The people can change things

“People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small.They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate.They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.” – Banksy

What can we do that respects every human being on the planet? Ever wondered what it might take to rid the world of conflict and live in peace and happiness? Some politicians and institutions are working feverishly to convince us that real social change is not possible. The goal is to consciously mislead those of us shut out of political and economic power, to make us doubt our ability to challenge those who hold political power, and demobilize us from taking action to change this oppressive, exploitative system.

For so many of us, following the law is considered a moral obligation. Police brutality and criminality is rampant in the US, the courts favor the wealthy, and we can longer even lead our lives privately thanks to the intrusion of state surveillance. And illegal and immoral wars rages all around us, murdering and destroying whole nations and cultures. History teaches us again and again that the law is an instrument of oppression, social control and plunder.

Freedom is about having choice, yet in today’s world, choice has come to mean a selection between limited options. Look no further than the phony parliamentary democracy. Two entrenched political parties are predominate and alternative voices are intentionally silenced by media neglect. Maverick thinkers are kept on a short leash, yanked back into conformity if they venture too far. We’re programmed to believe what the TV declares is true. We are told we are in competition with everyone and everything around us, including our neighbors and even nature. It’s us versus them. The try to deny the truth that life on this planet is infinitely inter-connected and the attempts to separate serves to enslave and isolate us. The State demands our conformity and obedience.

We, the people, can change things. No one’s going to do it for us—no politician, no technological innovation, no international agreement. If we want a different future, we are going to have to make it for ourselves by ourselves. To change everything, it's going to take everything we've got. Who are we? We are everyone, everywhere who cares what happens to everything—each other, humanity, nature, the planet. This year we will make a difference - possibly all the difference. We have to change the system in which we live. We have to be revolutionary. It’s up to us. And to change everything, we’ll have to have everyone we can, doing what we think best, giving everything we got. It is it absurd, isn’t it,  that we, 7 billion of us are living on the same planet, yet have grown further apart from each other. People are being woken up and are realizing how crazy it is to live in such a society.

The right way to think about the problems facing humanity is to be realistic. People talk about imaginary futures all the time and we’re constantly being promised amazing things which never materialise. Many people have finally awakened from the "each person for oneself" mad mentality. Things are changing. Sharing, collaborative economy concepts point towards a new direction, a direction of collaborating, of sharing, of helping, of togetherness.

The media tells us that we live in a world of greed, of inequality, poverty and war. We hear how people are becoming increasingly disconnected, that capitalism has undermined community. You don’t get people to change by scaring them. Instead, talk of the alternative in a way that it is so compelling that we eagerly seek change. We need to fight the system, not each other. When the world comes together, the system will fall.

We all know the world has gone wrong. When you realise something’s wrong with the world, the first step is to educate yourself about it and begin to have a grasp on the issue. Start with what’s closest to home and improve your knowledge and understanding of the issues you’re most interested in, and place them in their wider systemic context. Then reach out to others and start building a network where you can collaborate or communicate as a member of a community, sharing your interests and skills. Don’t become despondent if the seeds you sow don’t spring forth immediately. Individuals don’t possess the power to change the entire world. However, imagine a world where each of us did this. Imagine the transformation that could result. The change we want to see in the world, begins with planting the seeds of post-capitalism. We can change the world, but the key to unlock the process is in you and me. It is time for people to wake up and challenge capitalism’s apologists who continue to justify and protect the status quo while using rhetoric of change. People need to stop falling for the scam. The economic system is corrupt to the core. There is an opportunity for radical transformation and we must be ready. The social and labor union movements remain of critical importance. Every government and employer needs to be pushed from below. The key is for a movement to be a mass movement, not a fringe movement.

Very often in protest movements you will hear or read of capitalism but it is often accompanied by adjectives to qualify the word such as “monopoly capitalism”, “neo-liberal capitalism”, “global corporate capitalism”, as if a better form of capitalism is conceivable, as if it could be made ecological, social or humane, and compatible. Such people do not realize that as long as the motive of profit maximization and the principles of private ownership of means of production, selfishness, and competition remain – and these are the most essential elements of capitalism, little will change even if capitalism is transformed into produce sourced from local markets for local markets by worker-owned co-operatives. It would be a fraud to advocate a nicer type of capitalism as a solution to the social ills of the world. Such benevolent reforms cannot be implemented successfully within the framework of capitalism and its form of democracy. 

