The Greatest Robbery in History

Emblem of the SLP of America

This leaflet was distributed in the 1960s by the Socialist Labor Party of America which is worth re-posting despite certain flaws in the text. 

The Exploitation of Wage-Labor

This is the story of a robbery so colossal that it defies measurement. Compared with it the prizes, loot and spoils taken by all the pirates, buccaneers and freebooters of history are a mere bagatelle. The robbery is confined neither by time nor space. It is continuous, unremitting. It proceeds wherever society is divided into classes, wherever one class owns the instruments of production to which another class, owning no tools of its own, must have access in order to live.

There is nothing illegal about this robbery. Under the capitalist system, it is considered the normal "way of life." But it is robbery nonetheless. For the capitalist class uses its ownership and control of the factories, land, railroads, etc., in the same way that a highwayman uses his gun -- to extract a tribute from its victims.

CAPITALIST ECONOMIC ILLUSIONS

It is an insidious form of robbery, this capitalist exploitation. It abounds in illusions. For example, there is the illusion that conceals the real source of wages and makes the capitalist exploiter appear to be a sort of benign philanthropist. The worker goes into the factory on Monday morning empty handed, but, when he comes out on pay day, lo and behold, he has a pay check in his hands! If he meets a Socialist and hears the Socialist attack the capitalist system, he might say:

"Don't attack my boss. I'm getting little enough as it is. I wouldn't get anything if he were put out of business."

You see, this worker labors under the illusion that the capitalist supports him, whereas, as we shall demonstrate, he supports the capitalist. In this respect he is like the farmer who has not yet learned that you can raise potatoes without potato bugs.

CAPITALIST EXPLOITATION SUBTLE

Why is the worker the victim of this illusion? What goes on inside the factory that conceals from him the true state of affairs? What goes on is simply this: In the first hour or two that he is on the job the worker produces in the form of new values as much as he is paid in wages for the entire working day!

Of course the worker has no way of knowing this. When the serf of feudal times was forced to yield part of what he produced to the feudal lord, he knew he was being robbed. But capitalist robbery ia more subtle. The worker may perform but one minute operation in the production of a commodity requiring thousands of operations. Nevertheless, his labor has created new value equal to his day's wages in the first hour or two on the job and this new value -- together with the value added by his fellow workers -- is embodied in the finished product.

UNPAID LABOR

Karl Marx, the great champion of the working class, gave a name to the part of the working day in which the worker reproduces his wages. He called it necessary labor time. During the rest of the working day the worker produces values for which he is not paid, or -- let us call a spade a spade -- values of which he is robbed! This part of the working day Marx called surplus labor time.

For purposes of simplification, take the case of a worker who sells his labor power -- to be expended in eight hours -- for the price of $15. The first two hours of his working day are necessary labor time. In these two hours he produces as much as the boss pays him for eight hours of labor.

During the remaining six hours -- surplus labor time -- he produces three times as much, or $45 worth of new values. In the science of political economy we call the wealth that the worker produces, but of which he is robbed, surplus value.

EXPLOITATION AND WAGES

What in the degree of robbery, or exploitation? It varies as conditions vary in the different countries. In a countrv where more advanced techniques and methods of production are applied (such as the United States), the degree of exploitation is greater than it is in less advanced countries. At first blush this may seem contradictory. Why, you may ask, should workers who are more productive receive less proportionately of what they produce than workers who are not so productive?

The answer is simply that wages are not determined by what the worker produces. Leaving aside their temporary rise and fall due to fluctuations of supply and demand in the labor market, wages are determined by what it costs the worker to live and raise a new crop of wage slaves to take his place when he dies or is thrown on the scrap heap.

Everyone is familiar with the expression a "living wage." Our grandfathers got a "living wage"; our fathers got a "living wage": and. normally, we get a "living wage." Thus, in terms of food, clothing, shelter, etc., we receive substantially what our grandfathers did. Yet we produce vastly more than our grandfathers and considerably more than our fathers. Why, then, haven't we advanced beyond the "living wage" concept? The answer is that we cannot advance beyond this concept, no matter how much our productivity increases, as long as capitalism lasts. And the reason is that, under capitalism, labor power is a commodity, an article of merchandise, whose price is governed by the same economic laws that govern the price of any other commodity.

COMMODITY STATUS OF LABOR

Price may fluctuate according to the supply of a commodity and the demand for it in the market. Just as a pendulum swings back and forth, but is always drawn toward the center by gravitation, price may go up or down -- but always it oscillates around its value in accord with the economic law of value.

In other words, price, in the long run, coincides with value. And the value of any commodity is determined by the amount of socially necessary labor time required to produce it. In the case of the commodity labor power this means that its value is determined by the amount of socially necessary labor time required to produce the food, clothing, shelter, etc., needed to keep the worker in working condition. He gets a 'living wage."

THE TREND: INTENSIFIED EXPLOITATION

But, note this: The more highly developed a nation is industrially, the less labor time is required to produce the workers' necessities. Hence, instead of the workers' share of their product increasing proportionately as their productivity rises, it is the other way around. As new methods and techniques -- such as automation -- are introduced, the articles workers consume are cheapened and wages fall accordingly. Thus the workers' relative wages (what they receive in relation to what they produce) tend to fall as productivity rises. In other words, as labor productivity rises, the necessary labor time grows shorter, thus lengthening that part of the working day when the worker produces surplus value.

How the Capitalists Divide the Loot For purposes of simplification we have used a single worker as an example. Actually, as Daniel De Leon, the great American Marxist, pointed out, exploitation "is not the act of any individual capitalist, or set of capitalists, perpetrated upon any individual workingman or set of workingmen. Exploitation is a class act -- the act of the whole capitalist class-perpetrated upon a class -- the whole working class."

Apologists for capitalism sometimes try to refute Socialist charges of high-degree exploitation in America by pointing to the net profits of corporations. But Socialists have never contended that the corporations pocket all the surplus value their workers produce. On the contrary, Socialists point out that before a capitalist can count his net profits he must pay off the landlord, tax collector, banker, advertising capitalist, insurance company, and all the other parasites on parasites. By the time taxes, interest, rent, etc., are deducted, net profits of the immediate capitalist exploiter may be only a fraction of the surplus value of which workers are robbed. But this in no way disputes the fact that the working class is robbed by the capitalist class of wealth so vast that it defies measurement.

CAPITALIST HEADACHE: DISPOSING OF THE LOOT

Now, let us examine this thievery from another angle. We measure surplus value in dollars. But the workers do not produce dollars, they produce commodities -- and a commodity, Marx tells us, is an article that will satisfy some human want and that is produced for sale. Hence, before the capitalists can enjov their plunder, they must first find buyers for it. If they don't get rid of their commodity loot, it accumulates hi the warehouses and production stagnates.

In wartime the solution is simple. In wartime the surplus steel goes into tanks, ships and guns. the surplus textiles into uniforms, tents and bandages, the surplus lumber into training camps, barracks and caskets, and so on down the line of commodities.

But between capitalist wars -- in the intervening periods of "peace" -- the capitalists do not have this ready outlet for their wares. In peacetime they must find other means of disposing of their loot. How do they do it?

First of all, it is self-evident that the workers do not consume more than they can buy with their wages. And, as we have shown, this is just a fraction of what they produce. What happens to the remainder of labor's vast product?

