Dissolve all governments and elect yourselves

The first in a series of compilations of comments placed in the Guardian by Wee Matt of Edinburgh branch.

"Rise, like lions after slumber

In unvanquishable number!

Shake your chains to earth like dew

Which in sleep had fallen on you:

Ye are many—they are few!"

Shelley

Social systems do not 'naturally' arise, but are a consequence of technology and class struggle. All previous revolutions have been minority led ones thus, establishing new ruling elites. The post capitalist revolution will be the work of the immense majority, the abolition of waged slavery and the ending of elites and privilege, with the establishment of common ownership and free access to the wealth created under conditions of democratic control over resources by all.

 Nothing is forever, including capitalism. It is an obsolete and outmoded method of production. It can never satisfy human needs while retaining private, corporate or state ownership of resources and the means and instruments for producing wealth as its mode of production, can only satisfy market requirements and not human needs. The ideas of capitalism, overthrowing feudal relations and the Divine Right of Kings, would have seemed a fantasy in feudal times.

 The bourgeois democracy brought in by capitalism, is its own Achilles heel. The educated working class who presently produce all of the wealth, but do not own it, who run capitalism from top to bottom, yet it is not in their own interests, but the interests of a privileged minority, will dig the grave of capitalism. The wealth producers 99%, are compelled to wage-enslaved production (for sale) of wealth for the 1% capitalist parasitic class. The interests of the 99% lies in removing ownership and control from the 1% and establishing a commonly owned society. Nothing will stop an idea which time has come.

 Our present system of society is fraught with contradictions. We have the technological potential to adequately feed, clothe, house and provide a decent life for every man, woman and child on Earth, yet instead of abundance for all there exists poverty, insecurity and misery for the vast majority.

At the heart of all these social problems is the conflict between the need to accumulate and reproduce capital on one hand and the need to fulfill human want on the other. Productive activity is mediated through the mechanism of market exchange, so production ceases when profit fails to be realised, not when human need is satisfied. Instead of directly co-ordinating to fulfil its needs, humanity is dominated by the blind imperatives of an economic system. If humanity as a whole were to democratically take control of the productive apparatus of society and free its operations from the constraints of the profit motive, an already existing, but as yet untapped potential for abundance could be realised.

This would of course entail a complete transformation in property relations. Instead of a society based on minority control, production for profit, and market exchange, we would have one based on common ownership and production for need. Instead of being mediated through the market system, production decisions would be co-ordinated directly according to the self-defined needs of global society, and the means of production belong to everybody.

The capitalist system deliberately depresses wages in an economic downturn. Damn all to do with our fellow workers from other lands. Instead of slavishly scapegoating fellow workers, we should get up off our knees, be making common cause with workers of all lands and none, to remove this iniquitous system of capitalism with its 'production for sale to profit a minority owning parasite class. There is no such thing as middle class. Even if you have a huge mortgage almost paid and send young Dimkins to a private school. If you have to work for a wage or salary you are working class. Wages/salaries (rations) are just so much food, clothing, shelter, and enough if you have any kids to bring them up to be the next generation of wage slaves. They are set at a rate which ensure you show up of more exploitation in order to survive while you employer gets rich from selling off the (unpaid) surplus value you produce. Tax is not our problem. You only ever get the bottom line in your pay cheque. Taxation is a burden upon the employing class, so sod 'em. If by some stroke the nominal tax (the top line) paid by your employer was reduced, so too would your wages. Wages are subsistence payments.

 Meanwhile the parasite class are creaming off all of the surplus wealth which is created by the working class. We need to take the ownership of the wealth producing and distribution capacity from the hands of the parasite class, whether individuals, combinations, states or corporations and make them owned by us all in common, within a democratic, classless, post-capitalist framework of production for use instead of for sale with free access by all to the collective wealth.

We have been able to do this since the start of the 20th century, but settled for reforms instead or state capitalist solutions. State provision has damn all to do with 'socialism'. Most people think it means some kind of reformist capitalism with a vague 'fair do's' for the worker, or if they are on the 'Left' some kind of state ownership of resources.

 Communism/Socialism, (the terms are interchangeably), is a democratic, commonly owned, production for use, money-free, post- capitalist society which has yet to arrive and not to be confused, with the post-feudal state capitalist regime of the Soviets era, or the reform capitalism of the Labour Party or Social-Democratic parties of Europe. The NHS is a product of capitalism, designed to be cheaper for the capitalist class, employers etc. than private healthcare insurance options. Realistically within capitalism, we could have massive council house building projects, but there would be screams of rage from those whose profit was affected, the same parasite capitalist builders who prosecuted the Shrewsbury workers, also from those whose house values were eroded and yet another government would eventually try to rein this in. Capitalism cannot be reformed. Profit is paramount.

 The Socialist Party does not advocating a ‘citizens wage’, indeed, it wishes to abolish the wages system in its entirety and establish a commonly owned world. If wage or salary earners are paid £100 a week by the government, they can use this income to maintain themselves; which means that the employer will be relieved of having to include an amount to cover this expenditure in the wage packet or salary cheque. Economic forces will therefore tend to ensure that wages and salaries fall to a level which, when added to Basic Income, will allow the employee to maintain him or herself. In other words, wages or salaries would become sufficient only to top up Basic Income to the economically determined level. Or, put the other way round, Basic Income (like Family Allowances today) would be a subsidy to employers, and a massive one at that.

 Free access would be a much more direct way of ensuring that people were freed from material insecurity than the impractical Basic Income Scheme proposed by the reformist parties. It would also involve, as a corollary, the transformation of work. Instead of working for wages to produce profits for an employer, people will be able to co-operate to produce what they really needed. In fact such direct production for use, replacing production for sale and the profit motive, is the only possible framework within which we can satisfy our needs in an ecologically acceptable way. For, with the end of production for sale will go also the pressure for blind economic growth generated by the competitive struggle for profits.

“The watchword of Capital Accumulate! Accumulate!”- Marx

The socialist answer would be to allow people free access to the common store of wealth set aside for personal consumption, according to what they themselves judged to be their reasonable needs. Other needs would be satisfied on the same basis. Houses and flats would be rent-free, with heating, lighting and water supplied free of charge. Transport, communications, health care and education would be organised as free public services. There need be no admission charges to museums, parks, libraries and other places of entertainment and recreation. Socialism has NEVER existed anywhere, to have had its time. 

Even Tony Benn acknowledged that “The Labour party has never been a socialist party, although there have always been socialists in it – a bit like Christians in the Church of England.” 

The Labour Party has never been a socialist party but reformist capitalist one. Socialism has never been tried or existed. All you have ever had were attempts to tame capitalism's worst excesses and those failed because capitalism cannot be reformed. 

