health and safety

The number of people who died at work in Scotland rose last year, an increase driven by fatalities in agriculture and industry, a new report reveals.  There were 22 deaths at work in Scotland in 2012-13. Deaths rose north of the Border for the second year running, while falling across the UK. The death rate in Scotland is now 0.9 per 1,000 workers, almost double the 0.5 in England.

David Snowball, regional director for Scotland and the north of England for the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), which compiled the report, said risk-taking farmers, and a lack of precaution in industry, were factors in many of the deaths.

The Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) wants more to be done to protect workers. Grahame Smith, STUC general secretary, said: “Once again we have seen a rise in the number of workers killed in Scotland – 22 workers left for work never to return home and this is unacceptable and does not compare to an overall reduction in the UK wide figure of 148 which is 24 fewer than last year. These figures are the tip of the workplace fatality iceberg and do not include deaths through industrial disease, occupational traffic accidents or in sectors not[covered by the HSE].”

The STUC also wants to see fatal accident inquiries processed quicker and their recommendations enforceable by law. “It takes too long for bereaved families to get justice,” assistant secretary Ian Tasker said. “When sheriffs do make recommendations there is no legal basis for them to be brought into law.”

A Political Revolution

There is scarcely any subject upon which there is greater confusion of thought than that of the relation between reform and revolution. Throughout history long periods of imperceptible growth and development have been followed by sudden upheavals, which, notwithstanding their apparent isolation, are really incidents in and a part of the general social evolution.

In the system known as capitalism there is a class struggle between workers and capitalists and the reason is not difficult to understand. The means of production today are privately owned. A small section of society own all the factories, mines, mills, workshops and through that ownership they are able to live a life of ease and luxury. The other section owning nothing are forced to sell themselves as workers to the owners of property in order that they get food, clothing, shelter for themselves and their wives and children.

Many political parties claim to exist only for the purpose of assisting the working class and have drawn up programmes of social reforms which they all guaranteed would, if the workers would only trust them and vote for them; solve all the ills which afflicted the working class. The Socialist Party of Great Britain has no reforms on its programme and is opposed to all parties who asked the workers to support a reformist policy. Reform of capitalism would still leave workers in their slave position. Reforms, apart from the fact that in many cases they had proven worse than the evil which they set out to remedy, were but the normal features of capitalism. Capitalism and their representatives had been busy reforming the capitalist system since it had been established but in spite of all their reforms the condition of the working class was worse today than ever it was in its history. Defenders of capitalism boast reform is the antidote to revolution. The parties of the Left with their ever-changing lists of reforms should be an example to the workers of the futility of wasting valuable time and energy attempting to reform a system which could not be reformed in the interests of the working class.

An injury to one is an injury to all

Ignorance leads to indifference. If somebody suffers and I don’t do anything to diminish his or her suffering, something is wrong with us. One can be raised in ignorance and educated that eliminates others’ suffering. Entire populations can be psychologically shaped this way, with those doing the shaping being the truest of the true believers. Such conditioned ignorance lays the foundation for indifference to the fate of others.

It is all too easy to blame immigrants for causing problems such as unemployment, bad housing or crime. Whether it is Eastern Europeans or Asians, a finger can always be pointed at “them” for making things worse for “us”. Some cannot contain their indignation that immigrants should try to come here at all and talk about foreigners undermining “our” culture. It is bulls**t. The problems facing working people and their families are not caused by immigration or immigrants and will not be solved by the Fortress Britain or a policy of "British Jobs for British Workers". They are caused by capitalism.

 The immigrants who now try to settle in Britain come at the bottom of the social scale, taking the worst houses, accepting the worst conditions. Migrants are rarely well off in the country they move to, forming an underclass with little if any security of employment or housing. Immigrants often receive low paying work in the service industry (the 3-D jobs - dirty dangerous and difficult), once they enter the developed capitalist system and they can never afford the education to gain higher paying jobs. As a result they stay in the service industry their entire lives, being some of the most lowly-paid members of the working class of wage and salary earners. Selling the Big Issue on the streets may not be everyone's idea of escape from poverty but for many it may be a lot better than where they have come from.

At the behest of politicians in search of scapegoats the he mass media choose to concentrate on perpetuating urban myths about the arrival of foreign workers, furthering divisions and mistrust.  Without doubt some English or Scottish workers may have seen their pay lessen from the competition of newcomers. From this point of view, then, immigration might be a minus for British workers. We should not, however,  blame another worker for our poverty, whether migrant or not, whether illegal or legal. Those travelling long distances through fear or desperation are people no different to ourselves. Instead of falling for the divide and rule tactics which weaken us all, workers should recognise who their real enemy is and work together to defeat the system that enslaves us all. Employers needs a reserve army of unemployed, to exert a downward pressure on wages. A  labour shortage threatens the growth of the economy because it puts the working class in a strong position and clearly the employers wish to counteract this. All things being equal, a labour shortage causes wages to rise and thus puts workers in a comparatively stronger bargaining position.

 Naturally, the bosses will always seek to counteract such a situation by importing (often cheaper, more compliant) workers, which in turn intensifies competition among workers, potentially fermenting xenophobia and racism. For workers fighting over crumbs in lower wage unskilled jobs, the temptation to blame  unemployment or low wages on foreign labour may be strong. But nevertheless such views are false. The blame lies with the   employers’ demands for cheap labour. In the nineteenth century, capitalists in Britain welcomed many thousands of Irish immigrants to  keep wages down. These days it is the influx of Eastern Europeans which  had the effect of increased unemployment for existing workers and putting a downward pressure on their wages in some sectors.

