The Task and Goal of the Socialist Party

It's a commonplace sentiment that politics is broken. Every week brings more evidence of disillusionment. The debased nature of politics, however, is only the most superficial symptom of our problems. It is clear that we face problems with the capitalist system and not simply political problems. These days, no matter how hard we work, how much we manage to save or how carefully we plan for the future, we are getting no-where.

Propaganda by the system’s apologists is an old proven means to modify the consciousness of population. It has been practiced under the disguise of “objectivity” - data are selected, articles are written and fed to the press, “balanced" TV programmes are delivered. In addition to mere skilled disinformation we are plain old lied to deceived.

The struggle for political supremacy is not between political parties , as it merely appears on the surface, but it is a  struggle between two hostile economic classes, the capitalist and the working class. Deny it as they may or ignore itif they so choose,  the struggle in which we are engaged today is a class struggle, and as more and more  come to understand  they will rally to the political standard of the workers’ party to find their true place in the conflict and strike a united  blow against wage-slavery and achieve full and final emancipation. Nothing can stop the march of a popular socialist revolution. Our revolution will not be the fruit of a lucky chance but rather of  bitter prolonged struggle. Our revolution will not be the  work of a minority for one does not make the revolution for the masses; it is they who make it. The working class must be emancipated by the working class.

The ballot expresses the people’s will. The ballot means that workers have a voice to express its wishes. Centuries of struggle and sacrifice were required to acquire this freedom and we should use it wisely. The first step in this direction is to sever all relations with the capitalist parties. Labour, Tory, and the Nationalists alike, differing only in being committed to different sets of capitalist interests. They however have the same principles under varying colors, and are equally corrupt united as one in their subservience to capital and their hostility to the working class. It is an ignorant worker who supports any of these parties for he forges his own chains and is the creator of his own misery. Workers who support the capitalist politician  are guilty, consciously or unconsciously, of treason to their class. They are voting into power the enemies of labour.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is not a capitalist party. Its mission since its foundation in 1904 it is to conquer capitalism on the political battle-field, take control of the State and take possession of the means of wealth production, abolish wage-slavery and emancipate all workers and all humanity. In the world, today, reformism dominates the workers’ movement. The overthrow of capitalism is the object of the Socialist Party and on this principle we shall not compromise. The Socialist Party is honest, both in its statements about what socialism is, and in its desires to have within the Socialist Party only socialists.  Reformists conceive of political action in terms of a modification of the political and economic regime of capitalism. The Socialist Party, on the other hand, regards political action to capture the state power in its entirety.

The working class constitutes the majority of the population, however, they are unable to marshal their strength because the class is divided and disunited. Nevertheless, the working class has a militant history of fighting for improved wages and working conditions,  for union organisation, for recognition of political rights. Once again, we see an upsurge in the working class as the economic conditions worsen with the current crisis. But not only must we unite to defend our basic democracy, our wages and our working conditions we also have to struggle towards socialism.  The working class has to organise itself as a united fighting force to achieve a decent living and working conditions and  destroy the capitalist system of wage slavery and establishing socialism. At present, the objectives of the workers are on the economic and not on the political level. They seek to protect wages and working conditions rather than fighting for a better world.

The Socialist Party’s task is simply to help the workers march faster and without faltering toward the socialist goal. We decline to advocate palliatives or as Thomas Paine put it, “administering medicine to a corpse.” The Socialist Party defiantly challenges the capitalist class, relying upon the awakening working class to muster under its banner.

It is as Eugene Debs said:
"Ten thousand times has the labor movement stumbled and fallen and bruised itself, and risen again; been seized by the throat and choked and clubbed into insensibility; enjoined by courts, assaulted by thugs, charged by the militia, shot down by regulars, traduced by the press, frowned upon by public opinion, deceived by politicians, threatened by priests, repudiated by renegades, preyed upon by grafters, infested by spies, deserted by cowards, betrayed by traitors, bled by leeches, and sold out by leaders, but, notwithstanding all this, and all these, it is today the most vital and potential power this planet has ever known, and its historic mission of emancipating the workers of the world from the thraldom of the ages is as certain of ultimate realization as the setting of the sun.”

Remembrance

Sixteen million people died in the First World War. No fewer than  one in 40 of the nine million British and  Commonwealth troops came from the single city of Glasgow. 200,000 men from Glasgow fought, 17,695 were killed and many many more were wounded with lasting injuries and lost limbs. We should remember the futility of their deaths in “the war to end wars”

16,000  British  men are recorded as being conscientious  objectors. The Richmond Sixteen  were 16 men taken from  Richmond Castle in North Yorkshire where the Non-Combatant Corps was based, to an  army camp in northern France, refused to  unload supplies. They were court-martialled  and, as an example to others, sentenced to  death by Lord Kitchener. They were  only saved from this fate by Kitchener’s own sudden death and the prime minister,  Asquith, who  their sentence to  10 years’ hard labour. We should remember the social stigma these heroes had to bear for the rest of  their lives.

