Climate Change Hit Salmon Catches

 Global warming is being blamed for Scotland’s worst salmon season in living memory. 

Some beats on famous rivers like the Spey and the Nith recorded not a single salmon caught during the entire season. Just two salmon were caught on the River Fyne in Argyll this year, where once more than 700 were caught each season. The number of fish caught by anglers has been so low that some estates have stopped selling permits for once-popular beats because there is no fish to catch. Tourism has been hit, sales of salmon tackle have slumped and ghillies have lost their jobs.

 Experts believe rising temperatures blamed on global warming have badly hit the salmon’s feeding grounds with related changes in current patterns also affecting their migration. Survival rates for salmon at sea have fallen as low as 3 per cent with global warming and ocean fishing fleets among the likely causes.

https://www.scotsman.com/news/global-warming-blamed-for-scotland-s-worst-ever-salmon-season-1-4834860

Remembering Black Douglass

When abolitionist Frederick Douglass arrived in Scotland on a speaking tour in 1846 from the United States, 13 years had passed since Britain enacted the Slavery Abolition Act.

Colonial slaves had gradually been freed and Britain's slaveowners were financially compensated for their loss of "property".

Douglass's 19-month visit to Britain and Ireland began in 1845; seven years earlier he had fled slavery himself from the US' slave-owning South for the free North.

"One of the things about his travels in Scotland was his Scottish surname," said Alasdair Pettinger, author of the forthcoming book, Frederick Douglass and Scotland, 1846: Living an Antislavery Life. "He picked up the fact that Douglas [or Douglass] was a name that resonates in Scottish history."

Douglass often connected with Scottish audiences by referring to the "Black Douglas".

"When he addressed audiences, he quite enjoyed the fact that he could make a connection to the 'Black Douglas', which, being black himself, was quite an opportune connection," said Pettinger. 

He was born around 1818 as Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey. By the time he arrived in Massachusetts as a fugitive, he needed a new name. Nathan Johnson, a free person of colour who gave him shelter, had been reading a narrative poem by the Scottish author Walter Scott - The Lady of the Lake, which had a character named James Douglas.

Douglass impressed Scottish audiences with powerful speeches opposing slavery in the US, which had yet to end the practice. He worked as Scotland's anti-slavery agent from an address in Edinburgh, where there is now a commemorative plaque in his honour, and toured the country's cities and towns - including Glasgow, Paisley, Dundee and Perth - between January and October 1846. Delighting in the warm Scottish welcome, he described a "conglomeration of architectural beauties" in Edinburgh, and even contemplated settling in the capital with his family.

He demonstrated his literary knowledge of Scotland by visiting the birthplace of Robert Burns. According to Pettinger, the first book Douglass bought after escaping from slavery was an edition of Burns, and he was known to quote the 18th-century Romantic poet as another way of engaging with Scottish audiences.

Douglass arrived amid controversy over the separation of the Free Church from the Church of Scotland. The Free Church required funds, which saw it accept donations from pro-slavery churches in the US. Douglass latched on to the issue and denounced the Free Church by repeatedly calling to "send back the money" on his tour. At Edinburgh's Music Hall, 2,000 people attended his talk.

 The Scottish capitalists' appetite for making money fed off the back of human misery. Scottish merchants and doctors often staffed Africa-bound British slave ships that took enslaved African people and transported them to colonies in the Caribbean.  By around 1800, a staggering 30 percent of slave plantations in Jamaica, where there are still Scottish surnames and place names, were owned by Scots. As Scotland's Tobacco Lords reaped great wealth from their investments, Glasgow boomed. Glasgow, street names mark the city's merchants who amassed extraordinary wealth from the transatlantic slave trade, like Glassford Street, named after Scottish Tobacco Lord, John Glassford.  Other connections include Jamaica Street, named after the island where slave plantations saw the city's industrialists grow fat on the proceeds of sugar and rum.  In Edinburgh, Henry Dundas, a prominent Scottish politician who infamously delayed Britain's abolition of slavery by 15 years, is immortalised by a statue in the capital.

As for Douglass, he visited Scotland again between 1859 and 1860. After his first tour, he arrived back in the US in 1847 a free man, after supporters in England made provisions to buy his liberty.

“In the country, this conflict is not so apparent; but, in cities, such as Baltimore, Richmond, New Orleans, Mobile etc; it is seen pretty clearly. The slave-holder with a craftiness peculiar to themselves, by encouraging the enmity of the poor, labouring white men against the blacks, succeeds in making the said white men almost as much a slave as the black slave himself. The difference between the white slave, and the black slave, is this: the latter belongs to ONE slave-holder, and the former belongs to ALL the slave-holders, collectively. The white slave has taken from his, by indirection, what the black slave had taken from him, directly, and without ceremony. Both are plundered, and by the same plunderers.” 