No ruling class is ever completely unanimous. Capitalism creates conflicts within each ruling class since no two capitalists have interests which are exactly the same. The question of immigration causes disputes within the British ruling class. Some want to establish the principle that when a particular industry or trade is short of workers, its owners have the right to bring in workers from any other country, and thus help to counteract the danger of having to raise wages and salaries. Some other members of the capitalist class feel it would be a mistake to let in too many workers from other countries. Some members of the capitalist class take advantage of any "foreign" immigration to whip up nationalist feeling, using the perception among workers (who have the votes) that there is some threat to themselves from competitors from overseas. Those who are in possession of little are easily frightened by the threat of some other coming to take it away. The appearance of jobs going to these “foreigners” whilst their “own” go without work reinforces the illusion that migration causes unemployment.

Some capitalists have pointed out that this policy of importing migrant labour put an intolerable stress  on housing and welfare service such as education and health. Now that the economy is going through yet another of its inevitable cyclical crises, a crisis which makes migrants unwanted on the labour market, it now  puts the very same  politicians under maximum pressure to keep migrants out so to minimise state expenditure. So while many of those seeking to enter the UK might be well-qualified machine operators, engineers, builders, doctors etc (as they are), if the capitalist economy is going through yet another of its inevitable cyclical crises, there'll be no employers or money to pay for these much-needed workers. Public spending reduces the nation's profitability the bigger it gets, and is especially disliked when making profits is increasingly difficult. Racism and nationalism become more likely as high unemployment and poverty produce considerable social suffering, provoking the pained to find and lash out at those they think responsible, and politicians in need of scapegoats, chauvinistic bigots and money-mad tabloids all eager to finger some other victim as the cause .

Yet some dispute this negative side of immigration. The Government's fiscal watchdog, the Office for Budget Responsibility, said higher levels of immigration would help the economy to grow faster and ease the pressure to cut spending. The OBR said that an ageing population would put pressure on state finances through increasing health spending, higher state pension costs and rising social care bills. The OBR also forecast that if net inward migration were cut to zero over the next five decades, the scale of the public austerity facing Britain would need to be three times larger. Instead, a higher net migration than in our central projection would put downward pressure on borrowing and PSND [public sector net debt], as net immigrants are more likely to be of working age than the population in general.

Those who today argue for “fair” or “just” immigration controls ought to realize that over a century ago trade unionists were fighting controls in principle. They rejected all notions of “fair” controls and instead appealed for workers solidarity against a system that exploits all workers. The problems we face are not caused by workers from other parts of the world migrating to this part, but by the capitalist system of class ownership. What an extraordinary idea it is that members of the human race should be forced to remain on that small section of the earth's surface in which they happened to be born. Who gave the world's rulers the right to tell us which bit of land we should live on? How much longer are we willing to sit around and let a tiny minority divide us? Socialists understand that the thing which makes workers leave behind their communities, and go to a place where their language is not spoken, the same food is not eaten or the same clothes are worn , is the wages system itself.

Unique amongst all political parties, left or right, the Socialist Party has no national axe to grind. We side with no particular state or government. We have no time for border controls. The world over, workers must do what they can individually and collectively to survive and resist capitalism. In many parts of the world that means escaping political tyranny or economic poverty. Workers should try and resist taking sides.

Fact of the Day

 Annually we lose 24 billion tons of topsoil and 160 billion tons of aquifer water, we create 6 million hectares of desert every year while 17 million hectares of forest disappears. We have less than 20% of 1980’s fisheries stocks. These are shocking statistics.

We have to address the way we produce and transport food so it is within the resources of the planet.

End competition and embrace collaboration.

The SPGB and the IWW

In regards to the Industrial Workers of the World the Socialist Party of Great Britain has revised its attitudes as a result of changes within the IWW. The official position is that as long as the IWW behaves and acts as a workers union then its up to individual SPGB members  to decide whether or not it is in their interests to join.

Previously, during the formative years of both organisations, the IWW was seen as more of an anti-political i.e. an anarchist organisation, promoting industrial unionism, which the SPGB disavowed as sectional and undemocratic, since it was about industries controlling the means of production and distribution and not society as a whole, those outside the work-place. But the SPGB now accepts that in recent years the IWW can be more accurately described as an a-political organisation, a difference of emphasis, since it itself has changed its approach to the class struggle and for all practical purposes now acts as a democratic and progressive, inspirational and educational union that is to be recommended for membership when it is to the workers advantage, which is the majority of the time and situations. No longer being divisive with outright opposition to the pure and simple reformist trade unions by its adoption of the dual -card policy has been another change which differentiates the present from the early IWW that the SPGB criticised. It has also accepted the principles of agreed contracts of employment and even state recognition and registration. For all practical purposes it now operates as a union and an umbrella for workers of many political persuasions and not just the one. So it is not a formal position to the IWW that has been taken by the SPGB but an informal one (and a practical one), which can change if the IWW decide that certain ideas should take precedence over others or again become dominated by one particular strand of political thought, rather than an open and inclusive workers' organisation which exists now. We also have to be minded that even within syndicalist unions the more effective the union is in achieving victories against capitalism , the more the non-radical workers will join it for the trade union benefits and this could just as like water down its revolutionary aspects as to militantise those new recruits. It is just as likely that they will desert the union if the revolutionary aspirations of the union hinder the practicalities of the daily bread and butter fight .

The Loch Ness Monster

Italian geologist Luigi Piccardi credits the Great Glen fault system for reported its sightings.

"There are various effects on the surface of the water that can be related to the activity of the fault," Piccardi said in an interview published in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica. Piccardi also claims that alleged Loch Ness monster sightings have coincided with periods of seismic activity. "We know that this was a period [1920-1930] with increased activity of the fault. In reality, people have seen the effects of the earthquakes on the water."

Socialist Courier holds that there is more truth in the Loch Ness monster than the claims of the Labour Party or the SNP that they represent the true interests of the working class. 

Martian Story

Another short story from the archives of our companion party Socialist Party of Canada.

During one of those long weekends that crop up every so often, an adventurous Martian, deciding for a change to visit the earth, gathered the wife and kids together and set off through space. Arriving after a while at his destination, he and his family started out to see the sights and met a sad-looking Earthling. There was a dialogue.

Martian: "Why such a gloomy face, my friend?"

