our society.”

A socialist future can work

The basic aim of all our activities in the Socialist Party is to help the working class to accomplish the task of establishing a socialist society. Socialism means freedom. Freedom from poverty, insecurity, exploitation, and war. It means the full flowering of individual, spirit, and initiative and a richer and happier life for every family. It will provide, for the first time, opportunities to develop the full potential of every human being. It will guarantee the conservation of our land, and a more secure. These goals can only be brought about by the socialist revolution. The noble aim of the Socialist Party is to abolish the right of one person to rob another of the fruits of his or her labour, bankers, landlords, and profiteers no longer exist and common ownership prevails. This is what makes the Socialist Party different from all others. Nowhere in the world has socialism been established. The system of exploitation for profits extended over the entire globe. There is only one class capable of overthrowing capitalism: the working class. Exploited by the relations of production under capitalism, the working class has a direct material interest in the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement by socialism, the system in which the working class owns and controls the means of production and collectively shares in the products of its labour. The working class, created by capitalism, is also the destroyer of capitalism.

Since Marx first called for a society "from each according to ability, to each according to need" this vision has inspired hundreds of millions. It has been the driving force in history. But it has also raised the problem: how do we win? The effort to build a revolutionary movement capable of creating communism while still working under the powerful grip of capitalism is clearly no small or simple task.

Since Marx first called for a society "from each according to ability, to each according to need" this vision has inspired hundreds of millions. It has been the driving force in history. But it has also raised the problem: how do we win? The effort to build a revolutionary movement capable of creating communism while still working under the powerful grip of capitalism is clearly no small or simple task. Despite false starts and setbacks, we remain convinced the working class will realise its revolutionary potential but no movement has yet been built primarily around making socialist ideas mass ideas.

Nationalism preaches to the people of a nation or national group that regardless of class they have more in common with one another than they do with the people of other nations. Nationalism helps bind the working class to the plutocracy and the oligarchs of its nation. The Socialist Party line is, "One world, one class.” In response to nationalism and to anti-immigration, we say, "No borders." We don't say, "Abolish some borders." We don't say, "Some of the workers of the world, unite." Our class has learned from bitter experience that there is no halfway or reform solution to nationalism. Our call is for all of the workers of the world to unite. There are no capitalist solutions. There are no "good" borders or bosses. There is no "good" nationalism. And there are no "good" reforms. We show that dividing the workers on national or ethnic race lines enables the bosses to rip-off, one group of workers, while robbing all workers. The workers must awake, and awake quickly, to the realisation that war with all its horrors is the product of the capitalist system. To conceal the true source of war, capitalist propagandists divide the nations into “aggressors” and “peace-lovers.” This is a lie. The people of every nation hate war, for they are its victims. They are plunged into war by the capitalist rulers, who alone profit from it.

By making the reforms primary priority our fellow-workers are neglecting the socialist idea of abolishing the wage system." We need to live in a society in which the labour of the working class enhances everybody, where there will be no profits for the bosses. There will be no bosses at all. Only the working class, which suffers the cruelties of capitalism in peace and war, can deal the death-blow to this foul system. The workers can rally the broadest masses to their liberating banner and can change the world. Having abolished capitalism, they can harness the productive forces and the wondrous discoveries of science to the service of human needs.  The release of new technology and computerisation opens up grand vistas for the development of human society. It holds the promise of eliminating all poverty and raising the living standards of all peoples to undreamed-of heights. Hazardous and unhealthy occupations can become things of the past. The drudgery and servitude of ugly and unnecessary toil can be ended. There can be leisure and comfort and cultural advancement for every man, woman, and child on earth. All on one condition – that capitalism, the strangler of human progress, is ended! In the meantime, the poor and the needy – the millions of them – drag out their drab and dismal lives.

Which Banner?

Today's nationalist march was being held using the slogan "All Under One Banner."

Members of the Socialist Party in Scotland remind our fellow-workers of Object 8 in our Declaration of Principles

"The Socialist Party of Great Britain, therefore, enters the field of political action determined to wage war against all other political parties, whether alleged labour or avowedly capitalist, and calls upon the members of the working class of this country to muster under its banner to the end that a speedy termination may be wrought to the system which deprives them of the fruits of their labour, and that poverty may give place to comfort, privilege to equality, and slavery to freedom."

Many Happy Returns, Charlie

Happy Birthday Charlie

Today is a special day: it’s Karl Marx’s 200th birthday. On the 5th of May, 1818, Marx was born. He chose to be an advocate for the working class and dedicated his life to their cause. What kind of force would arise if their individual powers were consolidated into a unified political movement?

Things appear more unstable and unpredictable than ever before. The truth is that we are all victims of capitalism and our destiny is to confront and change the socio-economic forces that cause our modern epidemics of social ills. The profit-driven economic system -  capitalism - is not working for us and we should create another economic system that puts the people first.

Day after day, year after year, even generation after generation workers, forced to work under alienating conditions for the money they increasingly need just to survive, workers surely fit Marx’s idea of a proletarian “class in-itself,” having experienced the wage-slavery of capitalism but many socialists and scholars have expressed frustration about workers’ continued failure to become a “class for-themselves.”  How on earth can the scenes Marx portrayed in Capital still remain unchanged after more than a century? They strike only for narrow economic grievances related to their specific workplace and rarely assert a broader class-based perspective. In this sense, it may seem that the prospect of a Marx-inspired movement is nowhere to be found. But regardless the ideas of Marx are still alive, providing many workers with a sense of purpose and direction. Despite years of neglect and distortion, socialist ideas still arise and are discovered by workers when false narratives do not explain realities of everyday life. Theories that do not fit people’s lived experiences are unlikely to hold for long.

Capitalism exploits all the resources. They treat humans as resources, they treat the flora and fauna as resources. Everything is just a resource to be exploited by capitalism for the capitalists. The big corporations and their owners are ]killing this living planet. The ruling class doesn’t have sleepless nights worrying about its workers or the world around them. The same people who own everything on the stock exchange own the media that tells the people what to believe and what to think. And the message is “Don't worry.” We’ve got to take on capitalism and its lies. We are socialists, disbelievers in private property, promoters of common ownership for the common good 

We must work together every day to build our collective cooperative future. The Socialist Party is committed to creating a different kind of world, a world where radical participatory democracy is how we make decisions and it is one where exploitation of our environment and the destruction of our climate is not the function of our economy. Throughout history, change has often seemed impossible. But once it comes, it seems like change was always inevitable.  The Socialist Party has always been the radical voice of the working class.