Answering Some Questions

Letters to the Editors from the February 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors,

I subscribe monthly to your Socialist Standard. Frankly, I am very impressed by the honest “grass-roots” approach which you take towards such subjects as world nuclear disarmament, for example. However, there are a few passing points which I would like to be answered:

(a) In the light of your stance on War in general (Socialist Standard, February 1981 — "Refuse to be Sitting Targets”), how are pacifists wishing the foundation of a true socialist society going to overthrow hundreds of powerful capitalists in the world (who will definitely use the force of arms to protect their privileges) without the use of weaponry?

(b) How will unarmed socialists persuade “militia workers” — soldiers world-wide, and a potent force in themselves — to disarm and thus surrender their “livelihood”?

(c) Could you please in your reply put forward the SPGB’s argument against administration: i.e, without a representative administration, how will society be run smoothly and efficiently?

(d) How will socialists persuade workers brought up under the monetary system to accept the transition from the gold standard to a “new system of social organisation in which the means of production and distribution of wealth . . .  are commonly owned and democratically controlled . . ."  by all members of society?

Having said all this however, I thoroughly enjoy and approve of your journal: so, fellow socialists. carry on the campaign — there are not many of us in evidence.

Iain Campbell, 

Wester-Ross, 

Scotland. 

Reply:
(a) and (b) The Socialist Party of Great Britain is not a pacifist organisation. The reason we are opposed to violence as a means of establishing socialism is that we see no necessity for it. When the majority of workers want it, they will be able to use the already existing — machinery the vote — to bring it into being. And when that happens, what will "hundreds of powerful capitalists" be able to do against the conscious, collective action of millions of workers? The power of the capitalists comes from their political control and will exist no more once this control is taken over by a democratic majority of informed, convinced socialists. Nor is it easy to imagine members of the armed forces — who are also workers and would also be socialists — turning their arms against friends, relatives and fellow workers to defend a system the majority no longer wanted. Would they not rather surrender a futile, negative livelihood like soldiering for a life of voluntary cooperative work that will give them personal satisfaction and a sense of social purpose?

(c) The SPGB has no opposition to administration as such. We wonder what gave you this impression. Socialism will certainly need many and efficient administrators. Perhaps you are thinking of our opposition to political administrations, to governments. These are expressions of class division in society and will disappear in socialism. Government over people will be replaced by administration of things. Regarding “representative administration”, a socialist society will obviously have to delegate certain important organisational tasks to administrators; but they will have no special power or prestige over the rest of the community. They will just be carrying out socially necessary work and there is no reason to suppose that, if they have chosen this kind of work (all work will be voluntary), they will not carry it out smoothly and efficiently.

(d) We cannot hope that our efforts alone will be enough to make socialists of the millions of workers who have been conditioned by capitalism into thinking that the buying and selling system is necessary and eternal. Our argument is that from within capitalism itself come the forces (the SPGB is one of them) to convince workers that the present system, despite its immense productive power and continued raising of expectations, cannot solve the problems it produces and cannot operate in the interests of the working class. There is, of course, no absolute guarantee that this will happen but certain long-term trends make it increasingly likely. Capitalism, for its own needs, has already had to provide the premises for socialism — a large, organised, highly trained working class driven by its conditions to constantly look for alternatives; rapid worldwide communications and spreading of ideas; the possibility of a vast abundance of goods sufficient to satisfy all human needs; recurrent social problems which even under capitalism can often only be approached on a world scale (pollution, nuclear threat, terrorism, for example) and which thereby spread among workers a consciousness of the need for global solutions.

Editors

Dear Editors,

In article 6 of your Declaration of Principles, you declare that the working class must organise for the conquest of the powers of national and local government. Would you please elucidate as to the nature of the programme that you would embark upon if a member of your party were to be elected. As you have put up a candidate for Islington South and Finsbury, I can only assume that as a contingency you have defined a programme of aims.

I believe that the wording of article 8 is too ambitious. I refer to one specific word really: banner. As I understand, it, your party refutes any suggestion that it should have a banner as such, so surely the presence of this word in article 8 causes confusion and invites unnecessary criticism.

Stephen Shields, 

Glasgow

Reply:

The need to gain democratic control of the state machine is based on the realisation that if the governmental powers are not conquered by the socialist majority they will likely be used against us. When a majority of socialist delegates are elected by class-conscious workers to the assemblies of local and national government throughout the world they will have only one act to perform: the abolition of all property rights and the transfer of the means of wealth production and distribution into the hands of the whole community. Socialist candidates stand in election for that revolutionary purpose and none other.

If an individual socialist councillor or MP is elected on the basis of socially conscious working class votes, he or she will do everything possible to further the interests of the working class as a whole. The state forum will be used to expound clear socialist ideas and all legislative proposals will be responded to from the angle of the working class interest. Socialist delegates will be accountable to the Party membership. 

As for the reference to mustering under our banner, we doubt very much that this is a significant reason why workers arc not joining the SPGB. The term is clearly metaphorical, as are many other phrases in the Declaration of Principles. If Stephen Shields attends any of the meetings of his local branch he will meet with political clarification, but no banners.

Editors.

Addicted Scotland

Scotland has the highest death rate from drugs in Europe, with 934 fatalities recorded in 2017  which is set to top 1000 this year. That’s more than double 2007’s figure of 455.

David Liddell, director of the Scottish Drugs Forum (SDF), said: “We are in absolute crisis in terms of the number of people dying. It’s sadly taken this level of deaths for people to really start taking notice of the issue...We shouldn’t be writing people off. The new strategy must send that message, particularly in the case of overdose deaths, that they are all essentially preventable.” Liddell continued, “As a society, we should have much more compassion for our most vulnerable, who are victims of society themselves. What we want is to keep people alive so they can recover.”

