A Mad, Mad World

If anything could sum up the madness of capitalist society it is surely this. 'A rare violin "hidden in a closet" at the home of a reclusive US heiress for decades is expected to fetch up to $10 million (£6 million) at auction this week. .....  The violin is one of the highlights of the sale from the estate of Huguette Clark, the eccentric heiress to a copper fortune.' (Independent on Sunday, 8 June) A useless parasite possesses a valuable work of art of which she is unaware whilst millions starve and die for the lack of a few dollars. Capitalism stinks! RD

“I’m alright, Jock”

 

A 100 days to go until the referendum vote. Throughout the independence referendum debate the working class perspective has largely been missing.

The Socialist Party counterpose internationalism (technically, that’s the interrelation of nations but in common parlance we take it to mean anti-nationalism), against nationalism. We are internationalists because we believe that the interests of the exploited are the same all over the world, and that socialism cannot be achieved in a single geographic area. The class struggle recognises no borders. We seek a truly free society where all peoples and nationalities shall be united into a universal brotherhood.

 The creation of new national borders is not a step forward in the direction of the unity of the woking class, a pre-requisite for the establishment of socialism.  Independence movements divide workers of different nationalities and push them to line up under national flags  instead of struggling to free themselves from the wage labour and exploitation, imposed by a local ruling class as well as foreign ones. Nationalism is an objectionable sentiment since it means the placing of one’s own country, its interests and well-being, above those of the rest of humanity.

Men and women the world over are beginning to realise that nationalism and patriotism are too narrow and limited a conception to meet the necessities of our time. Some capitalists want independence but it should be revolution we, the people, should want. There are but two nations in the world. Do you belong to the nation that lives by working, or to the nation that lives by owning? The Pole, the Indian or the Somali who works belongs to our nation. On the other hand, the factory owner, the share-holding investor and the land-owner does not belong to our nation, no matter where they are born or where they live; no matter where you were born or where you live. No matter what their race; no matter what your race.

Forget your bogus patriotism. Our country is the world. Those who do useful labour are our fellow compatriots. The foreigner, the enemy, is oppressing our co-workers all over the world. They are breaking our backs. They are grinding our lives. We have nothing in common with them. Let us cast off all sectionalism, all parochialism, and sit down as brothers and sisters together. The task of building a socialist movement is not easy and it should include no support whatsoever for either the unionist or separatist factions who represent only different aspects of exploitation and oppression. The workers in Scotland must join the world working class to get rid of a global system which has long outlived its usefulness.

Nationalism finds little expression among the Scottish ruling class which is firmly committed to its junior partner relationship with British capitalism. This is hardly surprising, as the integration of their economic interests has inevitably tended towards what might be described as a social integration of the owners and representatives of Scottish and British capital. Their common outlook is reinforced by an unusual degree of inter-marriage, common club affiliations, common educational background, etc.

We must resist all attempts by one ruling class to play us off against each other. The idea of the "Scottish nation" hides the class character of the capitalist system and gives the impression that their exists the common interest of the "Scottish people".

We have no country but we do have a world to win. The only solution is a society in which money, exploitation and profit have been overthrown and production is in harmony with humanity and the environment. A society in which the means of production are socialised and no longer in the hands of state or private capitalists. It is a question of a new society, an "association of free producers", in which production is for the satisfaction of human needs and not for profit. A society without nations, states or borders.

There is simply no solution to the oppression of many of the world’s peoples within the framework of capitalism – this is clear enough from all that has happened. Capitalism is a world wide system.  Capitalism created the nation-state and the interdependence of world economy as one single system. However, it did so in a rather haphazard and contradictory fashion. On the one hand the capitalist nations are dependent on one another. But on the other hand they compete against one another. Neither nationalism nor pseudo-Europeanism is a solution in the interests of the working class. The solution to the problem lies in the unity of the workers of the world against the capitalists of  the world, the community of interests of the world’s workers.

Although multinationals often have interests distinct from those of the home state and can often frustrate the achievement of its policy aims, this does not entail the conclusion that MNCs are more powerful than the state and can dispense with its protection. Indeed the growth of the power of the MNCs has contributed to the growth of the power of the state and the increasing role of state capital as a counterweight. by internationalizing production, has created a world-wide division of labour. But it has also concentrated ownership and control into fewer and fewer hands. Profits know no nationality, no boundaries. Every new international corporate merger binds the world capitalists together as a class irrespective of nationality.

Should we be surprised at the finding that of 700 oil industry companies polled 18% said they believed independence would be positive for the sector, while 12% said it would be negative and 38% said they did not care either way.

Don't create a new nation - Create a new society. It’s in your hands.

Return Of Nazism

We were told the first world war was a war to end all wars - how pathetic that now seems. We were told the second world war was to end Nazism but that is proving even sillier in Greece. 'SS songs and anti-semitism: the week Golden Dawn turned openly Nazi. Supporters of the far-right party gave Hitler salutes and sang the Horst Wessel song outside parliament last week. ...... Emboldened by its recent success in European and local elections - in which the party emerged as the country's third biggest political force ..... the extremists drove home the message that they were not only on the rebound but here to stay.' (Observer, 8 June) Wars are fought for economic reasons - for markets, trade routes and spheres of influence. Not for high-sounding principles like peace and democracy. RD

The "Glasgow Effect"

In the early 18th Century, Glasgow was described by the author Daniel Defoe as "the cleanest and beautifullest and best built city in Britain". But when the Industrial Revolution drew thousands of people from Ireland, the Lowlands and Highlands, the population exploded and for many it became a living hell.

Babies born in Glasgow are expected to live the shortest lives of any in Britain. One in four Glaswegian men won't reach their 65th birthday. Harry Burns, who until recently was the country's chief medical officer and now professor of public health at Strathclyde University., has his own theory. He compared Glaswegians to Australia's Aboriginal people. He believes deindustrialisation in a city where tens of thousands once worked in the factories and the shipyards has deeply wounded local pride. As a result, people here have much in common with demoralised indigenous communities.

