One World, One People - For World Socialism

The Tory prime minister declared he has no regrets about his recent use of the “swarms” to characterize migrants trying to reach the UK. David Ca-moron goes on to criminalise them further by alleging that they are trying to “break-in” to the UK although as refugees many have a legitimate and legal right to seek asylum in the UK without going through the proper channels and by any means possible. The government is purposefully trying to create an atmosphere of fear by stigmatizing vulnerable people as a threat to the UK’S security and sovereignty.

In a corner-shop near the Scottish Home Office, the Unity centre has been fighting for several years to protect refugees and asylum seekers who have made their home in Glasgow. Asylum seekers come in and report to Unity before signing in at the Home Office building nearby. If they are detained during their visit to the Home Office, activists can swing into action to try and get them released. It’s a system that has helped hundreds stay in Scotland since asylum seekers started arriving in Glasgow at the end of the 1990s.

“Glasgow has stood against the Home Office in lots of ways,” said one Unity activist. “We help anyone in their struggle for papers, it’s about emotional solidarity as well as practical.” He talks about a flight full of migrants that has only this morning left Heathrow for Nigeria, stopping en route in Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone. “Charter flights are a way of expelling people en masse, where nobody can hear you scream. We know several of the people who have been sent out on this flight and many of them have legal processes open, they have families and children here. The Home Office just grab as many people as they can,” the activist added.

The Unity centre is only one part of a vibrant network of support for migrants and refugees across Glasgow, rooted in local communities and bringing together people from around the world with their Scottish neighbours. When the Home Office decided to start sending asylum seekers out of London to cities around the UK, Glasgow city council was the first to sign up.

The asylum seekers were placed in empty flats in long neglected high-rise estates. Neighbours appointed by the council to welcome the new families took the job seriously, bringing the new arrivals from Kosovo, Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, into their communities, holding parties, bringing families from across the world together. When families were told they would not be given asylum their Scottish neighbours refused to let the Home Office remove them from the UK. Immigration officials who arrived in the early hours for “dawn raids” on families were met by enraged Glaswegians who refused to let the Home Office take their new friends away.

The demonstrations became widespread and saw the end of the dawn raids. Many thousands of people who had been threatened with removal, including many families, were allowed to stay in Scotland.

Remzije Sherifi runs the Maryhill Integration Network where people from around the world come together in award winning dance and music projects.

“We have established great links between new arrivals and local people. This grows organically from the heart if people can understand why someone would have to flee their country. It’s still hard, there are still people struggling, but there are always doors open where they can get a cup of tea.”

The world is on the move. Tens of millions are displaced. Around the world much the same question is being posed: “How are we going to absorb all those hordes of immigrants?” All across the globe nationalist, xenophobic groups and movements are busy attacking and intimidating defenseless refugees. George Orwell defined un-Christian, un-white and un-Western people simply as “un-people”, in the eyes of the West.

The overwhelming majority of the refugees are forced to leave their homelands because of political and economic consequences of capitalism. Only a few Europeans or North Americans are capable of detecting connection between their continents’ wealth, those hundreds of millions of ruined lives all over the world, and the latest wave of immigrants. Glasgow's commercial wealth was built upon the slave trade, for example. Great Britain, responsible for the loss of millions of lives worldwide through its colonial genocides and triggered/orchestrated famines, is now pretending that it is facing a serious “refugee crises”.  While tiny Lebanon is now a host of over 2 million Syrian refugees, one of the main global bullies, the UK, has lesser than 25,000 registered asylum applicants on its territory. Immigrants are being portrayed as some menace, or pest, not as a group of desperate human beings – victims of the British Empire and the neo-colonialism that followed it. Much of the blame can be placed on the politicians and the toadying media. Even the liberal voices only offer concessions out of charity and not recognise solidarity as an obligation and so they do little to throw open the gates or knock down the walls of Fortress Europe.

As long as capitalism reigns supreme, as long as profit-seeking rules over the planet, the refugees will be crossing dangerous seas to seek safety and security. Many will die in the process but some will make it to be defined as “illegal” and persecuted and where victims will have to lie, in order to just survive. The Socialist Party as part of the World Socialist Movement stands with the exploited and the oppressed of all parts of the globe.

