Socialism is Society Evolving

The history of society since classes first developed has been the history of class struggle. The continuing development of society from a lower level to a qualitatively higher one has been accomplished throughout history by the overthrow of one class by another which represents a more advanced form of organisation of production and society as a whole. Thousands of years ago, when the development of the productive forces first made possible the accumulation of a surplus above what people needed to live, and the accumulation of privately owned means of production, the slave-owning class arose and established the slave system. As the productive forces developed, the feudal landlord class arose within the slave system, finally overthrew the slave system and established the feudal system. With the further development of the productive forces, the capitalist class arose within the feudal system, finally overthrew the feudal system and established the capitalist system. And now it is the turn of the proletariat to overthrow the capitalist system and build a completely new kind of society.

Underlying all this progress throughout history has been the struggle of people – struggle to develop production and science and to fight exploitation and oppression under the existing society. But only now, with the development of the proletariat under capitalism, has it become possible for the masses of people to finally take their place as masters of society and smash all social chains enslaving the producers and shackling production itself. The capitalists cannot eliminate the working class - and certainly cannot convert the working class into capitalists – for then whose labour would the capitalists live off. The working class, on the other hand, can run production and all of society much better without any capitalists at all.

The first great step in realising its historic mission is for working people to overthrow the dictatorship of the capitalist class and establish its own rule. It makes possible for the first time real democracy and political power for the masses of people. And its purpose is not to enforce exploitation, to allow one class to live parasitically off another, but to end all exploitation and create the community of working people, without class distinction.

The working class in power will have inherited from capitalism its “division of labour”–division between mental and manual workers, between workers in industry and working people in agriculture, between the city and the countryside, and between workers in different branches of the economy. The working class must break down these divisions and eliminate all aspects of commodity production (production for exchange, rather than production for use controlled by society as a whole), which contains within it the core of the separation of society into classes, based on private ownership of means of production. The working class must also overcome the inequalities that capitalism fosters between men and women and between different nationalities. The working class must revolutionise the political institutions, the culture, educational system and the very philosophy of the people, developing production and organising society according to the principles of cooperation. The working class, the only class which has no stake in the preservation of any aspect of capitalism or its “division of labour,” must struggle against the ruling class and completely transform society. When all of society has been transformed, the many sores left over from capitalism have been eliminated, and the community of workers has been established, then socialism, a completely class-free society, will have been achieved, and humanity will enter a whole new stage of history. There will no longer be the need for the state, since there will no longer be any class to suppress, and the state will be replaced with common administration by all of society. Socialism ends the anarchy of capitalism and its crises, by common ownership of the means of production and collective planning of the economy guided by working people. This removes the tremendous barriers to production that capitalist relations have erected. Unemployment will cease, because socialism will be able to make full use of the labour of everyone in society, while at the same time introducing new technology to expand output. As machines can replace workers, workers will not be thrown into the streets, but transferred to other jobs and the work day for all workers will be reduced. The nature of work itself will change completely, because the labour of the workers will no longer go to enrich capital to further enslave the working class, but to improve life today, while providing for the future, according to the conscious plan of the working class itself. The pride that workers have in their work will be unhindered by any sense that they are working themselves, or someone else, out of a job, or that they are being driven to produce for the private benefit of some moneybags, under the orders of supervisors  and the constant threat of being fired. The organisation of work will be overseen by the working class itself. Technology will no longer be weapons in the hands of the capitalists to grind down the working class, and workers will no longer be a mere extension of machinery, as they are under capitalism. Instead technology will become tools in the hands of the working people to make society in harmony with nature. All this will release the stored-up knowledge of the working class, based on its direct experience in production, and inspire workers to make new breakthroughs in improving production. Work itself will become a joy and enrichment of the worker’s life, instead of a miserable means to sustain existence, as it is under capitalism.

With no more State and the ownership of the means of production in its hands, the people discrimination in all areas of society will be wiped out. Nationalism, sexism  and racism only serves capitalism.

