A Sane Society?

A paper written by two eminent medical researchers is calling for restrictions on the production and use of neurotoxins, industrial chemicals that affect brain development in children, to say nothing about the rest of us. Conditions such as ADHD (up 88% in the US in the past decade) and autism (up 600% in twenty years and now present in one out of eighty-eight children) are cause for concern. Since 2006, the number of neurotoxins, such as lead and methyl mercury, have doubled and there are believed to be many more as yet unrecognized. A sane society would surely act on this to prevent any further damage. Sorry, I forgot, this isn't a sane society! John Ayers

Engels Against The Nationalists

A word of caution against those Left Nationalists that evoke the authority of Marx and Engels and cite their sympathy for Irish and Polish independence. All is not so simple.

Engels concluded an article, "The Magyar Struggle,"  (1849),  with these harsh words:
“But at the first victorious uprising of the French proletariat,... the Austrian Germans and the Magyars will gain their freedom and take a bloody revenge on the Slav barbarians. The general war which will then break out will scatter this Slav Sonderbund, and annihilate all these small pig-headed nations even to their very names. The next world war will not only cause reactionary classes and dynasties to disappear from the face of the earth, but also entire reactionary peoples.And that too is an advance”

Was Engels advocating nothing less here than the physical extermination of the Slavic peoples? Not really. What Engels really wished to make "disappear from the face of the earth" were the Slavic national movements, the political parties of the Czechs, Croats, etc., and their leadership.  The peoples themselves would be subjected by the victorious "revolutionary nations" to a (not altogether peaceful) Germanisation, Magyarisation and Polonisation.

Even so,  that attitude of Engels is bad enough to dismiss Left Nationalists hoping that Marxism offers credibility for their independence campaign.

That "no nation can be free if it oppresses other nations" held true, as far as Engels and Marx were concerned, only with respect to the large, viable, historic nations, and not with respect to the "small relics of peoples which, after having figured for a longer or shorter period on the stage of history, were finally absorbed as integral portions into one or the other of those more powerful nations whose greater vitality enabled them to overcome greater obstacles." Engels wrote in "What Have the Working Classes to Do with Poland?" (1866)

Engels' statements of 1849 and 1866 mean the denial of self-determination to the small, "non-historic" peoples. Engels was even more specific.

"There is no country in Europe," Engels wrote, “that does not possess, in some remote corner, one or more ruins of peoples, left over from an earlier population, forced back and subjugated by the nation which later became the repository of historical development. These remnants of a nation, mercilessly crushed, as Hegel said, by the course of history, this national refuse, is always the fanatical representative of the counter revolution and remains so until it is completely exterminated or de-nationalized, as its whole existence is in itself a protest against a great historical revolution.
In Scotland, for example, the Gaels, supporters of the Stuarts from 1640
to 1745.
In France the Bretons, supporters of the Bourbons from 1792 to 1800.
In Spain the Basques, supporters of Don Carlos..
In Austria the pan-Slav South Slavs [in the wider sense], who are nothing more than the national refuse of a thousand years of immensely confused development. It is the most natural thing in the world that this national refuse, itself as entangled as the development which brought it into existence, sees its salvation solely in a reversal of the entire development of Europe, which according to it must proceed not from west to east but from east to west, and that its weapon of liberation, its unifying bond, is the Russian knout.”

He writes “Thus the counter-revolutionary uprisings of the Highland Scots have to be explained in terms of a people still living within the clan organization and therefore opposing capitalist development, which would indeed use them ill in the end.' The counter-revolution in Brittany, just as in neighbouring Vendee, has to be understood above all as a result of the peculiar agrarian structure of this region and of the local peasantry's dissatisfaction (for the most part justified) with the early agrarian legislation of the French revolution. And finally, as for the Basques, they supported Don Carlos because in Spanish absolutism they saw a threat to their "fueros" and to their "altogether democratic"(to quote Mane) organisations of self-government."

Amongst all the nations and nationalities of Austria there are only three bearers of progress,
which have actively intervened in history and are still capable of independent life: Germans, Poles and Magyars. They are therefore revolutionary now. The next mission of all the other great and small peoples is to perish in the universal revolutionary storm. They are therefore now
counter-revolutionary."

In November 1847, Engels wrote: "Through its industry, its commerce and its political institutions, the bourgeoisie is already working everywhere to drag the small, self-contained localities which only live for themselves out of their isolation, to bring them into contact with one another, to merge their interests,... and to build up a great nation with common interests, customs and ideas out of the many hitherto independent localities and provinces.  The bourgeoisie is already carrying out considerable centralization The democratic proletariat not only needs the kind of centralisation begun by the bourgeoisie but will have to extend it very much further. During the short time when the proletariat was at the helm of state in the French revolution, during the rule of the Mountain party, it used all means—including grapeshot and the guillotine—to effect centralisation. When the democratic proletariat again comes to power, it will not only have to centralise every country separately but will have to centralize all civilized
countries together as soon as possible." said Engels in "The Civil War in Switzerland,"

