Industrial Autocracy (Part 2)

At the first sign of “hard times” when the capitalist finds he cannot sell the commodities produced by the workers in his plant, at what he considers a sufficient profit, he immediately closes the doors of his factory and proceeds to enjoy himself at some pleasant resort, living, on previous profits accumulated by him until “trade pick up” again.

Not so with the workers who are reduced to actual deprivation and desperation if they are unable to find a new job, which may be at a wage still further reduced. During “hard times” the worker who cannot find work must starve, or beg, or steal, or revolt. 

If you imagine for a moment that any of our great Captains of Industry are in business for the purpose of satisfying ever-present human needs, you have only to look about you to be swiftly undeceived. Under the present economic system, it is absolutely essential that people have to work in order to live. Everybody grants that productive workers are useful and valuable members of society and yet the very moment one multi-millionaire capitalist discovers that he cannot, personally, make a profit on his plant which he deems sufficient, he closes it down even though by so doing he throws tens of thousands of useful members of society out upon the streets to starve. The factory shuts down when the non-productive capitalist is dissatisfied with the dividends he is able to appropriate even though a hundred thousand people actually need the products that come from his plant.

This is sheer anarchy in production. It is the individual opposing his private profits to the necessities of tens and hundreds of thousands. This is selfishness enthroned; parasitism made lord over usefulness. And what say our law and our courts, our statesmen, our brave social problem-solvers to these things? Do they champion the cause of the productive workers, of those who serve, of the useful many, or do they rally around the support of the parasitic 1%?

You know and I know the courts and the laws, and their legal representatives, are so much a part of the of the privileged classes that they cannot conceive of any remedy, or relief for the working class at the expense of private property, to them the one sacred thing in the whole world. It never occurs to them that the railroads might be built, or the factories opened and operated, or the clothing produced merely to satisfy the desperate NEEDS of the people who actually produce these things. The only phase of such a situation that penetrates their minds is whether or not operation will result in greater or less profits for the owners of industry. What though the whole armies of Labour starve so long as it profiteth the profiteer! The Law and the legal representatives of the law, the Courts and our Great Judges say that a capitalist may do what he will with his own and that it is their function to protect him in the doing of it. And “his own” shall consist in whatsoever he may appropriate, take and hold, all he can get, whether it be 20 per cent profits, or 100 per cent profits, or 500 per cent. It matters not how a millionaire “invests,” what miracles of jugglery he may employ, what financial sleight-of-hand he may have achieved, whose money he has filched to invest the income on that investment, and on millions of fictitious investment, is considered first in operating the road, the plant, the mill. Unless the kings of industry feel that operation and production mean a sufficient profit (or additional capital) for themselves, the workers and the people may go to the devil with their needs. 

The rewards of labour bear no possible relation to the productivity of labour. A group of workers, by the use of new technology, or improved working methods, may increase the factory output ten-fold in a single year. Do they receive even twice as many products when they spend their wages? The capital of the capitalist who owns the plant may be increased enormously. But if the capitalist closes the plant and lives on his profits next year, what do the productive workers live on?

The capitalist who often never sees his plant, who is ignorant of the first details of the processes of manufacture, is made magically richer by the increased output of labour. They double, treble, quadruple “his” investments in one, two or three years, perhaps. His workers make the owner of the plant three times a capitalist, the economic master of three times as many jobs, and therefore, of three times as many “homes” and families. HE REAPS ALL THE REWARD. What has he done that he should receive any portion of it? 

Is it not true that the money he may have invested in this plant last year, or the year before, was the surplus values produced by other workers in the past?

Is it not true that the profits, or capital, you make for your employer this year will probably be used by him to purchase other plants, whereas economic King he will control other jobs and other lives next year ? Will not these new workers be permitted to work only when he is assured of still more dividends, still more capital for the purchase of still more factories?

We hear people say that “we need capitalists to promote production,” whereas it is precisely capitalist individualism or anarchy, that fetters and chains production.  Capitalist rule has brought poverty and despair to the productive many, and idleness and power to the unproductive few. For hundreds of years, we have lived in a world where the capitalists were the Lords of the Universe. They have been responsible to no one. And the autocrats in industry are lords over all other social institutions. They say what should be built and on what terms these shall be built and operated. They tell us through their media where to send the army to protect their investments in oil or in mines. The capitalist autocrats say when houses shall be built and food raised and transported. They say what terms the workers of the world shall be permitted to toil, and they say when the factories, and mills, and mines shall be closed and millions of wage-workers be thrown out of work, hungry, upon the streets. Theirs has been the last word in everything concerning our jobs and hence our lives. They are our Masters. Yet, they act irresponsible with the environment and now are more dangerous to the world’s workers than the nuclear bomb.

