Patients are not Widgets

Dr Brian Keighley, chairman of the British Medical Association (BMA) in Scotland, hit at the NHS Trusts.

 "We now see health boards talking about 'their' patients, almost implying that the doctors it employs or contracts with are mere technicians in the pursuit of their corporate aim. What an insult to those of us who came into medicine to treat patients to the best of their ability." He said: "Bean counting and clinical direction by managers with top-down politically-inspired targets are not compatible with relationships founded on trust between physician and patient. Patients are not widgets and I get upset when they are treated as such, and when I am considered a mere tool within a corporate design. This slavish addiction to an ethos of corporatism and managerialism has led to doctors, nurses and other clinicians becoming progressively disempowered." He added: "What I want to see for my successors in the NHS is a return to what is at the heart of laudable patient safety and quality initiatives - the centrality of the patient and his or her relationship with their doctor, nurse or therapist,"

Imperialism: Plague on both houses

The Left-wing have just not been interested in any criticism of what has become a dogma in their circles: that socialists are duty-bound to support struggles for "national liberation". The "revolutionary" Left simply "trot" out the old anti-imperialism position of supporting the weaker country against imperialist aggression which refuses any real class analysis of war.

Lenin wrote a pamphlet which he entitled Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. In it he argued that, through a process which had been completed by the turn of the century, capitalism had changed its character. Industrial capital and bank capital had merged into finance capital, and competitive capitalism had given way to monopoly capitalism in which trusts, cartels and other monopolistic arrangements had come to dominate production. Faced with falling profits from investments at home, these monopolies were under economic pressure to export capital and invest it in the economically backward parts of the world where higher than normal profits could be made. Hence, Lenin went on, the struggle by the most advanced industrial countries to secure colonies where such "super-profits" could be made. When, after 1917, Lenin became the head of the Bolshevik regime in Russia the theory was expanded to argue that the imperialist countries were exploiting the whole population of the backward areas they controlled and that even a section of the working class in the imperialist countries benefited from the super—profits made from the imperialist exploitation of these countries in the form of social reforms and higher wages, Lenin argued that imperialism was in part a conscious strategy to buy off the working classes in the imperialist countries. His evidence consists of one quote from arch-imperialist Cecil Rhodes , and one from Engels to the effect that the workers of England "merrily share the feast" of its colonies.

Firstly his analysis is out of date when applied to the current situation. Perhaps more importantly Lenin's theory of imperialism Lenin's theory of imperialism pitted the working class of undeveloped countries against that of the developed ones. It led to upholding national interest against class interest. Lenin's position was not a mistake. The “labour aristocracy” theory had the political purpose of enabling the Bolsheviks to argue for the workers in the colonies to form united fronts with their local ruling classes against Imperialism. This in turn had the aim of dividing the working class internationally, and turning it into cannon fodder for capitalist war. Lenin's expanded theory made the struggle in the world not one between an international working class and an international capitalist class, but between imperialist and anti—imperialist states. The international class struggle which socialism preached was replaced by a doctrine which preached an international struggle between states.

The choice is ours to make

Marx’s motto was to “Doubt everything”.

In an age where the internet provides us with unlimited access to the direct sources there appears to be no limits to the misunderstanding and distortion of Marx. In books and articles there is continuous reference to Marx, attacking him from all sides for claims that he never made. Many critiques basically accuses Marx of a economic determinism which makes men puppets in the hands of economic forces and the Materialist Conception of History interpreted as economic determinism is found in a collection of Marx’s critics.

Marx’s approach to history is explained in his Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy and in the Communist Manifesto. Marx’s scientific method was to proceed by simplifying concrete and complex manifestations into an abstraction, which becomes less and less complex until reaching the simplest conception. Then, by systematically adding complicating factors there is a return journey towards empirical reality. Marx was a believer in abstraction, systematic analysis, and successive approximations to a reality too complex to grasp directly. “Scientific socialism” was not so much the argument itself but the means by which the argument was first thought out and the habitual mode of thinking of the individual which was both open-minded and sceptical, willing to embrace or drop an idea depending on the evidence, willing to change the theory if the evidence demands it.

People makes their own history. Nobody has everything predetermined for him or her. That is not Marxism. The Material Conception of History does not deny the influence of ideas and it sets out to explain where ideas come from, as against those idealists who say that ideas have an independent existence, and are the primary cause of social change. Marx presented a theory of social change that locates the ultimate causes of change within the material and economic conditions of life that we have to examine the underlying economic factors. This does not commit Marx to a form of economic determinism which falsely argues that only the economics is of significance, nor does it mean that he denied the importance of ideas in social change but it does mean to understand the complexity of any society, to understand the complex pattern of development of that society, then an understanding of its economic development is crucial to an understanding of its politics, its culture and its social development.

