A SENSE OF VALUES?

We live in a society that sees millions of workers trying to survive from day to day on the equivalent of less than $2 a day and yet we can have a news item such as the following. "A baseball enthusiast has discovered a trove of sports cards hidden inside a soot-covered cardboard box in his grandfather's attic – with an estimated collected value of more than £2 million. ..... Kissner and his family said the cards belonged to their grandfather, Carl Hench, who died in the 1940s. (Daily Telegraph, 11 July) Pieces of old cardboard are valued more than human life inside capitalism. RD

trumped by the capitalist

Donald Trump opened his new £100m golf course. Trump had flown into Aberdeen on a private jet emblazoned in gold with the Trump brand.

The course is built across a stretch of stunning land overlooking the North Sea, some of which had been designated a site of special scientific interest (SSSI) because of the way the dunes moved northwards over time. Trump claims to have stabilised the land to create the "greatest golf course in the world". The Golf Environment Organisation, which vets courses and is backed by the European Tour, complained of the course's "considerable negative impact on what was one of the UK's most valuable mobile sand dune systems".

Trump denying there were any protesters, declaring after the first nine holes: "The environmentalists love what I have done." A second question about the environmental impact saw the billionaire shepherded by an aide away from the media and towards the VIP refreshment tent.

Later Trump said "Nothing will ever be built around this course because I own all the land around it," he said with a smile. "It's nice to own land."

Susan Monro home is just 100 metres away from the course clubhouse and she refused to sell up so Trump  piled an 8 metre high sand berm around her house, blocking her sea views. Huge gates have been erected at the end of her lane and she complains Trump's security staff shine lights into her home at night.

Another local who resisted Trump's attempts to buy him out is now forced to live behind a row of tall spruce trees planted on Trump's orders at the edge of his property which screen off spectacular views of the dunes and the sea.

Trump once declared "It's our property, we can do what we want."

Utopia's Here

We live a world based upon scarcity. Scarcity is neither natural nor necessary. Imagine if computers grew on trees, and the world was a gigantic forest, then in a monetary sense computers would be worthless. It would be impossible to sell computers if an over-abundance of computers existed because people could easily acquire computers for free. In the world of post-scarcity everything will be free. Nearly all of the major scarcity that exists today is not due to an actual lacking of material or energy. Our world has the capacity for everyone to have a very nice life materially. The reality is that global material abundance can be produced with current technologies. Food is one example, where there is more than enough produced for everyone on the planet , but politics and economics prevent fair distribution. The bottom line is that in the fundamental resources of this planet there exists in various orders of magnitude more energy, raw material and biological resources than humanity requires, and it is a matter of developing systems that use and distribute them more efficiently. Imagine a world where you can grow all your own food in a fully automated greenhouse. Your water falls freely from the sky or wells up from the earth and is filtered and cleaned automatically. Any time you want a new device or product, you can find a design online, perhaps customise it, and fabricate it locally or have it delivered using an automated delivery service. And your children have access to the best education ever conceived, for free and you have access to abundant free energy. What need will you have then to engage with the monetary economy?

Post-scarcity almost by definition implies "post-economic" as economics is based on scarcity. A post-scarcity society means that the necessities of living (and plenty more) will be available for everyone who requires it. There may well still be occasional shortages of  certain items that have purposefully not been made publicly available or are simply too scarce, but for the majority of people this will be irrelevant. The important point is that for the first time the general population will be able to live comfortably without having to sell their labour-power and owe anyone else their time. People will not have to suffer drudgery and what amounts to wage slavery during the best years of their lives. Wage-slavery is not liberty.We are owned, cradle to grave.  Working from pay-check to pay-check, often toiling at more than one job, in order to provide just the essentials of life is exactly the life that our great grandparents lived. That’s not the future our that our they had in mind for us. We should be celebrating that there is no longer any need to pay greedy corporations because technology means we can get what we want for free. Our mainstream economic dogma emphasizes competition and an income-through-jobs link which creates a vast amount of social stress in a society. People often throw their lives away because they are depressed and unhappy by financial misery. Money and governments only exist to regulate scarcity therefore if you are depressed regarding your lack of money, or the unfairness of your government, you must understand there is a reason to hope; that there is a reason why you shouldn’t give up hope.

Industrial capitalism has succeeded beyond it's wildest dreams. So much so, that over half a century ago, we had to start scrambling to find ways to soak up the embarrassing abundance of productive human capacity in the system. The world has long reached a pinnacle of productive efficiency impossible to visualise just a century ago. We’ve had the technology to provide material comfort to everyone on the planet for decades now. Denial of this fact will only doom us to decades of continued deprivation.  We need not quibble over "whether or not" the post-scarcity scenario "can" or "should" come to pass because it exists in the here and now. Of course, we need to make some crucial adaptations to the bygone system which brought us this far, by which we mean a change from capitalism to communism. People need to engage in a political struggle to bring about the changes. The transition beyond our current institutions to a post-scarcity society may be harder than actually developing the technologies required to support a post-scarcity world. Social change doesn't come by decree from the politicians. It comes from the bottom up, from those who see clearly and say, "I can see a better way to do things, a better way to live". This isn't to say what is proposed here will happen, but that it could happen – it is feasible from a physical and technological viewpoint. It is a matter of spreading the knowledge that these things are possible and enough people choosing to work towards it. We have the devices that allow people to effectively communicate. They're called lap-top computers and smart phones.

We have the new forms of energy that is free for all to use with no negative environmental impact. They are called solar, wind, and geothermal. Solar power and other forms of energy-reclamation will create free supplies of unlimited energy for everyone. By employing open collaborative design, digital manufacturing and advanced automation in combination, everything we need should be trivial to fabricate and distribute — from the basics like clean water, good quality food, medicine and suitable housing, to increasingly essential material goods such as vehicles, computers and mobile phones – all the way up to purely luxury items. Decentralizing production of these things will also allow more equal access to them and side-step many of the issues involved in distributing them. These methods could overcome nearly all significant scarcity that may persist due to the economic framework we have inherited from capitalism. We will create food and other products almost out of thin air. Technology will become extremely sophisticated. We will effortlessly grow food and manufacture products (via 3D printing) within our own homes. Everything will be decentralized and everyone will be empowered. We can build technology of any complexity from free open-source designs and digitally fabricate them from raw materials which are themselves extremely abundant. With every year that goes by, the methods of fabrication become more decentralized and the open-source designs become better, making this a more attractive and feasible option. In the future nothing will need to be fixed because molecular nano-technology will ensure everything is self-repairing. In this post-scarcity future, where everything is free, there will be no reason to feel unhappy; despair will be vanquished. We will enjoy this utopia for longer because medical technology will slow down aging and most illnesses will be curable. Earthquakes, hurricanes, drought, landslides, tsunamis, famine, disease — these things are a part of life on Earth. But with the intelligent application of technology, some can be eliminated, some can be rendered harmless and others can be dealt with as best we can.  Better building methods, particularly in earthquake-prone areas, can reduce the numbers who die in earthquakes to nearly zero. The same is true for hurricanes. If food production, water treatment and power generation are all decentralized, people are no longer dependent on roads and infrastructure to keep them alive in a disaster area.

