If you need leaders you are slavish sheep

The idea of socialism has been around a lot longer than Marx, indeed is older than capitalism, if one takes John Ball's speech - 'When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?' in 1381. An aspiration for social equality which could not be met from the primitive technology of its day...but what an aspiration when Peasants Revolt leaders were being beheaded and put on spikes.

Marx was a radical journalist who wished to see the end of feudal relations and the ushering in of capitalist development and technology. He supported emerging capitalist revolutions for a while. He saw peasants being cruelly treated and driven from land which had long been in common where wood could be gathered for fuel. He was chased into exile by the powers that be when his journalism questioned events such as that one. He learned his socialism from the French working class. As a polymath Marx was a prodigious scholar and teacher. He even gives credit to the Anabatists, who opposed private property and preached that all goods should be held in common. His gibe about the Church of England illustrates this, "...The English established Church, e.g. will more readily pardon an attack on 38 of 39 of its articles than on 1/39 of its income. Nowadays atheism is culpa levis (a relatively slight sin, c.f. mortal sin) as compared to criticism of existing property relations." This is the one he had in mind. (What a learned chap he was)

“XXXVIII. Of Christian men's Goods, which are not common.

The Riches and Goods of Christians are not common, as touching the right, title, and possession of the same, as certain Anabaptists do falsely boast. Notwithstanding, every man ought, of such things as he possesseth, liberally to give alms to the poor, according to his ability.”

All wealth springs from the collective labour of the working class. It should be owned in common. Why settle for crumbs when we can own the bake-house in common? If we abolished the wages system, the governments (slavemasters’ overseers), the private and nominally public ownership by corporations and individuals (The slaveowning class), of the means of producing and distributing wealth, and established equal access in a production for use, market free, free access, commonly owned world, there would be a sufficiency and more, indeed a superabundance probably.

Capitalism is incapable of satisfying or meeting human needs and must exploit the poverty stricken majority's relationship to the means of production and distribution, by ensuring wage slavery for the majority, to produce a surplus value (The workers commodity labour power produces a surplus over its value, the only commodity which does so) for the continued economic dominance enrichment and benefit of the minority parasite owning class. Capitalism is obsolete and has been so since the beginning of the last century. We need to have a dialogue with fellow workers worldwide, and make our common cause about abolishing the wages system and establishing a post-scarcity world of free access for all. It is a 'Free Access' society. The access will be 'self-determined', according to self-determined needs. There will not be any overlords in a free access society or access privileged above anyone else. In this sense we will all be genuinely social equals with equal access but needs are of course individual. Contributions likewise will be 'self-determined'. Free labour rather than waged. The surgeon will have gone into medicine to administer to the health of society. The sewage worker likewise, will have the same access to the common wealth. There will be no buying or selling so no need of monetary transactions, banks, Insurance sales, advertising, etc. and therefore a freeing up of the general population to render useful service utilising the previous productive capacity from the inefficient rationed economy of capitalism, to efficient allocations and sharing of resources globally instead of warring over them. As all will be held in common there is no need for rationed access, policed restrictions, or armies fighting over minority controls over vital resources. As it is a post capitalist society, it sees the end of social classes proper, in the last great emancipation. The end of governments 'over' people and the genuine democratic administration of resources introduced, (with re-callable delegation where required) with the utilisation of 'calculation in kind' stock controls using information technology to provide automatic stock controls and replenishment signals. There would be no prices, taxes or other rationing when we utilise the productive potential of present day technology, to produce a superabundance of wealth, with free access, instead of rationing it via waged slavery and price mechanisms, turning it off, when markets become glutted as at present. It is past time for a societal upgrade. Capitalism is well past its useful social stage. Politicians can't do it for us. But we can ourselves. It is time to turn ourselves to saving the planet and utilising the productive capacity allied with the latest in technology and informational techniques, algorithmic based decision-making instead of price mechanisms, to satisfy production needs, ensuring everyone without distinction, has free access to all we need, to live a useful and healthy life.

Smarten up and get up off your subservient knees to help create a 'post capitalist' system of society, where everything is owned in common and controlled democratically. Hasten the post-capitalist, free access socialist society, of open borders and healthy and secure places the world over, from which no one has to flee! We can have a class-free, slavery-free world to win, where we really can be, "Free at last".

You will find more on the World Socialist Movement website, or one of the companion parties site such as Britian’s oldest existing socialist party and second oldest political party, an honourable and refreshing exception to the usual run-of-the-mill organisations. 

Trump plays his last card

Donald Trump last week threatened to scrap £700million of investment at Turnberry golf course in Ayrshire and Trump Inter-national Golf Links near Aberdeen if he was banned from Britain after his comment that all Muslims should be banned from America. Trump said any ban would “immediately end these and all future investments we are contemplating in the UK”. Trump told Aberdeenshire planning officials that he would spend £643million and create more than 6000 jobs. Experts estimate he has spent less than £30million. Plans for a second golf course, hundreds of private homes and holiday lodges have yet to materialise.

The threat to scrap £700million of investment in Scotland is another of the tycoon’s fairytales, according to a leading economist. Professor Paul Cheshire accused the tycoon of hugely exaggerating the size and benefits of his stake in Scotland and said promises made by him were falling apart at the seams. The emeritus professor of economic geography at the London School of Economics spoke out after it was revealed Trump’s Aberdeenshire golf course created less than a 10th of the jobs originally forecast by Trump.

He said: “These figures are all fairytales. The idea that you could build an international golf resort well north of Aberdeen and attract the type of high-rollers that would be necessary to make that sustainable didn’t ever strike me as being remotely plausible. Trump is essentially a conjurer with wonderful patter. What he was originally proposing was an enormous twin golf course with a big international standard hotel and a hostel for migrant workers, plus hundreds of private houses. He was pulling the wool over the eyes of these poor people in Aberdeen, who just fell for it hook, line and sinker because they were worried about the end of North Sea oil. He promised them the ‘golf economy’. He claimed it would generate around 7000 jobs – I thought it was more likely to generate a few hundred.”

Prof Cheshire, one of the UK’s most respected economists, warned politicians that Trump could not deliver when detailed plans were submitted in 2011. Prof Cheshire added: “I thought it was such an obvious con that was being played on such a large scale, at the expense of an incredibly important site and local people’s interests. I thought Alex Salmond was a canny fellow but Trump pulled the wool over his eyes.”

Trump first announced he was planning to extend his business in Europe by building the resort at the Menie estate in March 2006. After the plans were originally rejected, then First Minister Alex Salmond met Trump representatives at an Aberdeen hotel and, shortly afterwards, the Scottish Government gave fresh hope to the proposal. They said it was “in the national interest” of Scotland for it to receive consideration through a government-backed inquiry. The public inquiry took place in 2008 and the development was given the green light. But it still had stiff opposition from environmental campaigners and local residents, some of whom Trump tried to force from their homes.

Councillor Martin Ford was chairman of Aberdeenshire Council’s infrastructure services committee when Trump’s planning application was received in 2006. After using his casting vote to go against the plans, he was later sacked from the position. Cllr Ford said: “Mr Trump promised everything under the sun and they were all ludicrous, ridiculous exaggerations which nobody should have believed. He said it was a £1billion investment but it was about £13million in 2011 – including buying the estate. By the end of 2013, it had gone up to about £25million and, since then, he’s built a clubhouse and a few sheds. It’s pretty safe to say he’s spent under £30million. From the point where the plan was first announced, the amount of money and the number of jobs just kept getting bigger. Fewer than 100 jobs is a tiny fraction of what was pledged and promised. It is important to note that Trump has not built a golf resort – he’s built a golf course and clubhouse. He was going to build a 450-bed five-star hotel. He has instead converted Menie House into a small hotel. So you can see the pattern here – £1billion goes down to £30million, 6000 jobs go down to 95 and a 450-bed hotel which has something like six rooms.”