Food for thought

Who's to blame for this sorry state of affairs in Bangaldesh? The New,York Times (26/05/13) comes up with the answer – we are because of our hunger for cheap clothing. Others have blamed the greedy clothing retailers. No one yet that I have seen has targeted the capitalist mode of production because the retailers are absolutely doing the right thing for maximizing profit. That's what they are there for and their investors are quite happy with it.
The 'World Section' of "The Toronto Star" of April 27th. 2013, contained the encouraging news that many of the poor farmers in Guerrero State, Mexico, are waging a successful war against drug-fueled crime. Prior to January, this part of Mexico had one of the highest murder rates in the world, until residents declared they had had enough and organized into vigilante armies. They donned masks, picked up weapons, hunted down criminals and put them on trial before the community. They now claim that crime is down 95% showing what community action can do. Now they need to get rid of the other problem that creates the crime in the first place – capitalism. John Ayers

Why hunger and famine?

" As a member of Oxfam's humanitarian support team, I can be deployed globally at short notice. My job is to provide short-term leadership or support in emergencies or humanitarian situations. From last October, I have been based in West Africa as the senior humanitarian adviser for the Sahel region - Mauritania, Mali and Niger...The food crisis was widely perceived in the media to relate to food shortages which then caused widespread hunger and malnutrition...Although this played an important role at a local level, it wasn't the main cause as the following example illustrates. During the crisis, Niger was still exporting food and staple cereals were available in the markets. The problem, however, was the poorest and most vulnerable people hadn't produced enough grain to survive and couldn't afford to buy it in the markets. Once people run out of money they turn to "coping strategies", for instance getting into debt or selling off their assets including their valuable animals....For the poorest people who are vulnerable to food crisis, the main problem is access to food, not availability of food - food is usually available but they can't get it..." - Scottish Oxfam worker David Crawford

Famines are not inevitable and they do not happen in isolation from the rest of the world. A drought is a natural event. Mass starvation is not. They are the consequence of human decision-making. Public indifference will only be dispelled when the media begin to explain, carefully and accurately, how and why famine occurs.

There was no shortage of food in the world. Thats a verifiable fact. The causes of hunger and  famine have little to do with a shortage of food. The real problem is elsewhere. Capitalists are not interested in production to benefit the peoples of the world. They are interested only in profits. Despite the hunger and famine in dozens of countries it is not profitable to feed starving peoples if they cannot pay for food.  Thus we recognize that despite every humanitarian declaration of rights it is legal for any individual to be deprived of food and left to die of hunger. If the economists were honest that would even say that this is the general condition of society and capitalists are obliged to starve people. Without exaggeration, it can be seen that the whole of our current society supports the legality of famine. It is a crime to be without money and it is  punishable by the death penalty. The struggle to rid the world of famine starts not with the begging bowl and pleas for pity, but by breaking the criminal conspiracy of  capitalism.

Food for thought

 In the article "The Real Cost of T-shirts" (Toronto Star, 25/05/13), author, Hasnain Kazim, reveals that the cost of a polo shirt sold by Mango stores in London is $46 while Mango pays just $4.45 to the producers in Rana Plaza, Bangladesh. Danish brand Jack's sells shirts for $32.66 and pays $5.08 to the producer. Minimum monthly wage in Bangladesh is $38 per month. Hourly cost of making garments in Bangladesh is 32 cents, and in China, $1.44. That's the reason China is outsourcing work to Bangladesh. Bangladesh will outsource work to the anthills of Africa were costs are two jars of honey per day for ten million workers ants! Some bloody system! John Ayers

Fact of the Day

In "1066: The Year of the Conquest" historian David Howarth notes that the average 11th century British serf worked one day a week to pay for his house, the land that he fed himself off of, his access to his lord's wood for heating fuel, and a host of other provisions, including a barrel of beer for him and his neighbor on each Saints day.

The Peoples Assembly and Left Unity

No one is going to hand workers socialism on a silver platter...least of all the Socialist Party of Great Britain. Workers have been fighting year after year, and needing better organization and class unity more than ever.  The gravity of the situation confronting people with austerity cut backs is such as to require the fullest solidarity, the utmost measure of unity among all sections of the trade union movement.  “Unity is Strength” is the most basic lesson of working class struggle.  If our class, as a whole, does not fight the only ones who gain are the capitalists.

