"It's only human nature , isn't it?"

Sooner or later a socialist will be faced with the question “What about human nature? Socialism is against human nature" as the reason to why the struggle for socialism is doomed and why socialism itself will not work. Rarely, if ever, is the question phrased “What aspect of human nature do we feel we should encourage to achieve socialism?”

Human nature has always been invoked every time there has been any question of social progress. The slave-holders said some people were born to be slaves. The slave was a possession of the slave owner and only lived and worked for his benefit. The master had full control of the life and family of the slave. The owner was everything, the slave nothing. It was the natural order of things.

Capitalism has been responsible for a great deal of human suffering. Concentration of wealth and property, exploitation of labour, the abuse of nature for profit, the violent suppression of opposition, the manipulation of democracy and control of information, surpluses of food and medicine for the rich while millions of the poorest die of malnutrition and disease. Supporters of capitalism, however, insist that “human nature” creates the ills associated with the present system – greed, competition, war, inequality. Socialists declare it is not “human nature” that is the cause of the problems people face today. It is the way society is organised

Opponents of socialism say that we are not being practical: that we are dreamers and utopians. Our opponents confront us again with human nature and say; “You want to change society to ensure happiness to all and give everyone equality. You forget human nature! Man is by nature selfish and evil. You will never be able to change people.”

Socialists do not believe that there is no such thing as the nature of man; that man at birth is like a blank sheet of paper, on which the culture writes its text. Socialists are never tempted to assume that "human nature" is identical with that particular expression of human nature prevalent in their own society. Socialists do not accept that there was a fixed, eternal "human nature". In human society nothing is unchangeable. Everything is variable. Human nature is strongly shaped by the society it exists in and does in fact vary from one society to another. Through history classes and social systems have succeeded each other and differed from each other. It is a mistake to maintain that human nature does not change. Everything changes in Nature and in life. Everything is in a process of transformation. Movement is the universal law of everything that exists. We never meet the same person twice because during the interval they have grown older, their constitution and character changed; they is no longer the same. If everything changes, is subject to transformation and modification, how is it possible to believe for a moment that the present system of property will always remain the same? That would be, indeed, contrary to nature.

The satisfaction of human needs is impossible for an isolated individual. Only by taking part in the collective production process, working alongside everyone else to produce what we all require, can an individual become truly human. It has also been said that if men do not have the spur of hunger and want and of the desire to make profit they will become lazy. To argue this is to forget the necessity for clothing, feeding and sheltering oneself. Who does not work neither will they eat. It is to forget too, that idleness is not the characteristic of a sane person.

Laziness is a social malady, spawned by our system, which is in itself a stimulus to laziness. It assures all riches, all the pleasures of life to those who work the least possible - the idle rich parasites. Laziness also develops from the intolerable conditions of forced and excessive labour in unhealthy factories. How can people work with enthusiasm when they know that their work will go to the enrichment of others? When the producers know that the products of their work will belong to them they will throw overboard the old repugnance which forced drudgery engenders in them. Work well regulated and fairly apportioned will become attractive. It will become a joy and a pleasure, and this is because work is necessary for the physical and mental well-being of the individual. Altruism/co-operation/communism, call it as you will, is basically the "we" and the "us" versus the egotistical bourgeois, "I" and the "me". "All against all" would properly express capitalist values.

Socialism does not depend on some miraculous change in human nature. Thirsty men will fight tooth and nail for a drink of water in a desert. But if they are up to their waist in water they may have a thousand differences among themselves, but they will not even dream of fighting for a drink. A dozen men in a prison cell with only one tiny window may trample over each other in the fight to get to that tiny source of fresh air. But outside, who ever thinks of fighting for air to breathe, or for more air than the next man? Announce a shortage of bread, and immediately a long line will form, with everyone racing to get there first. But if everyone knew that there is an ample supply of bread today, and there will be just as large a supply tomorrow and the next day, there would be no line, no race, no conflict; nobody would try to hoard an extra loaf in order to make sure of eating the next day. If society could assure everyone of as ample and constant a supply of bread as there is of air, why would anyone need or want a greater right to buy bread than his neighbor? Bread is used here only as the simplest illustration. But the same applies to all other foods, to clothing, to shelter, to transport.