"Being a welder in a shipyard was a cold and difficult and dangerous job," he says. "But it gave you cultural identity in the same way as native peoples in Australia once had a very intense history and tradition."

Burns points to a succession of graphs which show Scots do not smoke more than other Europeans nor do they suffer more heart disease. Scotland was the first part of Britain to ban smoking in public places.

“Where traditional communities lose their traditional cultural anchors," he says, "They all find the same things happening - increasing mortality from alcohol, drugs, violence. The answer is not conventional health promotion. Where you lose a sense of control over your life there's very little incentive to stop smoking or to stop drinking or whatever. The answer is to rediscover a sense of purpose and self-esteem."

Glasgow’s obesity rates are among the highest in the world. Research conducted in 2007 found that nearly one in five potential workers was on incapacity benefit and that Glasgow has a much larger number and a higher proportion of the population claiming sickness-related benefit than any other city in Britain.

The city has an alarmingly high mortality rate. A 2011 study compared it with Liverpool and Manchester, which have roughly equal levels of unemployment, deprivation and inequality. It found that residents of Glasgow are about 30% more likely to die young, and 60% of those excess deaths are triggered by just four things - drugs, alcohol, suicide and violence. Per head of population, the city has twice as many murders as London and that is after a 40% decrease since 2007. Even in the better off neighbourhoods, mortality rates are 15% higher than in similar districts of other big cities.

The Glasgow Effect is relatively new. "These causes of death have emerged really since the 1990s," says Harry Burns "And they emerged more dramatically in one particular sector of the population - men and women between the ages of 15 and 45. So it's a very specific pattern affecting people in their most productive years."

 Author Carol Craig says rapid industrialisation in Glasgow produced a toxic masculinity which destroyed family life. "I was so struck by the very nasty and aggressive relationship between men and women historically in Glasgow," Craig says. "And that was partly as a result of the terrible overcrowding - it was worse than England. Having a front room or parlour was practically unheard of." She explains that in 1891 the London County Council defined overcrowding in terms of two or more person in a room. In the metropolis one third fell below this standard but in Glasgow two thirds - or twice London's number - of residents lived in overcrowded accommodation. Enforced proximity, she argues, forced men out of their homes and into the pub. "It was a kind of survival mechanism," she says. "In the old Glasgow on a Friday when men got paid, you would see women queuing outside workplaces and pubs to retrieve any of the money. This was very much a city where men suited themselves."

According to the Glasgow and Clyde Health Board, in just two years almost half of all homes in the city will be single-adult households.

 "There is a failure of personal relationships in Glasgow that no one is facing up to," says Craig. "This is significant because what is the single most important thing for men's health? It's being married - it can account for as much as seven years of life expectancy. So if we want to find out why health in Glasgow is so poor I think one of the things that we should ask about is relationships."

Sociologist Aaron Antonovsky, has coined the term "salutogenesis" to describe an approach which focuses on a positive view of well-being rather than a negative view of disease. This takes us into the field of epigenetics - the business of genes being switched on or off depending on the environment you were brought up in. There is an epigenetic impact of the diet that your parents or grandparents were exposed to. Now we can easily find scientific explanations for this - we just haven't proved it yet." The idea that the lifestyle of your grandparents - the air they breathed, the food they ate - can directly affect you, decades later, is disorientating. Many would argue it smacks of fatalism. What is the point of trying to be healthy if you are doomed by your ancestors' bad habits? The epigenetic notion goes against conventional views that DNA carries all our heritable information and that nothing an individual does in their lifetime will be biologically passed to their children.

. "When you hug a baby you make them happy," he says. "Happiness is associated with the production of neurotransmitters in the brain. One of these neurotransmitters has an effect on a particular gene which activates the production of a protein that allows the brain to suppress the stress response. Failure to nurture a baby - failure to do something as simple as hug a child - interferes with that process."

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27309446

Healthy Capitalism or a Sick Planet?

Capitalism dominates the globe. Owners of capital control the means of production and their goal is to build profits. Many argue that market is the way to combat climate change and push for carbon taxing and trading and geo-engineering technical fixes.  By its very nature, capitalism seeks only to grow and accumulate – an idea that is diametrically opposed to a sustainable existence. A stationary state would mean certain disaster for a capitalist economy. Growth is simply essential for its survival. Spurred on by competition, capitalism seeks to constantly re-invest surplus into more capital; a system of self-expansion seeking only greater accumulation. The concept of stationary capitalism is an oxymoron. Not only does capitalism need to expand its resource production and consumption, it also must seek out new markets in which to establish itself. The capitalist system requires continual growth, which means expansion of production. Because production is for private profit, growth is necessary to maintain profitability — and continually increasing profitability is the actual goal. If a corporation doesn’t expand, its competitor will and put it out of business.

Healthy capitalism has led to a very sick planet.

The structural necessity of continual expansion is expressed in the mandate of corporations with stock traded on exchanges to maximise profits on behalf of their shareholders above all other considerations. There are well-meaning people who criticise the excess profits of corporate plunder and seek a remedy through restraint. One need only observe how swiftly institutional investors and stock-holders at AGMs punish director boards that fail to meet expectations. “Enhancing shareholder value” is a corporation’s reason for existence.

Joel Bakan recounted in his book, ‘The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power’ of his interview with Milton Friedman at the time when John Browne, then the chief executive officer of BP, had launched a public-relations offensive claiming that environmental stewardship would now be a primary goal for BP. Bakan writes:
“ When I asked him how far John Browne could go with his green convictions...‘He can do it with his own money. If he pursues those environmental interests in such a way as to run the corporation less effectively for its stockholders, then I think he’s being immoral. He’s an employee of the stockholders, however elevated his position may appear to be. As such, he has a very strong moral responsibility to them.’ ”

Richard Smith, in a paper published in the Real-World Economics Review, describes another problem with “green capitalism”:
“The problem is not just special interests, lobbyists and corruption...Under capitalism, it is, perversely, in the general interest, in everyone’s immediate interests to do all we can to maximize growth right now, therefore, unavoidably, to maximize fossil fuel consumption right now — because practically every job in the country is, in one way or another, dependent upon fossil fuel consumption...There is no way to cut CO2 emissions by anything like 80 percent without imposing drastic cuts across the board in industrial production. But since we live under capitalism, not socialism, no one is promising new jobs to all those ...whose jobs would be at risk if fossil fuel use were really seriously curtailed...Given capitalism, they have little choice but to focus on the short-term, to prioritize saving their jobs in the here and now to feed their kids today — and worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.”

