Socialism Is The Future, The Future Is Ours

The first condition of success for socialism is that its adherents should explain its aim and its essential characteristics clearly, so that they can be understood by everyone. We must do away with many misunderstandings created by our adversaries (and even some created by ourselves.) Socialism was born in 19^th century Europe as a movement of protest against the problems inherent in capitalist society.

The main idea of socialism is simple. Socialists believe that society is divided into two classes by the present form of property-owning, and that one of these classes, the wage-earners is obliged to work for the other, the capitalist, in order to be able to live at all. Workers effectively possess nothing. They can only live by their labour-power and since, in order to work, they need an expensive equipment, which they have not got, and raw materials and capital, which they have not got, they are forced to put themselves in the hands of another class that owns the means of production, the land, the factories, the machines, the raw material, and accumulated capital in the form of money. And naturally, the capitalist, the possessing class, taking advantage of its power, makes the working and non-owning class pay a large forfeit. It does not rest content after it has been reimbursed for the advances it has made, and has repaired the wear and tear on the machinery but continues to extract a surplus from the workers – which is their profit and supposed reward for being employer. A worker can neither work, nor eat, clothe or shelter him or herself, without paying a sort of ransom in the form of sweat and toil to the owning capitalist class. All this misery and injustice results from the fact that one class monopolises the means of production and of life, and imposes its laws on another class and on society as a whole. The capitalist wage slavery relationship inflicts a physiological effects, conditioning the working class to a submissive mentality in the workplace.  This submissive mentality then manifests into passive behaviour in the political lives of the working class.

Socialism aims to liberate the peoples from dependence on a minority which owns or controls the means of production. It aims to put economic power in the hands of the people as a whole, and to create a community in which free men and women work together as equals. Socialism seeks to replace capitalism by a system in which the public interest takes precedence over the interest of private profit. We, in the Socialist Party appeal to all who believe that the exploitation of one person by another must be abolished. Socialists aim to achieve freedom and justice by removing the exploitation which divides men under capitalism and strive to build a new society in freedom and by democratic means. Without freedom there can be no socialism. Socialism can be achieved only through democracy. Democracy can be fully realised only through socialism. One man is a master and the other a wage slave, one enjoys riches and the other obeys order, no amount of purely electoral machinery on a basis of 'one man one vote' will make the two equal socially or politically. Elections have become beauty contests between "charismatic" leaders struggling to attract the attention of the electorate in order to implement policies constituting variations of the same theme: maximisation of the freedom of market forces. There is little better description of democracy as the one that declares it to be the government of the people, by the people, for the people. While the guiding principle of capitalism is private profit the guiding principle of socialism is the satisfaction of human needs. Planning in socialism does not mean that all economic decisions are placed in the hands of the state or central authorities. Economic power should be decentralised wherever this is compatible with the aims of planning. The workers as the producers must be associated democratically with the direction of their industry.

The ecological crisis is the direct result of the continuing degradation of the environment that the market economy and the consequent growth economy promote. Humanity is faced with a crucial choice between two different proposed solutions, what we can call the "conventional environmentalist" and the "eco-socialist ". The green movement has lost much of its radical potential by being integrated into the existing social system and is engaged with those in the corridors of power to enact legislative palliatives. Another section with an almost irrational mystical approach to the ecological problem prefer a strategy of lifestyle changes, building "communes", food co-ops etc., instead of a direct challenge on the political field. However, this approach, although helpful in creating an alternative culture among small sections of the population and, at the same time, morale-boosting for those who wish to see an immediate change in their lives, does not have any chance of success ―in the context of today's huge  dominance of capitalism. The fact that the main form of is economic power, and that the concentration of economic power involves the ruling elites in a constant struggle to dominate people and the natural world, goes a long way toward explaining the present ecological crisis. To understand the ecological crisis we should consider the capitalist production relations. The eco-socialist solution seeks the causes of the ecological crisis in a social system that is based on the economic exploitation of human by human and not just mankind’s endeavours to dominate nature. If capitalism can’t be reformed to subordinate profit to human survival, what alternative is there but to move to some sort of globally planned economy? Our present political  leaders can’t help but to choose to  make wrong, irrational and ultimately  suicidal decisions about the economyand the environment. Socialism is an attempt to provide an alternative to what Marx called capitalism’s ‘destructive progress’. Capitalism can never be made to serve the common good and so for the sake of social harmony and ecological sustainability we must look to an alternative system altogether.

The Death Industry

Even we in the Socialist Party can admire Nicola Sturgeon’s spirited condemnation of the Trident Missile Programme and agree with her that it should be scrapped. However, in her emotional speech for the bairns and not the bombs she failed to chastise the rest of the arms trade that her government actually fosters and nurtures as the profitable part of the Scottish economy. This blog has already reported on the Glasgow Council pension scheme investing tens of millions in the weapons industry. What's the link between Edinburgh and drones, or Ayrshire and the teargas turned on democracy protesters in the Middle East? What does Dundee have to do with the repression in Bahrain? You guessed. Scottish companies are making cash from supplying weapons. The arms trade is a deadly, corrupt business. It is responsible for supporting, and profiting from conflict. Its customer base largely consists of human rights abusing regimes all over the globe.

In 2013 weapon manufacturers worth £1.8billion and employs almost 13,000 people and 30 Scottish arms trading companies attended that year’s showpiece arms fair the Defence & Security Equipment International (DSEI), which is heavily subsidized by the UK government.

Many of the biggest firms are marine companies which are involved primarily in naval defence. BAE Systems in Glasgow builds warships including the Type 45 destroyers. Rosyth-based Babcock Marine is helping to build the UK’s new Queen Elizabeth Class aircraft carriers. Some of the companies in Scotland are domestic while others are outposts of international firms such as QinetiQ, Raytheon, Thales and Finmeccanica. 

Finmeccanica is the world’s eighth largest defence contractor and is part-owned by the Italian government. Its subsidiary, Selex Galileo in Edinburgh, is heavily involved in high-tech aviation research for the Eurofighter, SAAB Vixen and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The Campaign Against Arms Trade (Scotland) say that Finmeccanica has supplied drones to Pakistan, howitzers to Nigeria and helicopters to Algeria, Libya and Turkey.

Working Shortage?

Toronto Hydro is laying off almost two hundred workers as it struggles to trim $20 million in costs. John Camilleri, head of C.U.P.E. Local One, told demonstrators that cuts are raising questions about whether there will be enough staff left to do the work, " There's no shortage of work. In fact, there is a back-up of maintenance work to be done." So workers are being laid off when there is plenty of work to keep them busy. One thing about capitalism – it's so so logical. John Ayers.

Dear Humanity…

It's time to talk about what's next. It's time to talk about the alternative. It is time to promote real solutions and a radical transformation. It’s time for system change. The time has come for socialism. Capitalism is ignoring the needs and well-being of people, communities and the planet as a whole. It is time to explore a genuine new economic model and move our world to a very different place, one where outcomes that are truly sustainable, equitable, and democratic are commonplace. Now is the time to shift the political discourse about the future away from narrow debates over reform policies that do not fundamentally alter any significant part of the nature of the political-economic system itself. The Socialist Party must bring people together who are serious about really tackling the system question, about building a new system of society and re-defining the public debate. We believe there are grounds for optimism that revolutionary change is possible.

