A group claiming to back the Islamic State have hacked the Twitter and YouTube accounts of the US military command. 'One message said: "American soldiers, we are coming, watch your back." It was signed by Isis, another name for the Islamic State. Some internal military documents also appeared on the Centcom Twitter feed. Centcom said it was taking "appropriate measures".' (BBC News, 12 January) The Twitter account, which usually provide updates on strikes against IS, was later taken down. If the IS has access to the US military's secrets it is a real cause for concern. RD
The Glasgow & Edinburgh Branches Blog. Towards a better understanding of the world, in order to change it.
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
The (Sur)realpolitik of Capitalism
People all over the world used to dream and desire things
like solidarity, beauty, love, justice for all, equality and brotherhood.
Knowledge was supposed to have one and only purpose: to give people the
intellectual tools to build better societies. Now, education is conditioning
with young people crushed under the deadly weight of student debt. Healthcare
little more than a well-remunerated business, with pharmaceutical companies engaged
in plundering instead of curing. People arescared that they might get sick one
day; not because of illness itself, but because they would not be able to pay
their medical bills. Great science is locked up behind the doors of corporate
laboratories as lawyers secure their patents for profits. Instead of advancing
humanity. The best scientific brains are working for the military, or they are
busy developing ‘products' for markets. The Arts has been reduced to mostly
indistinguishable soulless entertainment. Instead of inspiring people to
revolution, instead of making them aim at something higher, artists have been
reduced to the level of cheap providers of pap. Hardly anyone reads. Hardly
anyone thinks. Ideals are being spat on. Nobody seems to be happy. People are
miserably atomized, lonely and lost. Only consumerism, and commercialism are
glorified. There is nothing that encourages people to dream of a much better
world, or to struggle for a new, just and egalitarian society. Instead of
creating beautiful music and poetry, instead of building public parks and
ecological cities, we are choking our urban centers with cars; we are murdering
millions of people over access to natural resources. We live for
over-production and over-consumption, while billions are dying in the gutter.
Most of the people have been made to forget that human beings
are essentially optimistic, sharing and loving creatures. Most people have been
made to forget, or were never allowed to know, that building better societies
is much more glorious and fun than living in some extreme individualistic
nightmare. Living for humanity, not for profit, not for a ‘me-me-me-goes first'
dogma, is fulfilling and actually gives meaning to one's existence. People want
life to have meaning again… and to be full of beauty, of hope and dreams! These
are clear signs of an economic system that no longer plays a productive role
and needs to be replaced. The idea is becoming increasingly popular. It is an
idea whose time has come. With the beginning of 2015 we enter a journey to the
end of the night. The major task for the social movement is to build People
Power together. We build together because our issues are all connected and
unified power is when we are strongest. Global trade agreements, rigged for big
business interests seems distant but it has impacts at the local level, adversely
hurting workers.
We should all engage in this fight because the stakes are
high. We will create the world in which we want to live and one that increases
the chances of a livable future. One truly lives only when he or she is marching forward and aiming at a better world. The priority now is
for humanity to survive – to survive as free people, not as wage-slaves. Let us
unite and shout:
“We Want Our Planet Back!”
That should be the demand on our banners, our battle-cry. Not
everyone is for sale, neither is everyone willing to be a slave.
Monday, January 12, 2015
Troop Mobilisation
TROOP MOBILISATION
In Paris last week France seventeen people were killed in attacks at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, on a police officer, and at a kosher supermarket. So France is mobilising 10,000 troops to boost security after last week's deadly attacks, and will send thousands of police to protect Jewish schools. 'Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said troops would be in place from Tuesday evening in sensitive areas. It is the first time troops have been deployed within France on such a scale. On Sunday, an estimated 3.7 million people took to the streets to show solidarity with the victims, including 1.5 million people in Paris.' (BBC News, 12 January) RD
Cancelled Operations
The sharp rise in the number of procedures hospitals are at present postponing has prompted the leader of Britain's surgeons to warn that patients affected will suffer "considerable distress". 'Unprecedented demand has led to a third more elective (planned) operations being cancelled in England this winter than last year, latest figures show. A total of 12,345 were called off at short notice between 3 November and 4 January, a rise of 32% on the 9,320 seen in the same period in the winter of 2013-14.' (Observer, 11 January) Cancellations included some 3,771 procedures such as hernia repairs and hip or knee replacements in the three weeks before and during the festive season RD
Is Britain Next?