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/scotland-hosted-abolitionist-profiting-slavery-181124233607376.html

One for all and all for one

What will socialism mean in practice? It will mean that the capitalists will be deprived of their ownership and control of the factories and communications, mills and mines, and transportation. All these means of production which they have used and misused only to pile up profits for the owning employing class will be taken from them. Socialism will make an end of production for profit and will carry on production for use. The needs of all will be met, and new needs and pleasures now denied to the working class will be created and satisfied by a socialist organisation and expansion of production. Workers will produce far better and more willingly under their own management than they do now. For the first time the workers will know that greater productivity will no longer be a threat to their livelihood but will make it possible to raise the whole standard of living of all and shorten the hours of labour.

The capitalist is interested only in production for profit. The fact that people always need shoes and food and shelter is of absolutely no concern to him unless he can realize a profit for himself in producing these articles. If he cannot, he closes down his factories.

The ending of capitalism will put an end at the same time to the threat of wars, to the maintenance of armed forces in preparation for war abroad or suppression of the workers at home. The building of socialism will lead the whole of humanity towards a new world. This is the new world for which many generations of workers have struggled. It is for us in our generation to bring this new world into being. Revolution becomes possible when the working class is not prepared to live any longer under intolerable conditions and has a will to overthrow capitalism. A socialist party is based on the work of those who first taught how society develops and changes, on the revolutionary ideas of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. A socialist party has no interests apart from those of the working class as a whole an so it will not betray the interests of the working class—for it has no other interests. The Socialist Party is distinctively the party, and its vote is distinctively the vote, of the working class. The revolutionary party of the working class cannot be grown overnight. It arises from the class struggle; and it develops with the development of the class struggle, in the fight against capitalism. But the working class must know how to struggle, to have an understanding of the laws of development of society and of the laws of revolution.

There is but one issue from the standpoint of labour, and that is Labour versus Capital. Upon that basis, the political alignment of the future will have to be made. There is no escape from it. For the present, the ignorance of the workers stands in the way of their economic and political solidarity, but this can and will be overcome.

What we aim at is a socialist party to take into membership all class-conscious wage-workers, thus making an injury to one the concern of all. The Socialist Party stands firmly on the bed-rock of the class struggle, and; declares, that so long as the means of production are in the hands of a numerically small class, the workers will be forced to sell their labour-power to them for a bare subsistence wage. Consequently, between these two classes, a struggle must go on until the toilers come together on the political as well as on the industrial field and take over for themselves that which, being the result of their labour, justly belongs to them.  We believe that the economic struggle against the employing class must give way to the mass political struggle against the capitalist state.

Anyone looking for answers to the problems of the workers’ movement will not find them on the Left. Blundering ahead without vision it has stumbled first into this path, then into that, it has made mistake after mistake, and all too often dissipated its strength in hopeless struggles which could have been avoided had it possessed socialist theory to guide its footsteps. 

 Class war between employers and workers over the product of labour goes on without letup. The employers will continue to try to destroy the workers’ standard of living and break the unions; the workers will continue to build their unions and to advance their interests.

Our world today

The Socialist Party seeks the abolition of the private ownership of the means of production and the elimination of competition and production for exchange value and its replacement by democratic planning and production for use with the people’s management of the economy and society. Socialism will be based on the abolition of wage labour, the elimination of classes, the disappearance of the state and the full development of the productive forces in the context of world socialism, and “From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.”

 Capitalism itself has created the objective basis of socialism, within the old class-economic relations. It comprises the collective forms of production, a cooperative mass organisation of labour within industry and the abundance modern industry is capable of producing where collective forms of production, and their accompanying technical-economic changes, has resulted in the enormous increase in the productivity of labour and the creation of abundance. The abundance makes possible and necessary socialist distribution of goods, a socialisation of consumption to correspond with the objective socialisation of production. Capitalism rejects this possibility and necessity: it means its own abolition. Last but not least the proletariat, a property-less class.

Socialisation requires expropriation of private ownership and replacement of production for profit with production for use: new social relations of production. Rational planning of industry is possible, with the exclusive aim of meeting community needs. As this means the abolition of capitalism, it is forcibly resisted by the dominant class interests. The clash of the old and the new becomes a struggle of classes, a struggle for power between the classes representing the old and the new, the capitalists and the workers. To maintain its ascendancy, the capitalist class must repress the forces of production and the movement toward socialism. It becomes clear, particularly as the class interests of the proletariat are realisable only by destruction of the older relations of production. This means the proletariat cannot realise socialism without abolishing itself as a class to be replaced by the association of organised producers.

The struggle for power aims to get control of the State. The State is an organ of class rule and suppression, under capitalist control, enmeshed in all the class-economic and exploiting relations of the existing order. Wresting control of the state from the capitalist class makes it possible for the working class to overthrow capitalism and suppress the old ruling class, to destroy the old social relations and create the new. The socialist revolution is much more fundamental than the earlier bourgeois revolution. Where the latter replaced older forms of property and exploitation with newer forms, the former annihilates all forms of private property and exploitation. There can be no compromise between capitalism and socialism. The compromise between feudalism and capitalism revealed their mutual exploiting identity. The aristocracy merged with the new men who rose to power as a result of industrial exploitation of mineral resources on the great landed estates and many nobles became pioneers of capitalist enterprise. An older class adapted itself to the rule of the new and became part of the new system. But capitalists cannot be absorbed into the new socialist order; hence there can be no compromise between socialism and capitalism.