 Public libraries have been lending out books to people, for free, for hundred of years or so. Now we have indestructible book called an e-book that could be read 10 billion times without ever falling apart. The readers have the ability to "manufacture" copies of their own, on their computer. It's a post-scarcity book. It works the same way with all digital goods -- from entertainment to communication to the software you use to do your job. All monetary systems are abolished. Instead, if someone wishes something they only have to ask for it and public automated industry provides it. In theory, there will be no limit to how many resources an individual can consume. In the real world and in practice human wants are not infinite.The majority of post-scarcity economies develop towards steady state economies compared to the continuous growth economies common in scarcity economies. This is due to the fact that if post-scarcity economies grow at their full speed eventually local resources may become depleted thus increasing the strictness of supramonetary approaches and leading back towards a scarcity economy. It should be noted however that the resources available to a post-scarcity economy are huge (potentially multiple solar systems worth of matter and energy) so population growth is not the biggest issue. Rather steady state economic principles are often put in place to preserve Nature. People have already embraced a growing environmental consciousness of  “Reduce, Re-use, Recycle” to protect the biosphere. No matter how efficient or advanced a post-scarcity economy is there will always be a time limit to how fast commodities and services can be provided often referred to as the "wait-time". For many items wait-time is an insignificant factor to the consumer (most everyday items can be provided for in minutes). However if the wait-time is deemed to be an issue then logistical management  including mechanisms for quickening supply can be designed. For example; if a household automated-fabricator is asked to provide a complex or large item it may be quicker and more efficient for a neighbourhood  industrial-sized automatate-fabricator to manufacture the item and transport it to the consumer. Communities can devise their own particular priority allocating systems to determine access to fast track wait-time lists.

The biggest challenge is that despite technologies of abundance is that we still think in terms of scarcity. Recently, Canon announced that over the next few years some of its camera factories will phase out human workers in an effort to reduce costs. That means robots will soon be making the next generation of cameras, possibly as soon as 2015. Civilisation is ever closer to a near-workerless world. Under capitalism people feel that this increasing automation is a threat. A threat to their livelihoods. The reality is that automation is likely to provide situations where people will be left free to be creative and in activities that they want to be part of. Open design will enable people to be involved in the development and customisation of the goods they want in a way not seen before and reverses the trend of people simply being passive consumers. Creativity is something that can give huge satisfaction to people but if not fulfilled can cause great frustration and dissatisfaction. It enables an individual to have more control over their environment and life. Human beings are inherently industrious; not indolent, slothful, and lethargic. We are not lazy and useless, by nature. We are imaginative, daring, productive, adventurous, curious, persistent, and artistic creatures. Unfortunately a large proportion of people today in both white and blue collar jobs would really rather be doing something else than the jobs they are employed to do. Many feel that what they are doing is not directly relevant to their lives or is not particularly interesting and feel they are simply a cog with little control in a larger machine. Currently they have to do it to afford food, shelter and goods. A post-scarcity society enables them to have the time and space to work on things that are important to them, and to learn the skills needed to reach their goals and have room to be more creative. In a post-scarcity culture, not having to spend the best part of the day working for a living also frees people up to spend more time with each other - something that is vital for a proper community and it will permit for a greater variety of working life than offered today.

Using current existing known technology:
We can provide abundant clean water for everyone on Earth.
We can produce enough food to feed everybody in the world without harming the environment
We can meet our energy needs ten-fold using clean, renewable energy
We can build high-quality houses in a day or two, providing shelter for those presently living in slums
We can provide safer, more efficient, less polluting transport

We can provide mobile Internet access to everyone on Earth, connecting them to the world's informational and educational resources. Through open collaboration, this can network vast amounts of human intelligence, which can greatly accelerate scientific and technological progress. We can freely disseminate instructional materials throughout the internet, providing education of unprecedented quality to everyone on Earth. We can organize the World's medical knowledge, so that people have access to the highest-quality medical information and advice at all times.

There is widespread concern about an "overpopulation problem" which some claim makes abundance impossible. The world's population is about 7 billion. This number is growing with the UN predicting a possible 10.6 billion for 2050. After that, the UN expects the population to begin to fall. Assume that the population continues to rise beyond 2050 and reaches 40 billion, well beyond any UN estimate, would we be overpopulated then, in relation to available resources?

Food.
Without expanding farmland, we could grow enough food for 80 billion people using low-tech permaculture techniques only.
 Water.
Our planet has about 1260 quintillion liters of water. This means that 40 billion people using 200 liters a day each would use, over the course of a year, less than 0.00025% of the world's water.
Energy.
The world used 15 terawatts of energy in 2008. If rising population and increasing technology increased this 100-fold to 1500 terawatts, we would still only need to convert less than 0.9% of the sunlight that falls on Earth. It is highly likely that we will have nuclear fusion reactors and space-based solar panels before our energy needs come anywhere near this level.
Land.
The planet's surface (including oceans) is about 510 million square kilometers. According to Wikipedia, one-eighth of this, 63,750,000 sq. kms, is habitable land. For a population of 40 billion people, this is 1593.75 sq.m habitable land per person, equivalent to a average population density of 628 people per sq.km. This is comparable to a fairly densely populated country like Taiwan.

We can do more with less. 100 years ago, 8000 square meters of land was needed to grow food for a person. It can now be done on a few hundred square meters. Why? Because human intelligence has figured out how to extract more resources from a fixed amount of material. The effect of human intelligence is always to enable us to do more with less. Better solar cells can make more electricity from less sunlight, we can make a more powerful computer chip using less material than a few years ago, and more efficient vehicles can travel the same journeys with much less petrol. Human ingenuity is the key that unlocks all other resources. The greater the population, the greater the store of human intelligence. A large population that is well networked and educated will concoct and communicate all kinds of technological solutions that enable us to do more with the resources we have. And so, paradoxically, an increased population can mean that we have more resources to go around.

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“The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.”—Steve Biko

King Cash at Ibrox

The Charles Green consortium have told Rangers supporters that it would take at least £50 million for them to sell the newco club – a figure which would give them an astonishing 900 per cent profit on their initial £5.5m investment.

 A representative from Rangers Unite asked: “What would you see as an exit price?”
Director Imran Ahmad replied: “On a bad day the club is worth £50m.”

That statement will call into question the decision by controversial joint administrators Paul Clark and David Whitehouse, of Duff & Phelps, to sell the club and its assets to Green’s group for a cut-price £5.5m. Ahmed’s estimation of the true worth of the club is likely to enrage creditors and fans alike.

 Duff & Phelps have been paid an estimated £200,000 per week during their time at Ibrox.

Stop supporting capitalism!

Woody Guthrie

Both the Observer  and the Independent on Sunday carry  articles on Woody Guthrie who was born 100 yrs ago this month.

Socialist Courier draws attention to the insightful  Socialist Standard article written by Glasgow branch member Andy Armitage which is slightly less hagiographic than the above.

Phil Ochs’s tribute to Guthrie, “Bound for Glory” culminates with the lines: “Why sing the songs and forget about the aim / He wrote them for a reason why not sing them for the same.”

Woody Guthrie may have been a fellow-traveller of the Communist Party at times but a helluva lot of his songs reflect the thoughts and aspirations of socialists everywhere.

Keep on walking

46 parades of up to 8,000 Orangemen will march through Glasgow's city centre today with a number of them converging on Cathedral Square. In all, 174 parades taking place throughout the Strathclyde police force area. Henry Dunbar, Grand Master of the Orange Order, said: "The annual Glasgow Boyne Celebrations is the city's biggest street event" An impressive event, perhaps, but highly divisive and sectarian in character. 

The Orange Order warned that Scotland is a "nation in turmoil" and raised concerns over the "separatist campaign". Grand Master Henry Dunbar urged members to back the Union. The Orange Order called on the Church of Scotland to stand up for the country's protestant heritage. "We are dismayed by the dismal failure of our national church, the Church of Scotland, to exert influential leadership in matters of faith and morality. It is a sad reflection that in today's society, many protestants now consider that the Orange Order is more in harmony with their values and aspirations than the Kirk. We as an institution never envisaged nor aspired to be in such a position, and it is an appalling indication of how far the Kirk deteriorated. Sadly, it appears that we are in a situation where the Kirk can no longer command high public regard and influence."