What has this capitalist autocracy brought us? It has brought us the most devastating and annihilating violence the world has ever seen. The capitalist system has been the cause of the death of millions upon the fields of battle, or of their being crippled for life. It has brought untold hunger and suffering and scarcity, billions of dollars of debts, and a disintegrating banking system.

What has the rule of capitalist autocrats brought to us?

In a broad land, fertile enough to feed the whole world, by their private ownership they have given us under-fed children, constant need, everlasting insecurity against hunger for the majority of the people.

The rule of the capitalist has given us increasing unemployment next door to, closed factories and desperate need of factory products.

Capitalist rule has brought poverty and despair to the productive many, and luxury and power to the unproductive few.

It has filled our prisons and our jails with those who have been forced down into “crime” through poverty and despair!

It has fostered the prostitution of women who could not earn a living through work. It has closed the avenues of real education to the working class.

This situation combined with the growing consciousness of the workers of their own power, and their growing needs, is going to mean the early end of all exploitation upon the face of this earth!

Industrial democracy means the rule of the workers as opposed to what we have known all our lives-the rule of autocracy, or the rule of the capitalist few. Nothing has ever been done for the working class until the workers began to exercise power to force these things. Nobody but yourselves is going to do anything for you now. You must organise and carry on the work of education as you have never done before. And what you want done you will have to do yourselves.

There is only one thing that will cure the world of wars, of poverty, of unemployment, insecurity and parasitism, and that is Industrial Democracy - Socialism - when men and women shall give labour for labour, service for service, value for value. Then they who sow shall also reap, and the workers who make shall also enjoy. Then social planning and system shall take the place of the capitalist anarchy that has brought the foundations of the social structure tumbling in chaos about our ears today.

The capitalist still makes the rules of this game and you must never imagine for a moment that he is going to change them to benefit you in any way. THAT TASK IS UP TO YOU AND ME AND THE OTHER MEMBERS OF THE WORKING CLASS.

Adapted and abridged from this

https://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/marcy/works/industrial-autocracy.htm

Glasgow’s carers, cleaners and caterers have voted for strike action over a £1bn pay claim.

 Blink and you might have missed it, but last week in Glasgow women made history. Bringing to a head a decade-long dispute between thousands of low-paid carers, cleaners and caterers with Glasgow city council, Unison and GMB members voted in landslide numbers to strike over historic equal pay claims estimated to be worth up to £1bn. If no other arrangement is reached, working-class women will soon bring Scotland’s biggest city grinding to a halt as they withdraw the labour that is so often invisible and yet vital to the functioning of any society.

In the age of #MeToo and an unprecedented public interest in the gender pay gap and equal pay at organisations such as the BBC, these women should now be taking their rightful place on the fronts of newspapers and at the tops of bulletins, with feminists and socialists everywhere lining up behind them in solidarity. Instead their activism has largely gone under the radar, framed as a local or party political issue, or not really acknowledged at all. Not all forms of feminist or trade union action are created equal, it seems.

 Trade unions have fought in recent years to shrug off an image of gruff blokeiness, just as black, LGBT and working-class women have advocated for a feminism that is intersectional and inclusive. Both have made great strides, but Glasgow’s equal pay women serve as an example of how far we still have to go. Compared with the rightfully extensive coverage of Birmingham’s refuse strikers or Hollywood’s abuse scandal, is it that they are too female to be a proper workers’ rights story, and too working class to be a proper feminist one?

 Inherent in the dismissal of Glasgow’s equal pay women is an assumption that the domestic work of cleaning, care and catering should naturally fall to women, preferably those who’ll get on with it quietly and be grateful that they’re getting paid at all.

 When Glasgow city council responded to strike ballot results by claiming that “putting vulnerable people at risk by calling a strike … cannot be justified”, they failed to acknowledge that these women have propped up Glasgow’s economy for decades precisely by caring for vulnerable people – not to mention that many have their own families who also live in precarity, owing in large part to the undervaluing of their work. An eagerness to interpret the dispute as the political manoeuvring of union bosses has similarly ignored the ability of these women to self-organise and act in interests beyond those of political pawns.

 Some of the women involved in this dispute have been fighting since 2007, and many are nearing retirement. Their equal-pay battle began with a national pay scheme that jumped through hoops to combine different criteria and conditions just to maintain the unequal status quo. But on top of this, the outsourcing of their work to arm’s-length companies has seen many landed with increased workloads, faster turnaround times for home carers, meagre sick pay and conditions that mean they receive payouts of just a few months of salary upon leaving work, many having never earned enough to build up a pension.

