Political Duplicity

Politicians like to  make great play about how they will crack down on tax-avoiding companies but in practice they are much less thorough. For instance David Cameron has been getting cosy with executives of both Facebook and Google. 'Cameron appointed former Facebook head Joanna Shields to the Lords. Facebook has not paid any corporation tax in the UK for a second year, Tories are close to Google, which has also been accused of avoiding tax.' (Daily Mail, 26 November) RD

More Severe Cuts

Jeremy Hunt, the Health Minister speaking during a debate in the House of Commons said the NHS is entering a crisis even before the winter sets in. 'Health Secretary says he takes his own children to the Accident & Emergency at weekends because the wait to see a GP takes  too long.' (Daily Telegraph, 25 November) When even the Health Secretary admits to the inadequacy of the NHS it shows how severe the cuts have become. RD

For Common Ownership, For Free Access

A SPGB BANNER

"From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" is commonly attributed to Karl Marx, but "à chacun selon ses besoins, de chacun selon ses facultés" was also written by Louis Blanc (1811-1882) as a rebuttal to Henri de Saint Simon who claimed that each should be rewarded according to how much they work. It is speculated that the phrase was inspired from two lines from the Bible: “All that believed were together, and had all things in common; And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.” (Acts 2:44-45)

The contradiction in capitalist society is between the means of production, which are socialized in this society, and private, not social, accumulation. This inherent contradiction is the basis of society’s division into classes, into the rich and poor. It’s also the source of the crises of capitalism. Marx and Engels’ vision was that socialism would do away with this contradiction by doing away with private appropriation altogether. The idea was that the overthrow of capitalism in favour of a socialist society would improve the lot of the people. Marx and Engels also envisioned the destruction of the arbitrary division between physical and mental labor. Think about it — is sanitation workers’ work any less worthy in promoting public health than the skills a doctor puts in? Is it any less important to society? Yet sanitation workers are devalued in capitalist society and therefore paid less.

Not everyone has the ability to work as much as others do. Moreover, different people have different needs — say, there’s two workers, but one is raising a family while the other is only supporting herself. Paying these workers the same amount isn’t exactly equality, even if they put in the same amount of work.

The focus of the Occupy Wall Street on rising inequality between the wealthy 1% and the 99%, representing the working class was a popular expression of the conditions that Marx and Engels discussed when they described the growing poverty among the masses and the fabulous wealth of the capitalist class

Driven by this constant revolution in the means of production, high-tech, present-day capitalism is characterized more and more by low-wage jobs and a permanent and growing reserve army of the unemployed. But what if the means of production were owned collectively by the workers and run for the purposes of providing for human needs? Then these advances in technology would be a liberating force for humanity. Everyone could be relieved of back-breaking labour and repetitive jobs. Instead of working 40, 50 or 60 hours per week, everyone could work a greatly reduced schedule, with time for leisure, advanced education and cultural activities.

Human beings could put their minds to solving the great challenges facing the global population, not only to raise the standard of living for all, but also to rescue the planet from the environmental degradation that has been imposed by capitalism and the profit system. We could imagine that digging for oil and gas or mining for coal — all the things that are dangerous and toxic to workers and the planet — could be eliminated by the true development of renewable energy sources. These are the kinds of possibilities that Marx and Engels predicted when they described the socialist future.

We also believe that when the capitalist class is eliminated as a class and class distinctions are a thing of the past, when there is no longer a struggle for the existence of the individual, the capitalist culture of racism, of divide and conquer, of promoting divisions by country, nationality, race, gender and sexuality could be eliminated as well. Generalised want promotes divisions, and of course, the capitalists use it to their advantage. When that want is eliminated, it will be all the more clear that we don’t need to fight among ourselves or allow ourselves to be divided into other categories.

Imagine a society where all its members organize production and distribution on a cooperative, democratic basis according not to profit, but solely on the basis of need.  Such a society has no exploiting minority or exploited majority. All property other than personal property is held in common, for the benefit of all. Consequently, there is also no money. If you are hungry, you can eat from the collective store of food. If you want to work, work is always available, and each contributes what he or she can. When you are sick or old or too young, society always takes care of you. All decisions are made collectively, and leadership is chosen rather than imposed. There are no prisons, no standing army, and no state bureaucracy. The threat of social ostracism is sufficient pressure against anyone who threatens the collective or harms another.

Similar societies have already existed in one form or another, in all parts of the world, in what is known as "primitive communism."