Tree Species Are In Danger

We are all well aware of the importance of a tropical forest such as the Amazon rain forest has on world climate. Now, according to new research, a disturbingly high number of tree species are in danger of becoming extinct there. Of the fifteen thousand species found there, as many as two thirds are considered rare and 57% are facing extinction. With 'increased governance' that figure could be reduced to 36%. Perhaps with good governance it could be reduced even further. Do not hold your breath waiting for this to happen. The madness of capitalism will continue until we, the workers, say otherwise. John Ayers.

Economists make astrologers look good

There is great confusion over the question of what is socialism. Our aim in the Socialist Party has always been to clarify our meaning. The word was first coined early in the 19th century in regard to the doctrines advocated by the French utopian socialists Charles Fourier and Henri Saint-Simon, and became common in England from about the time of Robert Owen – another Utopian socialist, in the 1830s. Their doctrines suffered from a major shortcoming, in that they were rooted in the economic and social conditions of the times, in the as yet undeveloped nature of the capitalist economy and with this, the lack of development of the working class as an independent political force. Why didn’t Marx and Engels call it the ‘Socialist Manifesto’? Because at the time ‘socialism’ its adherents consisted mainly of the ‘Fourierists’ and ‘Owenites’ and they had already declined into sects with various quack remedies.

Marx’s epic work ‘Capital’, became virtually the ‘bible of the working-class’. ‘Capital’ not only scientifically explained capitalism - on the basis of enormous, painstaking research - as a socio-economic formation still in a state of development. It also gave the workers a clear understanding of the methods by which the capitalists as a class – manufacturers, landowners and commercial capitalists – got from the labour of the workers their large incomes in the form of profit, rent and interest. All were forms of surplus value, having their origin in capitalist production which was based on the special value-creating commodity bought by the capitalists – labour power.

Thus Marx exposed the whole machinery of capitalist exploitation of the working-class. In doing this, he equipped the workers with a scientific understanding of society and of their class role as the chief executants of the transformation of capitalism into socialism. That is, he gave the workers an understanding of their historic mission in society. Engels points out that with the discovery of surplus value and historical materialism, socialism left behind utopias and became a science.

The whole world, operates above all else according to the rules of capitalism. Under capitalism, the basic goal of society becomes the private accumulation of wealth for the elite few. In other words, the major institutions of society value the production of goods and services that are capable of generating a maximum amount of profit. What is best for the common good is obscured by what is considered best for capital accumulation. Instead of viewing workers as equal members of the broader society, the owners and bosses see us as no more than a necessary resource in the field of production. In a word, we’ve become akin to the machines - we’ve become objects of exploitation. Working people (who are by far the vast majority of the population) are seen simply as a necessary resource for corporations and private owners.

Capitalist enterprises have no incentive to work for ordinary people, and instead they do whatever is necessary to enrich the owners of their corporate stock. Billionaires like Donald Trump can use the bankruptcy laws to escape debt but average people can’t get relief from burdensome mortgage or student debt payments. Optimists say 2016 will be better than 2015 which may turn out to be true, but only imperceptibly so.

The median wage is 4 percent below what it was in 2000, adjusted for inflation. The median wage of young people, even those with college degrees, is also dropping, adjusted for inflation. That means a continued slowdown in the rate of family formation—more young people living at home and deferring marriage and children – and less demand for goods and services. At the same time, the labor participation rate—the percentage of Americans of working age who have jobs—remains near a 40-year low. Workers have lost power that came from joining together in unions.

Our labour is used not as a means to uplift society as a whole, but as a tool to make a select few very rich. On the job, we are often compelled to work under the near dictatorship of the boss. Even when we work for ourselves, we are still dictated to by the wealthy that hire us, the corporations who subcontract us, as well as the ebb and flow of the capitalist economy. In short, we are compelled to engage in work in order to create a massive overall profit that we will never see, and if we don’t like it, and we speak up, we face the likelihood of being fired. The schools teach us that this is democracy. For forty to sixty hours a week we live under a dictatorship in our workplaces, and this is acceptable? We struggle to get by on the sweat of our labour.

The bottom line is that we, as the majority, are standing at a crossroads at which we can choose the path of capitalism, or, the road towards direct democracy, local control, and the social advancement of the common good. We can choose a way that will allow our children and grandchildren to experience the independence, democracy, self-sufficiency, and natural beauty that are the gifts handed down from our common ancestors. Envision a system whereby all major decisions are made through local town or neighbourhood meetings. The future establishment of direct democracy will, in a large part, rely on the extension of the power of town meetings.