Engels is so thoroughly convinced of the finality and irrevocability of this verdict that he even risks offering this statement:
“We repeat: apart from the Poles, the Russians and at most the Slavs of Turkey [not of Austria and Hungary!], no Slav people has a future, for the simple reason that all the other Slavs lack the primary historical, geographical, political and industrial conditions for a viable independence.
And he continues:
“Peoples which have never had a history of their own, which come under foreign domination the moment they have achieved the first, crudest level of civilisation, or are forced onto the first level of civilization by the yoke of a foreigner, have no capacity for survival and will never be able to attain any kind of independence. And that has been the fate of the Austrian Slavs.
There is no country in Europe where there are not different nationalities under the same government. The Highland Gaels and the Welsh are undoubtedly of different nationalities to what the English are, although nobody will give to these remnants of peoples long gone by the title of
nations, any more than to the Celtic inhabitants of Brittany in France Here, then, we perceive the difference between the "principle of nationalities" and of the old democratic and working-class tenet as to the right of the great European nations" to separate and independent existence.
The "principle of nationalities" leaves entirely untouched the great question of the right of national existence for the historic peoples of Europe; nay, if it touches it, it is merely to disturb it. The principle of nationalities raises two sorts of questions: first of all, questions of boundary between these great historic peoples; and secondly, questions as to the right to independent national existence of those numerous small relics of peoples which, after having figured for a longer or shorter period on the stage of history, were finally absorbed as integral portions into one or the other of those more powerful nations whose greater vitality enabled them to overcome greater obstacles. The European importance, the vitality of a people is as nothing in the eyes of the principle of nationalities; before it, the Roumans of Wallachia, who never had a history nor the energy required to have one, are of equal importance to the Italians who have a history of 2,000 years, and an unimpaired national vitality; the Welsh and Manxmen, if they desired it, would have an equal right to independent political existence, absurd though it would be, with the English. What is pan-Slavism, but the application, by Russia and Russian interest, of the principle of nationalities to the Serbians, Croats, Ruthenes, Slovaks, Czechs and other remnants of bygone Slavonian peoples in Turkey, Hungary and Germany! ... If people say that to demand the restoration of Poland is to appeal to the principle of nationalities, they merely prove that they do not know what they are talking about, for the restoration of Poland means the re-establishment of a state composed of at least four" different nationalities."

Engels denied the national future of these peoples and counted on their absorption and their assimilation by the great "historic" nations.

For those who call themselves socialists, "the right of peoples to self-determination" has become so self-evident a principle but it is not a principle of Marxism.

Engels and Marx acted and fought in a world very different from that of today and to understand them we must understand the special range of problems posed by that world. Above all, they very obviously misjudged the speed of historical development, from which, for obvious reasons,  they were never able to free themselves completely They were reluctant  to concede to capitalism, which had scarcely reached maturity, a longer lifespan, and they therefore regarded the socialist revolution as the direct, practical task of their generation. On this premise their nationalities' policy is understandable.

It is simply not true (as some would have us believe) that Marx and Engels' negative
attitude towards the non-historic Slavic peoples was only a short-lived passing phase limited to the revolutionary years of 1848 and 1849. And it is also not true that this attitude can be explained completely by the counter revolutionary role of these peoples and by the danger of pan-Slavism. A national-German undertone is sometimes clearly audible in the national policy of Marx and Engels, although for them a united, republican Germany never meant anything else but the most suitable base of operation and the most competent agent of the socialist revolution.

So  the Marx and Engels position is wherever several nationalities are forced together in a single state, the internationalist policy of  Marxists not only strives to make the workers of the oppressed nation recognise the workers in the ruling nation as their comrades-in-arms and subordinate their particular national goals to the interest of the common struggle for socialism, but also above all encourages the workers of the oppressing nations, notwithstanding their national "pride" and  privileges that may benefit some strata of the working class,  to dissociate themselves entirely from all the policies of national oppression pursued by their ruling
classes.

 Should workers let themselves be "diverted" from the class struggle by the national question? How can one demand that they support the party of one capitalist against another
in a competition between sections of the ruling classes which given the present social order, every national struggle can be reduced to?

The question arises why oppressed nationalities cannot wait with their emancipation until
the hour of freedom arrives for the working class? And why should the English, German,  and Russian workers have been concerned with the establishment of independent (or even only autonomous) Irish, Polish, South Slavic and Ukrainian states, whereby large political and economic regions would be broken up, whose integrity would facilitate socialist development These are the issues that the theorist Roman Rosdolsky raises in his work on the national problem in regards to the position of Marx and Engels.

Today, we find the debate has not gone away but has in fact heightened in the past decades. What has most definitely changed,  is that many of todays “Marxists” possess little comprehension of where Marx and Engels stood regards the various manifestations of European nationalism.

Food for Thought

Toronto will host the 2015 Pan-American games. The organization recently fired the CEO who earned a salary of almost $400,000 and collected a severance package worth over half a million dollars. How does this compare with the wages of those workers who construct the facilities. One would think they would be worth something similar but will just get the boot when the work is finished. Time to get boot the wages system. John Ayers

Lacking Sprinklers and adequate Staff!