"The brotherly sentiments of the Redskins," wrote the Jesuit Charlevoix of the new world Indians he observed, "are doubtless in part ascribable to the fact that the words mine and thine...are all unknown as yet to the savages. The protection they extend to the orphans, the widows and the infirm, the hospitality which they exercise in so admirable a manner, are, in their eyes, but a consequence of the conviction which they hold that all things should be common to all men."

The question, then, is not: Is such a world possible? but: Is it possible again?

The productive prerequisites for such a society certainly exist. The previously undreamed-of material abundance created by capitalism renders hunger, want and even class divisions obsolete. There is enough food produced today to provide enough for every person on the planet. The introduction of ever-more-advanced machinery and technology has raised output to unimagined levels. Workers run things. In this sense, the ruling class today has become entirely parasitic, siphoning wealth but serving no useful social function. Society could do away with the ruling class and suffer no more than when tonsils or an appendix are removed.

Bill Gates once derided open source advocates with the worst epithet a capitalist can muster. These folks, he said, were a "new modern-day sort of communists”. When masses of people work toward a common goal and share their products in common, when they contribute labour without wages and enjoy the fruits free of charge, it's not unreasonable to call that socialism. In the late '90s, activist John Barlow began calling this drift, somewhat tongue in cheek, "dot-communism." Nearly every day another start-up proudly heralds a new way to harness online community action. Digital socialism is socialism without the state, without national borders and designed to heighten individual autonomy and thwart centralization. We have peer-to-peer production, a bounty of free access. The online masses have an incredible willingness to share. The number of personal photos posted on Facebook and MySpace is astronomical, but it's a safe bet that the overwhelming majority of photos taken with a digital camera are shared in some fashion. Then there are status updates, map locations, half-thoughts posted online. Add to this the 6 billion videos served by YouTube each month in the US. The list of sharing organizations is almost endless. When individuals work together toward a large-scale goal, it produces results that emerge at the group level. Phillip Howard, an associate professor in communication at the University of Washington, reported in the weeks just before Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was forced to resign "the total rate of tweets from Egypt  -  and around the world  -  about political change" exponentially grew from "2,300 a day to 230,000 a day." Not only have amateurs shared more than 3 billion photos on Flickr, but they have tagged them with categories, labels, and keywords. The popularity of Creative Commons licensing means that communally, if not outright communistically, your picture is my picture. In a curious way, this exceeds the socialist maxim of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" because it betters what you contribute and delivers more than you need.

Serious contributors to these sites put in far more energy than they could ever get in return, but they keep contributing in part because of the cultural power these instruments wield. A contributor's influence extends way beyond a lone vote, and the community's collective influence can be far out of proportion to the number of contributors. That is the whole point of social institutions—the sum outperforms the parts. Organized collaboration can produce results beyond the achievements of ad hoc cooperation. Just look at any of hundreds of open source software projects, such as the Apache Web server. In these endeavors, finely tuned communal tools generate high-quality products from the coordinated work of thousands or tens of thousands of members. An enthusiast may spend months writing code for a subroutine when the program's full utility is several years away. In fact, the work-reward ratio is so out of kilter from a free-market perspective—the workers do immense amounts of high-market-value work without being paid—that these collaborative efforts make no sense within capitalism. Instead of money, the peer producers who create the stuff gain credit, status, reputation, enjoyment, satisfaction, and experience. Not only is the product free, it can be copied freely and used as the basis for new products. Alternative schemes for managing intellectual property, including Creative Commons and the GNU licenses, were invented to ensure these "frees." Ohloh, a company that tracks the open source industry, lists roughly 250,000 people working on an amazing 275,000 projects. That's almost the size of General Motors' workforce. That is an awful lot of people working for free, even if they're not full-time. Imagine if all the employees of GM weren't paid yet continued to produce automobiles! One study estimates that 60,000 man-years of work have poured into last year's release of Fedora Linux 9.

The number of people who make things for free, share things for free, use things for free, belong to collective software farms, work on projects that require communal decisions, or experience the benefits of decentralized socialism has reached millions and counting. A survey of 2,784 open source developers explored their motivations. The most common was "to learn and develop new skills." The more we benefit from such collaboration, the more open we become to socialist concepts. We underestimate the power of our tools to reshape our minds. Did we really believe we could collaboratively build and inhabit virtual worlds all day, every day, and not have it affect our perspective? The force of online socialism is growing.