 All of this is set against a backdrop of decades of physically demanding and often emotionally draining work that ultimately forces many into early retirement anyway. Theirs is a story of the many ways in which class and gender intersect with austerity, privatisation and other capitalist forces to keep working-class women busy and quiet. But now Glasgow’s women have found their voice.

 If society really does find itself on a post-#MeToo precipice, then we have a decision to make: take the path of least resistance and focus on representation and CEOs, or fight for a feminism that goes beyond the boardroom, and a politics of workers’ rights that accounts for the specific ways in which women are oppressed by low-paid and precarious work.

 Glasgow’s cleaners, cooks and carers have made their choice. Over the coming months the city could see thousands of working-class women on picket lines, demanding what they’re owed after decades of being downtrodden. Our solidarity is the least that they deserve.

• Eve Livingston is a freelance journalist.

From an article in the Guardian

Industrial Autocracy (Part 1)

The capitalists and their paid lackeys of the media insist that commodities are the joint product of capital and labour. They say that the capitalist owns the factory; that he has invested his money in these institutions and that without the use of the factory and its machinery labour would be unable to produce anything. But we have seen that labour produced the factory even the money possessed by the capitalist class. To us, it seems a very simple matter to discover who make the things human beings need and use every day. We see the farmers growing cereals and vegetables, raising cattle and pigs. And we see these foods being transported to the food processing plants by railway workers, in trucks made by vehicle-builders. We wear clothing, all produced and cleaned and spun and woven into cloth and made up into garments by men and women. We live in houses, or flats, or tenements built by labour, from the materials produced by workers. Every shop, mill, factory, warehouse, every road, railway, and runway is the product of labourers and of no one else. We believe nobody will be foolish enough to question that labour produces all the commodities necessary to the life and well-being of mankind.

The employing owning class say that capital is the product of capitalists and that therefore it belongs to the capitalists and that it is “right” and “just” that the capitalists should manage their own products (their factories, shops, or mines) as they please, on whatever terms they may determine. These men who secured the mines, the rich acres produced none of these things; did not even work the land or the mines. They were merely the piratical crews that got here first and grabbed first. And the descendants of some of these early bandits are today engaged in riotous living on the incomes of countless millions, the base of which was thus secured and handed down to them by their grandfathers. First settlers who have been powerful enough and greedy enough to seize and hold the natural resources of any nation have always been able to make that nation pay continuous tribute to them, until the people revolt. You never knew a coal baron, even though the title to “his” coal mine came to his ancestors through large early land grants, permitting people to go down into the mine and get out their own coal, did you? Or a landowner who allowed the landless farmers to work the land for nothing, merely because he, himself, had paid nothing for it? Hardly. One and all the capitalists have held out for their veritable pound of flesh.

Anyone can see that if an owner of vast farmlands, purely by the power of his monopoly of those lands, rents out his farms to tenants year after year, and reinvests these rents in other business enterprises, he will accumulate more and more money capital. But we know who produces the rents paid to him, and we know also that his capital is obtained through sheer theft, and has no foundation on “justice” whatsoever. There can be no such thing as democracy, or “justice” so long as one group of men own the land and are able to hold up all other men for the privilege of using it. Under such conditions, landless men are handicapped at birth.  We do not agree with the hired intellectuals who mumble so much about “the rights” of capital, and the “rewards of capital,” etc., etc. We do not think the capitalist ought to have any share in the products of labour merely because he has appropriated the capital produced by labour. To reward the capitalist for the use of this capital means rewarding the non-producer for stealing from you and me. For the capital the boss uses today is the value produced by the workers and taken away from them last month or last year.