For many political activists it is getting harder and harder to be an optimist and a deep cynicism has grown about the prospects of ending the capitalist system and establishing socialism. In an age of unprecedented technological promise, politics has failed to keep up with this progress. For sure there is no shortage of people today to tell us that something is wrong, but there does exist a dearth of real ideas about removing the many problems we all face each and every day around the globe. There are many diagnoses of our social ills but few remedies offered. Any proposals  for actually changing the system are treated as impractical or a distraction from “immediate” demands. We are told that it can only be capitalism as usual as our only option right now and that a viable, plausible alternative system is not yet possible. But people are beginning to stir and imagine a different world to this one. They are starting to realise that without another type of society they may not have a future.

We live in a time of crisis, a time when millions of people across the world are victims of capitalist policies of war, exploitation and oppression, and destruction of the natural environment. There is renewed interest in the idea of socialism; a system based on common ownership of the means of production, rather than private ownership. But what do genuine people find when they try to investigate this revolutionary alternative? They find that all sorts of people, including political organisations and the governments of various countries, proclaim themselves to be ‘socialist’ without ever really defining what is meant by the term. There might be some vague and incomplete references to the wealth and resources of society being used for the benefit of all the people rather than a privileged minority, but not much else, and rarely, any strategy of how to achieve this. There is a lot of confusion and misunderstanding about what “socialism” means. For those who are not familiar with it, let’s get one misconception out of the way right at the start. Socialism, as we use the term, never existed in Soviet Russia, even before Stalin, or in China, even under Mao. Socialism also is not the same as the “social-democratic” capitalism that exists in Scandinavia and the” welfare states” in some other parts of Europe today. None of them conforms to the definition of socialism that we use. Their concepts of ‘socialism’ can mean anything from mildly reformist liberalism to state ownership and the nationalisation of water, gas and electricity, through to total state-capitalism. None of these have much at all to do with the genuine socialism that we are talking about, but are used to confuse and mislead the people, and hence to deflect interest away. 

Any attempt at defining socialism is dismissed on the grounds that we can’t predict the future and that a blueprint cannot be imposed. Since nobody is going to argue with that, it just closes off any discussion of the subject, leaving ‘socialism’ as a pie-in the-sky vision somewhere in the distant future. It also leaves the opportunists and pragmatists free to vacillate and somersault through various policies and tactics with no goals other than a ‘pragmatic’ and resigned critique of capitalism. We believe the fundamental principles of socialism and their universal application can be clearly defined without prescribing a blueprint for the form of their application in any country.

The Socialist Party is committed to the emancipation of working people everywhere. We believe that capitalism is an anarchic and crisis-ridden economic system based on production for profit. We are for the expropriation of the capitalist class and the abolition of capitalism. We are for its replacement by socialist production planned to satisfy human needs. It is becoming increasingly apparent that only a socialist rationally planned society can make the changes in our production and use of energy and resources that are essential to prevent, or at least mitigate, catastrophic climate change and other environmental degradation.

Socialism, as we envision it, is an economic system under which all natural resources, as well as all means of producing goods and of organizing the delivery of services, will be owned in common and democratically managed for the benefit of the society as a whole. Communities within a socialist system will take full responsibility for meeting everyone’s fundamental needs – food, clothing, shelter, health care, education, transportation, a healthy eco-system, access to cultural and recreational resources.  Rational planning, not competition for profit, will drive the allocation of resources, with the goal of meeting the needs of society as a whole. Under capitalism, advances in technology are used to replace workers, so that the wealthy owners of large enterprises can increase their profits, while the displaced workers are thrown out on the street and left to fend for themselves. In socialism, by contrast, advances in technology – intelligently designed and environmentally sustainable – will be planned and implemented so as to reduce the level of human drudgery. Advances in productivity will result in reducing the length of the work week and raising the standard of living for everyone, rather than enriching a privileged elite. Everyone will reap equal benefits from, and thus have an equal stake in, improving the way goods and services are produced and distributed. Everyone will enjoy a decent standard of living, and an opportunity to enjoy the richness of life. As machines and technology replace more and more manual labour and routine chores, people will be freed to devote more time to leisure pursuits such as recreation, creative endeavors, and social relationships. Meanwhile, better education, improved technology, humanely and democratically operated workplaces, a shorter work week, and an emphasis on cooperation will all combine to make work a more rewarding, less stressful experience. Under these circumstances, people will understand that everyone who is able to do so must work, and few (if any) will be reluctant to make their appropriate contribution to society in this way. All workers – not just those in a few lucky professions – will be motivated by a positive desire to help others, rather than by the need to avoid hunger and homelessness.

Bairns Not Bombs - An Infantile Protest

NATO = NAZI

Thousands of protesters marched through Glasgow city centre for anti-Trident speeches by the SNP leader, Nicola Sturgeon and Patrick Harvie, of the Scottish Greens, in George Square. Also addressing the gathering was Labour's North Ayrshire candidate Katy Clark, Cat Boyd, from the Radical Independence Campaign, and Ann Henderson, of the STUC. It is the annual rally organised by the Scrap Trident group will be followed on April 13 by a blockade of Faslane naval base, home of the UK's nuclear deterrent. We, of course, accept that most of the protestors are well motivated, that they care. But actions if they are to be effective require more than fine sentiments and sensibilities. It is not enough that behaviour is well meant: if it is to be effective it must be appropriate. If the anti-Trident campaigners really cared about people they would seek to campaign for their enlightenment; for an absence of nuclear weapons and war—in a word, for socialism.

Since it was founded in 1958, CND has seen the number of nuclear weapons in the world multiply hundreds of times over, but it has consistently refused to discuss what actually causes wars. When people really start to escape from the fears and prejudices that plague well-intentioned bodies such as CND, it will not just be just a matter of ‘'Scrap Trident’; it will be the end of all wars and of the economic rivalries between national ruling classes that cause them. If you are opposed to war and all that it represents—as any right thinking person should be—you will advocate policies and take actions which will make war impossible, by removing its causes. That is, you will seek to transform society in the interests of human beings as a whole. But to do what the SNP and the Greens do — to object to some weapons which might be used in wars, whilst implicitly tolerating others — is to accept the inevitability of war, and the social system which underpins it. Their efforts, because they oppose only certain kinds of war, and not war itself, serve, whether intentionally or otherwise, to make war more likely.

Campaigning against nuclear weapons is an irrelevance. Nuclear weapons are unlikely to be used in Syria, or central Africa, or any of the other myriad "trouble spots" across the globe. Tens of millions of people have been killed and not from a nuclear weapon. Are those anti-Trident campaigners unconcerned about such matters? By what contorted logic does "manner of death" come to mean more to them than "fact of death"? Can we challenge the SNP to close down the armament manufacturers and arms traders in Scotland.

Under capitalism we have a world which is divided into rival and competing nations, which struggle with each other over the control of markets, trade routes and natural resources. It is this struggle which brings nations into armed conflict with each other because militarism is the violent extension of the economic policies of propertied interests. War and the nuclear threat cannot be isolated from the economic relationships of production or the general object of capitalist production, which is to advance the interests of those privileged class minorities who monopolise the whole process of production. It follows that no working class of any country has any stake or interest in war, and we have always said that workers should never support war. Our stand since we were established has been to oppose every war. Armed with this understanding of the cause of war we are committed to working politically with workers of all countries to establish world socialism, because that is where the interest of the working class lies. The Socialist Party has never participated in the hideous cause of capitalism at war.

We have from those opposed to Trident this indignation about the effects of war, and some sort of policy, argued around some slogans, which aims to bring pressure to bear on governments to prevent them from producing nuclear weapons and to make them dismantle existing stocks. This superficial approach cannot possibly succeed, nor does it stand any chance whatsoever of guaranteeing a world free from war or the possible use of nuclear weapons. The superficial approach assumes some general democratic political structure by which populations are able to bring effective pressure to bear on governments conducting a policy of, or preparations for, war. But wars are not planned or conducted along democratic lines. Think back to the last war and the development of nuclear weapons. These things were done in complete secrecy. All governments, in the planning and conduct of war, must retain for themselves a free hand, which is secret, and by its nature without democratic reference to the population at large. Democracy and the conduct of war are anathema to each other. The first casualty of war is democracy.