Capital and labour interests of each of them is fundamentally different and exclusive. Capital is interested in production for profit, labour in production for use. Capital is based upon a constantly increasing exploitation of labour, in order to maintain its profit; labour constantly resists this exploitation. There is and can be no such thing as a “legitimate profit,” inasmuch as all profit is derived from paying workers less than the value they add to the product. There is and can be no such thing as a “fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work,” inasmuch as wages are the payment for only one part of the day’s work, the other part of which the worker is compelled to contribute to the employer in the form of surplus-value, or profit. Labour cannot get away from the fundamental fact that capital always seeks to intensify the exploitation of labour by reducing wages, increasing the work-day, or speeding-up production, or by all three at once; and labour always seeks to raise its wage and working standards. Capital always seeks to increase its profits, which can be done only by exploiting labour; labour always seeks to resist exploitation, which can be done only at the expense of profits. These are fundamental economic facts. Under capitalism, nothing that all the capitalists, or the whole government, or all the labour leaders, or all the workers, or a combination of all these, will ever do, can succeed in wiping out these facts.

The world to-day is in the hands of billionaires - owners of the biggest corporations, the biggest banks, and the biggest media; in short, nearly everything we use or need. These billionaires, these capitalists, not only own or control the means whereby we work and live but, in fact, control the whole governing machine. They pull the strings. And they use their power to make themselves richer and richer—at our expense. They hire workers to make profit out of their labour; their capitalist production is for profit, not for use: and to get more profit they slash wages, carry through speed-up and worsen conditions. This mad race for profit ends in a crisis; and then they try to get out of the crisis — at our expense. Look at the result. Poverty, insecurity and misery making their inroads in the homes of millions of workers: low wages, sweated labour to the point of physical exhaustion, is the lot of the workers in the factories with increases in the number of accidents, sickness, and a high death-rate amongst working-class mothers and babies. This is world to-day for working men, women and their families.

Red Salute

The decisions on production are made, not by consumers, what the people need and want; not by the workers, what the workers would like to make; not by scientists and technicians who know best of all, perhaps. The main decisions on production under capitalism—what shall be produced, how, where, and when—are made by financial magnates remote from the factories, remote from the people, whose sole motive is profit in each case.  Marxists call it the anarchy of capitalist production and the result is wasteful competition. Consider the waste represented by the conspicuous consumption of those seeking to emulate capitalist social parasites and the huge share of the product of labour that goes to those non-producers. That is an absolute waste. There is the waste of advertising, trying to get us to favour one identical product over another, or to buy something we don’t need and that won’t do us any good, and then buy something else to overcome the effects. That is pure waste. Then there’s the waste of human material, which really shouldn’t be squandered. Just think of all the people prostituting their talents and skills under capitalism. There are millions of such people, engaged in all kinds of useless, non-productive occupations in this present society. That’s not all. Consider the waste of militarism and all the wars. All that is an economic waste, inseparable from the present system. Finally, the costliest of all the results of the anarchy of capitalist production is the waste of economic crises—the periodic shutting down of production because the market has entered a recession—an unavoidable cyclical occurrence under capitalism.  Workers in factories, eager to produce what people require, aren't allowed to work and produce them, are put out into the street unemployed and now needing the work so that they could live.

What will the people of the future think of a society where the workers lived in constant fear of unemployment, in a world of abundance but with poverty and deprivation all around because of this monstrous squandering of the people’s energies and resources, which is the direct result of the anarchy of capitalist production. Just ending all this colossal waste—to say nothing of a stepped-up rate of productivity which would soon follow—the socialist reorganisation of the economy will bring about a startling improvement of the people’s living standards. The first condition will to stop production for sale and profit and organise planned production for use, eliminating all those conflicting interests of private owners of competing businesses. When people regard themselves as citizens of the world, concerned with all the affairs of the world and all its peoples, and seek fraternal association with them on the basis of equality, they will ask themselves If we’re all doing well and living good, producing more than we really need in an eight-hour day—then why the hell should we work so long?” This question will arise in the councils of the workers in the shops at the bottom and will be carried up through their delegates all the way to the top of the government. And the logical answer will go along with the question: “Let’s shorten the working day. Why should we work eight hours when we can produce all we need in four?” And there will still be abundance and superabundance. That may appear to be a simple answer to a complicated question, but many things will be simplified when the anarchy of capitalist production for profit is replaced by planned production for use.