“Just waiting for the magic wand of Capital!” is what all capitalists think when they see rich, uncultivated soil, or water-power running to waste, or when they hear of the need of a new factory. But the need is for the hand of labour, for the tools, the machinery produced by labor. The need is not that capital be invested for private profits, but that free access is given labour to produce for the comfort and happiness of mankind. In a capitalist society, however, where all the lands and the natural resources of the earth, and all the instruments of production and distribution (railroads, mines, factories, etc.) are already privately owned and controlled, Labor, the world’s true magic-maker, is shut off from the productive processes and from the power of producing a living, or of earning a living, except upon the terms laid down by the capitalist class. This is true in spite of the fact that all the capital in all the world is incapable of producing one loaf of bread, one pair of shoes, one house, one suit of clothes. Not one wheel would ever turn productively, not one machine would ever operate, not one train would ever move without the hands and brains of labour. Capital is utterly incapable of increasing itself. Unless he is a financier and banker able to filch the swag from some other capitalist who has exploited labour, the only way a capitalist may force his capital to multiply and bear the fruit of still more capital, is by the employment of labour. Without the hands and brains of labor, capital would remain forever stationary. A million pound investment would remain one million pounds. The increase in this capital is the product of labour alone. We are not discussing a situation in which another capitalist comes along and invests another million pounds in the first capitalist’s plant. What we are trying to explain is how the first capitalist, who possessed a one million pound investment, finds himself at the end of the year, with this same one million AND twenty-five or fifty pounds additional capital (or profit). The only possible increase in capital, in this instance, comes through the exploitation of wage-labour.

A landlord may double the rents he demands of his tenants for his flats or his houses. But this merely doubles the income of the landlord. This does not increase the total commodity, money, or the total capital existing in the world. It merely transfers money from the pockets of your employer (who has to pay you. higher wages in order that you may pay increased rents) INTO the pockets of the landlord. One man will be five hundred pounds “out” and the other will be five hundred ahead in the game. You wage-workers only get a bare living (when you get that) anyway. In this transaction of rent-paying there is no increase in the total capital.

Any particular capitalist investment, of a specific sum, increases only through the employment of labour by the capitalist. For labor produces new values and gives far more than the wages or portion it receives, while the capitalist takes far more than he pays in wages. The capitalist pays wages (determined by the cost of living) for the labour-power, or strength of the workers. The workers produce commodities of three or four times the value of their wages. The capitalist appropriates the difference between the value of these commodities and the wages of his employees AS HIS SHARE IN THE TRANSACTION. It is true that he usually has to share this surplus value among other capitalists, with the wholesale, and retail men and brokers, and their employees. Nevertheless, the general capital increases just in proportion as he and these other capitalists are able to hold on to that value and add it to their own capital. The increase in capital comes through the exploitation of labour and there alone. All other transactions are the mere transfer of already existing capital from one account to another and cannot possibly increase the total capital. So-called increases in the value of unimproved real estate are fictitious and only represent the power of one capitalist to hold up another capitalist. As we said before, the power of one capitalist landlord to raise the rents of shacks inhabited by the employees of other capitalists, for example, is his arbitrary monopolistic power to levy a tribute from the employing capitalists, because the landlord is able to force these employers to pay higher wages to their workers to enable them to pay his increased rents. No value and no capital is added to the total general capital. The landlord forces the corporation capitalists to divide the surplus value they have already extracted from their own workers, with him.

Adapted and abridged from this

https://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/marcy/works/industrial-autocracy.htm

Lest we forget

 Iain S. Williamson, one-time Glasgow Branch member who lived in Japan and wrote The 'Kilt and the Kimono'  died a couple of weeks back.

The Burning Question

Last year was the worst ever year for wildlife fires ever recorded in British Columbia, according to the B.C.Wildlife Service. 

65,000 people were forced to evacuate and fire suppression itself cost $568,000 million. Fire weather is typically hot, dry and windy and there was plenty of it in B.C. in 2017, just as there has been in Ontario this year; already by early August there have been 64. According to wildfire expert Mike Flannigan,'' 

The average area burned in Canada each year has almost doubled since the 70's and human climate change is a major factor''

There is only one major change worth making and that is the abolition of the cause of climate change.

For socialism, 
Steve, Mehmet, John &all contributing members of the SPC.

Hungry Scotland

One in 10 single adults feared running out of food in the last year due to lack of cash.

The figure for the 16-44 age group includes single parents while one in 10 households with at least two adults was in the same position.

And one in 10 of those in the poorest communities has gone hungry after their wallets ran empty.

 15% of adults in the worst-off communities had “eaten less than they should” because of a lack of money. This compares to 3% in the richest areas.

Mary Anne MacLeod of A Menu for Change – a project by Oxfam Scotland, the Child Poverty Action Group in Scotland, Nourish Scotland and the Poverty Alliance – said: “These statistics paint a grim picture of hunger across the country. Given Scotland isn’t facing a food shortage, this is clearly a problem of widespread poverty.” She added: “The figures show 16 to 44-year-olds are most likely to be going hungry. We know low wages, zero-hour contracts, frozen benefit levels and the introduction of Universal Credit are pushing more and more people to the brink. When so many people are struggling to make ends meet you know something has gone badly wrong with the system. In our rich country no-one should be constantly worrying about how they’re going to feed their kids."

http://www.thenational.scot/news/16902607.study-reveals-food-povertys-tightening-grip-on-scotland/

Lest we forget

Obituary: Bob Norrie (1977)

Obituary from the November 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Glasgow members were stunned by the news of the sudden death of Bob Norrie. He was 72 years old.