Socialist Courier has recently blogged on the Orange Lodge and the Church of Scotland here

The Battle of the Boyne, is remembered every year by Loyalists on the 12th of July although it took place on July 1st, 1690. It is celebrated on July 12th simply because somebody was mathematically challenged - in 1752 the change to the Gregorian calendar necessitated a re-calculation of all historical dates to determine anniversaries. July 1st (old style) really became July 11th (new style). The wrong date has become enshrined in Loyalist tradition ever since. The (mis-dated) anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne only became the focus of celebrations for the Orange Order ever since its foundation as a quasi-Masonic defensive association of lodges dedicated to preserving the Protestant ascendency in 1795. The victory of Prince William of Orange at the Battle of the Boyne did not change the penal laws against Irish Presybeterians in Ulster or the fact that in many cases they were forced to pay a tax for the upkeep of the local Anglican clergy even though they were not attached

Did Protestants fight Catholics during the Battle of the Boyne? Yes, they did. And Protestants fought Protestants and Catholics fought Catholics. To portray the battle as a religious conflict would be nowhere near the truth. William had the support of Pope Innocent XI and a Pontifical High Mass was celebrated in thanksgiving for the deliverance from the power of the Catholic Louis XIV and the Catholic James II. Catholics were fighting on both sides. And so were Protestants.

It was all about politics. It was not even really about Irish issues and was ultimately about the English crown on a foreign field and European alliances. William's European allies were mainly drawn from the League of Augsburg - an anti-French cabal of nobility, but included Catholic states as well. Irish issues were never really raised and Irish freedom was never mentioned. The majority of James' troops were the "Gaelic Irish" regiments.The Jacobite "cause" was a very nebulous concept to them. James enjoyed the support of the French, providing nearly a third of his fighting force And William's army relied mainly on Anglo-Irish forces. William's troops was even more diverse, with Dutch, German, French Huguenot soldiers and even Danish mercenaries fighting for him.

Was it a white  horse William rode on the day?  This is disputed by historians and current consensus seems to be that it was a dark horse and it is even more unlikely that he rode across the Boyne in triumph. He would have had to dismount and, less heroically, lead his horse across.

Was the Battle of the Boyne the decisive? Although crossing of the Boyne was important towards securing Dublin the defeat of James at the Boyne was neither the end of the war nor the start of a Williamite string of victories. The one decisive battle of the Williamite Wars was the Battle of Aughrim (County Galway) in 1691. Curiously enough fought on July 12th ... according to the old calendar!

Also known as the Williamite Wars it was effectively a fight between two factions of landlordism to decide which of them should have the right to exploit the people.

James Connolly was to write "...all the political struggles of the period were built upon the material interests of one set of usurpers who wished to retain, and another who wished to obtain, the mastery of those lands...The so-called Patriot Parliament was in reality, like every other that sat in Dublin, merely a collection of land thieves and their lackeys; their patriotism consisted in an effort to retain for themselves the spoils of the native peasantry; the English influence against which they protested was the influence of their fellow thieves in England hungry for a share of the spoil...It is unfortunately beyond all question that the Irish Catholics shed their blood like water and wasted their wealth like dirt in an effort to retain King James upon the throne. But it is equally beyond all question that the whole struggle was no earthly concern of theirs; that King James was one of the most worthless representatives of a race that ever sat upon the throne; that the "pious, glorious and immortal" William was a mere adventurer fighting for his own hand, and his army recruited from the impecunious swordsmen of Europe who cared as little for Protestantism as they did for human life; and that neither army had the slightest claim to be considered as a patriot army combating for the freedom of the Irish race...The Catholic gentlemen and nobles who had the leadership of the people of Ireland at the time were, one and all, men who possessed considerable property in the country, property to which they had, notwithstanding their Catholicity, no more right to title than the merest Cromwellian or Williamite adventurer. The lands they held were lands which in former times belonged to the Irish people - in other words, they were tribe-lands...."

As Connolly concludes "It is time we learned to appreciate and value the truth upon such matters, and to brush from our eyes the cobwebs woven across them by our ignorant or unscrupulous history-writing politicians."

capitalism- the meat grinder

 "Securing 1250 jobs through the new Centre of Excellence at Halls in Broxburn is fantastic news. Vion's investment in their new training centre is a major vote of confidence in the Scottish workforce and Scotland's economic future." -  Alex Salmond, 22 September 2011
The company then received funding of £1.495m from Scottish Enterprise and up to £500,000 from Skills Development Scotland.

Vion has warned that it could be forced to close its West Lothian plant, with the loss of 1,700 jobs. Bosses said the Hall's of Broxburn site had continued to record "unsustainable losses" - 5 July 2012 - less than a year later.

With 8,000 pigs a week currently being processed at the plant, which makes sausages, black pudding and haggis, it is the biggest pig processor in Scotland. VION UK is part of the Netherlands-based VION N.V., and currently employs almost 12,000 staff at 40 facilities across the country and is a major supporter of the UK farming industry, producing and processing beef, lamb, pork and chicken, as well as a range of sausages, cooked meatsVion's UK chairman Peter Barr said "There is significant over-capacity in the UK meat industry" Last month in a press release about future cost-cutting and stated "We are further optimizing our production, logistics, ICT and sales, thus also reducing costs. Unfortunately, this will not be possible without streamlining certain activities and making some redundancies."

Union leaders hit out at the sudden nature of the announcement earlier tonight and said staff were “shocked and angry”. Stewart Forrest said “The first question we want answered is why the company has waited until this 11th hour before engaging with its employees and their union. Usdaw was given no indication of the true seriousness of the situation and that is extremely regrettable and in my view totally unacceptable.”

Socialist Courier once again points to the worthless declarations from the SNP that an independent Scotland means very much to workers employed by companies who set business plans and commercial strategy, corporately, as a multi-national, outside a Scottish government's providence.

 And for those who hold out co-operatives as way to go VION is not a listed company and has one shareholder, the Dutch Zuidelijke Land- en Tuinbouworganisatie (ZLTO), an agricultural and horticultural association with some 18,000 members. Vion VION's turnover is €9.5 billion and the company employs 26,500 staff.

A return to Shetland's independence

Some may recall a slightly tongue-in-cheek post by Socialist Courier on Shetland Independence.

It appears from this Guardian report that the possibility that Scottish independence may actually lead to demands for Shetland's independence from Scotland.

Tavish Scott, the MSP for Shetland, and a Liberal Democrat, explains "There is a strong feeling here. It's that there is an opportunity in this referendum for Shetland to get what it really wants, which is more control of its own affairs. The point is that Shetland doesn't want the centralisation of the SNP. Devolution did allow Scotland to go its own way and now it should let Shetland go its own way."
The editor of the Shetland Times, Paul Riddell, has even gone as far as to describe Shetland as "a bit like a little Cuba, a semi-socialist, semi-autonomous paradise!"
Socialist Courier hopes not too much like the Castro dictatorship but we understand the sentiment that he expresses.

There is an old adage of the islanders: "All the Shetland ever got from Scotland was dear meal and greedy ministers."

When nationalism is let out of Pandora's Box all kinds of unintended consequences can arise.

 Freedom for Castlemilk!!

turning on the tap for some

Senior managers at Scottish Water paid themselves more than £1.5 million last year including a £369,000 bonus despite most state-employed staff having to endure a pay freeze.

According its annual report, the quango’s dozen board members earned £1.57 million in the 2011/12 tax year. This is an average of £131,000 each and almost seven per cent more than they were paid the previous year. The total includes the bonus, which was paid only to the five executive members. They each received an average of £73,800 in addition to their basic salaries. In addition, the four longest serving members of the board have racked up pension pots worth a total of £3.8 million.

Richard Ackroyd, Scottish Water’s chief executive, retained his position as Scotland’s highest paid public sector employee, earning a basic salary of £263,000, a bonus worth £105,000 and other benefits totalling £12,000. His £380,000 remuneration package was eight per cent higher than the previous year. In addition he has a retirement pot worth nearly £1.6 million.

Geoff Aitkenhead, the asset management director, received an extra £69,000 as part of his £252,000 remuneration package. Chris Banks, the commercial director, earned a £64,000 bonus, bringing his total wage packet to £234,000. Peter Farrer, the customer service delivery director, received a bonus worth £62,000 and total remuneration of £228,000. Douglas Millican, the finance and regulation director, was paid £253,000 last year, including a £69,000 bonus.

