The cost of cancer

Allan Cowie, general manager for Macmillan Cancer Support in Scotland, has revealed that after fear of pain, money worry is patients’ greatest cause of stress. And demeaning work assessments ruling people are fit to work are also causing unnecessary suffering.


Many Scots, according to the charity boss, have been left with the fear of being labelled scroungers, meaning vital benefits go unclaimed. Cowie said:

“ We worry the stigmatisation of those on benefits may mean patients with cancer are too ashamed to claim. We have encountered cases of terrible poverty. We have heard of instances where people only worry about benefits when they face losing their home. Up until that point, they are more concerned with the dreadful worry of if they will live or die. We have also heard of cases where people have no food in their homes because they have channelled all their money into keeping a roof over their heads. This is not acceptable in this day and age.”

Cancer sufferers face additional costs of a staggering £470 a month – the same as many mortgage payments.

He said: “This is the average cost associated with a cancer diagnosis in Scotland. It accounts not only for heating bills and travel costs for appointments, and dietary needs, but also the reduction in their income. People often can’t work during treatment or rehabilitation. Cancer mounts a two-pronged attack on people’s finances.”

Starvation Amidst Plenty

Everything that is produced in capitalism is for sale in order to make a profit and that includes food. So we can have a situation where people starve whilst food is destroyed. 'More than a quarter of a million people died in the Somali famine in 2011, a study by the UN and the US-funded Famine Early Warning System found. The figure was twice previous estimates and more than half the victims were under 5.' (Times, 3 May) We live in a society that technically could produce enough food to feed the world but because of the profit motive it condemns children to starve. RD

A Grim Forecast

Politicians and media "experts" are always telling us that although times may prove economically fraught at the moment the future will prove much better. Occasionally however the truth leaks out. 'Recession in the eurozone will be deeper than expected this year, the European Commission said yesterday in spring forecasts that predicted continuing record unemployment and a sluggish economic rebound next year.' (Times, 4 May). Capitalism by its very nature is based on booms and slumps and no "expert" has ever managed to solve that basic flaw of the system. RD

Why Vote SPGB?

We should not over-emphasise the counting of noses at election time but it does serve as a barometer of the maturity of the working class. All the votes of the people would do the Socialist Party no good if we ceased to be a revolutionary party by modifying our principles for the sake of capturing a higher vote. Some Left parties have sought to make their propaganda so attractive that it serves as a bait for votes rather than as a means of education. The SPGB rejects such an electoral strategy judging the votes thus secured do not properly belong to us and does an injustice to our party as well as to those who cast them. These votes do not express a wish for socialism and in the next election they can equally be cast for another party. The Socialist Party has no interest in swinging these type of votes to its favour. It is better that these sort of votes are not cast for the Socialist Party, for they will only misrepresent the degree of progress the party and indicate a political position the party is unable to sustain by obtaining what is a fictitious vote. We seek only the actual vote for socialism, no more and no less. Of course, we want the support of the workers, but only of those who desire socialism and are ready to vote and work with us for the overthrow of capitalism. We make it clear that the Socialist Party wants the votes only of those who want socialism, and that, above all, it discourages vote-seeking for the sake of votes and holds in contempt office-seeking for the sake of office.

In our propaganda we state our principles clearly to convince and win workers to our cause through an intelligent understanding of our object. We make no coalition with those who we disagree. No possible good can come from any kind of a political alliance.

Voting for socialism is not socialism any more than a menu is a meal. Socialists must be organised to achieve it. With the workers bound together by the common tie of their enlightened self-interest, they will express their solidarity in political terms and cast a united vote for the party of their class. The Socialist Party scorns any compromise and wants no votes that can be bought nor any support gained by false pretense. What other parties can say the same? The Socialist Party stands upon its principles and relies wholly upon combination of the forces of social progress and the eduction of the working class.

The Socialist Party is to the working class politically what the trade-unions is to them industrially; the former is the party of class, while the latter is the union of their occupation. The difference between them is that while the trades-union is confined to his or her occupation, the Socialist Party embraces the entire working class, and while the union is limited to bettering conditions under the wage system, the party is organized to conquer the political power to wipe out the wages system and make the workers the masters of the Earth.