A recent fire in a retirement home in Quebec that killed about thirty residents has highlighted the lack of sprinkler systems and adequate staff in these facilities. The sprinklers would have put the fire out and adequate numbers of staff would have been able to evacuate all residents in time. Both are tied to the money aspects as they are run by for-profit organizations and underline the stupidity and heartlessness of our economic system. John Ayers

An Ode to Engels

Marx described Engels as "a veritable walking encyclopedia,  he’s capable, drunk or sober, of working at any hour of the day or night, is a fast writer and devilish quick in the uptake" 

Socialist Courier came across the following poem honouring Engels. 

Frederick Engels 

Most don’t bother coming next and get the silver,
Or being the second highest mountain in the world.
But that was not the style of Frederick Engels,
He held Marx’s flag aloft, proud and unfurled.
When the brightest star is shining in the heavens,
You would think a darker piece of sky was worth a try.
But not if you were dear old Frederick Engels,
He stood right next to Marx and held his head up high.
You could never say he lived in Karl Marx’s shadow;
Shadows weren’t the sort of thing to bother Fred.
In honest proletarian cooperation
He helped multiply Marx’s light and shadows fled.
No one knew their dialectics like old Engels
And though his death was the negation of his birth,
A great productive life came in between them
And negating the negation shows its worth.
The negation of the death of Frederick Engels
Doesn’t take us back to little Fred,
But to the birth of a great proletarian movement
With Marx and Engels ever at its head.

by Godfrey Cremer, 
28 November 1999

Food for Thought

A recent report issued by Freedom House that has ranked national trends  in civil rights since the 1970s, said it was worried by 'a new trend in totalitarianism'. Civil rights and liberties have declined for the eighth year. This included another Egyptian military coup, South Sudan, Iraq, Syria, Central African Republic, and Yemen. According to the Washington-based research group, fifty-four nations showed declines in political rights and civil liberties. They are rights that have been fought for and won, however temporarily, after years of struggle in which many of those fighting for liberty were murdered. They would have been better advised to fight for a world where would be no ruling class to take away those rights. John Ayers.

The Horrors of War

The magnitude and horror of war is hard to imagine but this news item gives you a notion of how awful it is. 'A soldier who lost his testicles and both legs to a Taliban landmine says servicemen should donate sperm before they go to war.  Rick Clement, 34, almost died in the blast in Helmand Province, Afghanistan,  in May 2010.  He wed fiance Leanne Isaacs a year later but the marriage didn't last.'  (Daily Telegraph, 7 March) The horror that Rick experienced is not going to be lessened by any sort of legislation. What we need is world socialism and the end of war for ever. RD

The Slave’s Prayer

The Slave’s Prayer

O freedom, we thank thee from the fullness of grateful hearts. Thou art pure and incorruptible. Thou lookest down with pity and compassion upon the children of toil bent with their burdens and weary with oppression. Thou biddest them to join hands and hearts, shake off their cruel fetters, and rise to the realms of peace and joy.

We thank thee, above all, for thy supreme justice in withholding thy favors from masters and rulers, and rejecting with righteous scorn all special pleas for thy boon, rebuking thus the soulless few who would, to free themselves, see all their brethren perish in slavery. We hear they cheering voice and understand thy revolutionary mission — thou art to us the noblest of ideals; and when trials and vexations multiply and clouds hang low, we find in thee unceasing solace and unfailing strength and inspiration. We know that when the hour strikes for thy reception; know that when class robs class no more; when humanity, slaveless and masterless, rises to its dignity, then wilt thou come to earth to abide with the children of men in the reign of freedom from evermore

Amen
Eugene Debs 

"American Hustle"

The latest movie that fans are raving about is "American Hustle" and it is predicted to sweep the upcoming 'let's promote business' awards, otherwise known as the Oscars. The most commendable aspect is some great acting by Christian Bale and Jennifer Lawrence. The plot is that a pair of con artists is caught in the act by an FBI agent, who promises them immunity if they help to catch other fraudsters. There are no admirable characters in this movie. It's simply set a thief to catch a thief and shows capitalism at its most corrupt. In fact the one honest character is hell bent on furthering his career. The audience is asked to empathize with the original hustlers. The trouble is they're not worth it, like the economic system they believe in. John Ayers.