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Closing the Door (2/2)

Many believe that immigrant labour is scab labour, since the bosses had a long tradition of importing foreign workers to break strikes or cut wages. It was one of the reasons to stop scab trade that the International Working Men’s Association (the First International), was formed in 1864. Some on the Left today declare ‘Let’s have a debate on immigration’. And bewail the high numbers of immigrants, and that the ruling class use this increased supply of labour to cut wages in several unskilled and low-skilled job sectors, hitting the indigenous working class. They claim extra demand for housing has forced prices and rents higher, and in many cities local children cannot get into local schools and that the waiting time at the hospital has grown because of foreigners in the line for treatment. These claims are drip-fed daily to workers in order to divide them along the lines of colour and/or nationality/race (and religion), i.e., workers from ‘outside’ lower your wages, take your jobs, put up your rents, deny your children a decent education, etc., etc. Capitalism has always been an international system with capital going to where it will realise the highest returns rather than maintaining loyalty to a nation-state. Even Thomas Jefferson had to admit that ‘merchants have no country’. 

But is an increase in the supply of labour to be explained solely by citing immigration figures and playing with the figures? What of new technology? While not increasing the number of workers it can reduce the number jobs. Are we to become machine-wreckers once again? Then, of course, there is the export of capital to abroad, where it will be used to manufacture commodities cheaply and compete with home products. The point is quite simple for those who choose to see it: it is the owner of the means of production who will decide who will work, with what technology, for what wages, where the work will be sited and what level of unemployment (surplus labour, indigenous or foreign) will be best for his maximum profit. That is not always an easy thing to explain in a country where the working class movement is so pitifully weak ideologically, yet that is what socialists must do. It is the height of treachery to our class (remembering that the working class stretches far beyond Britain’s boundaries), blatant racism, and opportunism to opt instead for a policy of blaming the immigrant for all British workers’ woes, even if this will strike a chord with the basest instincts of many workers. While we are on the subject of the ‘indigenous working class’ just who are they? At what point does an immigrant family become an indigenous family? If the answer to that question is never than even someone with the flimsiest grasp of British history would have to draw the conclusion that there are very few members of the indigenous working class about. The question of house prices, rents, etc., being the fault of immigrants is pure bunkum. Immigrants tend to live in the lowest quality (if any at all) housing, unless, of course, one subscribes to the somewhat popular, but totally incorrect, view that ‘they come over here with nothing and are given the best houses by the council’ that can be heard in any working class area and is merely a reflection of the anti-working class repeating the pap that fills the pages of the gutter press. Workers do say these things and, if not shown the errors of these views, will tend to believe them. The Socialist Party will not pander to these simplistic views or try to give these opinions credibility. Another point about housing is that if immigrants really are causing rents and prices to rise then one must suppose that this is due to a housing shortage, which would be alleviated by, yes, you guessed it, building more homes which would create jobs wouldn’t it?

For sure it cannot be denied that the majority of the UK population now wants far stricter limits on immigration numbers. Our exposure of the level of ignorance and backwardness in the working class, its atrocious level of disunity, should not be cause for celebration or smugness. The fact that this level of ignorance exists does not make it either right or desirable, it only goes to show the staggering amount of work that socialists have to do to bring education, enlightenment and unity to the working class in this country. The Socialist Party is not afraid to take a minority position that is correct merely because it is unpopular with the working class at present. But our approach is to assign blame where it lies, squarely with the rich and not with the average person. The rich are trying to make the people pay for the crisis.

