Religion and Hypocrisy

The news that a Roman Catholic bishop who opposed homosexuality was in reality a homosexual may have shocked some believers of the Christian faith but they can take some sort of consolation in that  the Buddhists are just as guilty of teaching one set of principles but engaging in a much different practice. 'Thailand's national Buddhism body has announced it is monitoring monks for any inappropriate behaviour following complaints prompted by a video showing Buddhist monks flying in a private jet.' (Guardian, 17 June) The report then goes on to say that last year, about 300 Buddhist monks in Thailand were reprimanded  - in several cases removed from the brotherhood - over misconduct ranging from alcohol consumption to having sex with women. RD

Food for thought

So much attention was naturally focused on the terrible events in Boston on April 18-20 that an equally bad event that occurred in Greece did not receive the attention it warranted. After months of pressing the owners of a strawberry plantation for pay, migrant workers from Bangladesh gathered in a field hoping to get paid. Instead they received gunfire from three foremen, wounding twenty-eight. The three have been arrested and face charges of attempted murder. Though they may get long prison sentences, no one can say 'it won't happen again'. It wasn't the first and probably won't be the last time members of the working class have been shot at for demanding their rights. The Peterloo massacre in England, Bloody Sunday in St. Petersburg and Tiannanmen Square in Beijing are prime examples and these events will continue until we remove the cause – capitalism. John Ayers.

End Nationalism by Ending Capitalism

How can you be proud of your nation?
What say had you in its birth?
Which part do you control?

How can you a patriot be?
Which bit is yours?
Who owns you?

How can you love a country?
Which parts?
Who?

Richard Arnold 

The capitalist class, by making the workers propertyless, has made them nation-less. The workers have no country. This is no more your country than the shop you work in is your shop or the factory you work in is your factory. You are simply employed here, that is all. Those who so proudly talk about their country do not even own a plot of ground to be buried in. Why a worker, no matter to what country he belongs, should be patriotic is more than we can comprehend. The workers of the world have but one common enemy, the capitalist class of the world. There is not a square foot of land  that you, the working class, can call your own…They will take control of the land, they will fill all the higher positions.

Nationalism is the nationalisation of people. Once the border is created, the immigration posts and passport controls established by the new state undertakes to homogenise all those trapped within with an invented common inheritance of loyalty, supposedly to a common culture or way of life, but in practice to a particular capitalist state. The capitalist system generates nationalism as a necessary, everyday condition of its existence. If we want a world without exclusion and inequality, we must discredit all the structures that  exist to keep inequality in place. The nation-state is fraudulently constructed for one’s exclusive group. All nation-states deserve to be eradicated rather than legitimised. Every nationalism has its own special pleading as why it is special and not as bad as all the others but nationalism is and always has been a weapon in capital's arsenal. There is nothing progressive about national liberation movements, and "liberated”countries throughout history have shown themselves as capable of brutality as their oppressors.

Socialists argue that the division of the world into nations will disappear once the economic basis of that division is removed.

"National differences, and antagonisms between peoples, are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto." Marx and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto.

Thus they looked to socialist revolution as the means by which national oppression would be ended: "In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another is put to an end, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put to an end. In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end."

While Marx and Engels may have opposed the idea of nationalism, they, however, supported some nationalistic movements for tactical reasons but nevertheless always viewed it through the prism of hastening the establishment of socialism. Historic conditions change and it is no longer expedient to promote nationalism as a means to achieve socialism. Rather, it would be a hinderance.

Class struggle is the motor of history and as capitalism spreads around the globe it creates an international working class that must fight back against an international capitalist class. Most of what affects Scotland does not take place in Scotland. Capital has no national identity and capitalists are not concerned about national loyalties although they might exploit national boundaries for pragmatic reasons. Nationalists reject all theories which would have us see ourselves primarily as worker and have us believe that the accidental fact of Scottish nationhood, or any other, is what determines our fate. Nationalist politics feeds upon the feelings of resentment and revenge, it nurtures  old wounds in the collective memory of the society, it never let the people forget them, by constantly picking at the scabs of history.

Left nationalists such as the SSP offer the same stale promises of the old Labour Party all dressed up in new clothes. Although they speak of “socialism” against “capitalism,” they do not propose the overthrow of capitalism, the working-class conquest of power, the expropriation of the capitalists; their basis is still the same basis of capitalism, of capitalist democracy, of the capitalist State, and therefore the outcome can only be the same. Their only proposals are for the constitutionally re-organisation of capitalism by re-locating the Parliament and government. This is precisely its value to capitalism, to divert the workers in the name of phrases of “socialism.”