Capitalism cannot exist without the working-class. It is the working-class which sets in motion the machine. As soon as the proletariat becomes conscious of this fact it will begin to revolt against a state of things. Socialism is very simple. A small minority of rich people exploit the mass of poor people, those who produced the wealth of the world. If we, the vast majority, got ourselves organised, we can take the wealth into our hands, along with the means to produce it. Then with rational planning all major problems of social life can be resolved to the satisfaction of all.

More Food for thought

At the other end of the spectrum ( the highest paid lackeys ) we have those on welfare. The Provincial Liberal government is bringing down a budget and looking to decrease its deficit. As usual, it is targeting the most vulnerable in our society. It has proposed that anyone on welfare will experience clawbacks of their allowance if they earn more than $200 per month. They also propose to scrap the special diet allowance for those with chronic illnesses that require special foods. The program costs $230 million a year, not a small amount but piddling in the total budget. How mean can you get? How about getting someone to donate his/her hedge fund salary for a year (at that rate, how many years of earning do you really need?) and keep the food program going for another four years. Maybe the high earners can rotate! Of course, this nonsense will go on as long as we, the ninety-nine percent let the one percent do as they bloody well like.
But wait! We have a saviour. Justin Trudeau, son of former prime minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau, has been elected new leader of the federal Liberal party to contest the stagnating Tories. David Olive of the Toronto Star exhorts Trudeau to 'craft a bold agenda'. Olive points out that middle-class incomes have not only been stagnating but actually plummeting and the only thing saving them is the second bread-winner in the family and the credit card. Also for Captain Trudeau to address is the fact that 1.4 million are out of work and almost 900,000 Canadians, 38% of them children, use food banks *every week*, a 31% increase since 2008. Still, we are being told to wait for miracles from our leaders. Only when we all own the system and we have no leaders will this nonsense end! John Ayers

Food for thought

We are all aware that the highest paid lackeys of capitalism receive extraordinary salaries, often in the millions when one can say that by the mid-morning of the second day of the year they have earned as much as the average worker will earn in a whole year. However, the New York Times reported (Sunday, April 21) that hedge fund titans make much more than this. In fact the four top earners cited earned, $900 million, $1.7 billion, $1.1 billion, and $1.4 billion! Please
explain to me how anyone can earn $500 000 per hour! That means that these hard workers earn the average worker's salary in about five minutes! Just how crazy can this get? John Ayers

Gerald Massey - the Chartist Poet

"KINGS ARE BUT GIANTS BECAUSE WE KNEEL"

Good People, put no faith in Kings, nor merchant-princes trust,
Who grind your hearts in Mammon's press—your faces in the
dust—
Trust to your own true thought! to break the Tyrant's dark dark
ban;
If yet one spark of freedom lives, let man be true to man.
We'll never fight again, Boys! with the Yankee, Pole, or Russ.
We love the French as Brothers, and the fervid French love us!
We'll league to crush the fiends who kill, all love and liberty,
They are but Giants because we kneel, one leap, and up go we!

Trust not the Priests, their tears are lies, their hearts are hard and
cold—
The welcomest of all their flock, are fierce wolves fleeced with gold;
Rogues all! for hire they prop the laws, that make us poor men
sin.
Ay! tho' their robes are black without, they've blacker souls
within.
The Church and State are linkt, and sworn to desolate the land—
Good People, twixt these foxes tails, we'll fling a fiery brand!
Who fears the worst that they can wreak, that loveth liberty?
They are but Giants because we kneel, one leap and up go we!

"Back tramplers of the many! death and danger ambusht lie?
"Beware ye! or the blood may run! respect a nation's cry.
"Ah, shut not out the light of Hope! the People blind, may dash
"Like Sampson in his strong death-grope, and whelm ye in the
crash.
"Think how they taxt the People mad, that old regime of
France,
"Whose heads, like poppies from Death's sythe, fell in a bloody
dance.
Ye plead in vain! ye bleed in vain! ah! Blind, when will ye see,
They are but Giants because we kneel! one leap, and up go we?