In capitalist society many individuals are drawn to religion because it represents their hopes and aspirations for a better life – projected, however, into the future and into another realm completely beyond man’s ability to understand. The wealthy promotes religion to convince people that since life is miserable on this Earth – and it cannot be denied that this is so under capitalism–the answer is to hope for a better life “beyond this one.”

Religion serves capitalism by telling people that they are basically helpless before the forces of nature-and the rulers of society–and they should put their faith not in the ability of people to change the world, but in a supreme, supernatural being. And if that isn’t enough, religion can call up the image of fire and brimstone to threaten people. More, those evangelical TV preachers who control many of the churches make huge fortunes while telling the people to wait for “pie in the sky.” These hypocritical leeches live like kings, right here and now, from the sweat and blood, hopes and fears, of the people. These “men of god” and “prophets,” prey on the poor , promising them all kinds of miracles and salvation to ease their misery–for a nice donation, of course. Socialist society will eliminate all need for religions. While at any time there are things nothing in the universe that are not yet known, there is nothing unknowable, there is nothing that is not bound by the laws of nature and society. Once people become conscious of all this, they have no need for belief in supernatural beings or forces of any kind.

Culture, like religion and education, represents the viewpoint of one class or another and is a powerful weapon in the hands of that class for creating “public opinion.” The capitalist class spreads its culture, but through its vast mass media and reflects the outlook of the capitalists. Socialism is not a share-the-wealth programme, but is in reality a method to create and control the wealth.

Who owns the North Pole

The United States has appointed a coordinator for policy in the Arctic  as  it prepares to compete with Russia and China on resource extraction in a region quickly melting due to climate change.

Jim DeHart, a 28-year diplomat who most recently served as a senior adviser in South Korea, is now U.S. coordinator for the Arctic region.

U.S. interest in the Arctic has grown as climate change raises temperatures and causes sea ice to melt, opening the region to more shipping and exposing critical minerals, uranium and fossil fuels. The Arctic has warmed at a rate twice the global average over the last three decades.

U.S. officials said in April they were “in the process of adjusting our Arctic policy to today’s new strategic realities.” 

At the same time, the United States announced a $12.1 million economic aid package for Greenland, which has vast deposits of rare earth minerals that could be used in everything from military weapons to generation of renewable energy.

Trump has pushed for drilling for oil in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, considered one of the world’s last pristine places.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-usa-arctic/u-s-appoints-coordinator-for-arctic-policy-as-mineral-race-heats-up-idUKKCN24U336

Struggle Against Capitalism

Building a fair, just, and prosperous ecological future, rooted in social and ecological justice means fundamental change.

This present society is poorly organised that every day workers in their millions look for work and can’t find any.  Workers in their thousands look for work and can’t find any. The poor beg for their food and shiver from the cold. They suffer the worst poverty. The youngest ask their destitute mothers for food and the latter can’t give them any because they don’t have anything. All they can do is ask for alms; to arrested as beggars. Many of the more vulnerable unfortunates commit suicide, leaving families in the most terrible distress. People go hungry and suffer while food, clothing and shelter are abundant.

 Yet there are thousands of people who don’t work, who produce nothing, and who live thanks to the labour of others. The capitalist market system means economic plunder and ecological pillage and the continuing growth of the concentration of wealth in the hands of the very few.

Scarcity is a myth and nothing more. There are, in reality, abundant resources. There is actually enough for everyone and that all of us are deserving of our planet’s abundance. The world has achieved a high level of science and technology. The great store of society’s wealth is created by the millions of workers who with their toil transform raw materials into finished products. The raw materials, the machinery, and the means of transportation all created by the workers are an important part of the productive forces of society, but the most important part is the working class itself without whose labour the means of production would rust and rot. But in the hands of the capitalists the means of production become tools for the continued enslavement and impoverishment of the working class.

