Socialism = Communism

The Socialist Party repudiates any differentiation between socialism and communism. Socialism is communism, and vice versa. The words socialism and communism have the same meaning. Both entail the total abolition of money, buying and selling, and the wages system, a complete breach, both in practice and in ideas, with capitalism. They indicate a condition of society in which the wealth of the community: the land and the means of production and distribution are held in common, production being for use and not for profit. The community will ascertain what are the requirements of the people in food, clothing, housing, transport, educational and cultural facilities. Food, clothing, housing, transport, sanitation — these come first. Then will follow the luxuries.


It means the community must set itself the task of providing rather more than the people can use of all the things that the people need and desire, and of supplying these when and as the people require them. Socialism shall satisfy material needs without stint or measure from the common storehouse, according to individual and social desires. Private property, beyond that which is in actual personal use, will disappear. Everyone will be able to have what he or she desires in food, in clothing, education and travel. The abundant technology now possible removes any need for rationing or limiting of consumption. None will desire to hoard commodities not in use, since a fresh supply may be obtained at will.
In socialism, people will be free to co-operate, producing, inventing, studying, not under the compulsion of law, or poverty, or the incentive of individual gain, but from deliberate choice and with a zest for achievement. Socialism will provide the material and spiritual conditions which will make voluntary co-operative labour possible.

Marx and Engels on the power of the vote

It's often pointed out that our political system is completely corrupted by money yet history teaches that people's influence on their governments is much more powerful than we usually imagine. It's weakened primarily by people's failure to do anything and the mistaken belief that we don't have the power to shape the world as we wish it to be.


Marx and Engels strongly supported political action in the sense of participating in elections. They stressed the importance of the vote. Engels explains that universal suffrage "in an England two-thirds of whose inhabitants are industrial proletarians means the exclusive political rule of the working class with all the revolutionary changes in social conditions which are inseparable from it." Marx argued along the same lines, for example, in 1855, he stated that "universal suffrage . . . implies the assumption of political power as means of satisfying [the workers'] social means" and, in Britain, "revolution is the direct content of universal suffrage."

In 1852 Marx wrote, concerning the Chartists:

“But universal suffrage is the equivalent of political power for the working class of England, where the proletariat forms the large majority of the population, where, in a long though underground civil war, it has gained a clear consciousness of its position as a class and where even the rural districts know no longer any peasants, but only landlords, industrial capitalists (farmers) and hired labourers. The carrying of universal suffrage in England would, therefore be a far more socialistic measure than anything which has been honoured with that name on the continent. Its inevitable result, here is the political supremacy of the working class.” [Marx emphasis]
His meaning is clear - a working class majority in Parliament, backed by a majority of the population, can bring about the real transfer of power.

The Revolutionary Vote

If they won't vote for socialism, they won't die for it

The capitalist system fails to supply the needs of the vast majority of people and it must be overthrown before the workers can have freedom. The ruling class is never going to solve its problems through the capitalist system, therefore, the objective conditions for revolution are going to crop up over and over again. But there is considerable difference of opinions as to the means by which this can be accomplished. Some advocate the ballot, or parliamentary action; some armed insurrection, or military action; and some the general strike, or industrial action.

Armed insurrection to have any reasonable chance of success the workers would need to have as large and well equipped an army as the capitalists. Yet the working class are unarmed and most unskilled in the use of weapons. They have no military organisation. They have no means of securing arms. An untrained, undisciplined and badly equipped army of workers going forth to overthrow the system might as well be committing suicide. As long as the means necessary to equip, supply, and transport armies remains in control of the capitalists, it is impossible for the workers to gain military power. The revolutionary army would be slaughtered like sheep. The best tactics on the part of the workers is to avoid armed insurrection unless it is actually forced upon them andworkers should beware of those who urge them to armed insurrection.

