Trump comes up trump

Donald Trump’s Scottish golf courses are expected to get a tax rebate of nearly £1m as part of a government bailout for tourism businesses hit by the coronavirus crisis.

Trump Turnberry had been due to pay £850,766 in property tax this year and Trump Aberdeenshire £121,170.

This week South Ayrshire, the local council which includes Turnberry, and Aberdeenshire council are expected to tell both businesses they no longer have to pay that tax, known as business rates, because they qualify for 100% relief.

Both resorts have been able to avoid paying corporation tax, the main business tax in the UK, because they consistently report heavy losses due to their debts to Trump himself, cumulatively put at £155m in 2018.

Capitalism. The Divisive System.

 Even in isolation people who have been brainwashed by capitalism still find a way to spew out their hate. 

In May, YWCA Canada asked women to talk about how the impact of the global pandemic affected them specifically. This was on the video conferencing app Zoom. This is an example of how quickly people can come together and adapt to a situation and if nothing more share advice, but like so many things under capitalism it can be used or abused and it didn't take long for the abuse to come pouring in. This was in the form of racist and chauvinist comments with a torrent of profanity thrown in for bad measure, most of which were male voices. 

According to Maya Roy, CEO of YWCA Canada, ''Within two minutes of the call starting, someone started shouting racial epithets.'' 

There is no avoiding the fact that capitalism is a divisive system and is particularly obvious in a situation where everyone should stand together.

S,P.C. Members.

The Profit Motive The Very Life Blood Of Capitalism? They Are Wrong.

''Ontario COVID-19 deaths far greater in for-profit nursing homes'', were the headlines on the front page of the Toronto Star, May 9. The Star’s analysis showed that residents in the for-profit homes were four times more likely to become infected and die from the virus than those in municipal run homes. 

This is the result of the Mike Harris, Conservative government of the 1990's, which removed minimum staffing levels and set up competitive bidding for government contracts. 

Shaeleen Stewart, pres. of the Healthcare workers union, said, ''For profit nursing homes use more part-time and casual staff and have lower staffing levels compared to non-profit homes.''

 Some law suits have been initiated, but have not, at the time of writing, been certified by a judge.

 Whatever the outcome may be, it won't bring the dead back to life. Some have called the profit motive the very life blood of capitalism, but they are wrong - its the death blood.

S.P.C. Members.

The Real Meaning of Socialism

Socialism is not a complicated doctrine. Marx had a definition of socialism which was, “...the appropriation of the means of production, their subjection to the associated working class, and therefore the abolition of wage labour, of capital, and of their mutual relations.” 

The enemy is capitalism. We are living under a system which is more and more clearly revealed as the enemy of humanity. It has vast productive potential, but only means poverty and oppression for the masses. It brings deprivation and hunger to the people. It imposes draconian cuts on living standards in the interest of still greater profits for the capitalist class. Capitalism is responsible for the destruction of the environment. Its armaments industry monopolises much of the world’s research and development and cynically profits from war. The cause of all this is capitalism’s guiding principle, the quest for profit, which takes precedence over any human interest. Today capitalism is an existential threat to humanity.

The modern wage-slave is nominally free and possesses certain illusory political rights which the chattel slave or feudal serf did not enjoy. But these privileges are not sufficed to emancipate the wage-slave from economic servitude and subjugation to the class which has succeeded the old land-owning and slave-holders. Throughout the whole of their working lives they are totally dominated by the employing class. The fact that a certain number of the workers receive good wages, in comparison with others who are paid at a much lower level of subsistence, makes no difference to the system. In ancient Rome some highly-educated slaves received considerable remuneration from their owners, and even became rich men, but this did not affect the lot of the mass of overworked and ill-fed slaves of the same owners toiling in their mines or on their fields. What prevents the present wage-slaves of all grades from understanding how little freedom they really possess is the payment of wages - the cash-nexus - which blinds them to the fact that they receive but a fraction of the value of the wealth they create in return for the use of their capacity to labour; just as their liberty to change from one employer to another obscures the other truth that they are always, in reality, under duress to the capitalist class as a whole. In today’s world, if their trade unions gained in strength, workers could obtain certain advantages from the employers. But they could only do so through recognising the validity of the system itself.