Bob joined the party in 1940 and acquired an excellent knowledge of the Marxist case economically, politically and philosophically. His spare time was devoted mainly to the propagation of the SPGB case for Socialism and he did the job effectively and efficiently. Over the years he was a consistent attendee of Branch and propaganda meetings and to the end, he could often be found discussing with members of the audience long after the outdoor meetings had finished and everyone else gone. This activity increases the severity of his loss. He will be missed both as a man and as a socialist. Our sympathy is extended to his widow and family.

Understanding capitalism

The Socialist Party say that before production can be carried out in ecologically-acceptable ways capitalism must go. Production for profit and the uncontrollable drive to accumulate more and more capital mean that capitalism is constitutionally incapable of taking ecological considerations properly into account—and that it is futile to try to make it do so.

If we are going to organise production in an ecologically sound way then we must first be in a position to control production, but we can’t control production unless we own and control the means of production. So, a socialist society of common ownership and democratic control is the only framework within which the aims of environmentalists can be realised. So, environmental activists should be socialist. Yet too often they are advocates of  the idea of an idyllic market economy in which people exchange goods for use—what Marx called “petty commodity production"—but, as Marx demonstrated in Capital, petty commodity production led, logically and historically, to capitalist commodity production where the aim of production and exchange is no longer use but becomes to make and realise profits. Market exchange leads to the domination of production and society by market forces and, if we went back to the simple market system without profit-making envisaged by many Greens, the whole process of development towards a capitalist market economy would start all over again.

 The answer is to establish the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources. Then the whole concept of the market, of buying and selling, becomes meaningless. Where productive resources are commonly owned and democratically controlled so will what is produced, and the problem will not be to sell it— how can you sell to people what is already theirs? —but how to arrange for people to have access to it on an equal basis. In our view, it wouldn't be very long before the principle “from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs” could apply. That's socialism—real socialism, not the milk-and-water market exchange economy advocated by activists who believe they have radical proposals and it’s what greens if they are to be logical and consistent, should be working for.

Transforming raw materials into some commodity that can be sold, labour adds value to them; this value is the source of both the wages they are paid and the profits of their employer. Profits, in other words, are produced by labour. So said Adam Smith, the apostle of free-market capitalism. So the labour theory of value has a pedigree which ought to be unimpeachable for defenders of capitalism. It has to be said, however, that Adam Smith and his successors, precisely because they were supporters of capitalism, got themselves into all sorts of contradictions. They wanted to justify the capitalist profit system as the best possible, indeed as the only natural economic system, yet the labour theory of value which they accepted out of intellectual honesty implied that profits were a deduction from what labour produced and that capitalism was therefore based on the robbery of the producers.

There were only two ways out of this contradiction. One was to abandon the labour theory of value. The other was to accept that the capitalist system was based on the exploitation of labour and should, therefore, be abolished. Supporters of capitalism chose the first course so that by the middle of the last century the labour theory of value had become “discredited” in respectable circles. Supporters of the workers chose the second course. But they didn't quite get it right. They argued that the alternative to capitalism was a system that would ensure that every individual worker got the “full product of their labour”; this was to be done by pricing goods according to the amount of labour-time required to produce them and giving the workers who produced them a quantity of labour notes that would enable them to acquire the full labour-time equivalent of what they had produced. Under this scheme there would be no profit; all that was produced would go, in one form or another, to the producers. Marx is on record as attacking the idea that each worker could be ensured the “undiminished proceeds” of their labour. A whole section of his Critique of the Gotha Programme adopted by the German Social Democrats in 1875 was devoted to exposing the absurdity of the idea that each individual worker could be given the “full product” of his or her contribution to the co-operative labour of the whole labour force (even supposing this could be measured). In a socialist society, deductions from this would have to be made for such things as the resources to be devoted to the replacement and expansion of the means of production, the general administration of society and the maintenance of those unable to work because of youth, old age, sickness or disability. The only context, in fact, in which the phrases “full fruits" or “full product” or "undiminished proceeds” make sense is that of the whole community enjoying the full fruits of the collective co-operative labour of its working members; which in practice means allowing every member of the community an equal right to satisfy their own personally-decided needs. 

