The Co-Op Cop Out

“We are private companies that work in the same market as everybody else. We are exposed to the same conditions as our competitors.” - Mondragón’s human-resources chief

Many regard the co-operative movement as being in some way linked up with socialism. Socialists have come to realise that co-operatives cannot be used as a means for establishing socialism and that they only flourish to the extent that they can be successfully accommodated within capitalism.

The idea of the workers’ co-operative has flourished since the early days of the labour movement and has been seen by many as a possible alternative to nationalisation. The originators of the co-operative movement saw it as a movement that would eventually out-compete and replace ordinary capitalist businesses, leading to the coming of “the Co-operative Commonwealth” (which is an alternative name for socialism occasionally used by both Karl Marx and the Socialist Party). The co-ops would constitute, as it were, little oases in the desert of capitalism. They anticipated that the movement would grow until finally the workers would have achieved their emancipation. Essentially, each community would own its own means and instruments of production and each member of a community would work to produce what had been agreed was needed and in return would be issued with a note certifying for how many hours he had worked; he could then use this note to obtain from the community's stock of consumer goods any product or products which had taken the same number of hours to produce. (G.D.H. Cole was another who proposed a variant, that he called “Guild Socialism”. Although Cole’s blueprint did provide for close links between consumers and producers which could be interpreted as “production directly for use”, it still envisaged the continuation of finance, prices and incomes. It was to come into being through the guilds eventually out-competing capitalist industries in the marketplace)

Because co-operatives have to compete with ordinary capitalist businesses on the same terms as them, so they are 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 out-competed and is now trying to survive on the margins 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. Co-operatives did not provide a real solution to the workers' situation as it was incapable of providing an answer in the interests of all workers. At no time did it question the capitalist production relationships - it questions only superficial features (monopolies, competition, etc.).
Whether or not a place of work takes the form of a workers’ co-operative can have no bearing whatsoever on the pressures which compel it to meet the economic conditions for its existence. Nor do the details of how it run its affairs matter. It can be a kibbutz or a co-operative taking decisions collectively; it can be a monastery producing fortified wine; it can be a conventional business; in whatever way they are internally structured, authoritarian or democratic, and in whatever scale they may operate, as a part of social production they can only operate within the pattern of capitalist buying and selling.

In what way does the ownership of the factory by the employees differ from ownership by a capitalist? A co-op has to buy its raw materials on the market, along with every other company. It does not get steel, oil, copper, coal, any cheaper because it is owned by its employees. In buying in its machinery, equipment, materials, premises, transport etc., and in paying its rates etc, any unit, including any workers’ co-operative, must pay all these costs. How could any imagined “socialistic” unit operate without power supplies? In its application of socialist principles in production and consumption, is it going to persuade the utility companies to provide supplies free?

In addition to this income, the individuals working in the unit must have income to cover personal living costs such as rent or mortgage repayments, food, clothes, leisure activities, and so on and on. This is inescapable. Regardless of their make-up, production or service co-ops can only continue their existence whilst they are economically viable; that is, where income exceeds expenditure. If expenditure exceeds income, then inevitably they disappear.

A co-op has to sell its products on the market, along with every other company. It does not get higher prices for its goods because it is owned by its employees. It has to compete with every other manufacturer in terms of price, delivery dates, quality etc. In order to compete over any length of time, a co-op will have to invest in new plant and equipment. To do this it will require a large amount of capital. If this is obtained by borrowing, then the co-op will have to convince the banks that it is a viable and profitable concern, run along good business lines. It will be under even greater pressure to prove that it is viable just because it is a different sort of enterprise. Of course, it may decide to raise the capital needed for investment out of the profits. Inside the factory, there are no owners other than the workers. But they buy goods at the same price as other capitalist concerns. They sell goods at the same price as other capitalist firms. They compete flat out with other capitalist firms. If they are to make enough surplus to re-invest, or to convince the banks they are good for a big loan, how are they to do it?They are in a trap. Either they sack some of their fellows; or they increase their own intensity of work; or they take a wage cut. Elected workers’ councils would be in exactly the same position of having to lay off staff, if there is no market for the goods they produce.