The Russian revolution was a post-feudal one, not a post-capitalist one.

"State capitalism would be a step forward for us." - Lenin

"What you have is state capitalism." John Foster Dulles to Nikita Khruschev

 Engels and Marx would have no problem seeing that as a bourgeois revolution without a huge emerging bourgeois capitalist class, the intelligentsia and the State stepping into the breach. Real Marxists in the UK, the S.P.G.B., called it state capitalism in 1918.

 If production were geared directly to supplying needs, it would eventually tend to platform off at a level sufficient to provide for current needs and repairing and maintaining the existing stock of means of production. Abolish the wages system, we have a commonly-owned world to win. If there are wages and salaries, it is not socialism. State ownership is not socialism. Social programmes are not socialism. Socialism means democracy at all levels of society, including the workplace. Socialism means a wage-free, money-free society. Socialism means voluntary labour. Socialism means free access to the goods produced by society. Millions already engage in voluntary work. In any case, with production for use, we can accelerate the production of necessities and so have free access to all we need and require. It would be no problem. Food to eat, houses to live in, medicine for the sick, rather than for sale for the profit of a minority with access rationed via wages, as presently. What are waiting for? Another capitalist fallout leading to World War 3 and more war-science on civilians such as Nagasaki and Hiroshima by the ‘good’ guys?

"The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor" - Voltaire

"..capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt"  - Marx

Capitalism is exploitation.

Capitalism is a system in which the means for producing the wealth (the land, the mines, factories, the machines, etc.) are in private hands. A tiny handful of people own these “means of production” as they are called. But they do not work them. The immense majority of the people own nothing (in the sense that they can live on what they own) but their power to work.

By exploitation we mean living off the labour of other people. There have been previous forms of exploitation. In slave society, the slave-owners lived off the labour of the slaves who were their property. In feudal society, the feudal lords lived off the forced labour of the serfs. In capitalist society the worker is neither a slave nor yet a serf, i.e. forced to do free, unpaid labour for a master. But he is exploited just the same, even though the form of this exploitation is not so open and clear as was the case with the slaves and the serfs.

The essence of exploitation under capitalism consists in this — that the workers, when set to work with raw materials and machinery, produce far more in values than what is paid out by the capitalists in wages. In short, they produce a surplus which is taken by the capitalists and for which they are not paid. Thus they are robbed of the values they produce. This is the source of capitalist profit. It is on this surplus, produced by the workers, that the capitalist lives in riches and luxury.

Capitalism is a system of booms and slumps

From the earliest days of its existence until today, capitalism has been marked by periodic slumps, economic crises, depressions or recessions as they are called. Every seven to ten years a crisis of greater or lesser severity has taken place, bringing with it mass unemployment and misery for working people.

Capitalism is a system of exploiters and exploited, of rich and poor.

The ending of injustices caused by class society in its various forms, has long been the dream of mankind. It found expression in the teachings of the early Christians, in the writings of men like John Ball, Thomas More, Robert Owen, the Chartists and the other pioneers of the British workers movement. But so long as modern, large-scale factory production did not exist, Socialism—which alone can end the exploitation of man by man—could remain only a dream. It was capitalism, in the search for greater profits, which mastered natural forces expanded the production of goods on an enormous scale, united the scattered, individual production of men into highly developed, large-scale factory production, thus establishing the basis on which socialism can be built.

What will such a socialist society look like? How will exploitation and oppression be ended?

The means of production—the factories, mines, land and transport—are taken away from the capitalists. They are transformed into social property by common ownership. This means that they belong to and are worked by the whole of the people, that the fruits of production likewise become social property, used to advance the standard of life of all the people. No longer can some men (the capitalists) by virtue of the fact that they own the means of production, live off (exploit) the labour of others (the working class). No longer are the workers compelled to sell their labour power to the capitalists in order to live. The workers are no longer property-less proletarians. They now own the means of production and work them in their own interests and in the interests of society. For society is now composed or workers by hand and brain, i.e. of an associated body of wealth-producers. Production is planned to meet the constantly rising material and cultural needs of the people. This is only possible because the means of production have been taken out of the hands of competing private owners, whose only concern was to produce what was profitable, not what was needed by the people. Thus there is an end to crises, slumps and unemployment, of poverty in the midst of plenty. Socialism means peace. There are no longer capitalists who profit by war, who see in war the way to secure sources of raw materials, markets and a chance to dominate the world. Socialism is the only system in which the old definition of democracy as “government of the people, by the people, for the people” becomes a reality. Capitalist democracy is government of the people by the capitalists in the interests of the capitalists. Socialism cannot be imposed on the people from above. It develops from below, from the new opportunities which socialist society provides to men and women to develop all their capacities in their own interests and in the interests of society as a whole.

But capitalism by itself does not “evolve” into socialism. It has to be transformed into socialism by the conscious action and struggle of men and women. Capitalism creates the living social force which, by its very position in capitalist society, is compelled to change capitalism into socialism. This force is the working class s. The age-long dream of the thinkers and the fighters of the past can only be transformed into reality when the working class wages the struggle to take political and economic power from the capitalist class and, having succeeded in this, sets about building a socialist society.

Leninspeak (1983)

From the May 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

It really is ironic that those members of the Militant group who face expulsion from the Labour Party should complain about the lack of democracy and tolerance which they allege is being shown to them. After all, as worshippers of Lenin they must know that their hero was no democrat and showed little tolerance of his opponents outside or inside Bolshevik ranks. We have yet to hear them condemn this.

One of the most amazing legacies of the Russian revolution and its aftermath is Lenin’s image as a humane, even saintly figure, despite the wealth of evidence to the contrary. To this day thousands of people all over the world will revile Stalin but revere Lenin, yet the truth is that it was the latter who commenced the reign of terror after November 1917 and who deserves his own place in history as a brutal, lying, ruthless dictator.

Right up till the Bolshevik seizure of power Lenin had been agitating for the abolition of the state apparatus including the army, police and bureaucracy. Every official, he said, should be elected and subject to recall at any time. He was all for freedom of the press and the right to demonstrate for “any party, any group". Immediately on gaining power he even promised to uphold the verdict of the coming elections for the Constituent Assembly

As a democratic government, we cannot ignore the decision of the rank and file of the people, even though we may disagree with it . . . and even if the peasants continue to follow the Social-Revolutionaries, even if they give this party a majority in the Constituent Assembly, we shall still say, be it so. (Report on the Land Question, 8 November 1917.)

All of this was, of course, mere window dressing, for Lenin knew that the Russian people would never have supported what he really had in mind for them. Far from abolishing the state apparatus he set about strengthening it, especially the secret police (Cheka), in order to impose the Bolshevik dictatorship. And instead of officials being elected and recallable the Bolsheviks simply appointed their own men who were answerable to them alone.