A part is consumed by the capitalists in prodigal living. Some capitalists -- the plutocracy -- live in opulence surpassing that of kings, and often maintain not one palace, but many. In every city the capitalists form a community of super-consumers. They are the patrons of the night clubs, the purchasers of costly luxuries, the members of expensive clubs. Yet despite their prodigality, the capitalists can use up in personal consumption only a fraction of the immense wealth created by labor and appropriated by their exploiters.

Another part of this wealth -- a much larger part -- is used up in running a huge, bureaucratic, capitalist political State. The cost of running the political State -- including city, county, state and federal governments -- was somewhat more than $20 billion in 1939. Today the cost of running the federal government alone runs to more than $65 billion.

Still another part of labor's surplus product goes into expansion of industry. But while this tends temporarily to relieve the glut, its ultimate effect is to increase the capacity to produce commodities, hence to produce surpluses.

CAPITALISM NEEDS WASTE

Waste is another outlet for the wealth labor produces but cannot buy back. Some of the waste is incidental to the operation of capitalism. Take real estate transactions, for example. From the standpoint of economy these are pure waste. So is insurance. And advertising. None of these activities creates a penny's worth of value. Then there is the wanton destruction of surplus crops, and the fantastic waste involved in building hydrogen bombs and other weapons. And the waste of economic anarchy and duplication of effort.

Indeed, capitalism thrives best when waste is greatest. Floods, tornadoes, droughts, hurricanes and other natural disasters may ruin individual capitalists, but they are a veritable tonic to the capitalist system, for they help to use up surpluses.

COMPETITION FOR WORLD TRADE

However, such is the tremendous productivity of the modern working class that, despite prodigious consumption and waste, surpluses tend to accumulate, glutting the home market. The only outlet for this surplus is -- the world market.

Foreign markets are to capitalism what a safety valve is to a steam boiler. Continue to pump steam into a steam boiler that has no safety valve to release the excess pressure and, sooner or later, something will break. Similarly with capitalist production. Under a system of production for sale and profit, the foreign markets must drain off the surplus or it will pile up, cause economic stagnation at home, and, ultimately result in capitalist collapse.

All industrial countries, Communist as well as capitalist, are competing for a world market that, instead of growing larger, tends to shrink as economically backward countries industrialize and establish their own systems of exploitation. Inevitably the rivals in this economic war encroach upon each other's markets and sources of raw materials, creating international friction and hatred. For a time the weapons of trade -- tariffs, barter deals, import quotas, etc. -- are invoked. But ultimately such weapons are inadequate. The struggle that begins in commerce ends in -- WAR!

SOCIALIST SANITY

Capitalist rulers have no ears for the voice of Socialist sanity. For Socialism -- not the phony "Socialism" of Soviet Russia, which is really a system of bureaucratic despotism, but real Socialism -- would not only put an end to the periodic wars for capitalist survival -- it would also put an end to capitalist robbery of the working class.    By raising the worker out of his commodity status to that of a free human being with a voice and vote in the administration of industry, by guaranteeing to every producer the full social value of the product, in abort, by replacing capitalist anarchy and exploitation with Socialist cooperation and harmony, the world could be made into a veritable paradise of peace and plenty.

But capitalist rulers, blinded by their class and material interests, reject this. Whatever betides, they choose capitalism with its inevitable struggle for world trade and raw material sources, with its inevitable war. Not even the hydrogen bomb with its threat of human annihilation can prevent this ultimate outcome if capitalism is allowed to remain the ruling principle of society.

What the capitalist rulers and Communist bureaucrats are incapable of learning, the toilers of the world must learn --

There can be no peace without Socialism!

The capitalist system is the first in which a surplus of useful things is looked upon, not as a blessing, but as a curse. Below are depicted the various methods whereby the capitalists dispose of the fantastic volume of commodities the modern wage-slave class produces. It is impossible, of course, to determine accurately the proportion of labor's product used up in waste, or through expensive living by the capitalists, or in other ways, and the drawing is intended to convey this only in general terms. It should also be noted that the workers are many, the capitalists few,, and, though the working class may consume more in living, its per capita consumption is but a fraction of that of its exploiters than one and one-half per cent of all families had incomes of $15,000 and over. More than 8,300,000 families received under $2,000. Another 5,000,000 got from $2,000 to $3,000. At least half the U.S. population is near the ragged edge.

The capitalist class, as a class, robs the working class, as a class. The individual capitalist exploiter does not pocket the whole loot taken from the workers. Out of the wealth the workers produce come rent, interest, fees for insurance, advertising, etc., taxes and the "pay-off" for corrupt politicians, criminals and other hangers-on of capitalism who in one way or another serve capitalist interests. When workers read of the net profits of corporations, small or large, they should always bear in mind that these represent only a fraction of the total plunder. The "pie" above is suggestive and does not pretend to convey the real proportions in which labor's product is divided.

What we need is socialism

We live in an era in which socialism has largely lost its meaning. Social-democratic, Leninist, Stalinist, and Maoist governments over the past century which have failed to carry out their supposedly socialist objectives has dealt a serious blow to the integrity of the very concept of socialism.

 “The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the workers themselves” is a socialist principle. Self-emancipation requires that the working class gain power in society. This means the working class needs mass organisations it controls in order to secure its liberation and which looks out to the interests of the working class as a whole; that remains independent of the capitalist political parties and their professional politicians thus rejecting any “partnership” with the employing class. Part of the role of the Socialist Party is to help people see through the illusions of capitalism, to understand that we are faced with this stark choice of socialism or barbarism, and to encourage a vision of self-emancipation as the only means of creating socialism and the essence of what socialism would be. Revolutions are a dynamic process, not a single event or series of discrete events. Marx said that revolution is absolutely necessary not only because the old ruling classes cannot be disposed of in any other way, but because the class overthrowing it can only rid itself of all of the old “shite” (sheisse) and be fit to rule and found society anew only through the process of revolution. And it’s only through struggle that this revolutionary consciousness develops.

The present form of society rests on private ownership of the land and the machinery of production and distribution. The owners of the land and the machinery of production constitute what is known as the capital class. Yet it is the working class produces all the wealth that sustains society and it is held in complete economic and industrial subjection to the capitalist class, which lives on the wealth produced by the working class. The working class must wage class war and be fully conscious of the wrongs inflicted upon it by the capitalist class. The deaths by starvation, the millions of unemployed, the excessive toil for bare subsistence, the poverty, crime, and consequent misery, are all the direct outcome of domination by the ruling class. That class must go. Capitalist class relations perpetuate problems of human suffering that can be eradicated. Capitalism generates morally intolerable levels of inequality of material conditions of people. Capitalism thwarts democracy by placing the basic economic resources and conditions of investment in the hands of private individuals. Capitalism robs most people of meaningful control over much of their work lives because they are pawns in other people’s projects. Capitalism does not merely generate inequality and poverty through exploitation, it generates alienation as well. Capitalist competition and conflict destroys a sense of solidarity among people and built into capitalism economics is greed and fear.