 By a simple act of human solidarity, decided freely and voluntarily, we will put the world on a firmer foundation with a system of socialist cooperation. That will be a very simple and natural and easy thing to do because socialism will have the means, the abundance, the productivity for the benefit of all. When there is plenty for all, there is no material basis for a privileged bureaucracy and the danger disappears. From the very beginning,  we will have real workers’ democracy because democracy is not only better for ourselves, for our minds but is also better for production - economic democracy when all the workers participate in the decision-making,  bringing together their experience and proposals. Flaws in work-plans will be corrected right away by the hands-on knowledge of the workers, bad administrators will be recalled by the democratic process. An educated and conscious working class will insist on democracy in all spheres of communal life from A to Z,  in all cultural activities. Every day you can have something to say about what you’re doing and how it should be done. That’s what really counts so not to tolerate bureaucratic tyrants of any kind. All the repressive features of the State will wither away and die out for lack of function. There will be no class to repress. All will be free and equal. The government over men and women will be replaced by the administration of things.

That is an indication of social revolution. We, in the Socialist Party, strive to help it along, feel victory is on our side, for we are the future. The goal is worthy of anything we can do for it.

Mankind and Socialism

Under the capitalist system, a few crumbs must be given to sections of the workers to keep them sweet.  Capitalism, with its system of production for profit – its system of international rivalry for domination of foreign territories and trade, produces one war after another. The capitalists keep millions subjugated and exploited, by its wage system. This system cannot give peace and plenty to its people but socialism will. Socialism means production for use and not for profit. Socialism means internationalism. It means that one working class is not pitted against others. It means that one worker is not pitted against another in the fight for a job. It means that one worker is not cutting the throat of the other by producing at lower wages than the other. The reformers all seek to do the impossible: make capitalism work. Untold misery, poverty, and unemployment are the living facts that prove that capitalism doesn’t work – not for the working class, anyway.  Reformers refuse to see the truth: that capitalist society does not function to achieve social goals the community as a whole regards as desirable, but rather operates to achieve the goals considered desirable by a small part of society, the ruling capitalist class, which places its profits as the paramount concern of society. Society does not exist to satisfy the requirements of the community but the profit needs of the capitalist class. The government’s purpose is to ensure the rule of the capitalist class, and by its policies to assure their returns. When the needs of the great majority of society come into conflict with the capitalist system and the capitalist class, the government’s role is to ascertain that the latter triumphs. Capitalist class parties may differ and sometimes do differ deeply on how to achieve the purpose of the state, but despite these differences, all capitalist parties represent the capitalist class.

 Socialism is based upon the planned organisation of production for use by means of the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production, is the abolition of all classes and class differences. Production would not be organised on the basis of the blind push and pull of the capitalist market but in accordance with the needs of the people. Production for profit would give way to production for use. The waste of capitalist competition would be overcome. Capitalism produces bombs for the destruction of homes just as readily as it constructs homes. It produces luxurious palaces while millions live in shacks. Its motive of production was, is, and always will be profit. It is not the needs of the people that dictate its production.

If, however, production were carried on for use, to satisfy the needs of the people, the question immediately arises: Who is to determine what is useful and what would satisfy these needs? Production for use, by its very nature, demands constant consultation of the people, and the democratic direction by the people would guide the course of production and distribution. Decisions made by committees of planners, no matter how well-intended and benevolent they might be, cannot plan production for the needs of the people for it would lead to the regimentation of the people and would be for the workers, but not of and by the workers. Instead of being regulated by the blind market, as under capitalism, production would be regulated by a bureaucracy. Production for use, aimed at satisfying the needs of society and of freeing all the people from class rule, would be impossible. Democratic control, the continual extension of democracy, is, therefore, an indispensable necessity in socialist society. Socialism is not a blueprint for society that exists in the minds of some people. It is a practical necessity. It is the direction that working people must take in order to save society from disintegration. The Socialist Party intends to make our fellow-workers conscious of this necessity and to work for the realisation of the goal. The workers cannot rid themselves of their sufferings without abolishing capitalism and proceed with the complete reorganisation of society. The abolition of private ownership would remove the last barrier to the development of production. Production would be organised, rationally carried on and expanded, and aimed at satisfying the needs of society. Men and women would no longer be wage-slaves of the employers. Every introduction of new technology and an increase in productivity would bring comfort and even luxury of all; and an increase in everyone’s free time, to devote to the cultural and intellectual development of humankind. Mankind will not live primarily to work; we will work primarily to live.

Even today, with all the fetters that capitalism has placed upon production, industry properly organised can produce the necessities of life for all in a working day of four hours or less. Organised on a socialist basis, applying robotics and automation we are talking of a society of leisure and abundance. There is free access for all. There is ample opportunity for the intellectual development of all. There will be no need of a public coercive force to maintain the power of one class over another, to protect the property of one from the assaults of the other, to assure the continuation of oppression and exploitation. There will be the simple administration of things, but no longer the rule of one over another. The State itself will die out for lack of any social need or function. 