Socialists have fewer illusions than anybody about capitalism and we are well aware of the dangers. The spectre of nuclear Rrmageddon has once again reared its ugly head as the EU and the US bluff and counter-bluff with Russia in the stand-off over the Ukrainian civil war. If movements continue to support capitalism they must be responsible for all the ways in which capitalism develops. Because capitalism cannot be controlled in the human interest, we do not know all the ways in which it will develop. 

Sincere individuals are swept up by movements such as the no-nuke campaigns but these movements have no substance and are not acting with a clear understanding of the nature of the problems. It would be churlish of us to ignore the contribution of public protest and demonstrations in raising public awareness of the nuclear issue. Sometimes it is forgotten how deeply limited public knowledge of the facts there is. The real disappointment is that comparatively few on the march will move beyond the optimistic (but narrow) objectives embraced by the organisers.

This is socialism

It must not be assumed that the political parties all over the world which call themselves Socialist advocate socialism. That is not the case. You probably think you have some idea of what you believe socialism is. Socialism happened years ago led by men in cloth-caps and overalls who still believe in it. Or, socialism is this nice idea about equality that never worked. Or, socialism was a terrible one-party dictatorship. Let’s explain what socialism is because socialism means different things to different people. Ed Miliband and Stalin, for instance, have said they’re socialists. Both, of course, are lying. Socialism does not mean what its enemies and critics says it does. The rich and privileged oppose socialism, because it would take away their power and make them our equals.

Socialism means the common ownership by all the people of the factories, mills, mines, transportation, land and all the other instruments of wealth-production ad that does not mean nationalization and state ownership. In the 1870s, Engels noted,

“Since Bismarck went in for state-ownership of industrial establishments, a kind of spurious socialism has arisen, degenerating, now and again, into something of flunkeyism, that without more ado declares all state ownership, even of the Bismarckian sort, to be socialistic. Certainly, if the taking over by the state of the tobacco industry is socialistic, then Napoleon and Metternich must be numbered among the founders of socialism.”

Socialism means production of things to satisfy human needs, and not, as under capitalism, for sale and profit. Socialism means free access to and democratic management of the industries by the workers. Capitalism gives to the owning class the terrifying power to hurl millions upon the mercy of charity food-banks with a stroke of the pen. Socialism destroys this despotic power, and creates an economic foundation for complete democracy. Socialism is the exact opposite of capitalism. In socialism, every man carries an equal burden of work and shares equally in the good things that society has to offer. There is no poverty, because all the idle land and machines have been put to use to produce the things people want. Production is aimed at satisfying the needs of the masses rather than the profit interest of a few. There is no unemployment, because a plan has been created to put everyone to work. Illiteracy is soon abolished, and the diseases that plague people are reduced to the few for which advanced medicine has not found a cure. Each individual is given the chance of developing himself to the fullest, with everyone helping him in whatever way they can.

For you, as an individual, socialism means a full, happy and useful life. It means the opportunity to develop all your faculties and latent talents. It means that, instead of being a mere chattel bought and sold in the labor market, an appendage to a machine, an automaton, a producer of wealth for the aggrandisement of idlers, you will take your place as a human being in a free society of human beings, and a participant in its administration. Your job inside socialism will not be dependent on the caprices either of a private employer or the capitalist market. It will be possible to go beyond market incentives and reward people not in accordance with their individual contribution, but in accordance with what they need to flourish. When things are produced to satisfy human needs, instead of primarily for sale and profit, involuntary idleness will be an impossibility. The "demand," instead of being limited to what people can buy, will be limited only to what people can use. Nor will technological unemployment be possible with socialism. Instead of kicking workers out of their jobs, the improved methods and facilities will kick hours out of the working day. "Jobs for all" under capitalism is a hypocritical slogan, except possibly when capitalism is preparing for, or engaged in, an all-out war. Socialism alone can give jobs for all and open wide the doorway to economic opportunity. Your hours of work in socialism will be the minimum necessary to fulfill society's needs. Work is not the end and aim of man's existence; it is the means to an end. We do not live to work; we work to live. Socialism will, therefore, strive in every way to lighten the labor of man and give him the leisure to develop his faculties and live a happy, healthful, useful life. It was estimated two decades ago that with the facilities then in existence, by the elimination of capitalist waste and duplication, and by opening jobs at useful work to all who were deprived of them, we could produce an abundance for all by working four hours a day, three or four days a week, and thirty or forty weeks a year.

Workers can no longer be held to the word of command of a few leaders and the socialisation of the means of production cannot be the work of a masses led by a few. If our goal is to preserve the existing system for as long as possible, we have no hope to create a movement to replace it. The choice we face is a stark one. The choice between a world of poverty, exploitation and war, and a world of democracy, equality and plenty. Workers, mustered under the red banner of socialism, have the power to bring this whole wretched capitalist system down.

The Socialist Party is unlike any other political party. We believe that a new society must be organised and built that can serve the interests of the true majority; the working class. The Socialist Party is committed to break the grip of the industrial and financial barons that lords it over society and instead bring genuine power to the people through community control of neighbourhoods and cities, going hand-in-hand with workers’ self-management of production. Either we as a people continue down the unsustainable path of upholding capitalism’s callous disregard and neglect of human and environmental needs; or, we as a people seek out and develop a new vision for the world in which we live. The Socialist Party works today for a world without war, without poverty, without discrimination or chauvinism, without fear and desperation. Working people are now rejected the “politics as usual” of the mainstream political parties. They have done this by “voting with their feet” in their majority, and not casting ballots in recent elections. We believe they are ready for a fundamental change of direction in society, and are willing to place their trust in a movement of working people. We teach the way forward towards a new society of freedom and equality, and lay the basis for taking those decisive steps into a new tomorrow – a socialist tomorrow; a tomorrow where a completely way of doing things will be created by working people; of democratic assemblies, of recallable workers’ delegates and direct mass democracy wherever possible where workers will take possession of the means of production and distribution, and institute a democratically planned economy to meet the needs of all.

Socialists oppose the false principle of the survival of the fittest, and believe that human survival and social development can best be secured through co-operation among individuals and groups to their mutual benefit. We say that the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the workers themselves. The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger, want and boredom are found among billions of working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life. Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish capitalism and the state, and live in harmony with the Earth. Socialism means the common ownership of the means of production and the free association of producers. The implementation of anarchism can only be through the free federation of productive and communal organisations.

Marx and Engels criticised utopian socialists for having no contemplation of the huge forces within capitalism and of having little idea of the means and methods of achieving their “utopias” except by appeals to the heart. And like these early unrealistic utopians, some contemporary activists think it possible to create in the midst of capitalist society a microcosm of an essentially non-capitalist society such as co-ops - which it is hoped might spread by example. Some social democratic attempt to create capitalism with human and ecological values and these too are unrealistic, and destined to go nowhere. However many consider visions of the future as vital to the health of the socialist movement. They give constant inspiration, hope and direction to those engaged in what is still a long struggle.

The Gun-Runners in Glasgow

Glasgow City Council’s Strathclyde , Scotland’s most substantial local authority pension scheme,  has been sharply criticized for investing £83 million in 11 of the world’s biggest arms firms.