According to the Sunday Express the elite Special Forces have joined counter-terror police and 1,900 Army personnel in the biggest security operation since the 2012 London Olympics. 'The news comes as Al Qaeda warned that France was only its third preferred target after Britain and the US. Most of the Special Forces will be wearing civilian clothes, while some have donned police uniforms to accompany police officers who visit the homes of persons of interest in response to intelligence leads by MI5.' (Sunday Express, 11 January) The Sunday Express has learned that a 30-strong SAS team, divided into smaller groups, has been allocated to the Police Counter Intelligence Unit by the regiment's inner sanctum, dubbed the Kremlin. RD
Powerless Capitalism
After gale force winds brought down power lines on Friday, almost 10,000 people in the north of Scotland are still without electricity. The worst-affected areas are Inverness-shire, the Western Isles and rural parts of Wick and Dingwall. 'Poor weather over the weekend has hampered efforts to re-connect homes with engineers working in "treacherous and worsening conditions". Trains between Inverness and Perth have had to be replaced by buses. Several ferry services have been cancelled with the disruption expected to last until late on Sunday.' (BBC News, 11 January) Despite political promises capitalism still cannot deal with the usual winter conditions. RD
Success is Socialism
There exists no definition of socialism that is generally
understood and accepted. The dilemma of socialism today is first of all the
dilemma of the meaning of socialism, because the term has been applied to such
an all-encompassing range of persons, parties, philosophies, states, and social
systems, often completely antagonistic to each other, that the very term
‘socialism’ has become virtually meaningless. ‘Socialism’ has become another
name for another form of capitalism. The temptation is strong to abandon the
label entirely, to adopt some new term to indicate the kind of social change we
propose. But to do so would be to attempt to side-step the problem. Since the
main challenge to capitalism has always come from that which called itself
socialism, the intellectual harlots of capitalist ideology empty the word of
all meaning and purpose, denying the very possibility of an alternative to this
system, hoping to bury of all its revolutionary content. We have to take the
word ‘socialism’ back, for without words there can be no concepts, and where
there is no language of freedom, there can be no dream of liberation. We cannot
simply abdicate the terminology of socialism and arbitrarily invent new labels.
To do so would be futile, because any new terms will be similarly sucked dry if
they acquire popular recognition. Words such as ‘socialism’, ‘revolution’,
‘democracy’, and ‘freedom’ do contain within themselves a critique of the
existing order. That critique can be realized only by reconquering it and
giving it new life, not by abandoning it and searching for another. For this
reason, we continue with the term ‘socialism’, but ensuring that we give its
proper meaning so people understand exactly what we mean by it.
Today humanity faces a global crisis stemming from the
incredible rapacity of the capitalist system. There is catastrophic climate
change which threatens to end life on our planet. Socialism offers the best hope for humanity. We
think a society run by people themselves, freed from both bosses and
bureaucrats, would be far more democratic and liberating than capitalism ever
has been. We think that a society
premised upon the enhancement of life rather than the perpetuation of profit
would stand the best chance of putting a halt to the environmental devastation
now ravishing the globe. Socialists often talked about capitalism's
‘contradictions’ but never have they been more painfully in evidence than right
than now. Millions find no work while
manufacturing plants lie idle. Fortunes
are spent on high-tech weapons to bomb homes while homeless people sleep in
doorways. The hungry rummage through garbage bins outside of supermarkets with
well-stocked shelves. People starve while big grain corporations hoard their
surpluses in their storehouses. White-collar criminals in the banking and
finance industry are rewarded with huge bonuses. Agri-business pushes millions
of small farmers and peasants off the land, destroys life-sustaining topsoil,
creates vegetables without taste or nutritional value, and sprays farmworkers
with carcinogenic pesticides. The result is system ruled by insanity, obsessed
with acquisition and accumulation that it will leave the planet a wasteland. It
may be hard to believe, but there is a method to this madness: it lies in the
basic dynamics of capitalist society, which is organised for profit above all
else.
Socialists use the term ‘social revolution’ in a very
precise way. Whereas reforms are changes within an existing social and economic
system, social revolutions make a sharp break from one social system to
another. A socialist revolution would end the private ownership of the
factories, mines, transportation and offices by a tiny clique of capitalists. Some
politicians imagine that changing the tax code or campaigning for finance
reforms will fix the ill of the social system.
