RISE for what?

 

RISE - AROUND IN CIRCLES 

Scotland’s newest party, RISE, Scotland’s Left Alliance,dubbed the Scottish Syriza, unveils its regional list candidates for Holyrood on Tuesday. RISE will also launch a fundraising appeal for £100,000. RISE is an electoral pact between the Scottish Socialists, the Scottish Left Project, environmentalists and independence campaigners. Former Scottish Socialist MSP and current SSP co-convenor Colin Fox has explained the SSP will not field candidates in its own name, but will only stand under the RISE banner in order to avoid splitting the Left vote. Fox said RISE would appeal to SNP supporters for their second votes to maximise the number of pro-independence MSPs in parliament. The anti-austerity party, which is backed by former SNP deputy leader Jim Sillars, is standing only on the list system, where candidates can be elected with just 6 per cent of the vote.

Among RISE’s policies are a minimum wage of £20,000, maximum wage of £100,000, free public transport, an income-based Scottish service tax instead of council tax, ending charitable status for private schools, and, ultimately, an independent Scottish republic with its own currency. RISE advocates the construction of half a million new affordable houses over the next 25 years. Of course, there is no guarantee that five consecutive governments would maintain the massive building scheme. Abolish Police Scotland which was established in 2013. RISE proposes to return to local forces and to end the practices of stop and search and police carrying guns that were introduced under Police Scotland. Rise also wants to abolish the Offensive Behaviour at Football Act, which critics have claimed criminalises young football fans. RIAE advocates the decriminalisation of all drugs, and the introduction of a public programme of drug rehabilitation. The policy states that the so-called ‘war on drugs’ has resulted in organised crime and addiction. RISE proposes the “public ownership” of energy companies. It calls for the gradual phasing out of the oil industry to be replaced with renewable energy, which Rise policy says Scotland has in abundance. Although a transferance of ownership is implied in the policy, there is no detail of whether private energy companies would be compensated and how much this would cost. RISE will campaign to have employers who use zero hours contracts sanctioned with the withdrawal of subsidies and awards. The policy is one of several that RISE will campaign for under the auspices of an Employment Freedom Bill. Other policies attached to the Bill, much of which could only be instituted if employment law is devolved to Scotland, include employee involvement in workplace decision making and trade unionism taught to children at school level.

These policies are not unexpected and nor are they steps towards socialism but simply the usual platform of the Left to make capitalism run better and not to abolish it. We do not deny that certain reforms won by the working class have helped to improve our general living and working conditions. Indeed, we see little wrong with people campaigning for reforms that bring essential improvements and enhance the quality of their lives, and some reforms do indeed make a difference to the lives of millions and can be viewed as "successful". There are examples of this in such fields as education, housing, child employment, work conditions and social security. Socialists have to acknowledge that the "welfare" state, the NHS and so on, made living standards for some sections of the working class better than they had been under rampant capitalism and its early ideology of laissez faire, although these ends should never be confused with socialism. However, in this regard we also recognise that such "successes" have in reality done little more than to keep workers and their families in efficient working order and, while it has taken the edge of the problem, it has rarely managed to remove the problem completely. Socialists do not oppose reformism because it is against improvements in workers' lives lest they dampen their revolutionary ardour; nor, because it thinks that decadent capitalism simply cannot deliver on any reforms; but because our continued existence as propertyless wage slaves undermines whatever attempts we make to control and better our lives through reforms. Our objection to reformism is that by ignoring the essence of class, it throws blood, sweat and tears into battles that will be undermined by the workings of the wages system. All that effort, skill, energy, all those tools could be turned against class society, to create a society of common interest where we can make changes for our common mutual benefit. So long as class exists, any gains will be partial and fleeting, subject to the ongoing struggle. What we are opposed to is the whole culture of reformism, the idea that capitalism can be tamed and made palatable with the right reforms.

We oppose those organisations that promise to deliver a programme of reforms on behalf of the working class, often in order to gain a position of power. Such groups on the Left, often have real aims quite different to the reform programme they peddle. Many of the Left are going to put before the working class only what they think will be understood by the workers - proposals to improve and reform the present capitalist system- and, of course they are going to try to assume the leadership of such struggles as a way of achieving support for their vanguard party. These Left parties may try to initiate such struggles themselves and they will try to muscle in on any struggles of this sort that groups of workers have started off themselves. But it's all very cynical because they know that reformism ultimately leads nowhere (as they readily admit in their theoretical journals meant for circulation amongst their members, though not in the populist, agitational journals). The purpose in telling workers to engage in such struggles is to teach them a lesson, the hard way which is the only way some on the Left think they can learn i.e. by experiencing failure. The expectation is that when, these reformist struggles fail the workers will then turn against capitalism, under the Party Leadership. It is the old argument, advanced by Trotsky in his founding manifesto for the "Fourth International" in 1938, that socialist consciousness will develop out of the struggle for reforms within capitalism: when workers realise that they can’t get the reforms they have been campaigning for they will, Trotsky pontificated, turn to the "cadres" of the Fourth International for leadership. All that's achieved is to encourage reformist illusions amongst workers. The ultimate result of this is disillusionment with the possibility of radical change.

The Socialist Party does not accept the view that nothing but socialism concerns the socialist and in regards to trade unionism has stated that the non-revolutionary phase of the struggle between the classes is as inevitable as the revolutionary. When the worker acquires revolutionary consciousness he is still compelled to make the non-revolutionary struggle. We fight in the here and now, where we are and where we can, rather than tell everyone to wait until the revolution comes and that all struggle is a diversion from creating a united Marxian socialist party of the world. It doesn't mean we have to sit around and wait for a revolution. A blanket opposition to everything that does and can happen in capitalism in the guise of being supportive of working class interests and being true to socialist principles, they would involve actions (or sometimes, inaction) would be ridiculous and taken to its ultimate, logical conclusion would lead to the situation whereby socialists in parliament determinedly resolved to oppose all reform measures as a matter of course, even those of clear benefit to workers or the socialist movement (and by doing so inadvertently allying themselves with the forces of reaction to keep wars going, or oppose factory legislation and anything else that might benefit workers).

Every organisation has to decide what it is working for, and whether that aim is important. When the first of the parties in the World Socialist Movement was founded in 1904, it decided it was going to work for socialism. Socialists are, of course, not immune to the human tragedies which occur daily, by the millions, and which has generate thousands of reformist groups trying to stem the tide. Socialists made a choice. They chose to use their time and limited funds to work to eliminate the cause of the problems. One can pick any problem and often one can find that real improvements have taken place, usually after a very long period of agitation. Rarely, if ever, has the problem disappeared, and usually other related problems have cropped up to fill the vacuum of destruction or suffering left by the "solution". The mistaken idea that we should devote our energies to improving capitalist society through reforms has led, certainly in absolute terms, to the most destructive century in history. What has been the most pernicious lie of the century? It is that hope for the future lay in the gradual, imperceptible, but certain amelioration of capitalism through the process of reform. The false hope of piecemeal improvement of an essentially cancerous system captured the imaginations of millions, exhausted their energies in the reformist struggle to humanise the profit system, and then left them dumbed by frustration. Whether the changes were to come through Holyrood or by gaining control of local councils or by humanitarian and "green" appeals for a nicer, gentler world, the system which puts profit before need has persistently spat the hope of humane capitalism back in the face of its advocates. The progressive enthusiasm of millions has been stamped out in this way. Dare we imagine how different it would have been if that energy—or even a half or a tenth of that energy—which has gone into reforming capitalism had gone into abolishing it? 