Food for thought

A recent story on The Guardian website claimed the US Foreign Intelligence (?) Surveillance Court granted the FBI unlimited authority to access data on phone calls from April 25 to June 19. They are now collecting telephone records of millions of Verizon communication customers. In other words, privacy laws can be
subverted any time the powers-that-be want. Of course, nobody other than those giving the orders likes it. There is a solution to a world of snooping on each other but it won't be found in capitalism. John Ayers.

No Old Bangers Here

The present economic crisis in the UK has been so severe that many workers face unemployment, wage freezes and in some severe cases repossession of their houses. No such problems exist for the owning class. 'Wealthy Britons have spent £91 million buying new Ferraris this year, making Great Britain the biggest European market for the Italian car company. According to Ferrari's  global sales figures for the first six months, 415 models have been sold in the UK, an increase of 6 per cent, with the average purchase price standing at £220,000.' (Times, 2 August) RD

Fast Food Strike

Capitalist Civilisation - An oxymoron

We pride ourselves on our system, which we call “civilised,” and compare it with those primitive forms of society which we call “barbarian.” We point to our great works of art, our wondrous discoveries in science, our massive buildings and our machinery of all sorts.

Yet our “civilisation” has a class of people called capitalists – those good, kind, benevolent employers, to whom we go cap in hand, cringing for the privilege of being permitted to work for them. His place in our social system is to extort a profit out of the worker by buying our services as much beneath their true value as he can possibly procure them. The more extensive his trade, the greater will be his power over his employees. The wealth he has accumulated from his labourers gives him the power to regulate commerce. He has so much wealth he can live in idle leisure if he so wishes. This the labourer cannot do, for our earnings have nearly all gone within a matter of a few days.

 These grand works of art exist, true enough but rather than enjoy their beauty, they are bought and speculated as an investments. Wondrous scientific discoveries are constantly being made, but the reward is to the owner of the patent and not to the people. No sooner is a thing produced than it passes into the hands of others. The builders do not live in the fine houses they construct, but live in wretched inner-city tenements or tiny suburban  boxes.

We are engaged today in a class war; and why? For the simple reason that society has been mainly divided into two economic classes—a small class of capitalists who own practically everything and workers who possess very little. Between these two classes there is an irrepressible  conflict. Unfortunately, the worker has not fully understood the nature of the conflict, and for this reason has failed to accomplish any effective unity of his class.  It is a vain and hopeless task,  wasting time and energy, to endeavour to harmonise the interests of the boss and his hired hand.  Nor is it part of the mission of the Socialist Party to conciliate the working class with the capitalist class. We are organised to fight that class.

War and strife of all kinds mark this civilisation’s success and regardless of government they all rest upon appropriation and exploitation. All law is made to protect property and proprietors and there is no law for the poor. The exploitative employer is the economic master and the political ruler in capitalist society. Plutocracy rules.

The average worker imagines that we must have a leader to look to; a guide to follow. We have been taught to be dependent. We have relied too much on leaders and not enough on own self-reliance. As long as we can be led by an leader, we can be betrayed by a leader. Not all leaders are dishonest or corrupt. That would be a too sweeping a statement but we should not place our trust in any and instead take responsibility for own decisions.

 We are engaged in a barbaric competitive struggle in which workers  are fighting each other to sell themselves into slavery and fighting each other to keep soul and body together.  And this is called civilization! What a mockery! There is no real civilisation in the capitalist system.

Surely, the present system cannot go on for ever. The present system is destroying us and  the planet we inhabit. We, wage-slaves have to emancipate ourselves. It can be done. It must be done. It shall be done for the last day of the capitalist system and the first day of the socialist commonwealth is in our own hands. Today there is nothing so easily produced as wealth abundance wealth enough for all.  Today  there is no excuse for poverty.  And, today, we can begin to change this. 

Fact of the Day

The 10th Duke of Buccleuch - a title created in 1663 for the illegitimate son of Charles II - is now Europe's largest landowner with holdings valued at more than £1bn, according to the Independent

Throw off the chains!

Many are not in trade unions and many in their desperation have turned on the union as the cause of their misery. Why should they side with their employers? Why enrich the boss who has the power to dismiss you at will?