Part of the workers’ labour covers the cost of maintaining themselves and their families – their wages–and the rest is unpaid labour that produces surplus value for the capitalists, the source of their profit. This exploitation of the workers to create private profit for the capitalists is the basis of the whole capitalist system and all its evils.

Capital chases after the highest rate of profit, as surely as iron is drawn to a magnet – this is a law beyond anyone’s will, even the capitalists’, and it will continue in force so long as society is ruled by capital.

Owning and appropriating a part of the total capital of society privately, each capitalist must try to enlarge his share at the expense of the other capitalists. Capitalists therefore repeatedly introduce new machines and technology to try to produce goods faster and more cheaply, in order to grab more of the market from their competitors. But this machinery and technology costs the capitalists additional money without bringing additional profit–which can only be gotten from the labor of the workers. So there is the constant tendency for the capitalists’ rate of profit to fall, which constantly leads to desperate attempts on their part to push the rate of profit up, to the highest level possible. Capitalists battle each other for profit, and those who lose out go under. The strongest capitalists survive, and in surviving concentrate more of the means of production in their hands and hurl more of the smaller producers into the ranks of the working class. While each capitalist tries to plan production, the private ownership, the blind drive for profit and the cut-throat competition continually upset their best-laid plans, and anarchy reigns in the economy as a whole. Capitalists constantly pull their capital out of one area of investment and into another, along with bringing in new machines to speed up production. Some capitalists temporarily surge ahead and expand while others fall behind or are forced out of business altogether. With each of these developments workers are thrown into the streets and forced once again to search for a new master to exploit them. All this is why, from its beginning, capitalism has gone from crisis to crisis. But so long as capitalism is not overthrown, it finds some way out of the crisis–temporarily. Anarchy and the chase of competing capitalists after higher profit remain in effect. The laws of capitalism remain in force, especially the commandment: “expand or die.”

But for far too long wealth has been funnelled far too much to far too few, where only the wealthy prosper. Poverty has become an increasingly endemic and permanent fixture of working people’s life. Workers are often told to be "practical," to make their demands modest. It’s worth noting, though, that the same is never asked of the super-rich.

 Phillip Alston, the former U.N. Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, explained it well: "The overwhelming success of the ideological campaign that supports neo-liberal policies is that it has succeeded in convincing people that those in poverty have no one to blame but themselves, while supporting the notion that trickle-down policies will address it." 

Supporters of the wealthy deflect attention from systemic failures and help them further consolidate their power.  Capitalist institutions are set up to perpetuate social injustices including inequality, institutional racism, and imperialist wars and conflicts. Ending poverty, systemic racism, working to mitigate climate change, and halting this world’s ever-growing militarism is not only possible, but essential. The basic contradiction of capitalism stands out all the more starkly: production itself is highly socialised – it requires large concentrations of workers, each performing part of the total process and all essential to its completion, and it is capable of massive output on this basis; but the ownership of the means of production and the appropriation of the wealth produced is “private”–in the hands of a few, competing owners of capital. It should be obvious that working people are in dire need of a new vision.

The project of reconstructing society around the needs of the poor and dispossessed requires a socialist movement. Socialism is the recipe for a strategy that aims to have the economic pie fairly and justly divided, ending poverty and injustice. The working class possesses tremendous potential power to change the world, a fact that is shown every day in the process and product of its labor and in its many struggles against capitalism. It is the task of the working class to remake society to serve the interests of the great majority of the people.

The only socialist party in Britain

The Socialist Party constantly counsels our fellow-workers that “One thing we must warn you about, which is do not trust in leaders, trust in yourselves alone. Unless you understand the cause and the solution of your condition no leader can help you, no matter how honest and sincere he or she may appear to be; if you do understand, then you do not require leaders; you will know what you want and how to instruct your delegates to get what you want.”

Socialism has never even been put before the electorate by any party with the resources to ensure that it would get a fair hearing. To adapt a famous saying, socialism has not been tried and found wanting; it has never been tried. 