Workers must organise to voice the wrongs. Then it will be prepared for political action to overthrow the usurping class and to abolish classes for ever. The people have to be organised so that they know what they were doing. Socialists need to educate them first. Socialism requires the re-organisation of the economy to serve working people’s needs. Its precondition is therefore the organisation of the working class. The workers must be taught to unite and vote together as a class in support of the socialist party, the party that represents them as a class, and when they do this the government will pass into their hands and capitalism will fall to rise no more; private ownership will give way to social ownership, and production for profit to production for use; the wages-system will disappear, and with it the ignorance and poverty; misery and crime that wage-slavery breeds; the working class will stand forth triumphant and free, and a new era will dawn in human progress of mankind. The Socialist Party demands common ownership of all agencies of wealth production by the people themselves and the control of all industrial affairs on the basis of social equality. There is no escape from the thraldom of capitalism short of its complete overthrow, and this can only be achieved by the class-conscious political strength of the working class. The Socialist Party, therefore, calls upon all workers to forthwith to work unceasingly for the complete overthrow of the capitalist system, and for the emancipation of their class from wage slavery.

Socialists do not provide blueprints for how we should do things differently. Socialism does not depend on some miraculous change in human nature. Instead, the Socialist Party poses this question as the guiding rule of conduct: Will the proposal advance the interests of the working class and aid the workers in their class struggle against capitalism? If it will, the Socialist Party is for it; if it will not, the Socialist Party is absolutely opposed to it. The advocacy of political reforms obscures the working class objective of emancipation from wage slavery, and thus causes the workers to expend time and effort to little purpose.  Whereas the so-called palliatives when adopted by governments they have rarely proved efficacious, and have usually created the need for further legislation restrictions, and therefore kept working class action circular instead of straight. Reforms even if desirable are best obtained by educating and organising for basic ends, inasmuch as sops have ever been conceded when something more fundamental is the demand. The Socialist Party declares against reformism and a programme of palliatives, and urges the workers to concentrate their energies upon abolishing capitalism. Even if palliatives were granted, the capitalists would just take something away somewhere else. Palliatives means just going round and round in circles.

Socialism has gone in cycles. There have been periods when it has gone down and periods when it has risen. It will rise again. Re-establishing the belief in socialism as the viable alternative to capitalism is the critical task of the Socialist Party.  We have to admit that the system has no answers to its crises and there is no light at the end of the tunnel of capitalism. The working class remains “a class in itself”, with interests that are diametrically opposed to the interests of the ruling class. Whether it can became a “class for itself”, realising its power and moving consciously towards overturning the system that exploits and oppresses us all, will only be resolved through the struggle. Those who create the wealth in society need to take back the world. And that is exactly what we will do. We have a world to win.

Machines Continue To Take Over Jobs

The business section of the Toronto Star of May 9 had the lurid headline, "Canada loses 19,700 jobs in April." Further down the page we saw "Rise of the Retail Machines." The thrust of the article being that buying from deluxe vending machines is how people will shop in the future. Such products as cufflinks, health and beauty products, dresses, books, and much more are already stocked in the machines. Soon grocery stores could sell cooked chicken, meatballs, sandwiches and salads from machines. In other words, like the first headline, more unemployment for workers. Perhaps soon those who like to shop in a store will have two choices – on line or at the machine. Machines taking over jobs has been going on since the beginning of the industrial revolution and always at the expense of workers somewhere. It's time to put an end to insecurity of gaining a living! John Ayers.

Comic Book Capitalism

From the October 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard I don't know about you, but no matter the publication, I always read the letters page first. In Debbie a girls' magazine I recently came across a letter that struck a chord. It went on brightly about Blue Peter, show jumping — and then came the gem. "I don't get home from school until 5.30 and then I miss half the (TV) programme. And, knowing my luck, the part I miss is the best part." Like I said, that strikes a chord. If you are addicted to Debbie with its "Secret of Fear Island", "Up to Date Kate", "Little Miss Featherfeet" and so on, real life is "I miss the best part". As a past victim of "Cannonball Kid", "Trained to Bust-up a Baldy's Team", "The Tough of the Track", I feel that "I miss the best part." Let's fact it; The Hotspur, Wizard, Girls Crystal and the Rover have done us all a disservice. Having learned about the world from them — we always miss the best part. These comic books taught us that life was worthwhile; that it was exciting and dramatic. We were thrown out of school unprepared for that harsh series of cliches that capitalism really offers the young worker. "You will enjoy it here  . . . This job carries a good pension . . . There are excellent prospects of promotion . . . With this bonus scheme it is really up to you . . . Of course you must believe in the product . . ." Don't know about you, mate; I was unprepared for it. In the last frame of a Cannonball Kid story our hero is depicted on top of an open-decker bus being driven through cheering crowds. He then reflects — by means of a bubble coming out of his ear —"Ah well scored a hat-trick at Wembley and bust up a Nazi spy ring at school—I wonder what next year will bring." Unfortunately we are not thirteen years of age for ever. Too soon we are twenty or there abouts. So we start reading the Melody Maker or the New Musical Express. It's the same set-up though. Life is still worthwhile, exciting and dramatic. The only difference is that our villains are a little different. They are not cruel step-mothers who want to stop the ballet lessons (Debbie) or guys with big green heads from another planet (Eagle). Now the villains are the intriguing, mindless, unmusic-loving older generation. Perhaps after the Beano, Bunty, or Melody Maker you regressed to the Socialist Worker or the Socialist Challenge. The villains there are hard-faced businessmen, multi-national companies or 'right wing' trade union leaders. The heroes are Lenin, Trotsky or some other "working class heroes" who are going to do something for you. In actual fact, of course, life is not as simplistic as all that comic book nonsense would have us believe. George Orwell in an essay on Boys' Papers once speculated whether it would be possible to change the "right wing" bias of these young working class entertainments to  a more "left wing" bias. No doubt that excited some Maoist to bizarre notions of re-writing "I flew with Braddock" to "I marched with Mao" or some Socialist Worker zealot to contemplate the propaganda value of changing "Trained to Bust-up Baldy's Team" to "Trained to Bust-up Callaghan's Team". Such notions are best left in the nursery along with all the other junk of childhood. The real villain of the piece is the way that society is organised. Everything that is produced to-day is produced for sale; the whole purpose of production on modern society is to realise profits. Every worker — "Boring old fart" or "way-out revolutionary" included — is a victim of this vicious buying and selling system. The important thing is not to climb Mount Everest in your bare feet (as Wilson of the Wizard did) but to survive in the commercial jungle of capitalism. A man or woman is not judged by how fast he or she can run (I believe Wilson once ran the mile in 3 minutes) but how much he or she owns. The majority of the population own little or nothing but their ability to work, and have got to sell that ability for a wage or salary. No wonder they feel "they have missed the best part". The "best part" is reserved for the owners of the factories, workshops and commercial undertakings. The Socialist Party of Great Britain wants a new society;  a world where everything is produced solely for use; where the purpose of production is to satisfy human needs; a world without wages, prices or profits. This means a complete revolution in the economic basis of society. It means the whole world's resources are owned in common by the world's population. Such a gigantic transformation can only come about by the conscious act of a majority of the working class. A first step in that process is to leave behind the ideas of "heroes and villains" as portrayed in the comic books of our youth or the political comic books of the "right" or "left" wing. I started off by saying that I always read the letters page first. Well, here's one I came across in the New Musical Express. The publication was encouraging its readers to send in what they term "smart ass one-lines"; these are usually distinguished by being more than one line and not particularly smart. One of them struck me though as being rather less silly than most; it stated:- "Life is like a shit sandwich. The more bread you have, the less shit you have to eat." On Breadless Ones, ponder such wisdom. Dick Donnelly Glasgow Branch

Make socialism work

Socialism is based on the very simple idea that we should use the vast resources of society to meet people’s needs. It seems obvious that society should guarantee every person enough to eat, a roof over their heads, an education system and a health service accessible to all. In fact why shouldn’t everything be available for free, we have the capability of producing abundance and provide for all. Since Marx’s day critics have written libraries full of books about why socialism cannot work.