Unpaid Overtime

A favourite piece of owning class propaganda is that workers are lazy and they have to be constantly watched to make sure they are working hard enough, but what are we to make of this piece of information supplied by the TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady? 'Times are tough for public sector workers. As the cuts bite and fewer staff find themselves having to take on more work, unpaid overtime inevitably grows. Some of the increase will be down to the professionalism and commitment of staff who want to provide decent services. But there is also evidence of bullying and excessive management pressure in some workplaces. ....... Hours are up, workload has increased, pay has been frozen, pensions cut and jobs insecure as public sector staff know that 60% of the cuts are still to come.' (ITN News, 23 February) Unpaid overtime hardly seems to point to a lazy workforce, does it? RD

Money cranks

Major C.H. Douglas
Money Crank

Economic crises always have a falling-out-among-thieves with  different capital sectors seeking advantage for themselves by fixing capitalism’s problem on others. Many of todays radical economists pin-point the central cause of the problems of capitalism is to be found in the sphere of the circulation of commodities - a financial banking and consumer spending crisis, rather than at the point of production, where the Marxist locates it. They seek  to solve the social problem of capitalist production without changing the existing relations of production. Currency reformers of the Ellen Brown and Positive Money type wish to save capitalism by making changes in the monetary system alone and  reform capitalism by an alteration in the monetary mechanism. They ignore the industrialist capitalist and concentrate their attacks upon the bankers. They  propose to socialize credit and leave the capitalists in control of industry. It is a dream of reform shrinking away  from any genuine revolutionary consequences  hope to attain their heart’s desire by legislative measures , as simply and easily as signing a decree. Their practical political programs reflect a timidity that trembles at the prospect of  revolution. They sincerely desire to abolish all the miseries of exploitation, but without upsetting the existing social relations of production and without compelling anyone but a handful of bankers to yield up their present privileges. We are assured banking reform is not socialism but ‘economic democracy’.

They find the scapegoat in the money supply and the credit monopoly of finance capital. They often “prove” the existence of “the banker’s conspiracy” by exposing the Federal Reserve. They insinuate that bankers deliberately instigate panics and crises. They do pay no heed to  credit crunch as a symptom and evidence that the crisis is already under way, instead of being the fundamental cause of its occurrence, and pass over the fact that bankers, like other capitalists, can only invest money where there is the prospect of profit. The financial magnates are as helpless as any other capitalist group to start or stop a general capitalist crisis, although they have induced temporary credit stringencies for their private purposes. They hold a basic belief that money is not (or should not be) a commodity, but a system of worthless tokens (fiat money). They mistake the superficial forms of modern money (its paper dress as currency or its phantom bookkeeping existence as checks) for its inner nature. They completely fail to comprehend the function of money in a commodity producing society, and particularly under capitalism. As the general equivalent of value, money is not only a commodity but the king among commodities, destined to reign so long as capitalism endures.

Nor do these currency cranks fully comprehend  that money is subject to all the laws of capitalism. Chief among these laws is the necessity of transforming money into capital, and using capital to appropriate surplus value. The financier accomplishes this by loaning money to the industrialist or the merchant, who, in their turn, appropriate their share of surplus value directly from the working class. The self-same capital is used for exploiting purposes by both groups of capitalists, and yet the new economists  condemn the bankers alone. Their position amounts to this: the capitalist may exploit the working class, but the finance capitalist must not exploit his brother capitalists.

At the bottom of it all is the fear of the small businessmen of the Frankenstein monster of  the Big Banks. The monopoly of credit is the means by which large corporations exploit the lesser capitalist groups. They charge the banking industry with the creation of debt although that process is only a special case of the continuous transformation of social wealth into private property under capitalism. First, the power of creating credit is to be taken away from the private bankers and vested in the state. Either by nationalization of the banks or the creation of the North Dakota State Bank model. The scheme is utterly utopian. If credit was nationalized, as it is for all practical purposes in many capitalist countries today, it would simply put a more powerful weapon in the hands of the monopoly capitalists who control the state, and be used, as it is in those countries, to protect the profits of national capitalists against foreign competition. It appears radical in form but proves to be reactionary in substance. Its propagandists  pander to all the confused prejudices of the impoverished ‘middle’ classes, providing a pseudo-socialist covering for their outspoken hatred of finance capital, their nationalism and, in many cases, their anti-semitism.

 The fundamental cause of capitalist crises is to be found in the antagonisms of capitalist production and this cannot be repeated too often until it eventually sinks into the minds of those who want capitalism with a humane face.

100 Years of Conflict

The centenary of the first world war has produced a plethora of TV programmes and newspaper articles but one fact seems to be usually overlooked. 'British forces are set to withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of 2014. If 2015 is a year of peace for the UK, it will be the first for at least 100 years.' (Guardian, 11 February) The British army has been involved in wars all over the world constantly since 1914. Ireland, Iraq, Aden, Kuwait, Palestine, 2nd world war, Korea, Suez and so on ad nauseam. Ironically the 1914-18 war was named the war to end all wars. RD

The Gap Widens

The desperate poverty that forces millions to eke out an existence on the equivalent of $2 a day when we have a handful of billionaires living in luxury is a contrast that was well illustrated recently. 'Microsoft founder Bill Gates has regained the top spot as the world's richest person, according to Forbes magazine's annual ranking of global billionaires. Mr Gates' total net worth was estimated at $76bn (£45.5bn) this year, up from $67bn in 2013.' (BBC News, 3 March) Gates is not the only one enjoying this bonanza - in total, there were a record 1,645 billionaires, according to Forbes. RD

Fighting for Peace

PEACEFULLY IF POSSIBLE
FORCIBLY IF NECESSARY
"If your enemy has massive capacity for violence - and modern governments today have massive capacity for violence - why deliberately choose to fight with your enemy's best weapons? They are guaranteed to win, almost certainly." - Gene Sharp