This is the reason for the Peoples Assembly Against Austerity taking place in London today. Trade-unionists supported by an assortment of left-wingers hope to provide an alternative to the cuts in living standards being imposed upon the working class.

Has it a chance?

 While union members must understand the strength of unity they must also realise their weakness in the economic field against the power of the employers, then it will turn to the facts of its situation for a solution and find that the way lies through organisation for control of the political power. Not until that is assured can the workers own the means of life and operate them for their own benefit. When that lesson is learnt the day of socialism will be dawning. The sentiment of solidarity must be embodied in practical organisation based, not upon the mere transient necessity for wage claims, but upon the permanent need of the workers for the abolition of the wages system. To that end the workers must organise as a class, not merely industrially, for the capture of supreme power as represented by the political machine.

The left-wing, despite referring to themselves as “socialists” have no confidence in the workers to win through. They tell us, socialism will come eventually someday – presumably, when we are all dead and gone. By this, they mean the job falls not to them but to others sometime in the future. There is no logic to this whatsoever. For the world is ready now and painfully waiting – how is socialism to ever come in the future when we are never to explain it to people here and now?

The left-wing  put forward a whole series of reformist demands that on paper might seem to be appealing. The only problem is that there is no plan to actually achieve these demands - for the reason that they are pretend demands. Trotsky himself called these kind of demands "transitional demands" - the idea being to look at everybody else's demands and make bigger demands so they sound great. Occasionally they might achieve a demand which will make them seem sincere, however the idea isn't to achieve these demands - it is to not achieve them! This is the Troskyists' grand master plan to make workers dissatisfied, so the latter will become revolutionary and flock behind their political leadership. In other words the workers are to be the infantry led by the Trotskyist generals. The left-wing have real aims quite different to the reform programme they peddle. In this, they are being as dishonest as any other politician, from the left or right. The ultimate result of this is disillusionment with the possibility of radical change.

If all their proposed reforms were adopted – nationalisation, the multitude of changes in the tax system, defence budget cuts, etc., we’d still be living in a money-driven, buying and selling economy, still working for wages and salaries, still insecure, being hired and fired, in short, in capitalism. The demand for reforms will often only succeed if it can be reconciled with the profit-making needs of the system. In other words, the reform will often be turned to the benefit of the capitalist class at the expense of any working class gain. The aim of the left-wing has always been to establish state capitalism, the profit system planned centrally by a miracle-performing state. The source of the wealth would still be the surplus value wrung from the working class. Lacking an honest revolutionary stance for a new society, the left-wing becomes caught in a pointless and frustrating circular battle with an economic system that is based on exploitation. As long as the accumulation of capital takes precedence, either in the hands of the individual capitalist or state institutions, the primary concern of exploitation of labour and making profit will take precedence over the concerns of human need.

Some say to Socialist Party members“Don't split the Left. We are all working for the same goal, so why don't you join us? We can get strength through unity.”
What we are not told is what basis there can be for unity. It is not the wish of the SPGB to be separate for the sake of being so. But are socialists supposed to unite with those who want to reform and administer capitalism? Are we to unite with those who claim socialism can be established by a well meaning leadership without a class-conscious working class? Do we unite with those who see socialism as a system based on state control and state ownership of industry? Revolutionaries must reject this appeal if they are to remain revolutionaries. If there is no common ground upon which agreement can be reached then there can be no unity. Our analysis of the left-wing is not based upon some narrow sectarianism—it's based upon principle. We do not, nor have we ever, supported capitalist parties, especially those that dress up in revolutionary garb in order to hoodwink the workers. The left-wing is an expression of all the political mistakes made by the working class last century—from the Labour Party to the Soviet Union. We do not doubt that well-meaning individuals get caught up in such chicanery for no other reason than a desire to see a better world. However, sentiment can never be a substitute. However, a socialist organisation will get nowhere without a firm grasp of democracy, sound Marxist principle, a disdain to conceal its socialist objective, and a membership in full possession of the facts about current society and the revolutionary alternative. Unlike the Left we openly advocate common ownership and democratic control.