Earthling: "Hungry."

Martian: "Hungry! How come? The crops around here look good. The factories look big and plentiful."

Earthling: "That's just the trouble. The crops are too good. The factories are too plentiful. We've produced too much."

Martian: "Hungry because you've produced too much?"

Earthling: "Say, Mac, what's the matter? Ain't you been around?"

Martian: "Well — ah — I am a stranger in these parts, if that's what you mean. How can you be hungry if you've produced too much?"

Earthling: "That's always the way it is. When you produce too much, you're no longer needed at the factory. You lose your job and this means you have no wages to buy the things you've produced. So you go hungry."

Martian: "That's strange. I'll have to try and figure it out. But how much worse must conditions be when you're not producing too much?"

Earthling: "That's where you're wrong. When there isn't very much, the wheels of industry are turning full time, everybody is working and we have prosperity. When we have the least, that's when we have the most. It's when we have too much that we don't have enough. And when we have too much, we have to wait for the surplus to become wasted or destroyed or used up somehow till there's hardly any left and we can all have enough again."

Martian: "Get the kids back in the saucer, ma! We're going home!"

J.M. (Jim Milne)

Addressing the Green Party

Many Greens claim to advocate a society based on cooperation and production for use, a sustainable society where production is in harmony with the environment and affairs are run in a decentralised and democratic manner. They argue that only in such a system can ecological problems such as pollution and global warming be solved. The ultimate aim is a participatory economy, based on smaller-scale enterprise, with a greatly-reduced dependence on the world market. What is being proposed is the abolition both of the world market, with the competition for resources and sales it engenders, and of existing centralised states, and their replacement by a worldwide network of smaller human communities providing for their own needs. This will involve a steady-state economy based on maximum conservation of materials and energy.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain place ourselves unambiguously in the camp of those who argue that capitalism and a sustainable relationship with the rest of nature are not compatible and unless the Green Party embraces socialism, their vision is unachievable. Because people believe there is no alternative to capitalism, it keeps on existing. The environmentalist’s dream of a sustainable ‘zero growth’ within capitalism will always remain just that, a dream. If human society is to be able to organize its production in an ecologically acceptable way, then it must abolish the capitalist economic mechanism of capital accumulation and gear production instead to the direct satisfaction of needs.

A Society Without Conflict

It is the sort of event that disgusts socialists. That people should be celebrating death, destruction and militarism but we have even got the Lord Provost of Glasgow celebrating the same nonsense at this awful  Armed Forces Day. 'it is important that our serving military and our veterans know they have the support of this city and the whole of Britain.' she said.' (Sunday Express, 30 June)Her view and the few of millions of others is that there is something wonderful about killing people, makes us sick. We want a new society. Inside a socialist society there will be no armed conflict. There will be no lord provost either talking nonsense. RD

On the scam

Lord Smith of Kelvin, the Scots chairman of the UK Government's flagship Green Investment Bank (GiB), has come under fire after it emerged he earns more than £2300 a day in his part-time role. The executive, one of Scotland's leading business figures, is paid £120,000 a year to work one day a week at the publicly owned Edinburgh-based GiB, set up to invest in environmentally sustainable projects.

Full details of his remuneration emerged as the bank made what it said was an expected net loss before tax of £6.2m in its first 10-and-half months.

Lord Smith's remuneration in other posts includes £250,498 as chairman of Weir Group for 2012, £353,000 as Scottish and Southern Energy chairman for 2013 and about £83,000 as director of South Africa-based Standard Bank. Lord Smith, who chairs the organising committee for the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games, was appointed the Chancellor of Strathclyde University which he undoubtably claims expenses for. 

A spokesman for Lord Smith said: "Frankly, Scotland needs more people like Robert Smith."

Socialist Courier cannot agree with that assessment!

Worldwide crises need global solutions

That headline in the Scotsman immediately caught our attention and raised our hopes. Yet the very first sentence proved disappointing. “ Mobilising action to develop the planet sustainably without winners and losers will require international co-operation on a huge scale.” [Socialist Courier emphasis] While the declared aim appears to be admirable it contains a fatal flaw. It assumes  the continuation of the market system and  the continuation of the capitalist system which is the cause of the problems in the first place.  It remains firmly wedded to a belief that capitalism can be reformed so as to be compatible with achieving an environmentally sustainable society.

The article by May East, a CEO of CIFAL Scotland, a United Nations Institute for Training and Research sustainability centre based in Edinburgh,  continued “about the need to understand the convergence of multiple crises. With half the world’s growing population living in poverty, reserves of fresh water becoming increasingly scarce and climate change threatening to make large swathes of the planet unsuited for food production and habitation.”

The explanation is not complicated or complex to comprehend. The excessive consumption of both renewal and non-renewable resources and the release of waste that nature can’t absorb that currently goes on are not just accidental but an inevitable result of capitalism’s very essence. The capitalist system creates vast amounts of energy waste in the military and its socially useless jobs such as marketing, finance and banking which are part of its profit making machine. Endless growth and the growing consumption of nature-given materials this involves is built into capitalism. Capitalism differs from previous class societies in that under it production is not for direct use, not even of the ruling class, but for sale on a market. Competitive pressures to minimise costs and maximise sales, profit-seeking and blind economic growth, with all their destructive effects on the rest of nature, are built-in to capitalism. These make capitalism inherently environmentally unfriendly. The ecological contradictions of capitalism make sustainable, or "green" capitalism a confidence trick. The only way in which the article’s aims could be achieved is through socialism.

The author appears to be rather delusional on the subject of the government and international NGO summit successes, from 1992 pledges to the more recent promises. Capitalist politicians have proved incompetent to deal with the problem.

Sadly, the Scotsman article concludes with a list of reforms to be applied which are no doubt of some merit but as for them being a global solution to the world-wide environmental crisis, little better than a band-aids.

