Child Labour In The USA

Stories abound about the exploitation of young children in Asia and Africa but this story is from the USA. 'Children as young as 7 years old are suffering serious health problem from toiling long hours in tobacco fields to harvest pesticide-laced leaves for major cigarette brands, according to a report released Wednesday. New York City based advocacy group Human Rights Watch (HRW) interviewed more than 140 youngsters working on tobacco farms in North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia, where most American tobacco is sourced.' (Time Magazine, 14 May) The report goes on say that HRW is asking the tobacco firms to introduce legislation to curb this use of children but as the global tobacco industry generates annual revenues of around $500 billion there is little chance of that happening. RD

Abundance For All

The objective of the Socialist Party is to achieve wealth for all. Plenty of the good things of life for everybody. A fine house to live in, nice furniture in it, and a garden  about it. A table set with good things to eat. A wardrobe of quality clothing, comfortable and elegant. Opportunity and means to travel  the world. Leisure to read and play and work. No poverty anymore. With all these things, socialism will get the consequences of all these things, a natural human development, healthy men and women, a happy people. You of course say all this is a utopian fantasy but no, it’s not a dream but an immediate possibility. By means of the vast array of technology at our disposal we can produce wealth enough for all without any trouble whatever. By means of the new automated machinery a person can produce a hundred or a thousand times as much wealth as in the times of our fathers. There is no doubt at all about this. Modern inventions have so increased the productive capacity of mankind that all could have an abundance of wealth by working only 3 or 4 hours a day. Abundance under capitalism would indeed be a ‘‘miracle”. In fact, it is impossible. The idea of abundance has no place in capitalism. It is socialism that proposes to get this abundance for all.

In order to get this abundance for all, we must take these new inventions and use them for producing new wealth for all to share instead of producing it for a few. The only reason we are not all well off now is that a few people own these great machines and refuse to let us work at them except when they can make a profit for themselves. If we collectively owned these factories and railroads and mines and mills ourselves and all of us worked at them to produce wealth for our own use an happiness, all the troubles of poverty would disappear. The only thing that lies between us and the promised land is this private ownership of the means of producing wealth.Therefore, what socialism proposes to do, in order to get wealth for all, is to take possession of the instruments of wealth production and run them for the use of all. Just how do we do that?

The workers who are deprived of their right to the machinery shall come together in a political party and vote the current owners out! We say to the worker “Come join our party, vote yourselves into power, use that power to capture back those means of wealth production which the capitalists have stolen from you, and then you will get all that abundance which modern life entitle you to.” The Socialist Party appeals to your self-interest. We are practical and indulge in no dreams or false hopes. Your real interests lie in abolishing the private ownership of the means of production.

Socialism has unfortunately been presented in the past as a system not of abundance but of scarcity, as a system not of increased leisure and comfort, but of sacrifice and back-breaking toil, not political and industrial democracy and a wider freedom, but of less freedom and increased labour discipline. But socialism is not the politics of poverty but of abundance. Socialists presupposes the abundant availability of material goods to ensure full satisfaction of human needs. Sciene and technology has worked wonders in today's world by creating the necessary material conditions for humanity's march towards a socialist society. The development of automation has the potential to obliterate the difference between manual and mental labour. The grounds are being laid, all we have to do is to wrest control of the means of production from the capitalists so that productive forces can grow unhindered and undistorted.

 Always the paradox of poverty amid abundance faces us. The productive capacity of the world, which could produce an abundant standard of living for all, is not being utilised. Industry is being run not for use, but for the private profit of the banks, the business tycoons and the big landowners. It is this that tears society apart. Bosses, when they fire workers, do they worry whether or not they or their families are  going to suffer? There are some who out of charity give assistance, but they are powerless to relieve all those in need and who will either die prematurely because of privations of various kinds, or voluntarily by suicide in order to put an end to a miserable existence and to not have to put up with the rigors of hunger, with countless shames and humiliations, and who are without hope of ever seeing them end. We see fathers and mothers who kill their children so as not to see them suffer any longer, and women who, in fear of not being able to feed a child, don’t hesitate to destroy in their wombs the fruit of their love. These things happened in a country abundance reigns, where butcher shops are filled with meat, bakeries full of bread, where clothing and shoes are piled up high in stores, where there are unoccupied houses. There are many people who will feel sorry for the victims, but who’ll tell you they can’t do anything about it. let everyone survive the best they can. And all these things happen in the midst of an abundance of all sorts of products. If only all those in need, instead of waiting - took.