Who can doubt the accuracy of the socialist case, with regard to reforms, in view of the length of time and enormous efforts which went into the establishment of even these minor reforms? Stated simply it is that whilst we accept all and every reform, grudgingly granted or strenuously wrenched from the capitalist class we do not advocate organising nor working for them. Our work is to organise for socialism, knowing that when large numbers of socialists exist the capitalists will be most lavish in the distribution of reforms in an attempt to retain their privileged position. Until something is done to abolish capitalism we shall have to endure capitalism's poverty, wars and environment damage. We hold that the idea of keeping capitalism but reforming it to prune it of its exploitation and wars is a pathetic and dangerous illusion; and also that until the mass of the working class have been won over to socialism it is idle futility to speculate on ways in which a non-socialist working class that doesn’t understand or warn socialism could establish it. The class straggle is continuous and cannot be suspended. The working class always react in some degree to the continuous pressure of the exploiters, It follows that we do not hold and never have held that the class struggle is confined to small groups of socialists. The slow growth of socialist ideas among the workers is in its way a silent tribute to the efficiency of the media’s propaganda and is not due to the workers’ inability to grasp the cause of their slave position in society. Preoccupied with their very real day to day problems the vast majority accept these ready made ideas unquestioningly and uncritically. Those workers who do interest themselves are more often than not side-tracked into political dead-ends. Politicians take a leaf out of the book of the commercial advertiser and sells the leader or the candidate to the voter by the same methods used to sell patent medicines or washing powder. The appeal is no longer to the reason of the citizen but to his or her gullibility. The workers' minds have been so conditioned for so long that the capitalists “head-fixers” have thought of a good angle to explain away criticisms of their system. Confusion is worst confounded by those parties calling themselves “socialist.” The juggernaut of capitalism lumbers on unheeding to the inevitable clashes, pitting worker against worker in ineffectual and ghastly conflict. The reformers loudly calls attention to its evils (of, which we are already painfully aware) but stops short of unearthing the cause, i.e., capitalist competition.

Capitalist propaganda often takes place without any conscious effort on the part of the propagator. The child upon its mother's knee does not realise that the language it is being taught is suitably coloured to help the continuation of capitalism. Even the mother, unless she be a socialist, does not realise that she is teaching her children the capitalist attitude to good and bad, the doctrine of God and the Devil.

At the age of five the child is thrust into an organised scheme to enable it to know enough to earn a living but not enough to know anything of great importance. It is taught obedience to authority which results in apathy, patriotism which results in racial prejudice, religion which results in blind acceptance, and the history of “great men” which means meekness before prestige. The child turns to entertainments and it finds children's magazines, a brighter presentation of the same dope. The child goes to the cinema and sees the brave king defending his property against a weak, cringing, brutal coward, the glorious British army defeating the enemy with smiles and a stiff upper-lip.

Should the child be unfortunate to have to go to church,  he or she will be exhorted to sing aloud, “All things bright and beautiful” amidst slums and factory smoke.

Having left school into the hurried and worried life of capitalist wage-slavery, reduced to misfortune and hardship he or she will get to know all the capitalist incantations summed up in the philosophy. “All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.”

So many people today think that they will know better next time. Unless they are socialists they will not know better. The dope, whether from the church, the media or the schools will claim them. Rose coloured spectacles stand in the workers' way in their struggle to survive. When they get rid of them, as they will, they will be ready to see things in perspective. They will be socialists.

Reforms do not basically alter capitalism and it is agreed by the members of the Socialist Party that socialist delegates must contest elections solely on the programme of abolishing capitalism and establishing socialism, thereby seeking the votes only of socialists and not of reformists. The sole issue was whether socialist delegates elected on socialist votes would vote for measures which, whatever their origin and motive, would incidentally be of benefit to the working class and the socialist movement. Mention is often of measures to improve educational and healthcare facilities, safety facilities in mines and factories, the removal of restrictions on trade unions, etc. The Socialist Party takes the line that socialists outside Parliament would require their delegates in Parliament to vote for such measures on their merits. The vote would be given not in order to meet the views of reformists but under instruction of socialists. An “all or nothing" position while attractive in its simplicity is less logical than he imagined. It would logically lead socialists to take no action at all except in support of the establishment of socialism. It would for example require them not to support trade union efforts on the ground that a wage increase or resistance to a wage reduction is not socialism.