It is a common error to assume that every objection to Scottish nationalism must be based on 'Unionist' support for the British state. The Socialist Party opposes British nationalism as much as Scottish. The revolutionary working class is the grave-digger of all nations. Any defence of the nation further tightens the chain that keeps workers in slavery. The task of the working class is to defend its own interests, which in the Socialist Party’s opinion does not involve supporting  the expansion of Scottish capital. The emancipation of the working classes must be accomplished by the workers themselves, but it is no movement for new class monopolies and privileges; it is not a local or national, but a social problem embracing all countries, where capitalism exists.

George Julian Harney, an activist in the great Chartist movement and the First International, wrote:
“The cause of the people in all countries is the same – the cause of labour, enslaved and plundered labour...The men who create every necessary, every comfort and luxury are themselves steeped in misery. Working men of all countries, are not your grievances; your wrongs, the same? Is not your good cause one and the same also...the veritable emancipation of the human race. (Northern Star, February 14, 1846)

A Sense of Values?

The craziness of capitalism and its sense of values is well summed up by this news item. 'Two adjacent parking spots in the US city of Boston have been auctioned for $560,000 (£357,000), almost double the average price of a home in the area. ...... Lisa Blumenthal, who lives in a multi-million dollar home nearby with three existing parking spots, was the buyer. She told the Boston Globe the spaces would be useful for guests or workers.' (BBC News, 14 June) This is a city where currently thousands of families have to rely on food stamps in order to survive. RD

Food for thought

How and why do these jumped-up dictators like Syria's Assad get their weaponry from? That's easy to answer – the five nations in the world charged with the world's security – France, China, Russia, GB, US, are making a packet for their capitalist class as the worst purveyors of arms in the world. The US shipped $8.7 billions worth of arms in 2012, just edging out Russia. China ranked third at $1.78 billion. Thank goodness for our security. John Ayers.

State-owned Exploitation

Following on from the previous blog-post on co-operatives, the other panacea often presented is state-capitalism, sometimes described by the oxymoron term state-socialism.

Public ownership by the State is not socialism – it is only State capitalism. What many on the Left will do is add a caveat - that nationalisation with workers control is socialism. That too is erroneous. It still means state capitalism. Socialism is not state ownership or management of industry, but the opposite. Socialism abolishes the state.Industry is not transformed into the state, but industry is transformed into common ownership,  functioning industrially and socially through new administrative associations  of the producers, and not through the state. Socialists reject the idea that State capitalism is a phase of socialism. State capitalism can never become socialism  precisely because there exists  a state. A bait is offered to the workers of a “democratized” State capitalism by “democratizing” the government, placing it in the hands of “the people.” This policy is equally condemnable as strategy and tactics, – as strategy, it dispenses with the necessity of overthrowing the state as an indispensable phase of the Social Revolution; as tactics, it strengthens the state and weakens the proletariat by obscuring the fact that its power resides in ownership and control of the production process. The tendency toward a bureaucratic  autocracy is strengthened. The centralisation of economic management into the hands of the state has little to do with working class rule. Control of the nationalised industries is vested in boards which are appointed and even if elected just how could they change the nature of the capitalist beast - the requirement  to compete and make profits. State capitalism cannot exist without inflicting hardships on the workers.

Workers’ control implies the existence of a capitalist (or state capitalist) management. Workers’ self-management, co-operative production under the joint control of the workers in an enterprise, can also be achieved under capitalism, indeed has been on many occasions. Under capitalism it can only lead to workers driving down their own conditions as a result of capitalist competition or to the collapse of the enterprise.

The vast majority of British industry is not owned privately by individuals but corporately owned; by banks, by finance or insurance companies, by monopolies or by the STATE. These are all forms of capitalism in which capitalist property relationships remain intact. Surplus-value is still appropriated and production is governed through the market by the operation of the law of value and commodity exchange. These laws operate whether private companies or the state control production. The essence of capitalism is property relationships; ownership is merely a formal question, which can take MANY forms.