Gradually all opposition press was outlawed and their demonstrations forbidden. When the long-called-for elections for the Constituent Assembly resulted in a humiliating defeat for the Bolsheviks Lenin dissolved the Assembly by force. Later on he explained away those earlier promises on the grounds that

This was an essential period in the beginning of the revolution; without it we would not have risen on the crest of the revolutionary wave, we should have dragged in its wake. (Report of the Central Committee to the 11th Congress of the Russian Communist Party, 27 March 1922.)

In the run-up to the November coup Lenin and the Bolsheviks had won widespread support with their slogan “peace, bread and land". Of course the promises of politicians are always easier to make than to fulfil, as the Russian workers and peasants very soon discovered. The peasants, having got rid of the landlord, now had their grain and cattle forcibly taken from them in return for worthless paper money. Those who resisted were shot and many villages were burnt. Lenin claimed that his policy of robbing the peasants was necessary to avoid famine but, inevitably, the peasants retaliated by burning their crops and killing their cattle and so Lenin’s policy produced famine anyway.

In the cities and towns unemployment was rife and the workers, in or out of a job, were starving. Lenin’s response to the plight of the Petrograd workers was to tell them to

. . . set out in their tens of thousands for the Urals, the Volga and the south, where there is an abundance of grain, where they can feed themselves and their families . . . (To The Workers of Petrograd, 12 July 1918.)

How the workers and their families were go get to these areas in view of the fact that the civil war had broken out in each of them, Lenin didn’t say.

Early in 1919 many strikes and protest demonstrations were crushed with great loss of life. Starvation continued to be the workers’ lot for several more years but anyone who argued that the chronic food scarcity could be eased by allowing the peasants to trade their produce instead of having it stolen by the state should, said Lenin, be shot. This argument was “counter-revolutionary” — until Lenin himself made it official policy early in 1921.

Another myth surrounding the period of Lenin’s dictatorship is that at least there was democracy within the Communist Party. This is the so-called “democratic centralism", but Lenin no more welcomed opposition from his own comrades than he did from anyone else. Communists who criticised him or his policies were denounced as “unsound elements", “deviationists” or worse, and their arguments “mere chatter”, “phrase mongering” and “dangerous rubbish".

Lenin’s anger boiled over at those communists who wanted free trade unions independent of party control. He raged at the “loudmouths" and demanded complete loyalty or else they would throw away the revolution because

Undoubtedly, the capitalists of the Entente will take advantage of our party’s sickness to organise a new invasion; and the Social-Revolutionaries will take advantage of it for the purpose of organising conspiracies and rebellions. (The Party Crisis, 19 January 1921.)

He also complained that the debate on the trade unions had been

. . .  an excessive luxury. Speaking for myself I cannot but add that in my opinion this luxury was really absolutely impermissible. (Report on the political activities of the Central Committee to the 10th Congress of the Russian Communist Party, 8 March 1921.)

In short, shut-up and don’t rock the boat. Faced with this attitude the dissidents had no chance. Their various groups, such as “Workers’ Opposition", were expelled (even when they agreed to abide by majority decisions against them) and many of their leaders and members were jailed or exiled.

All Lenin’s actions were the result of his single-minded determination to seize power and hold on to it. even if it meant that millions of Russian workers and peasants died in famine and repression. The seizure of power was, given the chaotic condition of Russia at the time, comparatively simple: to hold on to power he had to create a state apparatus which, under his personal direction, was used to terrorise all opposition into submission.

The Leninists of today will argue that all of this was a case of the end justifying the means, that it was done in order to bring about socialism. But undemocratic means can never bring about democratic ends; any minority which seizes power can only retain it by violent, undemocratic methods. In any case, even before 1917 the Mensheviks and many European social democrats had used Karl Marx’s theory of social development to demolish the idea that socialism could be established in a backward country like Russia. The absence of larger-scale industry and the consequent smallness of the working class, both of which are essential ingredients for socialism, plus the presence of a vast, reactionary peasantry made socialism impossible. This earned them Lenin’s undying hatred, a hatred which only increased as he saw their view justified by events. All that was left to Lenin in the circumstances was to commence building up state-capitalism. The Russia of today is a grim reminder of how well he succeeded.

Vic Vanni

Glasgow Br. 

Capitalism is hell on earth

IT'S HELL

Working men or women who tries to find a way clear through the hardships of present-day conditions are faced with a difficult task. On every side is distress and confusion. Rising bills, falling wages, the uncertainty of a job, or the deepening misery of months and even years of unemployment; wars and ever new threats of war; news of violent struggle and disturbances abroad—all these are the daily conditions of life now. The Labour Party has nothing to say. They are ready to make all kinds of promises for a beautiful future time when they shall be holding government office. New cults and idols are held out before the workers presenting sham solutions to conceal from the workers their growing enslavement and hide from them the issue of Revolution. The workers are beaten down, because they were divided and uncertain, of their path, because they are misled by leaders in coalition with the capitalists. Capitalism can only maintain itself by driving down the workers, by harder and harder exploitation. Longer hours, lower wages, misery and war—these are the offerings of capitalism in the present epoch.

Various left-wingers instead of the aim of socialism which inspired the pioneers of the workers movement’, have in the past put forward the aim of a “mixed economy” and of state capitalism which leaves the exploitation of the workers unchanged and has nothing to do with socialism. Nowhere in the world has socialism ever been established. The failure of the Left is not the failure of socialism. The Socialist Party’s electoral programme has never been a platform of election promises and palliatives. It is the working of the capitalist system itself which produces unemployment and crises, by piling up profits for the few while wages are kept down to the minimum. In their insatiable drive for profits, the bosses in every capitalist country keep down the wages and purchasing power of their own working class and are constantly driven to seek new markets abroad. This is the basic cause for the cut-throat competition, the sharp contradictions, and the increasing unemployment in the whole capitalist world. We must stand together against the employers. The only struggle for us is the struggle of the workers against our exploiters. If the workers do not awaken in time to the issue before us a terrible fate awaits all.

In the name of those millions of our class butchered in all of capitalism’s wars; in the name of the mental and physical wrecks left to homelessness on the streets of our villages and cities; in the name of the bereaved and desolate mothers and wives who mourn the vain sacrifice of their loved ones, we appeal to you to arouse yourselves before it is too late. “War is Hell” and Hell’s gate has once again been thrown wide open across many parts of the globe. Workers, you have nothing to do with the quarrels of your ruling class. Your task is to war against your exploiters as the only way of freeing your class from all war and the industrial slavery that is grinding us down into ever increasing poverty. Today governments tell us the old lie of the jingoists that “the best way to keep the peace is to prepare for war” Aircraft or troops in the Middle East are not a guarantee of peace but a provocation for further war. It is madness to say that displays of military force can help towards peace.