Food for thought

There has been an uproar in Canada during the last two weeks over the hiring of cheap foreign workers. The super rich Royal Bank got caught with its pants down when an employee blew the whistle when he and many others were told to train these imported workers who would then replace the bank's workers for half the price. The government, properly outraged, has moved to stop this egregious use of their program that 'was never intended to put Canadians out of work'. Really! Who made up the rules in the first place? Meanwhile in the US, people and politicians constantly gripe about the Latinos in their country but they are quite happy to employ them at cut rates in their homes and businesses and the politicians who rage against illegals and want the border sealed, are strangely silent about enacting laws making it illegal to hire them. (Haroon Siddiqui), Toronto Star, 28/04/13). John Ayers.

Balls !!

The Royal Caledonian Ball is the oldest charity ball in the world. It is when Scotland’s elite high society descend on London for dinner, drinks and some traditional Scottish country-dancing, full of pomp and ceremony.

It was inaugurated in the Victorian era by the Duke and Duchess of Atholl first held in 1848. Since 1930 the ball has been held at Grosvenor House on Park Lane, the ­hotel with the biggest, grandest ballroom in London. Tickets cost between £135 and £225. There is a strict dress code. Gentlemen are expected to wear Highland evening dress, evening tails with white tie, or mess kit. Dinner jackets are verboten. Ladies should wear floor-length evening dress; tiaras are very much encouraged and tartan sashes are optional but encouraged.


Later, following the start of the grouse season, there will come a string of balls in Scotland – among them Oban, Skye, Angus, Perth, Lochaber and the Northern Meeting.

From here

Learning about schools and education

Children as such are not usually included among the oppressed. Yet they necessarily compose one of the weakest, most dependent and defenseless sections of the population. Each generation of children is not only helped but hindered and hurt by the elders who exercise direct control over them. Children are normally unaware of the social causes of their misfortunes and miseries and even the grown-ups may not know about them. Most parents cannot be held individually responsible for such misdeeds for they, too, have been shaped by the society around them and are obliged to follow certain ways out of necessity.


The class structure quickly impresses its stamp upon the personality, conditioning and regulating the relations between the sexes, the rich and the poor. This determines both the characteristics of the educational system and of the children tutored and trained under it.
Children soak up knowledge and retain it for use. The child learns best through direct personal experience. In the primary stage of education these experiences should revolve around games. They progress fastest in learning, not through being drilled by rota, but by doing work and experimenting with things. Occasionally children need to be alone and on their own. But in the main they will learn more by doing things together. By choosing what their group would like to do, planning their work, helping one another do it, trying out various ways and means of performing the tasks, involved and discovering what will forward the project, comparing and appraising the results, the youngsters would best develop their latent powers, their skill, understanding, self-reliance and cooperative habits. Participation in meaningful projects, learning by doing, encouraging problems and solving them, not only facilitates the acquisition and retention of knowledge but fosters the right character traits: unselfishness, helpfulness, critical intelligence, individual initiative.

As most people know free education and free schools were one of the first and most insistent demands of the working class in the last century. The bourgeoisie made this concession partly because it could afford to and mostly because it fitted in with its own interests.

However, history shows how subservience was bred and enforced in the schools. Business, big or little, directly or indirectly, has the economic, political and propaganda power to exercise a veto over the whole realm of education. The capitalists know what they want: schools which serve their profit system. Schools are institutions where children are indoctrinated with bourgeois ideology. They create an outlook that is warped and make apologists for the system, not careful investigators. The ideological submission of the working class is the most powerful shackle preventing it from taking power, and our education system is one of the factors in achieving this.

The way in which the class struggle is fought out within the educational system is as clearly apparent as the direct confrontation of classes on the factory shop-floor. Those involved in the struggle for better schools must face the fact that the functions of education in a class society is to give the working-class child only enough skills to enable him to be exploited in the work place and not to emancipate him from social drudgery. An illiterate work-force are of little usef to the modern employer. The class function of the school is to fit the working-class kid for the factory floor or the office desk – to exploit him and not to emancipate him. The educational process is deformed by the pressure of class interests. Education under capitalism must be conducted primarily in the interests of the ruling class.