To portray nationalisation as a means of making inroads into the capitalist system is to ignore the central role of the state. The nationalisation fallacy is based on the misconception of the role of the government, which according to those who desire “public"-ownership, represents a neutral group representing the nation “above” both the workers and capitalists. Bitter and long experience has shown that the government, far from being a neutral in the struggle of the classes, is in reality a representative of the ruling class. Workers will find themselves prisoners caught between two expressions of the same capitalist class – the capitalists themselves and their government lackeys. Hence nationalisation can never be a means of making inroads into capitalism. To argue so is to deny the fundamentals of Marxian economic. For all these reasons there is no advantage, either strategic or tactical, in calling for the nationalisation of private industry. It is irrelevant to the real interests of the working people of Britain whether profits are in private or state hands. It diverts the fight for socialism to a fight for reformism and gradualism. By presenting nationalisation and other forms of state intervention as “socialist”, the Left has helped to turn people away from socialism by identifying it with the suffocating bureaucracy that characterises the capitalist state machine.

An important part of the SPGB’s work must lie in exposing the socialist pretensions and in opposing the false strategies of the Trotskyists who demand that they nationalise more and more industries. The Old Labour left demand nationalisation as a means of making inroads into the capitalist system – as a form of creeping socialism. The SWP and  SPEW (Militant) say that they are making “transitional” demands, that their approach is different to that of the Labour left but in essence their strategy is just as reformist. They claim that slogans for more nationalisation raise the question of state power and heighten the consciousness of the workers. Objectively, in the real world, all these organisations are serving the capitalist class in that they are attempting to mobilise the working class in order to bring about the expansion of state capitalism in many cases to rescue bankrupt private enterprises. The strength of the working class lies in their labour and their relationship to the means of production – let us help them to learn to use it! Not government ownership but common ownership.  

Jobs and earnings in Scotland

256,000 people part-time workers , or more than 10% of the entire workforce, a rise of of 80,000 on 2008, are in search of a job with full-time hours. The employment data shows there was a drop of 92,000 full-time jobs since the downturn began in 2008.

Between 2008 and 2012, earnings dropped more for part-time workers, down by 8.7% to a median £11.50 for men, and down 8.4% for women to £10.29.

 Earnings in Scotland as a whole have fallen 8.1%, in real terms at 2012 prices. Full time median hourly earnings reached £16.12 for men, and £13.78 for women.

The most recent figures show just over 300,000 self-employed workers in Scotland - one eighth of the workforce, up 33,000

A Prince And A Pauper

Prince Charles as a future king of England is forced to attend all sorts of press shows and say all sorts of nonsense to all sorts of cringing, sycophantic journalists but even he must have felt a little sick at this utterance. 'The Prince, known in Scotland as the Duke of Rothesay, met recovering servicemen and women at the Edinburgh House personnel recovery centre.  .... Among those he met was Paul Lambert, 32, who lost both legs in Afghanistan in 2009. The Prince praised him as a "great example".' (Times, 14 June) You own absolutely nothing. You go into a conflict that has nothing to do with you. You have both your legs blown off. Your life is ruined. A "great example" of working class stupidity is what we would call it. RD

And they call us impossiblists!

At least 5,000 people are expected to attend an anti-G8 march in  Belfast. Barack Obama is among the political leaders arriving at the Lough Erne golf resort in Fermanagh for the two-day meeting starting on Monday. A separate concert for the anti-food poverty campaign, spearheaded by charities working in the developing world, will be held in the city's Botanic Gardens in the. The concert has been sold out, with around 8,000 people due to attend, organisers said.

Campaigners behind the city centre march said: "We believe that achieving social, economic and environmental justice must be central to political decision-making."

Socialist Courier wish them well even if we cannot but view their approach as utopian. The G8 protests may demonstrate great strength of feeling they will also demonstrate a great weakness. The capitalist system constantly throws up issues that demand action amongst those who are concerned. As a result, protest tends to become a demand for an “improved” kind of capitalism which leaves the long-term reasons for protest intact. This has been the history of protest. In this sense, protest tends to set a stage for further protest and further demonstrations (care to remind yourself of how many there has been in the past?). Though the issues may vary - and on this occasion anti-gas fracking in Fermanagh features prominently - the message stays the same: “We demand that governments do this, that or the other!” The spectacle of thousands demanding that governments act on their behalf is a most reassuring signal to those in power that their positions of control are secure.  In this way, repeated demonstrations do little more than confirm the continuity of the system. The point is to change society, not to appeal to the doubtful better nature of its power structures.