Whichever avenue they choose, their decision has two effects. Firstly they have attacked their own living standards. Secondly, they are acting as an unconscious argument in the hands of other bosses against their work-forces. If an employer in another factory is faced with a demand for, say, a wage rise, he will immediately reply that he can’t afford it and point to a worker co-operative and say: ‘they work for less than you are demanding. It seems a perfectly reasonable wage to them, with no boss, why are you demanding from me more?’ The capitalist has been provided with an excellent propaganda weapon against his own employee demands as a way of mitigating the class struggle and persuading workers that they have an interest in accepting ‘realistic’ (i.e. lower) wages. Co-ops exhibit the exact same vices as capitalist firms.
The logic of capitalism dooms the efforts of those who seek co-operatives. 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. Where it was a success it was merely the success of essentially capitalist undertakings. There is a tendency for worker co-ops to resemble more and more over time the conventional capitalist business model and the case of Mondragon - the largest worker co-op conglomerate in the world - would seem to bear this out. It has grown and has departed more and more from its original egalitarian principles and Mondragon has been noted for employing heavy hand tactics against its own two-tier workforce.

Co-operatives can only ever involve a minority of workers, and the more they are integrated into the capitalist economy and its profit- seeking, the more their members will have to discipline and pressurise themselves in the way the old bosses did - what is known as "self-managed exploitation". The fact is that there is no way out for workers within the capitalist system. At most co-operatives can only make their situation a little less unbearable. We cannot self-manage capitalism in our own interests and the only way we can really live without exploitation is by abolishing capitalism.

The worker cannot claim ownership and control of the mine or the factory because these are huge production organisations, part of a wider interlinked network and cannot be divided into separate pieces. This is the reason why socialists demand common ownership of the means of production – the land, factories, railway, etc. To suit collective work, collective property. The big issues are not decided “on the shop floor”, to use a militant phrase much loved by advocates of “self management”. There should be collective ownership and collective control of what is collectively produced.

Let us now bury capitalism

What Is Socialism? It is not nationalisation

“It was our lifelong dream coming true. It was a utopia. We were for it 100 per cent. What celebrations there were! The industry which had broken generations of miners was ours at last.”

On the 1st January 1947 miners took an unofficial holiday. The red flag was hoisted over the pits and the miners social clubs rang to choruses of the workers’ anthems of the Red Flag and the Internationale. The euphoria did not last.

Nationalisation (or in some cases municipalisation), is sometimes called “state socialism”, but more accurately it amounts to a form of state capitalism. The Post Office, would serve as an example of a “socialist” public service or the National Health Service. Or the BBC. But in the past we have had coal mines, the railways, the electricity and gas networks and tele-communications all owned by the state. Nationalisation has been wrongly equated with socialism. State ownership does not mean socialism. Nationalisation is a complete distortion of the idea of common ownership. The Labour Government has not only performed an essential service for British capitalism but at the same time has been able to hold in check the class aspirations of the British workers by representing such measure as the beginnings of socialism. So-called socialists demnding the re-nationalisation of the privatised industries and the new fresh nationalisations of key parts of the economy are committing an old fraud. Nationalisation does not facilitate the revolutionary task and are state-capitalist measures, not socialist ones.

At the dawn of capitalism, when the individual factory was usually quite small, it was normal for the capitalist to fill all three functions of ownership: he owned it, controlled it (in the sense of making all the operative decisions on the policy on the firm) and personally managed it. Today, in all the big corporations, ownership by shareholders is usually divorced from control by the big financial or and both are far removed from management which is exercised by (highly paid) salaried managerial employees. Private enterprise has become less private, less enterprising. Instead of the image of the self-confident businessman, owning his own factory, we now have the giant, impersonal monopolies, reliant on state contracts or subsidies. So what the form of ownership is not the decisive question; what matters are the interests in which industry is being run. Instead of individual ownership, the capitalist class as a whole owned the railways, the mines and energy producers.