A spokesman said: “Whilst there has been considerable debate recently about incentive payments to directors in all areas of the business world and particularly rewards for directors of businesses which have failed, Scottish Water can clearly be seen to be an outstanding Scottish success story.”

So, where did the actual workers share disappear to?

Past Reflections

This is the first of what will be a regular, if occasional, series of recollections from Socialist Party members.

Back in the 1960s Glasgow branch of the Socialist Party of Great Britain had two outstanding speakers. These were Alex Shaw, a veteran orator and the most amusing speaker I ever heard, and Dick Donnelly, a young man with a quick wit. This was before I joined the Party and every Sunday evening, weather permitting, I would go to the meeting at West Regent Street, to get my weekly fix of the case for Socialism.

I got much education and enjoyment from those meetings but the most memorable one was on a Sunday evening in 1960. When I arrived Donnelly was sitting patiently on the platform because the Communist Party was noisily celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Daily Worker, (its newspaper) in the middle of West Regent Street. A stage had been built from which the editor of the Daily Worker, George Matthews, would address the large turnout of C.P.ers and the Young Communist choir were there to warm-up the audience.

Matthews gave his speech after which the dismantling of the stage and the sound system were begun and the celebrations were over. This was what Donnelly had been waiting for. He got on the platform, started to speak and this attracted a large bunch of the C.P.ers. What followed was a hammering of the C.P.ers as Donnelly denounced and ridiculed them and their party.

The highlight was his reading out a poem in praise of Stalin penned by some Russian hack. This poem was surely the most servile, stomach-turning example of the idolatry heaped on Stalin.

    “O Great Stalin, O leader of the Peoples,
    Thou who didst give birth to man,
    Thou who didst make fertile the earth,

(After this line, Donnelly added “He’s not even doing that,
they haven’t buried him yet”)

    Thou who dost rejuvenate the Centuries,
    Thou who givest blossom to the Spring,
    Thou who movest the chords of harmony,
    Thou splendour of my Spring, O Thou,
    Sun reflected in a million hearts”

This appeared in “PRAVDA” on August 28th 1936 and is on page 4 of the January 1950 edition of the SOCIALIST STANDARD

Despite all the hostility of the C.P.ers Donnelly continued routing them and exposing the record of their party. In the end they were reduced to a sullen silence and that was the evening I’ll never forget.

Incidentally, also on page 4 is a similar cringe-making piece glorifying Stalin. This was published in ”PRAVDA” on February 1st 1935 and it ends with this absurdity.

“Everything belongs to Thee, chief of our great country….
And when the woman I love presents me with a child
the first words it shall utter will be: Stalin."
 
See what I mean?

Vic Vanni

THE LAZY WORKER MYTH

One of the myths espoused by supporters of capitalism is that the present economic downturn is caused by the laziness of the working class. Far from this being the case thousands of workers are desperate for a job as can be seen by the following statistics. "Leading companies are being flooded by 73 applications for each graduate vacancy, a major report reveals today. That figure is an average and the number is even higher in some sectors, with 154 chasing each post in retail and 142 vying for a single job in investment banking. The report says that it is even harder to find work this year as openings are down on 2011 amid the economic uncertainty worsened by the eurozone crisis." (Daily Mail, 4 July) RD

The truth of war

Michael Stephenson in his new book "The Last Full Measure: How Soldiers Die in Battle," gives a sobering and crucial look at the evolution of death on the battlefield and the ways that warriors come to terms with serving as killing machines.

"I wanted to write this book because I had a deep sense of that, and I was also a bit disturbed by the easiness with which we send our young men and women – and they've always been young, and they've nearly always been poor – to fight for us."

Socialist Courier's only criticism is that it is not for us that soldiers fight and die for but it is for the interests of the ruling class.

How to place people and planet over profit

The journey to a new society begins when enough people have come to two important conclusions. The first is that something is profoundly wrong with our current political economy—the system on which the world now runs. That system has been routinely failing us socially, economically, environmentally, and politically. When big problems emerge across the entire spectrum of our daily life it cannot be for small reasons. We have enormous social problems because of fundamental flaws in our economic and political system. The second conclusion follows from the first. It is the imperative to change the system,to build a new political economy that is beneficial to people and the planet we share.

Already a growing number are already finding it impossible to accept the deteriorating conditions of life and living. They see frightening gap between the world that is and the one that could be. Ever larger numbers of the working class are losing faith in the current system and as it steadily loses support, it leads to a crisis of legitimacy.So, our first step is to become teachers—to help bring our fellow workers to see the basic relationships: that the huge challenges we face are the result of the system's failure and that our current system of political economy no longer deserves legitimacy because it doesn’t deliver on the promises and values it proclaims, and that, therefore, the only path forward is to change the system. Revolution - That is the core, fundamental message.

Opposition to the detrimental effects of capitalism remain fragmented and we cannot take advantage of the opportunities presented by the rising popular disenchantment sparked off by the crisis. What’s needed is a concerted effort to coordinate a common organisation commited to creating a unified movement beyond isolated campaigns - a socialist party. Coming together is important because all the campaigns and causes face the same reality. We live and work in a system of political economy that only cares about profit and power. What is required is a fusion, embracing all those concerned about social justice, environmental protection and a true democracy into one powerful force. We have to recognise that we are all communities of a shared fate. We will rise or fall together, so we’d better get together. And as a  part of the drive for transformation we must posses a compelling vision of the world we would like to achieve.  We must confirm that the path to this better world does indeed exist. We must show that when it comes to defining the way forward, we know what we’re talking about. We may be accused of being dreamers, perhaps, but dreamers with a plan and the tools - the vote.

The democracy we need for administrating a new society , is unfortunately not the democracy we have but it is suffice for the majority to appropriate political power from the wealthy few. Achieving meaningful change will require more than parliament and will involve a re-birth of protest marches and demonstrations, direct action and strikes, and non-violent civil disobedience. At the local level, people and groups plant the seeds of change through a host of innovative initiatives that provide inspirational models of how things might work in a new society devoted to sustaining human and natural communities and the movement broadens to become national and then international.

The prospects of abolishing the capitalist system depends on the power of the popular movement that is built and upon our willingness to struggle together under the umbrella of One Big World Socialist Party.

working class blues

Job insecurity is nothing new for those on the lower rungs of the economic ladder. Since the '70s and '80s, a shifting labor market and anti-worker policies have been fraying the ties between employers and employees, fueling the perception that a job is a temporary affair. Globalization, outsourcing, contracting, downsizing, and recession have conspired to make confidence in a stable, long-term job a privilege that few can enjoy. But the recession has raised the numbers experiencing persistent job insecurity through the roof. Workers are feeling increasingly stressed, often trapped in low-wage and temporary employment with few benefits.

Capitalism wasn’t supposed to be like this. Hard work and endeavor was supposed to make us safe from the vagaries of arbitrary events that harassed our ancestors. But somehow we’ve ended up more worried than ever. American Psychological Association paints a picture of workers on the verge of a nervous breakdown:
    Sixty-two percent say work has a significant impact on their stress levels.
    Almost 50 percent indicate their stress levels have increased between 2007 and 2008.
    Forty-five percent of workers say job insecurity has a significant impact on stress levels.

Anxiety disorders now plague 18 percent of the U.S. adult population –- 40 million people. The drug alprazolam — familiar by its brand name, Xanax — was prescribed 46.3 million times in 2010, making it that year’s bestselling psychiatric drug. Prozac, the happiness-and-optimism pill, has been pushed aside by a medication meant to just help you get through the day.

Humans are pretty good at coping with bursts of pressure, but chronic uncertainty is different. Anticipating a major stressful event can be worse than the actual occurrence itself, research shows. We’re paralyzed by powerlessness and to compensate we pile on more work than we can handle. We don’t take sick days when we need them. We start fueling up on coffee and cigarettes and alcohol, and dropping the things that are good for us, like leisure activities and trips to the gym. Under chronic stress, our immune systems start to buckle from “over-responsivity.” The worst effects of pervasive job insecurity—on health, family, society—take time to incubate. Some of the signs are just now becoming visible. If this constant assault on our well-being goes on much longer, its effects may linger for decades.