But the cause is much deeper than bad policy or poor decisions, and will
not be solved by tinkering around the edges. Nor is the problem an evil plot,
as some on both left and right have alleged.
Powerful people frequently benefit from social inequality, economic
waste and ecological degradation, but under capitalism such things happen
whether or not anyone plans them. At
fault is not a calculating conspiracy but the very driving force of capitalism:
the relentless pursuit of private profit. Capitalism is a generalized regime of
commodity production characterised by market exchange, including the purchase
and sale of labor power. Production
under capitalism is organised for private profit, which is extracted from
workers' labor and realised in the sale of goods at the highest allowable
price. This system of social and property relations works to benefit a ruling
class made up of owners, financiers, merchants and executives who control key
institutions of production and exchange: banks, insurance companies, stock
exchanges, service concerns such as airlines and trucking, extractive
industries such as coal and oil, and manufacturers and distributors of
commodities like cars, computers and toothpaste. This ruling class appropriates the surplus of
the value created by the working class - the majority of us, whose living comes
not from owning capital but from working for those who do. By virtue of its
dominant social position the ruling class has a common and basic interest in
defending private property and maximising profit rates. But it is not a giant conspiracy. Sometimes
real differences emerge in its ranks.
Sectors of capital clash over appropriate measures for the maintenance
of profit rates, and they enter into political contest by underwriting
different candidates in elections and lobbying for different public policy
measures. Precisely through the open
expression of such differences, consensus is established within the dominant
class. The capitalists may feel the effects of crises and competition but as a
class, capitalists continue to do well and they rarely suffer like those of us
at the bottom of society.
Although to many people the prospect of a revived socialist
movement seems but a pipe dream, capitalism is showing its impracticality and
obsolescence in a host of ways. A rebirth of socialism is possible, just as
periods of calm in the past have been interrupted by resurgences of radicalism
and militancy. Many reservations that people hold about socialism are the
result of a perfectly reasonable revulsion against the monstrosities which have
masquerades as ‘socialism’. Around the world, countries ruled by single parties
and dictatorial autocrats draped themselves with the trappings of Marx, minuscule
groups announced themselves ‘the vanguard’ of the working class with some supposedly standing for equality,
worshipping authoritarian leaders and stifling democratic norms under the name
‘democratic centralism’. Socialism is a vision of a new world, based on one
central conviction: that human beings can construct a society without
exploitation and oppression through, and only through, the maximum extension of
democratic control. The emancipation of humanity from capitalism will only come
about when workers act in the offices, factories and streets on their own
behalf. It cannot be achieved through any shortcut, though many have been
tried.
The paradox of reformism is that it's not the way to win
reforms, especially in periods of crisis, when the system's ability to absorb
demands is minimal, substantial social gains can only be won through the
militant collective action of working people and mass movements aiming at the
democratic conquest of social power. The
aim of socialism can be sacrificed at crucial moments to the error of moderation
and gradualism. We don't object to reformism because it advocates reforms, but
because it has such a sorry record for obtaining them. We have no callous desire to ‘bring the system
down’ by letting people starve, as is sometimes attributed to
revolutionaries. On the contrary, we aim
to show people that by organising and struggling, they can win. We try to
generate a common political orientation. The main reason to join a socialist
organisation, of course, is work for socialism. The abolition of class rule and
establishment of workers' democracy will not come about unless there are
socialists organised to push for it. Through debate and analysis, socialists
help one another understand what's happening in the world. We need your
participation, talents and ideas. Join us.
Sunday, January 11, 2015
The Winners Will Become Losers And Vice Versa.
Capitalism is defined by competition and there will always be winners and losers in any transaction that takes place between two parties. The drop in oil prices is a case in point. Firstly, the price has dropped mainly because too much oil has come on stream, largely because the Americans have started exporting shale oil. The Americans did not stop to consider this possibility and could not care a damn about it anyway. They would become self- sufficient and gain valuable export dollars anyway. The Saudis refused to cut back on production believing that the cost of producing shale oil would deter its continued and growing production. In Canada, the oil producing provinces such as Alberta and Newfoundland are feeling the economic pinch, but Ontario comes out a winner. Oil for transportation and industry will be cheaper and the resulting lower dollar is good for exporters. Not too far in the future the tide will turn and winners will become losers and vice versa. Makes a lot of sense, right? John Ayers.