Even American Trotskyist James P. Cannon wrote that in a socialist society money, indeed, even a system for accounting for what was produced and how it was allotted would disappear: "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 books as to who eats how many pancakes for breakfast or how many pieces of bread for dinner. Nobody grabs when the table is laden. If you have a guest, you don't seize the first piece of meat for yourself, you pass the plate and ask him to help himself first."

In socialism, society's surplus wealth would be collectively used to enhance the welfare of all rather than that of a small minority. Such a society may seem too utopian. But as Cannon said: "What's absurd is to think that this madhouse is permanent and for all time. The ethic of capitalism is: 'From each whatever you can get out of him--to each whatever he can grab.' The socialist society of universal abundance will be regulated by a different standard. It will 'inscribe on its banners ' abolish the wages system - said Marx - 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.'"

Endemic Distress

The government has cut the NHS so severely that it is now forced to re-fund the service. The NHS in England should be given £2bn more next year, the King's Fund health think tank has said. Extra money for the service are called for after the latest figures showed the deficit growing as performance deteriorates. 'Halfway through the 2014-15 financial year the service's deficit had reached £630m - up from £500m a few months ago. It comes as targets are being breached for A&E, hospital operations and cancer treatment. In a briefing document, the King's Fund said the levels of deficits - revealed in official NHS board papers - were "unprecedented" and showed financial distress had become "endemic".' (BBC News, 26 November) RD

World Hunger

There are many reasons to get rid of capitalism. War, crime, preventable diseases - the list is endless. The greatest plight of all though is probably world hunger. 'We grow enough food right now to feed about 10 billion people, yet according to the UN, nearly 1 billion people suffer from significant malnutrition, in a world of plenty. They are hungry because they are poor, and they are poor because they are (by and large) either small-scale farmers without enough land, credit, extension services, or investment, or they are unemployed workers with income too low to support their families.' (Christian Science Monitor, 23 October) One billion suffering from malnutrition. It must end!   RD

Hospitals In Crisis

Experts said hospitals were "full to bursting," with latest quarterly statistics showing hospitals operating at the highest capacity levels recorded for the time of year. 'NHS leaders said that many hospitals had become so busy that it would take little more than "a gust of wind" to bring some to collapse. Accident & Emergency doctors said many of the problems stemmed from lack  of social care, with too many elderly patients stuck in hospital for lack of   help to get them back home.' (Daily Telegraph, 20 November) Lack of NHS funding could lead to a real medical collapse this winter. RD

This Is A Ceasefire?

The hostilities continue in the Ukraine  despite a so-called ceasefire. 'An average of 13 people have been killed daily in eastern Ukraine since a 5 September ceasefire came into place, the UN human rights office says. In the eight weeks since the truce came into force, the UN says 957 people have been killed, amid continuing violations on both sides. A new report by the office describes a total breakdown of law and order in rebel-held Donetsk and Luhansk.' (BBC News, 20 November)  The catalogue of human misery is horrendous - 4,317 deaths since April, 957 of them since the 5 September ceasefire, and 9,921 people wounded. Capitalism's conflicts always lead to working class suffering. RD

A Poisonous System

Under the shocking headline 'Supermarkets still selling chicken contaminated by deadly bacteria', we learn of the awful risks of disease and death as desperate retailers push for bigger and bigger sales. 'Supermarkets are selling chickens they know to be contaminated with a bacterium  that causes food poisoning and kills more than 100 people a year.' (Times, 19 November) The British Retail Consortium, which represents major retailers, said that its members were not required by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) to withdraw contaminated batches.  Which is very convenient for them but hardly reassuring for potential customers. RD

Economic democracy and freedom

A 19th Century Protest banner

The Earth’s greatest single resource is its people. The world could be a paradise for its inhabitants but it definitely is not a paradise for the majority of people. Who and what is responsible? It is the capitalists and their profit-seeking system. Our planet is ruled for and by capitalists for their own interests. What is wrong with the world is the way society is organised, the “system of society” which prevails. Two  main features of this society are it is divided into rich and poor—a tiny handful of rich (1 per cent of the population own more than half the wealth) who need not do any work, and the overwhelming majority who toil their whole lives through and that wars,  involving incalculable suffering to the people, are a regular occurrence.