Anthony Baxter who made the documentary ‘You’ve Been Trumped’ said: “The suggestions that the capital expenditure on Trump International was £643million and the course would support more than 6000 jobs are just total pie in the sky. He has already said he is not going to invest any more if the wind farm goes ahead. He is constantly coming up with bullying threats. Politicians need to wake up to reality.”

Trump still has outstanding planning applications with Aberdeenshire Council for further work at the site. These include the development of the MacLeod Course. He has also applied to extend MacLeod House, the resort’s hotel, and has submitted a planning permission in principle application to build 850 homes and 1900 holiday homes. In 2014, he took control of world-renowned golf course Turnberry.

You can't buck the market

"We're gonna take the 4 hour day,

We're gonna surprise the boss some first of May" 

– The I.W.W.

Work is an essential activity for humans. It is unfree (if you want to live) waged slaved employment in return for a ration of what we collectively produce, which is the killer. There wouldn't be shit sales, advertising, banking, insurance occupations, all to do with the money economy, so work would be able to be shared across a larger force of voluntary labour. The present intensity of production where we work to produce duplicates of commodiities to be thrown away Hours could be reduced and the distinctions between work and play or leisure be so blurred in many cases as to become meaningless. In a society where humans are free to choose both the pace and the length of time they work, not only would the blind pressure to reduce to a minimum the labour-time needed to produce a product no longer exist, but it would become perfectly meaningless to measure the "value" or the "cost" of a product in terms of the labour-time socially necessary to make it. A society based on voluntary work would be free from such considerations. And if productive activity is enjoyable how can it be regarded as a cost? The self-employed and small business owner are just as likely to be subcontracting to capitalist owners. It is in their interest to make common cause with the rest of the world's workers and get rid of capitalism, its markets, wage-slavery, buying and selling and establish a free access society of common ownership and democratic control.

Stuff charity. Solidarity rules. We in the Socialist Party don't 'ask' the general public, governments or philanthropists, to fund anything. We insist you get off your knees, or up of your arses and make the revolution instead of begging the capitalist class and its governments to be nice to you. "Arise like lions from your slumbers". It is 'our' job to solve the problem of poverty. Not governments, they only exist to govern 'over' us and to manage us. They are all subject to its anarchic market fluctuations, war over trade routes, raw materials, resources and geopolitical advantage, boom, bust, stagnation.  Not philanthropists. Despise the conditions in which philanthropy is deemed necessary. Don't think voting for the Labour Party is 'the road to socialism' either, regardless of the leader. Don't follow leaders. Government exists to manage 'us' in the interests of capital regardless of the colour of its politics. Dissolve all governments and elect the people. Despise all nationalism as deluded and anti-working class. Workers have no country. It is 'our' fault, if we support capitalism, from which springs poverty (actual relative in or out of work), homelessness and war. Decent acts of solidarity by individuals, such as these two blokes have displayed, can help alleviate problems and must be welcomed, just as any reform which provides a let up the misery, but the problems will persist and continue ad infinitum, until we take control of our own destiny and establish a commonly owned, free access society. Don't settle for crumbs from the bosses table. The solution is not more 'redistribution' and bigger crumbs, but common ownership by all. Take over the bakery and have free access to all you need and require. A socialist world would make it possible for work to be voluntary and access to the common wealth free. By abolishing the wages system and replacing the production of commodities for sale on the market, with production to satisfy human needs, we begin to rationalise production to that end, rather than the anarchy of market competition in the interests of a few, restore some natural harmony into our work life balance where work could also be play. No more rulers or ruled. We will all be social equals.

Capitalism is the social system which now exists in all countries of the world. Under this system, the means for producing and distributing goods (the land, factories, technology, transport system etc.) are owned by a small minority of people. We refer to this group of people as the capitalist class. The majority of people must sell their ability to work in return for a wage or salary (who we refer to as the working class.)

The working class are paid to produce goods and services which are then sold for a profit. The profit is gained by the capitalist class because they can make more money selling what we have produced than we cost to buy on the labour market. In this sense, the working class are exploited by the capitalist class. The capitalists live off the profits they obtain from exploiting the working class whilst reinvesting some of their profits for the further accumulation of wealth. This is what we mean when we say there are two classes in society. It is a claim based upon simple facts about the society we live in today. This class division is the essential feature of capitalism. It may be popular to talk (usually vaguely) about various other 'classes' existing such as the 'middle class', but it is the two classes defined here that are the key to understanding capitalism. It may not be exactly clear which class some relatively wealthy people are in. But there is no ambiguity about the status of the vast majority of the world's population. Members of the capitalist class certainly know who they are. And most members of the working class know that they need to work for a wage or salary in order to earn a living (or are dependent upon somebody who does, or depend on state benefits.) The small shopkeeper is in-between, his identification may be as a worker, or petty bourgeois with "notions of upperosity" (Sean O' Casey), he doesn't constitute a class for our general purposes, but he is at risk of falling into poverty especially as the big boys move in.

The problem is not austerity... that’s just a turn of the screw. We have always been rationed by the size of our pay cheque and the poor have always been poor. It used to Soup Kitchens; now it's Food Banks. Meanwhile the rich go on getting richer. We can't hope to end poverty and inequality – whether in Britain or throughout the planet – until we get rid of production of wealth for the exclusive profit of a few.

The problem is not Zero-Hours Contracts... It's wage-slavery. Unions should fight for the best deal they can get. But let's not kid ourselves that the system of employment can ever be geared to our needs.

Demonstrations and protest rallies may make us feel like we are 'doing something', but it’s an illusion. The real battle is over ideas: the ideas in the heads of those who do all the work but get little reward. That's why the rich and powerful spend so much time trying to suppress and ridicule any idea of an alternative

The world is rich enough. We can have a world where free access to the planet’s wealth replaces the market and a world where useful work is to be enjoyed rather than endured and suffered, and where no individual can monopolise access to wealth. Armed with knowledge, humanity can finally start to demand the possible.

Profit and Loss Scotland

In the annual listing of Scotland's biggest firms, with turnover above £20m and measured by a formula of turnover, profit and workforce compiled by the Scottish Business Insider magazine profits across the Top 500 were up 34% but if you exclude the Royal Bank of Scotland and the Bank of Scotland total profits fell 17% to £7.9bn, on turnover of £159bn. Of the Top 500, 167 firms saw profits decline, while 298 saw them rise.

Leaving aside the banks, profit per employee - with 571,000 employed across the 498 others - has nearly halved since before the financial crunch, to £12,900.

Some big players in the Scottish economy have no separate Scottish accounting with which to list them. So there's no sign of Diageo, with 40% of the Scotch whisky industry, nor big employers like the supermarkets (except for Tesco Bank, based in Edinburgh), nor big-employing outsourcers such as Capita, Serco and Mitie, no BP or Shell, nor big manufacturers such as BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce.

Some big multi-national corporations do publish figures for Scottish operations, or more often UK operations based in Scotland. And notable among them in this year's listing are the offshore oil and gas explorers and producers. They were among the big fallers, as the sector saw turnover down 12% (in this listing) to £7.4bn. Profits tumbled too. Maersk Oil North Sea (UK), part of the Danish giant, reported a £367m loss, moving it from 26th to 309th position. Dana Petroleum, owned by the South Korean state oil corporation, made a £462m loss, moving it from 20th to 312th position. Petrofac Scotland plunged to a £351m loss, Asco Group lost £308m, Faroe Petroleum reported a £166m pre-tax loss, Taqa Bratani (owned in Abu Dhabi) lost £351m and Ithaca Energy (headquartered in Canada) lost £82m. The oil and gas figures only reflect the start of the oil price downturn, which began gathering pace in autumn of that year.

The top ten companies include five in financial services and five in various forms of energy, it's a reminder how concentrated the economy has become in very few, quite volatile sectors. Something the optimists in the nationalist movement should note.

 http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-35272103

It’s not a question of waiting, but of making it happen.