Authors of a recent study in Michigan found that insecure workers were significantly more likely to meet criteria for major or minor depression and to report a recent anxiety attack, even after taking into consideration factors like race, education, poorer prior health, and higher likelihood of recent unemployment. Conclusion: Many of those who have managed to hang onto their jobs during the Great Recession are getting mentally and physically wrecked – often more so than those who have lost their jobs. The study found that chronic job insecurity was a stronger predictor of poor health than either smoking or hypertension. Months, even years, are shaved off of life expectancy. There’s no question that job insecurity is eroding our quality of life. And its prolonged effects can lead to coronary heart disease and even cancer.

Suicide rates are known to increase during economic downturns, and middle-age workers are especially vulnerable. Last year, suicide rates were at an all-time high in Connecticut, fueled by a sharp increase in rates among middle-age men. Middle-aged workers may still have plenty to offer, but employers often consider them used goods. In an economy with sky-high youth joblessness, employers know that there are young, inexperienced people that can be paid little and exploited at will. The jobs of older workers may be “restructured,” the pace sped up, the pay reduced.

When you don’t know whether your job will be around next year, or even next week, how do you plan for the future? What happens to dreams like buying a home? Going to university? Retirement? In the face of job insecurity, thoughts of any of these things bring instant panic instead of hopeful planning. Unlike losing a job, the fear of losing the job you have is not a discrete, socially visible event. Your course of action isn’t clear because you don’t know whether or how the job loss will occur. Things like unemployment insurance weren’t meant for your situation. There’s no intervention mechanism. You may become paranoid at work – and for good reason. Some managers have been known to try to get employees to quit so that they don’t have to pay for unemployment insurance.

The apologists for capitalism tell us that employers need maximum flexibility to hire and fire so that wealth can be created for all but for many of us premature death is often our only reward.

Adapted from here

Worth a look at is the blog on individual deaths related to welfare reform 

Rotting food - kids starving

Every day some 3,000 Indian children die from illnesses related to malnutrition, and yet countless heaps of rodent-infested wheat and rice are rotting in fields across the north of their own country. In all, about 6 million tons of grain worth at least $1.5 billion could perish. Analysts say the losses could be far higher because more than 19 million tons are now lying in the open, exposed to searing summer heat and monsoon rains.

Quite why the authorities could not simply offload the mountains of grain for free to fill empty stomachs is puzzling.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48039343/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia/#.T_GCfpHfVac

Why Work?

An interesting article in the Guardian echoing much of what the Socialist Party has said over the years.

Surveys have long shown that most workers think their jobs are pointless.

The dream of automation leading to shorter working hours seems forgotten. Science and engineering have brought great benefits but not to the time we have to toil and labour. A few decades ago one thing practically all futurologists once agreed on, it's that in the 21st century there would be a lot less work. We were heading into a 'leisure society' in which all of us would have to work less arduous hours because computers and robots would be doing much of the work. What we have got in fact is a society in which most of the population still works long hours for less pay, and the unlucky ones live a life of enforced impoverished idleness.What would they have thought, if they had known that in 2012, the 9-5 working day had in the UK become something more like 7am to 7pm? They would surely have looked around and seen technology take over in many professions which previously needed heavy manpower, they would have looked at the increase in automation and mass production, and wondered – why are they spending 12 hours a day on menial tasks?

Socialists and other futurologists believed that work would come near to being abolished for one reason above all – we could let the machines do it. The socialist thinker Paul Lafargue wrote in his pointedly titled tract The Right To Be Lazy (1883):

    "Our machines, with breath of fire, with limbs of unwearying steel, with fruitfulness wonderful inexhaustible, accomplish by themselves with docility their sacred labour. And nevertheless the genius of the great philosophers of capitalism remains dominated by the prejudices of the wage system, worst of slaveries. They do not yet understand that the machine is the saviour of humanity, the god who shall redeem man from working for hire, the god who shall give him leisure and liberty."

Oscar Wilde evidently agreed – in his 1891 essay The Soul of Man Under Socialism, he scorns the "nonsense that is written and talked today about the dignity of manual labour", and insists that "man is made for something better than distributing dirt. All work of that kind should be done by a machine". He makes quite clear what he means:

    "Machinery must work for us in coal mines, and do all sanitary services, and be the stoker of steamers, and clean the streets, and run messages on wet days, and do anything that is tedious or distressing".

Both Lafargue and Wilde would have been horrified if they'd realised that only 20 years later manual work itself would become an ideology in Labour and "Communist" parties, dedicating themselves to its glorification rather than abolition...

 The designer, engineer and polymath Buckminster Fuller declared that the "industrial equation", ie the fact technology enables mankind to do "more with less", would soon eliminate the very notion of labour altogether. In 1963, he wrote: "Within a century, the word 'worker' will have no current meaning. It will be something you will have to look up in an early 20th-century dictionary".

Yet the utopian vision of the elimination of industrial labour has in many ways come to pass. Over the past decade Sheffield steelworks produced more steel than ever before, with a tiny fraction of their former workforce; and the container ports of Avonmouth, Tilbury, Teesport and Southampton got rid of most of the dockers, but not the tonnage. The result was not that dockers or steelworkers were free to, as Marx once put it, "hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon and criticise after dinner".

 Instead, they were subjected to shame, poverty, and the endless worry over finding another job, which, if it arrived, might be insecure, poorly paid, un-unionised work in the service industry. In the current era of casualisation, that's practically the norm, so the idea of skilled, secure labour and pride in work doesn't seem quite so awful. Nonetheless, the workers' movement was once dedicated to the eventual abolition of all menial, tedious, grinding work. We have the machines to make that a reality today – but none of the will. This absurd system will stay that way for the time being because that's how the capitalist class derives its profit. We have the means to produce enough goods for everyone in the world to have all they need but capitalists would rather limit what is produced so that scarcity prevails.

Rotten to the core

 Not only is Apple, the computer and gadget manufacturer, making its profits on the backs of abused factory workers in China, but also on poorly paid store employees in the US. Apple store workers make up a large majority of Apple's US workforce—30,000 out of 43,000 employees in this country—and they make about $25,000 a year, or about $12 an hour. Lawrence Mishel at the Economic Policy Institute notes that that's just a dollar above the federal poverty level. This for a company that paid nine of its top executives a total of $441 million in 2011.

“The discrepancy between Apple’s profits/executive pay and its compensation to its workers is a particularly glaring example of what is occurring in the wider economy,” Mishel writes. Corporate profits are now at an all-time high, while wages as a percent of the economy are at an all-time low, and fewer Americans are employed than at any time in the previous three decades.

Companies like Apple are squeezing their workers, leaving them to live on less, while lavishing pay and benefits on their executives. The death of lionized Apple chief Steve Jobs seems to have opened a floodgate of reporting and criticism of the company's labor practices, but all this really proves is that Jobs and his empire are no better than, and no different from the rest of the US business elite. Just like everyone else, they're taking their profits directly out of workers' pockets.

One reason companies are so profitable is that they're paying employees less than they ever have as a share of GDP. And that, in turn, is one reason the economy is so weak: Those 'wages' are other companies' revenue. And high unemployment makes workers willing to accept those poverty wages. When you're desperate for a job, any job is better than nothing.

Companies love to claim that if they're forced to pay more, they'll have to eliminate jobs, but these numbers show that actually, they're able to keep wages low and refuse to hire; available cheap labor supposedly leads to more job creation, but it's the hollow, gnawing fear created by ongoing high unemployment that keeps wages low and workers passive. And the rich are getting ever richer. Real incomes have continued to fall, governments continue to slash budgets while corporate profits just keep going up. This is the new normal. And it's only going to get worse.