2000 Avoidable Deaths
Air pollution in Scotland's towns and cities has created a public health crisis, according to environmental campaigners. The claim by Friends of the Earth Scotland came after an analysis of official data for two toxic pollutants. The group said the figures showed pollution levels were continuing to break Scottish and European limits. 'Air pollution in Scotland's towns and cities is creating a public health crisis, according to environmental campaigners. High levels of NO2 are linked to asthma and other respiratory problems.......Last April, Health Protection Scotland (HPS) said air pollution may have been responsible for 2,000 deaths in Scotland in a single year.' (BBC News, 11 January) Inside capitalism business is much more important than pollution. RD
A Depressing Society
Capitalism with its threat of unemployment, rent arrears or mortgage payments is a depressing society. How depressing is shown by the latest figures from the Health and Social Care Information Society about the use of antidepressants. 'Almost one in ten people in Britain is taking antidepressants with GP prescriptions for them almost doubling in ten years. Doctors last year issued 55 million prescriptions for pills such as Prozac, up from 50 million the year before and nearly twice the 2004 amount.' (Times, 6 January) Last year £280 million was spent on the drugs. RD
Saturday, January 10, 2015
Our Aim is Socialism
It is not enough for socialists to decry the reformists’ abandonment
of any meaningful socialist meaningful policies. Is neither enough to speak in
general terms of the need for radical and socialism. The Socialist Party must be
more specific and it is high time to spell out concretely what should be done. It
is not utopian of us to imagine what a socialist society would appear like.
Obviously, a more detailed elaboration will be clearer closer to the time but
we can still offer a vision of what socialism is.
The purpose of the Socialist Party is to achieve world
socialism in which the social ownership of the means of production shall
replace the existing capitalist system. Our world is rich in natural resources
and is capable of producing everything necessary for a good life for all. Our
planet could be truly a paradise for everybody but it is not a paradise for the
people. Folk are starving while food rots. Wars are raging with a barbarity
that shames our species. In Britain and elsewhere the social services being cut
to the bone. Why is this? The fundamental reason of all this suffering is that
the world is capitalist, ruled for and by capitalists for their profit and
interests. It is divided into rich and poor—a tiny handful of rich (1 per cent
of the population own more than half the nation’s wealth). It is a system of
exploitation where a tiny handful of people own the “means of production” (the
land, the mines, factories, the machines, etc.) and living off the sweat and toil
of other people. The problems of capitalism - exploitation, anarchy of
production, speculation and crisis, and the whole system of injustice - arise
from the self-interest of this tiny group of capitalists.
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 has created
the economic conditions for socialism. Today the whole system of production is
socially interdependent, but it is controlled by private hands. In place of
private control of social production there must be social ownership if
society's problems are to be addressed.
Only socialism can solve the problems facing the people of
the world. 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 and work them in their own
interests and in the interests of society. For society is now composed or
workers by hand and brain, i.e. of an associated body of wealth-producers.
Socialism will be a better society, one which will present
unprecedented possibilities for the improvement of peoples' lives. Because
working people will control the great wealth they produce, they will be
fundamentally able to determine their own futures. The end of exploitation of
one person by another will be a resounding liberating and transforming force. The
economy will be planned to serve human needs rather than simply profit and
luxury consumption by the rich. This will release the productive capacity of
the economy from the limitations of profit maximisation. A great expansion in
useful production and the wealth of society will become useful. Proper planning
and cooperative coordination will replace the chaos of commerce. With
socialism, goods and services will be distributed on the basis of from each
according to their ability, to each according to their needs. Workers will
manage democratically their own work places through workers' councils and
elected delegates, in place of the myriad of supervisors and overseers today.
In this way workers will be able to make their work places safe and efficient
places that can serve their own interests as well as society's with the way
cleared to achieve a decent meaningful and productive life for all working
people. Such a democratisation of industry would not work unless the mass of
the working class itself was imbued with a consciousness of its necessity,
prepared to struggle for it, and prepared to participate in its functioning. What
will not be developed under socialism are the massive government bureaucracy
and repressive state apparatus (police, prisons) which are used to control the
people and defend the privileged position of the ruling class. Socialism will
not mean government control. Today under capitalism the state serves the
interests of the capitalist class. With socialism the state will
"wither" away, and a new era of human freedom and prosperity will
arise.