Co-ops are for coping

One of the main proposals advocated by the New Economic economists and many others is worker-owned and controlled  co-operatives. It has never been argued by the Socialist Party that co-operatives are a means to-wards socialism but rather it is the aim of the people - the Co-operative Commonwealth.

The idea of the workers’ co-operative originated in the early days of the labour movement. It is based on the simple attractive idea: “Get rid of the bosses who make a profit from our work and instead work for ourselves so we can enjoy the full fruits of our work.” Capitalism is not to be overthrown by class war but undermined by the  cooperative movement until it crumbles is the theory  But how does the ownership of the factory by the employees differ from ownership by a capitalist? A cooperative has to buy its raw materials on the market, just the same as every other company. A cooperative has to sell its finished products on the market, just the same as every other company. A cooperative has to invest in new plant and equipment, just the same as every other company. Thus, they have to buy goods at the same price as any other capitalist concerns. They have to sell goods at the same price as any other capitalist firms. They have to compete for extra capital or borrowing as any other capitalist firms. To succeed the worker in a cooperative is obliged to attacked their own living standards by taking less pay, or intensifying his work-rate or laying off some of his colleagues. Workers’ co-operatives face all the problems of capitalist competition and require to resort to all the capitalist cost-cutting strategies. The cooperative  means the workers are landed with the responsibility of making the business a going concern which will involve workers on lower wages and in higher productivity. Those proposing cooperatives are advocating self-imposed sacrifice.

When people endeavour  to ease their life by shopping for their families by purchasing collectively with others at wholesale prices so as to benefit by the difference with retail prices, this is not to be condemned. We understand very well that in our present state of society the workers will try to alleviate  as much of their misery as they can, and to give their families as much comfort and satisfaction as they can. We do not condemn those food co-ops. But as Marxists we must observe that if these means of tackling their poverty and making  their life more bearable were the general rule, instead of being the exception to the present state of affairs, the consequence would be that the cost of living having become cheaper, wages would not increase and would even decrease.

 Employers would simply refuse to increase the wages of their employees with the explanation that they can now live very well, with their cost of living thus reduced so why should we pay more. We witness the proof of that everyday. Pay in London is higher because the costs of living there is more expensive than in the provincial cities and towns. [SEE APPENDIX]

The concept of co-operatives also suffers from the same problem that the market domination of the conglomorates such as Walmart have on local communities. The success of co-operatives would close down the small local corner-shop (the “mom and pop” stores as they are called in the US) as much as the opening of a giant supermarket does and place tens of thousands shop-keepers out of work.

There is still another reason why co-operatives can have no socialist value. The proponents of co-operatives insist that in the co-operatives for consumption, the antagonism between seller and buyer who henceforth are one and the same is done away with,  just as with profit of one at the expense of the other. Yet nearly all of them are obliged by the commercial pressures of the capitalist milieu, to go in for capitalism themselves. Therefore just instead of selling only to their members at the price of cost, they are more and more obliged to sell to outsiders for the sake of profits. The antagonism between seller and buyer, which it is the role of co-operation to abolish, is still in existence. They are more and more compelled by competition to look for means of existence and development outside the distribution of products and are compelled to sell to the public. In attempts to realise and accumulate profits commercially co-ops become only a new sort of department store, constituted by small workingmen share-holders instead of department stores constituted by large capitalist share-holders. Co-operatives cannot help being governed by all the laws which determine and regulate production and exchange in the society of profit of to-day.

 Despite their glowing recommendation co-operatives do not even prepare the elements of the new society. Capitalism itself has already prepared us for a long time, both materially and as organisationally to administer socialist society. It is precisely because of capitalism, that all the work of administration, direction, execution, the most scientific sort of work as well as the most manual, is carried out by members of the working class hired for the task. We can change the present way of running industry into a new one without any shock or disruption or upheaval. Everything is ready for this transformation or revolution, because the role of the capitalists to-day, does not represent any sort of work, even of directing, and they may disappear to-morrow without anything being touched or destroyed in the operating of the different sorts of industries.