To the average person Marxists are regarded as ultra- revolutionaries who advocate of violent overthrow of all constituted order in government. The Socialist Party of Great Britain has not been enamoured with the idea of violence. We are not  insurrectionists. But we are realists. Above all do they try to guard against the sporadic, meaningless and inevitably self-defeating violence that suffering and resentment are so likely to prompt. We have never advocated the use of indiscriminate violence.  Nor do we incite needless bloodshed. Our position is non-violent resistance  is a more effective method for bringing about desirable social change in the modern world than violence. We are not interested in maintaining that non-violence is morally preferable to violence, but that non-violence is superior as an instrument to bring about social change. And we are speaking of non-violent resistance, not of non-resistance, which is a very different proposition. We do not argue that Man is innately good which will lead to the capitalist and the worker clasping hands in brotherly love. Men are “innately” neither good nor bad. The interests and values they hold to are based upon the objective historical conditions of their lives. What we insist is that violence alone will not achieve socialism and we will judge the effectiveness of non-violence on its efficiency.

In capitalism private property relations can only be protected by coercion – the have-nots had to be coerced by the haves, just as in feudal or slave society, expressed in the police, the laws, the standing army, and the legal apparatus of the bourgeois State. Man cannot but act. And since man is always acting, he is always exerting force, always altering or maintaining the position of things, always revolutionary or reactionary.   The web of physical and social relations that binds men into one universe ensures that nothing we do is without its effect on others, whether we vote or cease to vote. Man can never rest on the absolute; all acts involve consequences, and it is man’s task to find out these consequences, and act accordingly. Therefore it is man’s task to find out the consequences of acts: which means discovering the laws of social relations.

The support of large numbers of people begins to increase consciousness and when enough people withdraw their cooperation the government begins to break down.  The use of non-violent methods of action comes to be seen as the most effective use of force open at present to socialists. Commitment to civil disobedience is more than sore feet on marches and cold arses on wet pavements.

Hating the violence of the capitalist State, the revolutionary must produce a society which needs neither violence in peace nor in war. We must seek the only path by which capitalist social relations of violence can be turned into peaceful communist social relations. To expropriate the expropriators, to oppose their coercion by that of the workers, to destroy all the instruments of class coercion and exploitation crystallised in the capitalist State, is the first task. Violence departs from the world of men. Man at last becomes free. It is difficult  to see another way.

The Socialist Party is a revolutionary party, but not a revolution-making party. We know that our goal can be attained only through a revolution. We also know that it is just as little in our power to create this revolution as it is in the power of our opponents to prevent it. It is no part of our work to instigate a revolution or to prepare the way for it. And since the revolution cannot be arbitrarily created by us, we cannot say anything whatever about when, under what conditions, or what forms it will come. We do know that the class struggle cannot end until the workers deprive the employers of political power and come into   full possession of the political powers to use them to introduce socialism. We do know that this class struggle must grow both extensively and intensively to achieve this. But we can have only the vaguest conjectures as to when and how the last decisive blows in the social war will be struck. Since we know nothing concerning the decisive battles of the social war, we are manifestly unable to say whether they will be bloody or not, whether physical force will play a decisive part, or whether they will be fought exclusively by means of economic, legislative and moral pressure. We are, however, quite safe in saying that in all probability the revolutionary battles of the proletariat will see a much greater predominance of these latter method over physical, which means armed force.

In ‘Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict’co-authored by Erica Chenoweth, an assistant professor of government at Wesleyan University, and Maria J Stephan, a strategic planner with the US State Department, they analysed  323 examples of resistance campaigns and rebellion from 1900 to 2006, Chenoweth and Stephan conclude non-violent campaigns have been twice as successful as violent campaigns in achieving their objectives. They contend that this difference is down to non-violent campaigns being more likely to attract mass support. Non-violent resistance is not a magic wand and does not guarantee success. However, the hard evidence shows it generally has the strategic edge over violent resistance.

What gives a government -- even a repressive regime -- the power to rule? The answer, Sharpe realized, was people's belief in its power. Even dictatorships require the cooperation and obedience of the people they rule to stay in charge. So, he reasoned, if you can identify the sources of a government's power -- people working in civil service, police and judges, even the army -- then you know what a dictatorship depends on for its existence. Once he'd worked that out, Sharp went back to his theories of nonviolent struggle: "What is the nature of this technique?" he asked himself. "What are its methods ... different kinds of strikes, protests, boycotts, hunger strikes ... How does it work? It may fail. If it fails, why? If it succeeds, why?" If a dictatorship depends on the cooperation of people and institutions, then all you have to do is shrink that support. That is exactly what nonviolent struggle does. By its very nature, nonviolent struggle destroys governments, even brutal dictatorships, politically.  All power has its sources. And if you can identify the sources you can cut them off.