Money is a mere means of exchange, in a production for sale, private, corporate, or state owned, wage slave rationed access, economy. It will be totally unnecessary in a commonly owned, free access production for use post capitalist society. The franchise was only won through struggle. but liberty has not yet been won if we remain in conditions of waged slavery of the vast majority and privilege for the rest. Capitalism cannot give us freedom to live as social equals, if ownership of the means of production and distribution are held by a minority, private, corporate or state ownership. It is the poor who produce all of the wealth in the first place. The property of the rich is extracted from the surplus value over and above the rationed subsistence (wages) paid to the poor in return for their mental and physical capacities being employed in the creation of this wealth. The workers commodity (labour-power) doesn't receive the full value as other commodities do. State ownership is not common ownership. Nationalisation is not common ownership. The system in the old Soviet Union was state-capitalism. Socialism/communism is truly a post-capitalist, free access, production for use, common ownership society, without buying or selling, money, governments 'over' you, banks, insurance or any of the coercive apparatus of private, corporate or state owned society.

Poverty is relative as well as absolute:

“A house may be large or small; as long as the surrounding houses are equally small it satisfies all social demands for a dwelling. But let a palace arise beside the little house, and it shrinks from a little house to a hut. The little house shows now that its owner has only very slight or no demand to make; and however high it may shoot up in the course of civilization, if the neighbouring palace grows to an equal or even greater extent, the occupant of the relatively small house will feel more and more uncomfortable, dissatisfied and cramped within its four walls…A noticeable increase in wages presupposes a rapid growth of productive capital. The rapid growth of productive capital brings about an equally rapid growth of wealth, luxury, social wants, social enjoyments. Thus, although the enjoyments of the workers have risen, the social satisfaction that they give has fallen in comparison with the increased enjoyments of the capitalist, which are inaccessible to the worker, in comparison with the state of development of society in general. Our desires and pleasures spring from society; we measure them, therefore, by society and not by objects which serve for their satisfaction. Because they are of a social nature, they are of a relative nature…In general, wages are determined not only by the amount of commodities for which I can exchange them. They embody various relations.” – Marx, Wage Labour and Capital

Where scarcity does not exist, therefore acquisitive impulses would not be engendered in the same way as in scarcity and rationed access society such as capitalism. As production would not be turned off and people made redundant, before human needs can be satisfied, as presently in capitalism, where production is for sale to satisfy the profits of a few percentage of the population, an economic parasite capitalist class. Access would be self-determined. You don't take more air than you need, so why would you take more food, clothing, shelter, etc than you need? According to the ideological defenders of capitalism, people are motivated to work only by monetary compensation or by the threat of starvation. The undeniable fact that millions of hours of voluntary work are engaged in by people all the time. People are motivated to do socially useful work by reasons other than money and so could be relied on to do this too in a socialist society.

The Tories aren't the bad guys. It is capitalism and the Labour Party supports this equally as much and always has done, even to using troops during strikes. A Labour government like all capitalist governments is rules you. The banking system doesn't enslave people, but capitalism does, by waged slavery. Banks are merely a function of a market system of private, corporate and state ownership of the means of production and distribution, which has production for profit for the enrichment of a minority capitalist parasitic class, as opposed to a, post-capitalist, commonly owned, free access system which would have production for use in the interests of all and have no need of money, banks, insurance, markets, governments, police, armies navies and war machines. Capitalism can't be r managed in the interests of the working class, by Left, or Right, or Centrist, variants of its governments. No government can lift people out of poverty. Poverty (absolute, actual and relative) is essential to keep workers desperate for waged slavery.

You just can't have a 'nicer' capitalism. Unemployment is inevitably associated with of capitalist competition over markets, trade routes and spheres of interests. You can't have even the 'Right to Work'. There is always, even in boom times a reserve army of unemployed, to drive down wages. (If necessary they will inject inflation into the economy). Unemployment is currently 5.5 percent or 1,860,000 people. If their "equilibrium rate" of unemployment is 4% rather than 5% this would still mean 1,352,000 "need be unemployed". The government don't want these people to find jobs as it would strengthen workers' bargaining position over wages, but that doesn't stop them harassing them with useless and petty form-filling, reporting to the so-called "job centre" just for the sake of it, calling them scroungers and now saying they are mentally defective. Government is 'over' you not 'for' you. Governments do not exist to ensure 'fair do's' but to manage social expectations with the minimum of dissent, commensurate with the needs of capitalism in the interests of profit. Worker participation amounts to self-managing workers self-exploitation for the maximum of profit for the capitalist class. Exploitation takes place at the point of production. Because society is structured around the ownership of productive resources by a tiny minority and the compulsion of the majority to work, in order to live, to create profit for that minority, society cannot be reformed to abolish exploitation or the periodic economic crises that result from it. All the power to hire and fire is held by the employing class. It is past time to abolish the wages and prices system. Capitalists, regardless if they are home-grown vultures or overseas vultures, move in and out of countries based on profit maximisation, not to save or create jobs. The capitalist class don't wake up at night wondering how they can save or create jobs of people, but how they might make a profit, by leeching surplus value off their potential workforce.

“Instead of the conservative motto, ‘A fair day's wage for a fair day's work!’ they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, ‘Abolition of the wages system!’”- Karl Marx Value, Price and Profit

Society could not function without the social aspect of sociability despite aggression and competitive behaviour being rewarded. People are no more naturally violent than naturally cooperative. They have to be 'trained' to kill in war situations.

"What these studies have taught the military is that in order to get soldiers to shoot to kill, to actively participate in violence, the soldiers must be sufficiently desensitized to the act of killing. In other words, they have to learn not to feel -- and not to feel responsible -- for their actions. They must be taught to override their own conscience. Yet these studies also demonstrate that even in the face of immediate danger, in situations of extreme violence, most people are averse to killing. In other words, as Marshall concludes, "the vast majority of combatants throughout history, at the moment of truth when they could and should kill the enemy, have found themselves to be 'conscientious objectors' "  Dave Grossman, On Killing

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists possesses an eloquent piece on a world without money, a condensed explanation of surplus value and redundancy in everyday language. In socialism, we  won't be returning to barter. We will be taking over all the array of technological expertise and information of capitalism, which will enable production of surpluses and no switching off of capacity until needs are met, as opposed to artificial (rationed by price) demand as presently. The idea is that free access will be deliverable with voluntary labour. The interesting thing is how capitalism can tease us with the potential for its own demise, democracy the Achilles heel for liberation and recently Paul Mason's book, ‘Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future’ at least shone a focus upon some possibilities. We may likely die without seeing socialism, but we will be happy that we have been one of those consistent in keeping the original idea of what socialism is, and is not, alive. Making socialism is a task the world’s working class have to do for themselves.

Socialism depends on people recognising our mutual interdependence. There is, in other words, a sense of moral obligation that goes with the territory. Socialism will permit a far greater degree of technological adaptation without the constraints of the profit system. Intrinsically backbreaking or unpleasant work can be automated. Conversely some work may be deliberately made more labour intensive and craft based.  Even under capitalism today most work is unpaid or unremunerated - the household economy, the volunteer sector and so on. So it is not as if this is something we are unaccustomed to. Volunteers moreover tend to be the most highly motivated as studies have confirmed; they don't require so called external incentives. We will get rid of an awful lot of crappy and pointless jobs that serve as a disincentive to work. Since we would be free to do any job we chose to what this means in effect is that for any particular job there would be a massive back-up supply of labour to cover it consisting of most people in society. In capitalism this cannot happen since labour mobility is severely restricted since if you have a job you cannot just choose to abandon it for the sake of another more urgent job from the standpoint of society. With these two core characteristics of a socialist society - free access to goods and services plus volunteer labour - there can be no political leverage that anyone or any group could exercise over anyone else. The material basis of class power would have completely dissolved. What we would be left with is simply human beings being free to express their fundamentally social and cooperative nature.