A socialist society will carefully plans its way of life and technology to be a harmonious part of our natural environment. This planning needs to take place on regional, national, and international levels and covers the production of energy, the use of scarce resources, land-use planning, the prevention of pollution and the preservation of wildlife. The clean-up of the contaminated world will be among the first tasks of a socialist society. It is fashionable in some quarters to locate the cause of the environmental crisis in the insatiable lust for “progress but before we condemn progress or growth, we must recognize that more is at stake in rejecting progress or growth than thwarting the undeniable rampant consumerism in the America and Europe.  Billions of the world's population lack even the basics of sustainable life, barely surviving in the midst of poverty, disease with inadequate shelter, food and water. Until the material means to rectify the sorry, inhuman plight of billions is available, progress and growth must continue. To deny them a future and make them pay the price for Western privileged waste and excess would be callous. Equality of sacrifice in the face of vast economic inequities cannot be the solution to environmental degradation.

Many environmentalists see the failure of either market-based or regulatory measures as a failure of political will. They believe that politicians have yet to recognize the dire consequences we face by ignoring the environmental crisis. While this may be true, it fails to recognize the acute limitations of market-based and regulatory solutions and the impossibility of their effectiveness in a global capitalist economy.  The political will is not absent because of ignorance, but because the political system is owned and controlled by the capitalists. Moreover, the global capitalist economy is fueled by profits and profits alone. And profits are sustained and expanded by turning everything material or immaterial into a commodity. As a commodity, nature's resources hold no value other than what can be attached to the pursuit of profit. It is the exploitation of human and natural resources-- labor and nature's bounty-- that is the grist for profit's mill. And capitalism puts profits ahead of nature as well as ahead of people. Both history and the logic of capitalist accumulation and expansion demonstrate the inevitability of waste and destruction. Only when environmental degradation impedes the process of accumulation and profit expansion will the capitalist system respond to the crisis; environmental scientists tell us that will be too late. We will have already reached the tipping point where runaway catastrophe will be irreversible.

Only a system that will replace the logic of profit-before-all with the broad interests of humanity possesses the answer. Only a system that can substitute common ownership for the short-term self-interest of private property can cope with the ecological crisis. Only a system that erases the artificial borders and boundaries of nation-states can meet our needs. The answer is quite simply: socialism. Environmental activists must embrace the socialist option. For socialists, the “ecological crisis” is not a crisis of ecology. It is not nature which is in crisis but society, and this crisis of society engenders a crisis of relations between humanity and the rest of nature. In our view, this crisis is not due to the human species as such. It is not due in particular to the fact that our species socially produces its existence by labour, which allows it to develop and gives substance to the notion of progress. It is due to the capitalist mode of development, to the capitalist mode of production (which includes a capitalist mode of consumption) and to the productivist and consumerist ideology of “always more” that flows from this. Capitalism does not produce use values for the satisfaction of human needs but exchange values for the maximisation of profit. This profit is monopolized by a minority fraction of the population: the owners of the means of production. They exploit the labour power of the social majority in exchange for a wage which is lower than the value of the labour supplied. The sole conceivable alternative to capitalism is a system which does not produce exchange values for the maximisation of the profit of capitalists but use values for the satisfaction of real human needs (that is, uncorrupted by commodification), democratically determined. A system in which collaboration replaces competition, solidarity replaces individualism and emancipation eliminates alienation. Indeed, such a new civilisation - corresponds to the definition of a socialist society.

Stop the Deportations

Students and politicians mounted a last-ditch bid to stop the deportation of a Pakistani student, who says his brother, uncle and cousin have been killed or “disappeared” in his home country for their political activity.

NUS Scotland, along with a number of SNP MPs, have called for the Home Office to urgently look again at the case of City of Glasgow College student Majid Ali, who is due to be deported imminently.

Language student Ali claimed asylum in 2011, telling the Home Office that officials in his home province of Balochistan enforced the “disappearance” of his brother. Ali claimed his family home was raided and his uncle and cousin killed two months ago. Ali himself was a student activist in the troubled region, before leaving for Scotland and his legal team have claimed he believes his life could be in danger if he were to return.

NUS Scotland president-elect Vonnie Sandlan said that Ali’s detention had happened very suddenly, immediately after he went to the local Home Office to sign some papers on Friday. “He never had a chance to pick up his belongings. He had his phone taken away and, after four years of building a life here, he never even got a chance to say goodbye to his friends and loved ones,” she said. “We are extremely concerned for his well-being, and very distressed that he is being deported regardless.”

Sanjay Lago, president of the City of Glasgow college students’ union, explained  “We won’t stop the campaign here, this has really opened the eyes of so many people about how this kind of deportation can happen to someone they know, and we’re going to fight to stop this happening again”.

Why we Struggle

RAISE THE RED BANNER OF SOCIALISM

Austerity has been criticised as an irrational policy, which further exacerbates the economic crisis by creating falling effective demand. However, this criticisms scarcely explains why such a policy persists, despite its ‘failure’. In reality, economic crises express themselves above all in a reduction of profitability of the capitalist class. Austerity constitutes a strategy for raising capital’s profit rate.

Austerity constitutes a strategy of reducing business costs. Austerity reduces the price of labour, increases profit per labour-unit cost and thus boosts the profit rate. It is complemented by institutional changes that, on the one hand, enhance capital mobility and competition and, on the other, strengthen the power of managers in the enterprise and share and bondholders in society. As regards fiscal consolidation, austerity gives priority to budget cuts over public revenue, reducing taxes on capital and high incomes, and downsizing the welfare state. However, what is cost for the capitalist class is the living standard of the working majority of society. This applies also to the welfare state, whose services can be perceived as a form of ‘social wage’. It is clear, therefore, that austerity is primarily a class policy. It constantly promotes the interests of capital against those of the workers, pensioners, unemployed and economically vulnerable groups. In the long run, it aims at creating a model of labour with fewer rights and less social protection, with low and flexible wages and the absence of any substantial bargaining power for wage earners.

Recession puts pressure on every capitalist to reduce all forms of costs, to more intensively follow the path of ‘absolute surplus-value’, i.e. to try to consolidate profit margins through wage cuts, intensification of the labour process, infringement of labour regulations and workers’ rights, massive redundancies, etc. From the perspective of big capital’s interests, recession gives thus birth to a ‘process of creative destruction’. There is a redistribution of income and power to the benefit of capital, and concentration of wealth in fewer hands as small and medium enterprises, especially in retail trade, are being ‘cleared up’ by big enterprises and shopping malls.

This strategy has its own rationality It perceives the crisis as an opportunity for a shift in the correlations of forces to the benefit of the capitalist power, subjecting societies to the conditions of the unfettered functioning of financial markets, attempting to place all consequences of the systemic capitalist crisis on the shoulders of the working people. This is the reason why, in a situation of such an intensification of social antagonisms like today, a government that wants to side with labour and the social majority cannot even imagine to succumb to pressures to continue implementing austerity policies.