Kirsten Horsburgh, SDF strategy coordinator for drug death prevention, said: “We need to see the number of drug-related deaths in Scotland as a public health emergency. If we were talking about almost 1000 people dying of other preventable causes every year, there would be a public outcry and there would be a full-systems approach to address the issue. This is everybody’s business and it needs attention. It’s a national travesty.” She added: “Stigma silences people and stops them accessing help. It’s seen as some kind of lifestyle choice, which is a lazy moral option.”

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/scotland-absolute-crisis-highest-rate-13144332

We need socialism

 Changes in society's social organisation involve changes in human behaviour, and they in turn, depend on the fact that human behaviour is elastic and not genetically fixed. We see once again the absurdity of the notion that human nature cannot change. This commonly made assertion implies that human behaviour is essentially fixed; it is, therefore, the exact opposite of the truth.

In capitalism, it is money that determines whether or not people's needs are met. This principle applies to the "welfare state" as much as it does to the market for goods. But in the case of the welfare state it is the government which has the power to decide whose needs are to be met (through the allocation of resources) and at what level.

Just as capitalism is a world system of society, so too must socialism be. There never has been, and never can be, socialism in just one country because its material basis is the world-wide and interdependent means of production that capitalism has built up. The bulk of the wealth produced in the world today is produced by the co-operative labour of the millions employed to operate these means of production. What is needed now, to establish socialism, is a conscious political decision on the part of these millions across the world to run society in their own interests.

This will be done by taking the means of production throughout the world into common ownership, with their democratic control by the whole community, and with production solely for use.

Common ownership will be a social relationship of equality between all people with regard to the use of the means of production. No longer will there be classes, governments, and their state machinery, or national frontiers.

Democratic control will involve the whole community in making decisions about the use of the means of production. Instead of government over people, there would be various levels of democratic administration. from the local up to regional and world levels, with responsibility being delegated if necessary to groups and individuals.

Production for use will bring production into direct line with human needs. Without money, wages, buying and selling there will be a world of free access. Everyone will be able to contribute to society by working voluntarily, according to ability. Everyone will be able to take freely from whatever is readily available, according to self-defined needs.

The motivation for this new world comes from the common class interest of those who produce but do not possess. An important part of this motivation comes from the global problems thrown up by capitalism. Global climate change makes a nonsense of the efforts of governments and makes the worldwide co-operation of socialism an urgent necessity. But this does not rule out local democracy. In fact, a democratic system of decision-making would require that the basic unit of social organisation would be the local community. However, the nature of some of the problems we face and the many goods and services presently produced. such as raw materials, energy sources, agricultural products, world transport and communications, need production and distribution to be organised at a world level. Corresponding to this, of course, there would be a need for a democratic world administration, controlled by delegates from the regional and local levels of organisation throughout the world.

The Socialist Party intends to build a world in which there will be neither exploiters nor exploited.  The socialist movement expresses the common class interest of the producers. Because political power in capitalism is organised on a territorial basis each socialist party has the task of seeking democratically to gain political power in the country where it operates. If it is suggested that socialist ideas might develop unevenly across the world and that socialists of only a part of the world were in a position to get political control, then the decision about the action to be taken would be one for the whole of the socialist movement in the light of all the circumstances at the time. It would certainly be a folly, however, to base a programme of political action on the assumption that socialist ideas will develop unevenly and that we must, therefore, be prepared to establish “socialism” in one country or even a group of countries like the European Union.

For a start, it is an unreasonable assumption that socialist ideas will develop unevenly. Given the world-wide nature of capitalism and its social relationships, the vast majority of people live under basically similar conditions: and because of the world-wide system of communications and media, there is no reason for socialist ideas to be restricted to one part of the world. Any attempt to establish “socialism” in one country would be bound to fail due to the pressures exerted by the world market on that country's means of production. Recent experience in Russia, China and elsewhere shows conclusively that even capitalist states cannot detach themselves from the requirements of an integrated system of production operated through the world market.

Faced with this explanation of how the world could be organised, many would reject it in favour of something more “realistic", including some who call themselves socialist. They seek to solve social problems within the framework of government policies, the state machine, national frontiers, money, wages, buying, and selling. But if our analysis of capitalism as a world system is correct—and

we've yet to be shown how it’s wrong—then state politics are irrelevant as a way of solving social problems. Viewed globally, state politics only make sense when seen as a means for capturing political power in order to introduce a world of free access.

We must get on with working towards the abolition of this sordid mess

Mammon reigns

Confusion is probably the strongest weapon in the capitalist armoury and a smokescreen of gibberish obscures the class nature of society.

 The interest of the working class lies in the immediate establishment of socialism, and this is the one and only object of the Socialist Party We are not to be fobbed off by the “Immediate Demands” or “Something Now' reformists. It is the Socialist Party view that the social problems that affect wage-earners in a particular country cannot be solved within that countries borders. Capitalism is the cause of these problems and capitalism is world-wide.  Because capitalism is world-wide so too must be socialism, the system which will replace it and whose common ownership, democratic control and production solely for use will provide the framework within which today’s social problems can finally be solved. This is why we sometimes refer to our object as “world socialism”, making it absolutely clear that we reject all nationalism and all national approaches to working-class problems. Now is the time, not to be disillusioned, but for fellow-members of the working class to study our case and understand its validity.

People running big corporations—indeed, those running businesses of all sizes—seek to maximise profits not because they are misguided, but because that’s their job in the capitalist economy. The common goal of both the private and public sectors is capital accumulation and market expansion – GDP growth in conventional economists' lexicon. Capitalists are not going to prevent climate catastrophe because they have only one purpose, and that’s to generate profits. This is why no governments have yet taken the actions that are necessary to drastically reduce climate change. They all seek the illusory trade-off between growth and greening of the economy. Governments and corporations talk the talk but they never walk the walk. The only direction government policies lead society towards is whatever generates the most profit. Real decision-making is left to the market and the stock exchange. Climate change appeasers with vested interests will say there is plenty of time to act, and they are aided by the actual climate-change deniers who say there is nothing to worry about.  Perhaps a section of the capitalist world, the fossil fuel industries, maybe made to pay a higher price for the consequences of their environmental destruction but the rest of the business world will get of Scot-free. As long as the profit motive is the driving force behind production the needs of people cannot be met. 