 “Green” enterprises are not exempt. They, too, are pushed by market forces the same as any other enterprise. Smith writes:
“Biofuels, windpower and organic crops — all might be environmentally rational here or there, but not necessarily in every case or forever. But once investments are sunk, green industries have no choice but to seek to maximize profits and grow forever regardless of social need and scientific rationality, just like any other for-profit business.”

Because of the built-in pressure to maintain profits in the face of relentless competition, corporations continually must reduce costs, employee wages not excepted. Production is moved to low-wage countries with fewer regulations, enabling not only more pollution but driving up energy and carbon-dioxide costs with the need for transportation across greater distances.

Under capitalism, all the incentives are to continue business as usual, no matter the dire future that business as usual is leading humanity. Putting the environment first in a capitalist economy is not realistic, and doing so anyway would be very costly due to capitalist dynamics. The fundamental issue is that it can’t imagine a world without capitalism. It has much company in that. But a future in which we live in harmony with nature, rather than destroying nature for profit, can only be a very different world.  However, there is much truth in Frederic Jameson's claim then that it is easier for many people to "imagine the end of the world than it is the end of capitalism"

Hope appears increasingly to have fallen prey to predatory global capitalism and its engulfing insecurity that have reduced human life to the task of merely striving to survive. Never have we required more urgency for a new political imagination to transform the world for the better.

A good society of the future, one with a sustainable economy, must be a socialist society. 

Morals, Money And Swiss Bank Accounts

One of the appeals to many workers of the Roman Catholic Church is that body's apparent disgust at the financial dishonesty of many aspects of capitalism, but behind this apparent disgust is another story. Pope Francis's battle to clean up the Vatican's scandal-mired bank, the Institute of Religious Works (IoR), has entered a new stage, with his removal of the entire board of the Holy City's financial watchdog. 'Among the recent scandals, Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, a former senior Vatican accountant who had close ties to the IoR, is currently on trial accused of  plotting to smuggle millions of dollars into Italy from Switzerland in order to help rich friends lower their tax bills. Investigators believe he used his two IoR accounts as overseas slush funds.' (Independent, 5 June) RD

Another Illusion Destroyed

One of the illusions promoted by politicians and the mass media was that although we lived in a far from equal society we were gradually improving things and equality was just around the corner. Complete nonsense of course. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show the real inequality. "Just 10 per cent of Britain's population own almost half the country's wealth, with vast hoardings of property, possessions, savings and cash." (Times, 16 May) The rich get richer and the poor get poorer - haven't you noticed? RD

Britain Is Booming?

Wow isn't it great to live in Britain? All the statistics show that we live in a booming society. "Some 104 billionaires are now based in the UK - more than triple the number from a decade ago - with combined wealth of more than £301 billion." (Daily Express, 19 May) Wow, fellow workers as you make your way to the Job Centre or the food bank you must be very proud that you live in such a wonderful society. RD

Socialism is a class movement

Red Rosa

Socialism used to be easy to understand until university professors started to do their dissertions on Marxism. Describing a world without private property or money is not too complicated. Socialist conceptions like universal human emancipation and of the free association of individuals are not complex. Those who make up the ruling class are determined to defend their interests against those they exploit, and they are ready to any means necessary including confusion. Socialists aim at no less than human freedom, our self-liberation. Socialist revolution is not merely a change of regime but a new economic system and in this process we change our relationships with each other and we change ourselves. We no longer live fragmented lives, alienated from each other and from ourselves.  We will not be isolated individuals but social individuals. Socialism releases the human potential to become a true community of freely-developing individuals and this new socialist society is not just a variant of the old one. Wherever labour-power is bought and sold humans are treating each other and themselves as if they were objects.

Mankind is frustrated at every turn by capitalism. We desire security, but this we cannot have. We desire peace and prosperity, only to find ourselves fighting devastating wars which bring in their wake economic catastrophes. The potential of most men and women are never realised. Their intellectual and artistic talents are warped on every occasion. Attempts to satisfy human needs are frustrated under capitalism.

Socialism offers a simple solution. All the things created by the ingenuity of man, all that science and art had given to the humanity over  generations is to be used, not for the few, but for the benefit of mankind as a whole. A new economic system of common ownership of the means of production and distribution, that raises production to a higher level, and ends all social conflict by creating a community of free and equal producers, striving not for sectional interests, but for the common good, these are the things which we aspire towards. This socialist commonwealth, liberating the individual from all economic, political and social oppression, will provide the basis, for real liberty and for the full and harmonious development of the personality, giving full scope for the growth of the creative faculties of the mind.

Yet academics have vulgarised the idea of Socialism, corrupting the meaning of socialism to a mere alteration of the property system and the introduction of planned economy on the basis of a barrack-like collectivism. The idea of socialism was divorced from the idea of liberty. State capitalism became regarded as a stage on the way to socialism. State capitalism concentrates an overwhelming power in the hands of the state, and places the citizen completely at the mercy of the State. The State, as the owner of banking, industry, agriculture and transport becomes the universal employer, the universal landlord. It controls everything on which the fate and happiness of the individual citizen depend. The citizen is dependent on the State as regards employment,  housing,  amusement, and education. State capitalism does not yet solve any of the outstanding problems. It does not abolish crises, the classes, the wage system. Under state-capitalism there is production of commodities for sale, not production for use.

Socialism is based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production, upon production for use as against production for profit, upon the abolition of all classes, all class divisions, class privilege, class rule, upon the production of such abundance that the struggle for material needs is completely eliminated, so that humanity, at last freed from economic exploitation, from oppression, from any form of coercion by a state machine, can devote itself to its fullest intellectual and cultural development.  Anything less will not be socialism.