Xenophobia and racism are not the exclusive domain of the right. Some of those Leftists calling for an end to immigration argue that immigration is and has always been a mechanism for depressing wages and undermining working class organisation. And some will cite evidence that West Indian immigrants who came here in the fifties and sixties were invited to take the low-paid jobs that British workers could not afford to take. This helped to maintain the low wages of those jobs. The idea that immigrants can only have a negative effect on wages, etc., is strange that we still remember the Grunwick dispute where immigrants, many first generation, organised themselves and fought courageously for reinstatement and union recognition, being defeated only through the treachery of the Labour Government of the day. Yet, even in defeat, these immigrants achieved higher wages and better conditions for those left inside the Grunwick’s plants. The picture is presented of immigrants coming here to live because we British workers have made life in our country so wonderful through our organisation and principled struggle. What nonsense! If people from the South of England start to migrate North for the cheaper housing, should we drive them back at Watford Gap telling them to go and fight for cheaper housing in the South? When British dockyards, with the full backing of their workforces, compete with each other for shipbuilding contracts and try to win work to their area away from other workers in Britain does this not usually involve bringing down wages and conditions and boosting productivity? The anti-immigrant argument, apart from freeing the employers of all responsibility for the things that they actually have control over, is not just silly but very dangerous and can easily incite regionalism as it already has Scottish and Welsh nationalism.

We in the Socialist Party have the task to educate all workers to realise the need to destroy capitalism and build socialism. No worker should be declared illegal for wanting to work or to better him or herself. Capitalism is the enemy of all workers. It is the system of capitalist production that produces unemployment, homelessness, destitution and crumbling social services (not to mention the incessant wars that creates refugees flee to safety) – not workers, be they ’indigenous’ or foreign. We are all wage slaves and we should not permit the media to constantly slander a section of us by blaming them for the problems created by the capitalist class itself – such as unemployment and homelessness. Red herrings are part of the poison of political life and demonizing those unable to defend themselves is an easy way to divert attention. The capitalists try to turn groups of workers against each other, competing ever more fiercely for dwindling jobs and falling wages in a war of all against all.  Workers of every country are forced to compete with each other in order to force down wages everywhere. Working people have only two choices: either let the bosses play us off each other until we hit bottom, or to unite and fight for decent wages and benefits for all.

One very basic idea, unity of the working class is critical. In capitalist society, a tiny class of people owns the means of production and profits by exploiting the workers’ labour. United, the overwhelming tendency of the working class would be to fight for a decent life for all, which is incompatible with capitalism. Powerful united struggles of the working class would inevitably demonstrate the need to overthrow capitalism altogether. Since the working class is the only class with the power to overturn capitalism, the capitalists use every possible divide-and-conquer tactic to prevent this development. The bosses hope to keep the workers fighting with each other over shrinking pieces of a small pie instead of uniting for better pay and conditions and a higher standard of living for everyone. Workers have nothing to gain by falling prey to any type of anti-immigrant scapegoating. We have to reject all laws that divide the working class into legals and illegals. The rich are the exploiters, a class of idle parasites who live off the toil and sweat of the workers. These big money-bags have only one interest: profits, and not just any kind of profits, but maximum profits. Hence, the rich use nationalism to wring maximum profits out of their employees and to make it easier to rule over the people. They use nationalism to single out certain sections of the people, the immigrant communities, for the worst kind of exploitation and to incite other sections of the people to attack the immigrants. This is the standard tactic of all minorities with state power: divide and rule. Politicians will continue to distract the public by blaming the individual and minority groups, and in particular newcomers and strangers rather than the economic system and the austerity policies it require to survive as the root cause of the problem.

As the gulf between rich and poor becomes greater so too will the desire of the capitalist class to use all weapons to divide working people. The response is to fight for the common interest of working class unity. But unity is not an automatic process. Create and perpetuating national divisions within the working class has always been an essential feature of the capitalist system. This was a point that Marx recognised over 100 years ago when he talked about the prejudice directed by English workers against migrant Irish workers. He called this antagonism the ‘secret of the impotence of the English working class ... It is the secret by which the capitalist class maintains its power.’

The Socialist Party has always approached the question of not from the standpoint of a particular capitalist state, but from the standpoint of the interests of the world’s working class. These are best served by the free movement of workers around the globe. Not only does this enable workers as a whole to get the best price for the sale of their labour power, it also increases the proletarisation of previously peasants and also aids international unification. We therefore reject completely all attempts by the ruling class to restrict or control the international migration of labour.