The rhetoric of austerity is a language of belt-tightening, of shared sacrifice, of somber speeches by pompous politicians who proclaim that they feel your pain while announcing budget cuts that freeze salaries, lay off workers and force more work onto those who remain. It's also full-on war on the only means of organized power that working people ever had: unions. Unions are in the 1 percent's crosshairs.

We're ruled by an ever-smaller group of elites who not only control all the resources, but all the power. The same people who are pushing wages downward are the ones paying for politicians' campaigns.

Rio = Zero

For what was billed as an historic summit, Rio+20 was an anti-climax.

Many are touting a mythical new "green economy" they say will solve all our climate challenges. Under the rhetoric of “green economy”, capitalists are actually attempting to use nature as capital, proposing unconvincingly that the only way to preserve natural elements such as water and forests is through capitalist investment. For capitalists, nature is mainly an object to possess, exploit, transform and especially to profit from. This will open the door to the development of a new speculative market. This will allow some banks, corporations, brokers and intermediaries to make a lot of profit for a number of years until their financial bubble explodes, as can be seen with past speculative markets. While still ill defined, they're generally referring to a model of economic growth based on massive private investment in clean energy, climate-resistant agriculture, and ecosystem services - like the ability of a wetland to filter water. Under this new concept, Wall Street gets to reap profits from a whole new line of business, and governments get to spend less protecting the environment.

Khadija Sharife, an Africa Report journalist who attended the conference, believes "It is the bankers' dream - the legitimisation of the green economy where valuation deepens the commodification of ecosystems," she said. "This has the extended impact of financialising ecosystems as priced or monetised services."

Patrick Bond, Director of the Centre for Civil Society and Professor in the School of Development Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal believes the failure of international environmental diplomacy lies in the way it is structured. "Every negotiating team goes to these conferences to secure the right for its business elites to emit more greenhouse gases."

Nature cannot be submitted to the will of the market. Putting a price on things like water or biodiversity as a way of managing their use turn them into commodities and risk having basic needs and services fall victim to speculators who make money off volatile prices. Does it make sense to put the future of our remaining common resources - forests, genes, the atmosphere, food - into the hands of people who treated our economy like a casino? Powerful transnational corporations and international businesses councils have successfully pressed for the ‘marketisation’ which will amount to a dramatic expansion of the commercialisation and commodification of the natural environment and its life services. In effect, genuine sustainable development has therefore been denuded of meaning and is not supported by concrete measures to move away from the logic of capitalist growth that destroys irreplaceable ecological resources.

 Capitalism, a system based on the drive to accumulate more and more (endless and unlimited growth) – is at the root of these crises. Capitalism cannot be green.

Food for thought

Most soccer clubs in Columbia are millions of dollars in debt and the  national team failed to qualify for the 2014 World Cup. In the game's heyday, Columbian drug capitalists used teams to launder money, boost their image, and flaunt their wealth in a process called narco-soccer. That money helped the national team climb to fourth place in world rankings. Things changed after the US war on drugs cut the flow of millions of dollars from organized crime to soccer. Capitalism corrupts everything it touches, even an otherwise healthy and skillful sport like soccer.
Coral Gardens which is off the coast of Komodo, Indonesia, used to be one of the world's most spectacular undersea areas, teeming with damselfish, bassets and hawksbill turtles, but not any more. The area has been destroyed by illegal fishermen who use explosives and cyanide to kill their prey. The fact that it's illegal means nothing considering the objective is the same as any legal business -- making a profit.
On April 20, the G20 group of nations pledged $430 US billion to the International Monetary Fund to protect the world economy from the impact of the Eurozone's debt crisis. According to Craig Alexander, chief economist for the TD Bank, "The number one financial crisis is the European fiscal mess. I think that financial markets will be encouraged that the IMF has more firefighting capability. " What is interesting is what Mr. Alexander did not say, that the majority of the world's population will continue to live in poverty, and what will happen when no government committed to capitalism has the ability to bail out their partners in crime. John Ayers

Robert Owen and New Lanark

Paternalism is a common attitude among well-meaning social reformers. Stemming from the root pater, or father, paternalism implies a patriarchal, benevolent but superior sensibility. Paternalistic social reformers feel a social responsibility and believe that they should "uplift" those beneath them, but also see those they help as inferior, or childlike, in some way. Paternalistic industrialists assume that they have a responsibility to those in their employ.  Robert Owen built the mill town of New Lanark, where he created relatively high quality schools and housing for his workers. He was never a democrat because workers' democracy would mean he would lose his personal control.

Robert Owen, left his home in Wales when he was only ten, to make his own way in business. He walked to London, where he entered the retail drapery trade. When he was 14 he went to Manchester. With a partner and £100 capital he began making machines (mules) for spinning cotton. Later he became manager (and later partner in) a factory. By the time he was twenty nine he was manager and part owner of New Lanark Cotton Mills near Glasgow. The mills had been established a few years earlier by David Dale, Owen's future father-in-law.

Robert Owen has been called the "father of English Socialism" and although he did not start English socialism, it caught hold of him and carried him along. It was the followers of Robert Owen who introduced the word “socialism” for the first time in the Owenite Co-operative Magazine of November 1827.  For Owen and his followers, ‘social’ signified ‘co-operation’ and a socialist supported co-operation. Owen found that treating your workers better makes better workers which makes better profits. As early as 1810, he raised the demand for a ten-hour working day, which was instituted on his enterprise at New Lanark. By 1817 he was calling for an eight-hour day under the slogan ‘Eight hours labour, Eight hours recreation, Eight hours rest.’

"...no experiment was ever so successful as the one I conducted at New Lanark, although it was commenced and continued in opposition to all the oldest and strongest prejudices of mankind. For twenty-nine years we did without the necessity for magistrates or lawyers; without a single legal punishment; without any known poors’ rate; without intemperance or religious animosities. We reduced the hours of labour, well educated all the children from infancy, greatly improved the condition of the adults, diminishing their daily labour, paid interest on capital, and cleared upwards of £300,000 of profit." (quoted in GJ Holyoake’s History of Cooperation). New Lanark gained international fame when Owen's experiments in enhancing his workers' environment resulted in increased productivity and profit. Before long, New Lanark became a tourist attraction where visitors came to gawk at Owen’s social experiment. Between 1805 and 1815, 15,000 visitors came to New Lanark. Owen reckoned that between 1814 and 1824 there were about 2,000 visitors every year. (To-day, New Lanark is a UNESCO World Heritage site and well worth a day-trip to see)

In 1800, Robert Owen took over the management of David Dale's cotton mills at New Lanark and put into practice the ideas that he had developed earlier in his life and his workers at New Lanark were made to adopt new living, working, sanitary, educational and other standards. When he first arrived, the population, he claimed "... possessed almost all the vices and very few of the virtues of a social community. Theft and the receipt of stolen goods were their trade, idleness and drunkenness their habit, falsehood and deception their garb...they united only in a zealous systematic opposition to their employers..." New Lanark had a population of 2,000 people, 500 of whom were young children from the poorhouses and charities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. The children had been well treated by Dale but Owen found the condition of the people unsatisfactory. Owen refused to take any more pauper children and he began to improve the houses and machinery. Crime and vice bred by the demoralising conditions were common; there was little education and less sanitation; housing conditions were intolerable. Owen set out to test his ideas on education and the environment by attempting to set up a model factory and model village. Under him, conditions in the factory were clean and children and women worked relatively short hours: a 12 hour day including 1½ hours for meals. He employed no children under 10 years old. He provided decent houses, sanitation, shops and so on for the workers. He gave rewards for cleanliness and good behaviour and mainly by his own personal influence, encouraged the people in habits of order, cleanliness, and thrift. The Gentleman's Magazine commented that "the children live with their parents in neat comfortable habitation, receiving wages for their labour...The regulations here to preserve health of body and mind, present a striking contrast to those of most large manufactories in this kingdom."