The Dawn and the Day is coming

Socialism is the doctrine for sharing and caring but for many people socialism is the philosophy of the ‘crazies’. The ruling class claim for themselves the mantle of progress, logic, truth, beauty, and knowledge. They represent socialists as deluded, irrational, psychotic, and hateful. But just look at these critics of socialism: the 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 grind the working class to dust beneath the wheels of the juggernaut of new technology. Are these people sane? Wise? Right? Benevolent? Reasonable? Only we socialists really take reason seriously. We are infinitely more rational than our class enemies. Socialists do not rape the Earth and do not worship Mammon at the expense of people and nature. This has made socialism the anathema of the ruling class, hence, they misunderstand and distort the ideas which reflects the class struggle. The only alternative is socialist revolution. Nothing is more impossible than the goal of self-survival on a ruined planet. There is a better way for suffering humanity–to go forward together to reestablish the democratic collective ownership of the means of producing life’s necessities.

It is practically impossible to make capitalism work rationally with a plan. The purpose of production always remains the same – how much is there in it for the owners of industry! The profit system recognizes no plans except one: private gain and the accumulation of even more gain. Our bosses has to exploit us in order to keep their own businesses making profit. In capitalist economics, the workers are reduced to a “resource” and a “cost item” to be kept to the absolute minimum through speedups, wage-cuts and layoffs. The bosses spend millions figuring out how to squeeze every possible ounce of labour out of us, for it is only out of our labor that they make their profits. Under capitalism, workers have no control over what is produced and how. All that is decided by how much profit some capitalist will gain. But socialism enables the working class to decide how to organise itself and the resources of society to meet the needs of the people. Socialism means workers are not at the mercy of the crises of capitalism. As long as profit for the few is the basis of the economic system, that system–capitalism–will continue to go from crisis to deeper crisis, with more misery for the majority of people.

Capital is simply money and commodities assigned to create a profit and be reinvested. Profit is made by the "magical" addition of surplus value to the value inherent in the product. The "added value," the profit, is produced by workers. The value of a commodity comes from the labour invested in it, including the labor that manufactured the machinery and extracted the raw materials used to create the item. And the boss' profits do not come from his smarts or his capital investment or his mark-up, but from the value created by labour - specifically, surplus-value. Surplus value derives from unpaid wages. The worker is never paid for the value of the product, only for the value of her or his labour time, which is considerably less, and which meanders widely depending upon the historical, cultural and social conditions of a country. Labour-power is miraculous, like the Virgin Birth. You get more out of it than you put in. Workers produce a commodity which has more value than what they get in wages to keep them functioning. This differential is surplus value, which is the source of capital. The secret of value, the labour theory of value, that was unearthed by the classical economists and by Marx is what the ruling classes fear and hate. It is the secret that will set the world free. People will learn how to control the supposedly sacred, eternal, and inscrutable method of production and distribution that now controls us.

Socialists will produce for use according to a reasonable plan and without a thought for the odious notion of profit. And with no insatiable parasitic class to maintain, socialist society will produce abundance for all. The global human family will arrange its standard of living as easily as affluent families do today.

Capitalism isn't directed by some sinister cabal, but by millions of individual owners. The whole system is coordinated through trade and the money prices that trade generates. Much engineering and manipulation and control through pacts does go on, but Marx pointed out the truly anarchistic nature of modern industrial capitalism - an irrational, disorganized hodge-podge operation that enormously rewards price fixers, crooks, gangsters, exploiters, con artists, gamblers, stock manipulators, and all manner of corruption. It's a crazy and ruthless economy that survives by inflicting anguish on untold billions. The underlying profit system is perpetuated by mostly unknown industrialists and financiers.

Today, millions challenge and protest. We have had enough of those patronising “radicals” who tells us that “You socialists are too impatient — Rome wasn’t built in a day.” After decades the working class is eventually becoming sophisticated enough to dare to revolt. Millions of people are learning to shed regressive prejudices and reactionary ideas. The socialist future is clearly within view for our epoch and our lives. What better use to make of one's life than in preparing that new civilization, the participation in the emancipation of humanity. We are no longer occupied with explaining defeats such as the 1917 Russian Revolution and rising above betrayals of all the reformist social-democrats. Not because we will have forgotten those, but simply because we are now focused upon fulfilling our role in creating a new world, rich with freedom, able to produce abundance while maintaining humane relations between people. Men and women intend to create a new society where everybody can stop being sheep start being human. You must play a part in bringing this about. Together, we must either change the world or be doomed by it. Together, we can win. Our mutual aid and shared support grows naturally out of our common experiences and joint actions. We are a movement with a goal. This world is ours, and you fight for what’s yours. The comradeship of fellow communists engaged in a common crusade is to be cherished. Our revolution is everybody’s revolution, and our revolution can and will be made, as the song puts it, with a little help from our friends.

Socialism is the ONLY answer!

 The future of humanity calls for an end of the profit system. Capitalism is an outmoded and exploitative system that needs to be changed for the salvation of humanity before it’s too late. We’d better learn and act now. Today the bosses own. Tomorrow the workers will own in common the means of production and would therefore be in a position to control and direct distribution in the interests of the majority of people. The working class must make its stand against the capitalist system – whose lust for profits and interest, for investments, markets and expanded capital, for raw materials and cheap exploitable labour, can mean only exploitation and abject wage slavery. Then ALL the peoples of the world will indeed be free.

With socialism, there will be no wages at all. There will be no prices or market in the sense of goods obtainable only on the basis of paying for them. Under socialism, men and women will receive a share of what has been produced by the common social labour. They will receive it on the basis of having participated in that social labour in one way or another, and not, as in capitalism, on the basis of the amount of expended energy which must be replenished. The latter is the way workers receives their “share” under capitalism; the capitalist receives his “share” because he owns the means of production and can buy the worker’s labour power. Under capitalism, workers, receives wages which simply go to refurbish him for another work-week or whatever. And so it goes on for the worker under capitalism – a continuous treadmill (perhaps only broken periods of unemployment or sickness. The exploitation of wage labour is the exploitation of one class by another class—the working class by the capitalist class—and is not necessarily the exploitation of the individual worker by his or her employer. Unless we understand this, the class struggle is only a meaningless phrase.

If you are a wage-working man or woman, your life is conditioned upon having access to a job; you must establish yourself as an employee to some employer. To establish this relationship you must possess something which the employer requires in the business in which he is engaged. You have the power to produce wealth—labour power. It is the only thing you have, but it is an essential factor in industry. In fact all capitalist industry is predicated upon the existence of men and women like you who have no other way to live, except by offering their life energy, labour power, for sale. The labour power of the workers in nearly all industrial occupations is used in connection with other expressions of power such as steam, electricity, gas, water, gasoline and horses. Labor power differs from these other powers in that it not only expends itself but expends itself intelligently and directs, controls and uses these other power expressions. The brain of the worker, as well as his arms and legs, is a factor of his labour power. The other powers would as likely injure as serve without the guidance of labour power. The worker sells his labor power and receives in return a wage, out of which he must provide the means of life for himself and his dependents. The boss buys labour power because he needs it to operate his establishment, whether that be a factory, a mine or a farm. The most up-to-date equipment is valueless as a means of producing wealth unless the magic influence of labour power sets it in operation. It is not a philanthropic motive that inspires the boss to employ the wage worker; it is because he must employ him, or fail in his enterprise. When he does employ the labourer he drives as hard a bargain as he can, which means that he will pay the laborer as little as the labourer will work for. But the least the labourer is inclined to accept, on the average, is a wage sufficient to maintain him and his family according to the standard of living obtaining among the workers. And this standard is what determines his wage. The labor time necessary to produce values equal to that required to maintain and reproduce the laborer sets the exchange value of his labor power, or the wage of the worker. As you will see later this is what determines the relation of all commodities to one another—the amount of socially necessary labour time contained in them—and, as labor power is a commodity, its exchange value is similarly determined. But labour power, unlike other commodities, besides being part of the worker is associated with the aspirations, hopes, ambitions and will of the owner. That is, as well as being a commodity, it has human attributes, and being inseparable from the labourer has the effect of reducing him to a commodity basis. In capitalist society he is not only a producer and seller of a commodity—labour power—but is himself practically a commodity—a package of labour power wrapped up in a human skin. As dead workers cannot be exploited it stands to reason that the workers must be kept alive if their exploitation is to continue. The boss is not at all concerned about how the workers live just so they are able to deliver to him the labour power for which he bargains with them. A favourite argument on behalf of capitalism is that “labour needs capital and capital needs labour.” This is not at all so, for capital in that connection is meant to disguise the capitalists. Labour does not need capital as capital. What labour needs, and will eventually have, is the instruments of production, without their character of capital. This character, which is a character imposed upon the means of production, the workers will destroy without injuring these tools, without so much as even scratching the paint on them. Only the instruments, without their capitalist ownership, are necessary to labour.