“I mean, your society's broken, so who should we blame? Should we blame the rich, powerful people who caused it? No, let's blame the people with no power and no money and these immigrants who don't even have the vote, yeah it must be their fucking fault.” -  Iain Banks

Lest we forget

Obituary: William Logan  from the April 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard It is with deep regret that we report the sudden death of William Logan—"Loge" to all who knew him. "Loge" was one of the founder members of Edinburgh Branch in 1968, and a driving force in its early dynamic days. He was an entertaining speaker and a prodigious literature seller. One of his greatest contributions to the Party was his interest in silk screen printing, which enabled Edinburgh Branch to produce their own inimitable posters, which sprang up all over the city. A visitor to one of our meetings in the late sixties, remarking on the number of SPGB posters he saw, thought that the cultural revolution had spilled over into Edinburgh; you could not turn a corner without seeing a poster.  The death of "Loge" at the age of only 35 is a grievous loss; his enthusiasm, drive and humour will be sadly missed.

Rhymeating lion tamer (1978)

Book Review from the December 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

John S. Clarke: Parliamentarian, Poet, Lion-Tamer by Raymond Challinor (Pluto Press)

This little book, published a couple of years ago, is well worth reading containing, as it does, illuminating sidelights on the genesis of the British Communist Party and its later left-wing off-shoots.

Clarke was an extraordinary character, leading a colourful life as a lion tamer (he came of circus stock) and merchant seaman. He travelled all over the world but, although entirely self-taught, showed remarkable gifts as a writer and Scottish "rhymeater" in the Burns tradition. He gravitated to the Socialist Labour Party where his journalistic talents soon made him the actual editor of The Socialist during the first World War. With the advent of the Bolshevik seizure in Russia, Clarke was the first (with Willie Gallacher) to make the Moscow trip. Whereas Gallacher (a muddlehead if ever there was one) swallowed the Russian bait, Clarke refused to come back to England and, as editor of the Glasgow Scottish Workers Committee paper The Worker, wrote critical articles, exposed the unsuitability of Russian tactics in Britain and, above all, the lying, glowing reports sent to Lenin by the greedy job hunters of the British Socialist Party. "Information by the mass, specially preened, pruned, doctored and cooked by the officials of the old BSP was sent to Russia with the deliberate object of misleading the Bolsheviks as to the true state of affairs in Britain" he wrote.

This certainly did not suit the new Russian paymasters who, after buying up The Worker, promptly had Clarke sacked. He was the first publicly to denounce the absurdity of Lenin's tactics of supporting the Labour Party. Challinor claims to have "subjected all Lenin's statements about Britain to a close analysis" and to have come to Clarke's view. "Lenin's mistake was his belief that most British workers considered the Labour Party to be Socialist, and that this myth could only be dispelled by seeing it in office but, in fact, most British workers are aware the Labour Party is largely the mouthpiece of the Trade Union leaders, whose limitations have been known for many years. Hence Lenin's tactic was an unnecessary exercise, telling workers what they already knew," he writes. What a pity that Vanessa Redgrave, Paul Foot, Tony Cliff, Gerry Healey, Chris Harman and co., many of whom were still, up to a few years ago, urging workers to vote for the Labour Party, did not know what "most workers knew". We would have been spared the rubbish of WRP, RWP, Big Flame, IMG etc., "New CP", "Old PLC." Chinese Leninists and so on.

Clarke was persuaded by the Glasgow ILP (Maxton and co) to run for Parliament. He was elected, sat for Maryhill for two and a half years and, to his, credit, chucked it up in disgust!

Borrow the book from the local library, like I did.

Horatio 

To BP or not BP?

Campaigners will stage a theatrical protest against BP’s sponsorship of the Edinburgh International Festival on Sunday. They argue cultural institutions across the UK are offering a veil of legitimacy to the firm as it continues to drive climate change and cause environmental destruction. The performance group will stage a street theatre performance to highlight what it says is the festival's "unethical" choice of sponsor. Performers will be joined by Friends of the Earth Scotland, staff and students from the University of Edinburgh. Artists scheduled to take part in the festival are also expected to make an appearance. Protesters attending the demonstration have been instructed to dress in black, and arrive at a yet-to-be disclosed venue in Edinburgh at noon.