At the close of 2014, the fund had shares amounting to £19.6 million in Lockheed Martin and Boeing – two of the biggest arms manufacturers on the planet. Lockheed Martin, one of the Strathclyde Pension Fund's leading benefactors, produces military aircraft, armored ground vehicles, missiles, unmanned systems for air and naval systems. It exports arms to states across the globe, including Israel and Bahrain. Boeing is the world’s leading aerospace firm, and the largest producer of military aircraft and commercial jetliners in the world. Its aircraft have been deployed in military campaigns in war-torn states such as Israel and the Palestinian Territories, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.

 Other leading arms firms invested in by the fund include Safran (£17.2 million), Honeywell (£16.4 million), United Technologies (£7.1 million) and Raytheon (£2.3 million).

Honeywell manufactures technology used in combat aircraft, tanks and the Reaper drone, deployed by the CIA and various states to conduct strikes worldwide. According to UK think tank Drone Wars, the US is the most prolific user of this unmanned aerial vehicle, and has used it to target and kill numerous people in Pakistan and Yemen.

 Raytheon makes the Reaper drone’s targeting system. The firm has also been linked to manufacturing components for bombs deployed in the 2014 Gaza conflict. Margaret Curran MP, shadow secretary of state for Scotland, was seated at Raytheon's table in February at a glitzy arms banquet in Westminster, according to UK charity Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT).

United Technologies produces aircraft, drones and helicopters, including the Eurofighter Typhoon, Lockheed Martin’s F-35 and the Northrop Grumman Global Hawk. In 2012, it pleaded guilty to the “illegal export to China of US-origin military software used in the development of China's first modern military attack helicopter,”CATT says.

Safran specializes in aerospace equipment, as well as defense and security-related weaponry and technology. It manufactures drone technology, air-land systems, biometric identification systems and more.

Glasgow City Council’s pension scheme is one of the world’s largest, boasting total assets in excess of £13.9 billion. It pays 70,000 Scottish pensioners, and has an additional 130,000 people either waiting to retire from local councils or contributing to the fund. The extent of Glasgow City Council’s investment in this lucrative but deadly trade sparked outrage. The global arms trade devastates lives, tramples on human rights, and jeopardizes security across the world. Anti-arms campaigners say the export and sale of arms entrenches a militaristic rather than diplomatic approach to international concerns.

Andrew Smith of British charity Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) decried Glasgow City Council’s investment choices. “Glasgow City Council is meant to be committed to public welfare and the public good, and should not be investing in companies that directly profit from war and conflict around the world,” he told the Scottish Herald. “The arms trade is a deadly and illegitimate industry and people across Glasgow will be shocked to find that the council is using their money to boost companies that arm dictators and human rights abusers.”

A spokesman for Glasgow City Council told the Scottish Herald the Strathclyde Pension Fund has its “own committee structure and governance which is responsible for investment strategy.” He claimed the local authority is not responsible for investment decisions relating to the fund.

Tommy Sheridan - the Shameless Scottish Nationalist

Tommy Sheridan’s Solidarity officially endorsed a vote for the SNP position for the May 7 General Election. A large majority of 65 or so delegates at their conference in Motherwell last Saturday voted in favour. A statement by the Solidarity executive described an SNP vote as “a progressive vote against the red, yellow and blue Tories” who “denied Scotland its independence last September.” Sheridan and Solidarity are openly supporting a pro-business party and a party that Surgeon has made clear will endeavor to put Miliband into 10 Downing St.

Shortly after the referendum vote Sheridan wrote: “in order to maximise the pro-Independence vote in next May’s General Election, all Yes supporters should vote for the SNP...” Speaking at the Solidarity conference, Sheridan insisted, “All my life I have called for a mass party of the working class. The SNP have become a mass party of the working class. They may be led by a middle class leadership, some of whom are certainly not socialists but are free marketeers in their very fibres. But the truth is that that party is almost 100,000 in Scotland and working class people are orientating towards it.”

The Socialist Party Scotland, the Scottish wing of the Socialist Party of England and Wales which grew out of the Militant Tendency faction, confirmed its decision to quit its support for Solidarity in a statement accusing Sheridan of moving away from a "principled socialist position" because they would rather that Sheridan had promoted their own pet project, the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition.  A bit like the pot calling the kettle black...

This, of course, vindicates the stand taken by the Socialist Party in opposition to the promotion of Scottish independence by the nationalist-left.

Tommy the Leader - Towards the Precipice 

If Not Now, When?

Although previous societies have inflicted local environmental damage on the planet which sometimes was so severe that it led to their extinction, as in the case of the Easter Islanders, the present scale of degradation is of an entirely different order. It is global and affects everyone. The world’s ecology is currently in a dire condition and capitalism is at fault. It is clear that capitalism, as an economic system, cannot save the planet from global warming and the consequences of climate change. We must lay to rest that capitalism can solve these problems. It must be apparent that we face an urgent crisis yet the ruling representatives of capitalism have greeted all the above with indifference. Environmental lobbies, such as Friends of the Earth, think that capitalism can end the destruction to the Earth’s eco-systems without any fundamental change to capitalism if only our political leaders would wake up. This is a common view amongst environmental activists; a view which sees capitalism moving towards sustainability and zero growth. The idea that capitalism can be reformed to become the charitable and green system is fairly typical of the environmentalist movement. In this model of capitalist society the basic structures of capitalism remain intact but the distribution of the social product is changed to end inequality. Institutions of capitalism, such as multi-national corporations become social organisations. Lifestyles change and social structures are reformed while technical green advances are applied worldwide. The market becomes harnessed to sustainability. Some sort of world ‘government’ under the main international institutions of global capitalism, UN, World Bank, IMF, WTO or whatever is brought about to police the system. This is all shallow wishful thinking.

We argue that such a scenario completely ignores the way capitalism operates, and must operate, as a system and is therefore hopelessly utopian. The present world system is driven by the struggle for profit which leads to competition, nationalism and imperialism. These are the characteristics of capitalism. Yet all of these have been eliminated in the green capitalist world. The present system’s need for infinite growth and the finite resources of Earth stand in contradiction to each other. Successful operation of the system, which in the terms of capital means growth, or accumulation of capital, means that on the one hand nature as a resource is to be exploited ruthlessly. There is a clear causal relationship between global capitalism’s search for profitable accumulation and global warming and it is for this reason that reformers aim to create a “no growth” capitalist economy. On the one hand they admit that the present order of states, dominated by an economy exploiting the working class, struggling for profits, operating with relentless competition and backing all this up by imperialism, cannot possibly lead to their utopia, since it specifically excludes these things. On the other hand by excluding these key characteristics of capitalism they admit their utopia is in certain fundamental respects non-capitalist, admitting this utopia is not achievable without a break from capitalism. Yet this is something they are not prepared to countenance. They maintain their humane capitalism is a type of capitalism worth fighting for. The present destruction of the planet is rooted in the capitalist system of production and cannot be solved without a complete break with capitalism. We need to create a higher form of social organisation before the present system destroys us all. The entire system of production based on wage labour and capital needs to be replaced with a system which produces for human needs. All the half measures of converting aspects of capitalism to social purposes, while the fundamentals of capitalism remain in place, are just wishful thinking; and to pretend they could solve our problems is pure deception.

The capitalist class, of course, appoint their top economists, rather than environmental scientists, to advise them on the ecological crisis. What these economists do not appear to realise is that, while starting from the assumption that the ecological crisis can be solved within the capitalist system, their calculations, which show the required costs would be unsustainable, prove the opposite, namely that this crisis cannot be solved within capitalist relations of production. It is obvious that the demands of the capitalist system, namely profits via cheap energy are being followed in preference to any strategy which could ensure the long term survival of life on the planet. Why are we doing exactly the opposite of what rationality should dictate? Capitalism is a productive system which produces for profit not for human needs. The capitalist system requires continuous accumulation of capital. If capitals do not accumulate they will collapse, and there is therefore a general struggle for accumulation of capital, which means growth and expansion of markets, throughout the entire system. This drive for accumulation is derived from the internal functioning of the system and cannot be avoided. As Marx noted, for capitalism, the watchword was:

“Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets!”