With socialism, goods are produced for people’s use and NOT for the profits which they bring in to bosses. Labour power is no longer regarded as a commodity to be bought and sold. It is not purchased at all, let alone purchased at the lowest possible price to keep it alive and able to produce more value. People, inside socialism, will work and produce useful goods. But they will produce these for their mutual needs and for their mutual development. The sufficiency of goods which people and machines can create will be given to men and women to develop their bodies so that their minds can grow rich in the wealth of human knowledge, esthetic appreciation and artistic creation. From day to day, from week to week, and from year to year, the spiral of possible individual activity will widen as human productive and intellectual achievements increase. Freed from the necessity of working for the bosses the time that each person must work will be small, yet the goods produced for all to enjoy will be plentiful. Once people have been freed from the capitalist system, they will also have been freed from wage labour, price and profit. That is why, instead of the conservative motto, “A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work,” workers must inscribe on their banner the REVOLUTIONARY watchword: “Abolition of the wage system!” Socialism is the ONLY answer!

Merry Marxmas, Comrades

There is Another Way

One of the basic proposition of socialists is that capitalism, even at its most liberal, remains a system of domination and exploitation. It is a system which involves the concentration of economic power, based on the private ownership and control of the main means of production and the maintenance and defence of this system possesses strong tendencies towards an ever-greater concentration of political power and a corresponding erosion of civic, political and democratic rights. There is an increasing centralisation of production and finance into fewer and fewer hands, while at the same time the dynamic of competition governs the system ever more ruthlessly as global corporate giants and anonymous financial markets compete over rates of profits. A vast reserve army of the unemployed has emerged even in the major capitalist countries. Old industries are abandoned or ‘rationalised’; and through constant mergers and speculation new areas of accumulation are fostered on a global scale. ‘Peripheral’ capitalist nations are weighed down by enormous debts, whose ‘recycling’ is accompanied by demands from creditors for ‘austerity’ measures on the part of the debtors; and these measures naturally fall most heavily upon already desperately impoverished populations. A ‘debt crisis’ continues to grow, and threatens to engulf the whole capitalist world in yet another economic cataclysm. All the while militarism is ever more blatantly a necessary prop of accumulation. Further still, the evidence grows daily of the undemocratic lengths to which capitalist governments are prepared to go to protect their interests and not only in foreign lands, but right at home domestically as the ‘strong state’ is combined with the ‘free market’. The ruling class seeks to its own view of how people should live – so that ‘virtue’ comes to mean accepting one’s social position, ‘honesty’ means leaving the rich to get richer, And the state, by using its power to try to make society cohere, in fact acts to make the exploited classes accept the rules laid down by the ruling class.

There is no doubt important differences between countries. More is done by way of welfare in Sweden than in Britain; and in Britain more than in the United States. But in all cases, social relations based on domination, exploitation and competition continued to structure the everyday experiences of the populations of advanced capitalist countries; and the reforms which were then achieved by dint of pressure and struggle remained limited by the social relations of capitalism. So long as the development of the welfare state and state intervention appeared to offer the possibility to alleviate some of the economic and social ills produced by the logic of capital accumulation for the majority, there are many people on the Left who believe capitalism could gradually be reformed out of existence by ‘incremental’ advances on many fronts. In short, the case for ‘gradualist reformism’ has been easier to make, even if the actual reforms that were achieved have serious limitations. Now, even these reforms need to be defended against the attacks and cuts. It is surely past argument that all such reforms, in the context of capitalism, are extremely conditional. The idea that reforms are in place forever once they are established and that the only remaining issue is the pace and scope of further advance, has been demonstrated to be no more than an illusion. Labour Parties have so far mainly sought legislation to regulate and constrain capitalist power but the point, however, is to dissolve it, and to replace it with a democratic, cooperative and egalitarian social system. The Keynesian welfare state reproduced the basic division between rulers and ruled, and did very little to tackle the undemocratic nature of capitalist democracy. Nor was it ever to be expected that it would or could.

Some critics of capitalism such as Richard Wolff and Gar Alperovitz talk about alternative socially useful production, based on the needs of society and (thus the needs of the employees and ordinary people.) alternative production is, not only what is to be produced, but also how it is to be produced. How the work is to be organised so that it’s not just fair but also pleasant. Within these new models of cooperative production goods shall be designed and manufactured more for the needs it fulfils than for the profit it might make and should not waste energy or resources, neither in its manufacture, nor in its use. The product should not harm the environment nor deprive workers of their initiative, creativity, or job satisfaction. Prosperity isn’t only higher living standards, but also the right to a meaningful job built upon the capability of workers to bring an endless wealth of ideas, knowledge and imagination.

The main lines of ‘new’ economic thinking emerge quite clearly. Wolff and Alperovitz have presented together two quite different things. At one level, they are concerned about propaganda about the superiority of life under socialism. This is nothing new and has always formed an important part of the socialist case. The other thing that they have done is to suggest an alternative for production under capitalism. Even if the alternative model of production is established in this or that factory it will not and cannot insulate the working class from the consequences of the compelling drive of capitalism to make profits and to increase profits. Capitalists, capitalist states, even worker-directors, cannot break loose from that objective necessity of speed-up, sackings, replacement of human beings by machines, cutting corners on health and safety, etc., etc., for that is the logic of the capitalist system itself. The dream of alternative production is not a panacea which neatly skirts all of these real constraints. There are two results from this alleged cure-all. First, the question of commercial viability is introduced into the argument by the workers themselves. Second, it hands to all other employers a golden opportunity for diverting the prospect of struggle into one of negotiation where a wonderful store of initiative and imagination is opened up to them, a host of new possibilities for profitable production are presented. But of course, they will grasp it in their own way. Reformism is strengthened by giving workers a place in the capitalist economic system through the development and articulation of cooperatives, but such is not the road to a socialist revolution by the working class. Socialists have always argued the case for alternative production in one sense: the idea that in a socialist society production will be for need and not for profit. Devoting time, energy and resources to drawing up detailed plans for such production in a capitalist society will ultimately be disillusioning and demoralising at best or strengthen capitalism at worst.

Strange Growth?

Engineering and construction giant, SNC-Lavalin plans to lay off four thousand workers next year, including one thousand in Canada. The Montreal based company claims this is to help the company grow. To quote CEO, Robert Card, "It may be ironic, but it's a growth move. We have a target to become a $15 billion company in the near future and that's going to generate jobs." Imagine how gratifying that must seem to those about to be laid off in the 'near future'. John Ayers

What holiday?

Low-income families should be given help to cope with increased emotional and financial pressures over the school holidays, a Child Poverty Action Group report, commissioned by Glasgow Life - an arms-length body of Glasgow City Council, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and the Glasgow Centre for Population Health said. Some families felt the strain when free school meals were not available. This could be exacerbated when working hours were cut for childcare reasons and families resorted to borrowing. The research highlighted the problems posed by the extra costs of feeding children over school holiday periods when free school lunches were no longer available. Lack of affordable childcare, leading to reduced working hours was also identified as an issue. The report states that subsidised travel and free activities and lunches could help struggling families.

John Dickie, director of the Child Poverty Action Group in Scotland, said "The pressures low-income families face are magnified during school holidays," he said. "It's harder for parents to juggle work and childcare and it's harder to feed, clothe and keep children warm, never mind give them the kind of holiday experience better off families take for granted.” 