We have a world to win.

Transcend national boundaries

Scottish nationalists claim that English domination is the cause of the social ills, such as bad housing, old age poverty, unemployment and rural depopulation from which the people of Scotland suffer. What is the attitude of the Socialist Party of Great Britain to Scottish nationalism? Do we support the aim of Scottish independence? The socialist and the nationalist see society from different points of view. For the socialist present-day society is divided into two classes: a capitalist class who own the means of production, and a working class who, having no property, are forced to work for the capitalists. The interests of these two classes are opposed and between them there is a class struggle. This transcends national boundaries.

For the socialist the property-less working class have no country. The nationalist, on the other hand, sees the inhabitants of one particular area as a unit having a common interest. He or she ignores the class division of society and the class struggle. For a nationalist the nation is all-important. A nationalist encourages the worker to believe he or she has a country. Thus Socialism and nationalism are opposed. They are irreconcilable. Nationalism is in fact one of the means which capitalism uses to blind the workers to class society. It is a delusion which socialists seek to dispel. For this reason the Socialist Party is opposed to Scottish nationalism and does not support the demand for Scottish independence.

The cause of unemployment and other social ills is in capitalism and its production for profit. When there is no profit to make from production, then production stops and unemployment spreads. Unemployment is inevitable under capitalism.

The SNP sees the cause of Scottish unemployment in a mythical English domination. Here again the nationalist is mistaken. He or she sees poverty not as a class problem but as a national problem: a problem to be solved not by class emancipation but by national emancipation. Socialists are committed to exposing this way of looking at social problems. We deny that English domination is the cause of poverty in Wales and consequently hold that national independence is not the solution.

The SNP promises that if it gains national sovereignty it will introduce various social reforms designed to improve the lot of the people of Scotland. We say that such reforms will fail. For it is the social system, and not the political regime, which will determine how people will live in an independent Scotland. It is obvious that the SNP, despite its leftist talk intends that capitalism in one form or another should continue after independence. This means that poverty also will continue. National independence will merely mean that the capitalists of Scotland will pay their taxes to a government in Edinburgh instead of to a government in London—a change of no interest to the workers of Scotland.

What then is the solution? Since these social problems arise from capitalism nothing short of the complete overthrow of this system will be sufficient. The Socialist Party therefore urges the workers of Scotland to unite with workers elsewhere to set up a world Socialist system where the peoples of the world will co-operate to produce for their needs on the basis of the common ownership and democratic control of the means of life. This will be a society without frontiers, without nations and without war. This is the real alternative to capitalism and nationalism.

Adapted from here 

Wash-day blues (1984)

From the November 1984 issue of the SocialistStandard

Like most students who don’t have Prince Edward’s connections, I was forced to seek employment during the summer vacation and was eventually “lucky” enough to secure the position of machine operator in a hospital laundry. The rate I was to be paid was the same as for full-time employees — £66.89 basic for a forty-hour week (all thoughts of becoming a tax exile in the near future quickly vanished). For those, like myself, who are less mathematically inclined this works out at £1.67 PSH (per slave hour) but like the majority of labour power sellers I was confronted with an offer I could not refuse.

This particular laundry served five hospitals. one of them psychiatric and another dealing with infectious diseases. The process begins at the dirty end — items are sorted by hand into barrows on the basis of type and how badly soiled. For this necessary but particularly unpleasant job, as for the operators who load the machines, what is euphemistically called Foul Linen money is paid at the rate of 50 pence a day. This extra is paid to compensate for the risk of contracting scabies, infectious hepatitis and other sundry ills.

The atmosphere, as can be imagined, can get very warm and smelly and on warm days it was common to be wet from head to foot with perspiration for the whole of the working day. Staff are periodically moved on a rota to different tasks within the laundry, possibly in a futile attempt to lessen their boredom. Futile since each task is as boring and debilitating as any other, whether standing all day folding pieces of clothing or feeding bed linen into the drying and folding machine. After a few hours on any of these monotonous, repetitive tasks, the brain begins to numb and actions become almost automatic. The only consolation for me and others like me was that we were there for a limited period only for the wages certainly offered no solace.

How do the full-time workers stand it? One said. "You know there’s nothing else, you resign yourself to it". Many of them sought escape through the pages of the Sun, Daily Star and Mills and Boon; they also showed a keen interest in the lives of their masters, having pictures of the royal family pinned on the laundry walls.

Students pay no income tax. so with six hours overtime I could take home £74.00, which means that full-time staff would take home less than £70.00 or less than £60.00 without overtime. While I was there a paltry rise of around £3.14 had come through for laundry workers. As if this wasn’t enough it is believed that this particular laundry will go private in the near future, in line with government policy, which brought rumours of staff lay-offs, replacement with cheaper labour or wage cuts for those kept on, all in the cause of profitability.

Hospital ancillary workers, like other NHS workers, do a very important job but as always are among the poorest paid. The laundry workers’ unions — the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE) and the Confederation of Health Service Employees (COHSE) — are. like all unions, useful only up to a point. Unions can never eradicate the root of the workers' problems; they fight battles but will never win the war. Under capitalism all production is for profit and the minority capitalist class appropriate the wealth created by the majority. The capitalists' goal is to maximise profits by making the working class work harder for less.

John Neill

De omnibus dubitandum

 Compilation of comments from the Guardian placed by Wee Matt

"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles."

 Marx and Engels are spot on there. Marx saw the struggle of the bourgeoisie to win power from the landed aristocracy as inevitable. It heralded, not just the birth of capitalism, but its assumption of power as an economic and political class, which would in turn help develop the forces of production changing them from the small handyman craft productive systems into the socialised production methods with a skilled educated workforce, however unconsciously this heralded the possibility, that they may be eventually captured by the subject wealth producer working class. Now, we workers, run capitalism from top-to-bottom. A free access society of common ownership and democratic control has been possible since the start of the 20th century. A change of ownership from elites, individuals, corporations, states, to common ownership, is a simple matter of changing political awareness and consciousness to this end, as in the ultimate self-interest, of all of humanity.

 As a preview of globalisation and a snapshot of methods applied to get there, Marx had this to say:

"...And whereas in the sixteenth century, and partly still in the seventeenth, the sudden expansion of trade and the creation of a new world market had an overwhelming influence on the defeat of the old mode of production and the rise of the capitalist mode, this happened in reverse on the basis of the capitalist mode of production, once it had been created. The world market itself forms the basis for this mode of production. On the other hand, the immanent need that this has to produce on an ever greater scale drives it to the constant expansion of the world market, so that now it not trade that revolutionizes industry, but rather industry that constantly revolutionizes trade. Moreover, commercial supremacy is now linked with greater or lesser prevalence of the conditioned for large-scale industry…. In India, moreover, the English applied their direct political and economic power, as masters and landlords, to destroying these small economic communities." (Capital Vol.3)

 On the franchise, in 1879 Marx commented:

"The point was not to pursue the franchise as though it were a Workers' Holy Grail, but to transform it from the institute of fraud . . . into an instrument of emancipation"

Adding:

"We cannot, therefore, co-operate with people who openly state that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves"

 Marx's analysis of capitalism is acknowledged, even by some conservatives, who do not agree with his conclusions as influential, formative, groundbreaking, pioneering, original, creative, innovative works. He was never meant to be read uncritically. His favourite aphorism was, "de dubitas dubitandum" (doubt everything).