He won the confidence of his work-force by opening a shop in which goods of sound quality could be bought at little more than cost price and at which the sale of alcohol was placed under strict supervision. The profit made by the shop was put straight into the school where the children of the factory workers were given a "free" education.  Owen's educational venture at New Lanark helped to pioneer infant schools and was an early example of what we now recognize as community schooling. Robert Owen aimed at giving children a good basic education, fitting the village youth for the world of work in the mills, but at the same time posing no threat to the existing order of society. He succeeded in creating a system which was able to produce obedient, conforming and apparently happy children equipped with basic literacy and numeracy. He also became more popular duing the American embargo in 1806 when he closed the mills for four months but paid the workmen their full wages. The mills continued to thrive commercially. Owen received no criticism from below and he simply bought out critical partners. Frustrated by the restrictions imposed on him by his partners, who wished to conduct the business along more ordinary lines, he organised a new firm in 1813. Owen decided to find men who would sympathise with his aims and circulated a pamphlet called A New View of Society describing his principles. Owen proposed that five per cent should be paid on capital and the whole surplus devoted to general education and improvement of the labourer's condition. Owen was a paternalistic factory aristocrat. He kept a close watch on employees. He was especially proud of the arrangement for marking each man's conduct daily by a ‘silent monitor,’ a label coloured to indicate either goodness and badness and placed opposite each man's post.

The rest of Owen's life was an attempt to recreate the New Lanark experience on a large scale and he became more radical. Owen began to flood Parliament and the newspapers with tracts promoting a plan for social reorganization on a grand scale. In place of the existing system of private property and profit, he proposed the creation of Villages of Cooperation. Each village would be a self-sufficient unit of between 500 and 1,000 people that combined agricultural and industrial production. Every family would have a private apartment  In his earliest days, Owen appeared to be little more than a benevolent factory owner who made paternalistic improvements in the lives of his employees. Society was to be transformed by means of experimental communities. Education was the key to Owen's scheme and its purpose was to mould the individual into an ideal social character. Owen argued that human nature could be changed: since we are all products of our environment, one need only change the environment to change man. Yet this 18th century materialist determinist view of the mind as a blank sheet on which the environment can imprint anything is wrong as the nurture Versus nature debate is an over-simplification but it, nevertheless, became a cornerstone of the socialist theories and programs of the 19th century. Society punished men for being what society had made them become. Owen wanted to produce self-help and initiative in the working man so where other men advocated the reform of the country's political institutions, Owen became preoccupied with rendering the State itself redundant. Owen thought the multiplication of ""villages of co-operation" would lead to what Engels later called the "withering away of the state".

Plan of a village of co-operation

From 1824 Owen poured his own money into setting up a community, New Harmony, in Indiana, which failed within a few years. New Harmony was the first and most famous of some sixteen Owenite communities that appeared in the US between 1825 and 1829. None, however, lasted more than a few years as communities. One of the most interesting was Nashoba, founded in 1825 by Scottish-born social reformer Frances Wright on the Wolf River in Tennessee. Wright intended to prove that education and a change of environment could have the same transformative effect on slaves as they had on the proletariats of New Lanark. Wright planned to purchase slaves, educate them, and free them. The plan failed because the community could not produce enough income to pay back the debts incurred in buying the slaves.

When Owen returned to Britain in 1829 after the failure of his American experiment he began to associate himself with the various self-help schemes. By 1830, more than 300 cooperative societies were in operation. Owen had set up his own cooperative (Association for the Promotion of Cooperative Knowledge), union (Grand National Consolidated Trades Union) and labour exchange (National Equitable Labour Exchange) organisations. The latter functioned as an extension of the cooperative store, surplus coop produce forming the basis of its activities. Essentially goods brought in were valued by a committee and a note issued indicating the amount of labour required to produce the item. This could then be exchanged for other goods in the bazaar of the same labour time value, the same time to produce. The the economic problem was seen as one of "unequal exchange" - employers paid wages less than the value of the product and so were cheating workers. At one time products tended to exchange according to the time the independent producers had taken to make them. In this way they did get more or less the full equivalent of their labour. But individual artisan’s tools have now developed into the powerful factory machines of today owned by capitalist companies while the producers now sell their ability to work to one or other of these companies in return for a wage or a salary. They no longer own and control the products of their labour. These belong to the company, which sells them for more than they cost to produce, pocketing the difference as their profits. When producers first became separated from the means and instruments of production, as was increasingly the case throughout the 19th century, it was not difficult for them to realise what was happening. They could see that what they produced sold for what it did when they had made them themselves as independent producers, but instead of them getting the full equivalent of their labour they only got a part of it as wages, the rest going to the capitalist who employed them. The source of the capitalists’ profits was their unpaid labour. So the demand for the full “fruits of our labour” went up among the more radical of the newly proletarianised producers. All sorts of schemes were devised by critics of capitalism such as Robert Owen in Britain and Proudhon in France to try to recreate the same result as in the old situation. But it was too late. They all failed as they had become irrelevant due to production no longer being individual but a collective effort. In this new circumstance, if the demand for “the full fruits of labour” was to be met it could only be done collectively. The whole product of society would have to be commonly owned and used for the benefit of all. This of course is socialism and it is the only way that, today, people can get to keep the fruits of their (collective) labour.

Robert Owen attempted to rectify this "unequal exchange" so that workers could obtain the full “fruits of our labour” by establishing a number of producer and consumer co-operatives around the country, linked by labour exchanges. The guiding principle of these labour exchanges was that goods were exchanged according to their value as measured by labour time, with non-circulating labour notes used to facilitate the exchange of goods. In this way, it was believed, there would be equal exchange and no exploitation. However, these co-operatives were short-lived and had difficulty in providing even basic provisions for exchange against labour notes. The problem of valuing goods in terms of labour time meant that errors were made and, inevitably, there were goods undervalued in relation to their market equivalents that were quickly purchased, while there were others that were overvalued and just as rapidly accumulated in the exchanges. Only where the labour exchanges replicated the market valuation were there no such problems. In effect, therefore, market price rapidly exerted its hegemony over labour values.

These bazaars were failures, but the idea of labour-time vouchers, or ‘labour money’, appeared in substantially similar forms in France with Proudhon, in Germany with Rodbertus and in England with Hodgskin and Gray. The idea was also to appear in Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875). This proposition has been seized upon by left-wingers as proof that Marx presumed the use of money in the early phase of communism. But in this work, as elsewhere, Marx is clear that communism (in its early and mature phases) will be based on common ownership and have no use for money:
"Within the co-operative society based on the common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products." Marx was quite adamant that his and Owen’s suggested labour-time vouchers would not function as money: "Owen’s 'labour-money' for instance, is no more “money” than a ticket for the theatre. Owen presupposes directly associated labour, a form of production that is entirely inconsistent with the production of commodities. The certificate of labour is merely evidence of the part taken by the individual in the common labour, and of his right to a certain portion of the common produce destined for consumption" (Capital, Vol. 1). "These producers may… receive paper vouchers entitling them to withdraw from the social supplies of consumer goods a quantity corresponding to their labour-time. These vouchers are not money. They do not circulate’"(Capital, Vol. 2). Marx only suggested labour-time vouchers as a possibility; given the low level of development of the productive forces, he believed that this was one way of regulating individual consumption. The objective was, for Marx and Owen: from each according to ability, to each according to need. And this is now realisable, as soon as a majority wants it. For Owen in the early nineteenth century the problem of the underdevelopment of the forces and relations of production was even more acute; and it is probably for this reason that he did not recognise the existence of the class struggle. This is why Marx and Engels called his ideas (along with those of Fourier and Saint-Simon) ‘Utopian Socialism’.

It was a fairly straightforward deduction that if labour is the source of all value, it is also the source of all power. The rich and apparently powerful "unproductive classes" are just a small minority sitting on the broad shoulders of the toiling masses. If the workers withdraw their labour, the unproductive classes topple over. A national strike, or "sacred month", would herald in a new co-operative order.