Non-violent means will increase your chances of the soldiers refusing to obey orders. But if you go over to violence, the soldiers will not mutiny. They will be loyal to the dictatorship and the dictatorship will have a good chance to survive. A non-violent struggle can be successful without a leader but people need to understand what makes this succeed, and what makes it fail. If they have no leader, this can be an advantage at times, because then the regime cannot really control the situation by arresting or killing off the leadership. But if you are going to do it without leaders, you have to do that skillfully, and know what you’re doing. If you spread information about what is required, and have a list of “do this, and not that”, and everybody understands that, the struggle can have greater chances of success. If you don’t have that basic understanding of what you’re doing, then you’re not going to win anything.  It is possible for ordinary people to maintain non-violent discipline, maintain their courage, to continue the struggle, despite the repression. Non-violent struggle opens the door to greater control over your society and makes democracy durable. 

A socialist party

WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE

Marx and Engels in the ’The Communist Manifesto’ write :
"The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority."

He later elaborates in his address to the First International:
 “To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes...One element of success they possess — numbers; but numbers weigh in the balance only if united by combination and led by knowledge.”

So there must be both organisation and knowledge in the workers’ hands if they are to emancipate themselves. A socialist party only functions as a catalyst for the working class to act on its own, combining the “ knowing" with the doing. The Socialist Party of Great Britain does not strive to lead each and every struggle, nor is it an association of cadres offering themselves up as enlightened leaders.

The purpose of the socialist party is according to Engels in ‘Socialism – Utopian and Scientific’:
“To accomplish this act of universal emancipation is the historical mission of the modern proletariat. To thoroughly comprehend the historical conditions and thus the very nature of this act, to impart to the now oppressed proletarian class a full knowledge of the conditions and of the meaning of the momentous act it is called upon to accomplish, this is the task of the theoretical expression of the proletarian movement, scientific socialism.”

And as Marx addressed the Brussels Communist Correspondents’ Committee:
“To address the working man without a strictly scientific idea and a positive doctrine is to engage in an empty and dishonest preaching game, which assumes an inspired prophet, on the one hand, and nothing but asses listening to him with gaping mouths, on the other... Ignorance has never yet helped anyone.”

It is clear that class consciousness is the prerequisite for the class party, but just what is meant by class consciousness, still less how it is fostered, is never properly dealt with by professed socialists. Working class consciousness can only develop to the extent that capitalist and reformist attitudes  are driven out by working class ones.  The working class is not only held prisoner by the chains of the capitalist mode of production. It is shackled by the unperceived but overwhelming intellectual, social, political and moralistic hegemony of the bourgeoisie, which anchors it in capitalism. The working class remains a prisoner. It is necessary personally to re-experience that total rupture with bourgeois society. It is necessary personally and critically to recover the historical experience of successive generations of communists.

The dominant form of struggle is trade unionism -  bargaining for the sale of labour power. Under capitalist production it is both inevitable and spontaneous. Bargaining as they do within the limits set by capitalist production, unions are forced constantly to compromise with capital, and are entities not constituted to go for working class power. On the contrary, the trade unions become an essential structural element in the system of the production and reproduction of the relations of production.  To call either for revolutionary trades unionism such as the anarcho-syndicalists call for, or to argue for the dissolution of trades unionism as some Left Communist groups do, lacks any viability. The first, revolutionary trades unionism, is a structural impossibility; the second, precludes any substantive intervention into the arena of the workers most generalised form of struggle.

What appears to be  required is a form of organisation of the labour struggle that recognises the necessity for bargaining and compromises on the economic terrain, but which provides the opportunity for the labour struggle to develop into an economic and then political class struggle. The most representative form of such organisation so far has been the  'One Big Industrial Union’ model of  the Industrial Workers of the World. Changes, however, in working class organisation cannot be brought about simply by ‘seeing and weighing up’ relative advantages and disadvantages, but only when the historical conditions are ripe for change, and when the conditions which have sustained previous forms of organisation have been undermined. Craft union,  the basis of trades unionism as it has hitherto existed – that of selling particular categories of labour power to individual employers – has been undermined and that form of union is now obsolete, as it divided the working class and prevent an effective labour struggle. Unions amalgamated, became “general” unions and industrial unions and these mergers are still continuing.

Scotland's Humanitarian Crisis

A campaign aimed at highlighting the "humanitarian crisis" caused by poverty in Scotland has been launched by a group of charities. The Scotland's Outlook campaign claimed hundreds of thousands of people were being "battered" by welfare reforms, stagnant wages, rising utility bills, higher living costs and job insecurity. And it said many families were having to use food banks to feed themselves.

It claimed more than 870,000 people in Scotland were living in poverty, with a fifth of children in Scotland living below the breadline and 23,000 people having turned to food banks in the past six months. Figures from Scotland's chief statistician also showed there had been a fall in the average household earnings in Scotland, from £461 per week to £436.

The campaign is being run jointly by Macmillan, Shelter Scotland, Oxfam, Alzheimer Scotland, Children's Hospice Association Scotland (CHAS), Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG), the Poverty Alliance and the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO).

Martin Sime, chief executive of the SCVO, said: "With nearly a million people in Scotland living in poverty, we have a humanitarian crisis on our hands and we need everyone's help to tackle it. Thousands of people are turning to food banks, struggling to heat their homes, and to clothe themselves and their children. It's not right.”