Leaders and intellectuals offer themselves up as the wise men and shepherds to lead us out of the wilderness into the land of milk and honey. They would have us believe that if we had no “intellectuals” to lead, we would have no movement. They would have the workers’ party controlled by party-bosses as the other capitalist political parties are controlled. The working class are no unthinking flock of sheep.

When we vote together on election day and act together on the industrial field we shall conquer state power and take possession of all the means of production and distribution then we will have an industrial democracy of and by and for the people. By voting into power the enemies of the labour movement many of the working class are responsible for the crimes perpetrated upon their fellow workers and sooner or later they will have to suffer the consequences of their miserable act.

Poor Scotland

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has revealed that 344,000 households in Scotland fall below the Minimum Income Standard (MIS) which is set by asking members of the public what they think people need as a minimum in order to have the choices and opportunities to participate fully in society. Goods and services included by the public are then assigned a price in order to produce figures for how much different households need to earn to achieve a socially acceptable standard of living.

For a couple with two children the MIS is currently £685 a week, which includes rent and childcare. For a single person it is £262 a week.

In March, a report into poverty and social exclusion in Scotland found that almost 1 in 20 Scots were unable to afford an adequate diet, and that 1 in 6 children lives in a home that is either damp or not adequately heated. It also found that 24 per cent of Scottish adults cannot afford one or more basic household appliances, such as a washing machine, a phone, curtains or blinds or table and chairs.

During 2010-11, there were 780,000 individuals living in relative poverty in Scotland, 160,000 of which were pensioners.

Judith Robertson, head of Oxfam Scotland, said: “The poorest people in Scotland are facing a perfect storm of rising living costs, falling incomes and government cuts. They are struggling and the gap between them and the richest people has grown massively over the years."

Who owns Scotland

Buy your little piece of it - for just £2.5million.


800 acre Tanera Mor, the largest and only inhabited island in the Summer Isles archipelago, 1.5 miles off the north-west coast of Scotland is up for sale. It has nine residential properties, a cafe, post office and three jetties.

Food for thought

In the wake of the horrendous factory collapse in Bangladesh, companies identified as having work done there are scrambling to minimize damage to their brand. Loblaws, a giant food store in Canada that sells clothes as well, has publicly stated that they are having an emergency board meeting to address the sorry state of affairs. The really sad thing is that they and the others have made conscious decisions to use Third World factories to avoid unionized workers and any country that has labour and safety laws that are in any way enforced. The other point is that these companies are doing the right thing as far as profit is concerned. Although individuals in the companies may deplore the conditions and pay of the workers, capital demands that they show excellent numbers on the balance sheet considering the competition is doing the same thing. The coercive laws of capitalist competition demand it. Doesn't it make sense to end a system that makes this type of situation necessary? John Ayers.

No God-given right to a country

The Church of Scotland denies any special privilege for the Jewish people in the land of Israel. In fact it went further and declared "Christians should not be supporting any claims by Jews, or any other people, to an exclusive or even privileged divine right to possess particular territory." [our emphasis]
In its report the Church of Scotland refutes claims that scripture offers any peoples a privileged claim for possession of a particular territory. Promises about the land of Israel were never intended to be taken literally, or as applying to a defined geographical territory. The ‘promised land’ in the Bible is not a place, so much as a metaphor of how things ought to be among the people of God. This ‘promised land’ can be found – or built – anywhere.

The Socialists' Message

The word “socialism” is commonly used as a political trick. Various Labour Parties are called “socialist” and it is suggested that countries with large welfare state systems are socialist and that nationalised industries are socialist. There has been a persistent tendency to define the idea of socialism to as a mere legal alteration of the property system and the introduction of some sort of planned economy.


When production is for the requirements of the community and when production is for use and not for profit of a minority, this is the basis of socialism. This socialist commonwealth liberates the individual from all economic, political and social oppression and provides for real liberty and for the full and harmonious development of the personality, giving full scope for the growth of the creative faculties of the mind. Based on the common ownership of the means of production and distribution it dissolves the hostile classes into a community of free and equal producers striving not for sectional interests, but for the common good.