What is wrong with the way society is organised, the “system of society” which prevails?  It is divided into rich and poor—a tiny handful of rich (1 per cent of the population own more than half the nation’s wealth) who do no work, and the overwhelming majority who work their whole lives through. The aim of our Party is to establish socialism and abolish the right of one person to rob another of the fruits of his or her labour. This is what makes our Party different from all others. 

Looking Forward to 2016

WE HAVE A WORLD TO WIN
WE HAVE A PLANET TO SAVE 

Today, on the first day of a new year, there is doubt and uncertainty about the future. But our New Year message is one of hope and confidence that once the working people take political power into their own hands, they can build world socialism using all its resources for the benefit of its people and contributing to human progress throughout the world. We remain convinced that socialism can only come as a result of the taking of power from the hands of the capitalist class by the working class. The fact that it is possible for this revolution to take place peacefully does not make it less of a revolution. The degree to which the capitalist class resists the establishment of socialism depends in the first place on how well organised, how politically conscious, how determined, and how strong are the forces of the working class.  In the second place, it depends on whether, faced with this overwhelming force, the capitalists decide to yield to the democratic will of the people, or stake everything on a desperate resistance. It is not possible to give any final guarantee as to what the capitalists will do. But the aim of the working people should be to ensure that the transition to socialism is a peaceful one. The first condition for this is the organisation of overwhelming majority of the working class for the ending of the capitalist system. The more this strength is mobilised, the less likely it becomes that the capitalists will resort to violence. If they do, the responsibility will be on them, not on the working class. Let us repeat and never forget, that democracy, even under capitalist economy, offers the best field for the development of the class struggle.

 Democracy has always been a bread-and-butter question. The demands of the Chartists were democratic demands for one vote for every man, for annual parliaments, and so on; but the Chartist leader Stephens was right when he said the Charter was a ‘knife and fork question’. The workers who rallied behind the Charter wanted the vote, because they wanted to end their economic slavery, their twelve-hour day, to end child-labour in the cotton mills and women’s labour in the mines. Having won the vote in 1867, the workers in further struggles were able to force through laws giving better conditions to miners, to factory workers, to seamen; in 1875 they won the right to picket. And after they had gained a firm legal position for the unions in 1905, British workers were able to win big strikes for wage increases and shorter hours in the year before the war. Democracy is not abstract. It means that the people have definite rights – the right to organise, the right to strike, the right to vote, the right to free speech. These rights are weapons without which the British people would be no better off today than they were a hundred years ago. These rights did not drop from heaven. Men died to win them. Nor can we say that once these rights are won they are safe forever. They always represent a concession which the capitalists would like to take away. The struggle for democracy is always going on. In the coming new year, the Tories are intent upon weakening the power of the trade unions. We need to stop them.

Transforming Parliament into an instrument of the will of the working people, is one of the most important points of our position. When we speak of Parliament’s role in the transition to Socialism we do not mean the same thing those who talk of the “Parliamentary road”. We mean a mass revolutionary movement resulting in a parliamentary majority which takes decisive action to break the power of the capitalists and transfer political power to the working class. We do not think capitalism can be “reformed” into socialism. It is impossible to proceed to the building of socialism if the existing capitalist state machine is left as it is.

What we mean by socialism is what the Marxist pioneers meant—the ending of the exploitation of man by man, the abolition of the system of rent, interest and profit, planned production for use instead of private profit, and the common ownership of the means of production and distribution by the people. This is the reason why our Declarations of Principles is set out in the clearest terms to explain the way towards our aim of socialism. It is only through this change in social relations and in the material basis of society that the transformation of man himself can come about, with a great educational and cultural advances. We reject the standpoint that capitalism has found a way to solve its problems. We are against all theories which seek to argue that some sort of “reformed” or “people’s” capitalism can abolish the possibility of slumps, guarantee full employment and rising standards, and remove the drive to war. The mounting problems of the workers, the pensioners and benefit claimants, the women and young people, together with the constant menace of wars, shows how wrong are those who would have us believe that we are living in a paradise on earth today. And behind and at the root of all the immediate difficulties facing the people are the great fundamental problems which only socialism can solve. Increasingly, people are asking questions about the world’s future to which only socialism can provide a constructive answer. The world is ripe and over-ripe for socialism. Only socialism can end the contradiction between social production and individual appropriation, abolish the exploitation of man by man, make possible long-term planning, and utilise the planet’s resources and every new development in technique and scientific knowledge for the benefit of the people.

They think us dull, they think us dead,

But we shall rise again.

A trumpet through the land shall ring,

A heaving through the mass,

A trampling through their palaces

Until they break like glass.

Ernest Jones

FOR WORLD SOCIALISM

Wages Fall

Workers’ pay packets in Ayrshire and Stirling have been among the hardest hit in Scotland. Data shows that nationally the real value of average full time earnings has dropped by 6.7% since 2008. In April 2008 the mean gross annual earnings for all full time employees resident in Scotland according to the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) was £28,528. The ASHE figure for the mean gross annual earnings for all full time employees resident in Scotland for April 2015 was £32,472. This is an increase of £3,944 or 13.8%. Between April 2008 and April 2015 inflation has been 20.6%. This means the drop in real value of average earnings of full time workers in Scotland between April 2008 and April 2015 has been 6.7%. For the UK the drop in real value of average earnings for full time employees was 13.6%.

The North Ayrshire and South Ayrshire areas together with Stirling saw the largest decreases in the real value of earnings.

For full time employees resident in Stirling, the drop has been 20.1% since April 2008, and for those living in South Ayrshire the drop was 17%. Workers in North Ayrshire experienced a drop of 15.8%. These are the three areas in Scotland worst affected by the recession. For full time employees resident in Perth & Kinross the drop has been 15.5%, the next area worst affected by the recession in Scotland. The drop in gross average earnings for all full time employees resident in East Ayrshire is 13.0%

From here

Our case justified by Keir Hardie (1974)

From the August 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

James Keir Hardie, one of the earlier Labour MPs, was, at different times, Chairman of the Labour Party Annual Conference and Chairman and leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party. He was largely responsible for the formation of the Labour Party and it has been claimed for him that “More than any other man, he shaped the political history of the Labour Movement.” Members of the Labour Party praise him for making their party what it is today but, for a reason which will become obvious, they never quote his detailed statement about the kind of party he claimed to be creating. It was published in 1910 by the Independent Labour Party under the title My Confession of Faith in the Labour Alliance.