Environmentalists, academics and artists will gather in the heart of Edinburgh to highlight BP’s monopolisation of Britain’s cultural landscape. In particular, they are criticizing Edinburgh International Festival's choice of sponsor.

The protest's organisers say that BP’s funding of the event is an attempt to distract attention from its role in exacerbating climate change. The demonstration has been organized by activist theatre group ‘BP or not BP?’ which has campaigned extensively against BP's practices across the globe. Among the energy extraction techniques BP has been criticized for are fracking and deepwater Arctic drilling. BP or not BP? warn the energy firm continues to draw unsustainable levels of fossil fuels from the earth, while using its influence to lobby against progressive forms of climate action.

Ric Lander, a campaigner at Friends of the Earth Scotland, told RT BP’s ethical and environmental legacy is scandalous.
“BP has been involved in some of the world’s biggest environmental disasters and actively lobbies against meaningful action against climate change,” he said. “World class performers haven’t come to Edinburgh this August to make the oil industry look good. Let’s clean up the Edinburgh International Festival and stop BP buying prestige at the expense of Scotland’s treasured public arts.”

Edinburgh People & Planet campaigner and medical student Eleanor Dow said the oil giant's role in greenwashing must be exposed.

“We need to expose this absurd and dangerous act of greenwashing by a company that is contributing to catastrophic climate change,” she said. “With the triumph of our occupation this year, which forced Edinburgh University to drop its investments in three major fossil fuel companies, it is clear the fossil fuel divestment movement is winning. The EIF needs to get its act together instead of remaining complicit in the destruction of our planet.”

Jess Worth of the “BP or not BP?” group decried the festival's acceptance of funding from BP.
“BP has a business plan for the end of the world, and the Edinburgh International Festival is endorsing it through this sponsorship deal,” she said.

As emphasis on the urgency of dealing with climate change a new report has recently been published.

Global food shortages will become three times more likely as a result of climate change according to a report by a joint US-British taskforce, which warned that the international community needs to be ready to respond to potentially dramatic future rises in prices. Food shortages, market volatility and price spikes are likely to occur at an exponentially higher rate of every 30 years by 2040, said the Taskforce on Extreme Weather and Global Food System Resilience.

Climate-linked market disruptions could lead to civil unrest. "In fragile political contexts where household food insecurity is high, civil unrest might spill over into violence or conflict," the report said. "The Middle East and North Africa region is of particular systemic concern, given its exposure to international price volatility and risk of instability, its vulnerability to import disruption and the potential for interruption of energy exports."

Global food production is likely to be most impacted by extreme weather events in North and South America and Asia which produce most of the world's four major crops - maize, soybean, wheat and rice, the report found. Such shocks in production or price hikes are likely to hit some of the world's poorest nations hardest such as import dependent countries in sub-Saharan Africa, the report found.

While we can all share the campaigners sincerity in trying to do something to halt global warming, they must offer real solutions to the problems and that means understand the cause and removing that cause. It is not a matter of smoothing off the unwanted bit of capitalism or protesting against one or two corporations. It means re-casting capitalism into another type of economic system - socialism. This needs to be said over and over again until it sinks into peoples understanding.

On the issue of climate change, capitalism is hopelessly ill-equipped to deal with it. Human and environmental needs come a poor second whenever the needs of capital dictate. The history of sincere but failed attempts to correct a system which cannot meet needs leads to the conclusion that a new social system should be tried. A system without money and the profit motive in which the interests and needs of all are paramount. In such a system the challenge of the human impact on the environment can be seriously addressed for the first time. People, and not money, will control their lives and the direction of social progress.

A choice has to be made. It is no longer a matter of ‘socialism or capitalism’ or even ‘socialism or barbarism’. The choice now is between world socialism and global catastrophe.

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.