We've fought and bled, while Fortune's darlings slunk in
splendid lair,
With souls that crept like worms in buried Beauty's golden hair!
A tale of lives wrung out in tears, their grandeur-garb reveals,
And the last sobs of breaking hearts, sound in their chariot wheels.
But they're quaking now! and shaking now! who've wrought the
hurtling sorrow:
To-day the Desolators, but the desolate To-morrow!
Loud o'er their murderous menace, wakes the watchword of the
Free.
Kings are but Giants because we kneel! one leap, and up go we!

Some brave and patriots hearts, are gone, to break beyond the
wave,
And some who gave their lives for love, have found a prison-
grave,
Some, have grown grey with weeping! some have fainted by the
way,
But youth still nouritures* within the hope of a better day.
O! Blessings on world-conquering youth! God's with the shining
band!
Their spirits breathe of Paradise! they're freshest from his hand!
And looking on the People's might, who doubts they shall be
free?
Kings are but Giants because we kneel ! one leap, and up go we!
* Nurtures.

GERALD MASSEY
(1828 - 1907)

Born in a hovel in Tring, on 29th May 1828, (Thomas) Gerald Massey was the eldest son of an impoverished and illiterate canal-boatman. Massey said of himself that “he had no childhood,” for on reaching the age of eight he was put to work in the Town’s silk mill where his twelve-hour days spent labouring in grim conditions added between nine pence and one shilling and three pence to his father's meagre earnings. He later worked in Tring’s then-thriving straw plaiting industry producing braid for the straw hat trade in nearby Luton and Dunstable. Thanks to his mother, Mary, Massey received a scant education at a “penny school”. Despite these tough beginnings, he learned to read and write using the Bible, Bunyan, Robinson Crusoe and Wesleyan tracts left at the family home.

Lots To Smile About

Accompanying a photograph of the two billionaires smiling broadly at a Berkshire Hathaway's shareholders meeting in the USA was the following piece of information. 'Super-rich Bill Gates and Warren Buffett obviously know how to take it easy. It can't be too hard when Microsoft chairman Gates, 57, is worth $67 billion and Berkshire Hathaway chief executive Buffett, 82, has been valued at $53.5 billion.' (Sunday Express, 5 May) RD

Another Promise Bites The Dust

When the government closed Remploy factories that employed disabled workers their boast was that the closures would lead to more of them getting jobs in mainstream employment. Like most government promises this turned out to be untrue. 'Up to two thirds of the disabled workers who lost their jobs when the nationwide network of Remploy factories began to be shut down last autumn are still out of work.' (Sunday Express, 5 May) Being unemployed is tough but being unemployed and disabled must be hellish. RD

Scottish Wage Slavery

Although Scots speak of Scotland as “our” country and millions of Scotsmen have died or have been mutilated over the centuries in defence of what they called “their” country, as a matter of fact Scotland does not belong to the whole of the Scottish people, but to a comparative few. How many Scots can point to a particular part of the map of Scotland and say “this is mine”? The greatest portion of Scotland is divided among a few great landlords.


Scotland is spoken of as a wealthy country by proponents of nationalism. Does that mean that the Scottish people as a whole are well off? By no means. Some are immensely rich, most merely get by with a bare living, and large number are degradingly poor. The land, factories and transport, all the means of producing the nation’s wealth, are owned by the landlord/capitalist class. In capitalist Scotland, production is carried on not for the purpose of supplying the needs of the people but for the purpose of sale in order to realise a profit. Only those who have something to sell can get a living.

The working class have nothing to sell but their labour power. They sell their labour power to an employer for a price, that is, wages. Since one cannot separate labour power from one’s body it comes down to this, that a workers actually sells themselves like a slave. Socialists describe it as wage-slavery. In Scotland the average a worker is not more than a few weeks removed from penury. The Scottish worker know that year of honest sweat and persistent toil and bring them nothing worth holding on to, nothing worth fighting for. Yet, deep down in their foolish hearts they believe they have a country. Oh, the blind vanity of slaves!