Mankind will prove that class conflict, poverty, hunger war, and oppression are not unavoidable and that capitalism and the state are not indispensable. In the socialist society we will show that abundance, freedom, and equality are not only possible but the natural condition for the new history of humanity.

If you believe in the socialist vision, you must become part of the socialist movement

Society rests at present upon the basis of private ownership of the essentials of existence. The possessing class is able to dictate terms to the non-owning class. Because the owners are few and the non-owners are many they can only conserve their monopoly by manipulating the minds of the majority as well as the machinery of political administration. Any struggle to end the exploitation involved in this system must begin as a struggle to undo in the minds of the working class from the bonds woven by the boss and his agents with intent to keep the slave satisfied with his or her wage slavery. Therefore all revolutionary emancipation struggles must begin with is what is called “education.”

Socialism” means the will of the workers imposed as a system controlling all economic life in the interest of the workers—and to the destruction of every other class-interest. To understand socialism, one must necessarily understand the present social system; i.e., capitalism.

Under capitalism, society is divided into hostile classes: an owning capitalist class, whose members have ownership of the various parts of the instruments of wealth production.
This includes the land, the factories, the transport, the communications, the mines etc., upon which the whole of the people is dependent for their existence.

A working class, whose members possess nothing but their labour power, which is useless to the worker unless he can have access to the raw material and the machinery of production, which is owned by the capitalist class.

This being so, the worker, in order to live, must sell his or her labour power to the capitalist or capitalist concern. This labour power that the worker sells is used for the production of wealth, for which the worker receives what is termed wages. Wages are the price of labour power; that is to say, the capitalist will have to return to the worker the number of necessities he must consume while exerting his labor power. This amount will vary with the value of these necessities and the standard of living, but it will invariably be less than the amount of goods his or her labour power produces. This is a necessity, not alone of this system, but of any social system of wealth production in which only a part of the members of society are actually engaged in useful labor; so that when a person sells his or her labour power a number of hours for a certain wage, the amount of necessaries to produce the wages is always smaller than the amount of labour which the employer receives from him, the difference between what the worker receives as wages and what his labor power produces during his working time, constitutes the sole source of unearned income, i.e., capitalist profits. Here we see laid bare the secret and mysterious source of the wealth of those, who, without producing themselves, obtain possession of the wealth of society.

Capitalism had its beginnings in the development of industry and commerce. With the application of machinery to productive industry, a tremendous change has followed in the whole superstructure of society. With the development of the hand tool into the machine, the independent mechanic has been forced into the factory, divorced from the means of production, a dependent on the machine owner.

As the machinery increases in size and cost, so does it squeeze out the weaker capitalist, whilst the stronger ones unite into combines and trusts; so that we see competition increasing among the workers, whilst among the capitalists' combination is the rule.
Thus does capitalism go steadily onward; first an individual competitive state, then on to collectivism, less and less competitive. Surely this cannot last forever! A point is reached where it becomes unbearable for the workers. Collective labour and increasing competition among them clash with the collective capitalism and increasing combination of the capitalist. The contradiction must be abolished. The expropriators must be expropriated, the workers who collectively use the tools of production must also collectively own them. Classes in society abolished and a new order of society inaugurated in which poverty may give place to comfort, privilege to equality and slavery to freedom.

How will this transformation from capitalism to socialism be accomplished, and who will bring it about?

Socialists maintain that social progress since written history has always been through the struggle of classes with opposing interests. These interests to-day are represented by the capitalists, who are the rulers and the workers who are the ruled.

Hence, the next step in social progress must lie in the victory of the workers.

The capitalists, however, are powerfully entrenched behind the state, which is the powers of government; this includes the legal, civil, and armed forces; this is the political power controlled by the capitalists in their interests, viz., to preserve their ownership in the means of wealth production. But in the hands of the class-conscious workers, these would be used as an instrument for their emancipation.

Therefore, to accomplish their universal freedom, the workers must be organised into a political party of their class with a full knowledge of their conditions, and the meaning of the momentous act it is called upon to accomplish, viz., the emancipation of the workers from slavery and establishment of a new order of society based upon the ownership of the means of wealth production, by and in the interest of the whole community. With this object in view, we solicit the support of all members of the working class. Our slogan must be: "Workers of the world, unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains, a world to gain."

The capitalist system is doomed.

“The monopoly of land drives him (the worker) from the farm into the factory, and the monopoly of machinery drives him from the factory into the street, and thus crucified between the two thieves of land and capital, the Christ of Labor hangs in silent agony.” Ernest Jones, Chartist

The Socialist Party appeals to you, fellow-workers, to rally around the only banner that symbolises hope – the banner of Socialism. Cast off all your old political affiliations, and organise and vote to reconquer society in the interests of its only useful class – the workers. Let your slogan be, the common ownership of the means of life. working people are not content to remain wage slaves of the capitalists and refuse to accept the burden of the economic crisis created by the capitalists themselves. Do not forget for an instant that the great struggle in which you are engaged in is a class war and that the lines must be sharply drawn in every battle, whether on the economic or the political field. The slavery of your class is responsible for your chains and not until your entire class is emancipated can you escape from the grasp of your capitalist masters. As far as this struggle is concerned, there is no good capitalist and no bad worker. Every capitalist is your enemy and every worker is your friend.