 Together we can transform the world. Our problem is not that people do not like what we say but that they believe little can be done. We want a different world and people to agree in a common vision that prosperity and peace are possible.  If our shared wish common is a world without poverty and war, why don’t we say so?  Why be silent about it? We should no longer be a scattered attempt to modify capitalism, but each one of us being part of a global effort to end this self-destructive system.  Across all divisions of national borders, religions and  races, we must be the alternative, insisting upon an end to capitalism. Let you, yourself be the starting point for the a universal call for the wholesale abolition of capitalist exploitation.

 People are tired of armaments and war. People are mobilising and resisting non-violently. They are saying no to militarism and war and insisting on disarmament. They have seen that they release uncontrollable forces of tribalism and nationalism. We need to acknowledge that our common humanity, our class unity,  is more important than our different nationalities. Socialists set about to build structures through which we can co-operate and which reflect our interconnected and interdependent relationships.

The Left exclude the working class from controlling and decision making positions, and workers are rendered passive, kept in ignorance and are controlled from above by a political leadership that looked first and foremost to secure its own position.  ‘Revolution’ for the Left-wing is purely political and not social and hence envisaged only as the transfer of political power from one class of leaders to another. The leadership of the party, therefore, simply seeks state power for itself and looks to manipulate people to that objective. This regimentation from above might have been appropriate to a backward Russia looking to industrialise a semi-feudal uneducated society but the adoption of Leninism by the Left suffocated the vital and constructive life forces that alone were capable of overthrowing capitalism.  In the capitalist developed parts of the world, the problem was not that of establishing a dictatorship to impose progress but on the contrary, of acquiring complete liberty. Exalted claims were made for the ‘revolutionary vanguard party’ and, workers own organisations were deemed redundant and devalued. The ‘workers party’ had acquired absolute hegemony.

And what did it achieve? A defenceless, unorganised and a depoliticised working class left to face repeated recessions and war. The whole character of socialist movement was lost to the politics of party-building.  Whoever challenged this was immediately vilified as counter-revolutionary even if it as those very same party cadres engaged in the process of Bolshevisation  that were sabotaging the workers movement and betraying the workers. Left-wing leaders shared with the capitalist class the same conception of the inability of the workers to do anything autonomous and creative in politics. The workers had to be disciplined, organised and directed from above. With such a negative view of the working class potential it is no surprise that the professional ‘revolutionaries’ would demand political power for themselves deny it to the working class.

Lest we be accused of misrepresenting the Left, Lenin himself openly declares that the workers are ‘so degraded’ and ‘so corrupted’ that they can only be liberated from above by a revolutionary vanguard.

“The dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised through an organisation embracing the whole of that class, because in all capitalist countries (and not only over here, in one of the most backward), the proletariat is still so divided, so degraded, and so corrupted in parts… that an organisation taking in the whole proletariat cannot directly exercise proletarian dictatorship. It can be exercised only by a vanguard that has absorbed the revolutionary energy of the class… It cannot work without a number of ‘transmission belts’ running from the vanguard to the advanced class, and from the latter to the mass of the working people." - (Lenin, The Trade Unions, The Present Situation and Trotsky’s Errors, 1920)

This vanguard, Lenin claims, embodies the ‘revolutionary energy of the working class’. More accurately, the ‘vanguard’ appropriates and usurps the position of the working class in the socialist movement. What Marx had explicitly sought to transcend, the so-called Marxists introduces, a bureaucratic centralism in the name of democracy and a rigidly hierarchical structure that subordinates the working class to the party, the party to the vanguard, and the vanguard to the leader.

It is no surprise that in this new age of social movements such as Occupy has shied away from what they perceive as the discredited party-politics of ‘isms’,  rejecting the ‘old class-politics’ of socialism. The Left vision should indeed be seen as an alien aspiration. Revolution is a process in which the proletariat develop their class-consciousness and their own organs of self-emancipation, winning control of society by these means. Horizontal democracy, the democracy of general assemblies, a delegate system of communication, liason and coordination between the councils between layers of decision making local, regional, worldwide are not antagonistic aims. People through its own efforts, develop a new mentality, new values and new skills. Workers  will emerge as the self-acting class capable of assuming the responsibility of providing the welfare of the world in their own hands. The working class educates itself in how to administer in a self-managed society regulated by its own associations.

We should caution against making in advance a fetish of particular organisational forms. The working class will be quite capable of knowing what is and is not the appropriate organisational structure, the more it actually becomes the revolutionary, class conscious, class. New conditions, relations and struggles require new forms, for sure. The principle of creative human agency requires that human beings be free to create the organisations best suited to its circumstances and its aspirations. To claim anything more than this is to fetishise the organisation and to invite the dogma that effectively constrains revolutionary activity.

Manufacturers of systems and models (and we could name many), believe they have discovered the remedy for society's ills, seeing socialist movement as a fertile ground for making converts. Rather than liberators such intellectuals enter the workers’ movement as the bearers of the very hierarchical attitudes which is the expressed aim of working class socialism to abolish. Socialism is a creation of the working class, self-organising in society itself. Socialism is constituted from below, not imposed or legislated from above. Class consciousness  is a self-transformation, not something that can be achieved from the outside.

Rosa Luxemburg explains:
 "Socialism must be created by the masses, by every proletarian. Where the chains of capitalism are forged, there they must be broken. That is socialism."
 Elsewhere she says:
 “If the proletariat fails to fulfill its class duties, if it fails to realise socialism, we shall crash down together to a common doom.”
 And again Luxemburg states:
  “The essence of socialist society consists in the fact that the great labouring mass ceases to be a dominated mass, but rather, makes the entire political and economic life its own life and gives that life a conscious, free, and autonomous direction.”

 A ‘socialist’ revolution that lacked this collective class agency may well be able to seize state control but political adventurers and intriguers would take over. Any ‘socialist’ state would simply be a counterfeit version of the capitalist state.