What does Scottish capitalism offer the worker? A life of toil, and a bare subsistence. Always the fear of unemployment. A drab, colourless existence and, when unable to earn our keep any longer, to be thrown on the scrap-heap. In an independent Scotland , nationalists say “there will be change” and that “things will be different”. But capitalism will remains in existence, the worker will still remain subject to the capitalist. There will still be riches and leisure for the few yet drudgery and poverty for the many. Mansions for the idle rich, slum housing for the workers. An independent Scotland can offer its workers nothing but wage slavery. Independence does not make a wage-slave free . There has neverexisted a truly free and democratic nation in the world.

No master ever had any respect for his slave. The capitalist for whom you work doesn’t have to go out and look for you; you have to seek out him, and you belong to him just as completely as if he had legal title to your body; as if you were his chattel slave. He doesn’t own you under law, but he does under the fact. Why? Because he owns the means by which you work and if you don’t work you don’t eat. He is your boss; he owns your job, takes your product and controls your destiny. You have wants. You have necessities. You cannot satisfy them except by your labour. In a barbarous competitive struggle workers are fighting each other to sell themselves into slavery.

After the American Civil War, the ex-Confederacy plantation owners looked upon the loss of their slaves as a severe blow, but they soon began to see what the North had long since known, that the ownership of land and capital meant the virtual ownership of those who must have access to those instruments or starve. The slaves had been freed but as this freedom did not include freedom of access to the means of livelihood they were still as dependent as ever. Being unable to employ themselves they were compelled to seek employment, or the use of land upon which to live, at the hands of the very class from whom they had been liberated. In either case they were only able to retain barely enough of the product to keep body and soul together. The competition among the newly emancipated for an opportunity to secure a livelihood was so great that their labour-power could be bought for a mere existence wage. The labour-power of the slave thus became a commodity, and like all commodities, its price was determined by its cost of production. The cost of producing labour-power is the cost of the labourer’s keep. The master class were able to secure the necessary labour-power to carry on their industries for merely a subsistence wage for no more than it cost them when they owned the slaves as chattels. Indeed, slavery is not yet abolished. So long as the worker is deprived of property in the instruments of production, so long as his labour-power is a commodity which he is obliged to sell to another, he is not a free being, be he white or black. He is simply a slave to a master and from morning until night is as much a bondsman as any black ever was below Mason and Dixon’s line before the civil war. Slaves are cheaper now and do more work than at any time in the world’s history.

A shopkeeper in order to live must sell his wares for what he can get, but a worker in order to live must sell a part of his life, nine, ten, or twelve hours per day, as the case may be. The shopkeeper, if lucky, may get the value of his goods, but the worker cannot get under the capitalist system the value of his labour; he must accept whatever wage those who are unemployed are willing to accept at his job. This is what is called wage-slavery, because under it the worker is a slave who sells himself for a wage with which to buy his rations, which is the only difference between this system and chattel slavery where the master bought the rations and fed the slave himself. There is only one remedy for this slavery of the working class, and that remedy is socialism a system of society in which the land, factories, workshops, and everything necessary for work shall be owned and operated as common property

Today there is nothing so easily produced as wealth. The whole earth consists of raw materials and with solar, wind and water power, by the touch of a button from the merest child, these can be set into operation to transform these raw materials into wealth, the finished products, in all their multiplied forms and in opulent abundance for all, wealth enough for a community. There is no excuse for poverty today yet it is a scourge for most living in a chronic state of poverty. Workers can change this by making up their minds that it shall be changed.

There is one way to attain that end, and that way is for the working class to establish a political party of its own, resolved to use all the power of the workers against their oppressors.

Colonial Hypocrisy

For many years the British ruling class have painted a picture of their government always behaving in an honourable fashion. This fallacy has now been exposed as nonsense. The British government is negotiating payments to thousands of Kenyans who were detained and severely mistreated during the 1950s Mau Mau insurgency . 'In a development that could pave the way for many other claims from around the world, government lawyers embarked upon the historic talks after suffering a series of defeats in their attempts to prevent elderly survivors of the prison camps from seeking redress through the British courts. Those defeats followed the discovery of a vast archive of colonial-era documents which the Foreign Office (FCO) had kept hidden for decades, and which shed new and stark light on the dying days of British rule, not only in Kenya but around the empire.' (Guardian, 5 May) In the case of the Mau Mau conflict, the secret papers showed that senior colonial officials authorised appalling abuses of inmates held at the prison camps established during the bloody conflict, and that ministers and officials in London were aware of a brutal detention regime in which men and women were tortured and killed. RD