One day we will have the power to make changes. Every movement that desires to change the social order must go to the people. An equalitarian society, functioning, not under authority and economic pressure, but by the common consent, can never flourish except by the active willing co-operation of the mass of people. There can be no socialism until the the majority desire socialism. An educational revolution is needed; is in fact overdue. The world will one day be ours, so let’s start fighting for it.

Artfull Dodgers

Workers are constantly being reprimanded by politicians and journalists for being "benefit fraudsters" but in fact whatever dodges they may get up to its as nothing compared to the tax evasion of the owning class. 'More than 100 of Britain's richest people have been caught hiding billions of pounds in secretive offshore havens, sparking an unprecedented global tax evasion investigation. George Osborne, the chancellor, warned the alleged tax evaders, and a further 200 accountants and advisers accused of helping them cheat the taxman: "The message is simple: if you evade tax, we're coming after you."' (Guardian, 9 May) Despite Osborne's threat this is a constant running battle between the government and the owning class's armies of accountants and financial adviser devising new and better methods of evasion. RD

The wealthy students

Research shows that of Edinburgh University’s ultra-rich graduates – those worth at least £20m – more than a quarter get their money from family fortunes. Edinburgh’s 80 ultra-rich graduates were worth around £52million each, but 26% of them sourced their money from inheritance. Japan’s Princess Mako is to study at the university. German aristocrat Prince Albert II, who can trace his noble lineage back to the Holy Roman Empire and has been described as the world’s youngest billionaire, studied economics and theology at the university. Other royalty to study at the university include Romania’s Princess Margareta and Princess Raiyah of Jordan.
And among Glasgow University’s wealthiest former students, almost a fifth rely on inherited cash, according to the study. At Glasgow University 18% of the 80 ultra-rich graduates sourced their money from inheritance.

Peter Murray McDouall (1814-54)

Jenny Wormald in her biography “Mary Queen of Scots. A Study in Failure” describes a Scottish monarch who lacked an interest in Scotland and who posessed an obsession in aquiring the English throne. In 1548, at the age of just five, Mary left Scotland for France. She returned to Scotland in 1561 following the death of her husband and continued to still own and manage considerable French estates, the legacy of the dowry settled upon her as a consequence of her brief marriage to the the French king. In Scotland, and even during her long imprisonment in England, Mary maintained a predominantly French household and a pronounced interest in French affairs. French was to remain her first language.

The Marie Stuart Society have now begun a campaign to raise about £100,000 for a full-size bronze statue of Mary.

However, Socialist Courier is always surprised, although we shouldn’t be, by our own forgotten Scottish working class history. The Chartist activist and friend of Marx and Engels, George Julian Harney was to recall, “no man in the Chartist movement was better known than Dr McDouall”.

Growing Old Disgracefully

Readers of the popular press are probably well aware of world hunger as a pressing problem, but they are probably unaware that this is not just a problem that affects people abroad. 'Most people think of the condition as a "third world problem", but one in ten older people in the UK are malnourished, the British Dietetic Association and the Malnutrition Task Force said. ..........."For far too long, malnutrition and dehydration has been thought of as a third world problem," said Helen Davidson, honorary chair of the British Dietetic Association - the professional body for UK dieticians. "The reality is, malnutrition and dehydration is a very big problem here in the UK."' (Daily Express, 9 May) Malnutrition Task Force task force chair Dianne Jeffrey claimed that one in ten older people are malnourished and estimates put the figure at about three million. That is capitalism for you, even in an advanced country like the UK old folk are malnourished. RD

Food Fact of the Day

The world loses 12 million hectares of productive agricultural land each year to factors such as desertification, land degradation and urbanisation.

If this land stayed productive it could have made 20 million tonnes of grain.

"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