Keir Hardie had founded the Independent Labour Party in 1893 and was its Chairman. His purpose in issuing hisConfession of Faith was to rebut the charge that, by affiliating to the Labour Party, the ILP had sacrificed its “socialist” character. Some of those who made the charge were members of the ILP. He defended affiliation to the Labour Party, which was, then as now, dominated by trade unions, on the ground of its practical advantage to the ILP but also, and primarily, on the ground of “socialist” principle — in line with his own declaration three years earlier that, for him, the socialist objective was “. . . free Communism in which ... the rule of life will be — ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’.” (Keir Hardie, From Serfdom to Socialism (1907), page 89).

His argument from expediency was to point out to the ILP that if they wanted to grow quickly, and in particular, if they wanted to get members elected to Parliament, their only hope was to have the support and the votes of trade unionists and to fight elections as Labour Party candidates. He indicated that there were some people “. . . who act as though their principle reason for being in the ILP is that they may get returned to Parliament.” He did not pretend that the votes the ILP thus picked up were the votes of Socialists.

He quoted figures to show that while it had taken the ILP seven years as an independent organization to reach 193 branches and an income of £721, within nine years of affiliation to the Labour Party (1900- 1909) these figures had jumped to 887 branches and an annual income of £8,871.

But his main argument was that forming Marxian Socialist organizations and propagating Socialism failed to bring quick growth and was wrong in principle. He instanced the small growth of the Social Democratic Federation and its failure to win any Parliamentary elections. (He did not name the SPGB but had a reference to “other Socialist or pseudo-Socialist” organizations.)

He argued that Marxian Socialist propaganda did not quickly attract large numbers of workers and that it was appreciation of this which had been the reason for the formation of the ILP, based on the different policy of

. . . conducting the propaganda in such a way as would win over working-class organizations, especially the Trade Unions to the support of Socialism, rather than alienate them.

This policy, known as “getting into the workers’ day-to-day struggles”, was advocated by the ILP and later by the Communist Party and always featured in controversy between the SPGB and those two organizations.

History has dealt mockingly with Keir Hardie’s theories. In appearance everything happened just as he said it would; in essentials nothing. The tactics he urged on the ILP got them members, money and seats in the House of Commons. In the 1929 Parliament more than 200 MPs belonged to the ILP — now it has no MPs and is all but dead, though its opportunist tactics are constantly revived by new so-called “left-wing” organisations. And the Labour Party first outstripped the Liberals, then became the largest party in Parliament and formed the government, all as Keir Hardie anticipated.

But what has happened to his belief that the policy he stood for would convert the working-class to Marxian Socialism? For that was the specific claim he spelled out in his Confession:

The Labour Party is the only expression of orthodox Marxian Socialism in Great Britain.
The Labour Party practices the Marxian policy of the class struggle, following Marx’s own example, and is blamed by its critics for doing so . . .
Thus it is proved that the founders of the ILP, and even more so, of the Labour Party, were, if I may use the expression, in the direct line of apostolic succession from Marx and the other great master minds of Socialist theory and policy.

Where is it all now? Keir Hardie himself later repudiated the class struggle. The ILP and Labour Party both dissociated themselves from Marxism. It was a General Secretary of the Labour Party, Mr. Morgan Phillips, who asserted that his party “. . owed more to Methodism than to Marx.” The Labour Party, TUC and the Unions all turned their backs on Marxian economics and gave whole-hearted support to anti-Marxist Keynesian myths of “controlled capitalism”, full employment and the end of crises. Even Keir Hardie’s belief that he was building a party completely apart and hostile to Tories and Liberals proved to be wrong because twice they have been in a three-party coalition government. (Is a third time now in the offing?). Above all, nobody in the Labour Party leadership today even pretends that that party is interested in the Marxian Socialist objective that Keir Hardie proclaimed.

The Labour Party has had sixteen years in office, years of administering capitalism just like any other capitalist party. Winning the workers over to Socialism was bound to be a slow business. It was made more difficult by Keir Hardie’s policies. Events have shown how right the SPGB was and how wrong was Keir Hardie

Edgar Hardcastle

Forging the Weapons of Class War

The economic and social system prevailing in the world to-day is known as capitalism. The dominating features of capitalism are the private ownership of capital, the production of goods for profit and the division of society into two classes, namely, the capitalist class and the working class. The land, factories, mines, railways and shipping, all the means of producing theworld’s wealth are owned by the landlord and capitalist class. The great mass of the people own nothing except their muscles and brains, that is, their power to work. Production is carried on not for the purpose of supplying the needs of the people but for the purpose of sale in order to realise a profit. Only those who have something to sell can get a living. Only those can obtain things who can afford to buy. This is the capitalist system.

The worker has nothing to sell but his or her labour power. He or she sells labour power to an employer for so many hours a day for a certain price, that is, wages. Since one cannot separate labour power from one’s body it comes to this, which a workers actually sells themselves like slaves. We socialists, call the workers under capitalism, “Wage slaves”. Wages are determined by what it costs to keep a producer and family. How many workers do you know who can save out of their wages? They may be able to put something by in a good season, but bad seasons come and the savings are gone. It is a fact that the average worker is not more than two weeks removed from penury. The capitalist will only buy labour if he can make profit out of it. Just compare the value of the goods you turned out in a day when you were in the factory, and what you received for your work. The difference between the two is the employer’s profit. Profit is the result of the unpaid labour of the worker. Under capitalist workers are continually robbed of the results of their labour. The capitalist will compel the worker to work as hard and as long as he or she can, for as little money as possible. Even through the efforts of the best-organised trade unions wages never rise higher than the cost of living. And even this is not secured.

What does capitalism offer people? A life of toil and sweat, a bare subsistence. Always the dread fear of the sack. A drab, colourless existence and when unable to work any longer, to be thrown on the scrap-heap. However the alternative, socialism, offers everything which industries produce goes now not to enrich a small parasitical section of the community but the whole community. The whole world becomes a huge cooperative society, and the people, instead of slaving to enrich the idle investors, creates wealth without having to pay tribute to speculators and profiteers. Worker takes a direct part in the management of work, no longer a slave of another man, but a member of a great community of labour.

We are entering a period of new struggles and for these we must be prepared. Together we shall build a worldwide Co-operative Commonwealth. The Socialist Party scorns to hide its aims. Under capitalist society it exists to fight against the exploitation of those who toil by hand and brain, and to strengthen the political understanding of the need of ending capitalism and establishing socialism. We urge that there be no pessimism. Let there be no sense of frustration. The future is ours. And there are those of us who were never more optimistic, never more certain, never more determined to achieve the goal of socialism than we are on the final days of 2015. The stronger the Socialist Party becomes, the stronger the whole working-class movement becomes in its struggle against capitalism and its efforts to establish socialism. We stand at the threshold of great class battles. Raise high the people’s flag, our scarlet standard of freedom! Let us take the offensive in the battle of ideas, which is always a part of the daily struggle against capitalism. For there must be no mistake our class enemies do not neglect the weapon of propaganda. They mobilise the whole machinery of the media and press into service press every kind of charlatan.  The more the class struggle develops, the more capitalism will spew out various breeds of leftists, mouthing revolutionary phrases to entrap the workers and keep them in the capitalist net. We know that social changes are not made by leaders, but by great mass movements, and not stimulated by poseurs and political one-man bands, but by organised workers, free men and women. And therefore we will go into great battles, and we will emerge strengthened, with greater numbers.