Nationalised industries are said to be for the profit of the community but they are for the benefit the capitalist class and when they no longer serve that function, they are privatised. Certain industries, delivered up to the greed of private companies, become instruments for the exploitation of other sections of the capitalist class, and so powerful they grow that they disturb the whole bourgeois system. Capitalism is forced to make attempts to overcome its own anarchy of production if it is to continue to survive under modern conditions. The first attempts in this direction are represented by the organisation of cartels and trusts; later the direct intervention of the state become increasingly necessary. On the world market, state control is needed by the capitalist, in order to render the national industries better able to compete. While many saw nationalisation as a step towards the socialist planned economy it was merely the natural consequence of the modernisation of the out-of-date industries by the capitalist state in order to render British capitalist industry as a whole more able to compete. The whole reason for the nationalisation measures of the Labour Government 1945-51 was that the recovery of the whole economy would have been endangered without cheaper access to transport and fuel.

Naturally the whole process of state control over industry remains in the hands of the capitalist class and its representatives. In Britain the management of the nationalised industries stayed in the hands of much the same people who ran them previously—plus a number of loyal labour lieutenants of capitalism who were rewarded for services rendered with jobs. By December, 1949 of 131 names listed by Mr. Attlee on central nationalised boards, sixty-one also held directorships in private companies, twenty-three were knights, nine were lords, and three were generals. It may not be altogether unfair to suggest that their devotion to the socialist idea was not primary. In such a state-controlled economy the profit motive—the fundamental cause of capitalist crises—naturally remains untouched. In fact the control itself exists solely for the maintenance and the increase of profits.

In capitalist society a private industry only becomes a State service in order to better serve the interest of the bourgeoisie. We witnessed that with the state take-over of the failed banks of Northen Rock, Royal Bank of Scotland and the Halifax Bank of Scotland to preserve the integrity of the financial sector as a whole. Nationalising the banks have been instrumental in maintaining the class structure of British society. It was a nationalisation which feathered the bed of the capitalists and the banking oligarchs remained safe in their beds. The capitalist bank nationalisations is the clearest proof that capitalists are prepared to concede formal ownership of the means of production to the state provided that it is in what they call ’the national interest’ (i.e. in the interests of their class as a whole, as represented by their state). Ownership is a secondary matter; there are all kinds of private, collective and state forms of ownership - what is important is the class reality which lies behind these legal arrangements in that the capitalist class is still in power and in control of its capitalist state.

State employees, like workers in private employment, strike and engage in a struggle with the exploiters. Even if the new state owners desired to improve the lot of those employed would they be able to do so? The work-places of the state and municipality are prisons quite as bad as private workshops, if not worse. But those “revolutionaries” will have to mount guard over the general interests of society served by the socialised industries, and in particular over the interests of those directly engaged in them. The state ownership of the Post Office in this country since the 18th century has meant neither improved conditions for the post office workers, nor any advantage to the working class as a whole. We witnessed the same despotic rule and saw that those who worked most and hardest would still get the least remuneration.

There is no question of syndicalism or “guild socialism”: each factory and work-place will not be owned by its own workers. They will be “owned” by the working class collectively. Nor will the question of competition (and conflicts) between various factories arise through a system of “”market socialism.”

Surely, today, nobody believes that thanks to a British Rail or a National Coal Board, we will reach the New Jerusalem. We have learned from the political failures of the past just how disastrous the idea is that socialism can be established over time by a “working class government” through nationalisation and state control. Yet nationalisation under workers’ control is the now the cry being raised in some quarters but it is a call for the working class to undertake the management of their own exploitation.

Within this model wage labour would still function and it follows that so too would capital. Capital accumulation out of surplus value would be the overriding imperative of this system. At the end of the day what we have is just another class-based society parading as one in which the means of production are purportedly publically-owned but actually owned by the state-apparatus. It is the Left’s mistaken belief mistaken belief that “socialism” is simply a change in administration and so if nationalisation gives the appearence of worker-control it must be well down the road to socialism.