The author and her organisation is setting out to impose on capitalism something that is incompatible with its nature. The Socialist Party place ourselves unambiguously in the camp of those who argue that capitalism and a sustainable relationship with the rest of nature are not compatible. Perhaps, one day she will join us. The real powers of action are with the great majority of people. This will be when we decide to create a society in which we will be free to co-operate and to use all our great reserves of energy and ingenuity for our needs. We should construct permanent, durable means of production which you don’t constantly innovate. We would use these to produce durable equipment and machinery and durable consumer goods designed to last for a long time, designed for minimum maintenance and made from materials which if necessary can be re-cycled. In this way we would get a minimum loss of materials; once they’ve been extracted and processed they can be used over and over again. It also means that once you’ve achieved satisfactory levels of consumer goods, you don’t insist on producing more and more. Total social production could even be eventually reduced, once the needs of all have been satisfied.

If the environmental crisis is to be solved, this system must go - and that entails the capitalist class being the losers,  leaving the rest of humanity to be the winners 

The Labour Party - The Soft Left

The Labour Party has failed, so let’s start a new one. That’s what some trade unionists and left-wingers are saying. But why? Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Surely one of the lessons of the 20th century has been that Labourism is a dead-end. It can’t succeed. Not because its leaders are insincere or incompetent or corrupt or not resolute enough (although many are one or more of those things). It fails because it sets itself the impossible mission of trying to gradually reform capitalism into socialism. This can’t be done, as experience, not just theoretical understanding, has confirmed. The last thing that is needed today is a non-socialist, trade-union based “Labour” party. We have seen the past and it doesn’t work.

Pensioners And Penury

With the present government thinking up new ways to cut welfare benefits a new target has arisen. Politicians are starting to talk about cutting benefits for elderly workers and getting a lot of support from the media. Free TV licences for the over 75s, free bus travel and winter fuel assistance are amongst their targets. So who are these "wealthy" pensioners? 'According to Age Concern, more than 1.7 million pensioners live below the poverty line, with incomes of less than £215 a week; more than 26 per cent of pensioner couples have less than £1,500 in savings between them.' (Times, 26 June) The same newspaper reports that according to the charity BAPEN, more than 1.3 million over-70s suffer or at risk from malnutrition. Hardly "wealthy" is it? RD

The Socialist Party case for democracy

People talk incessantly about “The System”. “The System is bad”, “The System must be changed”. “Vote for me, because I am going to change The System”. What system, exactly?

The original theory of democracy envisaged popular participation in the running of affairs, what is called "participatory democracy". This is the sort of democracy the Socialist Party of Great Britain favour but we know the most we will get under capitalism is the right to vote, under more-or-less fair conditions, for who shall control political power— a minimalist form of democracy that at least provides a mechanism whereby a socialist majority could vote in socialist delegates instead of capitalist politicians. This  form of politics is an effective antidote to bureaucratism, radical in the sense that it is not simply concentrating on the issue of democracy but upon the whole concept of leadership. Socialism is not the result of blind faith, followers, or, by the same token, vanguards and leaders. Nothing is more repugnant to socialism than clever strategisms and conspiratorial tactics. Socialism is not possible without socialists.

Loan Sharks and Pay Day Lenders

It is estimated that 165,000 households in Britain use illegal money lenders and that many thousands are in serious debt to them. The borrowers are people with a bad credit history or who cannot manage their finances or whose income is very low. The current recession is blamed for the squeeze on people’s incomes and state benefits are rarely enough to fill the gap. In extreme cases, parents resort to stealing food.

The poor are fertile territory for doorstep lenders. If you are desperate and the kids haven’t eaten for three days, a person coming to the door and offering a loan seems like the Messiah. In fact, they are a pack of wolves.

Demands for action against loan sharks led to the establishment of official Illegal Money Lending Teams which operate across the country. They claim to have secured 222 prosecutions, assisted 19,000 victims and secured prison sentences on perpetrators totalling 150 years.

Debra Wilson wanted to buy a computer for her daughter as a Christmas present. The cost was £350 so she borrowed £500 from a money lender, accepting that there would be “a bit of interest” added to the repayments. A few days later, the lender said he wanted £750 in return, payable the following month. Mrs Wilson could not meet the terms and took out further loans, increasing her debt. At one point she was paying more than £2,000 a month and over seven years the lender charged her a total of £88,000, sometimes accompanying demands with threats of physical violence.

In Newcastle Crown Court, Judge John Evans told Robert Reynolds, Mrs Wilson’s lender: “You are a loan shark, a person without a conscience. Your behaviour was beneath contempt. Reynolds admitted a charge of harassment with intent to commit violence and received a suspended prison sentence.

The supposed legal sector of pay day loans is little better. For Wonga and other "legal loan sharks" it is a £2bn business. One million families are being forced to take out payday loans every month as they struggle to meet the rising cost of living, new research reveals today. A poll for Which?, the consumer organisation, shows that nearly 400,000 of them use the high-cost loans to pay for essentials such as food and fuel, while 240,000 need the money to pay off existing credit. Half of the people who take out payday loans find they can't cover the cost of repayments – which can attract interest rates of more than 5,000% – which means they are forced to take out new credit and spiral further into debt.

The poll by Which? found that 4 per cent of people, equivalent to one million households in the UK, said they had taken out a payday loan in the last month. Some 38 per cent of people who do so use them to pay for food and fuel, while 24 per cent repay existing payday loans. A total of 79 per cent of people, about 38.5 million adults, use some form of credit, while 44 per cent are worried about their household level of debt.

Seven in ten of payday loan users regret taking out credit in the past, while 49 per cent found they couldn't meet the high cost of payments, and 28 per cent said that, while they don't like being in debt, they saw it as a necessary part of their life. While the repayments and interest on a month-long loan may be initially small, borrowers get into trouble when they cannot pay back on time, or have to roll over the credit. What starts off as a small amount can spiral into tens of thousands of pounds.