It is a system of exploitation. By exploitation we mean living off the labour of other people. There have been previous forms of exploitation. In slave society, the slave-owners lived off the labour of the slaves who were their property. In feudal society, the feudal lords lived off the forced labour of the serfs. In capitalist society the worker is neither a slave nor yet a serf, i.e. forced to do free, unpaid labour for a master. But he or she is exploited just the same, even though the form of this exploitation is not so open and clear as was the case with the slaves and the serfs. The essence of exploitation under capitalism consists in this — that the workers, when set to work with raw materials and machinery, produce far more in values than what is paid out by the capitalists in wages. In short, they produce a surplus which is taken by the capitalists and for which they are not paid. Thus they are robbed of the values they produce. This is the source of capitalist profit. It is on this surplus, produced by the workers, that the capitalist lives in riches and luxury. Capitalism is a system in which the means for producing the wealth (the land, the mines, factories, the machines, etc.) are in private hands. A tiny handful of people own these “means of production” as they are called. But they do not work them. The immense majority of the people own nothing (in the sense that they can live on what they own) but their power to work. Capitalism is a system in which the means for producing wealth are owned by a few who live by exploiting the workers, i.e. by robbing them of the values they produce over and above the value of their wages.

As we have seen, capitalism is a system in which there are different classes—exploiters and exploited, rich and poor. The interests of these two classes are clearly opposed. The exploiters try to increase the exploitation of the workers as much as possible in order to increase their profits. The exploited try to limit this exploitation, and to get back as much of the wealth as possible of which they have been robbed. This is one aspect of the class struggle which arises inevitably out of the whole character of capitalism as a class system based on exploitation. The working class has to fight both immediate and long-term struggles. The immediate struggles are those that are fought out on different aspects of the struggle within the existing capitalist order. These struggles can be victorious without a fundamental change of social system. Such struggles are those for wages or in defence of living standards by trade unions. But for a lasting solution of all these problems, it is necessary to end capitalism altogether and to replace it by a new system of society in which the working people rule.

The ending of the exploitation, the cruelty and injustice caused by class society in its various forms, has long been the dream of men. It found in the writings of men like John Ball, Robert Owen, the early English Chartists and the pioneers of the labour movement. But capitalism by itself does not “evolve” into Socialism. It has to be transformed into Socialism by the conscious action and struggle of men and women. The age-long dream of the thinkers and the fighters of the past can only be transformed into reality when the working class take political and economic power from the capitalist class and, having succeeded in this, sets about building a socialist society.

What will such a socialist society look like? The means of production—the factories, mines, land, banks and transport—are taken away from the capitalists. They are transformed into social property which means that they belong to and are worked by the whole of the people, that the fruits of production likewise become social property, used to advance the standard of life of the peoples. No longer can some men (the capitalists) by virtue of the fact that they own the means of production, live off (exploit) the labour of others (the working class). No longer are the workers compelled to sell their labour power to the capitalists in order to live. The workers are no longer property-less proletarians. They now own the means of production in common and work them in their own interests and in the interests of society. It is the only system in which the old definition of democracy as “government of the people, by the people, for the people” becomes a reality. Capitalist democracy is government of the people by the capitalists in the interests of the capitalists. Socialism cannot be imposed on the people from above. It develops from below. The state apparatus which serves capitalism will be transformed into one which serves the interests of the people. The people will play the decisive part in the running of their communities.

Most people, even some capitalists, believe in a fair distribution of wealth, but you have probably noticed that capitalists and workers understand fairness very differently. This is not surprising to Marxists because they use class analysis as their basic method for understanding society. On the basis of that method Marxists recognize that what people mean by fairness has a lot to do with their class position in society and the degree to which they are influenced by the class-based theories, intellectual fashions, and prejudices that dominate the societies in which they live. For example, slave owners in societies with slavery-based economies often try to justify the status quo by claiming that slave laborers are incapable of personal autonomy and self-government and therefore slavery is fair and beneficial both to slaves and society as a whole. Likewise, capitalists promote ideas about the absolute necessity of private property, the profit motive, and wage labor for building a modern civilization, ideas which in their minds justify the existence of the capitalist class, capitalist domination of the working class, and a lopsided distribution of wealth that creates a fabulously rich minority and an impoverished working-class majority.