The means of production need to be converted from capitalist class property to social property before an equitable system of distribution can be achieved. Instead of the present system in which workers are alienated from the means of production and from the products of their labour, a free association of producers producing for the needs of humanity, is required. Instead of the interchange with nature being determined by capitalist profit, this interchange needs to be collectively planned and regulated by all. Only after such changes can we achieve a balanced exchange with nature. We call a society of socialised property and freely associated producers, producing for human needs, “socialism” or “communism”. It will be a society which will inscribe on its banners:

“From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”.

A society where the free development of each will be the condition for the free development of all. Such a society will differentiate itself from capitalist in a myriad of ways, but the principal differences will be that it is a society without state, without money, where the mass of humanity participate in the planning and running of society. It will be a society without wage labour and commodity production and without classes. For the first time in human history it will be possible to collectively plan the future of the human species. Humanity will have a common interest and will be able to work towards achieving it. Working time will be reduced and the mass of the population will be drawn into the running of that new society. All will have a common interest in solving the ecological problems inherited from capitalism. With the abolition of capitalist society, all its waste, its cruelty, its wars, together with the misery, agony of toil, ignorance, brutality and mental degradation it inflicts on the working class, will be ended. Socialist society will draw on the abilities of all and produce for the needs of all. It will be able to balance these needs with sustainability. It will then be possible to roll back and repair the dreadful damage capitalism has inflicted on the planet in the few centuries during which it has been the dominant system of production.

The choice facing the world is one of the ruin of civilisation or the construction of world socialism. We address ourselves to those who agree that the capitalist society must be replaced with a free association of producers and citizens. We, in the Socialist Party, are committed to building a world that prides itself on having a sustainable environment and society that co-exists in relative harmony with undeveloped areas of the planet. We insist that our environment not be sacrificed on the altar of profit — either in the form of corporations devouring our forests and waters, or in the form of urban sprawl and unnecessary development. We, in the Socialist Party, seek to build a society where the barriers between rural and urban are broken down through the reorganization of society for the benefit of all life on the planet. We, in the Socialist Party, understand that we are not isolated from the world community. On the contrary, our internationalism allow us to understand how what we do has an effect on what happens across and around the world. We, in the Socialist Party, are committed to building a society that will be beacon of democracy and social justice.  The demands the Socialist Party put forward are based on what working people need if they are to live any sort of a decent life. They are not based on what the capitalist system says it can afford. Our intention is to provide a guide and plan of action, and, at the same time, assist working people in becoming aware of their power to reconstruct society so that it serves the interests of humanity. Our demand  is the aim of revolution and the establishment of a democratic socialism. The tactics, methods and forms of struggle may necessarily change over time, depending on the development of the conditions. But, at all times, these tactics, methods, forms, and aims employed by the Socialist Party are developed with the same objective— the advancing of the struggles of working people for their immediate and historic interests.

Sky Spies And Nose Dives!

 Drones are going mainstream in the US. According to an Associated Press release, February 27, civilian cousins of the unmanned military aircraft that have tracked, spied on, and killed terrorists in the Middle East and Asia are in demand by police departments, border patrols, power companies, news stations, and news papers, all wanting views that are too dangerous for planes and helicopters to get. It matters nothing to these groups that the ordinary citizen may object to being spied on. The only worry that the US government has is that they could collide with planes or come crashing to the ground. Better that capitalism takes the nose -dive! John Ayers.

A world in chaos

Within today's society, capitalism simply creates scarcity and competition and this in turn creates many problems, such as starvation, homelessness, increased crime. You too are conditioned and molded, only more subtly. You are relentlessly bombarded with pro-establishment propaganda, images and emotional appeals all your life on every front. The narrow limits of your freedoms make you as broadly conformist as any army drill team. Socialism is a doctrine which threatens to pull the plug on their perverse system before it succeeds in destroying us, the environment, and the future of humanity.

The goals of our socialist society is a life free of exploitation, insecurity, deprivation; an end to unemployment, hunger and homelessness.  An end to racism, national oppression, anti-semitism and  of all forms of discrimination, prejudice and bigotry. An end to the unequal treatment of women, the young and the elderly and all those of another sexual orientation. The creation of a truly humane and rationally-planned society that will stimulate the fullest flowering of the personality, creativity and talent of the individual. We stand for socialism, a society that is run by and for the vast working-class majority, a society in which the needs of the mass of people come first, not the greed of a handful of mega-millionaires. The advocates of capitalism hold that such goals are utopian; that human beings are inherently greedy and selfish. A society based on satisfying human need is totally realistic. Others argue that these goals can be fully realised through reforms under capitalism. We are confident, however, that such goals can be realised - but only in a socialist society. History is a continuous story of people rising up against those who exploit and oppress them to demand what is theirs.

Capitalism has been fatally flawed. Its inherent laws - to maximise profit on the backs of the working class - gives rise to the class struggle. Capital is simply money and commodities assigned to create a profit and be reinvested. Profit is made by the “magical” addition of surplus value to the value inherent in the product. The “added value,” the profit, is produced by workers. And this capital is born to expand or die. To be useful, the investment must result not only in a profit but in a growing rate of profit. The value of a commodity comes from the labour invested in it, including the labor that manufactured the machinery and extracted the raw materials used to create the item. And the boss’s profits do not come from his smarts or his capital investment or his mark-up, but from the value created by labour—specifically, surplus-value. Surplus value derives from unpaid wages. The worker is never paid for the value of the product, only for the value of her or his labour time, which is considerably less, and which meanders widely depending upon the historical, cultural and social conditions of a country. Labour-power is miraculous, like the Virgin Birth. You get more out of it than you put in. Workers produce a commodity which has more value than what they get in wages to keep them functioning. This differential is surplus value, which is the source of capital. Marx pointed out the truly anarchistic nature of modern industrial capitalism—an irrational, disorganized hodgepodge operation that enormously rewards price-fixers, crooks, gangsters, exploiters, con artists, gamblers, stock manipulators, and all manner of corruption.

The secret of value, the labour theory of value, that was unearthed by the classical economists and by Marx is what the money barons fear and hate. It is the secret that will set the world free. People will learn how to control the supposedly sacred, eternal, inscrutable method of production and distribution that now controls us. Socialists will produce for use according to a reasonable plan and without a thought for the odious notion of profit. And with no insatiable parasitic class to maintain, socialist society will produce abundance for all. In place of this conspiracy of chaos, socialism offers rational, democratic planning. In the place of the sham democracy offered by capitalism which maintains the dictatorship of the bosses over all of the most vital aspects, socialism demands the complete democratisation of social production. To the problem of homelessness, socialists propose a radical solution: allow the homeless access to the homes. How many people lost their job while factories stood idle and raw materials were dumped or allowed to rust? Another “extremist” solution: open the factories, let the workers in. Let them make the things that people need, let the people who need them acquire them.