Even the environmentalists do not have the confidence that the world can produce sufficient  in a sustainable manner to provide for all. We are cautioned against unlimited growth and warned that the planet’s resources are finite and to this we answer, we know. Our reply to the  many well meaning environmentalists is that they have accepted the false premise of capitalism that people possess limitless wants - or in plain language, people are greedy. Yet right in front of their eyes, exposing the lie, exist the vast advertising industry that capitalism requires to create demand all and around us the hierarchial society where ones status is expressed by a display of conspicuous consumption that we are all taught to try and emulate.

 Socialists declare that all things that are jointly needed and used ought to be jointly owned—that industry, the basis of our social life, instead of being the private property of a few and operated for their enrichment, ought to be the common property of all,democratically administered in the interest of all. There will be no money, and there will not even be any bookkeeping transactions or coupons to regulate how much one works and how much a person gets. People will work without any compulsion and take what they need. So said Marx. Does that still sound like an unrealistic vision? Once again, we say lift yourself out of the framework of this present society, and do not consider this conception absurd or impractical. For in the socialist society, when there is plenty and abundance for all, what will be the point in keeping account of each one’s share, any more than in the distribution of food at a well-supplied family table? You don’t keep a tally as to who eats how much. Nobody snatches food when the table is fully laden. If you have a guest, you don’t seize the best choice of meat for yourself, you pass the plate and offer it. We've got the abundance - we just have to change the way we distribute it.

No, what’s absurd is the ethic of capitalism: “From each whatever you can —to each whatever he can grab.” The socialist society of universal abundance will be regulated by a rational standard. It will be “From each according to his ability—to each according to his needs.”

The Socialist Dogma

Our revolution has not yet been made and we will make it when we will lay down the foundations of the egalitarian society we desire. The Socialist Party is accused of being dogmatist. We are dogmatic in so far as we hold ideas that make us strive to end capitalism. We are dogmatic because we talk about surplus value, another expression for rent, interest and dividend. We are dogmatic because we preach the class war. We are dogmatic because we are asking workers to cut themselves from the capitalist parties and form one for themselves in opposition to them. The Socialist Party case for socialism remains unaltered since 1904, a sign of its truth and not of its dogma. It is also said that the Socialist Party is too purist and that we fight for nothing short of socialism because we believe that nothing short of that will save the workers. To that dastardly crime, we bow our heads with shame and plead guilty. As workers who have joined the Socialist Party, we accept its claim that its political position presents a satisfactory solution to the evils of capitalism.

Capitalism has failed miserably to provide the basic necessities of life for hundreds of millions of workers around the world. Millions of workers are in poverty, hungry and homeless. Many of our younger workers will never find steady, secure work in capitalist society. Our older workers are thrown out like garbage when they no longer have value to some boss. Like all thieves, the capitalists have no honour among themselves. They are constantly plotting against one another for more plunder. To make themselves more money, they will fight to the last drop of OUR blood. The only solution is a socialist revolution. Otherwise, we will suffer capitalism's endless wars and conflicts. Capitalism means the ruination of our class, our families, our friends. Only world socialism offers an alternative to the misery of capitalism.

We want a society whose workers run everything in the interests of the world's people. We want a system that encourages every person to become involved in running society; that educates and trains everyone to act for the common good and does not indoctrinate people to look out for number one; that opposes placing selfish interests above the social needs. We want society to help each individual grow and fully develop their personalty and potential. In capitalist society, only the ruling class are free - free to hire and fire, free to pillage and plunder, free to make our class fight for their profits. Socialism will abolish the wage system and the principle "to each according to need" will be as basic as the principle "every man for himself" is to capitalism. In socialism, the principle of work will be: "from each according to ability". People will work because they want to, because their brothers and sisters around the world need their work. They will share in decision-making, including the distribution of goods and services according to society's needs. To consume the wealth created by society is a right given to citizens at birth and, against that, what is required of them is to contribute to society as best as they can. There must be no economic connection there. In the capitalist system there is an absolute economic relation. If you are put in a certain position in terms of production, your lifestyle and your consumption is already decided. No matter what you do, if you appear in production as an unskilled worker, then it is already decided that your children will not have proper education, that you might die of diseases that don't kill other people and you might live in houses that stink. That is already decided by the way they have made you contribute to social production. If they prevent you from contributing to production, if they make you unemployed, it is even worse. Your place in production decides your place in consumption. In socialism that is not the case. When you are born you have a right to live like everybody else and socialism assumes that you have the common sense to get up and contribute something to society according to your creative ability.There must not be any economic or political connection between people's contributions to production and their enjoyments of its fruits.