Many families also reported borrowing money during holidays to pay for the additional costs of heating and clothing. Parents also spoke of the guilt they experienced at not being able to meet children's expectations.

One parent told researchers: "You are living just to survive not to actually live a valued life. You just have to live through each day and thank God it's one less."

Another added "It's worse at Christmas when it's cold and I have to put more money in my gas to heat my house. When the kids are in school I don't use my heating and I save it for them coming home." 

The Labour Party is not, and has never been, a Socialist Party (1977)

From the June 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent furore in the press and within the Labour Party itself over whether the Party will admit to its ranks “Marxists” has been the cause of much debate concerning the origins of Labourism. Tony Benn, a member of the Government, defended the notion that Marxism has had a strong influence in developing the Labour Party. Benn’s claim is spurious and unfounded: the rejection of Marxism, and hence revolution, fated Labour to follow a reformist path leading to the inevitable disillusionment of its members.

Most of Labour’s early leaders if asked what books were seminal in shaping their views of society would probably mention John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Henry George’s Progress and Poverty, the Bible. If Capital was mentioned at all it would come a long way down the list. In fact, it has been claimed that the Labour Party owes more to the writings of the founder of Methodism, John Wesley, than to the founder of scientific Socialism, Karl Marx. Keir Hardie, founder of the Independent Labour Party, said: “I claim for Socialism that it is the embodiment of Christianity in our industrial system,” It was said of Hardie’s meetings that they often began with a hymn, followed by a lesson, and concluded with a prayer.

The Labour Party’s view of society at its foundation was not an economic analysis of capitalism. The capitalist system was bad because it was run by hard-faced politicians who were indifferent to social evils, and not because of its economic laws which placed the pursuit of profit above all else. Therefore, the solution to the problems of society lay in removing these men from; office and replacing them with a more decent set who would, by reforms, abolish the poor, feed the hungry, etc.

This was a denial of reality. No party, however well-intentioned, could hope to spirit away the essential basis of capitalism, whilst at the same time acting as custodian of that very system. The only option was to change society in a revolutionary way and this was rejected out of hand by the Labourites. Thus, having no Marxist outlook, it was understandable that Labour leaders would find working with the avowedly capitalist Liberals no hardship (it still is the case). Ramsay MacDonald, the first Labour Prime Minister, said he could see “no profound” gulf between Liberalism and Socialism. He argued that socialism was to be furthered by the close collaboration of men of goodwill from all [sic] classes on the basis of “conceptions of right and wrong” common to all. Keir Hardie’s hatred of class strife was a direct result of his Christian beliefs and Liberal upbringing.

The Labourites from the beginning shied away from the fact that the working class’s interests were diametrically opposed to those of the capitalists. In fact they held firmly to the principles of free-trade Liberalism. Keir Hardie himself left the Liberal Party not because he found the policies of Gladstone distasteful, but as a result of the way the local party branch chose its parliamentary candidates; a method which excluded working men. Hardie affirmed his still-felt affinity for Liberalism when he stood for election as an independent labour candidate in 1892. His election manifesto stated: “Generally I am in agreement with the present programme of the Liberal Party.” So much was Liberalism the cornerstone of much of the early ILP ideology that the Manchester Guardian could say, in 1901, of its annual conference: “what must strike a liberal . . . is, one would say, how much of the proceedings are devoted to the advocacy of traditional Liberal principles.”

When it came to deciding what Hardie’s party was to be called, the 1893 Conference rejected the idea of naming the new party the Socialist Labour Party, for in the words of Katherine Conway: “The new party has to appeal to an electorate, which has as yet no full understanding of Socialism.” This opportunistic approach to the working-class electorate has characterized the Labourites from the earliest times. Its refusal to commit itself to definite principles was the nearest it ever got to having principles, Henry Pelling, the historian, has argued in his book The Origins of the Labour Party that by adopting the broad, indefinite title of the ILP, the party was only reflecting the fact that most of its support lay in local parties and union branches which were not committed to socialism. The object of these bodies was to build a parliamentary party on the basis of social reform, not social revolution. The eight-hour day, abolition of overtime, old-age pensions, and so on, were prominent amongst the ILP’s early demands. Their allies in this were to be trade unions.

This appeal to trade unions proved ultimately successful. It was union support which saved the infant Labour party. For in the general election of the late 1890’s all the Labour candidates had been defeated, polling 44,000 votes in all, and the ILP was on the verge of bankruptcy.

But the unions were not attracted by overthrowing capitalism and replacing it with Socialism. What interested them most was the creation of a political party which would safeguard their immediate existence by using parliament to pass favourable legislation. This would have been entrusted to the Liberals, as traditionally had been the case. However, they had allowed the employers to organize strike-breaking organizations, especially in the docks, they had voted against the eighth-hour day demand, they had watched without a murmur the Taff Vale case of 1900. It was disillusionment with Liberalism and not capitalism which forced the unions to throw in their lot with Labour.

During the period between 1906 and 1914, the Labour mps merely acted as a pressure group, prepared to barter their vote for small, piecemeal legislative measures advancing the cause of trade unionism, and in this they were reasonably successful. For example, they secured the repeal of the Taff Vale judgement in the Trades Disputes Act of 1906. However, Labour was normally content to follow the Liberal lead at this time, which led it to be described as the “handmaiden of liberalism.”

Let us turn to another group concerned in the formation of the Labour Party, the Fabians. They were a group of well-to-do intellectuals, George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Sidney and Beatrice Webb amongst them. It was the Fabians who, in Britain, made socialism synonymous with the state. They made the remarkable discovery that in the wasteland of capitalism there were patches of socialism in the form of public baths, parks, playfields, cemeteries, washhouses and public conveniences. Even the War Office and Scotland Yard had for them the character of socialist institutions. Another of their brilliant contributions was the theory of gradualism: the official socialism of the Labour Party. Finding words like “revolution” alien to their vocabulary, the Fabians argued that socialism was to evolve almost imperceptibly over many years, until one night everyone would go to bed (except those on nightshift) and in the morning they would wake up inside socialism. To quote Keir Hardie, Socialism would come “like a thief in the night”. The main agent for this unconscious change in society—no one was to be aware it was occurring, except the Fabians — was to be the state. Attempts at putting this theory into practice via nationalization have not brought Socialism one inch nearer, neither have they reduced class conflict—witness the recent bitter battles with the miners.

The emphasis it placed upon working within the capitalist system, meant that the Labour Party was open to all sorts of social reformers and cranks. Trade unionists, dissatisfied Liberals, well-to-do philanthropists, and out-and-out careerists saw in the Labour Party a meal-ticket. A direct result of the influx of the intellectuals and managerial types was the ousting of working people from the representative positions in the party. By 1945, Arthur Greenwood, Labour’s Lord Privy Seal, could say approvingly: “I look around my colleagues and I see landlords, capitalists and lawyers. We are a cross section of the national life, and this is something that has never happened before.” (Hansard, 17th August 1945)

Thus in the origins of the Labour Party we can see the seeds of future failures. The Labour Party has not brought Socialism about because from the outset it never was a Socialist party. It sought to win votes on the basis of social reform and not social revolution. Any socialists who might have existed in the Labour ranks at that time were swamped by non-socialists, who dictated the party’s course along essentially reformist and capitalist lines. Any notion that once into office the Labourites could take the capitalist dog for a walk has been subsequently shown to be false. The dog has taken them for a long walk down the road of power politics and social evils. Support of two world wars, presiding over massive unemployment, etc., has been the sorry outcome for a party, which failed to realize that capitalism can only be run in the interests of the capitalist class. It was not a question of good men with Christian principles, but of socialist economics.

Bill Knox

(formerly of Edinburgh Br)

Eating In A Public Place.