This requirement to maximise profits, resulting from inter-capitalist competition, in turn unleashes an inexorably antagonistic dynamic between the capitalists, on the one hand, and their workers on the other. All of the things that workers want for themselves and their family – higher salaries, health benefits, lengthy, paid vacations, sick leave, pensions, etc. – can only be won at the expense of the capitalists’ profits. The more the workers succeed in pressing their interests, the lower the capitalists’ profits. Consequently, capitalists and workers find themselves in a perpetual state of war with one another. Sometimes this war is waged quietly, almost invisibly, as workers simply leave work early and let someone else punch them out on the time clock. But at other times these antagonistic relations erupt violently where workers battle police in order to defend their picket lines, defy court injunctions, and halt production until the owners are forced to their knees and concede to their demands. Tired of watching their real wages fall, tired of being told the company will leave the country every time they ask for a raise, tired of monotonous work, long working days, short vacations, and tyrannical bosses, tired of watching politicians pander to every whim of the rich at the expense of the public welfare, working people will rise up, seize society at its foundations and overturn the entire system with the overpowering strength that comes when the immense majority of the population, act in their own interests and in the interests of all the oppressed members of society. “The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interests of the immense majority.” (Communist Manifesto)

We say that it may be possible to bring socialism through peaceful means through the ballot box. We stand in elections but we are different to other parties. Join us for a better world. We believe that the people — in the workplaces, on the streets, in our communities — have the power to fundamentally change the way society is run. This dream is not only possible but necessary if our planet and its people are to survive. Under capitalism, we waste half our waking day frustrating our creative powers, degrading our abilities, and just plain bored. All our lives are spent shackled to the profits of the 1%. Imagine a world dedicated instead to human joy. A life in which most of our waking hours are devoted to acquiring the necessities to survive will give way to a life in which our physical needs are satisfied and we can proceed to develop our more spiritual talents: art, science, philosophy, literature, etc

“Let us finally imagine, for a change, an association of free men, working with the means of production held in common, and expending their many different forms of labor power in full self-consciousness as one single social force.” – Marx (Capital, Vol. 1) 

Time Is Running Out

Capitalism is presented as a ‘natural’ and ‘eternal’, formed like mountains and the oceans by forces beyond human control, that it is an economic system ultimately resulting from human nature. However it was not established by ‘natural forces’ but by intense and massive violence across the globe. At its root, capitalism is an economic system based on three things: wage labour (working for a wage), private ownership of the means of production (things like factories, machinery, farms, and offices), and production for exchange and profit. While some people own means of production, or capital, most of us don't and so to survive we need to sell our ability to work in return for a wage, or else scrape by on benefits. This first group of people is the capitalist class and the second group is the working class.

For the majority of us, most of our lives are dominated by work. Even when we are not actually at work, we are traveling to or from work, worrying about work, trying to recover from work in order to get back to work tomorrow, or trying to forget about work. Or even worse, we don't have work and then our main worry is trying to find it. Paradoxically, while millions of people are overworked, barely able to cope with high workloads and long working hours, millions of other people are jobless or work on part-time contracts and desperate to work. And while automation, mechanisation and productivity continually increases, working hours and working lives don't fall. In fact, in most places they are rising, as retirement ages are put up and working hours are increased. For many of us, we don't care about the work we do, we just need money to get by and at the end of the month, our bank balances are barely any different from the month before. We spend our days checking our watches, counting down the minutes till we can go home, the days till the weekend, the months till our next holiday.

Even those of us who have jobs in areas we enjoy, we do not control our work. It controls us, we experience it as an alien force. Most of us do not control what time we get to work or what time we leave. We do not control the pace or volume of our work, what products we make or what services we provide, or how we do it. For example, nurses may love helping people. But may still be frustrated by bed shortages, insufficient staffing, punishing shift patterns and arbitrary management targets.

And then much work, which may be extremely difficult, boring and dangerous for workers and destructive for the environment, is not even socially useful. Globally, millions of people every year are killed by their work, while scores of millions are made ill and hundreds of millions are injured. From built-in obsolescence causing products to break down making people buy new ones, to entire industries like sales and marketing existing only to persuade people to buy more products and work more to buy them. And much other useful work is squandered in supporting socially useless industries.

Why is it like this?

The reason is simple: we live in a capitalist economy. Therefore it is this system which determines how work is organised. And our work is the basis of the economy. Money - capital - is invested to become more money. And this happens because of our work. Our work adds value to the initial capital, and the value we add comes to more than our wages. This surplus value results in the growth of the initial capital, which funds profits and expansion. Capitalism is based on this simple process – money is invested to generate more money. When money functions like this, it functions as capital. For instance, when a company uses its profits to hire more staff or open new premises, and so make more profit, the money here is functioning as capital. As capital increases (or the economy expands), this is called ‘capital accumulation’, and it's the driving force of the economy. The wages we get roughly match the cost of the products necessary to keep us alive and able to work each day (which is why, at the end of each month, our bank balance rarely looks that different to the month before). The difference between the wages we are paid and the value we create is how capital is accumulated, or profit is made. This difference between the wages we are paid and the value we create is called "surplus value". The extraction of surplus value by employers is the reason we view capitalism as a system based on exploitation - the exploitation of the working class.

The lower our wages, the harder we work and the longer our hours the bigger this surplus value is. Which is why employers in the private and public sector continually attempt to make us work harder and longer for less pay. For this reason our jobs are made dull and monotonous, as then unskilled workers can do it cheaper. The products we produce or the services we provide are also often substandard to cut costs. Mass unemployment functions to keep wages of overworked employed workers down. As workers who are not afraid of being replaced by the unemployed can demand higher wages, better conditions and shorter working hours. Enterprises which extract the most surplus value and so profit and expand the most, succeed, while those which don't, fail. So if a company or an industry is profitable, it grows. Regardless of whether it is socially necessary, whether it destroys the environment or kills its workers.

In order to accumulate capital, our boss must compete in the market with bosses of other companies. They cannot afford to ignore market forces, or they will lose ground to their rivals, lose money, go bust, get taken over, and ultimately cease to be our boss. Therefore even the bosses aren't really in control of capitalism, capital itself is. It's because of this that we can talk about capital as if it has agency or interests of its own, and so often talking about 'capital' is more precise than talking about bosses.

Both bosses and workers, therefore, are alienated by this process, but in different ways. While from the workers' perspective, our alienation is experienced through being controlled by our boss, the boss experiences it through impersonal market forces and competition with other bosses. Because of this, bosses and politicians are powerless in the face of ‘market forces,’ each needing to act in a way conducive to continued accumulation (and in any case they do quite well out of it!). They cannot act in our interests, since any concessions they grant us will help their competitors on a national or international level. So, for example, if a manufacturer develops new technology for making cars which doubles productivity it can lay off half its workers, increase its profits and reduce the price of its cars in order to undercut its competition. If another company wants to be nice to its employees and not sack people, eventually it will be driven out of business or taken over by its more ruthless competitor - so it will also have to bring in the new machinery and make the layoffs to stay competitive. Of course, if businesses were given a completely free hand to do as they please, monopolies would soon develop and stifle competition which would lead to the system grinding to a halt. The state intervenes, therefore to act on behalf of the long-term interests of capital as a whole. The primary function of the state in capitalist society is to maintain the capitalist system and aid the accumulation of capital. As such, the state uses repressive laws and violence against the working class when we try to further our interests against capital. For example, bringing in anti-strike laws, or sending in police or soldiers to break up strikes and demonstrations. The rich, throughout history, have found ways to subjugate and re-subjugate the masses. And the masses, throughout history, have always woken up to throw off their chains.