Single-issue campaigns and protest movements have played an
important role in mobilising social activists and raising awareness about
issues. But protest and campaigning can only take the class struggle so far. We
can’t just keep on campaigning against things. We have to also
campaign for things. If all the aroused and the enraged can see is an
unresponsive brick wall of party bureaucracy misnamed ‘democratic centralism’
with leaders who make promises they don’t intend to carry out, they it can
easily result in demoralisation and apathy. There is a democratic instinct
among working people. They know that majority control is in their interests as
opposed to domination by unrepresentative minorities or vanguards. The healthy
rejection of leaders, opportunism and careerism should not mean a rejection of
organisation. A mass movement of workers has to have a purpose. For sure it
should defend and protect the exploited and oppressed, the targets and victims
of capitalism. But these are only defensive struggles within the system and can
only take us so far. Social movements should plan for replacing the existing
system with something radically better and be committed to the democratic
socialist transformation of society, a society where decision-making permeates
its complete essence and where the majority collectively own and control the economy.
We need peoples’ power that encourages debate and has nothing to fear from the
open and free flow of ideas and information, but everything to gain. Working
people clearly appreciate that unity is strength, especially in the face of
capitalist wealth and power. That in division lies defeat. One united movement
has a far greater chance of succeeding than one divided up into a series of
competing groups but this cannot be based upon a ‘broad church’ of
contradictory aims but has to be formed with a common goal yet providing ample
forums in which all the different ideas and strategies for changing society can
be debated and decided upon. Past experience has shown that the fight for
reforms can all too easily become an end in itself, with the aim of the
democratic socialist transformation of society relegated to celebratory
speeches and pious resolutions. The system has demonstrated that it cannot
deliver reforms and cannot even retain past gains.
Our political work now must be one of preparation, linking
up with who want to fight back. We are merely making the road clearer and
easier to travel down so that working people’s efforts to transform society
have a better chance of success.
Andrew Kliman writes critically “On the anticapitalist left,
the typical view of how to transcend capitalism can be summarized as follows.
First, you change people’s consciousness, or their consciousness changes
through their participation in new forms of organization. The change in
consciousness allows us to increase our side’s political power, to the point
where we take control, either through elections or by seizing power. And once our side has political power, we can
then change the nature of the economy and the state simply by deciding to put
“people before profit” and implementing what we decide. We need the right
political forms, forms of organization, to accomplish this—and there’s a whole
lot of debate about what are the right forms of organization. But if we do have
the right forms of organization, then overcoming capitalism is a simple matter.
We decide, through these forms of organization, what should be produced and
what shouldn’t, we decide how to distribute resources and goods fairly, we
decide on other social priorities, and then we just put these decisions into
effect. This picture of social change is in the minds of almost the whole of
the anticapitalist left, from vanguardists to anarchists.” He goes on to say
“despite your intentions–in order to compete effectively, there will be a
continual stream of unintended consequences that you won’t be able to eliminate
through experimentation. A country that tries to improve the standard of living
of its workers too much will not be competitive. State-run banks that try to
pursue public policy objectives instead of maximizing profit, and worker-run
banks that try to enhance the workers’ well-being instead of maximizing profit,
will lack the funds to do so. And so on. The problem here isn’t that you’ve
made mistakes…The problem is rather that, despite your good intentions, and
despite the new priorities, new forms of organization, new forms of ownership,
new laws, and the new name you give your society, it remains capitalist. It
remains capitalist because the economic laws that govern capitalism continue to
govern your society. And they continue to govern your society because new
priorities, new forms of organization, new forms of ownership and so forth are
not enough––by themselves––to overcome the economic laws of capitalism.”
They would merely be capitalism in a different form or they
would be unviable and lead back to capitalism.
And the reason why they wouldn’t work is that these supposed
alternatives to capitalism all try to get rid of capitalism without getting rid
of its mode of production. The proposals won’t work because it tries to change
the capitalist system by eliminating its effects, but not the causes of these
effects. Changes in political and legal forms, and changes in consciousness,
are not themselves changes in the relations of production. If only they are
changed, not the relations of production, the changes will not succeed in
changing the character of the society. Capitalism is based on its mode of
production; socialism is based on the socialist mode of production. If there is
a third kind of society in between them, what is its mode of production?