Together we can win

The immediate aim of socialist revolution is to overthrow the capitalist class and the creation of a classless and stateless society in which the guiding principle will be ‘From each according to ability, to each according to need’. We live in a world dominated by capitalism, a system which allows a small minority of capitalists to oppress and exploit the great majority of humanity. Nevertheless, capitalism cannot grow without organising its workers and teaching them the virtues of a form of ‘solidarity’ of working together. The mutual economic interests, the daily association, the common experiences of the social conflict, must surely develop that solidarity without which the proletariat may struggle in vain, but with which it must inevitably assert its supremacy. The slogans of the proletariat, "an injury to one is an injury to all" and "workingmen of all countries—unite," mean something.

What every worker must realize is that through trade union struggle we are not fighting the causes which is capitalism but only its symptoms. We are fighting against the effects of the system and not against the system itself. What trade union struggles really do is to fight to improve the conditions of the working class within the framework of the capitalist system. They do not challenge capitalism itself. Every wage increase that is won by the workers is immediately offset by the employers by more intensive work, by stricter supervision etc. and by a general price increase. So that, usually the worker is back to from where he started.

What all workers must understand is that their misery is due to exploitation carried on by the capitalist class. The capitalists, of course, try to present their rule and their system of exploitation as eternal. The capitalist lives by exploiting the worker and the worker lives for the day he can end this exploitation. Trade unionism merely restricts their struggle to attempts at lessening this exploitation. It does not fight to end exploitation i.e. to end the capitalist system and replace it by socialism. This is the fatal limitation of trade union struggles. The union is a defensive weapon only.

We do not, of course, therefore oppose trade union struggles or refuse to participate in them. It is very essential to organize workers and help them to fight for their day to day demands. Because, it is only in the course of these fights, that the workers learn about the system of capitalist exploitation and the need to abolish it. Trade union struggles are necessary. What is wrong is to stop at that stage, limiting ourselves to trade union struggles. Workers must know how to fight for wage increases but they must go further and abolish the wage system itself. There are no solutions within the capitalist system. It is necessary to fight not – only for a living wage, but to fight for the complete overthrow of the capitalist system of exploitation.

Capitalist society is based on the exploitation of the working class by the capitalist class and that all the evils of this society arise from that. There is only one way that all the suffering caused by capitalism can be finally ended – by wiping out its source, capitalism. And there is only one force in society that can bring this about – the working class uniting against the capitalists all those who suffer under their rule. This is why the aim of the working class, through all its daily battles against the capitalists, must not only be to win whatever concessions. can be wrung from them today, but to build the strength and unity of the working class and build for the day when it will be able to overthrow the capitalists altogether. The working class has a long and proud history of militant struggle, which has won unions many gains for the working class, paid for many times over in blood.  Each time we must pick up the pieces to start all over again. But each time wiser, each time more determined. And union workers who have fought and sacrificed so much to bend the capitalists can and will break them.

Unemployment In Italy

Press reports are banging the drum about capitalism's so-called recovery in that the Eurozone unemployment rate dipped slightly in April from 11.8 per cent to 11.7 per cent. It is difficult for young Italians to talk about economic recovery though. 'Italian youth unemployment hit a record 43.3 per cent in April, according to official figures. Although the overall rate was unchanged at 12.6 per cent on the month, the proportion of 15-24-year-old job seekers out of work rose to the highest level since records began in 1977, Eurostat data showed.' (Times, 4 June) Hardly a cause for celebration is it? RD

The Decline Of Religion

The fall of religious influence is so great that a grass-roots movement in 2009, the Future for Religious Heritage took shape in 2011 as a network of groups from more than 30 countries, dedicated to finding ways to keep churches, synagogues and other religious buildings open, if not for services, then for other uses. 'Perhaps nowhere is the plight of churches more stark than in the Netherlands, where about 1,000 Catholic churches - about two-thirds of the country - are due to be shut down by 2025, a reorganization forced by a steady drop in attendance, baptisms and weddings. Those were the figures given by Cardinal Willem Eijk, archbishop of Utrecht, in a report delivered to Pope Francis last December.' (New York Times, 2 June) Religion has always been a barrier to socialism so no tears here on learning churches are closing. RD

Democratic Socialism

A common criticism on the Socialist Party is that it succumbed to utopianism and imagined that socialism will bring an end to the class struggle and usher in a new classless and stateless society of free brotherhood. We stubbornly clung to the basic concept of Marx, that only the working class, i.e. those forced to sell their labour power in exchange of wages, unites the objective and subjective conditions for building a socialist, i.e. classless society. We have defended that idea throughout our existence and through times that such views were unfashionable.  We have maintained steadfastly that the socialist reconstruction of the world can be accomplished only through conscious, collective action by the workers themselves. The Socialist Party does not intend to lead the masses towards a free and classless society because we adhere faithfully to the motto of the First International: “The emancipation of the workers is an act of the workers themselves.” If the people wait for a revolutionary vanguard to lead them to the classless society or the free society, they will neither be free nor classless. Socialism is rule by the people. They will decide how socialist society is to work. The task of the Socialist Party is to help and guide the transfer of power from capitalists to the people. We cannot build a strong socialist movement until we overcome the confusion in the minds of workers about the real meaning of socialism.

 To use the word “socialism” for anything but people’s power is to misuse the term. Nationalisation of mines, railways, steel, etc. in a capitalist class society is not socialism, nor does this constitutes the socialised sector of a “mixed economy”. Such nationalisation is simply state capitalism, with no relation to socialism.

Nor is the “Welfare State” socialist. A socialist society will certainly give high priority to health, education, art, science, and the social well-being of all its members. But welfare and social services in capitalism, to improve the efficiency of workers as a profit-makers, is not socialism but again a form of state capitalism. It can be an improvement in capitalism, just as a 40-hour week is an improvement on a 60-hour week. But it is not socialism. We should always remember that “state socialism” is about as close to the real thing as a poisonous toadstool is to an edible mushroom.