The solution is a world wide movement by the workers for the establishment of socialist society. However, in time, worsening conditions together with the efforts of socialists will speed the ultimate awakening of the workers. We are working for the overthrow of capitalist society which has already drawn too large a draft on the bank of time. We ask for your understanding, help and co-operation that the necessary knowledge may be spread to the workers and a world wide brotherhood of mankind be established in our time.

Amid the political and economic misleaders of the Left, the Party’s voice has rung out clear, calm and confident, nor has one false note been struck. Events so far have justified its every warning and advice, and while collapsing capitalism is reflected in the hesitating uncertainty and vacillation of so-called socialist parties, the Socialist Party stands solid and unshakeable, on behalf of our fellow wage slaves, building up and perfecting the mechanism by which we may emancipate ourselves. We may be a small party but we are a socialist one, and, the only socialist party in Great Britain.

The Scottish Commons

Today it’s estimated around half of its private rural land is owned by just under 500 individuals, while the Panama Papers revealed that as much as 750,000 acres of this may be owned anonymously by those in offshore tax havens.

The problem with Scotland’s land ownership is not new.  The word “feudalism” likely conjures up images of the stratified Middle Ages, but it was not until this century that feudal ownership formally came to an end in Scotland. Before the Abolition of Feudal Tenure Act of 2000 was enforced in late 2004, there still existed vassals and feudal superiors in the country. Although an earlier act in 1974 gave vassals the power to “buy off” their feu duties, in 1999 around 10 per cent of landowners were still making regular payments to their superiors—one such notable superior being the Church of Scotland, which at the time collected as much as £30,000 a year from feudal lands. To get a sense of just how astonishing this is, the analogous piece of legislation that brought feudal ownership to an end in England, the Tenures Abolition Act, was enacted in 1660.

Scotland’s Land Reform Act 2003—a piece of legislation described by the Scottish Conservative Party as a “land-grab of which Robert Mugabe would have been proud”—set in motion the basic mechanisms to help communities buy the land they lived on. 

It stipulates that such buyouts must take place through a body that represents local residents, typically a heritage trust. On the Isle of Eigg—home to one of the first modern community buyouts, in 1997—a board of directors is appointed to run the trust, the majority of whom are members of the Eigg Residents Association, who are in turn elected by members of the community. Aside from any suggestion of new “countryside bureaucracy,” the need to introduce democratic norms as a prerequisite for community buyouts highlights, if nothing else, just how fundamental and agenda-setting a right is property ownership: property, in other words, is power. For the Isle of Eigg and other communities like it, this power has been transformative. It’s estimated around 560,000 acres of land is now in community ownership across Scotland. With the recent success of the Isle of Eigg buyout in the back of everyone’s minds, the allure of the commons appeared inescapable; the idea was seen anew.

Community ownership is not new. It was the Romans who talked about the existence of res communis, that which belonged to all as opposed to res publica, that which was owned by the government. Even within Scotland itself, the idea of the commons has existed for centuries in the form of the commonty and the old royal burghs of King David I, which for so long were chipped away by feudal charters. To talk of the commons today then is to talk in terms of resurgence rather than revolution.  A “return” to the commons may yet hold the kernel of something far more radical than its centuries-old history belies.  With a pandemic that has left many of us feeling acutely powerless, it’s not hard to see how the commons—through community right to buy and greater decision making at the local level more generally—might empower ordinary people in ways we haven’t done for a very long time.

