Discussing the SPGB Case

A collation and re-editing and reformatting of various contributions to the RevLeft discussion thread adapted from here

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is the oldest socialist organisation in the UK and have far outlived most other groups. As for recruitment, the SPGB has perhaps the highest rate of member retention of any group and certainly isn't miniscule in comparison to other “Marxist” parties, (its among the larger groups in Britain which doesn’t say too much, though). Most “Marxist” groups disillusion and burn-out more people than they recruit. The master-disciple relationship is perpetuated in many “socialist” parties where the theorists of the executive committee “do the thinking” in private meetings and the rest “do the action”. The SPGB answer to how socialists should organise is transparence with all meetings being open to the public as the best education for the class self-organising for themselves.

It is only right and proper that the Socialist Party’s case is subjected to the closest scrutiny. We encourage questioning. Marx said his personal motto was to “Doubt Everything.”  Nevertheless it is comical  to read criticism of the party from those on the Left who decline to look in the mirror and identify their own even more stark failings. Of course, the SPGB are not perfect in its communication or interaction with the working class and we are always striving to improve but are the others on the Left any better at it!!

The Rich Are Getting Richer

                              

'The ranks of those with money to burn swelled by a million last year, taking the worldwide total of "high-net-worth individuals" to 12 million according to Capgemeni and RBC Wealth Management. In their annual survey, published yesterday, the two money experts found that the collective wealth of the world's well-heeled rose by 10 per cent to a record $46.2 trillion (£29.5 trillion) last year.' (Times, 19 June) To gauge just what this means it is important to realise that a "high-net-worth individual" is defined as someone with investable assets of at least $1 million, not including their main home and collectibles such as art, jewellery and vintage racing cars. The report goes on to say that in Britain 24,000 such individuals were created last year taking the total from 441,000 to 465,000. RD

Divided Scotland

Scotland's wealthiest households are now 273-times better off than the most deprived, according to Oxfam Scotland and the gap is widening. 

The number of workers who live in poverty has gone from 255,000 to 280,000 since 2008.

The report said that working tax credits were "effectively subsidies from the public purse to employers paying poverty wages", and that all employers should pay a living wage. Businesses paying less than the living wage cause the State between £5.9bn and £6.3bn each year.

The report explains "Experiencing poverty in this rich country is also intensely stressful. Stigmatisation through media and political rhetoric adds to individuals' sense of anguish and isolation. They, not society, nor the economy, are blamed for their poverty. Meanwhile, pressures to consume abound in a culture that elevates status and image above relationships, community contribution or care for the environment."

Judith Robertson, head of Oxfam Scotland, said she believed the existing economic model was not working. She added: "Despite decades of economic growth and a myriad of anti-poverty policies, the reality for too many Scots is a cocktail of high mortality, economic inactivity, mental and physical ill-health, poor educational attainment and exclusion from the decisions that affect them...We need to create a new prosperity that will benefit everyone in society. At the heart of this new prosperity would be community-led economies which focus on the quality and distribution of growth, creating livelihoods for the many, not profits for the few. Our economy shows this is practical and achievable. We just need the will to work together to make it happen.".

It will take a lot more than what Oxfam expects and much more than any capitalist government can be expected to deliver. It will require a socialist revolution to change society and transform the economy into one that is based upon providing for peoples needs and not to supply profits to the wealthy. 

Oxfam can identify the problem but falls short on the solution. 

What do we mean by SOCIALISM?

With the forthcoming Peoples Assembly to campaign against the cuts and calls for a new Left Unity workers’ organisation it is important that we have some sort of understanding of the basics. Political power is wielded by social classes through political parties. The transference of power from one class to another is not an automatic process. It involves a political struggle - a class war.

Non-revolutionary politics is about different sections of the ruling class struggling amongst themselves contesting elections for a share of the spoils in  profits and privilege. Different political parties represent different factions and interest groups seeking the lucrative control of the government. Different politicians with their own theories of how best to maintain the existing order and keep the support of the people, usually by securing this or that reform or concession for this or that section of the population. But all varieties of non-revolutionary politics PRESUPPOSE the continuance of the existing order in its fundamental structure: that is to say, in capitalist society. Non-revolutionary politics presupposes capitalist property relations, the exploitation of the working class by the propertied minority and the maintenance of the capitalist state.