 So-called specialist workers will not receive more money for work that is supposedly "more important". The measure of work will have nothing to do with what people receive. People should and will get what they need, within the limits of what everyone can produce. The elimination of wages causes the social basis for privileges and a new class of bosses to disappear. For the first time in history, workers will receive a fair share of society's wealth, regardless of the work they do. We hold a socialist economy must be an economy without wages, in which needs are somehow registered and conscious working units decide on meeting them.  Using many of the currrent techniques of logistics and the great advance in computer and communications systems it will not be very difficult for human society to know in advance what it needs.  It is not difficult to organise given the fact that social needs can be consciously registered by individuals, by collectives and by consuming units and so on.

Socialism will abolish socially useless forms of work that exist now only for capitalist profit. Socialist society will not need millions of lawyers, advertisers, or sales-people. In one stroke, it will do away with layers of needless government bureaucrats, as well as the hordes of petty supervisors and administrators who oversee and manage us for the employers. It will free everyone to perform socially useful work, which is the source of true creativity. Ending the wage system will reduce the problems capitalism causes inside the working class. Racism, one of
capitalism's greatest evils, exploits one worker to a greater degree than another. Marx said over 100 years ago that, "the worker in white skin can never be free as long as the worker in black skin remains in chains." The Socialist Party opposes all nationalism by which the ruling class demand that workers must respect capitalist borders. These borders are artificial; they exist to divide workers and keep different sets of bosses in power. Workers need no borders. Workers in one part of the world are not different from or better than workers in another. Nationalism creates false loyalties. Workers should be loyal only to other workers, never to his or her oppressor. We endorse the revolutionary slogan: "Workers of the world, unite!"

As you can conclude a socialist organisation of the world requires the active commitment of millions of workers. Socialism will not succeed unless people understand it, agree with it, and decide to make it happen. The revolution starts when you begin to make it happen. Nothing dogmatic about that. 

We can change it

We live under the shadow of capitalism, a political/economic system, which promotes individual success over group well-being. It is a model of civilisation that is making us miserable and ill. Dependent on continuous consumption, everything and everyone is seen as a commodity, and competition and ambition are extolled as virtues. Capitalism encourages short-term artificial goals: goals that strengthen greed and dissatisfaction, pre-requisites for encouraging consumerism and the perpetual expansion of the ubiquitous ‘market’.  “All for ourselves and nothing for other people.” as Adam Smith put it.  A study  by Berkeley University that seems to confirm Smith’s truism. “The higher up the social-class ranking people are, the less pro-social, charitable and empathetically they behaved…consistently those who were less rich showed more empathy and more of a wish to help others.”  Graham Music a consultant child and adolescent psychotherapist at The Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust in London, makes the point that our “monetised western world is going to make us more and more lose touch with our social obligations.”

It is a system that denies compassion and social unity. Unhappiness and mental illness, as well as extreme levels of inequality (income and wealth) flow from the unjust root, causing social tensions, eroding trust and community. Mental illness, including anxiety and depression – a worldwide epidemic claiming 5% of the global population – are further consequences of this dysfunctional social model. Millions are hooked on pharmaceuticals (legal and illegal), much to the delight of the multi-national drug companies whose yearly profits in America alone nestle comfortably in the trillions of US $. Suicide, according to a major report by the World Health Organisation (WHO), is the third highest cause of death amongst adolescents (road accidents and HIV are one and two), and the primary cause is depression.