Workers are, and have been for many decades, in a position to capture the state machine and establish socialism, on the one condition that they themselves wish to do so, i.e. that they understand that this is both necessary and possible. Unfortunately, almost the whole working people today are capitalist-minded. Why is this? Because they have been capitalist-educated in a capitalist society. However, the world around us is falling to pieces. The need for revolution is beginning to be widely realised. Mankind for the first time will be taking charge of its own destiny. We will no longer have things happening to us. We will be deciding what is to happen. The problems of the world are not technological ones. The difficulty is a social one – that man has so far been incapable of taking charge because of the class divisions that make it impossible to take decisions for the development of mankind as a whole. Socialism is the society of the free and equal, a democracy defined as the rule of the people. Its misrepresentation has been facilitated for the capitalists by the paid retainers, those academic and media boot-lickers who promote misunderstanding and prejudice against socialism.

The Socialist Party is completely devoted to the idea that socialism cannot be realised other than by democracy. Our task, as socialists is simply to keep restating what socialism and democracy means. The Communist Manifesto said:

“All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority.”

 Marx and Engels linked socialism and democracy together as end and means.  The “self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority” cannot be anything else but “democracy” -  the rule of the people.

 “The first step”, said the Communist Manifesto, “in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy.”

“The emancipation of the working class is the task of the workers themselves”. That Is just another way of saying—that the socialist reorganisation of society requires a workers’ revolution. Such a revolution is unthinkable without the active participation of the majority of the working class, which is itself the big majority of the population. Nothing could be more democratic than that. To make the workers the ruling class is the same thing as  to establish democracy. The socialist task is not to deny democracy, but to expand it and make it more complete. That is the true socialist tradition.  Democracy is necessity to assure the harmonious transition to socialism.

All the great Marxists defined socialism as a classless society—with abundance, freedom and equality for all; a society in which there would be no state, not even a “workers’ state”, which have been bureaucratic dictatorships of a privileged minority. Capitalism, under any kind of government is a system of minority rule, and the principal beneficiaries of capitalist democracy are the small minority of exploiting capitalists or party functionaries.

The Industrial Workers of the World used to give a shorthand definition of socialism as “industrial democracy”;  the extension of democracy to industry, the democratic control of industry by the workers themselves, with private ownership eliminated. We never hear a “democrat” say anything like that today.

We are assailed by those who claim  socialism has failed Which raises the question: What is socialism? The socialist society was to be classless, democratic and worldwide.  The things upon which human life and civilisation are based would be produced in abundance, the very need for distribution according to work no longer applies and the actual possibility of distribution according to need comes into existence. “To each according to his need”. By reason of technologica development and the vast extension of leisure, work itself will have become a pleasant pastime instead of dreary drudgery; mankind will have learned to work for society according to ability. The other half also of the slogan descriptive of communist society becomes translated into reality – “from each according to his ability.”  Socialism will be a society of associated producers. Property will no longer belong to individuals or be state-owned but to the community, which is now classless; and the state itself will be concerned not with the government of men but the administration of things. The need for the apparatus of force, the “state,” which protects the earlier form of distribution also disappears. That is to say, “the state withers away” completely.

That is the Marxist conception of socialism, and so if we then proceed to say that socialism has been tried and found wanting, we cannot. For, to begin with, it has not been tried at all.  How can a society fail which has not yet come into existence?

When Marx spoke of the “inevitability” of socialism, he meant, that, given correct human action it could come into being and that he anticipated that this human action would be taken. He did not mean that socialism was bound to come, mechanically of itself, independent of human action. On the contrary, he expressly stated that the destruction of capitalism could lead to socialism – or mutual destruction of both the capitalist and working class - barbarism. Marx did not say or imply that if you somehow destroy capitalism socialism must dawn. That is a fatalist idea.  What Marx did teach and demonstrate was that if you destroy capitalism IN A CERTAIN WAY the road to socialism would be opened. In what way? In the revolutionary way. If socialism is to be the outcome of capitalism’s downfall, it is necessary that mankind take conscious democratic action in that direction. The socialist revolution is no ordinary revolution. The victory of the working class in its fight to bury the capitalist class will be the last class conflict. It is the war to end all wars, the class to emancipate the whole of mankind.

Allah, The Pope And Karl Marx

The New Statesman commenting on recent persecutions and murders by various Islamist groups takes the Pope to task for his recent whitewashing of the Quran as far as violence is concerned. 'Even today's Pope - as the Christian faithful were being harried, persecuted or put to the sword in Nigeria, Syria, Iraq and beyond - told the world in November 2013 that "authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Quran are opposed to every form of violence". But read the text yourself, and you will see that jihadists can find plenty justification for the acts they commit, even if most Muslims are pacific.' (New Statesman, 8 May) If such a conservative journal attacking the ideas of the Pope seems unusual, even more startling is their further comment. 'Karl Marx was wiser than the Pope. In March 1854, he wrote that for "Islamism" - the word was already in use - "the Infidel is the enemy" and that the Quran "treats all foreigners as foes". RD

A Socialist World

We are fighting to end once and for all the exploitation of man over man and to build a completely new society. Socialism will be won and built by the working class. The aim of the international working class is to replace the world capitalist system with world socialism.  Production for sale or exchange on the market, will not exist. The system of wage labour will be abolished and the guiding principle of labour 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. With the abolition of classes and class distinctions, all social and political inequality arising from them will disappear. The conflicts of interest between workers and farmers, town and country, manual and intellectual labour will disappear. As classes will not exist, the state will not be necessary as an instrument of class rule and will wither away. Humanity has not always been divided into classes. In the primitive communal societies all the members cooperated together to assure their survival.

The interests of the working class are the same in every country. After we have overthrown the capitalists we will establish socialism. Socialism will mean the rule of the working class. It will bring freedom to all those oppressed by capital and open up a new period of history.  The resources of society will be distributed according to the needs of the people, not to satisfy a few capitalists’ hunger for profits as is the case today. The enormous waste of capitalism will be abolished. Starvation in the midst of plenty is the distinguishing mark of the capitalist system of production. It is not “human nature” that is the cause of the problems people face today. It is the way society is organised, with a minority of people owning and controlling the wealth and industry and excluding the vast majority of the people from any real say in the running of society.  It is this that must be changed. The working people who have produced all the wealth around us must come into ownership and control, so that they can then build the society and produce the things they want. The vast majority of the people gain nothing from capitalism and would lose nothing with its passing. This capitalist society demands, not bandaged up and blood transfusions, but the death blow to enable the introduction of socialism, an order of society that can manage the technological revolution to the benefit of the working people. With the ending of capitalism the people would also decide how industry was to be run.