With the Grand National Consolidated Trade Union that he helped to found, Owen brought all the widespread but disparate industrial activity under One Big Union with the object of ending the "capitalist system". He wanted to use unionism to change the economic system while his members wanted to use the unions to wring higher wages from their employers. From the union leaders' viewpoint, the Grand National's primary goal was an eight-hour workday. From Owen's perspective, the goal was a total transformation of society based on Owen's Villages of Cooperation. The inclusion of all workers, including women, was ensured. Lodges had their own sick, funeral, superannuation and other benefits and there were no regular subscriptions to central funds. There was a general levy of members to acquire land and set up workshops, however. Membership was said to have reached somewhere between a half million and one million within a few weeks, although there was no accurate record of the membership and it is believed that there were only 16,000 paid-up subscribers so the figures have little real significance.  The aim was syndicalist government, founded on a pyramid system of representation. Owen opposed strikes because he believed that unions thus used were part of the class war, rather than being used as a means of social regulation. Owen himself always opposed the class struggle. When the true class war came to a head in the summer of 1834, Owen bailed out, disassociating himself from the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union which he himself had set up. Owen failed to understand the cruelties of life in the 1800s, where men and women rebelled against their masters. He may have sympathised with men to a certain extent , but he could not identify himself with them. The "Grand National" began to break up owing to its inability to provide adequate support for sections of its membership who were on strike and the skilled craftsmen fell back where they could on the local guilds and societies and we hear comparatively little of industrial unions until the 20th Century.

In 1835 Owen renewed the attempt to found a community. This time the attempt was made through a distinctly working class body. This was variously named the Association of All Classes of All Nations (1835-39), the Universal Community Society of Rational Religionists (1839-42) and the Rational Society (1842-46). At its peak in 1841 there were 70 or so branches spread throughout Great Britain. In key centres, such as Manchester and London, meeting halls were built (the Halls of Science) and regular indoor and outdoor propaganda meetings held under the auspices of ‘Social Missionaries’. By late 1839 the efforts bore fruit with the opening of a community at Queenwood in Hampshire. This became known as Harmony. In the summer of 1845 Harmony was sold off. Yet another failed project.

Robert Owen is generally described as a philanthropist and utopian socialist but he was first and foremost a capitalist. He was never reconciled to the class conflict which the trade union struggle brought. New Lanark was not a socialist experiment. Owen and his partners owned it and he directed it personally with very little democratic input or participation from the workers. Private ownership and the profit motive remained in spite of the more humanistic measures that Owen certainly adopted. Thus the failure of the New Lanark model to spread was not really a failure of a socialist model as it was the failure of Owen’s own paternalistic humanitarianism. At Harmony the aspirations of working men and women were sacrificed to the demands of the profit system. Capitalism still held control, and the working people there remained its victims. It is also relevant to mentioned that the type of worker brought to New Lanark was of a rather homogenous type: Scottish workers of Calvinist backgrounds who were inclined to discipline, uncomplaining labor and personal self-improvement - complacent compliant wage-slaves. Whereas at New Harmony even the poorest families were accustomed to work only a few months each year and then to spend the rest of their time "in doing nothing, in drinking and in talking politics, which tend to nothing"  and they also questioned submitting to Owen’s authority, whether paternalistic or not.

Owen had rebelled against the “trinity of evils:” private property, religion, and marriage founded on property and religion. He developed a plan of progressive paternalism in his communes – curfews, house inspections, and fines for drunkenness and illegitimate children. He equated happiness with docility, and as a result was criticized for condescending to the working class. The importance of the Owenites is that for the first time a complete change in the nature of society was contemplated by a section of the working class. Owen contrasted the "brutal selfishness" of individualism with the rational self-interest of co-operation, which recognises the individual's own interest in the welfare of the community. Owen was therefore a revolutionary because he wanted to change attitudes. Owen recognised, unlike most Chartists, that political democracy is not the solution in itself to capitalist misery. When the Grand National collapsed from the combined offensive of government, courts and employers the workers began to think that to gain power they would first need to gain the vote. Owen did not share this "Chartist" dream. He believed that whilst there are rich and poor, the rich will rule - whoever has the vote. He, however did not fully appreciate that the vote sought by Chartists could in fact be a means to an end.

A distinctively socialist political economy did eventually emerge within sections of the Chartist movement. Ernest Jones, for example, dismissed the demand for "a fair day's wage for a fair day's work", which was to ask for: "a golden slavery instead of an iron one. But that golden chain would soon be turned to iron again, for if you still allow the system of wages slavery to exist, labour must be still subject to capital, and if so, capital being its master, will possess the power and never lack the will to reduce the slave from his fat diet down to fast-day fare!"

Owen had a vision of a multitude of independent co-ops linked to form a co-operative world. As people learnt the new morality, the need for government would fade away and prisons and punishments would also become unnecessary. The false, individualistic morals of competitive society are the "sole cause which renders law necessary in society" as Owen explained in 1833. In the new order there would be disagreements between people and between groups, but they would be fewer and could be resolved by arbitrators skilled in the practice of the new morality. Owen wrote that if everyone was "trained to be rational, the art of war would be rendered useless". In 1833 he told people that the co-operative system would not only be free of litigation, it would be free of war, and until that object was achieved one of the main aims of the co-operative movement was to be a peace movement: "One of their chief offices, until the ignorance which causes the evil shall be removed, will be to reconcile man to man, and nation to nation throughout the world, and to enable all to understand that they have but one interest, which is, to insure the permanent happiness of each and all".

The origins of the co-operative movement go back to Robert Owen in the early nineteenth century. The Rochdale Pioneers, founders of the modern cooperative movement, were Owenites and the modern secularist movement can also trace its ancestry back to the Owenite movement of the 1840s. The utopians' shared ideals of cooperative effort and their creation of small-scale communities contributed to anarchist political theory as well as the communal traditions of the kibbutz movement and the American counter-culture of the 1960s and 1970s.

Co-operatives cannot be used as a means for establishing socialism. As long as the capitalist class control political power, which they will be able to continue to do for as long as there is a majority of non-socialists, capitalist economic relations (commodity production, wage labour, production for profit, etc.) will be bound to prevail and these will control the destiny of co-operatives. Co-operatives usually only flourish to the extent that they can be successfully accommodated within capitalism. Instead of the “ethos" of the Co-operative Movement transforming capitalism, it was the other way round: the ethos of capitalism transformed the co-ops. This was because they had to compete with ordinary capitalist businesses on the same terms as them and so were subject to the same competitive pressures, to keep costs down and to to maximise the difference between sales revenue and costs (called “profits” in ordinary businesses, but “surplus” by the co-op). The co-operative movement was outcompeted and is now trying to survive on the margin as a niche for “ethical” consumers and savers, leaving the great bulk of production, distribution and banking in the hands of ordinary profit-seeking businesses.

See here for more on Robert Owen

Appendix:-
SPGB 1989 Conference:
"This Conference reaffirms that is: 'In the minds of many workers the Co-operative movement is regarded as being in some way linked up with socialism. When the co-operators take up this attitude they claim in justification that Robert Owen, the co-operative pioneer, was actively concerned for some part of his life with possible means of escape from the capitalist system ...Robert Owen's solution was that small groups of workers should try to establish self-supporting 'villages of industry', in which there would be no employer, no master. They would constitute, as it were, little oases in thedesert of capitalism, owning the 'land and means of production common'. He anticipated that the movement would grown until finally the workers would have achieved their emancipation ...The Co-operative Movement cannot solve the basic economic problems of the workers as a whole, or even of the co-operative societies' own members. Its success is merely the success of an essentially capitalist undertaking ...Co-operation cannot emancipate the working class. Only Socialism will do that. The workers cannot escape from the effects of capitalism by retiring into Owen's 'villages of industry'. They must obtain for society as a whole the ownership of the means of production and distribution, which are the property of the capitalist class. For this they must organise to control the machinery of government. Once possessed of power they can then reorganise society on a socialist basis of common ownership. Owen's original aims can only be achieved by socialist methods'." - carried