The central political issue of our time, however,  is the issue of the class struggle for socialism. Every other question is of minor importance, since its answer can be found only in the solution of the central issue.  One of the main functions of capitalist  politics is to deceive the working class as to the real and central issue which confronts them. So long as the workers believe that their significant political choices lie WITHIN the capitalist order, capitalism itself, no matter what internal shifts take place, is not threatened. Every device serves this duplicity. Capitalist parties stage fake debate on “the fate of the nation”. They create the sham a populist party to direct discontent and dissatisfaction into safe channels. And when all else fails, the capitalist class can resort to a police state, justified by a mass hysteria whipped up by their media about homeland security or what-not to maintain control.

Socialists must strive to break through the deceptions of bourgeois politics. They must push aside all secondary and reformist distinctions, and pose directly the central issue: the struggle for socialism. The success of the Socialist Party in an election campaign is not to be measured in votes, but in the extent and the depth to which we have succeeded in bringing the central issue before the attention of the electorate. All of our propaganda, all our discussions are a campaign for socialism.

Socialism is not a reform, it is a revolution. This is the position held by all socialists everywhere. However, one cannot but feel that it is not always entirely clear what is understood by the word “socialism" so some prefer to add the adjective “revolutionary” socialism to distinguish ourselves from those who merely wish to patch up the present system and keep it. Socialists are not “reformers” — we are “revolutionaries.” But even this qualification can be confusing and requires clarification. By revolution, socialists do not mean violence or bloodshed. By “revolutionary socialism” we do not intend it to be a call to arms and to man the barricades. No, we mean by it,  the capture of  political power by the working class as opposed to the capitalist class. This is the essence of revolutionary socialism. Whoever agrees with the necessity of the organisation of the working class into an independent socialist party, distinct from and hostile to all capitalistic parties to capture the machinery of government in order to carry out the principles of socialism is a revolutionary socialist.

The terms socialist and socialism were first used by Robert Owen to describe the views of those who, like himself, were in favour of the substitution of organised co-operation rather than the chaos of competition, well before Marx and Engels adopted the words to signify their political thoughts. An alternate label, social-democrat, was first used, and made popular, by the Chartist leader Bronterre O’Brien, also some time before Marx and Engels. A social-democrat, according to O’Brien, was a man who regarded social questions as of paramount importance and desired to solve them by collectivist and democratic action. O’Brien took and used the term social-democrat to express the views of those who wished to bring about a complete social reconstruction under democratic forms.

Socialism starts out with the observation that our present system divides society into two classes, the “have all” and the “have nothing” class, and that it is the great mass of the people that do all the useful work who belong to the “have nothing” class. All the misery, all the injustice and disorder, result from the fact that one class monopolises the means of production and of life, and imposes its law on another class, and on society as a whole. The thing to do, therefore, is to break down this supremacy of this one class. All difference of class must be abolished by transferring to the whole body of the democratically organised community, the ownership of the means of production and of life, which to-day, in the hands of a single class, is a power of exploitation and oppression. The universal co-operation of all  must be substituted for the exploitative rule of the minority.

Socialists recognise the class war between the propertyless class and the possessing class as the inevitable historic outcome of the capitalist system and of the direct economic and social antagonisms which it has engendered and fostered.

Socialists formed into a political party will  use political institutions to educate and to prepare, as far as possible, peacefully for the socialist revolution. Socialists hold that the methods of giving legal expression to this great socialist change should be completely democratic in every respect.

Socialists aim is to transform capitalist property into social property and end the domination of the capitalist class which degrades humanity. Socialism will abolish all all classes, raises humanity to its highest level.

Socialists see that those antagonisms can only be resolved by the complete control over all the means of production, distribution, and exchange, by the whole people, thus abolishing the class State and the wages system, and constituting a Co-operative Commonwealth or a Social-Democracy.

A Scotland Divided

Shetland, Orkney and Western Isles authorities want greater revenue-raising powers, improved energy connections with the mainland and a stronger recognition of their "status" in a Scottish constitutional settlement. A key demand is for control of the sea bed, allowing revenue to be redirected from the Crown Estate to local needs. New tax powers could give islanders more revenue from renewable energy and fisheries. The three island council leaders set out their ambition in a joint campaign called Our Islands Our Future. 