The Chartists taught that so long as the payment of wages by one class to another class continued, and production for profit under a competitive system consequently remained the dominant form of employment, it was quite impossible for the propertyless majority to emancipate themselves from the control of the rich. The only possible remedy for this state of affairs is for  workers, to cease being wage-earners for working people organised collectively, owning and controlling all the great means of making and distributing wealth, and thus would be the co-operative commonwealth.

 Socialism is a class-free society without property, without ownership – either private or nationalised – of the means of production, without commodity production, money or a state apparatus separate and apart from the members of the community. In the light of that definition, it is clear that no socialist  society exists anywhere in the world today.

 The Socialist Party exists to help replace the present capitalist system by socialism, understood broadly as a co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production. We hold a vision of socialism as a society where wealth will be in the hands of those who produce it, where the exploitation of man by man will be ended, where production will be used not for profit, where a new relationship will develop between peoples based on equality, where individual men and women will fully develop their abilities. We do not stand for violence. 

Our aim is a peaceful transformation to socialism: though we have to add that an aim is not a guarantee. We are not saying ‘Wait for the revolution.’ but that struggles which build towards self-organisation are pointing the way towards the way a future non-capitalist, socialist society. Part of the class struggle is the building of working-class self-confidence and organisation. There is no short cut to the social revolution. The revolts of impatience, of frustrated anger and with insufficient organisation only play into the hands of the ruling class, as all past experience has shown. Education and understanding among working people makes socialism attainable and are indispensable conditions for success.

Highlighting the Slavery Connection

Scotland's first black professor, Sir Geoff Palmer, professor emeritus at Heriot-Watt University, has again called for plaques on Scotland's statues to give a truthful account of their links to the slave trade and said the move could help educate and change attitudes against racism.

Sir Geoff has previously argued that Edinburgh's economic transformation at the end of the 18th Century was a result of slave ownership and that Scotland had a higher share of the trade by population than England or most European countries. By 1817, 32% of Jamaican plantations were owned by Scots.

Numerous statues and street names are still in place across Scotland honouring figures who perpetuated such atrocities.

Palmer previously called for a plaque under Edinburgh's Melville Monument, which honours slave owner Henry Dundas, one of the country's most influential politicians in the 18th and 19th centuries who played a prominent role in delaying the abolition of slavery - forcing about 630,000 slaves to wait more than a decade for their freedom.

Sir Geoff told BBC Scotland that adding clarifications to these monuments, rather than pulling them down altogether, would avoid erasing history.

"I don't want statues to be taken down. My view is you remove the evidence, you remove the deed."

Nobody Ever Said Life Under Capitalism Was A Happy-Go-Lucky Romp.

 The figures released by Stats-Canada for April ain't exactly cause for a celebration. More than one-third of Canadian workers were hard hit as the full force of the pandemic blasted the economy. Nearly two million jobs were lost and the unemployment rate jumped from 5.2 to 13 per cent. By April 12, the number of the Canadians who were unemployed or working much shorter hours totalled 5.5 million. The Toronto region was the hardest hit, with a loss of 593,000 jobs. The agency predicted if present trends continue the unemployment rate at the end of April will be 17.8 per cent. 

It’s chilling to think of what the economy will be like world-wide when the virus is over, which sounds like gloom and doom, but nobody ever said life under capitalism was a happy-go-lucky romp.

S.P.C. Members.

The Many Forms Of Capitalism. We Advocate The Abolition Of Capitalism.

 In these trying times governments all over the world are under scrutiny concerning their handling of the corona virus. 