No individual, no political party can do the job for the people of ending capitalism and building socialism. This can only come about when the mass of the people engage in action themselves. It is in the course of taking part in the continuous struggles against the capitalist class that people learn the need for the fundamental change, the revolution that will end capitalism. Against  the ruling class, the working class has the potential weapons of unity and organisation. No power on earth can stop their advance if they are united and have the understanding of how a socialist world can be achieved. Socialism will enable us to overcome the brakes on progress of capitalism. It will release the creative energies of the mass of the people, making it possible to meet their needs in food, clothing and shelter. Men and women will be able to develop their own personality and talents to the full. With the harnessing of science and technology to industry, boring and repetitive work will be eliminated. Work for all will become as it is today for only a very small minority—interesting and satisfying. Life for all will be plentiful, secure, happy and interesting. It will may not mean the end of all problems, but the end of those worries about wages, housing, poverty, peace that dominate our lives today.

The building of this new society in our country is the aim of the Socialist Party. The interests of the exploited cannot be brought into harmony with the interests of the exploiters. We see the goal of socialism not as far-off, ultimate aim but rather as our immediate objective. We visualise a social system that would be based on the common ownership of the means of production, the elimination of profit in the means of production, the abolition of the wage system, the abolition of the division of society into classes. When we speak of the means of production, the world’s wealth, we mean that wealth which is necessary for the production of the necessities of the people. The industries, the railroads, mines, and so on. We don’t propose the elimination of private property in personal effects. We speak of those things which are necessary for the production of the people’s needs. They shall be owned in common by all the people. We hold that  workers in every country must collaborate in working toward that goal. We advocate the international organisation of the workers, and their cooperation in all respects. We believe that the wealth of the world, the raw materials of the world, and the natural resources of the world are so distributed over the earth that every country contributes something and lacks something for a rounded and harmonious development of the productive forces of mankind. We visualise the future society of mankind as a socialist world system which will have co-ordination between the various regions, a comradely collaboration between them for the  production of the necessities and luxuries of mankind according to a single universal world plan.

Workers United

The capitalists have intellectuals of all categories to praise and exalt its benevolence. Scarcely anybody but socialists  retain a belief in the anti-capitalist strivings and sentiments of working people or trust that they can in time participate in a movement  toward socialism. For adhering to these convictions and being guided by them, the Socialist Party of Great Britain is looked upon  political fossils, relics of a bygone era and dogmatists who cling to outdated views. As Marxists we hold no religious-like faith. Our views are derived from a reasoned analysis of the decisive trends of our time, and an understanding of capitalist development. Marxism has clarified many problems in philosophy, sociology, history, economics, and politics but its achievement is the explanation it offers of the key role of the working class in history. No sooner has the prospect of working class revolution been dismissed for the umpteenth  time than it returns to haunt its sceptics. Some see the seeming omnipotence of the ruling class and succumb to sentiments of hopelessness.

All over the world  industrialisation and urbanisation is causing the working class, that is, those who sell their own labour power to the owners of capital, to grow in size. We do not misled ourselves. They are a working class which has not cut loose from subservience to the capitalist parties and established a political organisation of their own. We witness its conservatism with a small c at every election.  Most have not even organised industrially and even those who have, receive criticism from some “radicals” who  appear to deny labour unions any progressive features. They ignore the fact that the mere existence of trade unions act as a shield against lowering wages and working conditions and check the aggressions of capitalist reaction, albeit with limits and frequent set-backs. These “Left-communists”  leave out  the working conditions before unions, the fourteen or sixteen-hour days, and they neglect to point out what happens when unions are made exceptionally weak or actually destroyed by dictatorships.

What will change the working class from being a prop to capitalism? The resurgence of labour radicalism may well come from the flagging of the long-term postwar capitalist expansion and an extended downturn in the industrial cycle.  Under intensified competition, corporations will be increasingly pressed to shave their costs, beginning with the cost of labour. As the unions engage in defensive actions against such attacks, sharp tension can quickly replace the prevailing toleration between the bosses and the workers. It could be provoked by anger against anti-labour legislation. The possibilities are so diverse that it is impossible to foretell where or how the break in the dyke will come.

Workers in the past have far more passive, helpless, and poorly organised than today. The workers then as today were divided against themselves: native against foreign-born, white against black, skilled workers against the unskilled workers, men against women. The anti-union forces of the employers associations and the government were powerful. The magnates of capital had the workers at their mercy. They controlled the police, the courts, the State and the press. They used the blacklist, union spies and strikebreakers. Moreover, the privileged  union leadership was complacent and more interested in maintaining industrial peace. In America De Leon, Debs , the Wobblies, despite sacrifice failed to achieve fundamental change. Then, the 1929 Wall St happened and appeared to be a knock-out blow. With industry’s  recovery, workers morale and fighting spirit also revived. Labour went on the offensive against corporate capital, independent of its union bureaucrats.

It is ironical that many intellectuals who reject Big Business mimics its low estimation of the working class potential and capabilities. Although they fancy themselves as progressive, they remain captive to the political backwardness of capitalist apologists. They view workers as sheep, who cannot look beyond their filling their stomachs bellies. The disparagement of the workers reinforce the indoctrination  of the ruling class and weakens the self-reliance of the workers. They do not see the working class as the producers of wealth but simply consumers of it. Capitalist production cannot do without an ample labouring force, no matter how many are unemployed, because profit-making and the accumulation of capital depend upon the extraction of labour power which creates value in the form of commodities. The industrial work force as such is not expendable, no matter how fast or how far automation proceeds under capitalist auspices.