Although they left no detailed blueprint of a socialist society, the viewpoint of Marx and Engels, was that socialism would be a new mode of social production that would in essence be an “association of free and equal producers", not a system where the administrator of production and distribution would be the state, but rather the producers and consumers themselves to whom these functions of ownership and control would fall. The path to socialism is not through nationalisation, public corporations or even trade union control, but through a fundamental change in class relations. Socialism is rule by the working people. They will decide how socialism is to work. This was how Marx defined socialism. To-day there is no difficulty whatever in creating wealth far in excess of our requirements and the motto, “From each according to ability, to each according to needs,” now ceases to be utopian and becomes a reality.

On this Day

April 17 in 618 -- On this day fifty-three monks were burned alive in their refectory by a gang of armed women seeking revenge for being cheated out of their pasture rights, on the island of Eigg.

Dear Old London Town

The plight of the London homeless grows worse by the day with more and more families forced to get by in cramped bed and breakfast accommodation and yet a walk through the up-market sections of such districts as Belgravia, Kensington, Chelsea and Mayfair shows many desirable residences lying vacant with their owners living elsewhere. '"Belgravia is becoming a village with fewer and fewer people in it," said Alistair Boscawen, a local real estate agent. He works in "the nuts area" of London, as he puts it, "where the house prices are bonkers" - anywhere from $7.5 million to $75 million he said.' (New York Times, 1 April) Parts of dear old London town have become far too dear for the working class. RD

The Power of the Vote

An essential part of the right-wing criticism has been an attempt to prove that socialism is incompatible with democracy, that socialism cannot be but authoritarian. Marx has been presented as advocating violent revolution, totally opposed to the system of parliamentary elections. This has also been propagated by Leftists of various shades who claim that elections are a farce and the proletariat cannot come to power without the use of force. It was for this reason that they self-style themselves as ‘revolutionaries’ This picture is totally wrong. Marx actually looked upon the ballot box as a means of achieving the socialist revolution, after the democratic rights had been won.

As his co-thinker Engels wrote in the 1895 introduction to Marx’s The Class Struggles in France “The Communist Manifesto had already proclaimed the winning of universal suffrage, of democracy, as one of the first and most important tasks of the militant proletariat.” Engels also said that workers should "to convert the ballot box from a means of fraud into a means of liberation"

Nor was Marx an advocate of vanguard minorities seizing power in the name of the working class and on their behalf.

Engels in his 1890 Preface to the Communist Manifesto writes “For the ultimate triumph of the ideas set forth in the Manifesto,Marx relied solely and exclusively on the intellectual development of the working class, as it necessarily had to ensue from united action and discussion”

Marx did not intend his message for select disciples but directed it at the working class as a whole. To Marx, the workers when they become socialists do not become different from the rest of the working class. Their change in thought is an evidence of gradual transformation in the working-class movement. They remain a part of the workers, struggling along with them for emancipation.

The End of the State

Continuing to correct some misunderstandings about the ideas of Karl Marx.

Most of the misconceptions regarding socialism have been propagated by those who wish to emulate the Russian Revolution. It is unfortunate that when their so-called “marxism” became the official ideology of the ruling class in Russia the anti-state sentiments of Marx and Engels have been downplayed or downright distorted.


Workers State

“The society which organizes production anew on the basis of free and equal association of the producers will put the whole state machinery where it will then belong - into the museum of antiquities, next to the spinning wheel and the bronze ax.” Engels

Neither Marx or Engels ever advocated a "worker's state". Both wanted to use the state's apparatus used to overthrow the bourgeoisie, at which point it would have served its purpose and would be dismantled.

Many on the Left are convinced that Russia was some sort of "workers state’ albeit some qualifying it as being deformed. A "Workers State" is not actually a state controlled by the workers, but a state controlled by a vanguard party in the name of the workers. The 'workers state’ meant governmental rule by a vanguard party, the Bolsheviks, and by adding control over the economy by nationalisation to the political control of the government, the totalitarian rule over all of society emerged in full.