Until Tomorrow

A 1961 sci-fi short story from the archives of the Socialist Party of Canada 

"The destruction was so near complete that plant and animal life crept back over the earth slowly. The soil itself was to a great extent polluted by the fall-out. But that portion of humanity which escaped was truly fit, and brought with it memories, and a resolve never to repeat the fatal mistake of society divided against itself."

The speaker was Hubert Brodkin, venerable sage and keeper of the archives; the time, the year 1000 A.H. (after the holocaust); the place, Entrada Island, large western neighbor of a country once called Kanata. Professor Brodkin's listeners, several thousand in number, were gathered on the sea-shore and along the sandy estuaries of two great rivers; yet so near perfect was his voice transmitter that all could have heard had he spoken in a whisper. Behind them lay a lush land and all shared in common those things commonly used. There was plenty for all, with no rich, no poor, a fulfillment of the dreams of ancient dreamers called "Utopians," whose very names were forgotten.

"Warnings of the impending catastrophe," continued the professor, "were given about the year 1950, in what was then referred to as the 'Christian Era.' But the great mass of people were indifferent, and left all vital matters to those few who held them in complete subjection and who were spoken of as "experts." The particular economic and social period was described variously as 'Rugged Individualism,' 'Democracy,' and 'A Way of Life.' Five per cent of the population came into control of ninety-five per cent of the world's wealth, and so well did they command communication and silence opposition that the major portion of mankind was thought-controlled. It was a time of hand-clapping, of slogans, catch-words and phrases. Imitation came to be regarded as talent. Mouth-gurgling passed for music. From talking and thinking alike people began to look alike, to resemble in certain measure a famous dummy of the time called 'Mortimer Snerd.' And so tractable had they become that the dominant few, drunk with power and greediness could play with them as an angler plays with a hooked fish. This mass inertia tempted the world's dictators to lead it on into events so terrible that today's descriptions are dumb. People and records went down to destruction together, and what little I can tell you was passed on mainly by word of mouth from those few who survived to their descendants."

Here, onward, Professor Brodkin's style of speech became broken now and then by a slangy idiom echoing, so to speak, out of some forgotten time with which he alone seemed in tune:

"The circus began in this section of the earth after a number of sailing ships unloaded their razzle-dazzle biped freight. They struck a wild land inhabited by Primitives. Each ship's company consisted of a small number of Grabbers and a large quota of Goofs. The Grabbers were OK, they were wise cookies. The Goofs were everything else. Unlike Mother Hubbard, they were at once both poor and lacking in ambition. So long as they could eat, sleep, and breathe air in and out they were satisfied. The Grabbers sicked the Goofs onto the Primitives. The Goofs advanced in three columns. Some members of the first unit rode horses. Others bore guns, powder, and lead. Such gentry were described in a future time as 'Liberators.' Their combined attack appalled the Primitives who fought back as best they could with stone hatchets, bows and arrows. The front section of the second column carried a huge white cross on which the skeleton of a man was spread — this terrorized the Primitives. Now followed closely a group clad in long black coats, and carrying large books in their hands — these hypnotized the Primitives and softened 'em up for the third company. These sweet-scented gentlemen lugged kegs and jugs filled with a fiery fluid which sent the blood racing through the natives' veins, causing them to dance and whoop 'er up in wild fashion.

"Ground had now been broken for the Grabbers, who arrived plentifully supplied with mouse-traps, miscellaneous trinkets, and muskets made of cast-iron that later were to burst in the natives' faces. The Grabbers had an eye on four-footed animal skins in the possession of the Primitives. Spaniards called the procedure 'Negocio,' Englishmen dubbed it 'Business Incentive,' which term in after years was to ripen into 'Free Enterprise.'

"When the process of skinning the Primitives who had skinned the quadrupeds was well advanced and both were all but exterminated, the Grabbers divided the country amongst themselves, drove stakes and built fences around their allotments, then posted signs proclaiming this land is the private property of Grabber So-and-So and trespassers will be severely dealt with by virtue of 'Constituted Authority.' This latter sounded awesome to the Goofs, and since it was printed in large capitals they had not the temerity to question matters; especially when a number of the bigger Goofs were dressed in uniforms, armed, and sworn to obey the rules laid down by Constituted Authority.

"A 'Culture' period now followed in which the Goofs were taught to sing patriotic songs, and told how lucky they were to be living in Kanata. It was driven home to them how badly the Grabbers of other lands treated their Goofs.

"Then, when the landless, propertyless Goofs had no alternative, they made a deal with their overlords by which they (the Goofs) could live on the lands and do all the work, cut the timber, build the houses, grow the crops, raise cattle, build dams, factories, power plants; in brief, do everything necessary to keep the Grabbers in clover.

"The society developing out of this lopsided partnership became finally an insane mechanism in which the parts operated against the whole. Each family of Goofs desired the elimination of its neighbor. Each group hoped for the misfortune of other groups. Everywhere, individual interest took precedence over public good. The lawyer wanted litigations, particularly among the rich. The physician wanted sickness — he would be ruined if everybody died without disease. The military man wanted wars that would carry off half his comrades and secure him promotion; the undertaker wanted burials; farmers wanted famine to double, or treble the price of grain; the architect, carpenter and mason wanted conflagrations. It was truly each against all. The era was described by a noted philosopher, Bertram Dresser, as 'Graboofia.' Indeed it is to Dr. Dresser that we are indebted for much of the information handed down. And it all added up to a survival of the slickest.

"This charming result was affected by the Goofs surrendering to the Grabbers at the point of production their entire product, and receiving wages sufficient merely to restore the energy to work. Surplus values retained by the Grabbers had to be sold in order to provide them with profit, ease and luxury. Fully half the Goofs were now put to advertising and unloading the loot. But due to a world wide expansion of technology the Grabber gangs of most lands had surpluses to sell. Markets shrunk and rivalry between the great robber groups grew bitter. In the frantic search for trade they ferreted out all potential customers. It was at this point that propaganda ran rife and military build up sky-rocketed. It was a carnival of name-calling; when interests clashed the other fellow became a 'Red,' a 'Black,' a 'Blue,' or a 'Communist.' Each Grabber group would trot out some new weapon, expecting all opposition to collapse in fear; but instead, some one of them would come up with an even newer and better instrument of destruction. More than half the Goofs' labours were devoted to this end.