Graeme Brown, director of Shelter Scotland, said: "People across Scotland are being battered by welfare reforms, stagnant wages, rising utility bills, higher living costs and job insecurity. Set against the background of 155,100 households on council waiting lists and nearly 40,000 homelessness applications last year, it is clear that much more needs to be done to combat the root causes of poverty if we are to improve the prospects for everyone living in Scotland. "We see and hear the misery poverty causes every day. Not only does it have a devastating impact on home life, it has long-term detrimental effects on people's health, wellbeing and life chances - especially children."

It called on people across the country to "join the fight against poverty". The Socialist Party, too, joins in that call to fight against poverty - by enlisting in the socialist movement for only socialism will do away with the cause of poverty, capitalism.

A campaign aimed at highlighting the "humanitarian crisis" caused by poverty in Scotland has been launched by a group of charities. The Scotland's Outlook campaign claimed hundreds of thousands of people were being "battered" by welfare reforms, stagnant wages, rising utility bills, higher living costs and job insecurity. And it said many families were having to use food banks to feed themselves.

It claimed more than 870,000 people in Scotland were living in poverty, with a fifth of children in Scotland living below the breadline and 23,000 people having turned to food banks in the past six months. Figures from Scotland's chief statistician also showed there had been a fall in the average household earnings in Scotland, from £461 per week to £436.

The campaign is being run jointly by Macmillan, Shelter Scotland, Oxfam, Alzheimer Scotland, Children's Hospice Association Scotland (CHAS), Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG), the Poverty Alliance and the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO).

Martin Sime, chief executive of the SCVO, said: "With nearly a million people in Scotland living in poverty, we have a humanitarian crisis on our hands and we need everyone's help to tackle it. Thousands of people are turning to food banks, struggling to heat their homes, and to clothe themselves and their children. It's not right.”

Graeme Brown, director of Shelter Scotland, said: "People across Scotland are being battered by welfare reforms, stagnant wages, rising utility bills, higher living costs and job insecurity. Set against the background of 155,100 households on council waiting lists and nearly 40,000 homelessness applications last year, it is clear that much more needs to be done to combat the root causes of poverty if we are to improve the prospects for everyone living in Scotland. "We see and hear the misery poverty causes every day. Not only does it have a devastating impact on home life, it has long-term detrimental effects on people's health, wellbeing and life chances - especially children."

It called on people across the country to "join the fight against poverty". The Socialist Party, too, joins in that call to fight against poverty - by enlisting in the socialist movement for only socialism will do away with the cause of poverty, capitalism.

Billions of Dollars

We are constantly reminded by the mass media that we are living through a recession and must be prepared to cut down on our economic expenditure, but no such advice is proffered to the owning class. 'The investment firm run by the US billionaire Warren Buffett has reported a record profit for 2013. Berkshire Hathaway made $19.5bn (£11.6bn) last year, up from $14.8bn (£8.8bn) in 2012. "On the operating front, just about everything turned out well for us last year - in some cases very well," Mr Buffett wrote to shareholders.' (BBC News, 2 March) Investors in Berkshire Hathaway with an additional $4.7bn culled from the exploitation of the working class will have no need for any cuts in their expenditure. RD

Why be a socialist?

FOR A WORLD OF FREE ACCESS

 “From each according to his abilities to each according to his needs!”

We live in a world where war and the threat of war, hunger and poverty, racial and sexual discrimination, plus many forms of repression, including the most barbaric, such as torture and genocide, are the lot of the majority of the earth’s inhabitants. We are living under the yoke of capitalism.

The aim of the World Socialist Movement is to replace world capitalist economy by a world system of socialism. A socialist society is mankind’s only way out, for it alone can abolish the contradictions of the capitalist system which threaten to degrade and destroy the human race.  For the first time in its history mankind will take its fate into its own hands. Instead of destroying innumerable human lives and incalculable wealth in struggles between classes and nations, mankind will devote all its energy to the struggle against the forces of nature, to the development and strengthening of its own collective might. Socialism will abolish the class division of society, i.e., simultaneously with the abolition of anarchy in production, it will abolish all forms of exploitation and oppression of man by man. Society will no longer consist of antagonistic classes in conflict with each other, but will present a united commonwealth of labour.

By abolishing private ownership of the means of production and converting these means into social property, the world socialsim will end the forces of the world market competition and its blind processes of social production, by consciously organised and planned production for the purpose of satisfying rapidly growing social needs. With the abolition of capitalism devastating crises and still more devastating wars will disappear. Instead of colossal waste of productive forces and spasmodic development of society-there will be a planned utilisation of all material resources and a painless economic development on the basis of unrestricted, smooth and rapid development of productive forces.