Because you get a wage, and that wage suffices to keep you working for the capitalist and you can pay the rent and get fed. You have been turned into a wage-slave. He belongs to another class, the ruling class,  and you belong to the lower class, the subservient class. You are in an overwhelming majority and they only a few yet, they own practically everything and rule the land. And they will keep on owning and ruling the land as long as you  allow them to; and you will allow them to as long as you persist in voting for their politicians, instead of uniting and acting solidly with and for each other and against the capitalists. It is because of your ignorance that you don’t understand your own interest and  believe you need rulers to control you. But you don’t need them. The working class do all the producing and manufacturing. The bosses could not exist second without you. A capitalist without workers cannot exist. While the capitalist could not exist without you, however, you could do just fine and would actually begin to live without them.

Capitalism is based upon the exploitation of the working class; and when the working class ceases to be exploited, there will no longer be any capitalists. What has the investor of a factory got  to do with its operation? Absolutely nothing. They simp1y live off the profits and dividends of what is produced there, because you will allow it to be so. He does nothing and gets everything, and you do everything and get nothing. Some deal! Without you society would cease. Society does not need the idle capitalists. They are parasites. They are worse than useless. They simply take what you make, leaving you in poverty. You make  things in great abundance, but you cannot possess them. You can only consume that part of your product which your wage, the price of your labor power, will buy.

If you think  that you ought to have a master to rob you of what you produced—if you think that you are so helpless that you would die unless you had a master to give you a job and take from you all except just enough to keep you working for him; if you think that workers ought to fight each other; if you think that unity, the unity of the union  would be a bad thing for the working class; if you think that your interest is identical with the interest of the capitalist who robs you; if you think that you ought to be in slavish submission to the capitalist who does nothing and gets what you produce; if you think that, then certainly you are a happy wage-slave. As an individual worker you cannot escape from wage-slavery. It is true that one in a million  may become a capitalist but he is the exception that proves the rule. The wage worker in the capitalist system remains the wage worker. There is no escape for you from wage-slavery by yourself.

Having said you cannot alone break out of chains, if you will unite with all other workers who are in the same position that you are;if you will join the organization that represents your whole class, you can develop the power that will achieve your freedom and the equal freedom of all.  No matter who or what a worker may be, if he or she works for wages they are in precisely the same economic position that you are, your class; your comrade.

The Socialist Party has declared war upon the capitalist class, and upon the capitalist system. We say: Arise! It is in your power to put an end to this exploitation. Make yourselves the masters instead of being the slaves to the machine. Abolish the wage system, so that you can be free.  Build the houses and live therein;  plant the orchards and vines and eat the fruit thereof. The workers who sustain and maintain the world, will take possession of the world and turn all into the common property of all. This is the meaning of socialism and is what the Socialist Party stands for. Our demand is modest: We demand the Earth for all the people.

Adapted from here 

Health and safety in sport

Recently, Socialist Courier, touched on the fact that health and safety of rugby players are deliberately overlooked.  Once again more facts are being produced about the long term health risks of contact sports and once again it focusses on head injuries and concussion.

A brain injuries expert has discovered what he believes to be the first confirmed case of early onset dementia caused by playing rugby.

Dr Willie Stewart said the discovery suggested "one or two" players competing in the Six Nations every year may go on to develop the condition.

He examined sections of brain tissue for abnormal proteins associated with head injuries and dementia.The former rugby player had higher levels than a retired amateur boxer.

The boxer had been diagnosed with dementia pugilistica - more commonly known as punch drunk syndrome - which is thought to affect up to 20% of boxers who retire after long careers. Symptoms, which usually appear between 12 and 16 years after the boxer's career begins, can include memory, speech and personality problems, tremors and a lack of coordination. The condition has been recognised for more than a century, and until recently had been thought to only affect boxers who suffered repeated concussive injuries through being punched in the face.

But Dr Stewart said: "What we are finding now is that it is not just in boxers. We are seeing it in other sports where athletes are exposed to head injury in high levels.Those sports include American football, ice hockey and also now I have to say I have seen a case, the same pathology, in somebody whose exposure was rugby."

Obviously the positives of team sports such as rugby outweigh the negatives they also carry but when sport becomes an industry and the individual participants welfare becomes secondary to that industry's interests than our position is that an injury to one, is an injury to all. That entails all means are used to minimise  risk and and eliminate lasting physical damage and the profits and costs be damned!

The Day To Day Struggle

Politicians are always claiming that because of their endeavours we are all better off financially than we have ever been, but the facts disprove this fantasy. 'More than half of UK adults are struggling to keep up with bills and debt repayments, a major survey of people's finances has suggested. Some 52% of the 5,000 people questioned said they were struggling, compared with just 35% in a similar study in 2006, the Money Advice Service said. In Northern Ireland, some 66% said they were struggling.' (BBC News, 2 August) RD

Banking on ethics?