Wealth is not created by market forces; at most it is only distributed by them — unequally and to the benefit of those who own the means of production.

Black Flag Exhibition in Dundee

“I regard anarchism as a political and behavioural philosophy with which I identify fully. However, anarchism is, above all, morality and implies a way of life without concessions. In this sense, I would not be so much because my life is far from that of any anarchist militant.”  says Santiago Sierra.

‘I travel a lot,” explains Santiago Sierra. “But entering a country is like going to jail. Borders disgust me – as an idea and as a personal experience. This work denies all of that.” Sierra is talking about his latest installation, which has just opened at Dundee Contemporary Arts. Called Black Flag, it documents his attempts to have the symbol of anarchism planted at the north and south poles. What was the reason for the project? “To occupy the world, I suppose." 

Sierra’s attempt at world occupation started three years ago when he sent an expedition to the remote Norwegian island of Svalbard. From there, he travelled to the Russian base of Barneo which, because it sits on a drifting ice floe, has to be rebuilt every year in order to serve incoming tourists. From there, Sierra’s team ventured to the nearby north pole and, on 14 April 2015, planted a black flag, as well as capturing the landscape in sound and video.

Eight months later on 14 December – precisely 104 years after Norwegian Roald Amundsen beat Britain’s Captain Robert Falcon Scott to become the first person to reach the south pole – Sierra’s minions planted another at the geographic south pole. The two black flags were both left in place, partly as a rebuke to, as Sierra sees it, nationalists who have befouled Earth’s otherwise pristine extremities with their misplaced national symbols.  He adds: “Planting a national flag in a hitherto unvisited place has never been an innocent gesture. This is how colonial processes always begin.” 

It’s no coincidence that the Tayside city is playing host to Sierra’s latest provocation. “Dundee is no stranger to the subject,” says Sierra, now 52. “Its geographical position and its shipyards have led it to form part of the conquest of both poles.”

Black Flag is at Dundee Contemporary Arts until 25 November.

Dying younger in Scotland

Life expectancy is an estimate of the average number of years a new born baby would live based on that area's age-specific mortality rates.

How long men and women in Scotland can expect to live has fallen for the first time in 35 years. National Records of Scotland (NRS) figures show life expectancy fell by about 0.1 years for males and females. 

Scotland still has the lowest life expectancy of all UK countries. Life expectancy in the UK as a whole remains lower than in many other comparable countries internationally.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-45636457

Achieving Socialism

There are erroneous definitions of socialism which were being spread about in order to breed confusion in the minds of our fellow-workers. For that reason, it is especially necessary to define socialism.

Two false definitions were:

(1) that Socialism meant a system of sharing-out,

(2) that Socialism was a system of rationing.

When the Socialist Party lays down that we are for socialism, we want a system of society where those things necessary for the maintenance of life itself would be owned by society as a whole. Socialism meant the social ownership of the things necessary to maintain life—land, transport, factories, communications, etc. The products would be individually owned and consumed. That definition should be kept clearly in mind. The idea that we would all use the same toothbrush is sheer nonsense. Another bogey put forward was that socialism would restrict individuality. Individuality was already restricted or haven't you noticed?

The only solution was to harmonise production and ownership by society taking control of the means of production and the instruments for the converting of the raw material into the articles we require, and owning socially, product socially—i.e., for the needs of society and not for the profits of a class, The question was how was this to be done—there was only one manner of doing it and that was by the members of society desiring it should be so—it was not going to happen behind one's back as some people fondly imagined. The human factor was necessary to change the present conditions. The only class interested in that change was the working class—it was to their interest that the capitalist system should be wiped out. How, then, to bring about socialism? Political power is essential for bringing about the change.

There was a great deal of confusion about the meaning of political power, and a great deal of superstition. Some thought the vote was merely a bauble to amuse the working class. Others that since politics were corrupted, the workers should not dabble in them, but should devote themselves to economic action. These notions, whether springing from personal experience or manufactured by people whose interest it is to spread confusion, were due to a misunderstanding of what politics meant. The working class had not grasped the historical side of the matter. They join a political party and they see underhand trickery going on that they sicken of the whole business because they do not understand politics.