On November 6, Arnold Abbot was arrested in Fort Lauderdale for violating a city ordinance – feeding the homeless in a public place. This law was passed and enforced because people with businesses do not want the homeless hanging around their area. This is not a new thing. In the 1930s in Canadian cities, Department stores such as Eaton's and Simpson's prevailed on Ottawa to open labour camps in the outback for the same reason. But, new or old, one thing is for sure, it's the same old system. John Ayers.

Out Of Touch Govenor

Most of you who read this will be aware of the comments made by Stephen Poloz, the Governor of the Bank of Canada, on November 4. He suggested that unemployed youth should work for free until the job market picks up. His remarks came a day after a speech he made saying 200,000 young Canadians are out of work, underemployed or back in school. What he didn't say was that many of them need money desperately to survive and pay for courses. It was one of the most stupid and irresponsible things a person high up in the capitalist hierarchy has said in a long time. It is a searing indictment of capitalism that the higher one rises, the further out of touch with economic reality he/she is likely to become. John Ayers.

Socialism is a good idea...but

Socialism is a good idea, but “it doesn't work in practice…” and “people are too greedy for it to succeed…” and “the rich and powerful will never allow it to happen.” We’ve have all these refutations to which is added “it's the only system that works…” and “don't waste your life trying to change things…”

Imagine if you wanted to start a society and proposed that those who do all the work will be paid as little as possible while those who claimed to own most things didn't do anything but would have more of everything. Capitalism is a bad idea for the well-being of society. Socialism is more rational. Growing numbers are concluding that capitalism doesn't work.

The ruling class have abandoned the rest of us to survival status, without jobs, without security, without hope. We get the crumbs off their table. Reformism both expresses an abandonment of revolutionary aims and the adoption of bourgeois party politics. The reformist tactic is the acceptance of gradualism. Reformism offers no hope of creating a labour movement that can in fact bring socialism about. The oligarchs and plutocrats amass fortunes, unaware of the millions starving to death, living without clean water and dying from preventable illnesses, all in their wake. The media offer stories about the good works of billionaires to make us think they are somehow special people. Bill Gates, they tell us, is a grand fellow, as is Warren Buffet and Jeff Bezos with their “charitable give-aways.”  If they were sincere about wanting to make a better world, they would do the one thing that would bring immense change and form a mass-media network, waking up the citizens of the planet to the need for social revolution.

The achievement of socialism awaits the building of a mass base of socialists, in factories and offices. Capitalism must be replaced by socialism, by the common ownership of the means of production and distribution in the interests of the people as a whole. A socialist democracy implies mankind's control of the immediate environment as well, and in any strategy for building socialism, community democracy is as vital as the struggle for electoral success. To that end, socialists must strive for democracy at those levels that most directly affect us all — in our neighbourhoods and our places of work, promoting decentralisation, and restoring human and social priorities. By bringing men and women together primarily as buyers and sellers of each other, by enshrining profitability and material gain in place of humanity, capitalism has always been inherently alienating. A socialist transformation of society will return mankind to its sense of humanity, to replace its sense of being a commodity. The process of socialist education is the raising of consciousness, the building the numbers of socialists, and a strategy to make visible the limits of capitalism. Victory lies in joining the struggle. Socialists should get together to discuss the path ahead.

The Socialist Party v. The Communist Party. A Debate (1931)

 From the August 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

About four hundred people were present at Chalmers Street, Clydebank, on Wednesday, May 27th, to hear a debate between the Communist Party of Great Britain and the S.P.G.B. The subject for debate was, “Which Policy should the working class support at the Present Period of Crisis, that of the C.P.G.B. or that of the S.P.G.B." Mr. J. Cunningham occupied the chair.

The Chairman intimated that the conditions of debate would be: first speech twenty minutes, second speech fifteen minutes, and a closing speech of five minutes. All “personalities” barred.

A. Shaw, on behalf of the S.P.G.B., opened the debate by defining terms. By working class was meant those who had to sell their labour-power to the capitalist class in order to live. By capitalist class was meant those who bought the labour-power of the workers. Capital was that portion of wealth used with a view to profit. The working class desired to sell their labour power at as high a figure as they could possibly obtain, while the capitalist endeavoured to purchase as low as possible. The private ownership of the means of living provided the basis for a struggle which Socialists termed the class struggle.

The class struggle had two aspects—economic and political. Workers form organisations on the economic field (Trade Unions) in order to make organised resistance to capitalist attacks on wages and working conditions, but in spite of all efforts put forth by them on this field their conditions tend to become worse. The class struggle would go on so long as the capitalist system of society existed.

Under such conditions the workers are doomed to a life of poverty, degradation and misery. The means of production are developed to such an extent at the present time, that all kinds of goods could be produced almost as plentifully as water. Yet we had the absurd state of affairs of workers starving in the midst of plenty. In America, in the State of Ohio, wheat was being burned in order to keep up prices. Around us the factories and granaries were bursting with the necessities of life while the producers went ill-clad, ill-nourished and ill-housed. This being the state of affairs, workers organised on the political field in order to better their conditions. Lacking knowledge of the cause of their terrible plight, the workers fell easy victims to smooth-tongued orators who enlisted their support for any and every policy but that which would free them from their poverty-stricken condition.

The I.L.P., the Labour Party, and the Communist Party had programmes which they claimed would benefit the working class. The Socialist Party of Great Britain also had a programme, but unlike the programmes of the Parties mentioned, which wish to reform the present order in certain details, the Socialist programme was one of Social Revolution. Nothing short of the complete abolition of capitalism and the establishment of Socialism would serve the interest of the working class.

The Communist Party spread confusion among the workers by advocating such nostrums as a £4 minimum wage and a six-hour working day, abolition of the House of Lords, &c. Their policy changed so often that it was difficult at times to know where they stood. As an example of this, his (Shaw’s) opponent and others, as Communist candidates in Glasgow, recently advocated a £3 minimum and a seven-hour day. Having failed to get working class support for their reforms at previous elections the Communist Party had reduced this particular reform from £4 to £3 a week. There was no difference between tactics such as these and of those used by Labour politicians to whom Communists professed to be opposed.

For years the Communist Party had been telling the workers that Socialism was in being in Russia. This was false. The workers in that country were at the present time producing commodities for sale and being exploited as in other capitalist countries. Capitalism, not Socialism, was developing in Russia. The social relations of wage-labour and capital were the order of the day in Russia and were developing under the name of the Five Year Plan.

The Five Year Plan (much boosted by Communists) was merely a step taken in the Industrialising of Russia, and Industrialisation would develop in Russia as it had done in any other country—at the expense of the worker.

The majority of the population of Russia were peasants, with the peasant individualistic outlook, and largely illiterate. It was difficult enough to get the workers of western capitalist countries to understand Socialism (where all the conditions were favourable and reflected this idea) but how much more difficult would it be in such a backward country as Russia?

Russia held out no example to the workers of Britain or any other capitalist country of how to establish Socialism. On the contrary, as Marx had pointed out many years ago in the preface to his work “Capital,” the more highly developed country held out to the lesser developed the image of its own future.

The position of the Socialist Party was that Socialism could only come about by the intelligent action of an enlightened working class, organised in a Revolutionary Socialist organisation to get control of the State machine for that purpose. No reforms or palliative measures could be advocated by such a Party to side-track the workers, therefore he (Shaw) would ask, the workers present to support such a policy and reject the reformist and muddled policy of the Communist Party of Great Britain.

THE COMMUNIST PARTY’S CASE.

Peter Kerrigan, on behalf of the Communist Party of Great Britain, stated that he agreed with his opponent that the abolition of capitalism was the only hope of the workers. At the present stage of capitalist development we were in a period of permanent crisis. The policy of the Communist Party was framed to apply to conditions as they were at present. The Communist Party took part in all the struggles of the working class, hence their programme had to be broad enough to cover all details of working class life. The representative of the S.P.G.B. was in error when he referred to the programme of the Communist Party as a programme of reforms. Since capitalism, to-day, was at the stage where it could not grant the demands of the workers, those so-called reforms were revolutionary in character. The immediate needs of the workers were of more importance than the abstract theories of the S.P.G.B. By lining up with the workers in every struggle we would ultimately arrive at unity. We could get unity only by preaching what the workers wanted. A seven-hour day was a need of our class; therefore we ought to advocate it and organise the workers for it. The masters were lowering wages; therefore we should strive with the workers in order that wage-cuts be resisted. Marx in “Value, Price and Profit ” made this quite clear. In the day to day struggle of the workers the S.P.G.B. were of no assistance.