If you think the preceding post calls for a better type of bank and believe the Co-operative Bank, alas, you are mistaken. The difference is simply in the degree not the essence. The Co-operative Bank is a relatively small and “conservatively” run bank that has promoted its ethical business practices.

Former Co-op Bank chief executive Neville Richardson’s left the bank in 2011 with a package worth £4.6 million, including a £1.4 million payment for ‘loss of office’, and the same amount as ‘compensation’ for leaving. The banks financial downgrade to “junk” status by Moody was mainly based on the deterioration in the performance of the loan portfolios the Co-op Bank acquired with its takeover of the Britannia Building Society in 2009 when Richardson was chief executive of the Britannia at the time of the deal.  Like any other business,it has to beat the competition, make profits and accumulate capital. Large institutions like local councils have a fiduciary responsibility to not leave taxpayers’ money in a bank where there are any questions about its solvency.

It looks as if the Coop Bank's difficulty has arisen from "loan repayments" being less than expected, i.e some of their loans not being repaid in full or on time. I would think that there are many businesses and people who would love to have a loan from the Coop Bank. The trouble seems to be that it is having to use the funds it has to increase its capital rather than to make loans. The Co-operative Bank unveiled a rescue plan to tackle the £1.5bn hole in its balance sheet. Most of the capital to be used to plug the hole will come through a "bail in" - a process where bond holders will be offered shares in the bank.

The deal will result in a stock market listing for the group. Many will argue that the culture and practices of the bank are bound to change once its shares are owned by commercial investors. In general, the bank will be more focussed on making profits because of the "need to generate an appropriate return on equity". The bank has always focused on making a profit, that's what co-ops do: it's just a question of who gets the profit. The capital is in the hands of the capitalists, and the bank needs capital to keep going.

An estimated 15,000 retail investors, many of them pensioners, who hold Co-op bank PIBS (permanent interest bearing shares) and preference shares stand to lose at least 40% of their investment plus a large chunk of their income if the plans proposed by the mutual parent, Co-op Group, go ahead. Dividends on the PIBS and preference shares have already been suspended, leaving thousands desperate to know how they will survive. Many are dependent on this income which ranged from around 5% to as high as 13% a year, to supplement their pensions. Until now, PIBS have been regarded as relatively safe – nothing like as risky as shares. As capital issues emerged at the Co-op, the price of its bonds began to fall sharply, hitting the small investors. The PIBS now trade at 60p compared to their face value of 100p and the 160p they were at their peak.

Ethical concerns do not come before business.

The Real Thieves

For many of us Wells Fargo simply recalls all those cowboy western movies we used to watch of stagecoaches being held up by masked bandits.

However Wells Fargo has surpassed the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) as the world’s largest bank by market capitalization. It has also amassed almost 40% of the U.S. mortgage market by early 2013. And the real robbers has been Wells Fargo itself.

One for all, all for one

A Labor Day is coming when our starry flag shall wave,
Above a land where famine no longer digs a grave,
Where money is not master, nor the workingman a slave...

All workers have but one enemy — the employing class. All the workers must get together against their common enemy. The struggle of the working class is world-wide. The workers  cannot wage a successful struggle against their own exploiting class and at the same time put their trust in organizations that have been and are hampering and betraying the struggles of their brothers and sisters in other countries. We must join hands with the workers of the world. They have fought our battles which they knew were theirs. We must fight their battles which we know to be ours.

The employers pay as much as they have to pay, in order to secure "the hands" that they need, in order to carry out their profit-making enterprises. They pay what they have to in the open market. In the open labor market your wages are determined by your own economic necessity. If you are destitute enough to offer your labor power for lower price than the other fellow, wages will come down. Standing alone with empty pockets you are no match for the boss with pockets bulging with money, and backed up by an extensive employer organisations and trade  associations.

