The "Friends" of Scottish Workers (1945)

From the April 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since the working class was granted the vote there has never been a shortage of busy-bodies who—hand-on-heart, have declared their ardent sympathy and interest in workers' problems.

When elected, of course, the workers become the "constituency" and each M.P. "looks after his constituency" and looks ahead to the next election. W. Gallacher, A. Woodburn, D. Kirkwood and other Parliamentary luminaries are engaged at the moment—amid other equally laudable pursuits—in pressing the post-war claims of Prestwick Aerodrome. All three are campaigning for the "Forth Road Transport Bridge and have endorsed Hector McNeil, Labour M.P.'s efforts to modernize the Clyde so that the largest ships can be docked at Greenock and Glasgow"

Other Scottish M.P.'s—with an eye on their constituency—are eloquently expatiating on Scottish needs and problems. The "Daily Express," February 15th, gave considerable space to a report of a Parliamentary debate on a Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Bill. Thos. Johnston—the mover the bill said: "In the Tradeston division of Glasgow, for example, there are 127 houses or more than 700 persons to the acre." He said: "The measure won't bring a new Jerusalem to Scotland, but would assist local authorities to deal with problems." In short, a confession of impotence unuusal in its frankness. In the came report there is a gem of a phrase coined by Campbell Stephen, I.L.P., M.P.:— "We in Scotland have had a raw deal. Our association with England has not given us an opportunity to deal with housing and industry." Characteristically, however, W. Gallacher, M.P., capped the lot with "Effete Sassenachs were incapable of dealing with the planning problems which confronted them in Scotland and in consequence the Sturdy Scot had been bound hand and foot and dragged behind them in this miserable bill." He then went on to talk about the class war, which, he said, had done a thousand times more damage that the War.

Have the Scottish workers any doubts that Gallacher, Woodburn, Campbell-Stephen and Co., are really interested in working class affairs? Could they have?

Those of them who have, however vaguely, identified Socialism with an international outlook will be bewildered at Gallacher's talk of "effete" Englishmen and "Sturdy" Scots, particularly in view of his later and inexplicable reference to a class war.

They will think of "effete" "Scots," who bide here in Scotland for the "Glorious 12th" and "sturdy" Englishmen who "carry hods" here all the year round.

Supporters of the "Socialist" I.L.P. should feel uneasy about Campbell Stephen's "Our association—hasn't given us an opportunity."—They will, or should wonder who "Our and us" means and conclude that if it was Scottish workers—that is was Capitalism rather than association with England that had been and still is the source of working class problems.

The England, Irish, Welsh and American capitalists with investments in Scottish aviation, building, shipping and transport will applaud the efforts of the Scottish Communist, Labour and I.L.P. M.P.'s.

Kirkwood has already earned the title of "M.P. for John Brown's" among Clydeside workers: now it will be Woodburn "M.P. for Scottish Airways," McNeil "M.P. for Clyde Trust" and Gallacher "M.P. for Arrols and Wimpey's."

What all this has to do with the interests of the working class in Scotland no one knows. Perhaps the M.P.'s could tell us?

It certainly does not require genius or a microscope to perceive that Scotland, like every other country, has a population which is divided into a majority who are non-owning workers and a minority who are non-working owners. And that after centuries of joint development with England that all means of producing wealth are owned and controlled by large concerns whose shareholders are spread throughout Britain and the rest of the world.

Just as certainly it does not need extraordinary intelligence to know that workers in specifically "Scottish" concerns merely receive in wages enough to continue working—barely enough, as for workers everywhere.

The Scottish workers don't have to attend a University to know that the ruling class of Scotland since the days of the Highland "clearances" referred to by Marx in biting terms in "Capital" (Vol. 1), are any less brutal and avaricious than their English counterparts. Or do they?

Thos. Johnston's burning indictments of the Scottish ruling class make curious reading nowadays when he is Secretary of State for Scotland and seems to be on terms of easy familiarity with the present scions. The same remark applies to old copies of the "Forward" during his period of editorship.

There is a story told by John S. Clarke regarding Lenin's estimate of Gallacher in which he described Gallacher as a "#### fool"; a story which Gallacher repudiated indignantly and inexplicably as "an insult to Lenin." Whether the story is true or otherwise is unimportant but at least reflects a view of Gallacher, increasingly common, among workers with memories and intelligence.

The ability of the Gallachers, Johnstons, Maxtons, Kirkwoods in getting away with their anti working class nonsense and buffoonery rests on the—as yet, political ignorance of the Scottish workers.

Their political and social interests—like their fellows everywhere—are opposed to those of their masters and does not lie in schemes which will enable their employers to wring yet more surplus value from their skill and energy.

The political power that enables the privileged class to retain their social privilege is vested in control of the machinery which has its centre in Westminster.

This fact enables the Scottish, English and Welsh working class to co-ordinate their task of intelligently wresting this supremely vital control of political machinery from the hands of their class enemies—the masters; a co-ordination which has a fit and ready instrument in the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

The duty of the Scottish workers—like the workers the world over—is to-day—not tomorrow—to attempt an understanding of the basic nature of their problems and having done so, to organise in the Socialist Party democratically to take over power to establish Socialism.

Capitalism in Scotland, in England, America, Germany, Russia, in every country in the world produces the same set of problems to workers—poverty, unemployment, insecurity, war, and so on.

These problems arise with sublime impartiality as to forms of government, climate and previous political history, they arise in democracies and dictatorships in the two hemispheres and in big and wee countries.

The Socialist analysis and solution is international in scope and outlook and the only way in which the Scottish workers can assist their fellows in India and Greece as elsewhere is to study, understand and organise for Socialism. As they do so, the baloney of the Labour, I.L.P. and Communist M.P.'s will become clearly apparent. "Our" problems are the problems arising from the capitalist nature of Society which is now world-wide and the solution for "us"—World Socialism in which wealth will be produced, controlled and enjoyed by all.

Thomas Anthony.

SPGB Press Release on Jeremy Corbyn

CORBYN WON'T MAKE A DIFFERENCE

SOCIALISTS WARN OF DEAD-END FOR CORBYN BAND-WAGGON

Members of The Socialist Party of Great Britain have warned the public not to be taken in by claims that Labour Party leadership candidate Jeremy Corbyn offers any alternative to austerity in Britain.

Campaigning in North London this week, Bill Martin, who stood for the Socialist Party against Corbyn in his Islington constituency earlier this year, said Corbyn was right to lay the blame for the slump on the economic system, but claimed he was “just a traditional Labour MP, who puts forward the case for state intervention in a capitalist economy: Harold Wilson 2.1.”

“The cause of austerity is not the Tory government, or the absence of a Labour one. It’s the profit system which causes boom and bust,” said Bill Martin. “Governments can only spend at the expense of profits.  Corbyn should know better.  It was his Labour Party in the 1970s that tried to spend it’s a way out of a slump and it didn’t work then.”

Joining him was Adam Buick, an editor of Socialist Standard magazine who commented: “There is a lesson in the failure of the left-wing Syriza government to end austerity in Greece.  While capitalism is in a slump it can’t be ended. It was an impossible demand.”