The financial sphere is not simply the reign of speculation, it is not a casino, it is much more an overseeing mechanism. In his analysis in Volume 3 of Capital, Karl Marx illustrates that social capital is being occupied by two ‘subjects’: a money capitalist and a functioning capitalist. In the course of a lending process, the money capitalist becomes the recipient and proprietor of a security, that is to say a written promise of payment from the functioning capitalist, the manager. In Marx’s own words: “In the production process, the functioning capitalist represents capital against the wage-labourers as the property of others, and the money capitalist participates in the exploitation of labour as represented by the functioning capitalist.” Secondary contradictions between the managers and the big financial investors certainly do exist, but they are minor in comparison to the capital-labour class contradiction.

Every enterprise is Janus-faced, comprising on the one hand the production apparatus per se and, on the other, its financial existence, its shares and bonds, which are being traded on the global financial markets. The production of surplus value constitutes a battlefield situation where resistance is being encountered, meaning that the final outcome can never be taken for granted. Techniques of risk management, organized within the very mode of functioning of the ‘deregulated’ money market, are a critical point in the management of resistance from labour, and thus for promoting and stabilizing austerity. Financial markets generate a structure for overseeing the effectiveness of individual capitals, that is to say a type of supervision of capital movement. The demand for high financial value puts pressure on individual capitals (enterprises) for more intensive and more effective exploitation of labour, for greater profitability. This pressure is transmitted through a variety of different channels.

When a big company is dependent on financial markets for its funding, every suspicion of inadequate valorization increases the cost of funding, reduces the capability that funding will be available and depresses share and bond prices. Confronted with such a climate, the forces of labour within the politicized environment of the enterprise face the dilemma of deciding whether to accept the employers’ unfavourable terms, implying loss of their own bargaining position, or face the possibility to lose their job: accept the “laws of capital” or live with insecurity and unemployment. This pressure affects the whole organization of the production process. It therefore presupposes not only increasing “despotism” of managers over workers but also flexibility in the labour market and high unemployment. Hence, “market discipline” must be conceived as synonymous with “capital discipline.”

The working majority in practically every capitalist country will always be opposed to shrinking wages and precarious employment, to degeneration and cut-back of public services, raising the cost of education and healthcare, weakening of democratic institutions, strengthening of repression. They will always conceive the ‘crisis of labour’ (i.e. unemployment, precarious and underpaid work etc.) as a social illness that should be tackled by itself, not as a side effect of the recovery of profits. The continuation of austerity is therefore a matter of the social relation of forces. As Karl Marx commented on the limits of the working-day: “The capitalist maintains his rights as a purchaser when he tries to make the working-day as long as possible … On the other hand… the labourer maintains his right as seller when he wishes to reduce the working-day to one of definite normal duration. There is here therefore an antinomy, of right against right, both equally bearing the seal of the law of exchange. Between equal rights force decides.”

Under capitalism, the economic power of society is only used to produce goods which can be sold at a profit; if this cannot be done then nothing will be produced. The owners of the means of production would rather allow their businesses to sit idle than to produce at a loss, even if the things that could be produced are desperately needed. The capitalist economy is governed by profit not need, and for this reason is highly inefficient in terms of meetings society’s needs, despite what all the apologists of capitalism claim. We are frequently told that capitalism is the most efficient of all economic systems – yet if this were the case, why would factories and offices lie idle and empty, despite being able to produce an abundance of goods and services that society needs? If profit were removed from the equation there would be no barrier to using all the means of production at our disposal to their fullest extent.

For many, it is clear what we are fighting against but it can be harder to picture exactly what we are fighting for. Socialists are not crystal-ball gazers. We cannot predict the future with absolute certainty and so we cannot say exactly what socialism will look like. Society is not shaped by the speculation of past generations, but by the decisions and actions of the present. Nonetheless it is still possible to make some deductions about what socialism will look like by applying a materialist analysis to the development of history and society. In other words, we can make hypotheses about the future, based on the evidence from the present and the past. This is not a precise science that can predict exactly when a revolution will break out or the specific form that it will take but by looking at capitalist society we can see potentially what a socialist society will look like. This idea of an economy that isn’t run for profit gives us the first glimpse of what socialism will look like. Socialism means the end of a society in which human beings are oppressed and exploited by other human beings. It means an end to private property and an end to profit and the anarchy of the market. A socialist society would be able to plan in the interests of the needs of the many, instead of the profits of a few. This is the foundation of a society of abundance, in which all the forces of economic production are rationally and democratically planned in the interests of the majority. Instead of alienating us from our work, socialism will gives us a real stake in the economy and in society, by giving us collective ownership over it. The work itself will therefore have a more direct purpose and be clearly for our own benefit and the benefit of others around us, instead of paying dividends for far away investors.

For people to be able to genuinely participate in the democratic running of society they must have the time to do so. Under capitalism, the length of the working week and the pressure of day-to-day life mean that the vast majority are completely divorced from political activity. For someone working long hours or two jobs, the last thing they are capable of or willing to do with their evenings and weekends is attend meetings on proposed. In a socialist society, where the efficiency of technology and automation has greatly reduced the hours of the working day, people will finally have the free time necessary to participate fully in how society is run. By placing the economy under genuine democratic control of the working class, people will also have the motivation to participate thanks to the knowledge that their thoughts and actions can make a tangible difference. At the heart of socialist democracy, therefore, is the ability for society to actually be able to implement the decisions it makes.

 Socialism does not mean an immediate end to all of the world’s problems and the creation of a paradise in which everyone lives happily ever after. It does promise a system where humans can stop destroying themselves and their planet, and instead begin to take conscious control of their own lives. From a capitalist’s point of view, destroying the planet is an acceptable price to pay for higher profits, not least because it is the world’s poorest people who will be the ones who bear the brunt of extreme climate change. When it comes to climate change socialism is the only thing that can save us from destroying the planet by reducing emissions to mitigate climate change which would contribute to solving the most serious problem facing all life on earth today. The technology already exists to harness the energy from wind, waves and sun, which could be used to power the entire planet. This is not done because it would be an unprofitable exercise for those capitalists who have built and invested in enormous fossil fuel companies. Capitalism is incapable of planning for the future, interested as it is only in short term gain.

Nobody's Fault?

Who does the government work for? In April, Oklahoma experienced a very rare earthquake of 5.7 magnitude. State officials told a homeowner sustaining significant damage that the state's largest ever quake was 'an act of nature and nobody's fault.' Scientists disagree. They say those quakes and thousands before and since, are caused by wells used to bury vast amounts of waste water from oil and gas exploration deep in the earth near fault zones. There is no limit to the lengths capitalism will go to hide its dirty laundry nor to the size of lies told by their lackeys. (New York Times (April 18) John Ayers

This is what socialism is

Socialism has been attacked many times. Socialists are reproached with every kind of criticism. A condition for the success of 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 some created by ourselves). The main idea of socialism is simple. Socialists believe that society is divided into two great classes by the present form of property-holding. As long as society is divided into classes, so long will the social system be founded on the distinction of a ruling class and subordinate class.  There is a multitude of human beings; they possess nothing. They can only live by their work. Under capitalism, people are divided on the basis of class. There are the 1%, who own the wealth and the means to produce wealth, and the rest of us, the 99%, who sell their labour to produce profit for the 1%. Socialism means the elimination of these class barriers and the organisation of production and resources to enable all people to live fulfilled lives and to ensure environmental sustainability. The elimination of economic divisions in society will create an equitable justice system that ensures fairness for all people.