 Workers learned this long ago that they must match the cartels of the employing class whose aim is exploitation and tyranny and began to start unions, pledging one another not to work below a certain price. If they worked together to get all available workers into the union and if they practised solidarity and bargain collectively, they were able to shift some of the burden of economic necessity from their own shoulders to the employer’s and made him pay the “going rate”

Reformists maintain that we can arrive at “socialism” by winning reforms one after the other. Reformism is trickery used to keep the working class under wage slavery. What they don’t say is that whatever the capitalist has to give up with one hand, he will just take back with the other. Nor is that to say we will no take all the reforms the capitalist is forced into conceding. Those so-called “socialists" advocate activities limited to achieving  immediate demands, denying  the tasks of raising the consciousness of the working class. The fight against reformism  is about stopping the creation of illusions about capitalism. The Left accuse us of the charge that such opposition to reforms is “dividing” the working class,which in itself pre-supposes a preceding unity, and this never existed. Instead of dividing workers we are arousing them from their slavish submission to capitalist domination. Better a thousand times to be divided fighting for freedom than united in the bonds of slavery. The issue for the Socialist Party, therefore, is not that of a “uniting the whole of the workers,” but that of expressing the interests of the working class.  Every socialist knows that to solve the unemployed problem we need the social revolution. Can we immediately unite the whole working class for that? We cannot. There are those that insist on intermediate stages such as nationalisation  and state-ownership.  We know and have pointed out that the State, merely furnish forth better wage-slaves and better organisation for the profit-takers. Even if State employees are well-paid, and are assured of continuous employment, they are still only privileged menials, so long as they are unable conjointly with their fellows to control the entire management of the industrial community. State control of this sort may be better or it may be worse than private control, but brings with it no complete change from competition to co-operation such as we are striving for. Moreover, there is an ever-present danger of  a bureaucracy imposing authoritarianism from above. Furthermore, we cannot  mislead workers  and induce them to think we, too, are merely tinkerers with present forms of social development.  Rather we are working and fighting for a complete social revolution, which shall abolish the State and establish a free association of producers in its stead.

The class struggle is a political struggle. Capitalist society is built upon our sweat and blood, our misery and want. All our victories on the economic field are turned against us, and our economic slavery is reinforced by an absolute political dictatorship of capitalism. Thus our economic struggle must of necessity become a political one. The proletarian struggle ceases to be a struggle for higher wages and shorter hours, and becomes a struggle for the supremacy of the working class.The workers must organise an independent working class mass socialist  party consisting of all workers. A socialist party makes no compromises with the capitalist class. We ask no favors of capitalism and grant it none. We are a movement of revolt against the existing social order, scorning all alliances with th ruling class  and working with all available means for the emancipation of the working class and the abolition of capitalism. The object of a Socialist Party is socialism. To that end the education and organisation of the proletariat and their conversion to socialist principles is essential. We cannot have socialism without socialists. Therefore, the first duty of a Socialist Party is propaganda, in order to make socialists. We declare ourselves for the abolition of the wages system.

While we shall not ourselves advocate a policy of demanding palliatives. The Socialist Party does not oppose every movement of the working class towards improving its condition – even in present circumstances – or in defence of its interests. But our sole purpose is to be the political instrument of the working class.

 “The emancipation  of the working class must be the work of the working class itself,” says the Communist Manifesto. And the “working class” is not a few hundred elected representatives who control society’s destiny with rousing speeches. Even less is it the two or three dozen leaders who occupy government offices. Only with the working class actively co-operating and participating in the overthrow of  capitalism can the socialization of the economy be prepared. If the methods recommended by Socialist Party are not the best we are ready to adopt any methods that can be proven to be better, until then our men and women will go to Parliament with a the sole mandate to establish socialism, not to plead for amelioration or beg for alms. We will not ally ourselves with any non-socialist party that does not share our common socialist aim. It is better for a socialist to fight and be beaten as a socialist than to fight and win under another banner. The struggle for working class emancipation, which finds its expression through a socialist party, must continue, and will increase in intensity until either the ruling class completely subjugates the working class, or until the working class prevails over the capitalist class. There is no middle ground possible.

We wrest control of government from the capitalist class not simply for the purpose of continuing the class struggle on a new level, as has been the case in all previous political revolutions when one class has superseded another in the control of government. It does not mean that the workers and capitalists will merely change places, as many believe. It means the inauguration of an entirely new system of society, in which the exploitation of one person by another will have no place. It means the establishment of a new economic motive for production and distribution. Instead of profit being the ruling motive of industry, as at present, all production and distribution will be for use. As a consequence, the class struggle and economic class antagonisms as we now know them will entirely disappear.  The class struggle must necessarily cease, for there will be no classes. Each individual will be his or her  own economic master, and all will beat the service of the commune, co-operative, or collective. There will be a free community of fellow-workers working for the common good, sharing the fruits of common  ownership and  enjoying the personal emancipation from compulsory toil  and drudgery.

To be free, you must dare to be free. The chains holding us down in wage slavery are our submissiveness and our lack of revolutionary spirit.

We British Workmen

We British workmen, so they say,

Are free; and who can doubt it?

For, if we do not like our pay,
We’re free—to go without it.