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/who-really-owns-scotland-land-ownership-reform-act-registry

Social Evolution

The ruling class of this country and all the others never stopped preaching that their form of government is “the most democratic on earth.” Like other things these parasites put out, this is reality upside down. The fact is that the people who run this country are a small handful of bankers and businessmen, millionaires and billionaires. In this system which they call “the most democratic on earth,” they own the vast productive forces–the factories, the mines, the mills, the transportation systems, communications, etc – and exploit the working class, the majority of the population, for their own private profit. The State – the police, army, courts, bureaucracy and similar institutions – is set up and controlled by this capitalist class who  are never mobilised against the class of bankers and corporation executives. In short, this state is a class dictatorship of employers and investors. This does not mean there is a dictatorship in this country of one person or a clique. It does mean there is a class dictatorship, where a tiny handful of profit-makers rules society and uses the State as their machine to repress the working people. Most people do not think of their country as a dictatorship because the domination by the capitalist class is usually concealed under the camouflage of democracy for it is extremely difficult for a minority of exploiters to rule by force alone and require to be controlled by consent. The capitalists do not openly admit their rule. Instead they claim that this is a democracy where “everyone shares power and takes part in running the government.” However, the capitalists are no more willing to “share” power with the majority of people than it is to share the ownership of the means of production and the wealth that comes from this. For them to function as a capitalist class, they must exploit the working class; and to exploit the workers, who constantly resist this exploitation and oppression, they must use the state to suppress the workers.

 Nevertheless the ruling class had been forced to grant the workers some democratic rights such as the right to vote, free speech, free media, etc. But these freedoms, like everything else in capitalist society, have their class content: they mean one thing to the ruling class and quite another for the workers. For the capitalists, freedom of free speech, as examples, mean the right to fill the air-waves and press with their propaganda and lies and to use them freely to debate with each other. For the capitalists, elections are a way to settle differences among themselves, while making it look like everybody has equal say. The ruling class decides by compromise within its own ranks, and among its paid politicians, how it will maintain its system of exploitation over the people.

For the working class, democratic rights are the fruits of previous struggles, and we fight to preserve them for they make it easier to organise and mobilise for the day when the capitalists will be overthrown. Often democratic rights are a sham to mask the real dictatorship of the capitalists. This becomes especially clear when democratic rights come into conflict with the most basic “freedom” of bourgeois society–the right of the capitalists to their “private property” and to exploit the labour of the workers.

When the capitalist class talks about freedom, it does not mean that the people have, or should have, rights. It means that the capitalists are free to exploit the people to make profits.  There is one sense in which the capitalists want the workers to be “free.” We must be “free” of ownership of the means of production, we must have no other way to make our living except to go to work to enrich the capitalists. It becomes clearer and clearer that capitalist society means democracy and freedom for the capitalist minority and oppression and exploitation for the great majority of the people. This can only be reversed by socialist revolution to overthrow capitalist rule and all the political structures, the courts and bureaucracies, all its rules and regulations aimed at enslaving the people are abolished.

In the process of socialist revolution the working class take control of the state machine and once in power the working class moves to socialise the ownership of the means of production-making them the common property of society–to resolve the basic contradiction of capitalism, to break down the obstacles capitalism puts in the way of progress, and makes possible the rapid development of society. Socialism is a higher form of society than capitalism, and is bound to replace it all over the world, just as capitalism replaced the feudal system of landlords and serfs. No longer do a handful of parasites run society for their own private profit and the working class sets out to transform all of society, stripping from the master class their ownership of the means of production which becomes the common property of the working people. 

 Socialism replaces capitalism, a form of society, where there will no longer be any classes, and, therefore, there will no longer be any need for the State, when everyone in society can share equally in producing goods and services and managing the affairs of society; putting the common good above narrow, individual interests, when goods and services can be produced so abundantly that money is no longer needed to exchange them and they can be distributed to people solely according to their needs. Classes will have been completely eliminated, and the state as such will be replaced by the common administration of society by all its members. As this happens, throughout the world, mankind will look upon a whole new horizon.