"From early youth Kanatan Goofs had been taught that one of their number could whip any six foreigners. Was not this well proven by that affair with the Primitives? True, the Goofs had stuck knives on the ends of their guns to avoid getting too close to the enemy with his short knife; but all's fair when glory is to be won!

"As to the Grabbers, they never intended to do any fighting, and had hideouts for themselves prepared in advance. And they planned all along to instruct their principal servants to prepare, in the name of Constituted Authority, documents ordering the Goofs to advance against their foreign counterparts whose own Grabbers had been designated as enemies. So powerful and so few in numbers had the world's Grabbers become, they could start and stop isolated wars at any time without those who fought knowing who was responsible. Surviving Goofs, returning victorious were rewarded with medals and cement monuments. and 'Remembrance' days. And they were a long time complacent. They believed the few in control of the earth were fearful of launching an all out chemical and germ war lest they themselves perish in the process.

"Step by step, many Goofs began to realize the sheer lunacy of Graboofia. They visualized a tomorrow, with a way of life where each against all had given way to a world of one for all and all for one. They realized they outnumbered the Grabbers 1000 to 1 and had the power to change the world, if they had the determination.

"But an effective job of head-fixing had been accomplished by the authorities through their control of the powerful means of spreading ideas; the schools, the church, the newspapers, the movies, the television. Those Goofs striving to change the world were pictured as enemies of individualism, free enterprise, liberty and democracy. Yet there were signs of rumbling and a growing awareness of a better tomorrow. Then somewhere, some one committed a 'hostile' act, and the terrible, indiscriminate destruction broke out. Unbelievable secret devices of death came out of concealment. Millions of men, women, and children were killed or maimed, blinded and rendered insane. A creeping death enveloped the entire earth. Almost everything wilted before it. Some of the people found refuge in caverns, others in sheltered nooks near sea-level. Communication, except the more primitive kinds and the printed word were lost as survivors slipped backward toward savagery. But the story of mankind before the holocaust (thanks to story-tellers like Dr. Dresser) was not lost completely, nor was the belief that some tomorrow would bring forth a fuller life."

As the professor's voice died away the Islanders rose slowly from the sands and headed homeward. The disappearing sun, seeming also content had painted the horizon a rosy red and bridged the sea-water with a streak of light which now retreated swiftly with the seconds, like the flashing smile of some departing guest — departed until tomorrow.

ROY DEVORE

Trotting after Trotsky

Socialist Courier has recently posted a number of articles on Leninism. Its equally evil twin, Trotskyism,  should not be overlooked.

"Permanent Revolution"

Trotsky acquired the phrase from Marx’s writings and very much like Lenin and his use of “dictatorship of the proletariat” from Marx, applied it in such a way that it was not originally intended to be used by Marx.

Marx first used the phrase in the following passage from The Holy Family, 1845 He wrote:

 “Napoleon represented the last battle of revolutionary terror against the bourgeois society which had been proclaimed by this same Revolution, and against its policy. Napoleon, of course, already discerned the essence of the modern state; he understood that it is based on the unhampered development of bourgeois society, on the free movement of private interest, etc. He decided to recognise and protect this basis. He was no terrorist with his head in the clouds. Yet at the same time he still regarded the state as an end in itself and civil life only as a treasurer and his subordinate which must have no will of its own. He perfected the Terror by substituting permanent war for permanent revolution. He fed the egoism of the French nation to complete satiety but demanded also the sacrifice of bourgeois business, enjoyments, wealth, etc., whenever this was required by the political aim of conquest. If he despotically suppressed the liberalism of bourgeois society — the political idealism of its daily practice — he showed no more consideration for its essential material interests, trade and industry, whenever they conflicted with his political interests. …. Paris exchange- brokers forced him by means of an artificially created famine to delay the opening of the Russian campaign by nearly two months and thus to launch it too late in the year.”

In this passage, Marx says that Napoleon prevented the 'bourgeois revolution' in France from becoming fulfilled: that is, he prevented bourgeois political forces from achieving a total expression of their interests. According to Marx, he did this by suppressing the 'liberalism of bourgeois society'; and he did it because he saw 'the state as an end in itself', a value which supported his 'political aim of conquest'. Thus, he substituted 'permanent war for permanent revolution'. The final two sentences, however, show that the bourgeoisie did not give up hope, but continued to pursue their interests. This tells us that, for Marx, 'permanent revolution' involves a revolutionary class (in this case, the bourgeoisie) continuing to push for, and achieve, its interests despite the political dominance of actors with opposing interests.

No more war - No more armies

Parades, medal ceremonies and fly-pasts over three Scottish cities are being held to mark Armed Forces Day. The main celebrations centre on Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee, Inverness, Perth and Aberdeen on Saturday, with other events around the country. The UK's fifth Armed Forces Day is being held to show support and appreciation for the armed services.

 One must be quite starry-eyed, in fact, delusional, to see war as the humanitarian instrument of peace.

The United Kingdom  decides whether or not to wage war according to the chances of succeeding and to their own assessment of their strategic, political and economic interests. And once a war is begun, they want to win at all costs. It makes no sense to ask them to carry out only good interventions, against genuine villains, using gentle methods that spare civilians and innocent bystanders.  It makes no sense to ask them to protect but not to bomb, because armies function by shooting and bombing. Those who say “support our troops” serve to neutralise any peace or anti-war movement. Opposition is attacked as “support for dictators”, another “Munich appeasement”, or “the crime of indifference”.

The problem is that every war is justified by a massive propaganda effort which is based on demonising the enemy. To-days Armed Forces Day actually canonises the combatants.