We live in a world where technological achievements
unimaginable in previous societies are within our grasp. For the first time in
history we can produce enough to satisfy the needs of everyone on the planet. Yet
millions of lives are stunted by poverty, destroyed by disease and military
conflict devastate lives. New technology gifted with the wonderful power of
shortening and fulfilling human labour, offers unemployment or over-work. The
domination of commodities in our society is so pervasive that it seems to be an
inevitable, natural state of affairs. All our achievements, everything we
produce, appear as commodities. The creation of exchange values and the
circulation of commodities requires a commodity which can represent all other
commodities, through which all other commodities can be compared and money is
the universal pimp. Money can buy everything - it is the most powerful
commodity in existence. The role of money in the circulation of commodities
shapes the consciousness of human beings involved in that process. Money takes
on the value of the objects it represents, it appears to be the force which can
create value itself. Money twists our human potential, transforms our feelings
into false feelings and manufactured needs, and changes us into different
people, alienated, atomized human beings
who lives somebody else’s life — not our own life. In the capitalist system,
the worker work for money, to survive and the accumulate things. The worker
does not experience work as free life. It deeply effects the social relations
of the worker to the husband/wife, lover, children, friends, and the worker’s
well-being; the psychological damages from the stress of work can last for a
life-time.
We say we human beings being social beings have the ability
to determine and direct our own futures (within certain limits). When the
workers own the means of production, William Morris explained, they will be
able to concentrate on a beautiful artistic production. Similarly, with more
leisure, they will have more desires and so a desire for beautiful things. We
entered into a society of abundance many decades ago, but capitalists must invest
seemingly forever to secure wealth, the fruit of that abundance, for
themselves. Technology does benefit society by creating unprecedented material
abundance. This abundance, while generated by greater productivity, has to be
hidden in plain view from the people. This is the great capitalist scam: the
owners of technology convince the workers that the machines, dead labor so to
speak, not their living labor, produce wealth. The bosses have largely
convinced us that we must service the machines at low wages, not the other way
round. An abundant society is not defined by the size of your plasma television
but by the quality of life that ensues when basic needs – food, shelter, health
and conviviality – are satisfied. When the time that we devote to directly
supplying those real needs reverts back to us, when our days are filled with
the things we want to do and that immediately sustain us, and not the tasks of
the paymaster, then we can begin to truly live.
A line of thinking like this is dismissed as fanciful, as
utopian, in the sense of unattainable. But, to mention only one area, the
accelerated pace of our current drive to despoil the environment in quest for
oil and natural gas is praised as eminently practical. Where is the folly here?
Is imagining a world free of exploitation more harebrained than the headlong
pollution of our planet? What sort of society could evolve if everybody had
free access to the world’s wealth to meet his or her basic needs of food,
shelter and health?
It is necessary to persist in speaking about an abundant
society and counter the popular confusions, because there is no other way to
reverse the perspective of power – a perspective that demands sacrifice and
scarcity to keep us all subservient.
Terrorist Attack
After the Charles Hebdo attack, the head of MI5 warns of a Paris-style atrocity on UK soil. 'Al-Qaeda is planning a Paris-style terrorist atrocity against Britain, according to the head of MI5. Andrew Parker, the Director General of the Security Service, warned that the threat of a "mass causualty attack" was growing and that intelligence pointed to the existence of specific plots.' (Daily Telegraph, 9 January) Security was stepped up on Wednesday at British ports , and armed police were put on patrol at the Eurostar terminal at London's St Pancras station. RD
Terrorist Plot
Politicians who want to maximise present day profits care little for future environment conditions but Al-Qaeda is planning a Paris-style terrorist atrocity against Britain, according to the head of MI5. Andrew Parker, the Director General of the Security Service, warned that the threat of a "mass casualty attack" was growing and that intelligence pointed to the existence of specific plots. 'Security was stepped up on Wednesday at British ports and armed police were put on patrol at the Eurostar terminal at London's St Pancras station. Mr Parker warned that although three terrorist plots had been foiled in recent months, it was almost inevitable that one would eventually succeed.' (Daily Telegraph, 9 January) RD
The Socialist and the Trade Unionist
It’s a great pity to have to admit that things have been so
bad for the union movement for such a long time. So torpid and uninspiring has
been its response to the austerity cuts, particularly the TUC symbolic protest
marches. Membership continues to dwindle, workers’ power continues to be
eroded, and employers continue to find new ways of out-maneuvering the unions. There
were exceptions such as the fast food and Walmart workers strike actions in the
US.