Karl Marx in 1875, in a letter that is known today as the Critique of the Gotha Program formulated a famous principle about how wealth would be produced and distributed – “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

The first part of the principle—from each according to their ability—means that all members of society will have the right and the actual opportunity to develop their talents and abilities to the utmost and to use their talents to produce goods and services for the benefit of society. In other words, everyone will have an education that allows them to realize their highest potential and a job in which they will have the opportunity to give their best efforts back to society. There will be no uneducated or poorly educated people, no unemployment, and no one will be forced by economic necessity to work in fields unsuited to their abilities. The second part of the principle—to each according to their needs—explains what citizens will receive from society in return for their labor, and that will be nothing less than complete satisfaction of their material and cultural needs.

Marx also said something very interesting about the implications of a fair distribution of wealth in a socialist society. He said that the principle “to each according to their needs” actually entails that inside socialism any given individual will have the right to receive a quantity of goods and services that is unequal rather than equal to the quantity received by others. This will sound counterintuitive, or even wrong to many, because most of us have been taught to believe that equal rights are the highest form of fairness, but Marx shows that this is not the case with regard to the distribution of wealth. 

Imagine two women living in socialism. One woman is a bus driver with five children and the other is a bus driver with one child. Let’s ask ourselves a question: According to the principle “to each according to their needs” which woman should have the right to receive more goods and services (food, housing, clothing, medical and childcare services, etc.) in compensation for her labor?  You might be tempted to answer that both women should receive the same quantity because both are bus drivers, and it’s only fair that everyone be treated equally. That would be the correct answer if this society was being run on the principle “to each according to their work,” which would mean that all bus drivers would receive the same reward. But that is not what Marx had in mind for socialism. The problem is that if each woman were treated equally, the driver with one child would receive more relative to her needs than the driver with five children—the former would be objectively richer and the latter poorer. This shows that an equal distribution of wealth can actually result in a highly undesirable kind of inequality—a division between rich and poor. This happens because principles such as “to each according to their work” or “equal pay for equal work” fail to take individual needs into account.

The principle “to each according to their needs” overcomes this defect by treating individuals differently, but in a positive way that considers and meets their differing needs, rather than a negative way that ignores individual needs. In a socialist society the unique needs of every individual would be respected. Thus the answer is that the woman with five children should receive more because her needs are greater.

The principle holds true even if we compare our bus driver with her five children to a neurosurgeon with five children. Shouldn’t a neurosurgeon be entitled to more than a mere bus driver? Not at all, since it won’t matter what kind of work you do. What will matter is that you contribute to the best of your ability. In return, society will meet your needs. If the needs of an individual who happens to be a bus driver are greater than those of a neurosurgeon, then the bus driver will receive more. But the needs of both will be completely and ungrudgingly fulfilled. Who would have a problem with that except for people who want more than they need? And there’s a name for that condition; it’s called greed.

This should lay to rest the common misconception that socialism means everyone will be treated exactly the same, as in the oppressive uniformity of the anthill or the barracks. Socialism actually means the opposite: out of respect for the individual, everyone will be treated differently, but in a way that satisfies the individual’s needs. The right to an unequal share in the consumption of goods and services actually results in a higher form of equality—all people will be equal in the sense that the needs of all will be met. The capitalist principle of “fairness,” is “From each according to the capitalists’ needs, to each according to the capitalists’ greed.” But for the Socialist Party “From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs” is our inspiration and destination.

The Clydesiders - Book Review

Book Review from the January 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Clydesiders by R. K. Middlemas 

In the general election of 1922 twenty Independent Labour Party members were elected from Glasgow and the West of Scotland alone. As a vast, hymn-singing crowd saw the new MPs onto the London train one of them, Emmanuel Shinwell, was aware that "they had a frightening faith is us . . . we had been elected because it was believed we could perform miracles and miracles were needed to relieve the tragedy of Clydeside in 1922." (Conflict Without Malice by E. Shinwell) The miracles, of course, failed to come. Capitalism proved more than a match for the reforms of the Independent Labour Party. Mr. Middlemas traces the gradual decline of that organisation.

The cover announces his book as "an important contribution to contemporary political history." This claim would not be so wide of the mark if he had got a few more of his facts right. Take, for example, his confusion of the founding of the Socialist Party of Gt. Britain with that the British Socialist Party on page 32:

The impossibilists', the hard core of followers of the American Daniel De Leon broke off in Scotland in 1903 to form the extremist Socialist Labour Party (SLP), and two years later in London to form the British Socialist Party.