During the lulls in militancy, people come to believe that the social contradictions of capitalism will never generate insurrectionary moods and movements in their time. It results from an over-estimation of capitalism on the one hand and an under-estimation of workers on the other. Beaten down in so many ways, workers seldom suspect that they are capable of resistance. Necessity  forces individuals, groups, classes, and whole peoples to perform prodigious feats. The working class  has displayed considerable fighting spirit, initiative, and stamina in the past. If the workers can produce all kinds of commodities for the market, if they can build and maintain powerful industrial unions for themselves, why can’t they go beyond all that? What prevents them from organizing a mass political party of their own, being won over to socialist ideas, which can challenge the existing order and lead the way to a new society? Why can’t workers, who make  make history and remake society, remake themselves? If they perform all kinds of jobs for the profiteers, why can’t they do their own jobs? If they wage and win wars for the imperialist rulers, why can’t they conduct a class war in defense of their own interests?

The will to win is an indispensable factor in the way to win. The working class can go forward to victory only as they become convinced that the ruling class are not born to command, that they are leading the world to catastrophe, that they are not omnipotent and unbeatable, that their system of exploitation is not everlasting but has to go and can be abolished. This is the message of Marxism. It teaches that the workers can and must supplant the plutocrats and oligarchs as the directors and organisers of economic and political life and become the pioneers of the first truly human society. Nothing less than the very survival of the world depend on the achievement of socialism.

A Happy Childhood?

A constant feature of many TV ads is the depiction of happy families and contented children, but for many children the reality is far from the advertisers fantasy. 'The prison population has doubled from 41,800 in 1993 to 84,000 today. In our macho times, the courts incarcerate vast numbers of minor offenders - 37,527 served sentence of six months or less in 2013. The judiciary's treatment of women is particularly scandalous. Sixty per cent of all women in prison in 2013 were incarcerated for minor offences. ....... Today, some 200,000 children a year in England and Wales have a parent in jail.' (Observer, 1 June) With a mother or father in jail the lives of many children must be far from idyllic. RD

Socialism is Revolution

The vast majority of people in society to-day are at the mercy of business-men. Capitalism and its agents are governed by the law of production for profit irrespective of the needs of the people. The criteria of all capitalist enterprises are to make a profit. Their calculations are determined by the market. This race for profit ends in a crisis; and then they try to get out of the crisis—at our expense. Throughout the world, without exception, the picture is one of increasing chaos and crisis. The capitalist system is paralysed as never before. Great numbers of workers have been thrown into unemployment and destitution. The standards of living of the most have declined. The ruling class is to try to find a way out of the crisis by throwing its burden upon the shoulders of the working class. If the capitalists have callously forced working people into austerity conditions they have, however, very carefully looked after their own interests. Every appeal of the bankers and industrialists to the government for assistance has met with immediate response and have been shielded from the economic effects of their own bankruptcy.

Workers must face the fact that all capitalism has to offer them to-day is poverty, low wages, and unemployment.  They, nor their families,  have any hope or future under capitalism. There is no need for a single worker to be overworked or in dread of losing his job; no reason why an unemployed worker should lack the necessaries of life. All over the world workers are coming to realise that nothing except the existence of capitalism prevents them building a decent and secure world. But to get this, capitalism must be overthrown. Workers have the power to overthrow capitalism from the very moment that they unite and resist. It will mean that the employers will be deprived of their ownership and control of the factories, mills and mines, shipyards and all the rest of the means of production which they have misused only to make profits for themselves and pile on the poverty for the workers . The workers will end of production for profit and will carry on production for use. The needs of all will be met, and new needs and pleasures now denied to the working class will be created and satisfied by a socialist organisation. We have to-day ample resources for producing all the things we need. Workers will know that greater productivity created by the new technology will no longer be a threat to their livelihood but will make it possible to raise the whole standard of living and shorten the hours of labour.

All over the world there grows a brooding fear of revolution. Oligarchs and plutocrats are busy ensuring that they maintain control of their governments, through financing political parties or imposing dictatorships via “palace revolutions” when elections have failed to go their way. The likes of the Koch brothers tremble with dread at the prospect of revolution. The revolutionary upsurge of the workers is worldwide. It varies in intensity from intensified strike movements to actual struggles for power. Its tempo is greatly increased by the deepening of the capitalist crisis. Workers, faced by worsening conditions are exhibiting the characteristic signs of radicalisation. There is a revolutionary storm brewing. Capitalism has created the objective conditions for Socialism. But it can go no further. It has become an obstacle in the continuing evolution of humanity. Capitalism has provided its own executioners and grave diggers, the  workers. They are freeing themselves from the illusion that capitalism provides the way to prosperity.

Socialism revolutionises the aim of production from production for profitable sale to production for social use. In so doing it frees humanity from the narrow limits of capitalist economy. Socialism abolishes the chaos and anarchy of capitalist production and social organization; it does away with the dog-eat-dog competition of capitalist commerce. It sets up instead a planned system of economy in harmony with social relationships. Instead of a profit-making apparatus to fatten a few while millions suffer, socialism is for the benefit of all. Under capitalism everywhere wealth piles up automatically in the hands of the parasitic owners of the industries, while the actual producers live at subsistence levels. The workers everywhere are beginning to understand and penetrate the lies of capitalism.

Reading Notes

In "1493", author, Charles C. Mann examines the interchange of world cultures, resources, food, people, and more after Columbus. He writes, "Consider the seventeenth century English entrepreneurs who wanted to make money in North America… [They chose tobacco plantations]. To do that, they would have to take down huge trees with hand tools; break up soil under the hot sun; hoe, water, and top the growing plants [and so on]… Where could the colonists acquire it [Labour]? Before answering this question, make the assumption, abundantly justified, that the colonists have few moral scruples [although devoutly religious!] about the answer and are only concerned with maximizing ease and profit." [They chose African slaves, of course ]. How little things have changed in the ensuing three hundred years – same system, same results! John Ayers. [Comments in brackets added by me]

Food For Thought

In the last week of March, the Ministry of Labour ordered the magazines"Toronto Life" and " The Walrus" to shut down their internship programs because, by not paying them, they were in violation of the Employment Standards Act relating to wages. Instead of paying them, the interns were let go, so the choice was work for free or get out! John Ayers.