We have seen a century of cruelly extinguished hopes of those who heaped praise upon the state-capitalist hell-holes which posed as "socialist states" which pseudo-socialists promoted. We have witnessed a system which has persistently spat the hope of humane capitalism back in the face of its advocates. The progressive enthusiasm of millions has been stamped out in this way. How different it could have been if all that work which has gone into trying to reform capitalism had gone into struggling to abolish it ? Historically, reform activities have dissipated the earnest energies of so-called socialists from doing any socialist work, whatsoever. The need for reforms is an all-time job. The Socialist Party is not going to do anything for the working class except to arouse their fervor, determination and enthusiasm for socialist objectives. Working-class understanding is at a very low ebb, therefore the membership in the Socialist Party's strength in numbers is puny. Apart from the feeble voices of the Socialist Party, the great mass of the workers are not exposed to socialist fundamentals. Nevertheless, the greatest teacher of all is experience. Eventually, all the groping and mistaken diversions into futile efforts of reforming and administering capitalism will run their course. People learn from their mistakes. Necessity is the latent strength of socialism. Truth and science are on the side of socialism. Socialism is no fanciful utopia, but the crying need of the times; and that we, as socialists, are catalytic agents, acting on our fellow workers and all others to do something about it as speedily as possible, the triggering agent that transforms majority ideas from bourgeois into revolutionary ones. The seeming failures, the disappointments and discouragements, the slow growth, only indicate that socialist work is not an easy task. What makes socialist work stirring and inspiring is not that there are short cuts, but that there is nothing else worth trying.

Some members of other organisations have the best of intentions, but good intentions do not change the nature of those organisations. Those “socialist" activists have claimed impressive “successes” and “victories” in every field except one. History have proven beyond any shadow of doubt that they have not remotely convinced the workers of the need for socialism. From their activities carried on in the name of socialism, the one thing conspicuous by its absence has been any mention of the socialist case. The efforts of these “socialist" activists has been geared to an attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable contradictions of capitalism.

The Socialist Party is not on "The Left". There is no such manipulation or dishonesty. We have always been opponents of nationalisation. We do not advocate that the working class should experience the disillusionment of yet another Labour government to realise that it would be once again anti-working class in praactice. It is interesting to note how small the memberships of the other so-called revolutionary parties are. It makes a shambles of the misconception that the Socialist Party is small because of our procedures or lack of participation in "the struggle", or our "unsound" or that favourite criticism for being “dogmatic and sectarian” that we lost members and influence. This is a historic and social phenomenon. The myriad parties of the Left all have serious declines in membership. It can be ascribed to a public's apathy that arises when high hopes raised by social reform programs only lead to disillusionment. Many of the Left persist in claiming that the masses require "revolutionary" leadership , yet we can see from the present spontaneous struggles of the Arab Spring, The Occupy Movement and the Spanish indignados, in Turkey and in Brazil that protest and resistance does not require political party leadership of a vanguard.

The Socialist Party does not minimise the necessity or importance of the workers keeping up the struggle to maintain wage-levels and resisting cuts, etc. If they always yielded to the demands of their exploiters without resistance they would not be worth their salt, nor be fit for waging the class struggle to put an end to exploitation. We full-heartedly support trade unions offering joint co-ordinated action to defend their members. Successes through such actions as striking and protests may well encourage other workers to stand up for their rights more but the reality remains that the workers' strength is determined by their position within the capitalist economy, and their victories will always be partial ones within the market system. Only by looking to the political situation, the reality of class ownership and power within capitalism, and organising to make themselves a party to the political battle in the name of common ownership for their mutual needs, will a general gain come to workers, and an end to these sectional battles. Otherwise, the ultimate result of the strikes will be the need to strike or demonstrate again in the future.The never-ending treadmill of the class struggle. Workers can never win the class struggle while it is confined simply to the level of trade union militancy. It requires to be transformed into socialist consciousness.

A Wasteful Society

Recent figures released by the UK Trade & Investment's Defence and Security Organisation illustrate just how wasteful capitalist society has become. 'The statistics show that defence exports surged by 62 per cent to £8.8 billion last year, easily outstripping growth in the global defence market of 45 per cent. A large chunk of the expansion is down to two deals struck by BAE Systems - a £1.6 billion sale of Hawk training jets to Saudi Arabia and a £2.5 billion order for 20 Typhoon and Hawk aircraft placed by the Omani Ministry of Defence.' (Times, 20 June) This manufacture of death machines is worldwide with Britain only producing about a fifth of the global total and ranking second to the USA. RD

Political Posturing

Politicians love making grandiose claims that have nothing to do with reality and the president of the USA came up with a wild one recently. 'President Obama used the backdrop of the Brandenburg Gate yesterday to urge Russia to leave the Cold War behind by agreeing to a one-third reduction in its nuclear arsenal.' (Times, 20 June) The USA has 7,700 nuclear warheads and Russia has 8,5000, so a one-third reduction would still leave enough nuclear warheads to burn the world to a crisp. RD

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.