Orkney Islands Council convener Steven Heddle said: "It is a measure of the importance of this to our three communities that we've joined forces today to ensure the voice of the islands is heard loud and clear during the pre-referendum debate. Islands by their very nature are special places with special requirements. The Western Isles, Shetland and Orkney each have a strong sense of identity. What we share is an abundance of natural resources and a pride in our cultural traditions."

Angus Campbell, leader of Western Isles Council (Comhairle nan Eilean Siar), said it represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity for the islands. "The constitutional debate offers the opportunity for the three island councils to secure increased powers for our communities to take decisions which will benefit the economies and the lives of those who live in the Islands," he said.

Shetland Islands Council leader Gary Robinson said he wants to strengthen existing governance. "There's no doubt that this is an historic opportunity for the islands, which will continue to punch above their weight in terms of their economic and cultural contribution to Scotland," he said.

Scottish Lib Dem party activists have already agreed that Shetland and Orkney should loosen ties with Scotland and the UK and that the islands have a separate right to self-determination. Tavish Scott, the Liberal Democrat MSP for Shetland said: "London is pretty remote from our Islands. When the Scottish Government spend every working day removing power, financial and policy responsibility from local people a stand must be taken. I am very pleased that the island councils have now produced a blueprint of what they want from their governments. Devolution on power in 1999 to the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh from London was meant to be about enhancing local government. Sadly the experience has been the opposite."

Socialist Courier has previously said there is no limit to self-determination. An independent Scotland with their Scottish regiments can be expected to suppress any attempt by Lerwick to take control of "their" oil. 

A Filthy Society

Supporters of Chinese capitalism often boast of the development of industry in that country but they seldom speak of the awful environmental cost of such development. 'In January and February 2013 air pollution levels in the capital Beijing and a number of other cities rose to what are believed to have been record levels. Dubbed the "airpocalypse". Beijing was shrouded in a thick cloud of smog. On more than one occasion the US embassy in the city, which monitors air quality and publishes the results on a Twitter feed, described the levels as "beyond index"." (Guardian, 18 June) In their drive for more production and more profits the Chinese capitalists care little for the health and well-being of their workers. RD

Can Capitalism Ever Afford Peace?

Another bloody war, and the hope of socialism is being buried again. The workers of Syria and other Arab lands are murdering each other at the bidding of capitalism.

The Western media except for the occasional report forgets that both sides in Syria are using hideous weaponry and committing horrible atrocities, and that the UK/US with its Arab monarchist/religious states are actively aiding one side, while Russia and Iran helps the other.

 The American and British administration have declined to make public the evidence and scientific proof of the use of Sarin and they are being allowed to say "trust us" on the issue of chemical weapons use and its consequences. The newspapers and TV news appear to readily accept such claims which is surprising considering their track record of previous misinformation and intelligence errors. Isn’t it true that that liars are untrustworthy?

Jean Pascal Zanders, a leading expert on chemical weapons who until recently was a senior research fellow at the European Union’s Institute for Security Studies. “It’s not just that we can’t prove a sarin attack, it’s that we’re not seeing what we would expect to see from a sarin attack.”

Greg Thielmann, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Arms Control Association, noted that the White House had a lack of a “continuous chain of custody for the physiological samples from those exposed to sarin.” The statement released by the White House Thursday, "does not eliminate all doubt in my mind,”

Philip Coyle, a senior scientist at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington, said that without hard, public evidence, it’s difficult for experts to assess the validity of the administration’s statement. He added that from what is known, what happened doesn’t look like a series of sarin attacks to him. “Without blood samples, it’s hard to know,” he said.

 Anthony Cordesman, a security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, wrote Friday that “the ‘discovery’ that Syria used chemical weapons might be a political ploy.”

Meantime, other informed commentators such as UN representatives suggest that “...there are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated. This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities.”

Many supposed “peace-makers” now call for a “No-Fly Zone”. There is no such thing as a “limited” no-fly zone. It  means essentially a declaration of all-out war.  Once the US and its allies start a no fly zone they will expand it and intensify it as they take countless other military actions to protect its zones until the Syrian government falls.

During the no-fly zone in Libya, a country with substantially less effective air defences than Syria, the US backed it up with all manner of refueling, electronic jamming, special-ops on the ground. Over the 192 days of patrolling the Libyan no-fly zones, NATO countries flew 24,682 sorties including 9,204 bomb strike sorties. NATO claimed it never missed its target but that was also not true. Hundreds of civilians were killed in Libya  by no-fly zone attack aircraft  that either missed their targets and emptied their bomb bays before returning to base  while conducting approximately 48 bombing strikes per day using a variety of bombs and missiles, including more than 350 cruise Tomahawks.