He said Corbyn and his supporters should “stop wasting time trying to reform the market system and instead join our campaign to replace the capitalist system of class ownership and production for profit by a socialist system of common ownership, democratic control and production directly to meet people’s needs. Only then will austerity be ended forever.”

Glorying in Blood-sports

The first day of the grouse shooting season, traditionally known as the "Glorious Twelfth" has just passed and the Scottish land-owners have launched a campaign to protect their privileges called ‘Gift of Grouse’. The 'sport' has an appalling record of crimes against wildlife, and its land management practices not only work directly against efforts to counter climate change, they cause immediate damage to communities downhill from shooting estates through increased flood risks.

The RSPB Scotland has again called for grouse moors to be licensed following the discovery of a dead hen harrier on a moor in south west Scotland. The young female bird, named Annie, had been fitted with a satellite transmitter as a chick.

Tom Quinn of the League Against Cruel Sports said people were giving the impression shooting game for the table was healthy, sustainable and environmentally friendly, but that it was none of those things.

“Millions of other animals and birds are deliberately killed to protect the grouse shooting industry. The environment is being devastated by the burning of grouse moors, and millions of tonnes of lead shot are left to poison the countryside.” 

Ownership and use of much of the land in Scotland is positively medieval. Those neo-feudal landowners got their large estates by nefarious means and over many generations have systematically cleared the land for the venal pursuit of profit. Socialists would like to see the moors, hills, glens, shores and mountains rewilded and repopulated, a place where we are not shooting the life out of the birds, the deer and raping the landscape. We have no doubt that the loss of a few cap-doffing, servile gamekeepers and ghillies will be more than compensated by new employment resulting from proper agricultural use, leisure and tourism, and wildlife conservancy. Reforest the moors, re-introduce wolves and watch the country come back truly alive.

Scottish “grouse moors” cover an estimated area of approximately 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres) making it one of Scotland’s most extensive land uses. Much of the land was taken from the working people so it could usually be handed over to sheep farming or grouse coursing. It was privatized from commonly held lands to the ownership of a few elites. Those people were squeezed into the unhealthy cities of Glasgow, Dundee, Edinburgh or onto ships to the New Worlds where they could take the lands of other peoples further down the chain.

Closing the Door (1/2)

WORKERS UNITE FOR WORLD SOCIALISM

We are facing the largest movement of refugees since the World War II. The number of people forced to leave their homes rose to a record 60 million last year - with most of those people fleeing Syria's horrific war or coming from counties such as Afghanistan, Eritrea, Somalia, and Iraq. Migrants have been making appalling and terrifying journeys and all too often dying in the process. People don't risk death unless they are desperate for life. People don't decide to uproot families unless that is the only choice available. But the response so far has been to vilify the people risking everything to get here, while fortifying borders: building more walls, erecting more fences, sending more militarised patrols, and raising the possibility of bombing the "death boats". As the walls go up around the borders, they have blocked our capacity to see the connections between foreign policies and the people living beyond our fortified frontiers. Rather than dream of permanent relocation, refugees often wish to return home, if they could. 'Humanitarianism' begins to take on another dimension with walls and warships to turn back refugees seeking political asylum and sanctuary. Civilians have little option but to flee their homes from war and conflict, fueled and financed by arms supplied by the Big Powers and their proxies. Immigrant movements will not stop by razor wire. It will only force immigrants to change direction not destination.

Any historian will tell you that the UK is a country built up by immigrants. Everyone if you go back far enough is either an immigrant or the descendant of an immigrant. Throughout history immigrant labour had very solid benefits to society and informed critics know this to be the case. Immigration has always been a difficult issue for the labour movement. Why is it difficult? Because ‘common sense’ seems to demonstrate a central principle of capitalist economics: employment is a function of the simple supply of labour. The view exists that unemployment therefore occurs because there are too many workers competing for jobs, not because the system, the employers or the government determine it. To admit foreign workers, in such a view, is insanity. The real world is not so simple. Immigration is only part of a complex set of problems concerning the world’s labour force. Whenever we have high unemployment, those representing the interests of big business attempt to cover up their own responsibility for this situation by blaming working people.

Many depart their homelands, leaving behind their families and friends. Obviously they would not leave in large numbers and emigrate were it not for the fact that the conditions they are forced to live in are desperate. There can be no doubt that dire need compels people to abandon their native land, and that the capitalists exploit the immigrant workers in the most shameless manner. They leave behind unemployment and hunger to find here discrimination and prejudice. The wealthy travel because it broadens the mind they say but the poor travel through necessity. Those politicians who have never felt it necessary to defend workers’ wages or standards of living are the same ones who leap to the defence of British workers from the ‘marauding Africa hordes’. For centuries the blame for terrible social conditions – slum housing, sweatshops and unemployment has been laid at the door of the immigrant. When working people are stricken by crisis and in the times of social turmoil and upheaval, the nationalists thrust themselves to the fore. A picture is being painted of the Government that has no real control over issues such as immigration. This notion is very far from the truth. The Government is actually responsible for much of the “popular” anti-immigration feeling that is expressed, as a working class divided along national and racial lines is no threat to the capitalist class. Government also claim that “popular pressure” leads it into setting the limits and controls. Lift the illegality off the shoulders of those accused of being illegal and threatened with deportation and you have workers who can organise and strive for higher wages and conditions. All the mainstream politicians of the major parties have indulged in attacks on immigrants and immigration for years. It is necessary for them to have a scapegoat to blame for the ills of the political system that we live under and the immigrant, present throughout history, has always served as such a scapegoat.

The growth of migration is enormous and continues to increase. The conditions in their homelands are the direct result of capitalist exploitation. For many decades the class which is still exploiting us has been exploiting them in a most inhuman way. The capitalists drain the wealth from these countries in the form of raw materials or unprocessed agricultural products – for which they pay little – and send in return expensive manufactured goods. They never allow the development of self-sufficient industries in these countries for they would thereby forfeit their supply of cheap raw materials. The working people and peasants of these countries are therefore completely at their mercy. If e.g., the one-crop happens to be sugar, they must starve while the cane ripens and there is no work. If market prices fall, they must suffer wage cuts. Can't they find work in their own country? The answer is no, and one of the reasons for that is globalisation. Large corporations like to boast how their investments help underdeveloped countries grow in industrial strength. The truth is a lot different. When corporations enter an underdeveloped country, they provide jobs for just a handful of people — at the cost of distorting and retarding economic growth of the country as a whole. Thus, they are unable to develop many of the basic industries because the new business enterprises are crushed by giant multi-nationals. When corporations invest money, large profits are sent back to Wall St or the City of London for the bankers and shareholders of the corporation. Thus, money is drained out of many countries of Asian, African, and South American countries, to enriching the wealthiest segments of society.