To-day, the workers perform all the useful functions in society. Occasionally a capitalist may amuse himself by going into the office to dabble in business, but as a class, the capitalists preferred to spend their time at the gambling tables of Monte Carlo or yachting in the Mediterranean, etc. Some people said that it was the capitalist class who provided the brains. What, then, happened when a capitalist died? Surely in such a case, the business must die with him —but what did we find?—more often than not the business went on better than during his life, at all events it did not immediately die. The truth was that brains were bought, and the brains were supplied by the working class. Since the capitalist performed no useful function, the logical deduction was that those who did all the work should enjoy the results. Why didn’t they? It was not a question of numbers—the workers were in the majority. Why didn’t they take control of the means of production for themselves? Simply because if they had attempted to do so they would have had to meet the forces of the Nation—the army, the aircraft, etc. The army, however, is composed of working men, and even the officers, bar the fashionable regiments like the Guards, are working men—they sell their "professional services” for their livelihood. How, then, did the capitalist control the Army? It was a question of supplies. First, the law sanctioning the Army, etc., is passed by Parliament. Then the supplies necessary to maintain and increase these Forces are voted in the Annual Budget. Lastly, the instructions and general orders are sanctioned by Parliament before they can be put into operation, The control of the Fighting Forces is therefore in the hands of those controlling the political machinery. Another point, not so well known, is that a Standing Army—for more than a year—is illegal in this country. How then does this Army continue in existence? By the following method. Every year a Bill called the Renewal of Expiring Acts Bill is passed in the House of Commons. One of the items in that Bill is the renewal of the Army. So that even to continue the Army the control of Parliament is necessary. Since 1867, when the Ten Pound Franchise Bill was passed, the workers have had the majority of votes. The workers, therefore, have ample means to get control of that machine politically. The anarchist says Parliament is no good.

There are two sets of Anarchist Groups, one believes that an individual should be entirely free and that action should be confined to economic lines —i.e.. striking, etc. That a General Strike would wipe out capitalism. They ignore the fact that the first people to suffer are the working class, who have the smallest supplies. A General Strike, therefore, means General Starvation. Moreover, they are quite unable to show how unarmed workers could face the fighting forces, particularly with the latter’s powerful modern weapons of destruction.

The other set believes that syndicates should be organised by the workers in the industries for the purpose of taking over these industries and that each section should be confined to its own trade, i.e., the bakers—the bakery, the miners—the mines, etc. This was known as Syndicalism. It was absurd to isolate the workers in that manner—to put the miners in charge of the mines, the sewermen in charge of the sewers, and the lunatics, presumably, in charge of the asylums. Production was social, the miner depended on the baker for his bread, and the baker depended on the miner for his coal, etc.

About 1905 a scheme was formulated in Chicago that had for its method the “taking and holding" of the means of production without a political party. The body then formed was called the Industrial Workers of the World. When asked how they could hold the means of production the answer usually given was “by locking out the capitalist.” As the capitalist is hardly ever in the factory this did not seem a very hopeful procedure. When asked what power the workers could bring against the armed forces they had no answer, though later on they developed the notion of physical force— a piece of sheer lunacy while the capitalist control political power. The Anti-Parliamentarists, such as Guy Aldred, who ranted about the uselessness of the political machine, were unable to find a substitute. The Socialist Society, in its first stages, may have to maintain a standing army, and it will be the workers then who will determine that question. Having this control, through the political machine, the workers will be able to obtain and distribute what they require.

Lost And All At Sea?

A recent article in the Toronto Star focused on the plight of a young woman, Angela Johnson, who bought a boat to live on because of the price of land in Vancouver. 

Though Ms. Johnson is quite happy with her purchase, of $279,000, it's hardly the point, which is many people are considering living on boats now the price of real land has swelled in Vancouver. 

The average price of a 2-storey house there is $1.27 million; a bungalow is $1.175 million and a condo is $506,624.

The moot question is, ''How will folks cope who can't afford a boat''?

For socialism, 
Steve, Mehmet, John & 
all contributing members of the SPC.

Far Better To Have A Society That Didn't Create Mental Health Problems,

Ontario Health Minister, Christine Elliot is under fire for cutting $335 million from planned mental health funding this year. With the defeat of the previous Liberal government in June's election Doug Ford's P.C.s have clearly demonstrated how much they care about health. This means the planned $525 million annual addition to the mental health budget proposed by the outgoing Wynne government has been slashed by $190 million. 

N.D.P. leader Andrea Horwath was furious saying that, ''Addictions and Mental Health Ontario says $2.4 billion is needed in new funding over the next four years''. 

What neither Wynne, Ford, Elliot or Horwath have said is it would be far better to have a society that didn't create mental health problems for so many in the first place.

For socialism, 
Steve, Mehmet, John & all contributing members of the SPC.