Capitalism is a social system that stands condemned. Its usefulness of the past is now long over. If it is allowed to continue, the world will only plunge deeper into suffering, degradation, destruction. Revolution does not mean that we would “demand” that a government do this or that. It means that we, the working class, make the decisions ourselves.

Food for thought

A recent report by McMaster University (Hamilton) and United Way Canada, funded by The Federal Social Sciences and Humanities Council, released some amazing facts. It stated that 'precarious or insecure' work in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton areas has increased by 50% in the last twenty years and is affecting people's decisions regarding relations and having children. Barely half of the working adults in the two areas have full-time jobs with benefits and expect to be in the same job a year from now. Half of the insecure workers are earning between $50,000 and $100,000 a year. According to the report, the impact is being felt in the upper income levels. Some of the middle- income workers are university lecturers on contracts and research assistants in hospitals and government facilities. Contracts mean limited-time employment, low wages, no benefits, and no guarantee of further employment when the contract ends. Until recently, poverty and insecurity were thought to affect low-income workers, but not anymore. As Wayne Lewchuk, McMaster University Labour and Economics professor put it, " ...we found that in some cases, middle-income households with precarious work are under more stress than low-income households with secure employment." One thing is clear -- under capitalism, whatever one's job or income, you are bound, sooner or later, to get screwed. John Ayers.

The bedroom tax song

You Cannae Have A Spare Room in a Pokey Cooncil Flat

  I’m a welfare state wean, we live on the bottom flair
But we’re no allowed to even live there any mair.
They say we’ve got too many rooms, in our social rented flat
We’ve an eight by ten foot boxroom where you cannae swing a cat
Chorus:

Oh ye canna have a spare room in a pokey cooncil flat
Ian Duncan Smith and Co have put an end tae that
They say “live in a smaller house”, they say that is their plan
When the odds against you finding one are ninety-nine to one

Noo ma auntie’s in a wheelchair, but these Tories dinna care
They say they have a deficit, she got to pay her share
£60 a month they’ll take, then leave her tae her fate
Whilst gieing millionaires a tax cut, cause they say they’re due a break

Noo that Buckingham Palace looks a pretty roomy gaff
And the ludger there gets benefits at rates that make me laugh
A civil list, plus tax perks, near ninety million pounds
With her other dozen mansions lying empty a’ year round

Noo those MPs doon in Westminster must think that we’re ‘a dense
Wi their second home apartments, where the public pays their rent
They’re even get a food allowance, two hundred quid a week
But they’re claiming we’re the scroungers, is their arse up in their cheeks?

So we’ve formed a Federation and we’re gonna have our say
The Bedroom Tax it has to go, and we ain’t gonna pay
We’re gonna march on London tae demand our civil rights
Like nae mair Tories and their Liberal shite


To the tune of “The Jeely Piece Song”,
by Scottish singer-songwriter Adam McNaugton.

We Arra People!

The Socialist Party stands for common ownership and co-operation. The Socialist Party as a party of exploited workers, of both sexes and of all colours, regardless of nationality, the working class in a word, constituting a great majority of the people, ( and in fact, are The People) , demands that the industries shall be taken over by the workers who shall operate them for the benefit of the whole people.We demand the means of production and distribution in the name of the workers and the control of society in the name of the people. We demand the abolition of capitalism and wage-slavery and the unconditional surrender of the capitalist class.

In the name of the people, the Socialist Party condemns the capitalist system. In the name of freedom we condemn wage-slavery. In the name of modern technology and potential abundance we condemn poverty and deprivation. In the name of peace we condemn war. We condemn hunger and the murder of little children. We condemn ignorance and superstition. In the name of humanity we demand freedom for every man, woman and child.

The workers who have made the world and who support the world, should take possession of the world. We demand complete control of industry by the workers; we demand all the wealth they produce for their own enjoyment, and we demand the Earth for all the people. The battles of the workers in the war of the classes and the battles of the workers, wherever and however fought, are always and everywhere the battles of the Socialist Party.

The Socialist Party makes no promises. It doesn’t canvass for votes with false election pledges. We simply deliver this ultimatum to the global capitalist class. The ballot expresses the will of the people and it means that the working class has a voice, that must be heeded. The workers have never made use of their political power. Workers who vote for a pro-capitalist party do worse than throw their votes away. They are deserters of their class and their own worst enemy. Though they may be in blissful ignorance of the fact, they are false to themselves and their fellow-workers, and sooner or later they reap what they have sown.