Working people have dreamed of a world of freedom and equality, an end to exploitation and misery. In a capitalist system, production takes place for profit, not for human need or benefit. Food is a commodity that is sold for a profit, not a right or a thing that should be made available to everyone because they need it to survive. Rather than use our society’s resources to abolish hunger and feed everyone for free, businesses compete with one another for market share and profit. This means there is a constant drive by producers to expand and grow more and more, regardless of the ecological and human costs. The ruling class thrives on the exploitation of both workers’ labour and the environment. Vast resources are poured into avoiding environmental regulations and driving down (or outright stealing) workers’ wages. The majority of the population — having no other way to survive — are forced into selling their labour on the market, becoming commodities themselves. Such a system produces enormous inequality.

Under capitalism, democracy ends at the entrance to the workplace. The interests of business owners and their drive for profit take precedence over the rights of workers. Socialism will allow for a democratic system in which the people collectively participate in decision making and have full democratic control over the economy. Socialism means workers gaining democratic control over their workplaces within a framework of democratic control of the economy and the prioritisation of human need and environmental sustainability. A socialist solution would be motivated by preservation and climate justice, not profit, and would distribute resources more effectively than a profit based system, in which two-thirds of the world’s food is wasted for profit generation.

The anti-capitalist movement has a strong conviction that the existing order of things is unjust, however, there is only a vague idea of what it is fighting for, as opposed to what it is fighting against. The idea that it is possible to create alternative societies – ‘islands of socialism’ – within capitalism, is not new. Is it possible to escape and create an alternative lifestyle within capitalism? To some degree it is possible, but only for a small minority and only to a very limited extent. Small groups can do so, but it does not offer a solution for the mass of the population. Some argue that co-operatives, run on a ‘fair’ and ‘equitable’ basis, could gradually prove themselves to be more efficient than capitalist firms and that, therefore, they could come to dominate the economy. Unfortunately, there is overwhelming evidence that this is no more than wishful thinking. Understandably, when faced with the closure of a workplace, groups of workers sometimes resort to establishing workers’ co-operatives to avoid redundancy. Far from representing a means of changing society, however, these co-operatives are subject to the laws of the capitalist society they exist in. This usually means that they fail because they cannot compete with ‘unfair’ capitalist companies, or capitalist relations resurface with increasing tensions between the workforce and the new management. It is not possible to escape the reality of capitalism.

The move towards socialism requires participation of passionate individuals working collectively, who believe that another world is possible and that, more importantly, the working class has the power to build it. The purpose of the Socialist Party has always to make socialists. Without a conscious politically organised majority in the working class socialism is impossible. Socialism has to be the work of the working class itself and without this socialism cannot be. The lie that capitalism brings prosperity and happiness needs to be exposed and dispelled. Socialists seek something different, not a new boss, in place of the old boss but the end of bosses. We cannot continue to defer to the lesser evil of reformism and reformers. We need to build our own party that can fight not only against the daily exploitation of capitalist society, but struggle to overturn the whole system, putting the workers themselves in power. A socialist party, however, doesn’t mean simply running our own candidates, it also means building an organisation that unites the whole working class geographically and politically, and sustains that resistance beyond episodic or momentary eruptions. Without organisation struggles can often dissipate in the face of repression. We are a long way from being that mass party, but that shouldn’t stop us from recognising the need today to consciously take the steps to build it one step at a time. This generation must declare war on capitalism and take up the banner of socialism.

Humanity can produce everything it needs without polluting environment or plundering the planet. Working people - those who create the wealth, make things run, invent new technologies, educate our children, care for the sick and build the future - will democratise and transform society. At the same time, they will also breathe democratic life into every sphere and institution of society.

A SCOTTISH RED HERRING

From the August 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

The self-styled democratic champions of the British Empire are wont to ignore the violence and intrigue which have contributed to its upbuilding, not only abroad, but in these islands.

When their attention is called to these factors by foreign dictators they take refuge in the feeble excuse that it all happened a long time ago; an excuse which seems to make very little impression upon the spokesmen of movements for "national liberty."

In the case of Ireland we have had violent examples, recently, of the bitterness which still survives (in spite of a partial self-government), as a result of centuries of oppression. In Scotland a similar sentiment takes a more pacific, but none the less definite form.

The Scottish National Party is endeavouring to enlist the support of workers there, on the ground that they are worse fed and housed than their fellow-slaves in England, and that there is a larger proportion of their number out of work. It proposes a whole series of reforms for the special benefit of workers in Scotland, such as increased wages, shorter hours, better housing, and public works, holidays with pay, etc., and with this avowed end in view, calls for the restoration of the Scottish Parliament, which voted for its own extinction some two hundred and thirty-odd years ago.

Our readers will notice the extremely moderate nature of the claims and proposals of this Party. It dare not, in face of patent facts, suggest that the position of the English workers is a happy one, in spite of centuries of self-government and generations of working-class enfranchisement. It does not claim that Home Rule for Scotland will abolish unemployment, slums, underfeeding, etc; it merely hints that they can be reduced thereby to the English level. Scottish workers may well ask themselves whether it is worth their while to go through so much to get so little. Other reform parties in the past, such as the Liberal and Labour Parties, both in England and Scotland, have at least held out a more glittering bait than this. Hence, perhaps, no stampede of Scottish workers to the National Party has so far been recorded.

Moreover, the logic of the Nationalists, even with regard to their limited claims, is decidedly faulty. It is notorious that there are several districts in England, chiefly in the North, knows as depressed areas. These areas can show more intense degrees of poverty than obtain in certain other parts of the country. Is this to be explained by saying that the Government is concentrated in the hands of Southerners or is situated in the South? Would the state of affairs be appreciably altered if an independent seat of government were set up in Barnsley or West Hartlepool?

In their leaflet "Crisis!" the Scottish National Party bemoan the extent to which work has been transferred from Scotland to England soil by the railway companies, and the number of factories which have been closed in the former country as compared with the latter. It may not be out of place to remind them that English capitalists do not hesitate to close works in Lancashire and open others in India or China, when it proves profitable, and no British Government has shown either ability or willingness to interfere with this process. Capitalists are not primarily concerned with geographical boundaries or the nationality of the people whom they exploit.

On the other hand, the Scottish nation, whether independent or united with England, is divided into classes, as is society elsewhere. It is this division which accounts for the existence of the evils from which the Scottish workers suffer. English rule did not account for the fact that the depopulation of the Scottish Highlands led to the congestion in its industrial slums. The Scottish chieftains themselves turned out their own clansmen in order to make way, first for sheep and later for deer, in order to fill their own pockets. The notorious Duchess of Sutherland, for example, had 15,000 people hunted out in the six years 1814-20, and called in British soldiers to enforce the eviction. The political union merely facilitated the development of capitalist robbery with violence.

Thus the history of Scotland, while differing in detail from that of England, followed the same general course. By their divorce from the soil, a nation of peasant cultivators were converted into wage-slaves, exploited by a class ready to convert the world into one gigantic market. The forces of competition thus let loose may be held in check to some degree by national legislatures, but no final solution for the havoc they create can be found along such lines. The problem is essentially an international one, and must be internationally solved. That, however, calls not for National parties, but for parties in all countries which clearly recognise the common interest of the workers of the world, namely, to achieve their emancipation as a class.

When the workers get upon the right track of understanding their position they will cease to worry their brains over comparatively trivial differences in their conditions, whether as between nations or between districts or separate towns. They will recognise that they suffer varying degrees of poverty because at present they exist merely to produce profits for their masters, and that it is a matter of comparative indifference to them whether these masters are English or Scots, Germans or Japanese.