“Workers State” is a contradiction in terms, but if it is to mean anything it would have to mean that the workers controlled the state; which could only be done through some democratic mechanism. But the workers never controlled the state in Russia. Within a few years of the Bolsheviks seizing power in November 1917 they had suppressed all other parties and established a one-party dictatorship.

Marx explains that although revolution the proletariat will be “raised to a governing class” this has nothing to do with creating a dictatorship of a political sect, but is rather a claim that the proletariat will use “general means of coercion” to remove the bourgeoisie’s power (by abolishing the private ownership of the means of production, disbanding the standing army, and so forth). It is the entire proletariat that is to exercise this power. In reply to a question raised by the anarchist Bakunin, “Will all 40 million [German workers] be members of the government?” Marx responds, “Certainly! For the system starts with the self-government of the communities.”

The purpose of seeking political action and capturing the state-machine is not to take office and form a government but simply and solely to take state power out of the hands of the capitalist class since it is through controlling this organ that the capitalist class is able to maintain its possession of the means of production.

“ In order, therefore, to assert themselves as individuals, they [proletarians] must overthrow the State” German Ideology

A SENSE OF VALUES?

It speaks volumes for the media's sense of values when it can report the following fraud, but remain silent about a much greater con trick. 'A Florida billionaire, William Koch, 72, has won $380,000 (£247,000) compensation after 24 fakes were discovered among 2,6000 bottles of vintage Bordeaux wine that he bought for $3.7 million.' (Times, 13 April) The greater con is of course capitalist society itself which can have people starving whilst a useless parasite can spend millions of dollars. RD

Understanding Marx

David McLellan, formerly professor of political theory at the University of Kent wrote: “Marx’s writings have too often been reduced to ill-digested slogans… it is not surprising that Marx still remains so misunderstood.”

The Dictatorship of the Proletariat

“No revolution can be made by a party, But by a nation [i.e. by everybody]” Karl Marx

The “dictatorship of the proletariat" is not a very useful term for socialists to use. It is unnecessary baggage for today’s socialists to carry. For a start when Marx was writing the term “dictatorship” didn't have the tyrannical connotations it does today. Marx didn't mean a dictatorship in the modern sense of the word. He meant a community in which the whole working class would set the political agenda and use the political machinery to act in it's interests. Writers like Hal Draper have addressed the authoritarian distortion of the term.

To-day it is loaded with prejudice and/or misunderstanding. Many now steer clear of employing the phrase because of the way it has been employed to justify despotism.

Marx writes in his Gotha critique “Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat."

So it is worth noting that he is not talking about an independent stage between capitalism and communism, but rather the period of revolutionary transformation of one into the other, rather than into some other system which is them transformed into communism. It is not yet socialism.

Perhaps the better term for socialists to use is “social democracy” which according to Rosa Luxemburg in Leninism or Marxism? pamphlet “begins simultaneously with the beginnings of the destruction of class rule and of the construction of socialism. It begins at the very moment of the seizure of power by the socialist party."

The dictatorship of the proletariat is the rule of the working class, not over the working class.
The Socialist Party does not seek the 'dictatorship of the proletariat', but the abolition of the proletariat!

A nice little nest-egg

Always the first to attack workers’ pensions rights, the capitalist class have one rule for us and another for themselves.
James Crosby and Andy Hornby – two of the three former HBOS chiefs damned by a parliamentary commission for “catastrophic failures of management” – were on pension schemes that accrued benefits at twice the rate of average workers.
The “executive section” of the HBOS pension scheme allowed them to pocket 1/30th of their final salary for each year they worked at the firm, compared with 1/60th for front-line staff.Hornby, eligible to start drawing down a £240,000-a-year HBOS pension when he turns 50 in four years time.

Ged Nichols, general-secretary of the Accord union, which represents HBOS staff, said the pension arrangements were “absolutely disgusting”. He said: “Even with James Crosby reducing his pension, for a front-line member of staff, they would still have to work for more than 20 years to get what Mr Crosby and some of the other former directors get as a pension for one year.”