You have got to stand and act as one. Solidarity is your salvation, and socialism points unerringly the way. The class-conscious socialist movement scorns all compromise. The Socialist Party is pursuing its object and come what may, it will press on and on until the goal is reached and labor rules the world. The days in which we live are indeed pregnant with great possibilities. The working class is charged with the gravest responsibility of the ages. The history of the working class has been a history of unremitting struggle against exploitation and oppression by the capitalist class. Under the rule of the present capitalists, there can be no freedom for the workers – only freedom to be exploited as wage slaves. But where there is oppression there is always resistance and the working class has never been cowed. It has always struggled militantly to throw off the yoke of wage slavery.

The Socialist Party is the only party that stands against the present system and for the rule of the people; the only party that avows itself the party of the working class and the overthrow of wage-slavery. So long as the present system of capitalism prevails and the few are allowed to own the means of production, the toiling class will be struggling in the hell of poverty as they are today. The Socialist Party is absolutely the only party which faces conditions as they are and declares unhesitatingly that it has a definite and concrete plan for dealing with capitalism. The Socialist Party is the party of the workers. The Socialist Party stands for common ownership and co-operation. the Socialist Party demands the overthrow of capitalism. The most promising fact in the world today is the fact that labour is organising its power; its economic power and its political power. The workers who have made the world and who support the world, are preparing to take possession of the world. This is the meaning of socialism and is what the Socialist Party stands for.

We demand the means of production in the name of the workers and the control of society in the name of the people. We demand the abolition of capitalism and wage-slavery and the surrender of the capitalist class. We demand the complete rights of all the people regardless of race, colour, or nationality.  We demand complete control of industry by society; we demand all the wealth they produce for their own enjoyment, and we demand the Earth for all the people. The Socialist Party is determined to work co-operatively for the socialist commonwealth.

If the workers do not wish to emancipate themselves, if they are content to remain mere commodities for the  profit-extracting processes of the rich, then industrial action may perhaps make their masters adopt gentler methods of treatment; but if they wish to be no longer mere clay for the extraction of surplus-value, but living men and women, rejoicing in the freedom of their lives and the fruits of their labour; then they must apply their political strength, so as to splinter the system.

 Workers have but one commodity to sell, that is, their power to labour. The value of this power, embodied in their brains, nerves, muscles, etc., depends upon the value of the necessary elements of their subsistence. The cost of the food, clothing, and shelter, etc., that the worker must have in order to go on working are reflected in the wages that they receive. In the long run and on the average, they cannot accept less without causing their energy to deteriorate and become unsaleable. They cannot get more, because there are machines on the one hand and unemployed workers on the other ready to take their places.

With the workers, the existence of economic law is not a matter of speculative theory; it is a painful, everyday experience. If there were no economic forces operating according to some discoverable law, nothing could prevent the workers from claiming what wages they fancied, and the same would apply to the capitalists in fixing their prices. Nothing would be determined; all would be chaos; but human beings cannot exist on chaos and such a state is simply inconceivable.

At first sight, the realm of exchange presents an appearance of anarchy. The fluctuations in prices, including wages, are occasionally so violent that they seem capricious to the superficial observer.

In the same way, superstitious sailors, even today, attribute storms to spirits, etc., but for every wave, there is a corresponding trough and the general level of the ocean remains unchanged. So with the world market. The rise in prices at one time encourages greater production till the market is glutted; then, with the consequent fall in prices, the less economically conducted concerns go out of business. Always there is going on a ruthless, blind, automatic selection of the fittest types of machinery and organisation for the production of the wealth, with the result that the social powers of production are greater today than ever before in human history.

How are these powers controlled? They are in private hands, in spite of their social character. Consequently, they are only set into operation for the production of private profit. There is no organised social plan. Competition asserts itself at every turn. Even the narrowing of the circle by the concentration of capital, the forming of world trusts, international combines, etc., only makes the struggle fiercer.

The larger the output, the greater the importance of minute economies; yet the conflict in the market is as nought compared with that in the factory. If the capitalist is an anarchist in the realm of exchange, he is a despot in that of production, which is carried on amid the smouldering revolt of wage-slaves needing but little to fan it into open flame; but this revolt, again, is for the most part blind. It is only against the effects of the system, because the workers have not yet learned to understand the cause, i.e., the system itself.

Hence their efforts at improvement take the form of demands for higher wages and shorter hours, valuable enough if other things remained the same. Capitalism, however, constantly develops a greater power of exploitation. No programme of reforms can alter that. The workers cannot interrupt the development of industry; they can only take advantage of it by obtaining control of it through the common ownership of the productive forces themselves, but that would be socialism—and “the end of all things.” That at least is what those who pretend that “there is no capitalist system" would like us to believe. 