 Appendix

 “However, the capitalist character of our worker has still another side. Let us assume that in a given industrial area it has become the rule that each worker owns his own little house. In this case the working class of that area lives rent free; expenses for rent no longer enter into the value of its labor power. Every reduction in the cost of production of labor power, that is to say, every permanent price reduction in the worker’s necessities of life is equivalent “on the basis of the iron laws of political economy” to a reduction in the value of labor power and will therefore finally result in a corresponding fall in wages. Wages would fall on an average corresponding to the average sum saved on rent, that is, the worker would pay rent for his own house, but not, as formerly, in money to the house owner, but in unpaid labor to the factory owner for whom he works. In this way the savings of the worker invested in his little house would certainly become capital to some extent, but not capital for him, but for the capitalist employing him...Incidentally, what has been said above applies to all so-called social reforms which aim at saving or cheapening the means of subsistence of the worker. Either they become general and then they are followed by a corresponding reduction of wages, or they remain quite isolated experiments, and- then their very existence as isolated exceptions proves that their realization on a general scale is incompatible with the existing capitalist mode of production. Let us assume that in a certain area a general introduction of consumers’ co-operatives succeeds in reducing the cost of foodstuffs for the workers by 20 per cent; in the long run wages would fall in that area by approximately 20 per cent, that is to say, in the same proportion as the foodstuffs in question enter into the means of subsistence of the workers. If the worker, for example, spends three-quarters of his weekly wage on these foodstuffs, then wages would finally fall by three-quarters of 20 = 15 per cent. In short, as soon as any such savings reform has become general, the worker receives in the same proportion less wages, as his savings permit him to live cheaper.” Engels in the Housing Question

Food for thought

On March 16th. Toronto Star reporter, John Upton, describes what it feels like in the morning when he opens the door of his apartment in New Delhi, " Fog drenched clumps of soot, ozone molecules, and microscopic bundles of nitrogen oxides flow into my chest, where some become lodged. Some of these particles might give me lung cancer. Others will enter my bloodstream. The airborne detritus puts me in danger of bronchitis, asthma, a lung infection, even high blood pressure and dementia." Yet New Delhi ranks in 12th. place on the list of the world's most polluted cities. Ahwaz in Iran holds the coveted position as the world's worst, the pollution being five times greater than that of New Delhi. In 2010, 3.2 million people died because of air pollution according to a study
conducted by the British Medical Association journal, Lancet. In "People of The Abyss", that Jack London wrote in 1902, that the dome of St. Paul's
Cathedral was being corroded by sulphur fumes and wonders what it does to one's lungs. Have things changed that much? As long as capitalism exists conditions like these will not only exist but be much sought after by the manufacturers. John Ayers.

Poor Scots and rich ones

In 2011/12, there were 710,000 (14%) Scots in poor households of which 420,000 working age adults, 140,000 pensioners and 150,000 children were living in relative poverty, 80,000 children were living with combined material deprivation and low income.

Within the last two years, Scottish incomes have gone down from an average of £461 per week to £436.

Welfare measures including changes to eligibility for child tax credits and working tax credits which could, on average, mean that households will become around £700 per year worse off.

Child poverty levels are expected to soar in Scotland over the next few years by at least 50,000, taking the total number of children who live in families that struggle daily to provide to over 280,000.

Ian Marchant, CEO of  Scottish Power had received £1.45m in 2011.The company's annual report showed he earned a basic salary of £870,000, up by £30,000. He also received shares worth more than £1m from the firm's long-term bonus plan. His pension was worth £680,000 - a total package of more than £2.63m 

The New Economics - Dusty Old Ideas

It is not at all surprising that when capitalism undergoes one of its periodic slumps and stops “delivering the goods” people, particularly economists, begin searching for better models.  People like Gar Alperovitz, a professor of political economy at the University of Maryland and member of a think-tank the New Economic Institute has made  an impact on left-progressives with his books and articles on  "post-capitalism". He is one amongst many with similar analysis and similar solutions.

A Hungry Society

Fifty years in prison for what? Murder? Rape? No, capitalism doesn't work that way. 'A habitual offender may have committed his final felony, after a judge sentenced him to 50 years  for stealing a rack of ribs from a shop. Willie Smith Ward, 43, attempted to steal the $35 large stack of ribs at the H-E-B store in Maco, Texas, by smuggling it underneath his shirt.' (Independent, 31 May) A $35 felony? Fifty years in prison probably seems just in this crazy society of capitalism. Why didn't he just starve? Capitalism has got to protect itself from workers like Ward. RD

Food for thought

New Democratic MPP, Taras Natyshak, is enraged about the exploitation of interns, "It's free labour. The longer we let this thing lie as a vague part in our employment laws, the longer it will be abused." Unpaid internships are unregulated by the Employment Standards Act and no statistics are taken, therefore, it should come as no surprise that the practice is spreading. Employers attempt to justify it by claiming that it is job training and few interns complain, hoping they'll get a job at the completion of their internship. The NDP wants the liberal government to clearly define internships and limit their length. Thus the NDP wants, in its reformist zeal, to decrease the extent of exploitation of these young people. The SPC wants a society where no exploitation of one human being
by another exists. John Ayers.