The employing class incites the workers of one nation against those of another in the endeavour to keep them disunited. Class-conscious workers, realising that the break-down of all the national barriers by capitalism is inevitable try to help to enlighten and organise their fellow-workers. Owing to the immaturity of the labour movement, to the lack of a socialist outlook and of working class theory, they were easily swept in behind the chauvinist policy of the capitalist class. The age-old tactic of the capitalist ruling class is to break the unity of the working class. The ruling class has long known that if it must control people whose numbers are much greater than its own, sheer physical strength is not enough. The ruling class must DIVIDE in order to RULE. Meanwhile they distract the working people of Britain from their own plight. The working class must remember that in their unity is their strength. That the strength of the working class is all powerful because it is based on the determination to end all oppression, all exploitation of man by man, and to oppose all subjection of man on grounds of sex, nationality, colour, or creed. Unlike the unity of the capitalists it is based on a total and enduring unity of interests. But in the absence of working class unity, the strength of the capitalists is greatly increased. Nothing could have been more dangerous for the ruling classes than that of native and foreign born workers should make common cause, as they are doing today, and instead of fighting each other join forces and fight employers. There is indeed a need for ‘integration’ and of ‘multi-culturalism’ but no socialist is going to be associated with moves to rob people of their culture and customs.

When they say: – “The immigrants are taking your jobs,” we answer: – This is a lie. It is not true that increased immigration leads to increased unemployment. It is the capitalist system which causes unemployment as it did in the 1920s and the 30s. Then the scapegoat were the Irish. Another lie blaming the newcomers for the housing shortage and the increased demand upon the social services such as the hospitals and schools. It is necessary constantly here to emphasise the important contribution made to those social services. Nor do not forget that a higher proportion of migrants from Eastern Europe, for instance, entered the country as fit and available workers, whom the capitalist State is not require to “raise” and “educate”. Immigrants and refugees are not a drain on the social security system – in fact, the evidence shows they contribute far more to the system than they receive in return.

Capitalism needs nation states – to regulate relations between firms; to impose common laws and currency which aid capital accumulation; to organise labour markets and the provision of education, transport and healthcare and to try to prevent recession turning into economic collapse. In fact the deeper the crisis, the greater the tensions between firms, the more the competition heats up, the more the state is needed to impose some sort of ‘order’. So today, far from the state disappearing, it plays an increasingly important function in the regulation of the world economy such as we see in Europe and the Euro. The state also has a role to play in aiding and assisting in the exploitation of the workforce – hence the use of immigration controls. On the one hand those who own and control the wealth want the freedom to make as much profit whenever and however they want. But at the same time the system is based on oppression and exploitation, so they demand the right to restrict the freedom and movement of labour. These restrictions take the form both of attacking trade unions at ‘home’, and also controlling those that are forced to seek to pastures new.

Immigration control has nothing to do with ‘flooding’ the labour market or any such nonsense. Automatically, immigration corresponds to the needs of the economy. Similarly, in close capitalist logic, immigration does not in any way aggravate the shortage of social services, since the immigrant brings with him not only his or her body, which has to be housed, but also his and her work, which helps to build the house. Immigration control is nationalistic legislation. It cannot be contemplated by a socialist, for its whole rationale is founded on the nation state and the feverish competition in which that nation state is engaged. This struggle between nation states has two main effects. It splits and divides workers from their main objectives, and, in the long run, weakens their strength all over the world. While the battle between nation states continues there remains no chance for a switch in resources from the ‘developed’ to the ‘underdeveloped’ world. The socialist case does not stop with opposition to border control but extends to making it clear that we are looking for a system where people are not forced through economic circumstances to leave the homes and cultures they know and understand. Socialists must make it clear that they are opposed to anti-immigrant propaganda, opposed to immigration control, not for any abstract principle, but because of the need of workers of all nationalities, to forge a weapon which, unlike immigration control, will carve out the highest standards of life and living for all workers.

What is Socialism?

The World Socialist Movement (WSM) mission is to help inspire a vision of an alternative way of living where all the world’s resources are owned in common and democratically controlled by communities on an ecologically sustainable and socially harmonious basis. Of course, other groups and political parties may share much the same objective but differ on the means of achieving that object. The WSM holds the following principles:

Opposition to all forms of capitalism (past, present, local, global, state or ‘free market’) and its replacement by a classless, moneyless world community without borders or states and based upon:

1) Common ownership and direct democratic control of the means of production;

2) A free access ‘use’ economy with production geared towards the satisfaction of human needs; and

3) Voluntary association, cooperation and the maximization of human creativity, dignity and freedom;

4) A recognition that such an alternative society can only be established democratically from the ‘bottom up’ by the vast majority of people, without the intervention of leaders, politicians or ‘vanguards’.

a    a) Individuals will voluntarily co-operate to produce goods and services and will freely take these

b    b) From the stores and other such establishments, according to their needs.

c     c) Buying and selling, money transactions, profits and employment for a wage or salary etc., will cease altogether, along with the very idea of property itself (except for individual possessions for one’s own use).

     d )Individuals will be able to freely develop their creative potential and to make meaningful decisions that will allow them, at last, to take real control of their own lives.

Such a society requires two things. Firstly, the technological capacity to produce enough to satisfy everyone’s reasonable needs. This is something we have had for a long time now. Poverty persists, not because we lack the productive potential to eliminate it but, rather, because present-day society only meets human needs if they are backed up by “purchasing power” and because more and more of that productive potential is being squandered on socially useless activities whose only function is to keep our money-economy going. Secondly, the achievement of this future society requires that large numbers of people clearly understand what it will involve and support its establishment. This, however, is still far from being the case today and is one of the reasons why we have come into existence as a conscious and democratic organisation without leaders – to help this to happen.

To bring about this alternative way of living we must recognise the nature of present-day society as one in which a tiny minority – either through private corporations or the state – effectively own and control the means of producing and distributing wealth, leaving the rest of us relatively powerless and compelled to sell our working abilities to this owning class, usually in return for a wage or salary. Putting our trust in politicians or leaders to solve the many social problems we face today is ultimately futile since we currently live in a global society that is essentially organised to serve the interests of this minority only, rather than the population as a whole. Despite the courageous efforts of ordinary people the world over to resist the powerful political and economic forces that work against them, we are still faced with much the same kind of social problems that we had over a century ago.

To get rid of this society peacefully requires that the majority of people – without distinction of gender, sexuality, ethnic/cultural identity or religion – unite for this purpose and, at the same time, oppose those poisonous ideologies that strive to divide, distract and disempower us. It requires that we organize consciously and democratically to establish an alternative society ourselves from the bottom up, without the intervention of leaders or politicians and that we critically support practical attempts in the present to empower ordinary people and strengthen their resistance to the global market and state. To that end, we call upon anyone sympathetic to this broad objective to join with us – irrespective of differences of opinion on matters of secondary importance – to help build a strong, inclusive, but principled, movement for radical change in a spirit of cooperation, friendship and solidarity.

Future socialism will based on the principle of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need", and will not be based on money, capital, commodities or wages but will consist of myriad self-organizing assemblies of economic units in competition with one another to most efficiently transform skilled labor and other resources into forms of social wealth  serving the material and cultural needs of people. Human society in the future will take the form of an adaptive system. The forms in which people (thru their organization as producers, consumers and shapers of public opinion -- and the struggles flowing from and in turn heightening their consciousness) would effectively control the economy, culture and politics  -- would be as advanced compared to the method of leaving the real decisions and real authority in the hands  of either the marketplace, elected representatives or all-powerful central planners. We are talking of a society with no antagonist classes and, in fact, no classes whatsoever, that functions without using money, wages, capital or a market. In this society there is no need for and consequently no existence of the exploitation of man by man. In this society everyone works and uses all the resources at hand, including available technology, to solve problems.