The Canadian government seems to be doing their best, whereas the American and Brazilian ones are not, which is hardly surprising considering their presidents are jackass's. Some folk may advocate a change of government, which in the long run means squat no matter how they handle the crisis. 

Consider if you will, a guy born in the eastern part of Germany in 1900, living there all his life and reaching the ripe old age of 100. He would have lived under the imperial regime of Wilhelm the second, the Weimar Republic, the Nazi dictatorship, the so-called Communist dictatorship and the present parliamentary democracy.

 Therefore he would have lived under five different forms of capitalist administration. However he would have been exploited under all of them. Capitalism can be administrated in a variety of forms, but the fundamentals remain the same - the ownership of the tools of production by a small minority even if it is the elite of the ruling party, and the consequential wage enslavement of the working class. 

We of the SPC do not differentiate between forms. We advocate the abolition of capitalism, because no form of it can solve the major social problems we all face.

S.P.C. Members.

HELP US TO PROPAGATE SOCIALISM.

Socialism stands for a society of equals in which the distinctions between rich and poor, exploiters and exploited, no longer exist. Opponents of this revolutionary conception assure us frequently that no such form of society has ever existed, or ever will ; that there always have been rich and poor, and always will be .These claims are false. These assertions  are based on a very scanty acquaintance with the facts, and are effectively refuted by numerous anthropological studies. The things required to satisfy the needs of the world are to-day wrested from nature by one section of society, the working class. The other section, the master class, appropriate the results of the workers' efforts, the wealth produced, by virtue of the fact that the workers have "behaved" and "voted" in such a way as to enable the masters so to do. Thus the master class determines who shall have, who shall have not, and in what proportion—determine who shall eat and who shall starve.

The remedy? The antidote to the poison pushed into the minds of our fellow-workers is that they must, behave, think, and vote differently. You must think for yourself, instead of absorbing the propaganda dressed up to look like real knowledge. You must vote for your own class, and not that of the banker. You must see to it that your fellow-worker has the real position of the working class laid in front of him, instead of the dope issued by the capitalist-financed media daily. The Socialist Standard is the instrument for your

purpose ready to hand. Bring it to the notice of your work-mates. Push it for all you are worth. Its only mission in the insurance line is to point the way to the workers by which they can insure against the evils of capitalist society, by ensuring a speedy termination of the system that robs them of the fruits of their labours.

A worker never gets much more out of employment, even when he or she is lucky enough to be always at work, than the necessaries of life required to keep them fit and able to support a family.

The cost of living is the mean level around which the industrial war takes place. Supply and demand plays its part, but nearly always on the side of the masters, because there are nearly always more workers than jobs. Represented by leaders who do not understand the economic laws of the capitalist system nor how to direct the workers in times of crisis, the latter are always at a disadvantage in disputes over wages. Human labour-power is the worker's only commodity; we live by the sale of it or starve if we cannot sell it. Let every worker understand once for all the real meaning and significance of labour-power as a commodity. Let us realise that our wages can seldom rise above what it costs to maintain ourselves and our families. That wages are more likely to fall below that level as competition increases. We only delude ourselves if we imagine that high or low taxes affect us in the long run.

Mass production is the latest and most callous form of capitalism; it manufactures cheap and shoddy goods to feed and clothe its overworked and poverty-stricken slaves. It drives the wage-slaves to despair through long periods of unemployment and dread of the sack.  The inevitable consequences of mass production are increased unemployment and lower wages. Mass production is not a thing of the future; it is with us now in all its hideousness, and promise of worse to come. May it startle the workers of all lands out of their lethargy, strip the blindfolds from their eyes, and force them to examine the claims of the Socialist Party; for only then will they understand that they are slaves, why they are slaves, and how they can be free. The role of a revolutionary party is to spread revolutionary ideas and not to propose palliatives for the system it seeks to overthrow.