Let us make it clear that our founder members were opposed to the confused industrial-unionism if De Leon and that the date of formation was 1904, not 1905 as he suggests. He is plainly mixing up the SPGB with the so-called 'British Socialist Party' (BSP), the inaugural meeting of which was held on 30th September, 1911—with Hyndman in the chair. (See H. M. Hyndman and British Socialism by C. Tsuzuki and the Socialist Standard, November 1912). The BSP held negotiations with sections of the SLP and of the ILP, and others, in 1920-21 and it was this reformist cocktail which eventually became the 'Communist' Party.

Despite the unfortunate mistakes, there are some interesting passages in this book. One of these, on page 276, gives a classic example of policy reversal by the Communists. In October 1932 the CP and ILP were co-operating and they organised the first Hunger March. Yet, only a year before, a Communist Party manifesto had referred to "the struggle against the ILP which is an inseparable part of British social fascism." Elsewhere we find that Shinwell gained his 'socialist' education by reading "the German Socialist Bernstein" and that Maxton, with unconscious schizophrenia, claimed to recognise the class struggle and the labour theory of value—but not the materialist conception of history!

Mr. Middlemas has little to say about the present little group, all that remains of the once powerful ILP. He merely reflects that "like the old-time SDF and the contemporary 'Impossibilists', the ILP was on the inverted road of splinter groups for whom it is more important to decide the details of the socialist millenium than the present methods of achieving it." But it is quite wrong to imply that the ILP sacrificed numbers for the sake of socialist understanding. They have been strongly influenced by anarchist ideas and, now that the great days of Maxton, Brockway and Wheatley have gone, feel that "parliamentary action . . . has many limitations, and its members cannot adequately represent the interests of the working class." Their demands include the extension of the "comprehensive system of education and abolition of the Grammar School system: and the introduction of "differential rent schemes", although "only a socialist society will be able to bring down the rents"! Finally, they have pledged themselves "to fight within the capitalist system" so that "commodity production (can) be organised for the benefit of the community." Could confusion go any further.

From the start the ILP followed an opportunist line and sneered at the 'impossibilists' in the Socialist Party of Gt. Britain. Never having Socialist principles, it could at least boast of a fair body of working class support. Now that that is gone, there is nothing left. It should be a lesson to all those who preach reformism.

John Crump

Dirty Tricks

During his five-decade-long leadership of the FBI bureau the Director J. Edgar Hoover was virtually unassailable. Presidents could come and go but Hoover still retained his supreme position. It is only now that some of the dirty tricks and double-dealing that kept him in power have come to light. One of Hoover's targets was the civil rights leader Martin Luther King whom the FBI had originally started monitoring because of suspected ties to the US Communist Party but after King began criticising the government for failing to enforce civil rights in the American South and his participation in the 1963 March on Washington the range of the FBI's surveillance spread. 'Now revealed are brazen threats to smear King by making details of his numerous extramarital affairs public and hints at an audiotape that may have accompanied the letter.' (BBC News, 20 November) Who knows what other surveillance and threats may have been used in the past or indeed in the present. RD

Wage Workers, Beware

Government officials  like to boast of an economic recovery, but the pathetic level of wages gives the lie to that notion. 'The wage rise, in the 12 months to April, was the smallest growth in 17 years and puts the average weekly salary full-time workers at £518, official figures show. Annual increases averaged around 1.4 per cent a year between 2009 and 2014, but this latest rise - the lowest since 1997 - is only 0.1 per cent, said the Office for National Statistics.' (Daily Express, 19 November)  The depth of decline highlights just how tentative any recent recovery remains, with the bottom 10th of full-time staff earning less than £288 a week, compared with £1,240 for the top 10 per cent. RD

Wellfare And Food Banks

A study commissioned by the Church of England, the Trussel Trust food bank network, Oxfam and Child Poverty Action Group contradicts the governments insistence that there is no connection between the increasing use of food banks and welfare cuts. 'At least half of all food bank users are referred because they are waiting for benefits to be paid, because they have had benefits stopped for alleged breaches of jobcentre rules or because they have been hit by the bedroom tax or the removal of working tax credits, it finds.' (Guardian, 19 November)  The study is the most extensive research of its kind yet carried out in the UK and makes the government look foolish. RD

Religion As A Business

It is traditional for religious leaders in the West to at least claim to reject the material things of the world and embrace only the spiritual values but that is not the case for many in the East. Some of the gurus in India are also successful entrepreneurs and run massive business empires, selling traditional medicines, health products, yoga classes and spiritual therapies. 'They run schools, colleges and hospitals. Some of the gurus, according to Dr Vishvanathan, can make India's best-known companies "sound like management amateurs". A guru from Punjab, Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, who heads a popular religious sect, even performs at rock concerts and acts in films.' (BBC News, 19 November) RD