Anti-Racism Rally

STUC St Andrew's Day Anti-Racism March & Rally
SAT 24th November
10.30am
Glasgow Green

Fellow-workers should be aware that the only way to confront racists and fascists is on the battlefield of ideas, not with fists and boots.

The Socialist Party points the finger of blame at the real perpetrator of racism — the capitalist system.  Dispossessed, frustrated and alienated workers will always look for a short-cut to even up the imbalance between themselves and their masters. Is it any wonder workers are hoodwinked into believing ethnic communities or newcomers are the cause of their misfortune, and so must bear the brunt of their frustration. 

Racism will only be destroyed through a change in society. Racism has to be seen for what it is — a parasite on the back of nationalism, which is itself a disease of world capitalism. The task for socialists in their argument with racists is to convince them that workers have no nation and that there is more that unites the exploited members of the human race, all of whom have the same basic needs than can ever divide us culturally or historically. 

Racist ideas are a manifestation of capitalism, and will only be eradicated when the capitalist system itself is expunged by workers taking control of their own destiny, becoming conscious of their position in the relations of production and by democratically establishing a socialist society.

As we oppose, we must also propose.

“The enemy on whom we declare war is capital, and it is against capital that we will direct all our efforts, taking care not to become distracted from our goal by the phony campaigns and arguments of the political parties. The great struggle that we are preparing for is essentially economic, and so it is on the economic terrain that we should focus our activities.” -  Kropotkin

Workers cannot get straight improvements under capitalism —they all have strings. Wages may improve, but with a big demand for labour, up go rents and the price of food and necessaries. So that, overall, it might be said that in spite of the fantastic technical developments of the last decades—the fundamental position of the remains the same. And this, after hundreds of reforms and scores of political leaders. The Labour Party was born out of the idea of working-class political action. Many of its prominent figureheads claimed to be socialists. Even more than this, they claimed to be "practical" socialists who knew the way to get socialism. But the myth of the working class moving steadily forward to socialism by Labour governments is well and truly finished. Labour once used to be a reformist party which claimed to be able to impose socialist values—democracy, equality, co-operation not competition—on capitalist society. It was an impossible project of course which was bound to fail because capitalism can only work as capitalism. Capitalism offers to those who administer it just a choice of evils.  Now Labour is an openly capitalist party trying to impose capitalist values on those who haven’t absorbed them. How right was the Socialist Party to have had nothing to do with the Labour Party from the start.

We are inclined to accept the view that a terrible apathy exists and it is not as unhealthy as it would appear. The workers may not yet have awakened to the need for socialism, but they are beginning to demonstrate that they at least realise that so far whatever party they have voted for no change ensues for them—hence the abstentionists are the real majority—they continue to accept capitalism, but they are not voting for it. We believe that, especially among such people, real effort on our party can carry the day and convince them that there is something worth voting for. The fact that we are small numerically does not mean that the influence of our propaganda is not being felt; many people are quite prepared to vote and think with us to the exclusion of all others, even if they are not prepared at this stage to join us. 

Capitalism is tremendously wasteful and destructive of men, goods, power, land. The ultimate destiny of all useful goods is to be consumed. Yet under capitalism goods are not produced to be consumed, but for profit, and if a greater profit can be made by destroying the goods, the destruction takes place. A capitalist system that prioritises profit and market growth over all else is the mortal enemy of a sustainable economy that satisfies needs rather than stock portfolios. Capitalist crises provide essential fuel for the growth of far-right politics. In times of crisis, we can either look towards solidarity or turn inward in xenophobic fear. Far right demagogues harness and promote fears of difference and anxieties about joblessness and financial ruin when leftwing alternatives fail. When so-called "socialist" political parties enact brutal austerity measures, they open the door for the far right as the lesser evil.

 With so many people now aware how much harm and misery profits can cause, the socialist alternative appears more clearly as the way out. If people come to see that profits themselves only exist because a minority have unjust possession of what the majority need, and this dominant class exploit both with damaging anti-social consequences, then all that unfocused anger would linger, politicians’ gibberish and worthless promises would be ignored, and there would be ever-increasing support for common ownership of vital industries and other productive assets, along with politician-free democratic control over how these are used. This is genuine socialism. It has never existed anywhere. It would make restrictive and dangerous money completely obsolete. Take a little time to find out more about this people-first system before your next trip to the polling stations.

 We are a Socialist Party because socialism alone is based on the facts of working-class existence. Socialism alone can free the workers from the necessity of selling themselves for the profit of a master. Socialism alone will strip all of us of our merchandise character, and allow everyone to become a full social being. Debates about reformism vs. revolution have waged for generations on the left. But now we are on a deadline. We need to organise socialist movements to gain political power and shut down capitalism that threatens our existence. We must recognise that the climate crisis is the most acute symptom of our failure to abolish capitalism.