Socialism can only be brought into being by the political act of the majority of people wanting and working for it, we assume that the majority of people would want to co-operate with each other in running and maintaining a socialist society. Society will make decisions in its own best interests. This is not the case today. We do not claim that socialism will be trouble-free but compared with the madhouse of capitalism it will be a sane society indeed. Socialism will be the beginning of civilised history before which all societies will be classified as barbaric. We do not accept the permanence of capitalism any more than we accept the fact that the workers’ ideas of society cannot be changed. History shows that social systems change, and that these changes are accomplished by thinking men and women, and that peoples’ ideas change with them. This includes ideas on all subjects — religion, politics, morality, science, law and art. Ideas have changed considerably over the centuries and dramatically in the last 100 years. The spread of opinion, or social consciousness, as with mankind’s social life generally, develops in accordance with the development of productive forces.

Opinion today, or the prevailing ideology, is overwhelmingly capitalist, because capitalist ideas are socially sponsored, propagated and broadcast at all levels. Socialist ideas, which arise from the same economic conditions, are ignored or misrepresented or distorted in other ways. Yet the battle of ideas can be fought against such overwhelming odds. The question which obviously arises is does capitalism satisfy or can it be made to satisfy people’s needs? The answer is obviously — no. The contradictions within the system of poverty in the midst of plenty, its dependence on the market economy, its unpredictability and general anarchy, disqualify it as a social system rendering social service in the real sense of the term.  We apply our materialism, our factual analysis, continually to the economic background. Socialist propaganda is not aimed at man’s ‘innate goodness’ or higher nature, but at mankind’s practical material needs. It will be this factor alone which seen as an alternative will create revolutionary consciousness, and the subsequent political action based on that consciousness.  The establishment of socialism is a task well within the capacity of the modern working class. The alternative is to watch civilisation degenerate and deteriorate under an obsolete social system.

Advocating Socialism

Socialism is no mere Utopian dream, but is the direct and inevitable outcome of the present conditions of life and labour, as, indeed, every social system is the outcome of the one that proceeded it. In the middle ages the handicraft worker and the small peasant proprietor, with the simple, individual tools and implements of production, used to produce wealth and individually own and enjoy what their energy had called into being. In such circumstances, the socialist conception of society could not arise. But with the development of industry and the introduction of machinery, an industrial revolution took place, with the result that production to-day is no longer individual, but is collective or social. In deciding whether capitalism, like feudalism, should be consigned to history we should apply one simple test. Is the capitalist system organised directly for the needs of all people? If it is not, that would be the best reason for getting rid of it, and replacing it with one that would. This is a choice between capitalism or socialism.

Capitalism is organised for private gain, for profit and the accumulation of capital. It works through class ownership and economic exploitation. It sets up economic antagonisms within communities and divides the world into rival capitalist states. It breeds the ideologies of hate which are expressed in many forms of religion, nationalism, and racism. It is enforced through the power structures of the state. It creates vast amounts of waste and destruction. It turns all the useful things of life, including our labour, skills, and talents into commodities to be bought and sold on the markets. Capitalism makes a god of money and puts this above the real needs of people, so how could anyone seriously argue that it is organised for the benefit of the community?

Social systems are not, and cannot be, kept within national boundaries—but is widespread over the globe. While, however, the method of producing wealth all over the civilised world, has undergone a change from individual to social production, yet we find the ownership of the wealth when produced still remains individual. This contradiction, this grotesque social absurdity, lies at the root of all the trouble in modern society. It gives rise to the class antagonism which obtains to-day, and which the socialist alone can trace unerringly to this division of interest between the class who possess and the class who produce.

In every country under the domination of capital the simple facts of the situation are driving the workers to see the cause of the trouble, and are forcing them to an understanding of the remedy. Wherever capitalism is, socialism accompanies it like a shadow.

The Socialist Party set out to advocate socialism and socialism only as the hope of the worker, as the only way of escape from the appalling misery which envelops our class and which, if it is not already part of our daily experience, is removed from us by the smallest of spans, and we have preached it. We set out to show the utter folly of attempting to patch a system entirely rotten, and to urge that the only effect such patching could have was the prolongation of the life of that entirely rotten system—and we have shown it. We set out to prove that the enemies of the workers were not confined to the camp of capitalism, but were actually in command of the camp of labour, having been elected to their dominant positions by an ignorant proletariat— and we have shown it. Our purpose was to emphasise the fact that every worker or leader who was not organised in the ranks of The Socialist Party, waging war upon the forces of the capitalist class, was consciously or unconsciously lending aid to the enemies of the workers—and we have done that also. We set out to promote revolution as against reform; a boldly defined and unalterable working-class policy of open war upon the capitalist class as against compromise, with its inevitable results in working-class confusion; class organisation specifically for ultimate victory as against sectional organisation for an illusionary “immediate advantage." That is our message.

The practical alternative which would be organised directly for the needs of all people is socialism. The challenge of working with others round the world to set up a new system is not so great as it might appear. Already we have people doing useful work in every field. In farming, mining, industry, manufacture, building, and transport, and in the running of services like education, health, communications, radio and television, and the like, we have people of every skill and talent doing the useful things of life. The challenge is to free these resources from the constraints and the anti-social aims of the capitalist system. If workers around the world can run society in the interests of profit-mongers then they can surely run it in their own interests.

This would have to be based on common ownership where all resources and all means of producing and distributing goods would be held in common by all people. Then through democratic control and voluntary co-operation every aspect of society would be organised solely for the benefit of the whole community.