 The notion that inequalities can be legislated away is a fanciful one. Inequality is a prerequisite for the exploitation of waged slaves. Exploitation takes place at the point of production in order to satisfy the needs of the parasite capitalist class to Accumulate! Accumulate! Supply and demand are artificially induced by inequality inbuilt into the system.  Workers 'never' receive the value of their commodity (labour power). So true demand never equates with actual human needs, only with purchasing power. Production is turned off, before needs can be met in the interests of the profit of the parasite class, who individually, corporately, collectively and through state control in state-capitalist command economies, own the means of production and distribution. All wealth flows from labour. Capital (stolen surplus-value in a rigged market) is an encumbrance upon the satisfaction of human needs, as the needs of Capital require the exploitation of the majority along with attendant war, policing and the curtailment of freedom to be available for exploitative waged slavery upon pain of penury.

 Socialism is a post-capitalist world which indeed may be one of a superabundance of the necessities of living a useful and productive life free from wage-slavery, poverty, the booms, busts, wars and other attendant social ills of capitalism. “We'll look after you cradle to the grave,” was the promise of the capitalist class to the wage-slaves. They can’t afford that and we can't afford them. Don't settle for crumbs. Inequality has nothing all to do with immigration.

 Workers from the UK work elsewhere in the world including the E.U. The capitalist class as a whole supports the free movement of labour, if and when profitable, except when this proves unpopular, but it can then be used by their political opportunists and lackeys to scapegoat my fellow workers, rather than the instigators of the poverty and terror they flee from. We all have more in common with fellow workers worldwide than any of our home-grown capitalist economic blood-sucking class.

 Inequality is an essential component of capitalism in order that we are subject to waged slavery to enrich the parasite capitalist class. It is the capitalist class of social leeches who are the enemy and not our fellow workers from overseas or at home. The poor are the essential part of creating the wealth for the rich. It is from labour that all wealth is derived. Capitalism cannot be reformed in any lasting way. To remove the blight of poverty disease and war from the planet we must hasten, the introduction of common ownership and democratic control of production and distribution.

 There is no middle class. The middle class were the rising mercantile class and industrialists who became the upper class as they merged with the aristocrats and landowners in 19th and very early 20th century. The common perception of higher paid, white collar workers, academics, doctors, scientists etc. as constituting a 'middle' class with interests separate from other workers is a false one in general economic and political interest terms. 'Intellectuals' are just as likely to be and identify themselves as, working class. That they 'have to' sell their 'mental and physical' energies for a wage or a salary is a determination of their actual class position, even if they are falsely categorised within a mystical middle class category. Marx learned his socialism from the workers already organised for it and drew his lessons from the actuality of the slaughter of those workers.

 Taxation more or less, government spending more or less, is essentially an argument between small-fry tiddler capitalists losers, too irrelevant for to be swallowed up by, bigger fish capitalists winners with the ear of government, who would hope to be swallowed up by conglomerate sharks, the latter two being the vested interests capitalist governments listen to and of course, the masters of war. If one 'has to' work for a wage or salary, even if one sends young Dimkins to a private school and owns a dwelling with or without a mortgage, we have more interests in common with workers worldwide than with the local regional or global capitalist class.

 'We' the public at large, do not sponsor the state, except in local community charges and VAT through taxation. It is the capitalist class as a whole from their profits who sponsor the state. It is precisely because of the dominant interests of the capitalist class as a whole, the state cannot be reformed to represent a common interests of 'We'. That this assent to be governed 'over' has to be won in a bourgeois democracy via an extended franchised plebiscite, (won through trade unions and political struggle) only makes it a necessity for the P.R. pretence that we share a common purpose vis-a-vis taxation and the like. It is a manipulated delusion, that taxation should be a concern of the vast majority, which disguises the real interests of those ruling groups, upon whose interests governments govern over us. Your employer pays all of it, as it is deducted before you receive it. Your wage/salary IS the bottom line. If by government magic the 'nominal' tax you pay was removed your wage/salary ration would be reduced, as this would mean an increase in the bottom line and the employer won't pay twice for the upkeep of their government and give you a rise. The adjustment is to ensure if you are single, unmarried etc. you don't get the same ration as someone with kids (future wage-slaves) to support etc.

 Who sponsors the state? The capitalist class. Many are obsessed with the incorrect idea that the state and its government is an independent entity. The state springs up from the interests of dominant ruling class groups, from the days of kings and princes, to the rise of the merchant adventurers and then the capitalist class, now global in their reach to ensure the best governments money can buy. The state Genie is out of the bottle and it is now a local, regional and global capitalist one. You cannot tame it, or put it back in the bottle and retain wage slavery, with production for sale on the market. The state and government 'over' the people will not cease to exist until those states are captured by the worlds workers to prevent bloodshed, the last great emancipation, that of the wage slaves and the world is owned in common as true social and economic equals, in a class free , access free, wage- slavery free society and thus the dominant capitalist class and economic interests groups cease to exist as a class, as all of our interests will then be in common, to produce for use according to our capacity and access according to our needs. The state and governments will be redundant in the moneyless classless society.

Capitalism is our prison

Scotland’s jail population is 7894, comprising around 7462 men and 432 women.

West Dunbartonshire has one of the worst prison rates in Scotland, a new report reveals. The number of adults hailing from the Dumbarton, Alexandria and Clydebank areas who are banged up behind bars is 48 percent higher than the national average.

The local authority area contains the third highest prison level in the country with 265 prisoners per 100,000 people, compared to only 179 per 100,000 across Scotland.

However, West Dunbartonshire’s incarceration rate per 100,000 in adult population lags behind worst place Dundee and second worst Glasgow. The statistics, based on 2013 occupancy rates, reveal that the majority of prisoners are male — 184 men and young males compared to just 12 female.

The study flags up a strong link between jail population and area deprivation. West Dunbartonshire is frequently ranked among the most poverty-blighted areas in Scotland. Between 22 percent and 26 percent of the area’s children and young people are currently living in poverty, while 23 percent of families in West Dunbartonshire are materially deprived.

“Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind then that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; and while there is a criminal element, I am of it; and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.” Eugene V Debs

Common ownership is 'no' ownership.

Comments from the Guardian placed by Wee Matt

Democracy within capitalism serves elitist capitalist ends, i.e. springing from bourgeois democracy, which is constrained by the reinforced illusion, that 'business friendly' political parties, whether, Left, Right, Centrist, Green, Purple, Blue, Red, or Tartan necessitate the retention of unequal relations of production and distribution, through the retention of production for sale on a market with a view of realising profit for a minority class who enjoy a parasitic relationship to the production of a wage enslaved majority. The cliched analogy of "turkeys being allowed to vote for an alternative Christmas", which will still have the same outcomes springs to mind.

 That the capitalist class have different agendas is true, we have commercial versus industrial capitalists, local versus regional or global capitalist interests. That they compete against each other is true, even globally, unto war, hence the rise of governments to adjudicate upon and manage those different interests and maintain a regulated framework, for the collective 'capitalist' modus operandi. When we have a slump in trade globally, as at present, caused by the anarchy of the capitalist markets, which entails they go hell for leather to satisfy market demand, but crash when demand slackens, with unsaleable commodities and over extended debt, these rivalries come to the fore, but there is at the same time opportunities to carve out market niches, while driving down the rations of workers.

 Capitalist democracy is a sham. A growing awareness by the immense majority to the fact that, capitalism cannot be reformed and has to be replaced, by a post-capitalist, production for use, free access society without elites or governments, will see this same oppositionalism and consequent entrenchment of the ruling classes and a subsequent mislabeling and traducing of the growing politically aware majority until it becomes an unstoppable force, as nothing will stop an idea which time has come. It matters not if the new post-capitalist, democratic, free access, society is called socialism, communism, anarcho-communism or macaroni. "What is in a name a rose by any other name would smell as sweet". Marxism is not an ideology, but rather an analytical tool. Even Marx himself was said to have stated,"Thank heaven I am not a Marxist".

 The Socialist Party won't settle for crumbs from the rich war-mongering, leeching capitalist’s table. We want a post-capitalist, free access society. We want the whole world and everything in and on it, to be owned in common and controlled democratically, by the whole world’s population with wage slavery abolished forever. Who are we? The bottom line of your pay-slip is the wage you are paid not the nominal tax added to it. The Welfare State sprung out of the promises of successive governments to build a land fit for heroes made during the world wars and is a cost on employers, which must be borne by business, to keep an adequate supply of wage-slaves for present and future exploitation and of course, to prevent social unrest.