One generation after another in continuous effort, in great
strikes, massive demonstrations, and political struggles, have fought to build the
trade union movement. Long before there was a political party of the workers
there were the trade unions. Their history is an amazing record of valiant
workers who fought the law, who dared imprisonment, deportation, victimisation
and persecution in order that their unions could become strong and powerful.
Have you ever stopped to ask why and for what these organisations have been
built? You know they defend the wages and conditions of the workers. But why
was it necessary to fight for these? The answer to this question is important
because it goes to the foundations of unions and socialism.
The working class in society holds has no property. It is a
propertyless class—dependent upon the class which owns property—the land, the
factories, mills, mines, railways, transport. But the land cannot give forth
its fullness unless workers plough and sow and reap. The earth cannot deliver
its mineral wealth unless workers dig it. Factories, mills, mines, railways,
etc., cannot work unless workers are employed to make them serve their purpose
in the transformation of nature’s wealth into social wealth. It is this fact
which compels the owners of the means of producing wealth to employ labour.
They need that labour or their ownership ceases to be of value. That is why the
withdrawal of labour by the workers can be so powerful a weapon when used on a
large scale. Unions were formed by the workers because they possessed no means
of production of their own, i.e. they were propertyless and their labour power
which is inseparable from them could only be withdrawn from production in
sufficient strength when it was organised.
Now we know why trade unions were formed, in what consists
their power, and why the fight continues in a society where there is a class
owning the means of production and a working class owning nothing but its power
to labour. The roots of socialism lie in precisely those conditions which give
rise to trade unions.
Socialism is the name given to that form of society in which
there is no such thing as a propertyless class, but in which the whole community
has become a working community owning the means of production—the land,
factories, mills, mines, transport and all the means whereby wealth is created
and distributed to the community. Socialism is also the name given to a body of
scientific and philosophic thought which explains why the socialist form of
society is now a necessity, the forces upon which its achievement depends, the
conditions under which and the methods whereby it can be achieved.
It will be obvious at
once that the basic principles of Socialist society are diametrically opposite
to those of capitalist society in which we live. Socialism stands for social or
community property. Capitalism stands for private property. Socialism is a
society without classes. Capitalism is divided into classes—the class owning
property and the propertyless working class. We can easily understand,
therefore, why the great majority of landlords, employers, financiers and the
like are opposed to socialist ideas. Their very existence as the recipients of rent,
interest and profit is at stake. They do not merely reject the theory of socialism,
but actively and bitterly fight every movement which is in any way associated
with the struggle for socialism. It is to the individual and social interest of
the propertyless class to fight against the private property system and for socialism.
They do it every day, though as yet only a minority do it consciously for
socialism. When trade unionists fight the employers on wages questions and the
conditions of labour they are really fighting against consequences of the
private property system. The existence of the private ownership of the means of
production means also the private ownership of the things produced and their
sale as commodities in competition one with another. Labour also is a commodity
and those who sell their labour power, the members of the working class, manual
and brain-worker alike, also compete like other commodities.
Trade unionism really represents in one sense an attempt to
organise monopolies of labour power in order to break down the competition
between the workers who in the labour market are commodities for sale. The more
trade unionism advances in this direction the more difficult it becomes for the
capitalists to make profit. Hence the everlasting cry of the capitalists for
“lower production costs” and their opposition to the workers’ struggle for
higher wages and improved conditions. This is the fundamental contradiction of
capitalist economy—a struggle between the two classes, the propertied and the
propertyless—which is inevitable so long as the private ownership of the means
of production exists.
From this the socialist draws the conclusion, therefore,
that the class primarily interested in the change from private property to
social property is the working class. The goal of socialism as the classless
society has its starting point in the propertyless condition of the working
class which is also precisely the starting point of trade unionism. The unions
represent the first weapons of the working class in the struggle against employers’
interests; the socialist’s goal represents the consummation of the struggle of
the working class—its emancipation from the system which gives rise to that
struggle. Trade unionists and socialists have thus a common origin and the aim
of socialism is only possible of achievement by the working class becoming victorious
in the struggle against capitalism. Why then is it that trade unionists are not
always socialists?