What can be the justification for wanting to retain a system such as capitalism, which is only distinguished by its ability to generate failure and disillusion and all its various ways of thwarting the best hopes that we have for our future? The day is long overdue for getting rid of it. We live in a world in which it is now possible to satisfy everybody’s needs, but the present system of production prevents this potential super-abundance being realised. Unemployment is, therefore, an unavoidable waste created by capitalism. The wealth that could be produced by the unemployed would be very useful and would benefit the whole community. But the present system of society does not, and cannot, work that way.

Poor Unhealthy

People living in Scotland’s poorest areas have double the rate of illness or early death than those in the wealthiest parts, an NHS study has found. Almost a third (32.9%) of early deaths and ill health in Scotland could be avoided if the whole population had the same life circumstances as the people who live in the wealthiest areas, NHS Health Scotland said.

In the poorest areas those aged 15-44 are more likely to die or suffer ill health from drug use disorders and depression. The rate of dying early from or living with ill health caused by drug use was found to be 17 times higher in the poorest areas, while the figure for alcohol dependence was 8.4 times higher. Men in the poorest areas are more likely to die early from ill health than women.

 In the wealthiest areas, migraine and neck and lower back pain are more common contributors.

Dr. Diane Stockton, who led the study, said: “The stark inequalities highlighted in our report represent thousands of deaths that didn’t need to happen. Illnesses that people didn’t have to endure, and tragedy for thousands of families in Scotland. It does not have to be this way." She continued, “The fact that people in our wealthiest areas are in better health and that conditions that cause most of the ill health and early death result from things we can change, like illnesses associated with mental well-being, diet, drug use and alcohol dependency, shows that it is possible to create a fairer healthier Scotland.”

 Ash Scotland Chief executive Sheila Duffy said: “We know that you’re nearly three times more likely to smoke if you live in Scotland’s poorest communities, compared to our most well-off areas."

Socialism - the best of all possible worlds

We have said many times that studying the past is only meaningful if it enables a better understanding of the future. More precisely, a knowledge of the laws that have governed the evolution of societies in the past should enable us to have a clearer and more certain understanding of how society is likely to evolve in the future, and therefore how we can act to make these laws work towards progress, in the interest of the workers, who are the vast majority of the world’s population. Socialists did not invent people's aspirations for a just, egalitarian and free society; mankind has cherished this dream for a very long time. What Marx and Engels did was to take these aspirations and shape them into a revolutionary project. They undertook to discover the laws governing the evolution of class society so as to use this understanding to achieve the better society to which mankind aspires.

After decades of socialism being not being present in political debates, most people simply are not familiar with the term itself. The Socialist Party vision is of a society in which people have a real voice in the choices that affect their lives, having a say in the decisions that affect them It is a vision of a free, democratic and humane society. Socialism means taking power from the few and giving it to the many. The people who make society run ought to run society, that is, the working class majority who should take political and economic power. Of the myths today, probably the one least questioned is that the capitalist rulers are indispensable to the continued existence and functioning of society. The truth is just the opposite. There is only one class that is indispensable for human survival, and that is the working class, the class of labour. The task of the Socialist Party is to foresee a rebirth of mass radicalism and to prepare its advent by developing and disseminating the ideas of Marxism. 

The key to understanding the present economy can be found in the fact that, in the main, unless capital can be invested at a profit, production ceases. This is a fundamental law of the capitalist system. It is no matter that raw materials and labour, the sole requirements for wealth production, are available in abundance without the prospect of profit, production ceases. In a socialist society this restriction would be removed. Wealth would be produced solely to satisfy human needs—and in the modern world we have the potential to produce wealth in abundance. Will the people continue to permit the small fraction of wealthy proprietors to own all the land and its wealth, to ravage the national resources, and exclude the majority of the population from rational management and enjoyment of the land and resources?

The capitalist owning and employing class are the barbarians of modern society, resorting to their desperate struggle for survival to the most fiendish weapons and practices. To remove them from the seats of power is the task of the Socialist Party. Mankind cannot continue its evolution until civilisation is rescued from capitalist barbarism. Industrial democracy will wrest the earth from its exploiters and its vast and inexhaustible storehouse will yield abundance for all.

We in the Socialist Party do not advocate reforms. We do not oppose those individual reforms that may benefit workers, but never advocate reformism as a route to resolving the plight of the working class. To do so would attract the support of non-socialists who sideline all with reforms that workers don't need. We hold that regardless of any benefit reforms may have for workers, they are more often than not beneficial to the capitalist class who gain by propping up their parasitism within a class-based society. Reforms do not and never can change the fundamental base of capitalist society from which all social ills flow. Our aim is to foster majority change to achieve a society of equal social access to the means of life for all. Discarding our illusions is not a once and for all task. It is a continuous activity. The current state of the world and the system we live in makes us prone to fall into the trap of creating and remaining in convenient illusions. Yet by reminding ourselves that we have the responsibility of tomorrow in every step we take today, we can make better choices and leave behind us a world at least a little bit better. We in the Socialist Party care, but we also understand nothing really changes under capitalism. Only by changing our conditions through the establishment of a society where the world's wealth is owned commonly, where production meets human need instead of speculation for profit, will the above problems be resolved – a resolve that can happen as soon as people collectively decide they want it.

As socialists, we understand the rhetoric political parties make in their speeches to the working-class to incite support "Lower taxes!”, “Better wages!” This resonates with most working-class families, but ultimately fails to deliver as the socio-economic bureaucracy of the parties loyalty lies with the corporate 'welfare state', and their ties within the economic system to ensure only the wealthiest can benefit while creating misinformation and misconception with the voters giving the visage that "Our party, is your party". As long as workers take this 'easy way out" and not think for themselves, and allow the professionalisation and depoliticisation and personalisation of politics, the working-class will never reach a state of prosperity.