Adapted from the World In Common Group

The only road is the socialist road

Our language has been redefined. Useful terms which could better explain our circumstances have been purposefully perverted so that they are now all but unintelligible. The working class make up about 90% of the population. The 10% at the top, just under the –super-rich, were called the 'middle class'. The 'middle class' are the professional classes and the small business owners. They were never thought of as median income people– in fact, poor people saw them as being rich. The original meaning of “middle class” described those between the European royalty and the peasants. Later it was applied to the capitalists, those with enough wealth to rival the nobility.

The mainstream press have dropped working class from their vocabulary. The term is anathema to the propaganda system as it has developed. It is too descriptive– makes it too obvious that this is the class which does most of the work and produces most of the wealth. Today the working class are called middle class in the mainstream media, and the original meaning is buried deeper than Atlantis. For that matter, the poor are made to be nearly as invisible. This propaganda maneuver has made it easier to hide what’s happening in our economy, when combined with other terms and economic adjustments.

The word “progressive” meant leftist. ‘Communists’, ‘socialists’, labour leaders and even many liberals often defined themselves as progressive. Liberals, in those days, were thought of as centrist. To the right were conservatives – those who control the economy. But the ruling class ensures the mainstream press now call centrist liberals “leftist” and “progressive.” By doing so, and completely ignoring the genuine left-wing which has no TV channel, the language has been twisted into propaganda helpful toward making zombies of the masses, who have no idea what a real leftist is. Bill and Hillary Clinton are called “progressive” in the mainstream media. This is like calling the segregationist George Wallace a civil rights leader. Richard Nixon, who I thought of as extremely right wing when he was president, was far to the left of the Clintons. It was Nixon who signed the bills that authorized the EPA, OSHA, the ABM Treaty and a great many other progressive laws the Clintons would have nothing to do with today. In the time of his presidency, Nixon wouldn’t have dreamed that he could push the Clinton agenda of free trade to curse labor and environmental movements. He wouldn’t have deregulated the banksters and Big Media, or thrown poor children out into the streets with Clinton’s “welfare reform.” During Nixon’s presidency the public were more aware, and the Congress was far to the left of Nixon, tying his hands. Which is why Nixon couldn’t get his medical care system (the precursor to Obamacare) through Congress. Much of the Congress of that time wanted to pass Medicare for all, and opposed Nixon’s plan, which never went anywhere. It took a conservative Democrat, Obama, to get Nixon’s plan approved.

Socialists believe that to waken the conscience and change the consciousness of a nation, one had to be prepared to build an organization, start a publication, speak in a thousand halls to crowds of hundreds, or scores, or tens, if necessary, recruiting comrades from those converted by the sound of one’s voice and the strength of one’s arguments. The real Marxist is a radical democrat, not a would-be dictator.

We’ve seen it before - people eager to run the government for the capitalist class. Each one claims to have a unique approach and program with which they wish to lead to a better tomorrow. But their better tomorrow, not ours. Each candidate is attempting to offer a special brand of snake oil as a cure, but each formula has side effects negating any medicinal properties it might have. Everything they do to try to mitigate the crisis only ends up making it worse. These candidates don’t represent us. Of course we know that, and most people haven’t believed in that farce for some time. That’s why voter turnout is so low. So why are all these clowns running? It’s not merely for self-enrichment or self-aggrandizement, though surely that plays a part for most.

The electoral arena is where the capitalist class as a whole works out its internal differences, and chooses someone to act as their collective representative, in order to preserve and promote their common interests. But while each candidate attempts to fill that role, they must also try to handle the conflicting imperatives of all the different concentrations of capital within the class– financial, banking, industrial, commercial – as they battle it out over which gets to dominate the future of the economy. Banking capital would like the whole economy to just be handed over to the banks. Industrial capital wants to suck the last drops of juice from labor exploitation and the natural world first. Some want the cheapest possible workforce, while others see the need to throw the masses the occasional bone so we don’t upset their whole banquet table. Though these fractions of capital are intertwined, tangled in a web of common ownership and interests, they are simultaneously in conflict, and so finding someone who can represent them as a whole is proving very difficult.

None of the candidates has an alternative to offer that can encompass all of their interests and solve their common crisis. Whoever wins, the future ushered in by the new President will be for capitalists; not for us. We shouldn’t side with one monster over another. Those who try to reconcile fundamentally opposing forces always try to convince us to take sides among the different fractions of capital, to ally with one “lesser evil” over another. But allying with one against another never does us any good. All of them are our fundamental enemy. It’s smarter to let them fight it out, while we strengthen our own forces. We can use the contradictions among them to advance our own struggle.

Forget the debates. While there are superficial differences among them, they are not qualitatively different. It doesn’t matter if a candidate is a “good person” or not. They’re ALL running for the job of capitalist steward. If their intentions were good, they would struggle to overturn capitalism—not to run it, not to fix it. Liberals and socialists running a capitalist economy still have to run the capitalist economy, which has its own non-negotiable imperatives. We can’t solve our social problems by being drawn into this puppet show. Whoever gets elected won’t make things better. The only way to get out of this social crisis is to cut the Gordian knot of capitalism, overthrow it all and build a new economy on a new basis: one for the people, by the people, led by the people, in the peoples’ interests.

Socialists have embarked upon with the ultimate political act: the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist system. We identify socialism not with public (state) ownership of the means of production, but with the cultivation of mass participation in and control over economic, political, and social institutions and structures in which working people grasp direct control over all aspects of their lives. When the revolutionary process is unfolding, Utopia comes closer to reality, and impossible things appear within reach of the possible. "I" begins to merge with "We," and personal desires with collective strivings. Socialism has been defined and interpreted in lots of different ways. The Socialist Party is one of the few organisations who emphatically maintain that socialism should be identified with abolition of wage-labour. It means the creation of economic equality between people and the transformation of the means of production into the common property of society. When the market is abolished so is the whole economic basis of capitalism, i.e. labour power as a commodity, existence of a value system as the basis for the exchange and distribution of products between different individuals and different sections of society, the money economy etc. A great many use socialist terminology as a wrapping for views and objectives alien to socialism. The world swarms with such socialists. The victory of socialism is not an inevitable and pre-determined outcome of history. Our future depends entirely on the actual practice of our movement and its activists; on what they do, and what visions they have and hold out to the workers' movement. If we do it right, it will work out; if we don't, it won't. There is no historical inevitability here. We regard the socialist vision just as vital as we regard the struggle for wage rises. We are critical of those who seek to keep workers away from the social revolution and the social revolution away from the workers. We consider ourselves not a political party outside the class, but a party with a definite social outlook, within the class itself. The Socialist Party is committed to keeping its revolutionary politics vibrant and relevant. Socialists have always called upon the workers of the world to unite. Yet a slogan is one thing, and practice another.