Volunteers Needed

When socialists advocate a society in which everyone will contribute their abilities to the community on a voluntary basis in return for having their needs met, we are often met with the argument 'it's a nice idea, but it would never work', yet millions of people every day give their services free of charge simply because their services are required.

 Socialists are often accused of being unrealistic when we advocate a world in which people will work without the motivation of money. Yet even today men and women do work without financial incentive because they see their efforts are needed. There are some seven million unpaid carers in Britain—people (a majority are women) who help physically or mentally disabled relatives, friends and others on a regular basis. Not only do these people not get paid for their efforts, they often deprive themselves of other income-earning activities.

We don’t suggest that everyone is a potential member of a lifeboat crew or a mountain rescue team. But there is no reason to suppose that socialist society will lack such people because capitalism usually doesn’t lack them today.

With capitalism there are three ways of getting people to work: they can be paid, they can be forced, or they can be encouraged to volunteer. Payment for labour is the economic basis of the capitalist system: owners of capital has made a profit from the past efforts of workers are able to pay for further work to be done which, on average, will yield further profit.

Forced labour is not a very efficient way of producing wealth, so it has gone out of favour except as punishment. But the third form of work—volunteering, or working for no pay—is highly regarded. We live in a society that decrees most people have to work for money to live, except the few who own enough capital to avoid that necessity. But it is not a society in which no work is done except for money. All employment involves work, but not all work involves employment.

We speak of capitalism as the dominant economic and social system, but its dominance is not complete. Capitalist relationships are between suppliers of labour power and holders of capital, and between various other buyers and sellers. Socialist relationships are not just in the imagination of socialists today. In embryonic form, they are in the many types of voluntary work that are done today.

Within most households, domestic tasks are performed on a voluntary basis. No charge is made to do the washing-up, the shopping, the decorating or the gardening (the “wages for housework” campaign is not supported by the Socialist Party, who see it as an unwarranted extension of capitalism, although this does not mean that we encourage anyone to exploit anyone else, with or without a money' system).

Outside the household, men and women volunteer their services in a variety of ways. Hospital visiting, school governing, being on the local council, helping to improve the environment, are just some of the ways in which useful work is regularly done without the intervention of money by some 13 million people in Britain. Of course, voluntary work in the capitalist world is not the same as all work will be in a socialist world. For one thing, there won’t be the need for the vast apparatus of collection boxes, adverts, appeals and the bureaucratic administration of the “voluntary sector”. All effort will go directly to meeting needs.

Charity and volunteering may be seen as mitigating some of the inherent nastiness in the capitalist system. But it remains a culture of winners and losers, based on buyer and seller relationships, with capital always holding the upper hand. Socialism means the ending of such a culture and such relationships. In their place will be an extension of the principle of volunteering which can be seen in the pro-social actions of men and women today.

Some cynic once said that people who volunteer to work when everyone else gets paid must be soft in the head. Today each of us has to try to sell our labour power for the best price we can get. But at the same time, there’s nothing to stop us volunteering to join the socialist movement in helping to bring about the kind of world that expressed the best, not the worst, of what humans are capable.

Volunteering for socialism means choosing to replace the capitalist system with one based on all of us working directly to meet our own needs and the needs of others and on having free access to what we collectively produce by way of goods and services. In short, from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.

The Bitter Irony. Neglect and Abandonment of Housing.

In West Vancouver, one of Canada's most expensive neighborhoods, stands a row of abandoned mansions. It's difficult to find a person on Highview Place however hard one looks.

According to Statistics Canada's 2016 census, West Vancouver has the highest rate of unoccupied homes in all the municipalities that make up Vancouver, at 9.2 per cent.

Single detached house prices there rose 37 per cent in 2015 as a wave of real estate speculation swept the region and the affluent suburb became a hot spot for luxury homes.

The homes were built by British Pacific Properties in 2013, which, according to its website builds “exceptional master-planned communities.” These homes are presently valued at between $6 million and $8 million. The average price of a house in West Vancouver is $3 million and the municipality is now facing a decreasing population as there are few affordable houses in the municipality.

It's a bitter irony that most of the people who built these mansions cannot afford to live in them, including the small fry capitalists who own the construction companies that build them.

It cannot be much fun living near the abandoned houses as they have not been maintained, proving their absentee owners don't care. Reports have come in that there are six foot weeds in front of some properties, water seeping out of others, dead and dying plants in the yard, a flooded basement and raccoons going in and out of some of them.

The only explanation of such neglect and abandonment is the houses are used for investment rather than a home to live in.

For socialism, 
Steve, Mehmet, John & all contributing members of the SPC.