Unlike the helpless negro slave.
Our tyrant-driven brother,
If one employer prove a knave,
We’re free—to find another.

H. S. Salt
Labour Leader, 26 May, 1894

The Blue-Bloods of Scotland Mobilise

The Duke of Roxburghe and other members of the nobility have lobbied the government on its moves to help individuals and communities buy land which  has been in the hands of the aristocracy for generations. A Land Reform Review Group (LRRG) has been set up by the Scottish Government to examine ways of increasing community ownership of the land. A forthcoming review of the Agricultural Holdings (Scotland) Act will look at granting an absolute right-to-buy for tenant farmers. That would give them the right to buy-out landowners, even if they are unwilling to sell.

The duke owns the Roxburghe Estate, an enterprise with a £10.1 million turnover with Floors Castle, near Kelso, at its heart  and includes the Roxburghe Hotel and a championship golf course.

 The Earl of Seafield at its head, warned against the “fragmentation” of the land and played the ecological environmental green card to justify his extensive ownership of land as of his shooting and hunting grouse moors were run naturally.

James Carnegy-Arbuthnot, director a family company that owns the 3,250-acre Balnamoon  near Brechin described the extension of  right-to-buy legislation as a “highly vexatious proposal in the eyes of landowners” and described“This amounts to the dispossession of land from one person to the advantage of another and has no place in any democratic system.

Atholl Estates, which oversees 145,000 acres in Highland Perthshire, was critical of increasing community ownership as a means of redistributing land, saying: “It certainly should not be used as a tool to politically engineer property ownership away from one group of people to another as this fundamentally undermines Scotland’s credibility as a nation that respects the private sector, free markets and the protection of property rights as a cornerstone of human rights and financial security.”

 Douglas and Angus Estates, which are owned by the family of the former Tory prime minister Sir Alec Douglas-Home and currently under the stewardship of David, the 15th Earl of Home, remarked the current ownership arrangement put the estates at the heart of community life.

The agent for Kinnordy Estates, Kirriemuir, owned by Lord Lyell, former Tory minister said: “In the instance of Kinnordy Estate and its locality to the town of Kirriemuir, I do not believe there is justification for the wider public community to have a stake in ownership, governance, management or use of the land… land and estate management must remain in the hands of those qualified for the task (by merit of both qualification and experience) as demonstrated on Kinnordy Estate.

Land-reform campaigner Andy Wightman said: “I want to live in a land where class distinctions are no longer legitimised by the recognition of aristocratic titles and where the principle of equality underpins access to land rights… I want to live in a country that finally puts an end to the centuries of landed power and returns the land to the people of Scotland – both men and women.”

Half of Scotland is owned by just 500 people, many of them those relics from feudal time who believe they have a birth-right to “their” land.

What Will A Socialist World Look Like

Marx refrained from offering future generations any instructions or blueprints. Nowhere in Marx is there to be found a detailed account of the new social system which was to follow capitalism. Marx wrote no “Utopia”. Socialist society of the future will be for the socialist generations themselves to decide upon and organise. It was Auguste Blanqui, the French revolutionary who said: “Tomorrow does not belong to us.”

However, we can project general principles and note what will be redundant in socialism. We can outline the broad features of the new society and the way in which it would develop.  Actual socialist society, like all previous forms of society, will come into existence on the basis of what already existed before it. We do not start with a blank page. Capitalist society has actually prepared the way for socialism. Production has become increasingly social and the process of production has linked  together a very large number of people in the course of transforming raw materials into the finished article and  crated a greater and greater interdependence between people.  It is because the fact that capitalist production is now the co-operative work of all society that it can no longer be the property of one individual or group but instead it should be the common property of all.  Production is carried out by workers and  the transfer of ownership to society as a whole does not essentially alter their work. Therefore the working class can take over immediately. In a socialist world production will not be not for profit but for use. There will be no new division into classes, because in a socialist society there is nothing to give rise to it. Socialism will not be perfect but there will no longer be a struggle between opposing classes. The State will shrivel away.

Capitalism condemns those of us to poverty, enforced idleness, and hunger which it cannot employ for the purpose of enriching the capitalist class.  Our capitalist society is based on the waste and the squandering of resources and energy. Consider the waste of militarism and war. Just think of it! Billions a year wasted on the arms trade under the present system. Billions expended on advertising to promote consumerism. Millions of  people, engaged in all kinds of useless, non-productive occupations in capitalism such as sales-persons.