Scotland welcomes migrants but...

At Glasgow University’s Wolfson Medical School 30 doctors –mainly from Iraq, Syria, Iran and Sri Lanka – who were being offered the chance to fulfil their medical calling and participate in the New Refugee Doctors Project. By granting membership to the new refugee doctors, the BMA is giving them immediate access to training and journals and support for their statutory clinical exams and assessments. As well as support for sitting stringent English language tests, these men and women will have unpaid work placements in local GP practices and mentoring support from practising doctors in Scotland. This template is that it can be modified and moulded for teachers, engineers, scientists and programmers among future and existing refugees and asylum-seekers.

The arrival of asylum-seekers, many with valuable and highly specialised skills, provides an opportunity for Scotland.  Instead the UK Home Office will decree from 1 April, non-EU nationals who have been resident in the UK for five years or more and who don’t earn at least 35k per annum will be deported. 

This is how socialism will be (4/4)

We have to acknowledge that even amongst people who call themselves socialists, there is a wide variety of understandings and misunderstandings about the real meaning of the term ‘socialism.’ In the old days socialism was simply what we called the society of the free and equal men and women and was defined as the rule of the people. This still rings true.

The confusion of terminology can be illustrated by those who called state-ownership in the old Soviet Union “socialism”. Was this what Marx and Engels meant when they talked about socialism? The authentic socialist movement, as it was conceived by its founders and as it has developed over the past century, cannot be improved on the classic statement of the Communist Manifesto, which said:

“All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority.”

The authors of the Communist Manifesto linked socialism and democracy together as end and means. The “self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority” cannot be anything else but democratic, if we understand by “democracy” the rule of the people, the majority. The claim—that the task of reconstructing society on a socialist basis can be farmed out to politicians and intellectuals, while the workers remain without vote or voice in the process—is just as foreign to the thoughts of Marx and Engels as the reformist idea that socialism can be handed down to the workers by degrees by the capitalists who exploit them.

This principle is reiterated by Marx and Engels when they declared that “the emancipation of the working class is the task of the workers themselves”. That is the language of Marx and Engels—“the task of the workers themselves”. That was just another way of saying—as they said explicitly many times—that the socialist re-organisation of society requires a workers’ revolution. Such a revolution is unthinkable without the active participation of the majority of the working class, which is itself the big majority of the population. Nothing could be more democratic than that. “The first step”, said the Communist Manifesto, “in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy.”

That is the way Marx and Engels formulated the first aim of the revolution—to make the workers the ruling class, to establish democracy, which, in their view, is the same thing. From this precise formulation it is clear that Marx and Engels did not consider the limited, formal democracy under capitalism, which screens the exploitation and the rule of the great majority by the few, as real democracy. In order to have real democracy, the workers must become the “ruling class”. Only the revolution that replaces the class rule of the capitalists by the class rule of the workers can really establish democracy, not in fiction, but in fact. So said Marx and Engels.

They never taught that the simple nationalisation of the forces of production signified the establishment of socialism. That’s not stated by Marx and Engels anywhere. Still less did they sanctioned, the idea that socialism would create a government bureaucracy without freedom and without equality. Marx and Engels defined socialism as a classless society—with abundance, freedom and equality for all; a society in which there would be no state, not even a democratic ‘workers’ state,’ to say nothing of a state in the monstrous form of a bureaucratic dictatorship of a privileged minority controlled by its ruthless secret police and gulags. Marx and Engels saw the state as an instrument of class rule, for which there will be no need and no place in the classless socialist society. Forecasting the socialist future, the Communist Manifesto said: “In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association.” N.B.: “an association”, not a state—“an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all”.