Their aim will be to abolish masters of every nationality and to organise the production of wealth for their common good.

Eric Boden

This is Real Socialism

"While theologians are disputing the existence of a hell elsewhere, we are on the way to realising it here: and if capitalism is to endure, whatever may become of men when they die, they will come into hell when they are born." – William Morris

Socialists reject the argument that the wealthy deserve their wealth because that wealth is created by the working class and wrongfully appropriated by the rich who benefit disproportionately from their unpaid labour. The socialist idea of revolution was always one of the vast majority of society seizing power from a tiny minority of capitalists for the common good of all. The goal of the Socialist Party is socialism and we argue for an authentic social revolution. The Socialist Party’s aim is a classless society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the industries and social services administered in the interests of all society. Production will be carried on for  use instead of profit and this revolutionary change can only be achieved through the class conscious action of the working class itself.

Socialists wish to replace the State with a society self-managed by the people, and replace capitalism with socialism. Socialism is a money-less system in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the workers and the people of the community, rather than by capitalists. The creation of a socialist society would mean that production would be carried out for human need, instead of for capitalist profit; and that every person would have access to that which is necessary for a happy life. In today’s world production is carried out to make money, not to provide for all the people with needs — this is why millions of people starve when there is plenty of food. The end of capitalism would mean the end of poverty, hunger and of economic strife between nations – the root cause of war. The capitalist economic system lies at the root of all of modern society's major social and economic problems. Abolish strife-breeding capitalism and those problems are either eradicated or left to die.

The Socialist Party has long contended that only socialism can solve the major social and economic problems plaguing our society today. But many people have been taught all their lives that "socialism" means the state-controlled system that once existed in the Soviet Union, exists today in China or Cuba, or bureaucratic state control of society in general. The socialism advocated by the Socialist Party, however, is completely different from the Soviet or Chinese systems, or any existing system. It has nothing to do with nationalisation, a welfare state or any kind of state ownership or control of industry whatsoever. On the contrary, it would give power not to the state, but to the people themselves, allowing collective control of their own economic future. Far from being a state-controlled society, socialism would be a society WITHOUT a state. Marx once said that "the existence of the state is inseparable from the existence of slavery." Consonant with this truth, socialism would have administrations, but not a separate, coercive body standing above society itself -- a state. The people themselves, through the democratic associations of workers, would be the “government”. Far from being a bureaucratically controlled system, socialism would bring democracy -- the rule of the people -- to all parts of our lives

Socialism means a classless society. Unlike under capitalism, where a tiny minority owns the vast majority of wealth and the means of producing it, everyone would share equally in the ownership of all the means of production, and everyone able to do so would work. There wouldn't be separate classes of owners and workers. The economy would be administered by the workers themselves through democratic "associations of free and equal producers," as Marx described it. The people collectively would decide what they want produced and how they want it produced. The producers – the workers- would control their own workplaces and make the decisions governing their particular industry. As Engels once described it, socialism would be a system in "which every member of society will be enabled to participate not only in the production but also in the distribution of social wealth."

Socialism can only be built by a working-class majority in a developed, industrialised society. Without a majority and the ability to eliminate scarcity of needed goods and services, creation of a classless society will be impossible. In a socialist revolution, the industrially organized workers take possession of the means of production, abolish capitalist- class rule and supplant the state by the self-organisation of communities. The Socialist Party is needed to educate the working class and to recruit workers to the socialist cause.

Although no blueprint can possibly exist for what the workers themselves must ultimately build, socialism's general mode of operation can be broadly described. In every factory, every office and every workplace in socialist society, the workers themselves will meet in democratic assembly to determine their own workplace policies and elect committees to administer and supervise production. To administer production at higher levels, the workers will also elect delegates to local, regional and global councils of their respective industry but also to bodies  representing all other industries and services. This all-industry congress will ascertain what goods and services are wanted and will determine the resources needed to supply them. It will draw up the necessary plans to carry out production and allocate the resources. All persons elected to posts in this economic administration, at whatever level, will be subject to recall and removal whenever a majority of those who elected them deem it desirable. Instead of economic despotism, socialism means economic democracy. Instead of production for sale and the profit of a few, socialism means production to satisfy the human needs and wants of all. We all will be useful producers, working but a fraction of the time we are forced to work today. But we shall not only be useful producers, we shall all share equitably in the wealth we produce.

Under capitalism, improved methods and machinery of production kick workers out of jobs. Under socialism, such improvements will be blessings for the simple reason that they will increase the amount of wealth producible and make possible ever higher standards of living, while providing us with greater and greater leisure in which to enjoy them. With socialism, we shall produce everything we need and want in abundance under conditions best suited to our welfare, aiming for the highest quality with minimum harm to the environment, conservation and replacing our natural resources. We shall constantly strive to improve our methods and equipment in order to reduce the hours of work. We shall provide ourselves with the best of everything. It will be a society in which everyone will have the fullest opportunity to develop his or her individuality without sacrificing the blessings of cooperation. Freed from the compulsions of competition and the profit motive socialism will also be a society of peace. Socialist society will be a society of secure human beings, living in harmony with nature.

The world has the productive capacity to provide a high standard of living for all, to provide security and comfort for all, to create safe workplaces and clean industries. The only thing keeping us from reaching these goals is that the workers don't own and control that productive capacity; it is owned and controlled by a few who use it solely to profit themselves.

The poor die young

A MAN’S life expectancy in Scotland can vary by as much as 34 years depending on where in the country he was born. The astonishing gap — which is widening and is equivalent to almost half a man’s average lifespan — is revealed in a NHS report on the state of the nation’s health.

It shows a boy born in Whitehirst Park and Woodside in Kilwinning, North Ayrshire, a rural pocket of southwest Scotland, could expect to live to about 92, whereas a boy born in Greendykes and Niddrie Mains in Edinburgh is unlikely to live much beyond 58.

The Choice is Ours

In the Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels write “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles….a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes” The Marxist scholar Hal Draper explains this as “either a revolution that remakes society or the collapse of the old order to a lower level.” Engels restated this in his Anti-Duhring. He writes that the modern working class must make the socialist revolution or else face “…sinking to the level of a Chinese coolie,” while the bourgeoisie is “a class under whose leadership society is racing to ruin like a locomotive [with a] jammed safety-valve…” For the capitalist class, “…its own productive forces have grown beyond its control, and…are driving the whole of bourgeois society toward ruin, or revolution”. When the capitalist system turns most people into proletarians, “…it creates the power which, under penalty of its own destruction, is forced to accomplish this revolution.” Socialist revolution is not inevitable. But if it is not made, society faces ruin and destruction, with the working class reduced to the level of the starving, super-exploited, Chinese workers of that time. Therefore the working class and its allies should consciously and deliberately decide to make the revolution. Rosa Luxemburg, said the alternatives were “socialism or barbarism.” Luxemburg wrote, “In relation to capitalism as a whole, that society’s objective development merely gives us the preconditions of a higher order of development, but that without our conscious interference, without the political struggle of the working class for a socialist transformation… [socialism will never] come about.” If capitalism is left to itself, continuing to operate blindly by its own laws, it will eventually collapse into barbarism. To prevent capitalist collapse and barbarism requires that the working class make a conscious decision to overthrow it and create a new society. Socialism is not a gift to be given to the working class. It must be fought for and won by the working class itself. There are many possible forms of catastrophe in which capitalism may end, and there are many different ways in which a revolution may happen. There are many possible concrete ways in which “socialism or barbarism” may become realised. Ruin or revolution!