Laziness is a social malady, a legitimate response in our system, which offers ample role-models encouraging laziness. It assures all riches, all the pleasures of life to those who work the least possible, to the idle rich and to the social parasites. Sloth develops from the intolerable conditions of forced and excessive labour in unhealthy factories. How can a people work with enthusiasm when they know that their work will go to the enrichment of others? The typical grasping individualist, with no sense of social or collective responsibility, is the capitalist surrounded by competitors, all struggling to survive by cheating and corruption. These ideas of the dominant class – the competition and rivalry instead of solidarity – tend to infect the workers, especially those favoured by the employers for special advancement.

When the producers know that the products of their work will belong to them they will throw overboard the reluctance which forced labour engenders in them. Work well-regulated and properly apportioned will become attractive. It will become a joy and a pleasure, and this is because work is necessary for the physical and mental well-being of man. Even within capitalist society there is what is known as “solidarity” among the workers – the sense of a common interest, a common responsibility. The workers have at their disposal a thousand means of organising administration, control and division of products – Workers councils, factory committees, trade unions, co-operatives, etc., etc. There is no obstacle that cannot be overcome in a society that is based on labour and not on profit.

There would be a certain amount of necessary work to be done which would be usually repellant; some of this, probably the greater part of it, would be performed by machinery; and it must be remembered that machinery would be improved and perfected without hesitation when the restrictions laid on production by the exigencies of profit-making were removed. But nevertheless some of this work may not able to be done by machinery and so  volunteers would have to be relied upon. It is not foreseen that there will be any difficulty in obtaining them, considering that the habit of looking upon necessary labour from the point of view of social obligation would be universal, and  such work will be spread amongst many which would remove objections to work usually disliked.

The future alone can tell what will be the precise forms and special methods of organisation.  However, try and imagine the new society as an organised body of communities, each carrying on its own affairs, but united by a delegated federal body. It is to be understood that these two bodies, the township (or community) and the federation, would be the two poles but between there would be many other expressions of the decentralised principle, -- as in districts and regions  that were linked together by natural circumstances, such as language, climate, or the divisions of physical geography.

 The Socialist Party task is convincing people that a socialist is desirable and is possible. When we have enough people of that way of thinking, they will find out what action is necessary for putting their principles in practice. The Socialist Party accepts that, for the moment,  workers do not believe in their own capacity to undertake the management of affairs and unprepared to take responsibility for running society in their own interests.

Remember Our Past, Organise Our Future

Blowing the whistle on freedom

BRADLEY MANNING

The Socialist Standard wrote:
"Your brain is the greatest weapon you possess; your ability to communicate is your tool of liberation; thinking, speaking and organising democratically and intelligently you are a force that cannot be defeated."

Falkirk - Labour Party Attacking the Unions

After all the headlines about the Falkirk MP-selection rigging by the Unite union have  Radio Scotland described the row as “much ado about nothing”, reflecting the view of the police who said they would not investigate the allegations due to lack of evidence.

Investigative reporter Hannah Barnes said: “There was, as far as we can see, no major vote rigging scandal in Falkirk. And there will be no police prosecutions. The selection debacle there was much ado about nothing. But it was the catalyst – some might say excuse – for a historic shift in Labour’s financial relationship with the unions. The battle for Falkirk will soon be forgotten but the consequences for Labour will be felt for many years to come.”

Apart from Ed Miliband and Harriet Harman (and a handful of senior party staff), almost no-one involved in the key decisions about Falkirk, have been allowed to read the full report of the party’s secret investigation that was conducted by one member of the party compliance unit and one “young Labour activist based in Scotland.”

Some of those who it was claimed did not know they were members are quoted as having “said they had been asked whether they wanted to join and said they did.” They were in any case not members of Unite, and their membership fees were not paid by Unite.

 Ed Miliband and his advisers specifically led an attack on Unite and Len McCluskey himself telling him to face up to “malpractice” and insisting the union should not be defending “machine politics“.

 Socialist Courier can only say that sooner the unions and the working class ditch their misplaced and misguided allegiance to the Labour Party, the better for us all. The Labour Party (and their leaders) have shown their loyalty is to the ruling class over and over again throughout its miserable existence and it is now time for every trade unionist to cease their political levy and call upon their union to dis-affiliate from the Labour Party forthwith..

The gravy train

Former Glasgow Govan Labour MP Mohammad Sarwar is to be appointed governor of Punjab, the largest state in Pakistan. Its governor is considered to the the third most senior figure in the government of Pakistan. 

Sarwar's son, Anas Sarwar, went on to win the Westminster seat vacated by his father in the May 2010 general election. He was appointed deputy leader of the Scottish Labour party in 2011.