Shaw had stated that capitalism was the order of the day in Russia.  Such a statement showed that his opponent did not understand the Russian situation. Socialism was being built in Russia. A workers’ government was in control there, and there was no unemployment. The workers being in control of their own affairs were better off.

There were three systems of economy in Russia : 1 Handicraft in backward areas, 2 Concessions (under control of the Workers’ State), 3 Socialist economy. The Socialist economy was fast ousting the Concessionaires and abolishing handicraft. The workers granted concessions to outside capitalists, only in order to develop Russian industry.

Lenin had shown that the workers here could learn many valuable lessons from Russia, and, while learning those lessons, they should give Russia every assistance possible.

The S.P.G.B. wanted the workers to get control of the State. Marx said that the State machine must be broken and replaced by a Workers’ State. So much for the Marxism of the S.P.G.B. !

Did the S.P.G.B. think that the masters would allow them to peacefully achieve their goal? He (Kerrigan) did not think so. The whole of the past history was against such a theory. The workers must be armed and establish the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. This meant a new form of the State and would be the fullest Democracy.

The programme, as outlined by the speaker, was. the correct policy for a revolutionary workers’ party, and he would ask the workers present to support it.

SOCIALIST PARTY REPLY.

Shaw, for the next fifteen minutes, dealt with the points raised by the Communist speaker. First of all, he said, Kerrigan seemed to think that by merely asserting a proposition, it was so. He would remind his opponent, that he who puts forward a proposition must back it up with evidence.

His opponent had stated that the programme of the Communist Party was framed to deal with the immediate needs of the workers. This plea had been put forward by reformers of all shades of opinion. Conservatives, Liberals and Labourites had used this plea with disastrous effect on the workers who accepted it. If the workers accepted the Communist plea the effect would be no less disastrous. His opponent had failed to show how any of the planks of the Communist programme could alter the position of the workers, if any, or all of them, were put on the Statute Book. The workers would still be in poverty, would still be slaves to those who own the means of life. If unity could be achieved by this method, it certainly would not be unity for Socialism.

So far as wages disputes were concerned, the S.P.G.B., being of the working class, had of necessity to take part in this every-day struggle. Who could avoid it if they be workers. The columns of the official organ of the Socialist Party, the “Socialist Standard,” were used to point out the correct tactics to be adopted, as conditions determined, in such struggles. At the same time the limitations of such struggles were pointed out.

There was nothing revolutionary in fighting a wages battle with the employers. People holding all kinds of political opinions, from the die-hard Tory to the blow-hard Labourite, took part in such fights and did not desire Socialism; many, on the contrary, were strongly opposed to anything suggestive of Socialism.

His opponent had made the assertion that Socialism was being built in Russia, but had failed to submit any evidence of his assertion. When such evidence was produced it would be dealt with.

Arming the workers to smash the State had been put forward by his opponent as a means of Social Revolution, but he had not informed us where the workers were to obtain arms, and who was to train them. And did he think the masters in the meantime would stand idly by, perhaps putting a donation into their collection boxes in order to assist them? The advocacy of physical force was a suicidal policy. The workers were no match for the trained disciplined forces of the State. If the workers in Clydebank were to attempt to defy the State forces in the manner advocated by the Communist Party it would mean an early grave for them. A couple of battleships on the Clyde could turn Clydebank into a cemetery in the twinkling of an eye, and would do so if the workers there ever attempted to put into practice the nonsense taught by the Communist Party. This policy would lead to the shambles, not to emancipation. Engels, in his preface to Marx's "Class Struggles in France," had pointed out, over thirty years ago, that he who would advocate street fighting and violent uprisings was an idiot, yet hero we had the Communist Party advocating that workers should fight the State forces. The development of the technique of modern warfare itself was sufficient to fender this method obsolete and impossible.

The only sane, safe and sure method of overthrowing capitalism was, as Engels pointed out, to control the armed forces by getting control of the State machine. This was the Marxian method, the method of the S.P.G.B.

SECOND SPEECH FOR THE COMMUN1ST PARTY.
Peter Kerrigan, in his next fifteen minutes contribution, stated that he was surprised that Shaw, instead of wasting time by accusing his opponent of making baseless assertions about Russia, had not given the audience some data from authoritative sources to show, that Russia was a capitalist country. Shaw’s accusations on this score also applied to himself.

Russia, to-day, was in a period of transition to Socialism. The State industries there are Socialist forms and are developing. There is no unemployment. He would like to know where the industries are, in Russia, owned by capitalists. Shaw could not tell us, because there are none owned by capitalists. All industries there are owned by the people. The Constitution in Russia was the most Democratic that had ever been established. This Constitution gave the workers full control.

Surplus-Value in Russia goes back to the people via the channel of Social Services, and was used to better the conditions of the worker all round. Hours of labour were shortened and wages were increased. It was only a matter of time before the workers of this country realised the great changes that had taken place in Russia, that one-sixth of the globe were establishing Socialism in spite of world opposition.

His opponent was opposed to the idea of workers fighting the armed forces of the nation, but he would assure them that this job was not so ghastly as it appeared to be. The Communist Party was carrying on a campaign of propaganda among the troops which was very successful.

Shaw’s reference to Engels’s preface in no way assisted him, as it had been proven, since that preface had been written, that the manuscript had been altered in some details by Bernstein. . Bernstein himself had admitted that he had altered Engels’s work.

On the question of a country struggling for the rights of nationality, he would remind his opponent that Marx had supported the Germans against the French in 1870. Then, again, Marx had enthused for workers using physical force whilst writing for the "New Rhenish Gazette.”

The workers could not get their emancipation through Parliament. Before allowing the workers to do so the ruling class would abolish this institution. When the workers of Ireland had voted solid for Home Rule they were ignored. The same thing happened in Egypt and other countries. The workers here would have to do as the workers of Ireland had to do —take up arms.

LAST SPEECH FOR THE S.P.G.B.

Shaw, in his closing speech of five minutes, reviewed the ground covered by him and his opponent. The time allotted to both speakers was inadequate for them to deal in detail with the differences which existed between the S.P.G.B. and the C.P.G.B. Both speakers had to deal with the positions of their respective organisations in a general way. However, enough had been said to make it clear that only by workers becoming class-conscious, organising for control of political power as advocated by the Socialist Party of Great Britain could they win their emancipation. Any other method was doomed to failure. Socialism was the only hope of the workers, hence the ‘ Socialist Party would go on advocating and organising for it, refusing to be side-tracked and refusing to follow the Will-o’-the-wisp of Social Reform as the Communists were doing.

LAST SPEECH OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY.

Kerrigan, in winding up the debate, wished to emphasize the fact that fighting for "immediate demands ” was in no sense of the word reformist. The development of capitalism had made reforms a thing of the past. The I.L.P. and the Labour Movement promised the workers reforms but were not delivering the goods, and could not. The Communist Party, on the other hand, recognised the revolutionary significance of pressing forward with their programme of "immediate demands,” as by this method they would go forward to the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. It was only by paying attention to the details of working class life and framing our programme accordingly that we would go forward to Communism. Mr. Cunningham, the chairman, after a few remarks on the able manner in which the participants in the debate had put forward their positions, threw the meeting open for questions, a large number of which were answered by the two speakers.