 When the media announce that a massacre is imminent, we hear at times that action is “urgent” to save the alleged future victims, and time cannot be lost making sure of the facts. This may be true when a house is on fire, but such urgency regarding other countries ignores the manipulation of information and just plain error and confusion that dominate foreign news coverage. The slightest mistake by the anti-war movement will be endlessly used against us, whereas all the lies of the pro-war propaganda are soon forgotten. The “we must do something” brushes aside any serious reflection as to what might be done instead of military intervention.

We've always had wars. Humans are a warring species. Without an army to defend us, someone will always try to conquer us." How often is this heard to make it acceptable to encourage people to engage in killing?

 Some people declare that human nature makes peace impossible, that war is built into our genes. They point to research by evolutionary biologists that indicates our closest genetic relatives, the chimpanzees, make war. Therefore war must be part of our heredity. It's true that in certain situations chimpanzees do raid neighboring colonies and kill other chimps. Those studies on killer apes got enormous publicity because they implied that war is hardwired into human nature. Most scientists didn't draw those conclusions from the evidence, but the mass media kept reinforcing that message. Further research, however, led to a key discovery: The chimps who invaded their neighbors were suffering from shrinking territory and food sources. They were struggling for survival. Groups with adequate resources didn't raid other colonies. The aggression wasn't a behavioral constant but was caused by the stress they were under. Their genes gave them the capacity for violence, but the stress factor had to be there to trigger it into combat. This new research showed that war is not inevitable but rather a function of the stress a society is under. Our biological nature doesn't force us to war, it just gives us the potential for it. Without stress to provoke it, violence can remain one of the many unexpressed capacities our human evolution has given us.

Our society has a deeply entrenched assumption that stress is essential to life. Many of our social and economic structures are based on conflict. Capitalism's need for continually expanding profits generates stress in all of us. We've been indoctrinated to think this is normal and natural, but it's really pathological. It damages life in ways we can barely perceive because they're so built into us. We don't have to live this way. We can reduce the stress humanity suffers under. We can create a society that meets human needs and distributes the world's resources according to those needs. We can live at peace with one another. But that's going to take basic changes.

These changes threaten the power holders of our society. Since capitalism is a predatory social and economic system, predatory personalities rise to power. They view the world through a lens of aggression. But it's not merely a view. They really are surrounded by enemies. So they believe this false axiom they are propagating that wars are inevitable. In the past their predecessors defended their power by propagating other nonsense: kings had a divine right to rule over us, blacks were inferior to whites, women should obey men. We've outgrown those humbugs, and we can outgrow this one.

Let us cease celebrating war.

Lenin and the Russian Revolution (Part 4)

Revolution or Putsch?

The insurrection that gave power to the Bolsheviks was strictly speaking the work of the Military-Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet. The Bolsheviks used this more subtle approach of disguising its seizure of power as an assumption of power by the Congress of Soviets and it was through the organ of the Military Revolutionary Council, NOT the Soviet. The storming of the Winter Palace, was not done by a mass of politically aware workers, but by a few hundred pro-Bolshevik soldiers. Trotsky admitted that the insurrection was planned by the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, of which he was the chair and which had a Bolshevik majority. Trotsky describes how this Committee took its orders directly from the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party. So, although the soviets had played a part in overthrowing Tsarism and opposing the Kerensky government, the events of 7 November were a Bolshevik take-over. Were the mass of the Petrograd workers conciously involved in deciding on the revolution? No. On the morning of 7 November the workers of Petrograd woke up to find that in the night the Bolshevik Party had assumed power, the Bolsheviks had carried out a revolution while they were asleep.

The MRC was set up by the Soviet on the basis of defending Petrograd because it was rumoured of another potential Kornilov plot or an imminent invading German army . It was not set up on the basis that it would overthrow the provisional government.But then, under the pretext of organising the military defence of Petrograd from this phantom invading German army, Trotsky at the head of the Petrograd Soviet's Military Revolutionary Committee, took over the garrison unit by unit, through a system of commissars, first securing vital points like the train stations and telegraph office, then finally taking the Winter Palace.

"...even when the compromisers were in power, in the Petrograd Soviet, that the Soviet examined or amended decisions of the government. This was, as it were, part of the constitution under the regime named after Kerensky. When we Bolshevists got the upper hand in the Petrograd Soviet we only went on with the system of double power and widened its application. We took it on ourselves to revise the order sending the troops to the front, and so we disguised the actual fact of the insurrection of the Petrograd garrison under the tradition and precedents and technique of the constitutional duplication of authority” - Trotsky - Lessons of October

The explicit purpose was to present the 3rd Congress of Soviets opening the next morning with a fait accompli . Lenin was sure that only this way would the support of the Congress for immediate soviet power be assured.Once it had happened, workers and soldiers were enthusiastic. And they were part of making it happen, insofar as they obeyed the orders of the MRC. But it would be misleading to say that it was carried out by the proletariat organised in soviets as such. Were non-Bolshevik proletarians in District soviets aware this was coming? No. Were the Left-SR participants in the MRC ? No. Were even the moderate wing of leading Bolshviks supportive? No.This is not to say that Petrograd workers and soldiers didn't support the idea of a soviet government. They did. But that doesn't mean that they were conciously involved in the decision to go through with the October events in order to arrive at such a government.

The total lack of opposition to the Bolsheviks and the absence of support for the Provisional Government reflected the sympathies of the workers. The Provisional Government was utterly discredited, and Bolshevism's reactionary aspect had not been revealed. Support for the action came rushing in after the event from the Soviet of Petrograd Trade Unions and the All-Russian Soviet of Factory Committees amongst others. The factory committees rallied to the Bolsheviks because the latter appeared to support the workers' aspirations. The majority of the members of the Petrograd Soviet were in favour of the overthrow of the Kerensky government, but did this mean they were in favour of the installation of a Bolshevik government. What they were in favour of was a coalition government formed by all the "workers" parties, ie the Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, SRs and others. This was in fact favoured by many within the Bolshevik Party itself, but they were over-ruled by Lenin's determination to seize power for the Bolshevik party alone. In other words, it wasn't the overthrow as such of the Kerensky government but its replacement by a Bolshevik government under Lenin. There was no mandate from the soviets for this, which was why Lenin went to great pains to disguise his party's coup as the formation of a soviet government, which it wasn't. Once they got governmental power the Bolsheviks sidelined the soviets almost straightaway. The soviets were always considered as a cover to secure Bolshevik power.