The aim of the Socialist Party is to bring about the social ownership and democratic control of all the necessary means of production — to eliminate profit, rent, and interest, and to change our class society into a society of equals, in which the interest of one will be the interest of all. For a socialist world! To this inspiring task, we summon all who are oppressed by capitalism. Only a a socialist world can give us peace and plenty. Look how the capitalist world always totters on the brink of destruction. The capitalist parties are as rotten and bankrupt as the system they uphold. They can maintain themselves and that system today only by piling additional burdens upon the people. For the future they offer only war, continued insecurity and increasing reaction. The myriad evils of capitalism will disappear only with the destruction of capitalism and the building of socialism. Democratically-elected councils of workers in every industry and district will manage the factories and public services. Freed from the fetters of production for profit, the splendidly-equipped factories will pour out their products without interruption: the productive forces will leap forward to provide almost undreamed-of plenty. Far from being proponents of some all-engulfing statism, socialists see the state, as class antagonisms dissipated, beginning to wither away — being transformed as an instrument to protect class rule into an administrative tool.

Too many of our fellow workers declare that they “aren’t for that commie stuff myself. I’m a capitalist.” Although with no capital, nor much hope. Many fellow workers grow angry at the fast food workers demand for a $15/hr wage. They say their own jobs requires a broad set of skills: interpersonal and technical skills, as well as the crucial skill of performing under pressure often making decisions on their own, in seconds, under chaotic circumstances, that impact on other people'smwelfare and they only make $15/hr. If burger flippers think they deserve the same, good for them. Look, if any job is going to take up someone's life, it deserves a living wage. If a job exists and you have to hire someone to do it, they deserve a living wage. End of story. There's a lot of talk going around workplaces and elsewhere such as Facebook along the lines of, “These guys with no education and no skills think they deserve as much as us? Screw those guys…I'm a qualified electrician, I make $13/hr, fuck these burger flippers.”

And that's exactly what the bosses want! They want us fighting over who has the bigger pile of crumbs so we don't realize they made off with almost the whole damn cake. Why are you angry about fast food workers making two bucks more an hour when your CEO makes four hundred TIMES what you do? It's in the bosses' interests to keep your anger directed downward, at the poor people who are just trying to get by, like you, rather than at the rich assholes who consume almost everything we produce and give next to nothing for it. Many companies executives are fond of issuing motivation statements. They expect employees supporting families on 26-27k/year to applaud that. Can they pay us more? Absolutely. But why would they? No one's making them. Some fast food workers made them. They fought for and won a living wage. So how incredibly petty and counterproductive is it to fuss that their pile of crumbs is bigger than ours? Put that energy elsewhere.

So, Organize. Fight. Win.

The Social Spending League

In the social spending league, France tops the list with 31.9% of GDP going on social programs. What is interesting is that Germany spends 25.8% of GDP while the much maligned and profligate Greece spends 24% of its GDP on social programs, a drop of 2% since austerity programs started in 2010. It doesn't seem that Greece's spending is out of line or that pensioners need to face a cut in necessaries.. Of course, free access for all humanity would make this 'league' obsolete. Canada' percentage has dropped to just 17%, 1.5% down since 2009 while the US leads us with 21.7%. John Ayers.

Still A Shocking Figure

The Toronto Star of June 13 included an article about Dave Toycen who has spent most of his life travelling to the world's war zones doing all he can to rescue children. Toycen said that forty years ago children were dying at the rate of 40,000 to 50,000 a day, but now it's down to 17,000 a day. It may be an improvement but still a shocking figure that could be eliminated in a cooperative society of socialism. John Ayers.

All equal but not all the same

There is no future on the basis of capitalism in the world. Unless we overthrow capitalism, only environmental collapse and starvation await us. Capitalism or socialism is now a life and death issue. Revolution is now practical politics for humanity’s survival. But if we can achieve socialism the result is wealth for all and the good things of life for everybody. A comfortable abode, a dining table full of wholesome food and wardrobes of elegant clothes. There will be opportunity and means to the world. Leisure to read and play and work. No poverty anymore with its filth and sickness and vice. You say all this is a dream? No, no dream at all, but an immediate possibility. By means of the vast new technology that now exists of this modern world, we can produce wealth enough for all without any trouble whatever. There is no doubt at all about this. Modern inventions have so increased the productive capacity that mankind across the globe could have an abundance of wealth by working only 3 or 4 hours a day or even a week. Socialists propose to claim a share in this abundance for all people and not for the luxury and privilege of the 1%. Socialists proposes to take for ourselves this vast new technology and use it for satisfying the needs of all, instead of producing for the profit of the few. If we owned the factories and the machinery ourselves and all of us worked at them to produce wealth for our own use and happiness, all the troubles of poverty would disappear at once. The only thing that lies between us and the promise of prosperity is the private ownership of the means of producing wealth. Therefore, what Socialism proposes to do, in order to get wealth for all, is to take possession of the instruments of production and run them for the use of us all.

Those people who are deprived of their right to use the machinery they have made and to get the riches they make, shall come together in a political party and vote the employers out of power.

 These men and women who are denied the right to use their own machinery are the men who now work for wages, a bare living. They have nothing to lose, and everything to gain. This is the working class. Socialism appeals to them on the ground of their self-interests. Our appeal to our fellow workers is simple, not simplistic, practical not impossible.  We indulge in no dreams or offer false hopes. We say to our fellow worker: “Come with us, join our party, vote yourselves into power, use that power of the State to capture back those means of wealth production which the capitalists have stolen from you, and then you will get all that abundance which modern inventions entitle you to.” We've got the abundance - we just have to transform the way we share it out.

The mission of the Socialist Party is to muster all workers under our banner and whose real interests lie in abolishing the private ownership of the means of production, and also to shut out of the party the class whose real interests lie in the preservation of the present system. It is class war, a mighty battle of the ballots. How are we to achieve socialism? A political Party of class-conscious workers is how. Otherwise we are going to a capitalist Hell. Our countries and cities are huge dumping grounds full of poverty, homelessness, joblessness, crime, illiteracy, ill-health, racism, sexism, homophobia, domestic and random violence, addictions, ad nauseam. There is less of everything for everybody except stress and rage. Hitlerite wannabes menace the innocent and the vulnerable.

To many people, socialism is a call for violent action. The ruling class would have it so; they claim for themselves the mantle of progress, logic, truth, beauty, and knowledge. They represent the socialist as deluded, irrational, psychotic, and hateful. But just look at these high-sounding critics; the maniacs in the Pentagon; the perverted and distorted finance capitalists who would see a world plunged into barbarism before they relinquish a penny of their fabulous profits; the power-mad industrialists who calmly grind the working class to dust beneath the wheels of automation; the professors of knowledge who devote their lives to keeping knowledge away from the people. Are these people sane? Socialists are infinitely more rational than our ruling class.