This was the first time the position of the S.P.G.B. was put before a Clydebank audience, many of whom had never even heard of the Party’s existence, and on hearing the position for the first time received it in a manner which could only be described as "enthusiastic.” Many of them expressed a wish to hear more of the Socialist Party case, as they had become disgusted with the Labour Party and considered that the Communist Party was no better. At the request of several workers, we decided to remain in Clydebank until evening and hold a propaganda meeting. This meeting was held and was so successful that Glasgow Branch decided, to continue holding meetings in Clydebank during the summer.

Since the debate, we have held another meeting in Clydebank and our literature sales there have doubled. With persistent effort we hope to, in the near future, put Clydebank on the Socialist map, by forming a Branch of the Party there.

WILLIAM FALCONER,

Glasgow Branch Organiser.

Note.—In order not to allow inaccurate statements to gain currency we deal briefly with four assertions made by the representative of the Communist Party which our representative did not have time to deal with fully. (1) P. Kerrigan said :— 

The S.P.G.B. wanted the workers to get control of the State. Marx said that the State machine must be broken and replaced by a Workers' State. So much for the Marxism of the S.P.G.B. 

The implication of Kerrigan's assertion is that Marx did not urge the workers to get control of the State machinery. This is quite incorrect. Two brief quotations will suffice to show that the Marxian position is that held by the. S.P.G.B., i.e. that the workers must use the vote to obtain control of the political machinery.

Marx, in an article on the Chartist Movement, published by the “New York Tribune,” on 25th August, 1852, wrote:— 

“The six points of the Charter which they contend for contain nothing but the demand of universal suffrage. . . . But universal suffrage is the equivalent for political power for the working class of England, where the proletariat form the large majority of the population. . . . Its inevitable result here, is the political supremacy of the working class.”—(Republished in the "Labour Monthly,” December, 1929.)

Engels, Marx’s intimate friend, wrote in "Socialism, Utopian and Scientific ” (Sonnenshein edition, 1892, p. 86):—

The proletariat seizes the public power, and by means of this transforms the socialised means of production, slipping from the hands of the bourgeoise, into public property.

It may be remarked here that Lenin, in his "The State and Revolution” (B.S.P. and S.L.P. Edition, October, 1919, page 30) gave support to this policy. He wrote:—

The proletariat needs the State, the centralised organisation of force and violence, both for the purpose of crushing the resistance of the exploiters and for the purpose of guiding the great mass of the population . . .  in the work of economic Socialist reconstruction."

(2) Kerrigan claimed that in Russia there are no industries "owned by capitalists. All industries there are owned by the people.” He was not referring to the concession companies (which he admitted are capitalist owned) but to the so-called "Socialist ” State industries and collective farms. What Kerrigan overlooks is that the State industries in Russia, like the Post Office in this country, are financed on borrowed capital; they are a source from which the investor draws interest on his investment, out of the product of the worker’s labour. The original estimates of the Russian Government were for the raising of 6,000 million roubles (£600 million) for the Five Year Plan. This; with loans already outstanding would have increased the national debt to £750 millions at the end of the financial year 1932-33. (See Review of Bank for Russian Trade, June, 1929.) Actually the original estimates will be greatly exceeded. The above figures do not include credits obtained outside Russia and estimated at about £100 millions. Nor do they include investments of capital in the Russian Co-operatives, or the capital brought into the collective farms, by the peasants in the form of animals and machinery.

The interest paid on State loans is 10% or more. The interest on tens of millions of pounds of co-operative capital is 8%. The interest paid to farmers on their capital brought into the collective farms is 5%. (See “ Manchester Guardian,” 4th March, 1931. Article by the Moscow correspondent.)

(3) Kerrigan further claimed that Engels preface to Marx’s "Class Struggles in France 1848-1850 ” had been “altered in some details by Bernstein,” and that ” Bernstein himself had admitted that he had altered Engels’s work.” The mention of Bernstein is puzzling. Kerrigan's probably here thinking not of Bernstein but of a statement made by Engels himself in a letter to Kautsky to the effect that he had exercised restraint in the phrasing of his preface because of the possibility of the German Government re-enacting the anti-socialist laws. But the deduction drawn by some Communists is absurd. To suppose that Engels would avoid provocative phrases in the existing circumstances is reasonable; but it is not reasonable to suppose that Engels would categorically and in detail analyse and reject the idea of armed revolt as lunacy, and explicitly assert on the contrary that “bourgeoisie and Government feared far more the legal than the illegal action of the workers’ party, more the successes of the elections than those of rebellion,” if in fact he held precisely the opposite view. There is no foundation whatever for the view that Marx and Engels favoured the suicidal Communist policy of unarmed workers throwing themselves against the State and its armed forces. Such a policy is now even more impracticable than it was when Engels wrote in 1895.

(4) The assertion that Marx supported the Germans against the French in 1870 has no foundation in fact. In the first Manifesto of the International on that war he wrote:

On the German side, the war is a war of defence; but who put Germany to the necessity of defending itself? Who enabled Louis Bonaparte to wage war upon her? Prussia! It was Bismarck who conspired with that very same Louis Bonaparte for the purpose of crushing popular opposition at home, and annexing Germany to the Hohenzollen dynasty. If the battle of Sadowa had been lost instead of being won, French battalions would have over-run Germany as allies of Prussia. After her victory did Prussia dream one moment of opposing a free Germany to an enslaved France? Just the contrary. While carefully preserving all the native beauties of her old system, she super added all the tricks of the Second Empire, its real despotism, and its mock democratism, its political shams, and its financial jobs, its high-flown talk and its low legerdemains. The Bonapartist régime, which till then only flourished on one side of the Rhine, had now got its counterfeit on the other. From such a state of things, what else could result but war? . . . . . . . . The very fact that while official France and Germany are rushing into a fratricidal feud, the workmen of France and Germany send other messages of peace and good will; this great fact, unparalleled in the history of the past, opens the vista of a brighter future.

The above is dated "London, July 23rd, 1870."

Ed., Comm.

The Socialist Truth

PAYING HOMAGE TO THE ROBBER BARONS

Capitalist politicians on the TV, radio and newspapers have been running their mouth endlessly about the glories of “democracy,” “liberty,” and “national pride.” This giant sales pitch for capitalism is part and parcel of the ruling class preparations for war. They’re trying to whip up nationalism for war in Syria. But for all the air-time the ruling class is putting into it, they aren’t getting their war-mongering message over. Many see right through it. In the past decade, the working class has struggled against the war in Afghanistan and Iraq and the economic recession that have landed us in the deepest crisis since the 1930s Great Depression, and has seen the ruling class exposed in deceit after deceit. The workers’ complete disdain for this barrage of capitalist lies is a show of resistance and the strength of our class. We are unwilling to starve any longer while doing the world’s drudgery, in order to support by our poverty. It shows how we learn from our own experience in class struggle.  It also shows that the Socialist Party must use these lessons to show the need for socialism to the workers and the need to build the genuine socialist party of the working class. Most people in the world still struggle daily for food, clothing, and shelter. While a relative handful of people grow ever richer, the vast majority of people face a rapidly declining standard of living. We will make the world listen to the facts of our condition.

The Socialist Party rejects the Leninist view of the vanguard ‘communist’ party. We do not believe that a single party can or should determine the direction, strategy and tactics of the class struggle. We reject the idea that fundamental change can or should come about through a seizure of power by a vanguard party claiming to act in the interests of the working class and the majority of society. We reject the goal of what is misconstrued as the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” We reject the view that a single party can use its claim to represent the working class as a substitute for multi-party democracy and free elections. We are opposed to dictatorship in any and all forms, and we recognize that the application of this principle has in every case meant that a minority acts for and defines the interests of the majority of society. Such a view is antithetical to a belief in genuine democracy. We believe that fundamental will take the support of the majority of people who will demonstrate in some verifiable way (such as through voting) that they want such a change. We do not pretend to have a blueprint for a new and better society nor the road-map on how to get there yet we do possess a vision of a better society and general agreement on how to achieve it. At the same time, we believe that the options for change calls for re-examination and debates over possible new approaches. Socialists understand that we will have to travel new paths, and establish new sign-posts, while under the fire of our class enemies, of reformism. An open discussion of all these questions will be of great assistance to the whole revolutionary movement.