Not So Shocking

Workers often have to borrow in order to get by from day to day, but now we learn many have to do so just to get something to eat. 'One in five UK households borrowed money or used savings to cover food costs in April, a Which? survey says. It suggests the equivalent of five million households used credit cards, overdrafts or savings to buy food. The consumer group tracks the spending habits and behaviours of 2,000 people every month. Which? boss Richard Lloyd described the findings as "shocking". (BBC News, 5 May) Mr Lloyd may be shocked, but socialists find it no surprise. RD

The General Strike Weapon

The possibility of a general strike keep cropping up within the trade union movement. There have been many different types of general strikes in the history of the working class internationally. A general strike is a practical tactic or a token gesture, useful or detrimental, according to the conditions under which it takes place, the method it employs and the end it proposes. When we speak of the general strike we are not concerned with the general strike of a single trade union but of all workers. The movement is no longer, a trade union movement but has become a class movement.

For the general strike to succeed, the working-class must be convinced of the importance of the aim for which it is declared. It must be demonstrated that the purpose is legitimate and victory is realisable. The general strike must not be a disguise for revolution, but simply the right to strike on a wider scale and with a more clearly marked class character. The Socialist Party dismisses the idea that the general strike is the panacea of the proletariat. If the weapon of the general strike is to be used, then the organisation must be so built up that this weapon will stand ready for instant use. For the certainty of success in a general strike lies in its suddenness.

The Socialist Party oppose those who think that a general strike would be enough to bring on the social revolution and the fall of the whole capitalist system. The Socialist Party call for for participation in elections, as a means of propaganda, organisation, and struggle. The class vote has as its goal the self-emancipation of the working class. Yet, despite those who like to claim otherwise, we have never subordinated the taking of political power by the workers – which is necessary for the emancipation of labour and society – to a socialist majority in parliament. But we are also obliged to reject as a mirage the general strike as the only way to achieve socialism. We argue that the working class can vote for itself, for its own candidates and against the candidates of the exploiting class, with little need for the social disruption required to make a general strike as effective tool.

There are some who desire to transform the proposed general strike against austerity into a political general strike, using the opposition to the cuts as the slogans to mobilise around. They expect that because of a sustained general strike the normal economic life of the country will be suspended, rail and roads would be deserted, container ships unable to dock. Everywhere there would be a stoppage in distribution and in production. Naturally, this great discomfort would arise since workers would be depriving themselves, and therefore would be forced to adopt more forceful methods in order to live. They would seize food and other provisions wherever they could lay hands on them. The privileged classes, threatened, would respond in kind with repression and so the general strike is envisioned to escalate into a revolutionary character. That is the idea of the “revolutionary socialists".

This sort of strategy is a trick to delude the working-classes. It proposes to drag them far beyond what was proposed. By the attraction of certain concrete, definite and immediate reforms they are to be led to believe from the general strike they will be conveyed almost automatically to the Revolution. To imagining that a social revolution can result from misleading workers in such a manner is nonsense.
The idea of carrying through a social revolution by means of a folded arms policy is romantic. A stoppage of production and transportation is not enough to bring about the overthrow of a society. Strikers will stand outside the gates of the factories, and even if the workers occupy and take possession of the factory, it is a pointless exercise for the factories cannot function while the economy is suspended and production is stopped by the universal strike. The general strike is centred upon the economic and does not supply the working-class forces with a broader but more central aim by which they can unite. So long as a class does not own and control the whole social machine, it can seize all the factories and yards it wants to, but it really possesses nothing.

The general strike, although, quite powerless as a revolutionary means, is none the less important. It is a warning to the privileged classes, rather than a method of liberation for the exploited classes. It tells the governing class if they are mad enough to threaten or attack universal suffrage, if by the persecution of employers and the police they made the right to unite in trade unions and the right to strike empty forms, then a forceful general strike would be certainly the form that a labour revolt would take. It would be an act of desperation, more as a means of damaging the enemy to save ourselves than a means of liberation.

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.