There will be no need of a public coercive force to maintain the power of one class over another, to protect the property of one from the assaults of the other, to assure the continuation of oppression and exploitation. There is ample opportunity for the intellectual development of all. All perform their social duty as a matter of course. What need is there for compulsion, for a machinery of force? To prevent burglary? What will there be to steal in the midst of abundance? To prevent murder or rape? Such cases will be exceedingly rare, we may be sure, and in any case they will require medical attention or confinement for the guilty one in a secure hospital, and not a jail. To regulate traffic? But for that and similar tasks there will be needed, not policemen, as we know them now, but traffic wardens assigned to perform that task. Abundance for all? Free for all to take? A society without money?  They say it is impossible. As the necessities and comforts of life become increasingly abundant, and the differences between physical and mental labour, between town and country are eliminated – the need for tolerating even the last vestiges of inequality will disappear as a matter of course. This may seem incredible to a mind thoroughly poisoned with capitalist prejudices. But why should it be incredible? Mankind will prove that class divisions, poverty and oppression are not unavoidable necessary parts of life. In the socialist society we will show that abundance, freedom and equality are not only possible but the natural condition for the new history of humanity.

Men dying of thirst will fight for a drink at a desert oasis. But if they are up to their hips in water they may have a thousand differences among themselves, but they will not even dream of fighting for a drink. A dozen men in a prison cell with only one tiny window may trample over each other in the fight to get to that tiny source of fresh air. But outside, whoever thinks of fighting for air to breathe, or for more air than the next man? Announce a shortage of bread, and immediately a long line will form, with everyone racing to get there first, and a policeman on hand to “keep order.” But if everyone knew that there is an ample supply of bread today, and there will be just as large a supply tomorrow and the next day, there would be no line, no race, no conflict; nobody would try to hoard an extra loaf in order to make sure of eating the next day; and there would be no need of a policeman to back up his orders by force. If society could assure everyone of as ample and constant a supply of bread as there is of air, why would anyone need or want a greater right to buy bread than his neighbour? Bread is used here only as the simplest illustration. But the same applies to all other foods, to clothing, to shelter, to books, to means of transportation.

A planned organised society, efficiently utilising our present productive equipment and the better equipment to come, could easily assure abundance to all. In return, society could confidently expect every citizen to contribute his or her best voluntarily.

The Workers Will Pay

Gap Inc. announced on June 15 that it will close about one hundred and seventy-five stores in North America over the next few years, including one hundred and forty this fiscal year. To heighten the insecurity of their employees, Gap's director of public relations in Canada said, "Since the stores are closing over the course of the year, we will be reviewing each store on a case-by-case basis as we prepare for closure or as leases expire." About 250 jobs will be lost from the company's North American headquarters in San Francisco as well as the loss of jobs for the employees at the closed stores. The reason, according to the founder of Level 5 Strategy group based in Toronto is that, "It's a brand that appears to have stalled. They haven't continued to refresh the brand and its value proposition." This means simply that a group of capitalists simply haven't kept up with the competition. That means nothing to the workers, is in no way their fault, but they are the ones who will lose livelihoods. Make no mistake, once capital does not bring in the required return, the workers will pay. John  Ayers.

Dirt Products

South America's largest body of fresh water, Lake Titicaca is so polluted that local fishermen are having a hard time catching anything, let alone making a living. Most pollution on the Bolivian side, such as toxic heavy metals like arsenic and lead originates in El Alto, a city of one million near La Paz. Seventy per cent of El Alto's factories operate illegally and are not monitored for pollution. One might wonder how a government can sit idly by while this goes on. It's more than probable that the factories are owned by global corporations who are there because of the lax regulations and failure to monitor and, if regulated, would move to another place where they could operate as they wished to maximize profit and leave El Alto and its workers high and dry. Having despoiled Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, capital is seeking new horizons to continue dirty production wherever it can. Such is the nature of capitalism. John Ayers.

Feasible Socialism (Conclusion)

Socialism means a moneyless, wageless, stateless commonwealth. This was the general understanding of what socialism meant. Marx didn't talk about a "transitional society". He talked about the lower phase of communism. It was still communism...that is, a classless society. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need”

Who decides what your ability or need is? It would take some sort of position of power to determine who is in need and who has ability. Power naturally corrupts and tends to find ways to increase and consolidate power. After time, you are left with those who have consolidated power to abuse, and those who don't. Therefore who decides? The answer, you do! This is the whole point of the communist slogan "from each according to ability to each according to need". The autonomy of the individual is maximised and as a result, we all benefit. As the Communist Manifesto put it:

"In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all"

Specifically a communist (aka socialist) society - or at least what Marx called the "higher stage" of communism - exhibits two key features:

1) Free access to goods and services - no buying and selling. No barter. You simply go to the distribution point and take what you require according to your self determined needs. This depends on there being a relatively advanced technological infrastructure to produce enough to satisfy our basic needs. Such a possibility already exists. Capitalism, however, increasingly thwarts this potential. In fact, most of the work we do today in the formal sector will be completely unnecessary in a communist society - it serves only to prop up capitalism. What possible use would there be for a banking system under communism, for example? We could effectively more than double the quantities of resources and human labour power available for socially useful production by scrapping capitalism. Communism will destroy the need for greed and conspicuous consumption

2) Voluntary labour. Your contribution to society is completely voluntary. There is no wage labour or other forms of co-erced labour. You can do as little or as much work as you choose. And you can do as many different kinds of jobs as you want, too. The presumption is that people would freely choose to work under communism for all sorts of reasons:

- the conditions under which we work will be radically different, without an employing class dictating terms work will become fulfilling and pleasant

- we need to work, to express ourselves creatively

- with free access to goods, conspicuous consumption will be rendered meaningless as a way of gaining respect and social esteem. Which leaves only what we give to society as a way of gaining the respect of our peers. This should not be underestimated; it is one of the most important motivational drives in human beings as numerous studies in industrial psychology have confimed

- Socialism depends on people recognising our mutual interdependence. There is, in other words, a sense of moral obligation that goes with the territory

- Socialism will permit a far greater degree of technological adaptation without the constraints of the profit system. Intrinsically backbreaking or unpleasannt work can be automated. Conversely some work may be deliberately made more labour intensive and craft based.

- Even under capitalism today most work is unpaid or unremunerated - the household economy, the volunteer sector and so on. So it is not as if this is something we are unaccustomed to. Volunteers moreover tend to be the most highly motivated as studies have confirmed; they dont require so called external incentives

- We will get rid of an awful lot of crappy and pointless jobs that serve as a disincentive to work

- since we would be free to do any job we chose to what this means in effect is that for any particular job there would be a massive back-up supply of labour to cover it consisting of most people in society. In capitalism this cannot happen since labour mobility is severely restricted since if you have a job you cannot just choose to abandon it for the sake of another more urgent job from the standpoint of society

With these two core characteristics of a socialist society - free access to goods and services plus volunteer labour - there can be no political leverage that anyone or any group could exercise over anyone else. The material basis of class power would have completely dissolved. What we would be left with is simply human beings being free to express their fundamentally social and cooperative nature

Free access communism is not going to be brought to the point of collapse by the fact that we cannot all have a Porshe or Ferrari parked outside our front door. Imagine what it could be like without a boss class on our backs? Imagine what our workplaces could become without the cost cutting constraints of capitalism and having the freedom to decide on these matters ourselves. Imagine not being tied tdown to one single kind of job all the time but being given the opportunity to experiment with different jobs, to travel abroad to work in new places, to taste new experiences. Imagine a moneyeless, wageless communist world in which most of the occupations that we do today - from bankers to pay departments to arms producers to sales-people - will simply disappear at a stroke releasing vast amounts of resources and, yes, human labour power as well for socially useful production. Kropotkin was quite right. We dont need the whiplash of the wages system to compel us to work. The mere fact that we recognise our mutual interdependence in a society in which we will fully realise our social nature will suffice to impose upon us a sense of moral obligation to contribute to the common good of our own free will. Indeed we already, to some extent, do this today even under capitalism, given that fully half of all the work that we do today is completely unremunerated. How much more conducive will a communist moral economy be to the performance of unremunerated work is not hard to see.