Every worker should rally to the standard of his and her class. The overthrow of capitalism is the object of the Socialist Party and there can be no compromise. The Socialist Party stands squarely upon its principles in making its appeal to the working class. We do not beg for votes nor bargain for votes. We want votes, but only from those who want socialism - those who recognise it as in their interest and come to it of their own free will. The Socialist Party does not seek office and the perks of government. We want all the votes we can get only as a means of developing the political power of the working class. The Socialist Party is organised and administered from the bottom up. Each member has not only an equal voice but is urged to take an active part in all the decision making. There is no leader and there never can be unless the party deserts its principles and ceases to be a socialist party.

The social-reformer, the immediate-demander and the one-step-at-a-timer challenge the Socialist Party’s impossiblism. The half-wayers do indeed make steps but towards where? The Socialist Party will never mistake reform for revolution. We will wrest and extract what we can from the capitalists, but with our eye always fixed upon the goal and never losing sight of it. Enough is enough! There must be a change! The message of socialism proposes a change of system. Now is the time for the workers to assert their political power, and to demonstrate their unity and solidarity. The education and organisation of the workers is the aim and the purpose of the Socialist Party. The party relies wholly upon the power of knowledge and mutual understanding.

If the working class reaches an understanding of socialism and a consciousness of itself, no power can prevail against it. More people are taking action. People are challenging the system to create the world they want to see.

Food for thought

In "Climate Change or Revolution", The Toronto Star of March 6th .the Star staff commented on a series of essays jointly produced by The Center for American Progress and The Center for Climate and Security in Washington. The thrust of the essays was to emphasize the connection between climate change, food prices, and politics, and to show that these are the stressors that help fuel uprisings. To quote Princeton scholar, Anne-Marie Slaughter, "...consequences of climate change are stressors that can ignite a volatile mix of underlying causes that can erupt into revolution." Furthermore, the study argues that climate change played a significant role in the Arab Spring. Troy Sternberg, a geographer at Oxford University, a contributor, wrote that a drought in China, heat waves and floods in other wheat-growing countries, and a wet season in Canada, sent prices skyrocketing which led indirectly to regime change in Egypt.
Francesco Femia and Caitlin Werrell of the Center for Climate and Security said that from 2006 to 2011, up to 60% of Syria's land experienced the worst long-term drought ever recorded causing herders to lose 85% of their livestock and the livelihoods for 800,000 people. One may assume the above worthies quoted above are upholders of capitalism. The point is, if they can clearly see the connection between climate change that the effects of capitalism are causing, droughts, floods, and uprisings against governments, then it is to be hoped that the majority of the world's population also will and organize for the only thing that can prevent global disaster -- socialism. John Ayers

We are the Power

The capitalists are the upper class-because they are always on our backs; if they were not on our backs they would not be above us. In capitalist society the worker is not a person or an individual at all. He or she is simply merchandise, a commodity. The very terminology of the capitalist system proves it. Go to any factory or office and there will exist a department called “human resources”.

Capitalism is a society divided into two economic classes: a relatively small class of capitalists who own the machinery they did not make and cannot use, and the vast numbers of workers who did make the tools and machines and who do use them, (and whose very lives depend upon using them), yet who do not own them. Every cog in every wheel that revolves everywhere has been made by the working class, and is kept in operation by the working class; and if the working class can make and operate this marvelous wealth-producing machinery. These millions of wage-workers, producers of wealth, are forced into the labour market, in competition with each other, selling their labour power to the capitalist class, in return for just enough of what they produce to keep them in working order.

You are as much subject to the command of the capitalist as if you were his property under the law. You have got to go to his factory because you have got to work; he is the master of your job, and you cannot work without his consent, and he only gives this on condition that you surrender to him all you produce except what is necessary to keep you in working order. The machine you work with has to be oiled; you have to be fed; the wage is your lubricant, it keeps you in working order, and so you toil until you pass away. That is your lot in the capitalist system.