  Socialism is where we are truly social equals, free from fear of penury to develop further our understanding of our human condition. We are not speaking of a society such as the present one where production is rationed with production of commodities for sale on a market for a profit, leading to scarcity, with potentially rewarding outcomes for hoarding, there will be no elites controlling access etc. A post-capitalist world is also at the same time a post-scarcity one, as production for use, leads to the production of surpluses, as production is not switched off before needs are met, due to a fall in artificial demand via price mechanisms as at present.

 Relative to the present day then, there will be a superabundance of necessities. Greed and hoarding would be seen as silly. We would not need to change a person’s behaviour because that person needs first to understand that the world is experienced as phenomena, not objects, and that objects cannot provide happiness because objects are not identical with phenomena. i.e. that happiness is profoundly contingent. Thus we will be able to access all needs freely, without hindrance according to our 'self-determined' needs, operating upon the maxim of "From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs". A new sort of social behaviour will arise out of the implementation of the new society and new challenges. The idea is that, with the full development of socialism and unfettered productive forces, there will be enough to satisfy everyone's needs.

 If we do not learn the lessons of history we are doomed to repeat it. There is also a point we need to see and take this on board, about emergent elites or vanguards. The S.P.G.B. eschew leadership, for this reason. All previous revolutions have been minority ones and led by elites. We are talking of a majority revolution, such as the world has never seen. A democratic expression of a majority, who are and have become, politically aware and conscious of the aims and outcomes. Common ownership is effectively 'no' ownership. We will all own and share resources. With free access as a consequence.

 There is already a class struggle going on? The capitalists know full well they constitute a class in and for itself. A war on the poorest, is just but one aspect of it, with workers against workers also, enlisted to do battle on their masters behalf, to determine, deserving as opposed to undeserving recipients of poverty relief, to distract them from their own relationship to the phenomenal wealth, which they collectively produce for the minority ruling class. This in turn raises questions and possibilities of consciousness raising as the political debate ensues. We cannot get away from the class struggle, if we wish to establish a classless society.

 The capture of power of the State initially, is to render it innocuous. The State has to cease to be an administration over 'people' and become, shorn of its oppressive functions and apparatus, as there would be no longer any ruling class, elite interests, become an administration over 'things'. There are useful potential functions, we want doctors and airline pilots to be accredited in some accountable way. There would also be some world bodies capable of co-ordination stuff in an epidemic or a natural disaster to our brothers and sisters, the equivalent of the W.H.O. for instance. The forms and norms of everyday society would be in our own hands to develop, locally, regionally, globally as we extended functional decision making, where necessary over into recallable delegated bodies, free of the possibility of these becoming decision making functions 'over' the populace, as vested interests would not be able to arise to prevail, in a commonly owned production for use society with free access to the common wealth.

 The discussions on what forms the 'post-capitalist' world will take are already ongoing, as we see others, apart from people like myself even beginning to use this term  post-capitalism. This arises from the crisis of production, the possibilities of automation, a web of cooperatives and shared endeavours in the systems and software technology, alerting us to the possibility of self-regulated stock control, accounting in kind and no more need for monetary exchange. But all of this, interesting even seminal, as those developments are potentially depend upon their maximised fruition upon ownership and control being in the hands of 'all' of us and not some 'elite'.

 The real revolution will take place in the minds and hearts of the populace who make it happen and will be seen in existing developments in the general world. So there are no "blueprints for the cookshops of the future" in our scenario either. The people who make it happen, will make it work.

Wee Matt

Edinburgh Br

Get off your knees.

 

RISE UP

Another compilation of comments from the Guardian by Wee Matt

It is not a question of despising the rich, but addressing from whence their riches came. It is a social and political question of whether this allocation of privileged access to wealth, whether through inherited plunder of continents, or the slave trade, or modern waged slavery, by gun or by guile should continue. The Socialist Party doesn't think the capitalist class are scum, although some of them might qualify for this description. Many of them will be decent and honourable people. They are just playing the fortunate hand which they inherit and their education and so on equips them more than adequately to do this. They are schooled to think that this is the best of all possible outcomes, whether laissez faire trickle down or Keynesian re-distributive methods, with a modicum of state regulatory oversight for the greatest possible good for society. The dominant ideology of any society will be that of the ruling class. The raison d'être of capitalism is to accumulate or die within an intensely competitive environment.

 Their self-interest is a class interest even if some do not see it in those stark terms. It is the impersonal anarchy of the competitive global market system which determines embarkation upon ventures with outcomes such as "business by other means" war, mass lay-offs and redundancies, pressure upon labour costs to drive down subsistence levels of the wage slaves in order to render a leaner fitter business model for the purpose of further competition with advantageous outcomes over competitors.

Attempts to reform this will eventually and inevitably, lead to corrections upon the business friendly but welfare subsidised models and a return to the austere conditions of the rapacious austerity model, which will restrict the development of reform, however public spirited and well-meaning the governmental administrations, which arise in response to this. This is not to oppose reforms as such, they are a part of the class struggle after all and gave us the NHS and so on, but to oppose 'Reformism', as being any political solution to the problems of capitalism (war, poverty, waged slavery, inequality etc.) and capitalist accumulation, which can only be at the expense of the wealth producing working class. It is essential that the working class recognise it is in their immediate 'class interest' 99% to take control, of the means of producing and distributing wealth.

 No more money, banks, bankers, politicians and governments lording it over people. This would mean houses built to live in, food to eat, clothing to wear, medicine to treat the sick, rather than for sale on a market with a view of profit. Poverty is relative and absolute. It is an essential component of capitalism. How else will we agree to be wage slaves? Exploitation takes place at the point of production regardless of how well or poorly educated we are. Regardless of the size of the wage or salary.

 It is in the ultimate interest of humanity and the planet and environment, the 100% that this occur, although we do not expect the 1% to see this immediately, but no matter, they are superfluous to the production of wealth. We collectively run capitalism from top to bottom and nothing will stop an idea which time has come. All wealth springs from labour and should return to labour. It is a matter of class interest. We need to become more aware of the forms that conspicuous consumption by the rich take in the new century. It is not a question of envy. All this wealth is derived from the exploitation of the working class, the wealth producers, but who do not own. 

Capitalism and its inevitable concomitants of war, poverty, and planetary despoliation is well past its sell-by date.  Time to establish a post-capitalist production for use, free access world for all of the world’s people. We need to abolish wages and all prices and have production for use, with free access and common ownership. Dissolve all government 'over' the people and elect yourselves to govern over resources. We want the people to empower themselves. We do not seek followers but 'thinkers'.

 Miniscule we may well be, as we want people to educate themselves to aim for socialism for themselves, rather than lead them into being followers, as the Left-wing and capitalist supporting parties seem to do. We tell people 'don't vote for us as a 'protest' vote, only as a recognition of your understanding of the case for socialism.

 Britain's oldest socialist party, the S.P.G.B., has no leaders and all their meetings are open to the public, including Executive Committee meetings. The E.C. act as housekeepers, but do not run or govern the party. Only the members can make policy by individual Party poll. It is effectively ruled by the members, who have to satisfy the party they know what socialism is and is not, before they can join, as each member's vote carries equal weight.

"The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves. We cannot, therefore, co-operate with people who openly state that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must be freed from above by philanthropic big bourgeois and petty bourgeois.’ Marx and Engels

The Socialist Party is focused upon the solution of socialism, free from the tyranny of markets, waged slavery and private, corporate or state ownership of resources, and the establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth, by and in the interest of the whole community, rather than a perpetuation of the same old repeated reformist non-solutions. Within Labour and Left parties,you won't have any socialist policy, but a recipe for reforms of capitalism. However well-meaning they are bound to fail. Capitalist politics are designed for the reproduction of capitalist rule.