While they claimed that this was a spontaneous seizure of power by the workers, what can be seen is that it was timed to occur before the Soviet Congress could convene, and so guaranteeing Bolshevik supremacy in the soviets and little chance for a free democratic vote on the form any new government should take. It can be plausibly assumed that if the Soviet Congress had had a free vote, the Bolsheviks would have had to share power with their arch-rivals the Mensheviks. Martov called forward a resolution demanding that the Bolsheviks form a coalition government with other left-wing parties. The resolution was about to receive almost complete endorsement from the soviet representatives thus showing that the representatives in the soviet did NOT believe in all power to the Bolsheviks but then the majority of SR and Menshevik delegates unadvisedly left the congress in protest over the Bolshevik coup giving the Bolsheviks a majority of those who remained. (We can also speculate it was possible that Lenin himself could have been kept out of office due to the mistrust that many of the Mensheviks and other anti-Tsarist revolutionaries justly held him in.)

On October 25th, the presidium was elected on the basis of 14 Bolsheviks, 7 Social-Revolutionaries, three Mensheviks and one Internationalist. The Bolsheviks then trooped out their worker-candidates Lenin, Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev and so on. When it came to forming a government, Kamenev read out a Bolshevik Central Committee proposal for a Soviet of People's Commissars, whereby "control over the activities of the government is vested in the Congress of Soviets and its Central Executive Committee". Seven Bolsheviks from the party's central committee were nominated, and thus Lenin and Trotsky came to sit at the top. The "workers' government" was now composed of professional revolutionaries and members of the intelligensia ranging from the aristocratic, like Chicherin, to the bureaucratic, like Lenin and Kollontai, via the landed bourgeois (Smilga), the commercial bourgeois (Yoffe) and the higher industrial bourgeois (Pyatakov). These were the sort of people who were used to being a ruling class. The management of production by the workers was one of the goals of the struggle, proclaimed by the Military Revolutionary Committee on 25 October 1917. That same day, the Second Congress of the Soviets solemnly approved the decision to establish workers control while specifying, however, that this meant controlling the capitalists and not confiscating their factories.

The Bolsheviks effectively re-defined "proletarian power" to mean the power of the party whose ideology was believed a priori to represent workers interests. "Who is to seize the power? That is now of no importance. Let the Military Revolutionary Committee take it, or 'some other institution', which will declare that it will surrender the power only to the genuine representatives of the interests of the people.''

Not "the people", not the "representatives of the people", but "the genuine representatives of the interests of the people" and that would be, of course, the Bolshevik Party led by Lenin.

Substitution of the party for the class. A take-over, not a revolution.

The Year of Revolution?

We watch on our television and read about it in our newspapers. Mass protests the world over. It began a few years ago in Spain, then there was the Arab Spring, on to Greece against austerity and from there to the Wall St and St Pauls Occupy movement. Now it is taking place in Turkey and Brasil. Sadly, however,  it is not enough to have millions  of demonstrators on the streets.

That's no basis upon which to build socialism as we understand it We argue that socialism should be set up and run through the consent and cooperation of an overwhelming majority of the world's population. Above all the working class must have a clear understanding of what socialism entails and what methods are effective in overthrowing capitalism. A grasp of socialist principles by the vast majority of the workers is a minimal condition for going forward to socialism. The socialist revolution can only be democratic, in the sense of both being what the majority of people want and of being carried out by democratic methods of organisation and action.

The Paris Commune of 1871 where French workers actually created organisations of mass control which challenged the old system for a brief space of time. The Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917, when workers and peasants developed similar structures of direct workers' control such as the workers councils and factory committees (the Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917 eventually destroyed this, and ushered in a system of state capitalism). Similarly, in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the workers set up workers' councils when they took on their so-called "communist" oppressors. During the May of 1968 in France, workplaces and universities were taken over and in many cases run in a way that is of immense inspiration to socialists. 

What happened on these occasions? Certainly they were not socialist revolutions, as some claim. But they were significant in the history of the struggles of our class. They are significant because the sort of people who dismiss the possibility of revolutionary upheavals were dismissing it shortly before these events blew up in their faces. No one is in any position to dismiss the prospect of revolution who has not carefully examined these movements. In none of these cases was a socialist revolution achieved, but in each case there was a fundamental interruption of the ruling order and the appearance of new forms and conceptions of everyday life. To ignore them because of their failure is to miss the point. Individual revolts are bound to fail until they are accompanied by a widespread and growing—and ultimately worldwide—socialist consciousness. Marx's analysis shows that the socialist revolution must be world-wide and cannot be achieved in one country alone. Because capitalism has become a world-wide system the society to replace it must also be world-wide. Class emancipation must mean the "freeing of the whole of society from exploitation, oppression and class struggle . . ." 

What these examples show is that real change can be brought about by workers. Socialism is not a utopian dream. It is an ever-present undercurrent in working class practice and at times they erupt without warning, sparked off by something as mundane as protecting some trees or protesting a bus fare rise.  That these revolts do not go farther is hardly surprising. What is inspiring is that they went as far as they did.  99 percent of the socialist revolution consists of imbuing our class with the confidence and ambition to succeed, and a revulsion of living as wage slaves whether pampered or ill-fed: once we have this our numbers will carry the day. The capacity for producing abundance has been  been increased to a vast degree, yet people are still idle,  poverty stricken, homeless and starving, while the machinery of production is misused or neglected. This must change. This will change. This, the 21st century, can be the true century of revolution, of true socialist revolution. A socialist revolution, a democratic revolution without leaders, is an urgent necessity.