Homeless

Mrs Thatcher's old boast about making Britain a "property-owning democracy" seems a little lame today as the number of tenant households in England and Wales evicted from their homes hit record levels in the third quarter of the year, with cuts to social security among the factors leading to more than 100 evictions a day. 'Figures from the Ministry of Justice show that 11,100 rented properties were repossessed by bailiffs between July and September, the highest quarterly figure since the records began in 2000. ..... By the end of September , more than 30,000 tenant householders had lost their homes, and the figure is on track to be higher than the 37,792 recorded in 2013.' (Guardian, 13 November)   RD       

Go red, not green

Humanity faces a global crisis caused by the capitalist system. There is catastrophic climate change which threatens to end life on our planet, then there is endemic war and conflict, mass poverty a ruthless assault on working people working and living conditions worldwide. Capitalism will destroy the human race. It is absolutely clear that the ruling class will continue to put the drive for corporate profit ahead of everything, even our own future as a species. It is incapable of changing. Even when it recognises the danger it cannot stop doing what it does. If capitalism is not overthrown, humanity is most likely doomed. The only way out is the abolition of capitalism and its replacement by socialism. The World Socialist Movement reject in advance any argument that the crisis of global warming and climate change is so critical that it stands above politics or that there is no time to build a mass socialist party or that we can’t wait for socialism to replace capitalism. We don't propose waiting for anything — we are campaigning all the time and are trying to drive the struggle forward right now. But the basic point still stands: the capitalist class is leading humanity to absolute disaster and its class position means it cannot and will not do anything else. What is necessary is to organise the forces capable of prising its mad grip from the steering wheel and carrying out a drastic change of course.

Under capitalism, the working class owns only its petty, personal property (clothes, a car, perhaps a house, etc.). It doesn’t own any part of the economy — the mines, factories, offices, supermarkets, banks etc. — these belong to the capitalists — so in order to live workers have to go and work for the bosses and pay tribute to them (the famous "surplus value" discovered by Marx). Their labour is "free" only compared to the past (i.e., to slavery and serfdom). Workers can choose their employer but they cannot avoid working for one or another member of the capitalist class. In the essence of the matter they are slaves of the capitalist class as a whole. This is why Marx termed capitalism a system of "wage slavery". The great mass of workers can never escape their proletarian, propertyless condition. Only by making a socialist revolution can the workers collectively become owners of the means of production which they operate. Under capitalism, the working class is a ground-down, deeply divided mass — it is simply fodder for exploitation by the bosses in the workplace. Workers are forced to compete against each other for jobs. They are divided by nationality, ethnic background or skin colour; by skill and type of work (blue collar, white collar, etc.); by their wage and general conditions of work; and by age and gender. These divisions are skilfully exploited by the capitalist class to keep the workers disunited and turned in on each other.

The all-pervasive mass media workers ensures the workers receive a fantasy view of what is actually desirable and possible for them. The socialist must challenge this by making clear that people cannot live without perspectives, without hope for the future. Those who hope to organise a great movement of the masses must never forget this, never fail to inspire fellow workers with confidence that the future will be better than the present if only we strive to make it so. The idea of socialism, of the good society of the free and equal, is not a utopian fantasy but the projection of future reality. When this idea takes hold of the people it will truly be the greatest power in the world.  The world will be changed by people who believe in the boundless power of the socialist idea.

The environmental movement is stuck on false panaceas like cap-and-trade, cutting individual consumption (“live others so that others may simply live”), and outright reactionary “solutions” that revolve around some form of population control (as if the number of people on the planet was the problem rather than the nature of the relationship between said people and the planet). A truly effective environmental movement needs to connect with the only social force within the capitalist system that can win real change – the working class.

Capitalism is organized around companies making as much money as quickly as possible; if they don’t, their competitors will drive them out of business. As a result, corporations have an incentive to pollute because investing in clean technologies for their business would be costly and cut into their precious profits. Furthermore, there are entire branches of industry that depend on pollution – gas, coal, and the auto industries, to name just a few. They have a vested interest in blocking any kind of meaningful development of green technology or any tinkering with the transportation infrastructure which is heavily car-centered.