The Hungry Schoolkids

An increasing number of pupils in Scotland are going to school hungry and in some cases are stealing food from classmates, according to teachers.

Teaching union the EIS carried out a survey as part of its work on tackling the impact of poverty in schools.

About half (51%) of those questioned reported a rise in pupils coming to school without any food. The survey also found an increase in those taking free school meals and attending breakfast clubs. One in five (19%) identified an increase in the number of incidents of children asking for food and even stealing food from other pupils.

The union reported a 22% increase in the number of post-P3 children taking free school meals and a 27% rise in attendance at breakfast clubs. It also identified a 7% increase in the number of parents or guardians requesting referrals to local food banks.

On the issue of pupils' health and well-being, 71% of respondents reported an increase in the number of children displaying signs of mental-health problems including anxiety, stress and low mood. About half (52%) noted an increase in headaches, lethargy and weight issues among pupils.

EIS general secretary Larry Flanagan said: "The findings offer a stark warning of the deep and damaging impact of poverty and the politics of austerity on children and young people across the country." Mr Flanagan added: "The fact that teachers are reporting such very high increases in both mental and physical health issues in pupils is a huge concern and highlights the true cost of political choices that have driven more families into poverty and widened the gap between the rich and the poor."

A New World

TOWARDS A NEW DAWN

The whole world is chained to the capitalist system. The struggle to bring about the socialist transformation of the world economy will not be easy. Only when the working class abolishes capitalist relations of production and replaces them by non-oppressive, non-exploitive ones then the alienation characteristic of capitalism will begin to disappear. The people gain control of their productive activity and the products of their labour and so the antagonistic estrangement from each other and their aversion to work will be overcome. Productive activity will become once again a creative, fulfilling and truly human activity. The division between work and non-work will disappear and people will freely choose what to produce rather than being constrained by immediate necessities. In capitalist society, the capitalists own the means of production and engage in production for the sole purpose of making profits and satisfying their private interests. Therefore, though there may be planned production in a few enterprises, competition is rife and lack of co-ordination prevails among the different enterprises and economic departments as a whole. Anarchy in all social production is the order of the day. Cyclical economic crises which break out in capitalist society are the inevitable result of anarchy in production. They not only greatly undermine the social productive forces, but also are disastrous for the labouring people.

The world to-day is in the hands of billionaires-owners of the biggest corporations, the biggest banks; in short, the capitalist class. These capitalists, not only own or control the means whereby we work and live, but, in fact, control the whole governing machine. They pull the strings. And they use their power to make themselves richer and richer—at our expense. They hire workers to make profit out of their labour; their capitalist production is for profit, not for use: and to get more profit they slash wages, carry through speed-up and worsen conditions. This mad race for profit ends in a crisis; and then they try to get out of the crisis—at our expense. Workers must face with full and serious determination the situation as it is; face the fact that all capitalism has to offer them to-day is poverty, malnutrition, low wages, speeding-up and unemployment, despotism, war and slavery; and that neither they nor their families have any hope or future under capitalism.

There is no need for a single worker to be overworked or in dread of losing his job; no reason why an unemployed worker should lack the necessaries of life. All over the world millions of workers are year by year coming to realise these facts and to see that nothing except the existence of capitalism prevents them building up for themselves a decent and secure world. Everywhere the workers are becoming less and less willing to put up with an entirely unnecessary state of semi-starvation. They are showing themselves more and more determined to insist upon their right to food, clothing and shelter for themselves and their families. But to get this, capitalism must be overthrown.  To get this is only possible by the building up of Socialism, giving peace and prosperity, happiness and new life to the whole working population.

So long as the employer is the dictator in the factory, so long as the landlord is the dictator in the street, so long as the capitalist class everywhere holds the positions of real power in its hands, there can be no real democracy. It is only after the factories and mines have been taken from the capitalist employers and the conditions of work put under the control of the responsible delegates of the workers themselves; it is only after our houses have been taken from the landlord and put under the control of our own housing committees, that a democracy which, has much meaning for the workers can begin. It is the absence of this genuine participation in the work of administration which makes the present capitalist form of “democracy” so empty and useless from the workers’ point of view. The capitalists will be deprived of their ownership and control of the factories and workshops, mills and mines, shipyards and transport. All these means of production which they have used and misused only to pile up profits for themselves and poverty for the workers will be taken from them. The workers’ dictatorship will make an end of production for profit and will carry on production for use.The needs of all will be met, and new needs and pleasures now denied to the working class will be created and satisfied by a socialist organisation and extension of production. It will mean that the billionaires who now own the media will be deprived of their “liberty” to put forward their purses as “public opinion” and to spread lies amongst the people. The whole plan of production and distribution will be on the basis of things, not money. Not only economic security, not only ever increasing comfort and leisure, not only the day’s labour turned from useless grinding toil into useful work—but a far wider prospect is opened up. For these new material conditions will be but the basis for the most rapid intellectual and cultural development of the whole population. The new generation of children will be born into a new world. It is for us in our generation to bring this new world into being.

Towards socialism

FOR WORLD SOCIALISM

The first requirement for the workers in all countries of the world is to break from the capitalist class and their political parties, and reject any and all concepts of coalitions with their parties. Their programmes are reformist when our task is revolutionary socialist. The reformists project a perspective of merely removing what they present as minor defects in the existing capitalist order of things, of patching capitalism up and making it more tolerable, preaching conciliation and co-existence with capitalism, not class struggle against it for a fundamental change. . Only through an irreconcilable struggle against capitalism, towards its elimination and the establishment of socialism, will the people of the world find the full freedom, equality and democracy for which they aspire. The workers have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to gain. Workers of the world—unite!