The State and Capitalism

The foundation of capitalist society and civilisation is—as its name indicates—the private ownership of property. The state or the organisation of government in Capitalist society exists nominally to preserve the equilibrium—the balance of antagonistic forces within society—and it does this by maintaining with all the power at its command this private property basis.

In the fulfilling of this, its primary purpose, the State acts in the main according to certain rules—rules of its own making— which collectively are known as “the Law.”

The protection of property and the preservation and enforcement of the social forms and observances dependent upon property is thus the essential function of the Law. These elementary facts are, unfortunately, still unrecognised by the majority of our fellow workers. Their minds are so warped by the media and other agencies of mis-education controlled by the property-owning class that for them, as for the parasites who live and flourish on them, the Law is the great and wonderful preserver of social order without which all organisation would vanish and anarchy prevail.

The Law thus regarded comes to have a halo of sanctity thrown around it. It becomes a god-like power, beneficent in its ruling but terrible in its vengeance upon the transgressors. As a god it has its own sacred books and ritual, its prophets and priests.

Through all this glorification and mysticism the Socialist Party must show the world’s workers that the Law is one of the most powerful weapons of those who exploit and oppress them—that it is an agent of slave owners for the perpetuation of slavery. The Socialist Party works inside the trade union as he does outside, to develop the workers’ knowledge of the slave position of their class. As their knowledge grows they will have their organisation on this class basis instead of on that of craft or industry. We, however, sure of the correctness of our claim that there it no short-cuts to socialism, no other path than the hard and steep one of working-class revolutionary education, no other helpful policy than that based on the class struggle, have resolutely and consistently left such expedients to those others, content to have them provide our object lessons for us.

For our part we still proclaim that the proletariat must want socialism before they can establish it, and that they must understand Socialism before they can want it; we still assert that society is divided into two classes—a master class and an enslaved class—with diametrically opposed interests, and that the freedom of the enslaved class can only be the fruits of victory in a class struggle; we still declare that the basis of society as at present constituted, is the private ownership of the means of living, and that reforms—anything in fact short of the abolition of private ownership in the means of living, and the establishment of common ownership in its stead—must be futile and utterly helpless to effect amelioration of the general condition of the workers' position; we still preach that the road to this overthrow of the present social system lies in the capture of the political machinery, and we are as emphatically insistent as ever upon the point that the means to such end are already in the hands of the workers in their possession of the vast bulk of the voting power in all advanced capitalist countries. Such being our beliefs we have shaped our policy in accordance therewith. We have set our faces against compromises of every shape and form. We have refused to have anything to do with reforms, no matter how alluring they appeared, or how much they ran in the popular fancy. We have conducted all our activities in the light of the class struggle, keeping clear the issue—the overthrow of the dominant capitalist class and the system under which they dominate. We have held on our course without deviation, true to every clause, every statement, every affirmation, of the guiding tenets of our Declaration of Principles.

The aim of the Socialist Party is to persuade others to become socialist and act for themselves, organizing democratically and without leaders, to bring about a new socialist society. We are solely concerned with building a movement for socialism. We are not a reformist party with a program of policies to patch up capitalism. Our aim is to build a movement working towards a socialist society. We consistently advocated a fully democratic society based upon co-operation and production for use. The Socialist Party is an organisation of equals. There is no leader and there are no followers. The more who join the Socialist Party, the more we will be able to get our ideas across. The more experiences we will be able to draw on and greater will be the new ideas for building the movement for socialism. So stir yourselves, fellow-workers, and settle with the capitalist class once for all.

Revoking the Freedom of Edinburgh

Aung San Suu Kyi is set to be stripped of her Freedom of Edinburgh award for her refusal to condemn the violence against the Rohingya in Myanmar.

This will be the seventh honour that the former Nobel peace prize winner has been stripped of over the past year, with Edinburgh following the example of Oxford, Glasgow and Newcastle which also revoked Suu Kyi’s Freedom of the City awards. 

Suu Kyi was given the award in 2005 to honour her role in championing peace and democracy in Burma, where she was living under house arrest. At the time the Lord Provost of Edinburgh compared Suu Kyi to Nelson Mandela, describing her as “a symbol of peaceful resistance in the face of oppression. By honouring her Edinburgh citizens will be publicly supporting her tireless work for democracy and human rights.”

Suu Kyi has repeatedly refused to speak out against violence committed by the military against the Rohingya in Rahkine state, which saw more than 700,000 people flee over the border to Bangladesh. The crackdown, which began in August last years, saw villages razed to the ground, tens of thousands killed and women assaulted and raped at the hands of the military. The United Nations have said the violence amounted to “ethnic cleansing”.

The past year has seen Suu Kyi’s international reputation as a beacon of hope tarnished by what many see as her complicity or apathy towards the crimes committed in Rahkine. She has repeatedly refused to call the Rohingya by their name- which is seen as an acceptance of their belonging in Myanmar- and in a speech in Singapore yesterday, she described them simply as the “displaced persons from northern Rakhine.”

This will only be the second time in 200 years that Edinburgh has revoked a freedom of the city award, following Charles Parnell in 1890, an Irish nationalist who fell into disrepute for an affair.

No to reformism

 Money rules our political system, and government ideology. Capitalism has stretched its tentacles to every corner of the Earth in its quest for capital accumulation and market expansion so that it now poses an existential threat to planetary life. It is for this reason that socialism will never cease to exist as an alternative. Our rulers make critical, world-changing decisions, but they are compelled to do so by an impersonal beyond their personal control: the profit-driven dynamic of capitalism itself.  Capitalists can do whatever they like to mitigate the injustices of the present system, but socialism will always take hold.

The ‘trickle-down’ theory argument goes thus: cut the taxes of high-income earners so they can make more money off their investments; by taking home a greater share, they would spend more, in turn creating jobs and more income for everyone. While this trickle-down economics was being promulgated to ensure the State can afford to reduce taxation, social services were cut. The trickle-down perspective was cruel in practice but understandable from the capitalist’s pressure to accumulate capital by retaining more of the workers' surplus value.