If capitalism can’t be reformed to subordinate profit to human survival, what alternative is there but to move to a globally coordinated economy? Problems like climate change require the ‘visible hand’ of conscious planning. Capitalist leaders can’t help themselves, have no choice but to systematically make wrong, irrational and ultimately suicidal decisions about the economy and the environment. The fact that ecological problems don’t respect national or institutional borders is often used as an excuse for inaction, leading to the chronic breakdown of global climate negotiations. But that interdependence should be an impetus to reinvigorate the workers movements — a reminder that sustainability will come only through global solidarity. So then, what other choice do we have than to consider a true eco-socialist alternative? Is this Utopia?  But are not utopias, i.e. visions of an alternative future, wish-images of a different society, a necessary feature of any movement that wants to challenge the established order? The socialist ecological utopia is only an objective possibility, not the inevitable result of the contradictions of capitalism, or of the ‘iron laws of history’. One cannot predict the future, except in conditional terms: what is predictable is that in the absence of an eco-socialist transformation the logic of capitalism will lead to dramatic ecological disasters, threatening the health and the lives of millions of human beings, and perhaps even the survival of our species. What we need is socialism that points not to the primacy of ecology, but to the integration of natural and social, organic and industrial, ecological and technological; that recognizes human transformations of the natural world without simply asserting domination over it. We’re not talking about preserving an idealised picture of pristine, untouched nature — we’re talking about the world we choose to make, and the world we’ll have to live in. Workers don’t need to go green to save the planet - they need to go red.

Soup Kitchen Scotland

Figures have revealed that an increasing number of poverty-stricken families in Scotland are turning to charity food banks as they are grappling with mounting economic woes.

According to fresh figures recently released by the Trussell Trust, which operates the largest network of food banks in the UK, the number of hard-up Scottish families who depend on food banks to survive has doubled in the last year. The report said more than 51,000 people reached for the charity service to receive a three-day supply of food between April and September this year, which is up some 124 percent compared to the same period last year. The data further show that more than 15,000 children were among those relying on charity food in Scotland.

“Welfare problems still account for the highest proportion of those using our food banks in Scotland,” explained Ewan Gurr, the Trussell Trust’s network manager in Scotland. He also voiced alarm over the soaring number of Scottish families relying on charity food, adding, “The rising cost of food and fuel for those on static incomes and minimal employment opportunities for those both in work and out of work is forcing many families to deal with the horror of hidden hunger.”

In December 2013 over 9,000 men, women and children received emergency food parcels, around 45 percent higher than the previous month.

The Scotland’s Outlook campaign group estimated that more than 870,000 people were currently living in poverty across Scotland as a result of the UK government’s welfare and benefit reforms.

More Cuts

Bed-blocking is bringing the NHS "to its knees" with doctors unable to discharge more than 1,000 patients each day, a study reveals today. 'The crisis has deepened due to a lack of available council-provided care for the elderly. On one day this September, staff were unable to move 4,966 patients to another part of the NHS or into council care - the most since 2010. That month, a total 138,068 "days of care" were lost due to these delayed transfers, analysis by Sky News found.' (Daily Mail, 18 November) What lies behind this crisis? No suprise here - it is due to major welfare cuts.  RD                   

A Wonderful Town?

Frank Sinatra may have sung about New York being a wonderful town, but that all depended on what class you belonged to. Not so wonderful if you happened to be one of the following. 'There are about 3,357 unsheltered people living on New York's streets, a 6% rise from 2013 to 2014, continuing a trend that began a few years ago. But the vast majority of New York's homeless live in shelters across the city, and at 53,615, there are more people living in shelters than ever before.' (AlterNet, 23 October) At the same time, the condos cropping up in Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn show no signs of abating, bringing in more rich people. Between 2003 and 2013, the number of inhabitants with a net-worth of over 30 million dollars (known in wealthy circles as ultra high net worth individuals, or UHNWI) rose higher in New York than any other city in the world.  RD     

Another NHS Failure

We live in a money-mad society. If you have enough money you will be provided with the best possible food, clothing and shelter. This of course also applies to health care as a recent survey of GP surgeries revealed. 'Health watchdog the Care Quality Commission (CQC) has ranked almost every GP surgery in England in terms of risk of providing poor care. The majority are of low concern, but 11% have been rated in the highest risk band by CQC. Many of the elevated-risk practices had possible issues with appointments, mental health plans, and cervical cancer screening.' (BBC News, 18 November)   RD