Food for thought

Just in case you were waiting for the unions to bring about socialism, in Toronto the Labourers' union is suing the Carpenter's union alleging dirty tactics in the raiding wars going on in Toronto's construction industry. Obviously, do not expect a united front to end capitalism any time soon. Leave that to the World Socialist Movement!
Marx is often criticized for his statements relating to the growing immiseration of the working class because things have improved materially for workers in the northern hemisphere though not nearly as much as the capitalist class has improved its wealth. But the real evidence to corroborate Marx is that as soon as the way was paved for liberalizing capital, the owning class rushed into areas of weak laws to reproduce the conditions prevalent in the nineteenth century. Any description of third world working conditions could easily be included in M & E's descriptions of those times. The New York Times (March 3/ 2013) reports on the conditions of India's children working in the mines. Despite a landmark 2010 law mandating all children in India between the ages of 6 and 14 to be in school, some 28 million are working instead. One story tells of a seventeen-year-old who has worked in unbelievably unsafe conditions in the mines 'since he was a kid' and expects his four younger brothers to follow suit, and lives in a tarp-and-stick shaft near the mine without running water, toilet facilities, or heat. Where are those critics of Marx now ? What do they say? John Ayers

To a new world

Capitalism makes humanity suffer hunger, poverty and deprivation, bloody wars, oppression and state-approved torture. It destroys nature ruthlessly and our destiny should we not stop it on its this course, will be barbarism. A caring capitalism is like the unicorn: everyone's heard about it but nobody's seen one! Science and technology increases the slavery of mankind instead of emancipating it. The fetters of private and state property and the nation-state on the development of means of production have become unbearable. This situation means that the only way out before humanity’s actual existence becomes threatened is socialism. Enough is enough; we don't have to live this way.


The emancipation of humanity lies in socialism. Only the working class has the ability and the potential of putting an end to capitalism. "Ordinary" people hold enormous latent power in our hands. The ruling class are forever fearful of us discovering, and acting upon, that powerful truth. We do not have to put up with exploitation, discrimination, and oppression. We can look forward to the day working people - those of us who make society run - take political power in our own hands and run all of society! We can take our dreams of peace, equality and freedom and make them a reality. History is filled with examples of what people can achieve when they work together for the good of everyone. Our future is bright, and great struggles, with great outcomes are before us.

Food for thought

We've recently seen a massive outpouring of grief over the death of Venezuela's president, Hugo Chavez, a man who, in the opinion of many, did an excellent job. Socialists can agree that he did indeed do an excellent job -- of muddying the waters. The improvements he made in nationalizing the country's largest private electric company and Telecommunications company and the steel making and cement industries were improvements made within capitalism, that are no improvements at all. It's largely forgotten that in 2002 he fired 18,000 workers in the state-run oil company for striking when he refused to agree to a non-binding referendum on his rule. Chavez was merely another leader to attempt to administer the running of capitalism and calling it socialism. If the minority own the tools of production, the land, and the resources, it's still capitalism. If the majority must work for wages in order to survive, it's still capitalism. And what is Chavez' legacy to the Venezuelan people? A deeply troubled and divided country with high unemployment and crime rate. The fewer "socialists" like Chavez, the better. John Ayers

Reading Notes

How the CIA was funded is revealed in Tim Weiner's "Legacy of Ashes, History of the CIA". He writes, "The mechanics (of acquiring money) were surprisingly simple. After Congress approved the Marshall Plan, it appropriated about $13.7 billion over five years.
A nation that received aid from the plan had to set aside an equivalent sum in its own currency. Five per cent of those funds - $685 million all told -- was made available to the CIA through the overseas offices. It was a global money-laundering scheme that stayed secret until well after the cold war ended. Where the plan flourished in Europe and Asia, so would American spies." (page 32). Nothing to account for, no questions asked! The money allowed the cold war that wasted unbelievable amounts of social wealth that could have provided health care, education etc. to say nothing of the lives lost, to continue its destructive path for decades. Such is life under the madness of capitalism. John Ayers