The Socialist Party makes it clear that we stand for democracy as the only road to socialism. Without freedom of association and organisation, without the right to form groups and parties of different tendencies, there is and can be no real democracy anywhere. Capitalism is a system of minority rule, and the principal beneficiaries of capitalist democracy are the small minority of exploiting capitalists; scarcely less so than the slave-owners of ancient times were the actual rulers and the real beneficiaries of the Athenian democracy. But even so, with all that, a little democracy is better than none. We socialists have never denied that. We have all the more reason to value every democratic provision for the protection of human rights and human dignity; to fight for more democracy, not less. We recognise that the demand for human rights and democratic guarantees, now and in the future, is in itself progressive. The socialist task is not to deny democracy, but to expand it and make it more complete. That is the true socialist tradition. The Marxists, throughout the century-long history of our movement, have always valued and defended bourgeois democratic rights, restricted as they were; and have utilised them for the education and organisation of the workers in the struggle to establish full democracy by abolishing the capitalist rule altogether. The right of trade union organisation is a precious, democratic right, but it was not “given” to the workers. It took a mighty labour struggle to establish in reality the right of union organisation in mass-production industry. Yet workers have neither voice nor vote in the management of the industry which they have created, nor in regulating the speed of the assembly line which consumes their lives. Full control of production in auto and steel and everywhere is still the exclusive prerogative of “management”, that is, of the absentee owners, who contribute nothing to the production. What’s democratic about that? The claim that we have an almost perfect democracy doesn’t stand up against the fact that the workers have no democratic rights in industry at all, as far as regulating production is concerned; that these rights are exclusively reserved for the parasitic owners, who never see the inside of a factory.

In the past some would use “industrial democracy” as the definition of socialism, the extension of democracy to our places of work, the democratic control of industry by the workers themselves, with private ownership eliminated. This socialist demand for real democracy was taken for granted for a time when the socialist movement was still young and uncorrupted. We seldom hear anything like that today. The defence of “democracy” always turns out in practice to be a defence of “democratic” capitalism.  

And always, in time of crisis, politicians who talk about democracy excuse and defend all kinds of violations of even this limited bourgeois democracy. They are far more tolerant of lapses from the formal rules of democracy by the capitalists than by the workers. They demand that the class struggle of the workers against their exploiters be conducted by the formal rules laid down by the legislation enacted by their employers. They say it has to be strictly “democratic” all the way. When the capitalists cuts corners around their own professed democratic principles, the media have a habit of looking the other way, revealing its class bias.

Capitalism does not survive as a social system by its own strength, but by its influence within the workers’ movement, reflected and expressed by the votes the pro-capitalist parties receive. So the fight for workers’ democracy is inseparable from the fight for socialism, and is the condition for its victory. Workers’ democracy is the only road to socialism. 

This is how socialism will be (3/4)

Opponents of the Socialist Party say that we are dreamers. They tell us that because of human nature our fellow workers are innately greedy, selfish and evil and cannot change. Our reply. Is that this very same human nature argument was advanced against those who wished to abolish slavery and its cruelty and exploitation. Aristotle and Plato, defended slavery with the “human nature” argument. Slavery has been abolished. It is a big mistake to maintain that human nature does not change. Everything changes in Nature and in life. Everything is in a process of transformation. Movement is the universal law of everything that exists. That is the conclusion all science of our era comes: to the science of celestial bodies (astronomy), the natural and biological sciences, social and historical science, all. Everything evolves. Everything is constantly being modified. Everything changes. It is impossible to bathe twice in the same stream for water flows. We never meet the same man twice because during the interval he has grown older, his constitution and his character changed; he is no longer the same. The human species also has evolved. Even the planets themselves, the sun, the moon, the stars have not always been what they are today. If everything changes, is subject to transformation and modification, how is it possible to believe for a moment that the present system of property will always remain the same? That would be, indeed, contrary to nature. Today’s dream is tomorrow’s reality.

It has also been said that if men do not have the spur of hunger and want and of the desire to make profit they will become lazy. To argue thus is to forget the necessity for clothing, feeding and sheltering oneself. He or she who does not work neither shall eat. It is to forget too, that idleness is not the characteristic of a man in his sane senses. Laziness is a social malady, an outcome of our system, which is in itself a stimulant to laziness. It assures all riches, all the pleasures of life – in theory – to those who work the least possible, to the idle rich, to the social parasites. Laziness develops from the intolerable conditions of forced and excessive labour in unhealthy and infected factories. How can a person work with enthusiasm when he or she knows that his or her work will go to the enrichment of others? When the producers know that the products of their work will belong to them they will throw overboard the old repugnance which forced labour engenders in them. Work well regulated and apportioned will become attractive. It will become a joy and a pleasure, and this is because work is necessary for the physical and mental well-being of man. Modern science itself establishes the vital necessity for work.

In capitalist society the world is divided into states with opposed interests. The world is split up, lined with frontiers and barriers. At each moment storms are brewing. Nowhere is there security. If there is talk of peace there is also preparation for war. There is only one way to avoid new slaughter – a world revolution which will replace the struggle between nations by international co-operation. Socialism preaches solidarity among the producers and its slogan is “Workers of the world, Unite!” Humanity must choose between the capitalist system which leads to destruction and the reciprocity through the worldwide socialisation of the forces of production. Socialism will make of the earth one country single and indivisible.