The Left-wing tend to be nothing more than the reformist advocates of some kind of state-administered capitalism, paying lip service to authentic socialism but in practice obstructing any real movement towards socialism. The Left-wing, by and large, does not stand for socialism and persistently misrepresents what socialism is all about by identifying it with some kind of state involvement in the economy. To suggest that free access communism would be less efficient than capitalism ignores among other things that at least half the work done under capitalism serves no socially useful purpose whatsoever and contributes nothing to human wellbeing in any meaningful way - it is merely done to keep the capitalist monetary system ticking over. For instance, most of the work carried out today in the formal sector of the capitalist economy will no longer be needed in communism. What useful work does a banker or pay-roll official do today, for instance? Absolutely nothing. When production for sale on market ceases to exist and we produce simply and solely for need, a huge and growing chunk of the work we do today will no longer be required. Conservatively speaking, we can at least double the available manpower and material resources for socially useful production. If that is not a huge advance in efficiency then what is? In free access communism we will be able to do more with far less because we will producing directly for use and not for sale. The capitalist monetary system is the most extraordinary wasteful form of economic organisation but we are sure the capitalists will be gratified to learn that someon the left should spring to the defence of their system against the communist alternative.

The notion that capitalism can only be defined as a system where capital is owned privately for a profit is absurd. Doesn't capital owned by the state for example count as capitalism? Doesn't the very fact that means of production take the form of capital, irrespective of who owns it, make the system capitalist? The theory of state capitalism does not require there to be a class of private owners of capital, for there to be capitalism. This is a legalistic de jure approach to capitalism whereas a historical materialist approach looks instead at the de facto relations of production. It argues that there was a capitalist class in the Soviet Union that collectively owned the means of production as a class by virtue of their complete control of the state - the nomenklatura. Ownership and control are in fact inseparable. Ultimate control IS ownership. We are not saying there were no differences between the state capitalism and the private or mixed-economy capitalism but in their essentials they were the same. In Socialism Utopian and Scientific Engels noted how capitalism was rapidly evolving away from private ownership of capital for profit by individual capitalist to joint stock companies and on to ownership by the state. Here is what he said concerning the latter

"The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of the productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage workers - proletarians. The capitalist relationship is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head." Socialism Utopian and Scientific"

This does not seem to be compatible with the notion of "private profit" or ownership by private individuals but, clearly, what Engels is saying here is that state ownership is still very much capitalism. Of course you can chose to define it in whatever way you want but in the Marxian tradition the relation between "capital" and "wage labour" is absolutely pivotal to any real understanding capitalism. Hence statements like these.

“Capital therefore presupposes wage-labour; wage-labour presupposes capital. They condition each other; each brings the other into existence.” (Wage Labour and Capital)

and

“To say that the interests of capital and the interests of the workers are identical, signifies only this: that capital and wage-labour are two sides of one and the same relation. The one conditions the other in the same way that the usurer and the borrower condition each other."

So, no, it is not essentially to do with "private" ownership and profit. This is misleading. This idea that capitalism rests on de jure legal ownership of capital by private individuals is essentially an idealist notion which defines a mode of production in terms of its legal superstructure. With state ownership your have in effect collective ownership by the capitalist class via their control of the state apparatus itself. From the point of the view of the worker it makes absolutely no difference whether their employers is the state or a "private" business. From the point of view of the consumer too state property is private property and for which reason a payment is required.

"The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is, rather, brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State-ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution."

Engels is saying is that by bringing the scattered means of production under state ownership this will facilitate the transformation of these means into common property. So instead of having to deal with many separate individual capitalists we would have only to deal with the "national capitalist" as it were. This is what is meant by the "technical conditions" Engels speaks of - the centralised structure of decision making that socialism would inherit from (state) capitalism

As opponents of central planning we would disagree strongly with Engels on this particular point. Neverthless, Engels is clearly NOT suggesting that state ownership of the means of production, even though it faciilitates centralised decisionmaking (which he seems to have thought would be important and useful for a socialist society) is anything other than a form of capitalist ownership.

It was Kropotkin who said:

"No hard and fast line can be drawn between the work of one and the work of another. To measure them by results leads to absurdity. To divide them into fractions and measured them by hours of labour leads to absurdity also. One course remains: not to measure them at all, but to recognise the right of all who take part in productive labour first of all to live – and then to enjoy the comforts of life" (The Wage System)

Communism is not about "setting prices at zero" as some like Paul Mason has been inferring. It is about doing away with the whole notion of price and exchange value so that the very concept of "setting prices at zero" is a meaningless one as far as communism is concerned. To talk of setting prices at any level presupposes still a capitalist framework. If the supermarkets tomorrow said 'All cans of beans are free' the shelves would be cleared in hours. But if they said the same the next day, and the next, it would become pointless to go and fill your arms with cans of beans, and easier to just go and take a reasonable stock to keep close to hand. That is, money (likewise price) is not abolished, but the need for money is rendered redundant. Just because individuals in a free access economy are not restricted by money or labour vouchers from taking what they want does not mean they will want to take everything they can possibly lay their hands on. As for labour vouchers. Similarly just because these same individuals will not be externally compelled to work by the fact that their consumption is explicitly linked to their work contribution does not mean they will not contribute to the work. The point about a communist society proper - or higher communism - is that there is no objective or external econonomic mechanism - like money or labour vouchers - mediating beween the individual and his or her needs or wants. This includes the desire to work which would become as Marx put it in the Critique of the Gotha Programme, "life´s prime want". A means by which we express ourselves, our individuality. Kautsky has the right take on that, why bother mimicking the pricing mechanism when there is already a perfectly good way of doing that?