You do everything and he has everything. We do not need the capitalist. He could not exist without you but we can live without him. Workers are the only class essential to society; all others can be spared, but without you society would perish. Why should you be dependent upon a capitalist? Today the capitalist is far removed from the scene of production, and workers generate wealth more autonomously. All you have to do is to unite, think together, act together, strike together, vote together, never for an instant forgetting that you are one, and then the world is yours. You only need but to stretch out and take possession.

In the struggle of the working class to free itself from wage slavery it cannot be repeated too often that everything depends upon the working class itself. The simple question is, can the workers fit themselves, by education, organization, co-operation and self-imposed discipline, to take control of the productive forces and manage industry in the interest of the people and for the benefit of society? That is all there is to it. All the workers have to do is to recognise their own power. This seems simple enough and so it is, yet simple as it is it involves the greatest struggle in history.

Socialists are the very last to underestimate the magnitude of this Herculean task. We offer no so-called “great men” to do something for the workers. We are not offering ourselves as the vanguard party which will lead you. The workers must organise their own emancipation to achieve it and to control its almost limitless opportunities and possibilities.

Food for thought

Double speak -- Faced with a $26 billion deficit, Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty, is said to be clawing back $2 billion previously going to the provinces for job training programs. Prime Minister, Stephen Harper hardly seems to be on the same page when he made it clear that upgrading skills training is a top priority when businesses are complaining that lack of skilled workers is preventing economic growth. The hardest hit among the unemployed and in need of skills
training is the fifteen to nineteen year-olds with a jobless rate of 20%. It's easy to talk a good game but as usual, the benefits go to the capitalists and the workers have to suffer the consequences. John Ayers

A crisis of capitalism

The problem of the crisis is gaining the attention of people worldwide. This is because the present crisis is of unprecedented scale, and unparalleled seriousness and tenacity, have struck throughout the world. Representatives of the two classes in society are seriously engaged in the study of this problem with a rare level of seriousness; economists for the sake of somehow forging a path to stable capitalist production, and Marxists to provide a scientific basis for their tactics in this momentous period. As long as bourgeois economists maintain their capitalist perspective, they are incapable of understanding the problem of crisis. We socialists pointed out that it was not the bankers and financiers but the capitalist, system which was at fault.
To-day, the recession is still as intense than ever, at least, in regards for the working class. Workers in countries all over the world are faced with a world crisis of capitalism. Now genuine questions of survival, issues of actual life and death, are in the forefront of peoples minds. The crisis is not a crisis of natural scarcity or shortage. Millions of workers are willing and able to work; but existing society has no use for their labour. The crisis is a crisis of capitalism alone.
Everywhere there is a call for change and for government interventions that lead to a way out. All the leaders of capitalism, economists, financiers, politicians, are at sixes and sevens. All the capitalist spokesmen, Tory, Lib-Dems and Labour speak of “re-organisation,” and “re-regulation", of new policies of this, that and the other, to “save the British economy.” They appeal to the workers to make “sacrifices” to help and impose austerity cuts to ensure that sarifice. They mistakenly imagine that if only British capitalism could be modernised and improved and rationalisation all will be well. But no policy of patching up capitalism can avail. These so-called remedies not only fail to touch the root of the problem, they can only aggravate the disease.
What solutions do the capitalist leaders propose? They propose to throw the cost of the crisis off the backs of the rich onto those of the poor. The working class has met with the smashing of the unions, the driving down of the standard of living simultaneously with the drastic increase in the cost of living. The capitalists have no solution to the crisis. Its measures aggravate the crisis and pave the way for still more deep-seated and profound crisis in the future. The working class must not harbour any illusions about “recovery”. The motive of capitalist production is profit and the only issue of “recovery” for the bourgeoisie is recovery of profits. Such “recovery” will not alter at all the condition of the working class as wage slaves, or change the conditions of the exploited in relation to the exploiters. In fact, the recovery of the profits of the bourgeoisie can only take place on the basis of the further intensification of exploitation, the further impoverishment and ruin of the masses of the people, with a higher level of the permanent army of the unemployed, an increase in the impoverishment and immiseration of the working class. In order to force through its programme for shifting the burden of the crisis onto the backs of the working people, the bwealthy is launching a savage offensive against the rights of the workers.
In the crisis, the banks could not lend money to business which was not producing profits or dividends and banks could not collect on their loans to business. The government kindly issued loans, took up part of the credit of the banks and in return gave interest bearing bonds (quantitive easing) thus providing a juicy investment field for the bankers. Money went to the banks, the insurance companies, the credit companies to help them overcome the crisis.
With a decrease in revenue and an increase in expenses the government had to increase its taxes. It refused to tax the higher brackets of incomes . Instead, it began a series of wage cuts for government employees in the public sector. It cut welfare benefits. It raised VAT on goods needed by the masses.