Socialist Work

HOW IT IS AND HOW IT COULD BE

The basis of all societies is the production of goods necessary to life. In the present time, production is dominated by the capitalist, possessor of money, owner the factory and the machines, buyer of the raw materials, the hirer of the workers who  produce the goods which then can be sold and provide the capitalist with profit and privilege. Labour relations under capitalism is a system of squeezing, workers must be driven to the utmost exertion of their powers, either by punitive powers or by the more gentler arts of persuasion. So long as we have wage slavery it matters not in the least how debasing and degrading a task may be, it is easy to find people to perform it. Under capitalism the majority of human beings are not human beings at all, but simply machines of flesh for the creating of wealth for others.

Private property is the enemy of human happiness, for it creates inequality and established authority serves no other purpose than the sanctioning of property property. Socialists want to replace private property with common ownership. We stand for equality. When we say equality we don’t claim that all men will have the same brain, the same physical attributes: we know that there will always be diversity in intellectual and physical aptitudes.

There will be engineers and labourers: this is obvious but neither will be considered superior to the other, since the work of the engineer is useless without the collaboration of the labourer, and vice versa.

A question often asked is: “What about  the lazy? Those who do not want to work”

Today, the average person works a 8 hour day, 5 day week. Many workers are in jobs that are absolutely useless to society, in particular those in the armed forces and armament factories. Add to this a considerable number who produce nothing and are only necessary in capitalism: cashiers, bank and insurance staff, paper-pushers in the civil service, etc.

Much  useless work can be done by machines, used not as now to cut costs and grind out profit, but to save labour in unnecessary routine work to release people from the monotonous tasks.

We can thus say, without being accused of exaggeration, that when this pool of available workers is re-deployed and redirected away from  socially wasteful labour, the work-day and working week would decrease.  A society where all would work together would have to ask of each of its able-bodied members an effort of only two or three hours a day, a few days a week, perhaps less. Variety of life is as much an aim of socialism as equality of condition, and that nothing but an union of these two will bring about real freedom.
 As Marx wrote as early as 1845 “In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.”


Who would then refuse to give such a small quantity of labour in return for consuming according to his needs, which is to say, as he wishes? Who would want to live with the shame of being held in contempt by all and being considered a parasite? Our system of artificial shortage has engendered a fear of an abundance, filling our minds  with the customs and norms of commercial and competitive society.

Work in itself is not unpleasant. Many will toil in their garden or allotments for leisure. Many will engage in all manner of DIY and handicrafts as a hobby. Many will volunteer their help to charities. Some will offer to risk their lives to serve on a lifeboat or in a mountain rescue team. So even in our sham society most men are not disinclined to work, so long as their work is not that which they are compelled to do. But work under capitalism is inhuman for the workers and is compelled by the threat of deprivation, and the labour is without genuine interest, in  monotonous, repetitive jobs, where men and women are often driven to the point of exhaustion that the body can barely sustain. Therefore it is not unnatural that we witness an aversion amongst workers for their work, and how experts conclude that productive work, by its very nature, is repulsive to people , and must be imposed upon the unwilling by threat and bribery, the stick and the carrot. Yet, saying all this about compulsory labour, the work-place can also become a centre of community and fellowship. Some socialist suggest that the ideal of the future does not point to the lessening of men's energy by the reduction of labour to a minimum, but rather to the reduction of pain in labour to a minimum, so small that it will cease to be a pain.

Socialists assert that the community should hold all wealth in common and that everyone should have free access but their needs are not necessarily determined by the kind or amount of work which each person does. The fact that they are human beings with a capacity for work is enough. It is to be understood that each member of a socialist society is absolutely free to use their share of the communal wealth as they please, without any interference. This will minimise the possibility  of the community falling into bureaucracy, with the multiplication of committees, and all the paraphernalia of official authority, which is a socially wasteful  burden, even when it is exercised by the delegation of the whole people and in accordance with their wishes.

The question then now arises how is it to be done? A political party of the working class is the how. The Socialist Party declares that political power should be in the hands of those who intend to employ it for the overthrow of the present system, understanding by political power not merely the power of voting, but the possession of the whole administrative state system – the complete control of all executive functions. This, then, is the immediate object to be striven for; not mere reforms. Workers shall come together in those countries where elections are permitted and vote the capitalists out and vote ourselves in and with that political power we will take the means of production away from the capitalists control. It may not be all that simple and straight forward a task in all circumstance and thre may indeed be defeats and set-backs but there exists no other  alternatives despite claims to the contrary.

“The Socialist movement is not the coinage of one man, of one body of men, or of one nation; it is the expression at once of a necessary phase of economic evolution, and of a yearning which fills the hearts of the people of all countries and nations throughout the civilised world to-day – a yearning which individuals may formulate, but which no individual can create.” - William Morris