Raising the minimum wage is no solution, as it doesn't get anywhere close to solving the root problem. If our work is the basis of the economy, and the basis of growth and profits, then ultimately we possess the power to disrupt it, not to mention ultimately take it over for ourselves. It is entirely reliant on us, the working class, and our labour which it must exploit, and so it will only survive as long as we let it. By taking direct action like stopping work - striking - we stop the gears of production, and prevent profits from being made. In this way we can defend our conditions and leverage improvements from our bosses. By organising together we do not only improve our lives now but we can lay the foundations for a new type of society. A society where we don't just work for the sake of making profits we will never see or building a so-called ‘healthy’ economy but to fulfill human needs. Where we organise ourselves collectively to produce necessary goods and services not for exchange but for use. Where we get rid of unnecessary work and make all necessary tasks as easy, enjoyable and interesting as possible. A socialist society. We need to free ourselves from this wage slavery which robs our pay-checks every month and keeps us in debt and forever in the rat-race and on the tread-mill just to survive. Talking about class in a political sense is not about which accent you have, or if you go to the ballet or opera rather than the football match but the basic conflict which defines capitalism – those of us who must work for a living vs. those who profit from the work that we do. By fighting for our own interests and needs against the dictates of capital and the market we lay the basis for a new type of society - a society based on the direct fulfillment of our needs. Is such a society possible? You bet it is... there is simply no other way we will make it as a species but our time is running out.

More Hard Labour?

The Labour Party, especially its left-wing, claims to stand for the workers’ interests and for socialism. Labour at one time claimed that socialism could be introduced gradually through a series of reforms using parliamentary means. In its early years many workers voted for Labour, believing that they could vote in socialism, but the experience of various Labour governments has brought disillusionment. Today no-one believes that Labour will establish a new and better political and economic system. Even Labour politicians themselves ask for votes with the promise that they will make capitalism work better than the Tories. Real power rests with the capitalist class and its state. All governments, Tory or Labour, represent this class. Tory and Labour work consistent as a team. We are all familiar with a certain police interrogation method; two policemen conduct the questioning, one bullying and brow-beating the suspect for a confession, and the second being friendly, suggesting it is in the suspect’s own best interest to admit his crime for his own good. This is just the way that Tory and Labour work together in capitalism’s service. Good cop - Bad cop.

Yet it has been a common refrain among the left for as long as we remember that “We have to keep Labour in because the Tories are worse.” The choice remains between austerity and austerity-lite. Is the Labour Party really the ‘lesser evil’ ? Or is it just a smokescreen to conceal that, yet again, this election will present us with no alternative?

Yes of course, there will be differences between a Labour and a Tory government, and the leaders’ debates will try to emphasise the important choices we face. But in reality none of those differences is sufficient to justify support for one over the others. If you are interested in furthering progressive politics and advancing the cause of serious social change, there is nothing to be gained. The exhausted ‘lesser evil’ argument can only do more damage to the prospects for creating a new politics of radical change in the circumstances of today. In the case of the Labour Party it has become increasingly more difficult for its supporters to justify their continued loyalty for a party that has abandoned its own social democratic traditions.

What remains of the left sticks to the ‘lesser evil’ mantra, although with nothing positive to say about Miliband they have to justify it by fantasising about just how evil David Cameron’s Tories really are. After every election the Labour Party let its supporters down. For sure, for those with a taste for nostalgic past, a Labour government did establish the NHS, welfare state and nationalised industries. It also imposed bitter austerity, fought dirty colonial wars, imprisoned strikers and supported the British nuclear weapons programme. Yet still the left clings to Labour. They forget that the Labour governments of 1974-1979 cut working-class living standards to meet the needs of British capitalism in the recession, slashing public spending and imposing a five per cent norm for pay rises at a time of rampant inflation and mass unemployment. The left still expounded the ‘lesser evil’ argument and turned job cuts and wage restraint into a way of ‘protecting’ the working population from the Tories. Hence did the left become complicit in Labour’s attacks – and in its own discrediting and defeat. The Labour Party proved pathetically inadequate to the challenge of Thatcher, failing to support key struggles – most notably the Miners’ Strike of 1984-85. Yet still the left dreams of ‘reviving’ Labourism, and tries to channel the widespread bitter anti-Toryism into support for the ‘lesser evil’. The left cheered Blair’s defeat of the hated Tories as if it was their own triumph. And what did they get for their trouble? Years of a Labour government that was marked by capitalist-friendly policies and ended with an economic crisis, more dirty wars abroad and the assault on civil liberties at home. Surely after all those years of humiliation and hurt, those who still think of themselves as progressives will have to face up to the truth about Labour? But no, still many of them cling to the tattered old banners of the ‘lesser evil’ in this coming election.

As another election looms the drumbeat for a Labour vote is growing louder on the Left-leaning blogs and in the offices of the trade union bosses. Labour politicians having comprehensively failed to defend the interests of workers when in power or even offer effective support when in opposition, these very same union officials want workers to do them a favour and vote for Labour. The spectre of 'lesser evil' politics rises once more on the horizon. We are warned that not voting for Labour will mean another five years of the Conservatives. You are invited not to remember what Labour did when it was in government because, apparently, it's going to be so much better this time round. Really?

 Labour apologists try to focus on the few issues where there are disagreements between the two parties, in an attempt to deceive people into believing that they are being offered a real choice by representative democracy.  The left avoid criticising Labour because that's what ‘lesser evil’ politics requires. Union leaders refrain from telling us is what Labour's core beliefs actually are because, if they were being honest, they'd have to confess that they are asking people to vote for anti-worker policies. On issues of foreign policy, both parties are willing allies of the US. Both parties count “Israel” as a very strong and "natural" ally, justifying US and Israeli aggression, explicitly or tacitly, whenever it occurs as we have seen over the last decades.

People now know that Labour is a capitalist party. If so-called ‘revolutionaries’ support Labour in election campaigns, even as a ‘lesser evil’ and despite all sorts of qualifications to their support, they are betraying the working class. This support amounts to an attempt to preserve, or re-establish, workers’ illusions that if only Labour had a more ‘left’ leadership things would be different. No party, however ‘left’ its leadership, can effect important changes to the capitalist system through parliamentary reforms. Today, to support Labour is to directly contradict the fundamental task of presenting the working class with a clear alternative to all pro-capitalist parties and to the whole system of capitalism. Through bitter experience the mass of workers has become cynical about any political claiming to support its interests. A mass party must be created which presents a clear alternative to the capitalist parties, and which is able to prove in consistent struggle that it really represents working peoples’ interests.

The problem of how to relate to the Labour Party has dogged the British left for more than a century. The left, which crucially never managed to establish any real political independence from Labourism and still supports Labour as the ‘lesser evil’. It seems that they are the last ones left alive with any illusions (or rather delusions) in the potential for Labour to change things for the better. Once there was a clash between competing visions of society today the ‘lesser evil’ case for Labour is based on little more than cynicism, negativity and demagoguery. If you are serious about wanting to change society, there is no reason to support Labour, and doing so can lead to nothing positive in post-electoral politics. The left’s acceptance that there is no alternative to Labour has over the years become a self-fulfilling prophecy, with the defeat of Labourism meaning there is no sign of any alternative in politics today. The left bears a heavy responsibility for creating the situation they now bemoan. Eduard's Bernstein's so-called 'evolutionary road to socialism' has proved a dead end. Rosa Luxemburg was right all along.

Voting for the lesser evil, voting for a party and for candidates in whom you do not believe has to be self-destructive. When we go into the voting booth, stand before the ballot and lift the pencil and then vote for something in which we do not believe, we take responsibility for destroying a little piece of our integrity, of betraying our conscience. We give our backing to something we know is not good, not right, not the best path for our class. We violate ourselves, or permit ourselves to be violated by the lesser evil argument. Don't do it.