Salmond Finally Dumps Trump

Donald Trump preys on American voters’ fears over immigration and the perceived threat of terrorism. Fear was also a factor when Trump came to Scotland in 2007 – he preyed on politicians’ fears that North Sea oil was running out. Business leaders in Aberdeen responded to his promise of 6,000 jobs through the building of a luxury Trump golf resort, as “the second coming of oil”. And one of the first in line to talk up the development was Alex Salmond.

Last week, the former Scotland first minister, Alex Salmond,  branded Donald Trump “three times a loser” after the UK supreme court rejected the billionaire’s attempt to block the construction of a wind farm near his golf course. Back in 2007, when Trump first detailed plans for his $1.5bn luxury resort on the rare sand dunes that form part of the Menie estate, Salmond was busy courting Trump. The development was in his Gordon constituency, after all.

Every credible environmental group in the land was objecting to the Trump development, warning that it would destroy a protected site of special scientific interest (SSSI), but Salmond was wining and dining with Trump in New York. The scientists said the unique, moving dunes on which Trump wanted to build were “the crown jewels” of our natural heritage. Yet Salmond appeared on TV news programmes defending the development, saying environmental concerns were outweighed by the economic benefits and the thousands of jobs that would flow from it. Aberdeenshire council threw out Trump’s plans in November 2007 but Salmond subsequently met Trump representatives at an Aberdeen hotel. Shortly afterwards, his government “called in” the Trump proposal, claiming it was “in the national interest” of Scotland for the development to receive consideration through a government-backed inquiry. A year later, the golf development was given the green light by Salmond’s cabinet secretary for finance, John Swinney.

In 2009, bulldozers swiftly moved on to an environmentally sensitive site and began ripping up trees and burying them in crater-like holes. Trump was giving press conferences where he accused a local farmer, Michael Forbes, of living like “a pig”, and called his home “a slum”, threatening to pull the plug on a planned luxury hotel for the resort if Forbes “didn’t clean up his property”. Another local resident, Susan Munro, explained to me on camera how she had been forced to spreadeagle over the bonnet of her car by Trump security guards, while attempting to reach her home. At the crack of dawn, an army of diggers lurched into action to build a massive wall of earth around the home of resident David Milne, whose house Trump said he wanted to get rid of. In the summer of 2010, Trump’s workers had accidentally cut off the water to the homes of Michael Forbes and his wife Sheila, and of Michael’s mother Molly, which is served by a private well. Yet Molly, who is now 91 years old, was forced to retrieve her water from a nearby stream with a bucket and push it to her home in a wheelbarrow. Despite claims from the Trump Organisation that it would restore the Forbes’ water, this appalling situation continues to this day. What has Salmond done to help her? Nothing. The Trump Organisation claims it is not their problem. So does the Scottish government. While all this was going on, Salmond was nowhere to be seen, despite driving by the development every week en route to the Holyrood parliament in Edinburgh from his constituency. When Michael Forbes won the Top Scot award in 2012 Tens of thousands of people voted for him over the Wimbledon tennis champion, Andy Murray, and the comedian Billy Connolly. Yet when the Trump Organisation issued a statement branding the Menie estate residents “a national embarrassment to Scotland”, there was no rebuke from Salmond’s office at the time – just a deafening silence.

Trump’s development, in Aberdeenshire, employs fewer than 100 people. Salmond’s willingness to cosy up to Trump over a development that contained wildly optimistic economic projections has resulted in the destruction of a unique stretch of coastline for generations to come.

From here 

Secret Police

The Scottish government has called for the inquiry into the activities of undercover Metropolitan Police officers to be extended to Scotland. The Pitchford Inquiry is to look at how undercover officers infiltrated political campaigns over 40 years. But the inquiry is only currently able to examine undercover operations in England and Wales.

It has been claimed that some of the officers spied on activists ahead of the G8 summit at Gleneagles in 2005.

The officers had been working undercover for the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), which was part of the Metropolitan Police until it was shut down in 2008, and the separate National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU). Both teams deployed officers on long-term undercover operations to infiltrate radical political or social causes, such as environmental campaigns, anarchy and animal rights.

Socialism - the next logical step in human development.

Society is in crisis. As socialists, we understand that the underlying causes of this crisis lie within the capitalist system itself. The various economic difficulties cannot be “reformed away” through Keynesian or monetarist economic policies, because they flow from the fundamental contradiction of any capitalist society: the fact that production is social in character, yet the appropriation of social wealth is in private hands. As socialists we understand that the real solutions to the economic and political difficulties of society lie in overthrowing capitalism and establishing a socialist system. The leading force in the revolutionary process must be the working class, owing to its position within capitalist society, and its objective interests in destroying the system which exploits and dominates it. The economic and political crises are going to bring the working class into struggle. Already this has begun to happen. Yet despite the relative growth of workers’ movements, at the present time the working class remains incapable of carrying out its revolutionary role. The working class remains seriously divided, and dominated by the ideas of the ruling class.

The very idea of the workers breaking away from the capitalist parties and forming their own class party is so revolutionary that it terrifies the ruling class. They are afraid that if the workers form their own class party, there is no telling how far it will go. The working class must constitute itself as an independent political force in order to advance its interests. If they were to break away from the capitalist parties and proclaim that they are an independent political force with political aims of their own it would represent a tremendous step forward. All the capitalist politicians, their spokesmen and defenders, do everything they can to persuade the working class not to form a political party of their own. They have a hard enough time preventing the trade unions from acting on militant class-struggle lines. If there were also a mass socialist party, their difficulties would only be increased.

Capitalism, by its method of production, has brought isolated workers together and constituted them as a class in society. Capitalism has made the workers a class in themselves. That is, the workers are a distinct class in society, whether they recognize this fact or not. Historical development calls upon this class to reorganise society completely and establish socialism. To do this, the workers must become a class for themselves. They must acquire a clear understanding of their real position under capitalism, of the nature of capitalist society as a whole, and of their mission in history. They must act consciously for their class interests. Socialism cannot be achieved, and the workers cannot effectively promote their interests, without class consciousness. Class consciousness means an understanding working class, a self-confident and self-reliant working class. They must become conscious of the fact that these class interests lead to a socialist society. When this takes place, the workers are a class for themselves, a class with socialist consciousness.

The road to freedom is marked out by the principles and programme of revolutionary socialism, and no other road exists. What is the socialist objective? It is that the factories, the mines, the mills – as a matter of fact all the means of production – must be run and administered by the workers of and that the local and the planning and direction be in the hands of elected councils of the workers. In other words: the planning is developed, elaborated, executed and checked by the free and constant activity of thousands of committees which function from the factory to the regional and more centralized organs of the masses, which express themselves in a constant renewal and recall of the committees personnel. It is only in this way that the great socialist selection will be realised in life and will lead the most downtrodden sections of humanity – the thousands of technical, organisational and scientific “geniuses” who will replace the present-day “elite” and the “technocrats” and will guarantee a rapid suppression of all social inequalities. Democracy is therefore as indispensable a condition for the victory of socialism as the assumption of power and the abolition of the state apparatus are the indispensable conditions for the victory of the socialist revolution. The realisation of this idea would establish democracy on the economic field and guarantee the flowering of democracy on all other fields. The organisation which proudly champions these principles in this country is the Socialist Party of Great Britain. The consciousness of the need for socialism,] will not come about spontaneously as a result of people’s disillusionment. It is the task of the Socialist Party to continually propagandise for the socialist alternative. We argue for socialism not as a Utopian alternative to the evils of capitalism, but as the next logical step in human development. We continually try to show now the people’s problems are rooted in capitalism and that only a rationally planned economy, run by and for the working class, can overcome the present difficulties.