Who owns the North Pole - Part 59 - India, wants to

Nearly a month after India was admitted as an observer into the mineral-rich Arctic Council, India’s External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid is visiting Norway, a member of the eight-nation forum, where he will pay a visit to the Indian research station, Himadri, in Svalbard.

India’s research station in the Arctic, Himadri, operated by the National Centre for Antarctic and Ocean Research, was set up in 2008.  India has spent $3 million on research activities so far and plans to enhance the amount. During the next five years an amount of about $12 million is expected to be spent on research through the Himadri centre. Around 170 Indian scientists have written on Arctic research matters and 18 Indian institutions are focused on research related to climate through the Arctic.

“We are extremely interested in the Arctic region and intend to play an active role in the Arctic Council too,” said external affairs ministry spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin at a briefing, adding that it would be an area of focus for Khurshid while he is in Norway.

The Arctic region is estimated to hold 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil reserves and 30 percent of undiscovered gas deposits.

The Golden Parachute

After five years as boss of Royal Bank of Scotland boss Stephen Hester has announced plans to step down. Hester will leave later this year and will receive 12 months' pay and benefits worth £1.6 million and the potential for a £4 million shares windfall from a long-term incentive scheme.

Bank staff union Unite’s national officer Dominic said “With over 30,000 job losses over the last five years and major stress for RBS staff there is likely to be a lot of anger over Stephen Hestor's tax-payer funded multi-million pound exit package.”

Riot v Revolution

Socialists have been accused over the years of wanting to overthrow capitalism by force and violence. When we are accused of this, what they are really trying to imply is that socialists want to abolish capitalism with a minority, that we want to force the will of the minority on the majority. The opposite is the truth. We believe we can win a majority of the people to support a change in the system.  Socialism is not the regime of a minority. It cannot, therefore, be imposed by a minority.

 Our whole case rests on the assumption that violence comes, as, indeed, it generally does, from the side of the ruling class. We have no respect for the established order of things, knowing full well its ruthless disregard of human life and its indifference to human suffering and misery. We can sympathise with the crimes of the outlaw, created a criminal by society. But we know that the crimes and violence inflicted upon our class enemies only serve to strengthen them, and that they are not revolutionary but reactionary in their effects. We may excuse, but we cannot advocate violence. Violence can only to be resorted to in self-defence.

When the working class adopt means to the end; we have to make sure that they are means that reflect the end in view, and that they will hasten, not retard its attainment.  Rioting is simply the display of impotent rage. It is the tactics of despair, not a method for revolution. The capitalists’ power rest on the force of its state and  to appeal to force while all the arms are in the hands of  the ruling class is self-destructive.  It may well be that the revolution will not be achieved without violence; but we should be fools to provoke the fighting when we should have to fight at a disadvantage, when all the riot police and military resources are controlled by the master class, and all we have to oppose to them is bricks and broken bottles. In such circumstances, any use of  force, quite obviously, plays into the State’s  hands; every riot and every attack on property, gives them an excellent excuse to indulge in reprisals. We know that nothing would please the ruling class better than to goad socialists into premature “revolutionary” violence so they can suppress us. When a doomed insurrection inevitably fails it will have left the capitalist system intact and armed it with implacable fury. The fear of the ruling class will express itself in a long succession of reactionary years. And the workers will be bound and crushed for a long time. The pages of history recount this bitter lesson.

Workers and socialists have struggled long and hard for universal suffrage - a vote for everyone.  Elections indicate the strength of the different parties. A minority that, having taken part in the elections and having accepted them as a gauge, should then attempt to do violence to the majority, would would be opposed by a majority that, aware of its legitimacy of the ballot would not yield. The socialist’s task is organising for the revolution through the conquest of political power. We are by no means fanatics of democracy. The Parliamentary franchise is not an end in itself, but only a means to an end. We hold no illusions as to the value of the vote. Those votes are but the outward and visible sign of an inward invisible class-consciousness; the expression of a working-class revolutionary organisation. The power of the ballot depends, not upon the process, but upon the person behind the vote.