We may not have a party political alternative and there is truth in the idea that we need power in the formal political sense. A working peoples' political party—one made up of and fighting for working people—would make a huge difference. Why, you might ask, would we want a party? Wouldn't a party inevitably succumb to the corruption of political compromise and opportunism? Ours would have to be a party with a difference. Ours would have to be a socialist party prepared to reorganise the economy, to reshape society. Ours would have to be a party controlled by ordinary workers. Ours would be the party that takes power away from the 1% and gives economic and political power to the 99%. Could we build such a political party? We in the Socialist Party think we can. In any case, we have no other choice than to try.

End Capitalism - Or the End of the World

Political and social change is scary but the alternative is terrifying. Our planet is in ecological free fall. Where will it stop? When will it stop? Is it too late to stop? There is not an issue that is more critical to our survival. We count on our elected representatives to do everything they can to reverse climate change. And what do they do? They undo what little safeguards we have and support policies that are designed to make matters many times worse. The world cannot continue on their current trajectory if survival is the goal. Our only hope is a transformation of the economic system. And it is quite possible. Those who scream the loudest about change being impossible are usually those who have something to lose when change takes place. Change is constant and inevitable. The only questions are what change will take place.

Capitalism inevitably divides humanity through racism, nationalism and sexism. Socialism is a sensible process of overcoming humanity's divisions and building economic and social democracy, where the resources and productive capacity of the world belong to its people, who use them to meet human needs rather than to generate private profits for a few owners. Reforms can never achieve this goal; the system must be overthrown, and that requires revolution. The capitalist system is designed to stumble from one crisis to the next. Thirty people own 6% of the world's wealth. Meanwhile, 80% of the world's population share 20% of the world's wealth. About 1000 people on the planet, according to Forbes, own roughly 10% of the world's GDP.

The world's richest people (a few dozen billionaires) tentatively agreed to give away to the charities of their choice half of their wealth, which amounts to $3.5 trillion, or just over one-quarter of the EU's GDP. Will global poverty end if the 1000 richest people and the next one million richest donate all their wealth? Of course not! Charity has never been the solution to the problem of unequal distribution of wealth. Philanthropy is not the solution to poverty.

One billion people do not have access to drinking water largely because a handful of multinational corporations, in which the billionaire philanthropists own much of the stock, they own water rights around the world and charge exorbitant utility rates for water that IMF and World Bank insist must be under private ownership as Tim Di Muzio pointed out in his ‘The 1% and the Rest of Us.’

Two billion people are victims of chronic malnutrition and lack of medicine, largely because multinational corporations, in which billionaire philanthropists again own most of the stock, make it unaffordable for people to eat and have medicine.

Water, food, health, education and affordable housing are among the problems that billionaire philanthropists want to address but the political economy which these very same ‘generous philanthropist billionaires, created the aforementioned problems in the first place. Inequality and poverty cannot be eradicated by business interests even with the support of the UN and World Bank whose driving goal is commercial exploitation of natural resources, labour and markets. Most of the programs introduced to combat have been band-aid solutions to patch up the victims

Our foods are polluted. On one hand our food is polluted with herbicides and on the other hand by antibiotics. And then we have hormones and pesticides. The World Health Organization has concluded that the glyphosate in Monsanto’s Roundup, a herbicide widely sprayed on GMO food crops, is a likely causes of cancer in humans and animals.

93% of doctors are concerned about the meat industry’s excessive use of antibiotics, and independent scientists have definite evidence that the growing resistance of bacteria to antibiotics is due to the use of antibiotics as animal feed. 70% of all antibiotics are fed to livestock because it produces weight gain and saves money on feed costs. Scientists at the University of Iowa found Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in 70 percent of farmed hogs. A Consumer Reports investigation found that US meat, regardless of the meat’s source, is full of “pathogens, commensals, and antibiotic resistant bacteria.” Pork tested contained five resistant bacteria strains. As the drug companies have more or less stopped the development of new antibiotics, the protection antibiotics provide against infections is rapidly fading.

The FDA tried in 2008 to ban farm use of cephalosporins (antibiotics like Cefzil and Keflex) because they are needed for pneumonia, strep throat, and other serious human conditions, the egg, chicken, turkey, milk, pork, and cattle industries and the animal Health Institute protested The Animal Health Institute consists of the drug companies who make profits selling 70 percent of their production to meat, egg, and milk producers. The members of the “health” institute are Abbott, Bayer Healthcare, Elanco/Lilly, Merck, Boehringer, Ingelheim Vetmedica, Novartis, etc.  Congress responded not to the health and safety but to campaign donations. In other words profits come far ahead of public health.

While a severe drought in the western US is ongoing, with California reportedly left with one year’s supply of water, the fossil-fuel fracking industry is polluting the remaining surface and ground water.

Dr. Jacqueline Kasun, professor of economics at Humboldt State University in California, observes in her 1988 book The War Against Population that:

1.         No more than 1-3% of the Earth's ice-free land area is occupied by humans.

2.         Less than 11% of the Earth's ice-free land area is used for agriculture.

3.         Somewhere between 8 and 22 times the current world population could support itself at the present standard of living, using present technology.

This leaves 50% of the Earth's land surface open to wildlife and conservation areas.

The lower limit of 8 times the current population (about 44 billion) has been considered as being perfectly workable. According to Dr. Kasun,

"Better yields and/or the use of a larger share of the land area would support over 40 billion persons."

Former Harvard Center for Population Studies Director Roger Revelle estimated that the agricultural resources of the world were capable of providing an adequate diet (2,500 kilocalories per day) for 40 billion people, and that it would require the use of less than 25% of the Earth's ice-free land area. Revelle estimated that the less-developed continents were capable of feeding 18 billion people, and that Africa alone was capable of feeding 10 billion people.

In addition to the fact that many new strains of food have been developed that can boost food production, there are other indications that food would not be a problem. In the September 1976 issue of Scientific American, Dr. David Hopper asserted that the worlds "food problem" does not arise from any physical limitation on potential output or any danger of unduly stressing the environment. The limitations on abundance are to be found in social and political structures of nations and the economic relations between them.

The landmass of Texas is 268,820 sq. miles (7,494,271,488,000 sq ft) So, divide 7,494,271,488,000 sq. ft. by 6,908,688,000 people , and you get 1084.76 sq ft/person That's approximately a 33' x 33' (about 10 x 10 meters = 100 m2) plot of land for every person on the planet, enough space for a town house. Given an average four person family, every family would have a 66' x 66' plot of land, which would comfortably provide a single family home and yard - and all of them fit on a landmass the size of Texas. Admittedly, it'd basically be one massive subdivision, but Texas is a tiny portion of the inhabitable Earth. Such an arrangement would leave the entire rest of the world vacant. There's plenty of space for humanity.

Capitalists make money by exploiting labour and by externalising the costs of the waste products of the manufaturing process by dumping the wastes on the environment. The short-term time horizon of production for profit focused on quarterly profits is destroying the livability of the earth. To deny this is nothing but an apology for capitalist exploitation of labor and the earth. To ensure that ourselves and our children and their children can live through this and next century, we must do what seems impossible. And that’s to have a worldwide united action for socialism. The wealthy 1% is now focused on maximising their wealth; we must show the unavoidable disaster they will inflict upon the planet if they are permitted to pursue their goal of capital accumulation.

The current economic system is not geared toward sustaining global life support systems and is fundamentally flawed. It is clear the economic system is driving us towards an unsustainable future and future generations will find it increasingly hard to survive. The current system is not concerned with human need, such as stable global ecosystems, but the personal enrichment of a tiny minority, even at the expense of the health of the planet. It is therefore up to people to fight against the exploitation and plunder of capitalism and to set up a society in which the use of Earth’s natural resources can be rationally planned—a socialist society.

Capitalism’s pursuit of profit is destroying life on earth.