Is it any wonder that many capitalists showed a larger profit in some of the years of recession than in other more prosperous years?

The capitalists can only look for the solution in fiercer competition and in cheapening their own costs of production, by cutting wages against their competitors, in increasing their own workers’ productivity , in fighting to enlarge their own share of the market. But these measures are pursued by the capitalists in every country. Although one capitalist or another may gain a temporary advantage for a short time, the net effect can only be to deepen the crisis. The net effect of every advance of technique, of every wage-cut, of every cheapening of costs and intensification of production, is to intensify the world crisis for the worker. Increased output is demanded from every worker for less reward. Speeding up and rationalisation are the order of the day, leading directly to worsening work conditions, mounting health problems, and rising numbers of industrial accidents, along with increasing rate of unemployment or underemployment.

Many would-be reformers of capitalism urge that if only the employers would pay higher wages to the workers, enabling them to buy more of what they produce, there would be no crisis. This ignores the inevitable laws of capitalism — the drive for profits, and the drive of competition. The drive of capitalism is always to increase its profits by every possible means, to increase its surplus, not to decrease it. Some economists may preach the gospel of high wages in the hope of securing a larger market for certain capitalist’s goods. But the actual drive of capitalism as a whole is the opposite. The force of competition compels every capitalist to cheapen costs of production, to extract more output per worker for less return, and for wholesale wage-cuts in every industry. All have the same task; to cut down rigidly the standards of the workers at home, to carry through a trade offensive for the capture of markets abroad.

Capitalism has no solution. The most the capitalists can do is to wait amidst the general misery until the universal stagnation of production has run its course and for “demand” to once again return (...to begin a new trade cycle, and lead to a new future crisis.) Capitalism will survive if we let it. Crises can resolve the contradictions temporarily and allow a new period of expansion until the next crisis.

The motive of capitalist production is the securing of maximum profits. Production of goods is in fact an incidental aim of capitalism, as is employment. The bourgeoisie organises production for the purposes of increasing profits. When conditions are such that profits can be increased by increasing production, the bourgeoisie does so, and when conditions are such that profits can only be increased by cutting back production to keep up the price, then that is what the bourgeoisie does. Thus if it serves to increase profits to increase the numbers of workers in production, then this is done; but if profits can only be increased by intensifying exploitation, getting more or the same amount of work out of fewer workers, then this is done instead. These fundamental features of the capitalist system cannot be eliminated without removing the capitalist system itself.

This crisis calls aloud for the workers’ socialist revolution. Only the working-class can solve the causes of the crisis by wresting production from the fetters of private/state ownership and profit-making and organise production for social use. The power of producing wealth is greater than ever. It has grown far more rapidly than population, thus disproving all the lies of those who talk of “over-population” as the cause of the crisis. Although capitalism does not use more than a portion of modern productive power, although it wastes most and deliberately cuts down and restricts production in order to increase profits, actual production has grown much faster than population.

Only under capitalism can there be a curse of plenty. Only socialism can bring the solution. Only socialism can cut through the bonds of capitalist property rights and organise production to meet human needs. Once capitalism is overthrown, then and only then can production be organised in common for all, and every increase in production bring increasing abundance and leisure for all. This is the aim of the Socialist Party, the only party that pointed out during the present period that there is no alternative for the working class other than socialism.