Great social changes that are called revolutions cannot (or rather can no longer) be accomplished by a minority. A revolutionary minority, no matter how intelligent and determined, is not enough, in to-day’s world to bring about a revolution. The co-operation and adherence of the majority are needed. The socialist revolution will not be accomplished by the action, or the sudden blows of a militant minority, but by the defiant and harmonious will of the immense majority. Whoever depends on physical force to bring about the revolution, and gives up the method of winning over the immense majority to our ideas, will give up at the same time any possibility of transforming the social order.

 Socialism cannot be achieved except by the will of the majority of people. Socialists do not rest content after abolishing capitalism but must continue and build a new type of society where production is administered in an ordered way. A new social system cannot be constructed by a minority. It can only function with the approval of the majority who will create from capitalism the various types of social property, co-operative, and communal. The common good will be its object. For the first time since the beginning of human history, a revolution will have for its aim, not the substitution of one class for another, but the destruction of classes, the inauguration of a universal humanity. In the socialism, the co-ordination and collaboration of effort will not be maintained by the authority of one class over another,but will come as the result of the free association. How, then, can a system based on the voluntary participation of all be instituted against the will, (or even without the will,) of the greater number? Socialism requires to be organised and accepted by almost practically all.

The political terrorist is either a fool or a villain; either carried away by sheer lunacy, or motivated by personal gain. The genuine revolutionary knows that in order to accomplish results or promote principle, there must be unity of action.  Hence,  the true revolutionary accepts the will of the majority. The object of a Socialist Party is socialism. To that end the education and organisation of the working class and their persuasion to Socialist principles is essential. We cannot have socialism without socialists. Therefore, the first duty of a socialist party is propaganda, in order to make socialists. The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working-class themselves. There is no other way. They cannot be emancipated against their will.

To the Socialist Party whose objective is the socialist revolution – the abolition of capitalism and wage slavery parliamentary action is not the only means but in  countries with parliamentary democracy we use it because it is there to use. But in doing so the immediate object in view is to win the people to the ideas of socialism – to make socialists and to organise the working class for the social revolution. That being so, the winning or losing of seats in any legislative chamber is of secondary importance. What is important is to win votes – not merely as votes, but as evidence of the growing strength of the movement. In other words, as has been well said, we count heads instead of breaking them. That is not to say that the winning of seats is of no importance at all. It is important for it enables us to capture control of the machinery of the state to deprive the capitalists of its use and it legitimises the appropriation of the capitalist class. Parliamentarism is simply the most effective and appropriate means to that end at the present time.

Progressing Backwards

The illusion nurtured by supporters of capitalism that workers are constantly improving their financial position is shattered by the IFS.  Wages have fallen more in real terms in the current economic downturn than ever before, according to their recent report. 'On top of rising cost of living, one third of workers who stayed in the same job saw a wage cut or freeze between 2010 and 2011, said the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS). ....... In 2009, the average public sector worker earned about £16.60 per hour, which dropped to about £15.80 in 2011, the IFS said. Meanwhile, hourly pay for private sector workers in 2009 was just over £15.10 and dropped to £13.60 in 2011.' (BBC News, 12 June) RD

Food for thought

Britain, like most countries these days, is up to its eyes in economic woes. Now David Cameron is talking about a "One nation, deficit reduction plan, from a one nation party", and opposition leader, Ed Milibrand, used the phrase 'one nation' forty times in his conference speech last Fall. Even Nick Clegg used it when he told everyone to "Pull together as one nation". The idea is to convince the working class that their interests are identical with those of the capitalist class, whether it is making products for them to sell at a profit in the market place or fighting wars to further the local capitalists' commercial interests, as opposed to the interests of capitalists in other countries. The plain brutal fact is that the working class of any country has more in common with workers ten
thousand miles away than with the capitalists in their own country. One may like certain things about the country one lives in, but it is folly to identify that with the country as a political identity that is a means whereby the few live well at the expense of the many. As for the term 'one nation', the arithmetic is a bit off because there are in fact two nations on this planet – those of the capitalist class and of the working class. The idea should be to abolish all concepts of nation and replace it with 'a world for the workers'. John Ayers