At a Congressional hearing in 2011, then US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates explained “a no-fly zone begins with an attack to destroy all the air defenses … and then you can fly planes around the country and not worry about our guys being shot down. But that’s the way it starts.”

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is part of the World Socialist Movement, companion political parties in the struggle for a socialist society. The call by Marx and Engels in the concluding words of The Communist Manifesto : “Workers of the World Unite!”  caught at hearts of people everywhere.

The slogan advocates solidarity in a capitalist world divided into states with opposing and conflicting interests, a world split up, criss-crossed with frontiers and borders. potential explosive powder kegs the world over threatening to blow up civilisation. Nowhere is there security. There is talk of peace while there is preparation for war. The need for disarmament is announced while the countries arm to the teeth. The world  hardly recovers from one war and it prepares and then  launches another one,  that draws in all nations whether they like it or not, which means the wholesale destruction of men, women and children.  The stand of the Socialist Party is to hold the capitalist class accountable for every drop of blood shed by people in war. Capitalism has no peaceful, non-violent, socially beneficial way of resolving national conflicts  because it has an automatic, built-in limitation: it may not overstep the profit interests of the dominant capitalists.  It remains the great and tragic paradox of our age – poverty in the midst of plenty and it is underlined by  a social system which cannot satisfy the most elementary needs of the people, squanders its vast resources for war: That is one of the greatest indictment of world capitalism. In a socialist world, that most damnable instance of capitalist greed and inefficiency – war – would be a thing of the past. Socialism could take the vast resources which are available and rather than devote them to destruction, use them for constructive purposes .

There is only one way to avoid this slaughter – a world revolution which will replace the struggle between nations by social co-operation. The task is to put an end to war forever by putting an end to its cause, the capitalist system. Humanity must choose between the continuation of the capitalist system which leads to destruction and the alternative option -  a revolution organised on the basis of solidarity and reciprocity through the socialisation  of the forces of production. Socialism will make of the world one country, single and indivisible. In each region and district, taking into consideration their cultural and linguistic identities, the “independence” of each “peoples” will be assured and each will by free co-operation work together for the common progress and happiness of all people.

 The Party’s task is not to concoct some fashionable means of helping the workers. It is to  assist  workers in grasping the class relations that underlie exploitation and all oppression and grasping the general and long-term interests of the working class in overthrowing capitalism and ending class society. It has been argued that thee exists the concept of a “good war”. That socialists should defend  the democratic liberties which had been won by the working class by allying themselves with their “own” rulers against a more brutal dictatorship. Should a “less reactionary” ruling class be supported against a “more reactionary” one? It is the same question that was asked at the start of the First World War and again at the beginning of the Second World War. It is impossible to protect the democratic liberties of the working class by subordinating the class struggle to agreements and collaboration with the ruling class.  Support for war means support to the narrowing down of democratic rights to the point where there is no longer any difference between the democratic and that of a totalitarian  country. The way to preserve democratic rights is for the workers to defend these rights against their own ruling class, their own main enemy.

The chief aim of the Socialist Party in event of war must be to warn the workers against allowing themselves to be misled by the lies of the media and the mutual recriminations of capitalist groups, and to remember that the worker in enemy countries is just as much a victim of capitalist oppression as they are —that even though they are compelled by circumstance to fight against each other, that it will not be long before they are again compelled to help each other against the common foe – capitalism – whose machinations have caused war. The capitalists make huge profits out of war and war preparations. War and its mass butchery can only bring hunger, misery and want. We must fight against the real cause of war, and against the people that benefit from it. Our enemy is capitalism everywhere. The fight for socialism is the fight for peace. The enemy is not the men and women of other lands; it is the capitalist class at home. There is only one way to prevent war is by the overthrow of capitalism, the real root from which war springs.