Reforms and the Labour Party

Capitalism only continues to exist because people put up with it. Most people don’t see any alternative to working for wages, producing for profit and using money. They believe that it is capitalists, not workers by hand and by brain, who create wealth and that capitalists are doing us a favour by providing us with jobs. They believe that the world has always been divided into rich and poor, leaders and followers, rulers and ruled and that it always will be. These attitudes both reflect and sustain capitalism. And every time people get a chance to vote, most people support politicians who are committed to maintaining the capitalist system. So capitalism continues.
The ruling class are not a monolithic entity, all having exactly the same opinions. They do not all have the same ideas as to the best way of running the system from day to day, or year to year. All capitalists want to get the most out of their workers, obviously. But what is the best way of doing that? Some think they should rule largely by fear. Toe the line, accept long hours, low wages, and poor conditions, they say to their workers, or out you go. Alongside this “treat-’em-rough” school is the “pretend-to-be-nice” school who think that more humane methods are more profitable in the long run. Less primitive conditions in the workplace, a bit better treatment of families, somewhat less harsh handling of the unemployed, will all pay dividends, they think: be nice to your workers, and they will be nice to you.

Some reforms benefit workers. For instance, the 1948 NHS Act introduced free medical treatment. However, no reform is secure under capitalism. Since the end of the post-war boom, it has been downhill all the way. Successive governments, Labour as well as Tory, have cut back on their spending so as to leave more money for capitalist corporations to retain as profits. Things were by no means perfect pre-1970s but there were a lot more services provided, especially at local level, than there are today.

There was a time in the distant past when some in the Labour Party saw the introduction of free public services run by national or local government on a non-profit basis as stepping stones to socialism. Its 1945 manifesto declared that the Labour Party “is a Socialist Party, and proud of it. Its ultimate purpose at home is the establishment of the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain."  Hardly language which Labour’s leaders would use today. Though those Old Labourites were wrong in their belief that socialism can emerge gradually from a series of piecemeal reforms enacted under capitalism, they were right on one thing. In a socialist society education, housing, telecommunications, water, gas and electricity supply will be run as free public services on a non-profit basis, but as genuine services to people.

Now, the Labour Party has no vision beyond that of capitalism. Like every other Government it merely tries its hand at running capitalism. Their record of supporting wars, freezing wages, breaking strikes, and forming coalitions, with Tories and Liberals, should have been enough to finish them with the working class for keeps but the tragedy is that it didn’t and won’t.

Although from time to time a few members in the Labour “left-wing" still pay lip-service to an alternative society nothing they have ever said or done has advanced the workers cause one inch. While certain of their reforms might have helped the workers condition, in staving off unrest and discontent, they have also had the desired effect of giving the boss class a new lease of life. Socialists have no feeling whatever of gratitude toward the exploiters when they concede this or that reform. They usually take away with the left hand what they offer with the right that neutralises whatever good there may have been. Individual reforms may be to the advantage or disadvantage of the working class but capitalism reformed is still capitalism. No matter how beneficial or otherwise as is now usually the case individual reforms might be, the interest of the working class lies in overthrowing capitalism, not altering its workings. The fact is that, while workers can obtain some improvements, capitalism itself cannot be permanently reformed.
The working class’s support is needed for the ongoing existence of capitalism. Once we understand our real interest and begin to consciously organise to get it, no leader or deceiver in the Labour party is going to be able to deflect us from our course. Workers must first learn to distinguish between words and action. Until then the workers get the leaders and representatives they deserve and the system they choose.