The Socialist Party measures working-class progress in terms of its heightening awareness of its needs and aspirations. Consciousness in short, of its liberating rôle in history. Do workers realise the necessity of their building trade-union organisation that is independent of the employing class? Do they know the value of the strike weapon—and its limitations? Do they value and exercise hard-won electoral rights and the right to dissent? Do they become more and more convinced of the need for a change in the very basis of present society if humanity is to survive and to reach its proper stature? These are our criteria.

Nationalism teaches the worker to identify with his or her ruling-class. The Socialist Party says that the worker has no country and should recognise his common bonds with workers everywhere. Each new state that is set up has as its number one task the inculcation of a sense of differentness into its school-children and of their loyalty to a piece of territory quite arbitrarily arrived at. 

 If the workers vote for capitalism, then they will get what they vote for. Workers who want socialism will vote only for socialist candidates. The Socialist Party is unique among the political parties in this country is being prepared to put forward candidates fighting on that issue alone, socialism or capitalism. At present, the number of workers who want socialism is few in comparison with those who want capitalism. That unfortunate position can be remedied only by socialist propaganda. It is not helped, but hindered, by voting for one in preference to another of the parties which stand for private or state capitalism. There are differences, and real differences, between the capitalist parties, but the differences do not touch the subject condition of the working-class.

On The Record

From last month’s featured writer, J. A. MacDonald offers another fitting missive from his self-published journal, "On the Record". One this occasion MacDonald’s gives a humorous account of the animal economy of the humble ape known as man.

The Loquacious Ape

 "Man is a chattering animal. Usuall,y there is little of value in his pronouncements but we readily concede his facility of utterance. Other members of the animal kingdom are able to see, hear, taste, and smell far better than man can, but he can out-talk them all. The gift of gab he possesses today was not always a human attribute. Man was at one time much like other animals and answered all searching questions with a grunt, groan, grimace, or gesture.
Our simian ancestors were a sociable lot. With all his animosity to foreigner and outsider, as well as his political dissensions within the local orbit, there is probably no other animal as social as man. Looking back along the lengthy line of evolution it would be difficult to reach a point where our founding fathers were social exclusionists. They were always animals that enjoyed company...

. . . Looking over the position of the other animals in retrospect to language, we can readily that it had its origin and development in labor. It was a definite result of wielding tools to produce the needs of life. None of our fellow animals is expert in the use of articulate speech. None of them can argue or orate with ease and readiness we find in man. None of them has discovered the difference between the noun and the verb, or even the vowels and consonants. They communicate with each other in the old miocenic manner. . . . .

...The wild dog – the Australian dingo – is much like other animals of the frontier. He has no inclination to be on friendly terms with the people he happens to meet. But the tame dog, after centuries of training, has his ear attuned to his master’s voice and understands even better that some humans what the talking he hears is all about. When his owner speaks to him in a pleasant voice he returns the compliment with wagging his tail and osculatory gestures. When the boss berates him he sneaks off with his tail between his legs. The labor that induced speech and influenced the brain of the ape to become more and more like that of the man can be seen in its leavening function among the not so aptly termed – lower animals."

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

But Let’s Face It..

We of the SPC are as horrified as anyone else over the slaughter in Pittsburg, but realize that as long as capitalism continues this sort of thing also will, in fact, become more frequent. 

Though Trump isn't anti-semitic, nevertheless his, ''there's us and there's the others'', attitude is conducive to racist thinking, (if one can call it thinking); one can say it's halfway to government sanctioned, racism.

 Ironically, a few minutes later I heard the terrible news, I was watching, ''South Pacific'', in which John Kerr, sings, ''You've Got to Be Carefully Taught''. The song is about how parents teach their children to hate all those who aren't like them. If every parent instead taught their kids love of humanity it would be a wonderful thing, but let’s face it, this will not happen as long as we live in a society which by its very abnormal nature is divisive. 

If you want to see the end of atrocities, like the one in Pittsburg, then work towards putting the run on capitalism.

For socialism,

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

Red Jackie

Jackie McNamara Snr Billy McNeill called him a “wee commie bastard”, Kenny Dalglish dubbed him “Trotsky”. 

“While the rest of them were playing cards, I’d be reading The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists,” Jackie McNamara Senior once recalled of his Celtic days, when he picked up the nickname Red Jackie. 

It had emerged that he sold Soviet Weekly when he was a kid, not that he tried to hide political convictions inherited from his father, who had been one of the Clyde’s youngest shipyard shop stewards. 

After a Drybrough Cup win over Rangers, Jimmy Johnstone told McNamara it was a grand a man for the bonus. But because he was younger, McNamara only got £250. “Wages were wages but I reckoned bonuses should be the same for everyone. Unfortunately, Billy and Jock [Stein] didn’t see it that way!” 

Read more at: https://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/teams/scotland/scottish-football-s-10-greatest-rebels-1-4831513