Money is a social relationship. It links buyers and sellers in a market and therefore presupposes these things. But communism implies common ownership of the means of production. Where everybody owns the means of production it is not logically possible to have economic exchange. Exchange implies owners and non-owners. When I exchange something with you I am exchanging property title to this thing for some other thing. If you own a factory producing widgets you can sell these widgets on because you own them by virtue of owning the factory that produced them. It follows that if everyone in society owned the factory there would be no one to whom these widgets could be sold or exchanged. If there is no economic exchange then there is no reason to have a means of exchange - money. Money is a mean of exchange amongst other things and what it implies is the existence of an exchange economy which is completely incompatible with the idea of your "public" owning the means of production. Exchange denotes a transfer of ownership rights of the things being exchanged. This cannot happen where everyone owns the means of production, common ownership rules out the exchange of products and hence money. Logically then if you advocate the use of money and hence exchange, this means you advocate a system based on sectional or private ownership of the means of production - not common ownership. Money is not some kind of neutral tool of administration; it is fundamentally a social relationship between people. Of course, money existed before capitalism but, in its generalised usage, it corresponds to, and demonstrates, the existence of capitalist relations of production as a monetised economy par excellance. Since there will be no economic exchange transactions in socialism - socialism being based on common ownership of the means of production - this reason falls away along with the need for money.

This is why socialists totally reject the idea of using money not only - obviously - in a communist society but in any supposed transition to such a society. A transitional stage that continiued to use money would not be a transition at all. It would still be a capitalist society based on generalised commodity production. That is why Marx advocated labour vouchers - which we reject as too as both unnecessary and far too cumbersome - precisely because it was not money.

Many leftists have aligned themselves with the argument of the arch pro-capitalist Ludwig von Mises in asserting the need for a common universal unit of accounting. According to this argument, only by means of such a unit can we directly compare different bundles of inputs and thus supposedly select the "least cost "combination. For Mises this unit is money; for some so-called leftists labour values. The purpose of a common unit of account is to expedite economic exchange - what communism will lack - rather than the actual efficient deployment of resources as such. Having a common unit of account has nothing to do with the technical organisation of production itself and everything to do with capitalism's own priorities such as the need to determine profitability and the rate of exploitation.

Free access communism is a form of "generalised reciprocity" par excellance, a “gift economy”, which as the term itself suggests denotes the absence of any kind of quid pro quo set up.

1) The amount of work that needs to be done by comparison with today will be much less because of the elimination of all that socially uselsss labour that only serves to prop up the capitalist money economy - from bankers , pay to tax collectors and a thousand and one other occupations. Less work means a much reduced per capita workload on average which, in turn, means less resistance to working since our attitutde to work is partly conditioned by how much time we are required to do it. If you only have to do 2 hours per week on a boring job you are going to regard it differently than if you have to do it for 20 hours

2) A volunteer economy means that we are not stuck with just one job but can try a variety so there is a labour reservoir in depth for any particular job - even the most onerous or boring - and to an extent that is simply not possible under capitalist employment.

3) With free access to goods and services there is only one way in which you can acquire status and the respect and esteem of your fellows - through your contribution to society. Conspicuous consumption and the accumulation of private wealth would be rendered meaningless by the simple fact that all wealth is freely available for direct appropriation

4) The terms and conditions of work will be radically different without the institution of capitalist employment. It is often these terms and conditions - in particular the authoritarian structure of the capitalist workplace - that are the real problem rather than the work itself

5) Without the profit motive there will be far greater scope to adapt technology to suit our inclinations. Some work might be subject to greater automation; other work might be made more artisan or skilled-based

6) In a communist society our mutual interdependence will be much more transparent and the sense of moral obligation to give according to one's ability in return for taking according to one's need will correspondingly be much more sharply defined and enhanced as a motivating factor

7) A communist society cannot be introduced except when the great majority understand and want it. Having struggled to achieve it can it seriously be maintained that they would willingly allow it to be jeopardised? The reductio as absurdum argument

8) Work, loosely defined as meaningful productive activity is actually a fundamental human need, not simply an economic requirement. Try sitting around on your ass for week doing nothing and you will soon find yourself climbing up the wall out of sheer boredom. Prison riots have been known to break out on occasions when frustrated prisoners are denied work opportunities and even under the severe conditions they have to contend with.

9) Even under capitalism just over half of the work that we do is completely unpaid and outside of the money economy. This is by no means just confined to the household sector - think for example of international volunteers such as the VSO - and it gives the lie to the capitalist argument that the only way you can induce people to work is paying them to do it

Since you don’t have a quid pro quo set up with free access communism, individuals are free to do whatever work they chose. What work needs to be done as explained can be readily communicated through the appropriate channels such as job centres, online facilities and so on. You don’t have the same kind of dichotomous view induced by a quid pro quo set up which pits your self-interest against the interests of others. So social opinion become becomes a much more powerful force in society. Work that needs to be done most urgently and is not perhaps being done to the extent required - e.g. garbage collection - gains in status to the extent that it remains undone. People work for all sorts of reasons not just because they "like it". This is why we find the usual objections to free access communism being trotted out to be simplistic and reductionist. Labour at this higher stage is no longer coerced labour in the sense that an individual's access to goods (via their "income") is made dependent upon his or her contribution. On the contrary, the labour of freely associated individuals becomes life's "prime want". It becomes entirely voluntary labour, freely offered. The compulsion to produce without which human life could not continue will then operate exclusively on the social plane and not directly upon individuals who, neverthless, will have realised their fully social nature in a communist society and respond accordingly to the requirements of society to produce and reproduce its own means of existence. This is what constitutes the essence of communism - the realisation of our true social nature and of the need to contribute to society's maintenance and wellbeing - and it is why I have long argued that communism needs to be conceived as what is technically called a "moral economy"

The problem for the notion of apportioning labour time according some single vast society wide plan. Because production is a socialised process, because everything is interconnected - you need to ensure a certain amount of input X is produced in order to ensure that a certain amount of consumer good Y is produced - the ratios of millions upon millions of inputs and outputs have to be worked out in advance and the relative proportions or amounts have to be produced precisely in accordance with the Plan because the knock on consequences of any shortfall, say, will ramify through the whole economy and upset the carefully worked out calculations of the central planners. So finally on to the question of labour time allocation within the context of a definite social plan. It seems to me that if you are going to allocate labour in this predetermined a priori fashion then, in order for the definite social plan to be effectively implemented to the letter, you would need some way of ensuring that labour in its multiple forms is supplied in precisely the quantities needed in order to ensure that the technical ratios of inputs and outputs embodied in the plan are complied with. How can this can this be done without the most resolute and coerceive central direction of labour and the conception cannot possibly accommodated to the principle "from each according to ability to each according to need". It cannot be done and the fact that it cannot be done points to the need for a radically different perspective on the nature of a communist society to the one he is proposing. Actually even Marx's speculations on the nature of work and the abolition of the division of labour in communism directly contradict this notion in the famous quote from the German Ideology:

“For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic. This fixation of social activity, this consolidation of what we ourselves produce into an objective power above us, growing out of our control, thwarting our expectations, bringing to naught our calculations, is one of the chief factors in historical development up till now.”

Asbestos Again

Families of workers affected by asbestos related cancers have called for better screening for the condition. Illnesses associated with working in the construction industry are thought to kill more than 4,000 people across the UK every year.

Clydeside Action on Asbestos - the biggest asbestos charity in Scotland - called for more investment in screening, either through routine X-rays or a simple blood test that would detect illnesses. 

The charity's chairwoman, said catching the disease at the earlier possible opportunity would allow patients to "start making plans for their life and their families and so forth, but also to receive any form of treatment that may be available."