 To change this we need to move into a post-capitalist narrative, in preparation for a (re-callable) delegated democratic, free access, post capitalist future. Socialism will be a system which would not have money, other than as a curiosity for decorating the living rooms, or in showcases in museums of antiquity, for children to learn how we wealth producers (labour) kept ourselves enslaved within a waged system in which the wealth producers (labour) received a waged ration of the collective produce and the idle parasite class (capitalists) received the bulk of the wealth produced. We collectively 'make' or build, everything. Why do we, the workers, the 99%, 'have to' buy anything, when all wealth comes from labour?

 No form of capitalism can be made to work in the interests of all. It never could be so. It is critically dependent upon the maximisation of exploited labour, from which all wealth derives, including the state, the armed forces, to protect the spoils and engage in competition with other capitalist nations and alliances, for raw materials and to plunder resources to the brink of war and beyond. It is a utopian fantasy that there is such a thing, as a 'fair days pay for a fair days work' or even a 'right to work'. Capitalism nevertheless put in place the technology and the necessity for an educated skilled workforce to run it, within its restricted remit of, production for the profit of the minority.

 But workers now run capitalism from top to bottom and are more than capable of running the new society without elites. So the capitalist class are superfluous to the production process, a mere parasite class, redundant in the process and we can take it all over and have a production for the use of all, free access society with no need to compete with and against others, thus ending the rat race of war and all the other aspects of capitalism. The biggest catastrophe for the labour movement, (as opposed to the Labour Party,) is that the workers elected a capitalist party to reform capitalism, rather than electing themselves to remove capitalism with its inevitable war and poverty. You do not need leaders. It is a capitalist political snare.

"I am not a Labor Leader; I do not want you to follow me or anyone else; if you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of this capitalist wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I led you in, some one else would lead you out. You must use your heads as well as your hands, and get yourself out of your present condition; as it is now the capitalists use your heads and your hands."- Eugene V. Debs

 Workers already run capitalism from top-to-bottom. We can run the new post-capitalist, commonly-owned, free-access society without any hierarchies. Capitalism is not forever. However the fact of it ,is that our unmanageable market-system its instability-prone outcomes, propels capitalist apologists to try and justify its excesses within parameters which ensure its continuation and reproduction. This drains many of their critical capacity to envision the post-capitalist future potential of the whole human species. Competition for markets, trade routes and raw materials with its attendant ever present threats of war, big and small, gluts, depression, booms and busts, redundancy and overwork, poverty actual, absolute and relative, in the midst of potential of plenty. Production for profit of the few, can be swiftly be replaced by production for use by all.

 Freedom from the anarchic tyranny of markets, in conditions of waged slavery for the profit of a few, replaced by production for use by free workers, to satisfy the needs of humanity. Rationed access by prices, for the producers of wealth, replaced by free access according to self-determined needs. Privileged ownership by individuals, corporation, states replaced by common ownership by us all. Government 'over' us to protect the privileges of the few and limit our democratic impulses within those which best serve the continued dominance of privilege, rather than the democratic freedoms of a delegated administration over things and resources by true social equals. If you are born poor you will die poor, generally speaking and relatively speaking, with few exceptions. If you are born into the parasite capitalist owning class, you will die richer than when you were born, with few exceptions.

Capitalism cannot be regulated, reformed and cured of its booms, busts, wars, and inequality of outcomes, as it thrives upon those, as essential for its existence. We have not experimented with socialism/communism. But ‘They’ have experimented with either developing capitalism in a state capitalist format, (successfully being seen as a threat, to the other older capitalist models, not in any ideological sense but as competing trade or competing geopolitical threats to the dominant existing ones) or experimented as a Utopian/Owenite style meddling/tinkering with capitalism, in the social democratic interventionist regulationist models of the Labour party or Scandinavian parties, in the hope of achieving more equitable outcomes. Nor can it be captured by vanguardist elements in Jacobin/Lenin leaderist style revolutions, (leadership is a capitalist political principle) as this folly will only repeat previous systems of elite class dominance over the mass of populations.

 But capitalism can and must, be superseded by a new society, emerging with its technological capacities for production intact, with the immense majority in favour, consciously opting for a real functioning democracy of social equals, in relation to the ownership and control of societal outputs of production. Of course we can delegate specialist functions rather than spend time nattering, but the delegates must be instantly recallable.

 The world’s workers not only produce all of the world’s wealth, but we run capitalism from top to bottom. We manage it and make decisions on behalf of the minority capitalist class. We are more than capable of running the new society, utilising its informational technology, in conditions of common ownership of the means of production and distribution and collective common ownership of the resulting output of production for use, within a genuine democratic framework of genuine social equality, with free access to the collective produce. Those post- capitalist conditions of real social and economic freedom for all, will ensure a flowering of humanity, the advancement of creative and scientific solutions, such as the world has never seen. We have a world to win.

The socialist model is not Utopian but a matter of class interest. The last great emancipation will be that of the wage slaves, as we have a free access world to make and win. As William Morris explained:

“One man with an idea in his head is in danger of being considered a madman: two men with the same idea in common may be foolish, but can hardly be mad; ten men sharing an idea begin to act, a hundred draw attention as fanatics, a thousand and society begins to tremble, a hundred thousand and there is war abroad, and the cause has victories tangible and real; and why only a hundred thousand? Why not a hundred million and peace upon the earth? You and I who agree together, it is we who have to answer that question.”

The great appear great because we are on our knees: Let us rise. Stand tall, Look around and Demand change – Your survival depends on it.  

Wee Matt

Edinburgh Br.

Paid to stay in Glasgow

The arts body Creative Scotland has given an artist £15,000 to spend a year without leaving Glasgow. Ellie Harrison's project is called the Glasgow Effect - a term relating to poor health in parts of the city. Ellie’s project is based on the premise that if society wishes to achieve global change, then individuals have to be more active within their communities at a local level. In restricting herself to staying within the city boundaries she is keen to explore what impact this will have her on her life and on her work as an artist with national and international commitments.

The 36-year-old, who will take a leave of absence from her job as a lecturer in contemporary art practices at Duncan of Jordanstone College in Dundee, said the experiment would enable her “to cut her carbon footprint and increase her sense of belonging, by encouraging her to seek out and create local opportunities.”

Many, many people haven't left the city in the past year as a result of financial pressures.

 Local resident, Laura Walsh, pointed out that being forced to stay in the city permanently was simply a fact of life for many people. “I haven't left Glasgow in nearly four years, living on benefits and raising a child at the same time can do that to you. There have even been times I couldn't even afford the bus to travel to the next town,”

 Some can't afford the fare to the city-centre. 

It’s human nature, aint it?

More comments from the Guardian placed by Wee Matt

"He who is morally impressed by power is never in a critical mood, and he is never a revolutionary character" - Erich Fromm

Some people prefer to live with a flawed understanding of the world around them, which attributes a 'base' human nature as a prime motivator to peoples’ behaviour, but humans behave differently depending upon the conditions that they live in. Even very short term changes in those conditions can dramatically change the way people behave. Most of what people refer to as "human nature" is actually human behaviour: reactions to the world around them. Human behaviour reflects society.

 In a society such as capitalism, people's needs are not met and reasonable people feel insecure. People tend to acquire and hoard goods because possession provides some security. People have a tendency to distrust others because the world is organized in such a dog-eat-dog manner. Under capitalism, and the previous systems, people have good reason to worry about tomorrow—they can lose their jobs, or be injured, or grow old, and need a cushion of wealth to fall back on.

 In a socialist society, everyone is entitled to have their needs met. They won't be kicked out onto the street, or forced to give up the pleasures of life. There will be no poverty. The "cushion" will be cooperatively provided by all. The 'Human Nature' argument is just a fueling of prejudice and all this prejudice, none of which can survive a moment's critical thought, has been used politically to resist progress. It has been used as an objection to socialism.