Behind the Statistics

Various charities use different statistics about malnourished children's deaths. Some claim a child dies every 15 seconds from hunger while others that a more accurate figure is every 10 seconds. 'This latest, the 10 seconds one, is based on a figure from a very reputable source - The Lancet, an internationally renowned journal which recently published a paper saying that more than 3 million children died of under nutrition in 2011.' (BBC News, 18 June) Ten seconds or fifteen seconds - who cares? We live in a world that is capable of feeding, clothing and  housing the whole population. It is only capitalism that condemns millions to an early grave. RD

Food for thought

Forty-five million Americans now rely on food stamps to make ends meet. The cost of the program has risen from $33 billion in 2005 to $78 billion in 2011. This has made the capitalist class, who has to pay the taxes for such programs, nervous. It eats into profits. Need doesn't come into it, money does.

King Carlos of Spain has been under fire for his lavish lifestyle in the face of Spain's dire economic situation. Trips such as his expensive forays elephant hunting in Africa while fellow Spaniards starve have brought such criticism that he has been forced to hand over his $27 million, forty-one foot yacht, Fortuna (!). Poor boy, but at least he'll save the cost of refuelling it - $26, 400. John Ayers.

Carry on protesting

Our companion blog Socialism Or Your Money Back carries an interesting post on protests and demonstrations.

This, too, explores the topic of how to express ideas for change.

Demonstrations are meant to reveal the strength of popular opinion or feeling and they are an appeal to the “democratic conscience” of the State. That’s the theory. However, if the State authority is open to democratic influence, the demonstration wouldn’t be necessary; if it is not receptive to peoples opinion, it is unlikely to be influenced by an empty show of force containing no real threat. It would now seem that the true function of demonstrations is not to convince the existing State authority to any significant degree. Such an aim is only a convenient rationalisation. It is an assembly which challenges authority by the mere fact of its coming together. The demonstrators present themselves as a target to the so-called forces of law and order. It is in the nature of a demonstration to provoke violence upon itself. Its provocation may also be violent. But in the end it is bound to suffer more than it inflicts. This is a tactical truth and an historical one. The historical role of demonstrations is often to show the injustice, cruelty, irrationality of the existing State power. The larger the movement, the more powerful the police ranks that will be mobilised, and the greater the escalation of the violence.

An increasing number of people have recognised the futility of the huge peaceful  marches. In the past, the government viewed these pacifist marches with apprehension, but today they are accepted as part of the scenery. Recent demonstrations have become increasingly more militant and therefore more violent. Methods formerly accepted – such as sit-downs and rigid obedience to stewards and police – are being abandoned as obsolete. In its place has come the gesture politics. Relatively small groups of “autonomists” , the black bloc,  take to the streets, faces masked, for ritualised attacks on symbolic property and clashes with the police. Disorder would feature prominently in television news broadcasts, and then ...everything would return to normal. If you really want to transform society, mayhem proves no serious strategy.

Massive, defiant protests aimed at decisive political change ended up, in fact, ignored by the State, leaving protesters to return homes and their jobs. At the start of the Iraq war, hundreds of thousands of people marched in protest against it. The decline of the movement since then has been rapid. No one could seriously believe that even impressive demonstrations will alone stop or end the war in Iraq and elsewhere. Sometimes our protests express our genuine and sincere anger and indignation but it’s still always a matter of protests accepting that, the capitalist class run the country and we’re just trying, to make sure they don’t get away with too much.  The “practical” solutions the “radicals" offer with their chants and placards often amount to proposals for self-reform and self-regulation (after all the State is the capitalist's own state). This is indeed a pipe-dream, asking capitalism not to be capitalist! The reformists and leftists  pretend that if only the government followed different policies, it would be possible to have rising real living standards, improving health, education and welfare, and what have you. They’re lying. They even  know they‘re lying, but more importantly, the people they’re asking to take to the streets know they’re lying, so naturally people don’t come.

If slaves go on demanding that their masters loosen their chains, they deserve to remain slaves, because they accept having masters and they therefore accept slavery. We have to build a movement to overthrow our masters, and run the world ourselves, and solve its problems ourselves, instead of demanding that our masters find some solution for us. The alternative, “as everybody already knows” is socialism.  But if that’s what the Left is fighting for, why can’t they spell out (at least in broad outline), just what it means, and how they propose getting there? Why do they always avoid the issue. And when some actually do reveal their objective when it is looked closely at what sort of “alternative” the Left really want, it’s not at all surprising they don’t want to talk about it, or that many more won't listen. Most groups, at best, just want some of the most glaring injustices of capitalist society to be resolved and actually have no vision of a better world, with fundamentally different social relations.

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