The resources of the world must pass into the possession of humanity. All other problems, the problems of nationality and of race and colour will be solved once society is freed from exploitation and class divisions. We aim to replace the present capitalist system, with its inherent injustice and inhumanity, by a social order from which the domination and exploitation of one class by another will be eliminated, in which economic planning will supersede unregulated private enterprise and competition, and in which genuine democratic self-government, based upon economic equality will be possible. The present order is marked by glaring inequalities of wealth and opportunity, by chaotic waste and instability; and in an age of plenty it condemns the great mass of the people to poverty and insecurity. This lack of social planning results in a waste of our human as well as our natural resources. Our human resources are wasted through social and economic conditions which stunt human growth, through unemployment and through our failure to provide adequate education. Power has become more and more concentrated into the hands of a small irresponsible minority of financiers and industrialists and to their predatory interests the majority are habitually sacrificed. When private profit is the main stimulus to economic effort, our society oscillates between periods of feverish prosperity in which the main benefits go to speculators and profiteers, and of catastrophic depression, in which the common man's normal state of insecurity and hardship is accentuated. We believe that these evils can be removed only in a planned and socialised economy in which our natural resources and principal means of production and distribution are owned in common, democratically controlled by the people. What we seek is a proper collective organization of our economic resources such as will make possible a much greater degree of leisure and a much richer individual life for every citizen.

This social and economic transformation can only be brought about by political action, supported by a majority of the people. We do not believe in change by violence. The hungry, oppressed and underprivileged of the world must know democracy not as a smug slogan but as a dynamic way of life which sees the world as one whole. The vision of a new world of co-operative labor, the elimination of the exploitation of man by man, and the free development of, the human personality, is a practical possibility and a necessity. It is in harmony with the world-wide march of mankind. For over a century the domination of the capitalist mode of production has posed before humanity the alternatives: Socialism or Barbarism. The only definitive solution is the elimination of capitalism and its institutions, and the establishment of common ownership of the means of production and rational economic planning. Capitalism has developed as a world economic system. It is illusory to believe that the much higher development of the productive forces that socialism entails can be achieved within the framework of a single country. The construction of socialism can be completed only on a world scale. Capitalism must be abolished. The needs of working people can only be met by creating a planned economy, where ownership and control are taken from the tiny minority of capitalists and placed in the hands of the working people, to be run democratically.

Socialists often hear the comment that "Socialism is a good idea but it’s not practical." But today it’s becoming more apparent than ever that it is the present system — capitalism — that is impractical and unworkable. We know that a better world is not only possible, but absolutely necessary. If you think so too, join us. We take every opportunity to present the socialist case and to convince people of the need to do away with the repressive, unjust capitalist system, and replace it with socialism. Everywhere there is a searching for a solution to the problems confronting working people. We stand for a socialist society: where ownership and control of the means of production are taken out of the hands of the tiny minority of capitalists, and placed in the hands of the majority — the workers. The capitalist system is run for the profits of the few, not the needs of the majority. Workers are thus continually forced to fight to defend their interests. Through these struggles, they will come to see the need for socialism, to replace capitalism. 

Everything is One Thing – Capitalism

There is currently a historically low level of strikes in the UK and the USA. At some point that is going to change, but it's difficult to say where or when.

We live in an age of threats to global peace and stability. The myths and illusions concerning the Labour Party have an extraordinary tenacity. Despite betrayals by its leaders, repeated electoral disasters, it has been the renewed confidence of each new generation that has kept the Labour Party alive all these years. The facts of life have been against them but their self-sacrificing work has ensured the continuation of the party and has never altered their conviction that continuous effort would bring about the conversion of the Labour Party to a firm socialist commitment. Yet in the real world, capitalism hooks up with any government that protects its investments - from military dictatorships to Islamic republics to whatever you want to call the Labour Party.

Corbyn’s supporters reflect this naïve trust in the party. Decades ago most biggish towns had their local labour paper, produced by the constituency Party, they had an active Trades Council who could count on a wide support. How many of such papers exist today? Are there any Trades Council that is more than just a rubber stamp these days? Those who continue to believe in the viability of the Labour Party as a political force for the achievement of socialism are today confronted with more serious questions than ever before. Evidence of Labour governments being weak, timid and wholly reformist is very evident everywhere and at every level. The Labour Party is a massive institutional obstacle to the achievement of socialism.

Nor can any review of the Left outside the Labour Party can offer anything but yet more pessimism. The combined political impact of these groups is very limited, except in those situations where the mainstream of the labour movement is also moving in their direction. Workers are more likely to support the status quo or reactionary ideas when we are being cowed by our bosses and divided against each other. It's when we start figuring out how to come together and resist that many of us become more politically open to radical politics.

What we need are new styles of approach as socialists: new methods of organisation: new forms of socialist agitation; but how and in what ways the old techniques and organisational forms can be supplanted are not easy questions to answer. Words alone will not suffice. There must, it should go without saying, be intensive discussion of the problems at all levels; but it will be in the practical achievement of unity and common action that the shape and form of the future movement will emerge. It will be an exploration in practice. The workers would do a much better job, not the class as it exists right now, but the one that can come into being through future struggles. Socialism isn't based on the premise that people are the same, only that they have the same rights and resources. Socialism is a society run by and for people. Socialism could liberate billions of individuals. Socialism is about extending democracy - by extending popular decision-making into arenas currently controlled by unelected institutions like corporations by creating many new democratic institutions such as neighbourhood assemblies and workplace committees. Capitalism keeps pushing new generations to look to an alternative. Socialism is about expanding social movements into a full participatory democracy.

For eons our ancestors knew all about how to get along without killing each other and destroying the environment. Only with the advent of class society did competition and "winning" replace cooperation and sharing as the primary ethos. And now class society has finished its evolutionary mission, allowing us to return to our anthropological roots. People don't realize that they have been conditioned to suspend their common sense. We don't understand that capitalism is invalid but sustained by ignoring its horrendous side effects e.g. the poor, crime, endless war, disease and destruction of ecospheres. Everything is One Thing – Capitalism and there is only one solution – Socialism. The Spanish left party, Podemos, had a slogan “one foot in the parliament, one hundred on the streets.”

A festive financial famine

More than 7000 Scots were forced to use food banks in the week before Christmas.

Low income was the biggest factor in 27 per cent of cases, while benefit delays were a factor in 24 per cent and 15 per cent were due to a benefit change.

Ewan Gurr, Scotland network manager for the Trussell Trust, said:

“The message we are clearly hearing in our food banks is not so much that people are struggling with a low income but with no income. This is not about misplaced spending priorities but families struggling on tight budgets where increased winter fuel bills and the absence of free school meals can mean having to make a decision between a warm home and a warm meal. Many individuals and families are simply experiencing a financial famine.”

Socialism on the march

Our socialist revolution can and must be made. Our revolution is everybody’s revolution, of all nationalities and cultures. Who needs the compromisers of the reformist parties who have spouted about socialism for over a hundred years and never came close to making a revolution? “The final goal, no matter what it is, is nothing,” said Bernstein, “the movement is everything.” Every left-wing organisation seems to place the question of “Reform or Revolution” at the top of the agenda, but every conference seems to leave the question unresolved. The Socialist Party has not.