 The arguments that our behaviour is determined by our physical inheritance may pose as science but in reality they are socially determined prejudice, used as part of crude political ideology. In this argument all the bad examples of human behaviour which in the main are generated by capitalism, are called upon to say that a society based on equality and voluntary co-operation is impossible. Human beings are social animals capable of a wide range of behaviours. Millions are engaged in altruistic and voluntarist pursuits.

 Their very existence gives the lie to 'Human Nature arguments. The weakest argument around. Human behaviour is culturally created. In any case it is a matter of "enlightened self-interest" to get rid of minority ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, ending competition leading to war and impoverishment, and take them into common ownership with democratic control to have production for use, to produce a superabundance of wealth, from which we can all take according to our needs and contribute according to our abilities.

The Socialist Party is not part of the Left wing of capitalism and stands for its removal, not its reproduction. You should make common cause with fellow workers worldwide to establish a classless, post-capitalist, production for use, free access, commonly owned society. Abolish the wages and prices system.

 We leave you to the fantasy that the system in which poverty and war are concomitants, which created two world wars, culminating in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, is the best there is. The imperialist ambitions which caused the horrors of the Congo and Auschwitz, is incapable of being replaced by a humanity centred solution.

 Capitalism is an obsolete and outmoded method of production, which 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. It cannot exist without a vast infrastructure dedicated to waging of war (mis-named defence), poverty, absolute and relative and cannot husband the natural resources of the planet, due to the intense competitive nature of its market led system leading to clashes between rival capitalist interests over raw materials trade routes and geo-political advancement of its dominant market players. Religion is just a tool used by power seekers in the capitalist system to divide and rule it is no more to blame than nationalism, xenophobia, plundering of other countries for vital resources.

A genuine post-capitalist society would utilise the immense forces of production of capitalism, shorn of its private, corporate or state ownership, its wasteful war production and machinery, necessary only because of its intense competition with rival parasitic capitalist groups, leading to war over trade routes, markets and raw materials as well as geo-political advantage. It would replace production for sale on a market and waged-slavery and the waged rationed access to the wealth produced, with co-operative production for use, free labour and free access, to the social product for all, in conditions of production for use and unleash the technological capacity, within a moneyless society to provide a superabundance of the necessities of life, which we all could democratically oversee.

 Labour -power is the only commodity workers have in a rigged market, where we do not even have a "Right to work" and we do not receive the value of our labour. The only commodity this applies to is the workers labour power. We only receive the market price (wages) which is not equivalent to its value. The capitalist class pocket the full value of the surplus after realising the sale of the products of labour. If you are born poor you will die poor, generally speaking and relatively speaking with few exceptions. If you are born into the parasite capitalist owning class you will die richer than when you were born with few exceptions.

The whole world and everything in it and on it, is already run from top to bottom by the world's workers within the capitalist system. We are constrained by the mode of production for sale in the market, in conditions of waged slavery, a system where access to food, clothing, shelter and everything else, is rationed according to ability to pay for the goods and services, which we already collectively produce.

 Not only is all wealth produced by the worlds workers, we run this vast wealth production, in the factories and mines and workshops, even electing governments 'over' us, in the interests of the profits of the parasite capitalist economic class. The owners of this system generally do not run or manage it.

 The world’s economic activity should all be owned in common and controlled democratically, by the whole world’s population in a new post-capitalist arrangement of, production for use, with free access and democratic control over 'resources' and not people. The ends determine the means and the new society has to be a product of the democratic decision and will of the immense majority. Peacefully if we can, and forcefully only if we must if the democratic will of the immense majority is thwarted.

, Typical lefty Trotskyist behaviour in the Leninist mode think the end justifies the means. Instead of showing capitalism cannot be reformed and advocating its replacement, they advocate supporting of reformism to show later how the workers have been betrayed. They think workers are too dumb to realise their answer lies in replacing capitalism with a post-capitalist society and set out to be the vanguard which will lead them. There will not be a socialist state.

 Socialism is a direct democratic, self-organising world society, which achieves economic and political equality equilibrium, by the production for use non-ownership with free access and automatic stock control feedback loops.

 Capitalism is not self-organising, it is controlled violence, however, it is certainly a very resilient system, when it gains assent from the populace through the ballot box and ideological state apparatus, education, media etc. but it is just as likely to use direct top-down violence when its hegemony is threatened, by breaking the heads of the populace and proxy adventures, but the state-capitalism is not a product of socialism, no more than Bismarck's Germany was, but a product of trying to direct and develop capitalism, on top of a feudal system within a competitive capitalist world environment.

 Socialists seek a class-free, prices-free, wage-free society, with private, state, corporate ownership abolished and replaced, with a tyranny-free, war-free, poverty-free, world commonwealth.

"He who owns the means by which I live owns my very life." - Shakespeare.

Wee Matt
Edinburgh Br.

Scotland and the Easter Rising

‘Scotland and the Easter Rising’ edited by Glasgow University Professor of English Literature Willy Maley and doctoral candidate Kirsty Lusk to be published later this month, reveal the connections between Scotland and the six-day armed uprising. Central to the book is the story of James Connolly, born in the Cowgate area of Edinburgh to Irish immigrant parents, who was Commandant General of the Republican forces during Easter Week 1916 and was a signatory to the Proclamation of the Irish Republic. When the Rising eventually failed Connolly, who was seriously injured in the fighting, was rounded up with others and executed by a British firing squad.

Margaret Skinnider, suffragette, born in Coatbridge, Lanarkshire, is another republican sympathiser who features heavily in the book. She served as a scout, dispatch-rider, sniper and raider in the Rising. Skinnider was the only female combatant injured in action during the battle. Skinnider, a 23-year-old Scottish teacher, became convinced of the need for Irish independence during childhood holidays. Skinnider hid bomb detonators ­beneath her hat as she travelled by ferry to Dublin in 1915 and once there became involved in preparations for the Rising.

Lusk notes: “Skinnider had joined a rifle club in Glasgow, one of many set up, ironically, to train women in case they were required to defend Britain, and she proved herself a better shot than any of the boys when taken to a local shooting gallery. Skinnider took a spot in the rafters of the Royal College of Surgeons to fight as a sniper against the British soldiers placed at the Shelbourne Hotel. ‘More than once I saw the man I aimed at fall,’ she recounts.”

Maley remarks in the article “I believe that the Easter Rising still has important lessons to teach us...” 

Indeed, it does…lessons on what not to do in the advance of socialist ideas. 

The late Ian Bell in his article asked why Connolly was absent from debates leading up to the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. He certainly wasn’t forgotten by Socialist Courier blog-posts as a search of our archives would demonstrate and was cited when we pointed out the futility of nationalism. 

Hopeless future

One in four Scots is so worried about covering the cost of their housing that they fear they’ll have to default on a mortgage or rent payment, according to a new poll. Shelter, who commissioned the poll, said hundreds of thousands of Scots were living on a “knife edge”.

Adam Lang, from Shelter Scotland, said it was “a worrying sign of the times”. Shelter, he said, had seen a jump in the number of calls to the organisation. In 2014, they took 21,284 calls, up from 19,906 in 2013.

Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale will say in a speech that young people in Scotland have “left behind by austerity” which has made the prospect of owning a house unrealistic. The press release of her speech says: “For too many young couples in Scotland today, buying a house isn’t a realistic prospect. A lot of young people are stuck in a cycle from which there appears to be no escape. They decide to rent a flat to save for a deposit to buy a house, but the rent is too high so they can’t save much for that deposit, which means they continue to pay the high rent for years to come. Lots of young people now live at home with their parents well into their thirties, as it’s the only realistic prospect of ever being able to save for a house. The price of austerity has been that aspiration has stalled for a whole generation.”