People in unequal societies are suspicious of ‘the other’ – that’s anyone who looks thinks, and/or acts differently – and generally speaking don’t trust one another. A mere 15% of people in America confessed to trusting their fellow citizens, compared to 60% in less unequal parts of the world. The resulting divisions aggravate social tensions, fueling criminality and a cycle of mistrust and paranoia is set in motion. A capitalistic value system with its focus on the individual as opposed to the group, inevitably feeds a consciousness of separation and alienation. We are one, brothers and sisters of one humanity,  one undivided and indivisible family. Our nature is to be unselfish, socially responsible and helpful. Children love helping, and they do not need a reward. Actions, which are inherently selfless, offer an intrinsic reward because they facilitate relationship with our true nature.  In fact, when material rewards were introduced the children’s focus shifted, they lost interest in the act of kindness and became fixated on the object of reward. Graham Music concludes that “studies have shown that toddlers feel happier giving treats than receiving them”.  Studies undertaken in San Francisco found that those members of the community who “volunteered and engaged in other forms of giving when they were adolescents were much less likely to become depressed, even as they got older.”

With reward and punishment come desire and fear, desire for the reward and fear or anxiety over possible punishment if we fail. The effect is individual discontent and collective disharmony. Reward and punishment are major weapons of capitalism. Goals, meeting targets, bonuses, commission, perks: these are the language of business, the motivating force for, and of, activity. The present unjust economic model has fostered a value system that is a major cause of unhappiness, anxiety and depression. The capitalist apologists may hold that mankind is naturally selfish, and that competition, reward and ambition are necessary and good. They may argue that without them we would do nothing and society would grind to a dysfunctional halt. This is conveniently cynical view of man’s nature (usually one held by those who are more or less economically and socially comfortable) and it is fundamentally wrong and is used to perpetuate the divisive class society we live under. The ancient message that human kindness, selflessness and community service are not only positive attributes to aspire to, they are the healthy, natural and peaceful way for humanity to live. Change is urgently needed. Change rooted in the well being of the group and not the individual. Change which sees the economy as a way of meeting  and addressing human needs.

 The pollution of our water, food and air is caused by the greed for profit. This could be abolished if the resources of the countries of the entire planet could be organised rationally to produce a healthy environment. It is not a technical problem. It is a class and political problem. While capitalism remains, the resources produced by the labour of the workers will be squandered. All the resources for a world of abundance, without pollution, disease and squalor, exist at the present time in skill, technique and science. They are the same resources used to produce pollution and destruction. They cannot be used for constructive purposes till the capitalist system of profit-making is overthrown. Grim reality teaches that the alternative posed by Marx of democratic socialism or barbarism has been transformed into a world socialism or annihilation.

Adapted from an article by Graham Peebles that can be read in full and unabridged here

Grim Future for many

One in seven working-age adults and children could still be living below the poverty line by the mid-2020s, according to new research from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

Scotland’s employment rate currently stands at 73.5 per cent and, on rates of growth achieved in the 10 years to 2007, it could reach 80 per cent by 2025. They found that if the 80 per cent employment rate was reached by the creation of only part-time jobs, poverty among working age adults and children could fall from 800,000 (19.4 per cent) to 670,000 (16.2 per cent). If most of those extra jobs were full-time, the number in poverty would fall further, to 600,000 (14.6 per cent).

Old Nick In The Middle East

Many theories have been put forward to explain the conflicts that have affected the Middle East but his holiness has come up with a different one. The Pope blamed the Devil for the conflict in the Middle East as he hosted the Israeli and Palestinian presidents for a unprecedented "prayer for peace" in the Vatican garden. 'In remarks prepared for the ceremony Pope Francis said: "More than once we have been on the verge of peace, but the evil one has succeeded in blocking it. It is my hope that this meeting will mark the beginning of a new journey.' (Times, 9 June) All this time socialists have been blaming capitalism for modern wars while his holiness has come up with a much simpler answer. RD

Solidarity is the socialist's strength

Marx designated the working class the ‘grave-diggers of capitalism’ and that the emancipation of the working class would be the act of the working class itself. Capitalism has created the material basis for a classless society based on plenty.