“Single-issueism” is the process of crossing class lines and watering down principles to a broadly acceptable level in order to construct an alliances with sections of the ruling class so a particular demand or reform can be achieved. The single-issue men and women yearn for immersion into the system have come to dominate over those who abhorred capitalism and seek its abolition.

Many brands of oppression—racism, sexism, heterosexism, ageism, classism—are historical; they have not been always with us. It was not ever thus. And it’s not going to be this way, come the socialist revolution!

Some environmentalists concede that class exists all right, but it’s obsolete; capitalism and socialism are really the same thing because both deal with who shall own and control production. Some activists known as “deep greens” claim we shouldn’t produce at all because production is hazardous to health and environment and we should return to a more primitive life-style.

The single-issue is the dead-end issue. True, it is often large, but it is also, invariably, diffuse, divisive, ambiguous, contradictory, deceptive and mercurial- here today, gone tomorrow. It persists because the ruling class and their media confers respectability upon it. The capitalist system cannot grant substantial reforms because these would seriously weaken the very pillars upon which the system itself rests: exploitation for profits.

Oppressions grew not out of somebody’s evil mind, but out of material reality. Given certain economic conditions, levels of technology, and the particular development of the forces of production, assorted varieties of subjugation had to happen. When production of “commodities”—goods for sale— became widespread, private ownership arose and with it came new family structures and relations among people. Classes emerged. And to entrench these new classes, new forms of rule developed. The State was born; laws came on the scene. The culture changed. We live in an epoch in which there coexists class oppression, racism and sexism, heterosexism, ageism, ableism, anti-Semitism, etc. There’s a name for this kind of society and it’s called capitalism. It relishes and thrives on oppression.

By capitalism, we mean the system that exists on the basis of your unpaid labour. You as a worker produce commodities to be exchanged on the market. You produce not only enough to pay your own wage, but also an added value, a surplus value, over and above the cost of your maintenance. Surplus labour is your unpaid wage. In polite circles it is called “profit.” And that’s what capitalism is all about.

Capitalism is the all-embracing social cause of every form of oppression and exploitation today. This common context and content creates the parallels and the similarities between all of us despite our superficial differences of color and sex and age and sexuality. Capitalism is the core that engenders the intersections of all of our struggles, and all of our lives, and all of our problems. New forms of oppression and exploitation are created depending upon the needs of the economy. There’s constant interaction and change among economic institutions, the state, and the culture. We are all afflicted—commonly afflicted—by a ruthless system, a cruel, vicious, remorseless, callous system. The same enemy holds us in bondage. That enemy has the same reasons for torturing all of us. The ruling class wants to preserve its privileges, its interests, its power, its wealth, its dominion. And so it engages in a very interesting psychological technology called divide and conquer. It’s a weapon designed to make us all hate and resent and compete with each other. And so many of us buy it. We can’t let ourselves do that! We have to make change!

As a socialist party, we do not worship sectarian smallness or dogmatic purity. We aim at a mass radical workers’ movement. But, we refuse to dilute our principles into some classless united front which hands power over to any leadership that glorifies reformism as preferable to revolutionary solutions. The Socialist Party maintains its integrity and will not compromise its methods. Our task is to retain and continue socialist ideas, without these we would be derelict in our responsibility to the mass of humankind. Whenever we say that, somebody always objects: “Oh yeah? You can’t change human nature. ” Wrong! Our business as socialists is changing human nature away from the distortion that capitalism has made of it. And we can do it through unity. We are the people. We are the majority. If we organise, we can change this world, and we must.

When we make contact, we become part of each other. We draw from each other. We reflect each other; we affect each other, without losing our identities. Our oppressions interpenetrate, interact, intersect and meet. Some people try to escape the system. They try to ignore it and pretend it doesn’t affect them. But although you may try to escape the system, the system won’t escape you. You may try to ignore it, but it won’t ignore you. Sooner or later life and the system are going to place you in the class struggle. When people realize the system has “betrayed” them, they are very, very quickly raised in political consciousness. They then begin to generalise and see that everybody is affected. So solidarity is born and we understand we have to stick together if we’re going to create change. We fight on all fronts. We see the interconnections of all the different struggles and we have a vision of the future. Class is the key link.

What is class? Class simply describes where a person stands vis-à-vis wealth. Socialists call it your relation to the means of production. What end of the commodity production process are you on? Are you a producer of goods, or are you an appropriator of profits? Are you a worker employed by somebody else, or are you the employer who reaps surplus value from the labour of your employees? Workers are all the people who don’t own their own means of production. By this I don’t mean personal tools but the factory and the equipment, the production operation.

So who are workers today? Who isn’t? Movie stars, artists, musicians, government workers, professionals of all kinds, teachers, professors—almost everybody is a worker today. Workers aren’t just manual; there are increasingly fewer of those as automation and robots take over and everything becomes computerised. We do different kinds of work these days. We work with our minds more and we sit on our behinds more. But we’re still workers. We are the class. We are the overwhelming majority. And taken together, the workers of colour, the women, the young, the aged, the LGBT and the handicapped are the majority of that majority class. That’s what too many of us lose sight of. We really have some power if only we would use it. And that’s why we should stop sniping at each other and start organizing. There can be no socialism without liberation for everybody. This system cannot grant freedom to Blacks, period. To Hispanics, period. To women, period. You can’t have liberation for one group and nobody else. You can’t be liberated as an individual if you suffer oppression on some other level of your existence. If you make the cultural lifestyles of your own group into a substitute for politics and a strategy for change. It doesn’t work. It never works, because it’s too superficial. What it can do is destroy a movement. You have to recognise class—who’s the boss, who’s the worker, who’s right and who’s wrong. Class is the line we don’t cross.

Socialism is not production for profit. It is production for use. It is not production for private ownership and the private ownership of resources. It is common ownership of the wealth. It is not inequality and misery and persecution and discrimination; it is equality and fairness. It is not poverty and want; it is freedom from want. It is freedom from war. It is freedom from ugliness and squalor. It is just the opposite of what exists today and it expresses what people need and dearly want and would love to see.  Socialism is a celebration of life. We will never find tranquility until we merge our common treasury of wealth with the socialist concern for all people.

 There’s a big class struggle going on. How dare these extollers of a system that starves and exploits and crucifies untold billions blame the underpaid and the destitute for the poverty, mis-education, crime, dope, domestic abuse and cynicism that the profit system itself generates? The global order of capitalism cries out to be replaced with production for use, not for greed, so as to eliminate the endless wars and hatreds spawned by dwindling markets and poverty. The people will rise up one day and say, “I’m fed up with all this. I’m sick and tired. I’m not gonna take it anymore.” When people start to discover their wishes and dreams, at that point in history the planet will once again bloom. And the question is, what side are you on?