The Socialist Party and the Cooperative Commonwealth

Working people have suffered untold miseries under capitalist domination. The present and future outlook of the working class is extremely gloomy. The economic signs and portents point to increasing difficulties and increasing misery for the workers. The "Good Old Times  have fled, never to return. Outside of socialism there are no "Better Times " ahead for the working class. A number of developing countries have stepped up production and can meet, to a great extent, their own requirements; this limits the available world's markets. But such countries also step in as competitors, in foreign markets; this further curtails the available markets. This all-round competition intensifies the struggle for markets and brings about a greater concentration upon the question of lowering the cost of production of articles.

What are the elements required in order to produce wealth to-day? Raw material, machinery, and labour-power of various degrees of skill. Is there any shortage of raw material? The planet is teeming with raw material, and the untapped resources are as relatively unlimited as the development of human ingenuity. Is there a shortage of machinery? There are numerous first-class manufactories of all classes of machinery working short time for want of orders to execute. Is there a shortage of labour-power? The hundreds of thousands of unemployed of all degrees of skill searching anxiously, and so often unavailingly, for work can provide a complete answer to this question.

The Socialist Party promotes the overthrow of the capitalist system and the establishment of a commonwealth of workers throughout the World, ensuring from everyone according to his or her ability and to everybody according to needs, under the motto “All for each and each for All”. 

This social revolution is the objective of the World Socialist Movement, the end towards which every step it must directly tend. It is idle to deny the war between the classes, or to pretend there can be conciliation between the opposing classes. It can be solved by nothing short of the worldwide destruction of the capitalist power. It is time for our fellow-workers to heed the call to discard its futile reformism, to jettison labour mis-leader’s careerism and opportunism. 

The Socialist Party holds aloft the red banner of the World Commune to be, when the class war shall have been for ever stamped out, when mankind shall no longer cower under the bludgeon of the oppressor, when the necessaries and amenities of life, the comfort and the culture, the honour and the power, shall before all,  when none shall be called master and none servant. The Socialist Party advocates the social administration of the co-operative commonwealth of the future, A system of society in which the factories, the transport, the mines etc,  shall be owned by all in common.

The Socialist Party lays emphasis on the fact that it is a movement fundamentally different from the Labour Party and from left-wing parties.

We come before the working class with a reasoned explanation of the economic ills of the world, and with a reasoned plan for placing the social system on a new basis in keeping with the development of man’s productive forces.

We appeal to the working class to understand and act upon socialist principles. We preach that the method of achieving socialism is by constitutional, majority, control of the political machinery through the vote. workers must abandon their present apathetic attitude and take a lively interest in their present social position — they must study socialism and find out what it means to them.

We come not to create chaos and civil war, but to bring order to a disordered world.

We are not political gangsters threatening the lives or well-being of any individual. We are not bent on revenge, or on penalising our political opponents or the members of the propertied class. While it is necessary that the means of production shall be brought under social ownership and control, socialism will offer to the whole community—ex-capitalists included—the comfort and security which rational use of modern productive forces renders possible.

Indeed, it is our boast that the increasing insecurity of life under capitalism and the chaotic conditions at home and abroad will, in time, drive more and more capitalists, as well as the workers, to recognise that the socialist movement is the only guarantee of ordered development for society as a whole.

Our answer to appeals for unity is, therefore, what it has always been. The Socialist Party is always prepared to welcome socialists to join us on the basis of our Declaration of Principles, which points the only road to socialism. Never, under any circumstances, are we prepared to unite with those who—however well-meaningly—are travelling to a different objective or who preach a policy of civil war, which, if acted upon, destroys all present hope of socialist propaganda and organisation and delays progress towards emancipation.

 The Socialist Party argues that capitalism as a world system has become reactionary and that it has no progressive role to play anywhere in the world. This is because socialism, the next stage in social development which will involve the emancipation of all mankind, is possible. Only socialism is progressive, and this alone is what workers everywhere should strive to establish.