As a system, capitalism creates the possibility of socialism. This includes a high level of productivity, higher than ever before in the history of humanity; the proletariat, a collective working class, trained in cooperation and joint action by the system itself, living in the centers of capital production, and international in scope. In many ways capitalism pushes the workers to move toward a new, cooperative, world order. It also has mechanisms for holding back the struggle, for dividing the workers into a million distinct groupings. The better-off workers may feel satisfied and conservative. The worse-off workers may become demoralized. But capitalism finally threatens the workers, and all who live under its sway, with catastrophe, mass destruction, and barbarism, and this also pushes the workers to overthrow it, to end it, and to build a better society. This will not happen inevitably. It is a matter of struggle, of consciousness, and of making a collective decision—of breaking with fatalism and mechanism. It requires the efforts of the big majority of workers and oppressed.

James Connolly once said "The day has passed for patching up the capitalist system, it must go." He also said “Our demands most moderate are – We only want the earth!” The danger of reformism is clear for all to see, with any social democratic or labour party that has ever been in existence being dragged always to the right by the flawed idea that by creating a catch-all broad front based on reforming capitalism, with socialism as some 'abstract' distant goal. Trying to create a mass movement of people united against austerity attacks is one that must be supported, however not providing a clear and detailed path towards a socialist society to that mass movement, and trying to convince them of socialism as a "long term aim" is a mistake. We don't need to wait until sometime in the future, the time has arrived. A party without a clear programme towards socialism will be mired in long term reformism. Socialists must have trust in the working class. In reality, it shows a lack of confidence in the socialist case.

Each day life itself is more and more forcefully presenting people with the question: capitalism or socialism? The Socialist Party says that socialism is the solution. The necessity for socialism arises, in the first place, from the struggle of the working class for emancipation from capitalist wage-slavery. In addition, it is only through socialism that society can overcome the chaos and crises of capitalism and bring the social relations between human beings in harmony with the productive forces and the level of social development. The change from capitalism to socialism is absolutely necessary in order to open the way for the all-around progress of humanity. From its very emergence, the working class has been locked in a struggle against capitalist exploitation and the capitalist class. Workers have won some victories in their economic and political battles but still the fundamental problem remains unresolved and the same issues come up again and again. The vast majority of the workers still live in a state of insecurity. Workers’ gains are again under attack as the capitalist government keeps stripping away vital welfare safety-nets. The root of the problem is precisely the capitalist system which, at its very foundation, is based on the exploitation of wage-labour. Under capitalism, society's means of production (the tools used to transform nature and satisfy the needs of human beings) are owned by a tiny percentage of the population. Thus the working class – the class whose labour produces all new values – is separated from the implements of labour and the workers have no way to secure a livelihood except by selling their labour-power, day in and day out, to the capitalist owners. The capitalists in turn exploit the labour of the workers, returning in wages only a small fraction of the new values created by the workers. Under capitalism, the living human labour of the workers is looked upon solely as a means for enriching the capitalist owners. Capitalism recognises the worker only as a beast to be exploited.

Anyone who thinks even for a minute about the enormous productive capacity of our planet cannot but ask: why with such modern means of production unable to guarantee the economic rights and well-being of the masses of people? Why is the curse of unemployment and the plague of falling wages and living standards undermining the lives of millions? Why, in a world with such modern medical facilities, do millions of people go without needed medical care?  The answer comes almost as soon as the questions are posed. It is the capitalist system which is holding back the vast productive forces at the disposal of our planet. Capitalism has failed the entire world.

The Land War

432 people own half of Scotland’s private land, ten per cent owned by 16 individuals or groups while 0.025 per cent of the population owns 67 per cent of Scotland’s rural land. In terms of distribution of ownership, Scotland is one of the most unequal countries in the world.

Dr Jim Hunter, historian and land reform expert, says:

“There’s nothing like that anywhere else in Europe, and the reason for that is based in history. If you go back a couple hundred years, the pattern of land ownership was very similar, it would have been roughly the same concentration across Europe – the difference is that other European countries have at various times in the last hundred years had sweeping land reforms, which has changed the pattern completely, sometimes in the shape of revolution, sometimes through legal or constitutional reform. In Denmark, for example, land ownership was reformed over 200 years ago before they had democracy – the monarchy decided to take land ownership away from the aristocracy and give it to its tenants, in an owner-occupier system.

He continues: “Land reform in Europe has almost always meant shifting ownership from the landowners – in Scotland, historically, aristocrats – to their tenants, though in Scotland the move has been more towards community ownership, which is quite different. The idea of reforming land ownership was started by the Tory government, then pushed on by the Labour-Lib Dem administration in Scotland, but interestingly, since the SNP took power, the steam has gone out of the reform. In fact up to now they’ve done nothing at all.” 

Have labour power, will travel

From the August 1997 issue of theSocialist Standard Inside a feudal, pre-industrial society it could be said of the majority of those who worked that they would live, work, marry, procreate and die within walking distance of the place in which they were born. Modern capitalism has changed all that. The needs of the market have torn asunder all the old social ties of community. Families are spread all over the world as workers desperate for employment seek to sell their labour power wherever possible. They enter into competition with resident workers and thus the seeds of suspicion and hatred are sewn. The driving force of capitalism is competition. Capitalist against capitalist for a bigger share of the product of labour. Worker against worker in the search for a job.It is into this desperate struggle for a job that various politicians spread the poison of nationalism and racism. This poison is world-wide. In France at the recent election, one-in-ten voted for the openly racist, anti-immigration National Front. Every European country has its adherents of the same political poison. In the United States of America various America-first groups scream abuse at Mexican and Central American immigrants. In Africa tens of thousands of refugees cross borders escaping the growing tribalism that mirrors the ethnic cleansing of eastern Europe. Everywhere you look modern capitalism presents the same awful tragedy of lives ruined by the obnoxious hatreds of xenophobia. Inhuman nature So widespread is this nationalistic nonsense that many defenders of capitalism can claim that it is an innate human trait. These people talk glibly about "human nature" when dealing with such horrors as Zaire or Serbia. Socialists do not share that view. Far from being innately murderous and competitive human existence itself was only possible because of a history of co-operation and tolerance. In order to survive in a hostile environment human beings had to be theuniquely social animal. We do not deny the existence of such horrors as Hiroshima or Buchenwald, but we know that these are the products of a property-based society that alienates and destroys all decency in its drive for more and more profit. The product of a Glasgow slum does not travel to a remote island in the South Atlantic to maim the slum product of Buenos Aires because of some genetic urge. Behind all these atrocities lies the capitalist imperatives of markets and sources of raw materials. A world to win It is but one of the many paradoxes of capitalism that it has shrunk the world only to divide society into smaller and smaller fragments. That it has progressed at breakneck speed in the fields of travel and communication yet it has divided and alienated us from our true humanity. Technically we can travel half-way round the world in a day, communicate instantly with almost anyone on the planet; and yet find ourselves artificially divided on the basis of differences of custom, language, diet, culture and skin colour. Capitalism is a frightening, hate-filled system that turns everyone's hand against everyone else. Inside socialism, where the whole Earth is the common property of the whole world's population, we will all be able to travel our planet to work wherever we desire, safe in the knowledge that our brothers and sisters will welcome us on whichever shore we land. That is the aim of the World Socialist Movement. Shouldn't it be yours? Richard Donnelly Glasgow Branch