People do not start their lives with fully developed
theories about systems of society. Nor were trade unions formed to fight for socialism.
The workers formed them to defend and improve their immediate conditions of
employment, their wages, their hours of labour and so on. This is clearly
revealed by the way in which the unions have grown. An important hindrance to
this development springs, however, from the limited character of the trade nions’
activities in relation to the occupations of the workers. The fact that the
labour unions limited their industrial activities to measures on behalf of
particular sections of workers meant that they adopted the method of striking
bargains with particular groups of employers. To this has been given the name
collective bargaining, the setting up of agreements between employers’
associations and groups of trade unions for limited objectives. There can, of
course, be no complaint against such a procedure providing it does not become
an end in itself but is regarded by the workers as a part of a continuous
process in the developing of sufficient power and will to conquer the capitalists
when the time is ripe. When, however, collective bargaining is accepted as a
permanent procedure and becomes the first principle of action for the working
class movement, then it involves the acceptance of capitalism as a permanent
form of society; and the unions will have to take just what the capitalists can
afford to give them.
The socialist declares that such a policy, especially in the
present period, is disastrous for the unions and the workers. The socialist is
not anti-trade union. On the contrary, he is the most ardent of trade
unionists. Socialists want their fellow trade unionists to recognise the cause
of the struggle their trade unions are compelled to wage. Recognising the cause
as rooted in the private ownership of the means of production and the
propertyless conditions of the working class, Socialists want all the struggles
of the unions to be co-ordinated, so that behind every national or industry
conflict there will be available the appropriate power of the working class.
Socialists want sectionalism to be superseded by a united working class army of
the unions led by a general staff which directs the struggles of the workers to
one end—the securing of the victory of the working class over the capitalists. This
means that the trade unions should recognise that all the efforts of the
working class must be directed to the goal of the conquest of political power.
Their fight in the industrial field must be linked with the fight to capture
the state machine which, backed by the might of the working class, would
transfer the ownership of the means of production and distribution from private
hands to social ownership. It represents the merging of the many sectional
interests into the common interests of all and the formation of the mass
socialist party reflecting the growing consciousness of the working class of
its independent interests and aims—in short, its approach to the socialist
conclusions arising from a recognition of the class divisions in society and
the conflict arising therefrom. What was in its first stage an unconscious
class struggle of the workers becomes increasingly a conscious class struggle.
This is the path of working class emancipation and a society
that will become a working community, owning and controlling the means of
production, with no class conflict, no rival interests to divide and impede. As
socialists, we need to articulate our distinctive vision now, not sometime in
the vague, distant future.
Friday, January 09, 2015
Poor Air Quality
Boris Johnson is risking children's health by blocking action to clean up London's poor air quality, according to the city's former deputy mayor Nicky Gavron. He claimed that the mayor had failed to deliver on his promise of an electric car "revolution" and is not cleaning up buses quickly enough. 'London has been in breach of EU pollution limits since 2010, and is not expected to reach safe levels for another 15 years, despite the threat of fines from the EU. Until we have political leadership that takes this issue seriously we must face the reality that London's children will continue to be exposed to levels of pollution that will scar their health for the rest of their lives, Gavron, who was deputy mayor under Ken Livingston, writes in 'The Guardian'. (8 January) Future environment conditions mean little to politicians who want to maximise present day profits. RD
Another Shooting
In the second attack to hit Paris in less than 24 hours a female police officer has been shot dead and her colleague left injured. 'Both officers had been described by a police source as being in a 'very serious condition' after the shooting. It follows the massacre which claimed 12 lives including those of two police at the Charlie Hebdo magazine offices on Wednesday.' (Daily Mail, 8 January) RD
Another Attack
In the second attack to hit Paris in less than 24 hours a female police officer has been shot dead and her colleague left injured The officer, died this morning following the shooting in Montrouge, in the south of the city. 'Her male colleague was also injured in the attack. Both officers had been described by a police source as being in a 'very serious condition' after the shooting. It follows the massacre which claimed 12 lives including those of two police at the Charlie Hebdo magazine offices on Wednesday.' (Daily Mail, 8 January) RD
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
-
Paternalism is a common attitude among well-meaning social reformers. Stemming from the root pater, or father, paternalism implies a patria...