The cause of working-class misery is private ownership of the means of life. The interests of the workers, who do not own the means of life, are opposed to the interests of the capitalists, who do own them. This clash of interests is the class struggle. Although their interests continually clash with those of their masters, many workers do not understand that this is inevitable. Nor do they understand that their masters' ownership of the means of life is at the bottom of the trouble. Now why, with this continual conflict of interest, do the working class remain ignorant? And why are they so desperately apathetic? Is their ignorance not because the truth has not been told? And is their apathy not born largely of disappointment with the results of past efforts of their class to secure some amelioration of their condition?

We are very emphatic that the clear duty of a real socialist party is to work for real socialism. It has no justification for existence apart from that. The only work a socialist can do is to advocate socialism. We can never support anything that conflicts with or socialism while we remain socialists; for that is to obscure socialism. Arguing for reforms means the case for socialism has receded, no matter how temporarily, into a secondary position. Socialism is not being proposed. Secondly, doing reformist campaigns work needs no socialist party at all. Thirdly, the particular reform worked for will not appreciably affect the condition of the working class as such. Fourthly, it will therefore have wasted the working-class strength concentrated upon realising it. Fifthly, it will, because it has effected no material improvement in working-class conditions, have bred disappointment, and, from disappointment, apathy. And finally it will have made existing confusion worse confounded in the minds of the working class. Explaining capitalism and socialism is the proper work of a socialist party not demanding palliatives and amelioration of conditions. If we overleap logic we overleap ourselves and land in a bog of confusion and disappointment. We are only interested in the maintenance of truth. Truth can only be maintained inside the logical method — the truth, even if it means that we become for the time as voices crying in the wilderness.

We need not inquire for the moment into the honesty of working-class leaders. We need only deal with their teaching and leading.  If socialism is the only remedy, and they are not socialists, their teaching cannot be right because they do not teach socialism. Those who profess socialism although they talk of it occasionally, they do not teach it. The important thing in a teacher of socialism is that it should always be socialism that we teach.  If we do not explain every manifestation of class conflict in the light of socialist philosophy, it is little, better than any non-socialist political leader. Our teaching is neither logical nor consistent and lands our audience in a bog of confusion.  Working class ignorance and apathy which must be dispelled before socialism can be realised.

If we were to say that unemployment must last as long as capitalism and were then to recommend the unemployed to send a deputation to the representatives of the capitalists to ask that they, the capitalists, should abolish unemployment, we would either be fools, removed from logic of our position. If we argue that capitalist representatives are in control of the political machinery to conserve their own interests as against those of the working class (as we all agree is and must be the case); and that we must regard capitalist representatives always as a hostile force against whom war must be waged unceasingly until they are utterly vanquished, yet suspend hostilities and enter into alliance with them, we add to the confusion and disappointment of our fellow-workers. If we were to declare that poverty and misery must last till socialism is established, that until socialism is built nothing can materially or permanently affect the position; if we're to say that palliatives are therefore of little use, so little use indeed that we must have a party that shall concentrate upon the thing that matters – socialism - rather than the things that do not matter – palliatives- ; and that our organisation was founded because palliatives were not good enough, we should then concentrate our efforts upon the realisation of palliatives, we are riding rough-shod over logic and engulfing our fellow-workers in impotence and despair.  The Left-wingers might do good work for socialism if only their vaunted adherence to principle was a matter of fact instead of a figment of fancy.  They persist in the folly of emphasising non-essentials and scrimping on the essentials until they are forever remain a stumbling block.

Those who grandly announce “We are all socialists now,” are wide of the mark. Not everyone who proclaims him or herself a socialist shall find place in the real socialist movement. Not those whose desire is personal aggrandisement, nor those who aspire to lead the workers’ activities, nor the experts nor the superior persons nor the compromisers, nor those who are conscious and unconscious perpetrators of ignorance and false friends. But those who, understanding the working-class relation to the economy of production; understanding the forces that have been at work through all history to present in this the twentieth century that appalling anomaly of a starving people in the midst of a riot of wealth of their own creation; understanding how the physical and intellectual well-being of the workers is conditioned by the measure of their control of the means by which they live; understanding that control of these means of life can only be secured by workers similarly enlightened; those who understand these things and the necessity for eliminating every factor tending to confuse the issue in the working-class mind, have set themselves steadfastly to the task of translating their knowledge into clear, logical, consistent action to the end that their fellows may the more readily acquire the knowledge that shall make them free, only these are the socialists and only these can form a real socialist party. 

Homes by the Square Metre

Edinburgh continues to be Scotland’s most expensive property market with homes costing an average of £2,669 per square meter while Grangemouth is the cheapest at £1,016,  followed by Bellshill in North Lanarkshire at £1,030.

Overall in Scotland, house prices per square meter have risen by 20% since 2013 from an average of £1,320 to £1,579 in 2018.

Edinburgh is Scotland’s most expensive place at £2,669 per square meter followed by Linlithgow in West Lothian at £2,076 and Stonehaven in Aberdeenshire at £2,039.

Larkhall and Lanark have recorded the biggest price increase since 2013 with a rise of 33% while West and Central Scotland have seen the biggest increase over the last five years.

Prices per square meter increased by 33% to an average of £1,163 in Larkhall and to £1,579 in Lanark followed by Dalkeith, Bathgate and Hamilton all up 32%.

https://www.propertywire.com/news/uk/edinburgh-highest-per-square-meter-property-price-scotland-uk-average/

A FREE SOCIETY

Too often socialists express revolutionary slogans without explaining what they mean. If we want to be taken seriously we have to convince people that what we say makes sense. Our goal is a non-market moneyless economy with the slogan 'from each according to ability, to each according to need'.  In the view of the Socialist Party, an important obstacle stopping more people supporting the idea of a society based on production for use is that they simply can't see how a society without money or wages could work. It seems too daunting - too much of a leap of faith to make. The more we discuss it and argue why it needs to involve the removal of the market and money system, the less daunting it seems. In particular, the closer you look, the more examples we can find of where humans routinely behave (inside capitalism) in "socialistic" ways.