Food for thought

On March 5^th, Ontario Tory leader, Tim Hudak, claimed unions and environmentalists are threatening Ontario's economic progress. We wonder what progress he's talking about. Hudak said, " I think it's just unfortunate that the NDP and Liberals seem to be so singularly focused on appeasing the public sector union bosses -- it's causing a province to go bankrupt and it's costing us jobs. Nobody is going to invest in a province that has huge debts. What the oil sands are to Alberta, what potash is to Saskatchewan, the Ring of Fire (northern resource exploitation) could be for the province of Ontario. It's too bad that the Liberals seem to be captured by radical environmental groups." Hudak's rant could be a case of trying to pit one group against another or it could be a case of he doesn't know what he's talking about. On average, the cost to the capitalist of wages is 7% of the total. Furthermore, if the effects of capitalism continue to wreck the environment, there won't be much left for Hudak to rant about. John Ayers

Rich Pickings For Some

The New York Times annually reports on the astonishing incomes enjoyed by the capitalist class, but they are not necessarily the richest packages out there. As they report they rely on filings required by the Securities and Exchange Commission for public companies. That means they are missing entire categories of businesses: privately held corporations, most hedge funds and many private equity firms, but nevertheless some of their figures are staggering. 'Consider Leon Black, C.E.O. of Apollo Global Management, among the largest private equity firms with $2.86 billion in 2012 revenue. He took in more than $125 million last year. ........ Steve Schwarzman, founder and chief executive of the Blackstone Group, took in $8.4 million in compensation last year, and his distributions earned him an additional $204 million. ............The wealth of executives at Kohlberg Kravis Roberts was harder to determine, because it disclosed only distribution payouts on common units and not on the convertible ownership units held by top executives. But even excluding those payouts, the two co-chiefs at K.K.R., Henry R. Kravis and George R. Roberts, made more than $35 million each in compensation.' (New York Times, 10 April) RD

Fair Shares?

Socialism is not concerned with managing capitalism better but about a different kind of society. Socialists do not call for population control, for penurious thrift, and self-denial. Socialists don't call for “fair” shares of land or money to be handed out equally.

The socialist’s “fair share” for a member of the socialist commonwealth is the right of access and the satisfaction of their needs from the common store-house.
All previous societies have been rationed societies, based on scarcity of food, clothing and shelter. The modern world is also a society of scarcity, but with a difference.Today’s shortages are unnecessary; today’s scarcity is artificial. More than that: scarcity achieved at the expense of strenuous effort, ingenious organisation and the most sophisticated planning.
The abolition of classes is the equality at which socialists aim and the equality of access to the means of living. Such an equality would mean no one would be in a position to buy the services of others in order to make a profit, just as no one would be in the position of having to sell their energies in order to obtain a bare subsistence.

The world is haunted by a spectre – the spectre of abundance. Socialists do not preach a gospel of want and scarcity, but a cornucopia of plenty. Even with the present resources of production, it would immediately increase the wealth available for the workers' enjoyment. It would also render possible a considerable expansion of those resources in order that the free development of every individual should be translated from a dream into a reality. People themselves will decide when enough is enough.

The price of the cuts

Cuts in a range of welfare payments – including child benefit, tax credits, housing benefit and disability living allowance – will see the average Edinburgh household losing £2170 by 2016.

Some of the biggest cuts will come about as a result of the so-called bedroom tax which will cut housing benefit payments to households with spare bedrooms.

Figures from 2011-12 show that 15,500 households in Edinburgh – 60 per cent of all applicants – required a one-bedroom home. The annual number of one-bedroom city properties available to rent is around 500.

The tragic fact is that with the passing of Thatcher, her legacy, ‘Thatcherism’, remains government policy where the poorest who struggle to survive are the easiest targets for the implementation of austerity cuts.

Five Million In The Big Freeze

More than five million families in Britain are facing the threat of having their heating cut off after falling behind with their energy bills, an alarming report warns today. The research said the number of households struggling to pay their bills has jumped by around one million people over the last year. 'On average, they typically owe £123 to their energy supplier, raising fears they face being cut off if they do not eventually find the money to clear their debts. The report, from the comparison website Uswtich.com, said the number of cash-strapped families has jumped sharply over the last year from a total of four to five million.' (Daily Mail, 9 April) This is life in Mr Cameron "Big Society" - more like a big freeze society. RD