May Day Greetings

On May Day, the day of international working class solidarity and struggle, the Socialist Party of Great Britain sends its fraternal greetings to the working class. The Socialist Party sends its greetings to the workers of all countries the world over who are waging the same class struggle against capitalism. We have declared war upon the capitalist class, and upon the capitalist system. We are of the working class. We say: Arise, you worker! It is in your power to put an end to this system, seize and take control of the tools with which you work, and make yourselves the masters instead of being the slaves of industry. Long enough have we suffered ourselves to blindly and stupidly follow a leadership that has misled and deceived and betrayed. Wipe out the wage system, so that you can walk this Earth free men and women!


The Workers Maypole

World Workers, whatever may bind ye,
This day let your work be undone:
Cast the clouds of the winter behind ye,
And come forth and be glad in the sun.

Now again while the green earth rejoices
In the bud and the blossom of May
Lift your hearts up again, and your voices,
And keep merry the World's Labour Day.

Let the winds lift your banners from far lands
With a message of strife and of hope:
Raise the Maypole aloft with its garlands
That gathers your cause in its scope.

It is writ on each ribbon that flies
That flutters from fair Freedom's heart:
If still far be the crown and the prize
In its winning may each take a part.

Your cause is the hope of the world,
In your strife is the life of the race,
The workers' flag Freedom unfurled
Is the veil of the bright future's face.

Be ye many or few drawn together,
Let your message be clear on this day;
Be ye birds of the spring, of one feather
In this--that ye sing on May-Day.

Of the new life that still lieth hidden,
Though its shadow is cast before;
The new birth of hope that unbidden
Surely comes, as the sea to the shore.

Stand fast, then, Oh Workers, your ground,
Together pull, strong and united:
Link your hands like a chain the world round,
If you will that your hopes be requited.

When the World's Workers, sisters and brothers,
Shall build, in the new coming years,
A lair house of life--not for others,
For the earth and its fulness is theirs.

Walter Crane
Justice, 1894

What is capitalism?

"If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire." George Monbiot


"Capitalism is the natural system of humanity, it's all these small businesses and people coming together to compete. Everyone gets the amount of money they deserve because they've earned it, or if you're poor it's because you're lazy and if you're rich it's because you've earned it. The system works perfectly. It grows as long as the government stays out of the way; technology is just going to make the system better. And it's the only way to organise a society that's not going to be living in caves and rubbing two sticks together."

That's the catechism of those hopeless apologists who support the status quo and advocate the unreal laissez-faire philosophy of no governmental interference with business (as if they are not dependent on governmental interference!), a balanced budget, lower taxes, encourage private enterprise, etc. The libertarian/propertarian desire to eliminate merely the big capitalist is a dead-end, for the small capitalist is continually growing and expanding into the large capitalist.

The guiding principle of capitalism is competition, to make profit out of one’s fellows, and to grow richer than one’s fellows, at the expense of one’s fellows.
Only by buying the worker’s labor power can the capitalist make profits. Workers produce more than what the capitalist pays them in wages and benefits. This is the basis of exploitation of the workers. What the workers produce over and beyond the socially necessary labor for keeping themselves and their families alive and working is surplus value. Surplus value is the only source of profits and is ripped off by the capitalists.
Within the work-place rules a rigid dictatorship where the men and women are transformed into a cogs of the machine, where labour becomes wage-slavery. Outside the workplace economic chaos prevails and people are ruled by prices which they cannot control and by the wild forces of the market of which they can be only victims. It is only through the anarchic fluctuations of supply and demand, booms and bankruptcies, that society “decides” and “plans” its production .

Capitalism is tremendously wasteful and destructive of men, goods, energy, land. The ultimate destiny of all useful goods is to be consumed. Yet under capitalism goods are not produced to be consumed, but for profit, and if a greater profit can be made by destroying the goods, the destruction takes place.