The Socialist Party rejects the idea of exchange between independent workplaces and communities.  Those at workplace level who produce goods should have no say as to how those goods would be distributed or used - since if they did they would have a property right over them and that would not be social ownership but sectional ownership. Society as a whole would be the owner of the fruits of labour produced and supplied. it cannot just be left to the workplace committees to decide what is produced (they can decide how it is produced, but not how much). We should use the local market structure that we will inherit from capitalism. In other words, it is adequate to say you simply look at what people take and that automatically triggers (without the need for money) the demand from the next level upstream of production (ie at a simple level: local store- regional distribution warehouse-manufacturing/assembly factory-raw material extraction). There is no ownership by anyone of the instruments of production, like the land, factories, or transport. Social ownership would not be based on the state (or cooperatives), but based on common ownership.  It would involve the complete disappearance of buying and selling, of money, of wages and of all other exchange. Naturally, there being no money, the goods made available for individual consumption would be available for individuals to take freely without charge. Administration – those bodies that we democratically delegate to make decisions on distribution – will allocate whatever proportion is needed for general services like health, education, housing, etc. Sure there will be disagreements but the difference is that we will seek to resolve them democratically rather than through the rule of the rich. Given that socialism will still need to concern itself with the efficient allocation of resources this will be achieved mostly through calculation in kind. Decentralised production entails a self-regulating system of stock control. Stocks of goods held at distribution points would be monitored, their rate of depletion providing vital information about the future demand for such goods, information which will be conveyed to the units producing these goods. The units would, in turn, draw upon the relevant factors of production and the depletion of these would activate yet other production units further back along the production chain. There would thus be a marked degree of automaticity in the way the system operated. The maintenance of surplus stocks would provide a buffer against unforeseen fluctuations in demand 

It's a common objection that free access to goods and services would lead to people wasting resources by taking more than they need.  Most of the objections, however, tend to be the same old "what about the lazy person who doesn't want to work ?" argument dressed up in another disguise There are plenty of examples today to indicate that free access will not lead to abuses. When there is no requirement to hoard we use resources as and when we need them. Capitalist apologists have invented a fictional person, whose wants are limitless: someone who always wants more and more of everything and so whose needs could only satisfied if resources were limitless too. Needless to say, such an individual has never existed. In reality, our wants are not limitless - people have diverse tastes and we rarely want everything available nor do we want more of a thing than is necessary to satisfy our needs.  We cannot judge people's buying habits under capitalism with their actions in a free society. After all, the vast advertising industry does not actually exist to inform us about the choice of products available but rather to create needs. Conspicuous consumption within capitalism produces individuals who define themselves by what they have, not who they are. An unalienated well-developed individual that a socialist society would develop would have less need to consume than the average person in a capitalist one, a slave to consumerism. There is also in capitalist society a tendency for individuals to seek to validate their sense of worth through the accumulation of possessions. As Marx contended, the prevailing ideas of society are those of its ruling class then we can understand why, when the wealth of that class so preoccupies the minds of its members, such a notion of status should be so deep-rooted. It is this which helps to underpin the myth of infinite demand. In socialism, status based upon the material wealth at one's command would be a meaningless concept. Why take more than you need when you can freely take what you need? In socialism, the only way in which individuals can command the esteem of others is through their contribution to society, and the more the movement for socialism grows the more will it subvert the prevailing capitalist ethos, in general, and its anachronistic notion of status, in particular.

Today we have the possibility of living a life of potential plenty, and nor what we do endure – a life of frugality and scarcity. All previous ages have been rationed societies. The modern world is also a society of scarcity, but with a difference. Today's shortages are unnecessary; today's scarcity is artificial. Planning is indeed central to the idea of socialism, but socialism is the planned (consciously coordinated and not to be confused with central planning concept ) production of useful things to satisfy human needs precisely instead of the production, planned or otherwise, of wealth as exchange value, commodities, and capital. In socialism, wealth would have simply a specific use value (which would be different under different conditions and for different individuals and groups of individuals) but it would not have any exchange, or economic, value. Socialism does presuppose that productive resources (materials, instruments of production, sources of energy) and technological knowledge are sufficient to allow the population of the world to produce enough food, clothing, shelter and other useful things, to satisfy all their material needs. Conventional economics deny that the potential for such a state of abundance exists.

For socialism to be established, there are two fundamental preconditions that must be met.
Firstly, the productive potential of society must have been developed to the point where, generally speaking, we can produce enough for all. This is not now a problem as we have long since reached this point. However, this does require that we appreciate what is meant by "enough" and that we do not project on to socialism the insatiable consumerism of capitalism. Secondly, the establishment of socialism presupposes the existence of a mass socialist movement and a profound change in social outlook. It is simply not reasonable to suppose that the desire for socialism on such a large scale, and the conscious understanding of what it entails on the part of all concerned, would not influence the way people behaved in socialism and towards each other. Would they want to jeopardise the new society they had helped create? Of course not. If people cannot change their behaviour and take control and responsibility for their decisions, not only will socialism fail but itself will not succeed then either.

Sowing the Seeds of Socialist Revolution

Too often in the past has the working-class placed its trust in leaders and reforms yet ultimately for the working-class there has been nothing but a return to wretchedness and the outlook of gloom and despair unless we learn the lesson of reliance upon no other class but our own and attain that class-consciousness with its appreciation of the universal solidarity of working-class interests that shall presently deliver us and with them the whole human family from the throes of slavery for evermore. The remedy, socialism, means, not high wages or low wages, but the abolition of the wages system. Socialism means the end of the employing class. There is a real class divide. It is us against them.