Work will cease to be toiling for the benefit of a class enemy: instead of being merely a means of livelihood it will become a worthwhile communal co-operation to produce the necessities of life.   Culture will become the acquirement of all and  a great field will be opened for the harmonious development of all the talents inherent in humanity. Private ownership in the means of production and its lust for profits, retards technical progress. The closest possible co-operation between science and technique, the utmost encouragement of research work and the practical application of its results on the widest possible social scale; planned organisation, statistical accounting and the scientific regulation of economy will secure the maximum productivity of social labour, which in turn will release human energy for the powerful development of science and art. The development of the productive forces of world society will make it possible to raise the well-being of the whole of humanity and to reduce to a minimum the time devoted to material production and, consequently, will enable culture to flourish as never before in history. This new culture of a humanity that is united for the first time in history, and has abolished all State boundaries, will, unlike capitalist culture, be based upon clear and transparent human relationships. Hence, it will bury forever all mysticism, religion, prejudice and superstition. The social relationships between people will be above-board and principled. Labor will be conscious and enthusiastic as the way of life rather than only as a means of survival. The forces of production will be unleashed and there will be high standards of social wealth. There will be broad and profound advances made in the fields of education, art, culture and science, as the masses of people are free to pursue these endeavors.

Socialism may not be the “utopia” many have describe. But we can be assured that there will no longer be the struggle between opposing classes. Want and economic inequality, the misery of enslaved classes, and a wretched standard of life  will disappear. The hierarchy created in the division of labour system will be abolished together with the antagonism between mental and manual labour; and the last vestige of the social inequality of the sexes will be removed. At the same time,  the State will disappear also,  being the embodiment of class domination. It will die out in so far as classes die out, and with it all measures of coercion will expire. The State is nothing other than the instrument of the dictatorship of one class over the others. Freedom in capitalist society means freedom for the worker to sell him or herself into slavery, and freedom for the capitalist to exploit the worker. The difference between socialists and  anarchists must not be formulated by saying that the socuialist wishes to maintain the existence of the State but the anarchists wished to annihilate it. The real dispute has always been how the State is to be annihilated. The socialist view is that the suture will see the rise of a free association, a society wherein neither class nor government shall exist. The creation of a society without government is the aim of the socialist movemen to be accomplished by “destruction of bourgeois supremacy; conquest of political power by the proletariat.” [Communist Manifesto] Marx elaborates later in 1872 “What all socialists understand by anarchism is this: as soon as the goal of the proletarian movement, the abolition of classes, shall have been reached, the power of the State whose function it is to keep the great majority of the producers beneath the yoke of a small minority of exploiters, will disappear, and governmental functions will be transformed into simple administrative functions.” Here lies the fundamental difference between Marx and Bakunin - socialists hold that the working class must seize political power in order to destroy the class division of society and the existence of the State will become impossible owing to the annihilation of its foundations. The capitalist class seizes possession of the state apparatus and makes it the instrument of its exploitative interests in a manner which is apparent to every worker, who must now recognize that the conquest of political power is in his or her own most immediate personal interest. The blatant seizure of the state by the capitalist class directly compels every worker to strive for the conquest of political power as the only means of putting an end to his or her own exploitation.

Commodity production, that is, production for sale or exchange on the market, will not exist. The system of wage labor will be abolished and the guiding principle of labor will be “from each according to ability, to each according to need.” The means of production will be held communally and private property will be eliminated.

The goal of the World Socialist Movement is socialism, and to be part of the liberation of all humanity from the chains of exploitation and oppression. The emancipation of the workers will be accomplished by the workers themselves. They will achieve it through socialist revolution.  Workers everywhere are arriving at almost identical decisions as to tactics and organisation. Workers offer a solution of their own - socialism, the organization of production, the conscious control of the economy not by and for the benefit of capitalist corporations but by and for society as a whole. Socialism is not a remote ideal, an 'ultimate aim' but our 'immediate’ demand. For the time being the World Socialist Movement stands alone in its clear conscious goal - the entire transformation of human society.

Food for thought

The death of a welder in Toronto when a roof he was working on collapsed, highlighted two things. One, unlike the death of a policeman or fire-fighter, he will not get a public parade with workers from around North America in attendance (the jingoism factor); two, the number of worker deaths – in 2012 seventy- three in Ontario alone from accidents and 367 including those succumbing to occupational diseases acquired on the job. In fact, in a recent list of the most dangerous jobs, the top 10 was dominated by, not surprisingly, blue collar jobs such as construction, farming, electrical, trucking, refuse collecting, roofing, logging, and fishing. Police and fire-fighters did not figure in the top 10. Police and fire-fighters are workers too and we do not begrudge them due respect for performing the dangerous aspects of their jobs, but it is obvious that work place deaths and injuries are kept below the radar for obvious reasons. John Ayers.

Growing Old Disgracefully

Capitalism is a vindictive society based as it is on the exploitation of the working class. After a lifetime of insecurity and poverty in work many must face an even worse old age. 'According to figures produced by independent researchers at the House of Commons, at least 241,700 pensioners were suffering physical, psychological, financial or sexual abuse at the time of the last census in 2011. However, an upper estimate suggested the true figure could be as high as 353,300.' (Sunday Telegraph, 2 March) Needless to say this fate doesn't apply to the owning class. RD