As capitalism develops, larger and larger factories are built, thousands of labourers co-operate in the production of a single article, yet the article does not belong to them but to the owner of the means of production. The laborers are merely paid wages for the use of their labour power, wages which constantly grow less and less in proportion to the total product. Simultaneously the owner of the industries becomes progressively more divorced from the productive process. As small partnerships become big corporations or are driven out of business by the trusts and monopolies, the original entrepreneurs and organisers become mere dividend-takers. The corporation also develops, becomes more and more a public utility. The state begins to take a hand, and to run the industry. The former individual owner has now become a purely parasitic hanger-on.
The greater the productivity of labour, and the greater the amount of production, the greater becomes the surplus product in the hands of the owners, the greater the need for markets, the greater, therefore, the competition among the capitalists, the greater the relative lowering of the wages of the workers, the larger the army of unemployed and paupers, the more vigourous the drive for foreign markets and colonies for exploitation, and the more violent the military struggles to control the world. The greater the internationalisation of markets, the greater the need to have a military machine to defend the market interests, the greater grow the oppressive burdens of the state apparatus, the greater grows the necessity to transform the whole nation into an armed, ruthless, chauvinistic state,
Capitalism sucks the blood of workers and feeds off humanity like a leech.

The Price of Profit

Yesterday was Workers Memorial Day when we highlight the bloody toll capitalism inflicts upon us.
In New Zealand a coal mining company, Pike River Coal, was found guilty of nine health and safety violations over a 2010 explosion that killed 29 miners.
A government investigation found the company ignored 21 warnings that methane gas had accumulated to explosive levels in the mine and it was exposing miners to unacceptable risks as it strove to meet financial targets. Each of the charges comes with a maximum penalty of 250,000 New Zealand dollars ($211,000). But since the company is bankrupt, just who will pay the penalty?

Former chief executive Peter Whittall has pleaded not guilty to 12 charges. His case has yet to be heard.

We Are All Leaders

These are not times for reform and tweaking the system. Capitalism is in the process of destroying the Earth. The Socialist Party knows that no leaders are going to pull the workers into socialism. Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek. Mainstream politics cannot comprehend the absence of leaders in the movement and that it is not a weakness but a strength, testifying to our determination not to be followers.

Forget about looking for leaders. What we need is a movement that rises from the people and empowers ourselves. People need to stop looking up, and start looking around. There is an old adage, if the people lead, the leaders will follow. People need organisations, and people need to come together. But by self-organisation from the root, you will find that you have got no leaders - and do not want them because you do not lead them.

A leader may say “all that our organisation has gained is because of me”. But it is not so. It is not because a leader persuades the government to be nice, but because the actions of mass movements force the government to give back some of what has been taken from us.

Leaders, indeed, will sometimes pretend that they know best and that the movement depends on them. But they can do this only by with-holding knowledge and denying power from others. This is why it is important to make organisations as democratic as possible. The individual leader substitutes for and holds back the capacities of the 'led'. If we rely on one leader, or a group of leaders we are putting ourselves in a vulnerable position because we can easily be misled. Nor is there a leadership to be bought off. A leader comes to symbolise an organisation's cause and projects it on to one individual that his or her reputation and personality comes to represent and embody the cause.

The working class have nothing to gain and everything to lose by relying on leaders.

Leadership is one of those problematic words that needs qualifying. When we say "don’t follow leaders" we mean by this something very specific - a narrow political sense of the term - to denote the idea of surrendering power to an individual or group to change society on our behalf. We are not promoting the false idea that socialism is about "making everyone equal" in their endowments, abilities and so on. There will always exist those who will be better orators or write more lucidly than others.

Structure doesn't necessarily mean a leader. The best examples of organisation historically can be found in the trade union and labour movement at its best. Take, for example, the structures of trade union branches. These are a product of a long tradition of members debating, agreeing and renewing clear, transparent written rules that create a framework of mutual accountability, self-discipline and individual responsibility. They are there on paper, the responsibility of every member, to be used, contested and, once agreed, followed. That is not to deny that apathy and inertia can set in; the rules become a barrier to creative thinking and change; officials become corrupt or complacent. Yet the rules and basic principles remain, always available.

A socialist party must be a party of no compromise. Its mission is to point the way to the goal and it refuses to leave the main road the side-tracked that lead into the swamp of reformism. Nor does a socialist party advocate violence in the labor movement because it knows the capitalist class has the advantage. It is not cowardice but common sense and it is not heroism that makes a fool rock a boat in deep water, it is idiocy.

The capitalist class can gerry-mander elections, miscount and steal votes, plus resort to a thousand and one other political tricks, but such is simply to tamper with a thermometer, it cannot change the temperature. And the temperature is the organised power of the working class.

Power to no one, and to every one!