The capitalist economy does not exist to serve our needs, but instead, our needs are shaped to serve capitalism. We are all expected to make whatever sacrifices are required to help the economy – so we face cuts in pay and working conditions, damage to our environment, the cuts to social services because the economy ‘demands’ it. Everyone is a slave to the market economy. Today's economy is based on a very simple process – money is invested to generate more money. Bosses call it profit, politicians use the term economic growth. When money functions like this, it functions as capital. As capital increases (or the economy expands), this is called capital accumulation, and it's the driving force of the economy. Furthermore, for money to make more money, more and more things have to be exchangeable for money. Thus the tendency is for everything to become commodified. Money does not turn into more money by magic; capitalists are not alchemists! Rather in a commodified world, we all need something to sell in order to buy the things we need. Those of us with nothing to sell except our capacity to work have to sell this capacity to those who own the things we need to work; factories, offices, etc. But therefore the commodities we produce at work are not ours, they belong to our employers. Furthermore, we produce far more commodities and products as workers than the necessary products to maintain us as workers, due to long hours, productivity improvements etc. This difference between the wages we are paid and the value we create is how capital is accumulated. The function of a class analysis is to understand the tensions within capitalist society.  Since the employing-owning class is all but powerless in the face of ‘market forces,’ each needing to act in a way conducive to continued accumulation, they cannot act in the interests of workers, since any concessions they grant will aid their competitors on a national or international level. Thus the struggle between our needs and the needs of the capitalist economic system takes the form of a struggle between classes. When we say the economy doesn’t exist serve our needs and therefore we have to assert them against capital, we beg the question what a society that does exist to meet its own needs would look like. In other words, where does our vision of asserting our needs lead? Such a society, based on the principle of ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’ is called socialism. Needs’ in ‘from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs’ does not mean mere physiological needs as distinct from wants. Needs are self-determined, encompassing everything from the physiological to the psychological to the social, and everyone has an equal right to have their needs met. 

 Socialism has nothing to do with the former USSR or present-day Cuba or North Korea. These are capitalist societies with only one capitalist – the state. Socialism is a state-free society where our activity – and its products – no longer take the form of things to be bought and sold. Where activity is not done to earn a wage or turn a profit, but to meet human needs. It is also a democratic society, in a way far more profound than what ‘democracy’ means in its current sense. As there will be no division between owners (state or private) and workers with the means of production held in common, decisions can be made democratically among equals. As production is not for goods to be sold on the market, there are no market forces to pit different groups of workers against each other.  There will be only a self-managed, self-governing society which exists to meet the self-determined needs of its members. Production is socialised under our conscious control. Capitalism is a class relation, and class struggle is the only way to break out of it - by ultimately rejecting our condition as human resources and asserting ourselves as human beings. This can only be done with the abolition of social classes altogether. It’s not about saying class is more important than other things, but about understanding what capitalism is and where potential revolutionary subjectivity arises. It is not from oppression, but from alienation – the separation of producers from the product, of activity from the meaning and control of that activity. The working class are potentially revolutionary subjects because of our material position within capitalist society; we've nothing to lose but our chains.

Ends are made of means – some means get us closer to what we want, others make it more remote. As the Socialist Party, we do not spend much time dreaming of the future – our politics are very much oriented to the here and now by analysing present-day capitalism and its problems. Now it is true that having some idea of what a future society could look like can persuade others we’re not just idle dreamers who don't know what we're for. But a fully worked-out vision of the future is not a prerequisite for workers to struggle to advance their concrete material interests. To this end, we try to spread propaganda advocating socialist ideas which grow more tangible and more meaningful and our fellow-workers begin to feel their power to change the world and to imagine what that world may be like. Anti-capitalism is not workers managing the economy in place of capitalists but the abolition of ourselves as a class. Non-owning bosses such as in co-operatives taking the place of owning ones are not anti-capitalism. This is because capitalism is a mode of production not a mode of Therefore anti-capitalism has to go beyond opposition to those who manage it to opposition to the social relation as such ie the abolition of wage labour.

The Socialist Party has a vision of a class-free, state-free, non-market society without money, commodity production, and exchange guided by the maxim ‘from each according to ability, to each according to need.’ We believe that only certain means can create this end, and that these means therefore form a part of our vision, a vision that extends from the present to the future. We can make suggestions as to how such a society might work. But no blueprint, merely an exposition of possibility. We think it unlikely that would-be political ‘thinkers’ such as ourselves can anticipate all the details of a future society – no society has ever been designed in such a way in advance. Nevertheless, we can offer some broad guidelines and some speculation as to how it could work, the details will need to be filled in by the self-organisation of millions, whose collective genius far exceeds that of any individual.

We do place class analysis and the profit motive as central to our understanding of capitalism and how to abolish it. This is not a priori assertion, but an a posteriori one; that is one arising from rational, critical inquiry into the social phenomenon. So when we try to understand the persistence of starvation and malnutrition in a world of food surpluses we cannot but note the impact of export-led growth policies that see countries export grain to feed cattle to export to relatively affluent markets while the populations of the exporting countries go hungry. When we try and understand the world's unswerving course towards catastrophic climate change despite scientific consensus as to the causes and the severity of the consequences, we cannot but conclude that the capitalist imperative to 'grow or die' over-rides all else, perhaps even human life on earth. When we look at rising urbanisation and the global spread of shanty towns, for example, it cannot be understood without looking at the spread of capitalist social relations into the countryside, turning peasants into landless workers, many of whom are forced to migrate to the slums of the cities to scrape out a living. When we talk about capitalism and class struggle, we are not just talking about workplace disputes, but society as a whole, and the struggles that take place in society between the dispossessed and those who represent the interests of capital. 


Adapted from this debate
https://libcom.org/library/participatory-society-or-libertarian-communism