Our world’s resources are wasted while people’s basic needs remain unsatisfied. Land is despoiled, misery mounts, and poverty spreads. Prisons are being built. Factories are closed. National chauvinism, racism, and religious strive are growing at an alarming rate. The capitalist economy remains in the grip of the crisis. The employers pretends that it has the solution to the crisis and promises “recovery” provided  workers accept the responsibility of the crisis. But in reality the bosses have no control over the course of the crisis and the demand that the workers accept more un- or under-employment, further reductions in real wages, and increased cuts in social services and welfare benefits, is simply a demand that the workers take more of the burden of the crisis upon their backs so as to ensure the recovery of profits which is the real concern of the capitalist class. The working class must not harbour any illusions about “recovery”. The motive of capitalist production is profit and the only issue of “recovery” is recovery of profits. Such “recovery” will not alter at all the condition of the working class as wage slaves, or change the conditions of the exploited in relation to the exploiters. This “recovery” can only take place on the basis of the further intensification of exploitation, the increased impoverishment of the people, a higher level of immiseration of the working class.

The Socialist Party asks: why is this and why is it that we have to put up with these conditions?  How can things be changed? Workers are told that oppression, exploitation and inequalities have always existed and will always exist. The supporters of the capitalist class invoke the laws of nature, they proclaim it divine law from the gods. Reality, however, is quite different. It shows that these are the explanations of those who profit from this misery and whose power depends on maintaining the present conditions. The reality is that, despite diversity in political regimes, in language, and in culture and beyond differences in race and nationality, the vast majority of the people of the globe share a common condition: that of living in a society where the owners of the means of production impose their will over those who possess nothing or little. In other words, the vast majority of people live in a society divided into social classes where the propertied classes, the merchants, the industrialists, the financiers and the landowners, dominate the class who have little or no property, the working class. The economic base of this social regime is the capitalist system.

The task of the workers is not to substitute one exploiting class for another but rather to rid humanity of all exploitation. When the capitalists drove out the feudal nobles and kings, it did so in the name of all the people; but, in fact, it only replaced the old oppressors with new ones. It couldn’t have been otherwise because the capitalists were  a class whose existence was based on the private ownership of the means of production and the exploitation of the labour of others. Thus it only substituted a new form of class exploitation for an old one.

In attacking the foundation of the capitalist system – the private ownership of the means of production and wage labour – the working class undertakes at the same time the elimination of classes themselves. In effect, to eliminate the private ownership of the means of production is to destroy the material basis on which all exploiting classes are founded. Consequently, it is also to eliminate classes themselves. This is why we say that the  aim of the socialist struggle is the classless society, i.e.  a community in which no person exploits the labour of another. The proletariat has no one to exploit because it is the most deprived class in society. After the proletariat, there are no classes to serve as the object of exploitation. To eliminate the exploitation of the workers is to eliminate all exploitation.

Socialist society is a classless and stateless society. While under capitalism, production is done solely in order to make profits for those who own the factories, the railroads, the big supermarket chain-stores, etc., in socialist society, production is planned according to the needs of all people. socialist factories won’t shut down because investors don’t think they’re making enough money from them. Production will no longer depend upon the wishes of a handful of capitalists whose only goal is maximum profits, but on the collective will of all of the workers.

What millions and millions of men and women are calling for from the depths of their collective consciousness is an immediate radical change in the political and economic situation. The most vigorous anti-capitalist offensive can’t be put off till later. People are much more advanced than we imagine. They don’t worry over complicated doctrinal considerations, but with a sure instinct they call for the most substantive solutions: they expect much. Everything is possible. They know that the capitalist world is in its death throes and that a new world must be constructed if we want to have done with inequality, environmental destruction and war. The task of the Socialist Party is to unite and organise all workers and it is the workers themselves who must secure freedom for themselves, who must grow strong.

Child Labour In The USA

Stories abound about the exploitation of young children in Asia and Africa but this story is from the USA. 'Children as young as 7 years old are suffering serious health problem from toiling long hours in tobacco fields to harvest pesticide-laced leaves for major cigarette brands, according to a report released Wednesday. New York City based advocacy group Human Rights Watch (HRW) interviewed more than 140 youngsters working on tobacco farms in North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia, where most American tobacco is sourced.' (Time Magazine, 14 May) The report goes on say that HRW is asking the tobacco firms to introduce legislation to curb this use of children but as the global tobacco industry generates annual revenues of around $500 billion there is little chance of that happening. RD

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