Human history is also a record of perpetual change. Slavery was replaced by semi-slavery – serfdom which gave way to wage-slavery, the last form of slavery. The wage system will give way to socialism which will bring to an end the exploitation of man by man and slavery in all its forms. Everything in our lives has changed. And yet some seek to maintain a society in its old barbaric state of struggle and poverty. There is no reason whatsoever to despair of human progress. What appears to us impossible today is done tomorrow. Only a socialist society by putting the land, and technology at the service of all who work in the fields and in the factories, will guarantee real liberty to all. The state-machine will disappear together with the parasitic class whose privileges it safeguards. The producing members of society, will be free to spend their time at leisure. All the natural wealth freed from the control of the property owners, all the inexhaustible riches of science and human art will be at their disposal. Freedom will then cease to be a slogan and will become a reality, an everyday fact the property of all.

‘Murdered by the Tories'

Family of a mentally ill man who killed himself after his benefits were mistakenly halted have blamed the Tories for his suicide. Paul Donnachie was found dead at his home after an error saw his payments stop and he owed more than £3,000 in unpaid rent. The Glasgow man, who suffered from "severe" mental health issues, had been declared fit to work after he failed to attend a work capability assessment in June.

Upon realising their mistake, the council sent Mr Donnachie a letter telling him his benefits would be reinstated. But by the time it arrived it was too late - it was found unopened in his flat along with his body. It’s thought he had been dead for two months. The council letter informed him he had to reply within 14 days to have his housing benefit reinstated. Because he failed to do that, his arrears continued to build. His body was found when the council came to evict him. After his death, the authorities continue to hound him. One letter demanded £3002.72 that he owed in council tax arrears. They only discovered he was dead when they came to evict him.

Mr Donnachie's sister Eleanor told the Daily Record: “The Government murdered him. They are driving ordinary people to suicide. Paul suffered severe mental health problems. He failed to attend a work capability assessment on June 30 last year and was later told his Employment and Support Allowance was being stopped." Eleanor, from Coatbridge, Lanarkshire, said: “Something needs to be done. “The Conservative Government aren’t living in the real world and have no idea how people live. They don’t care about working-class people and the vulnerable.

Paul Donnachie’s disability benefit was ended in June 2015 after he missed four work capability assessments by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) who insisted he was capable of working and said the benefits cut would be backdated to June 3. The DWP subsequently contacted Glasgow City Council, who stopped Mr Donnachie's housing and council tax benefits. Again, the cut was backdated, so he was already in arrears with his rent and council tax. Mr Donnachie didn’t know where to turn after his benefits were stopped. In September, as he struggled to cope with no income, he applied to Glasgow City Council for a Scottish Welfare Crisis Grant to pay for gas, electricity and food. But his application was rejected and he was advised that if he wanted to eat, he should go to a food bank.

In November, a study from Oxford and Liverpool universities linked the DWP’s hated “fit for work” assessments to 590 suicides in England alone.

This is how socialism will be (2/4)

Many believe socialism to be unattainable yet the world about us is falling to pieces. The need for revolution is being realised more and more. Who are the one class that no society can do without? Those who work. Capitalist society cannot exist without the working-class. It is the working-class which sets in motion its formidable technical and mechanical apparatus. The working-class, by seeing after the functioning of large-scale production, by work in huge factories and stores, brings into existence organised work on a collective basis. And this collective work ought to show more clearly the exploitation of the individual. Modern production is mass production. But without doubt, profit therefrom is individual; that is to say, the riches collectively produced are appropriated by individual capitalists. As soon as workers becomes conscious of this fact, of this permanent scandal of capitalist society, they will begin to revolt against a state of things which ensures for the capitalist class the lion’s share and will demand its rightful due. Capitalism is maintained by class power and will only be displaced by other class power. Society in order to live must produce. In order to produce, use is made of the means of production which everyone knows; the land, the mines and machines. These means of production turn into means of domination when they are not at the disposal of society as a whole but are the private property of one class. In this manner, the great landowners through possession of the first instrument of labour – which is the land – were in a position to exploit first the slaves and later on the serfs, The landlord said: “The land belongs to me and you will be my slave and work for me on my land,” The peasant thus comes under the sway of the landowner. Each class which owns the means of production seeks to obtain political power, control of the State and the armed forces in order to safeguard its exclusive property, and maintain its monopoly of ownership.

Socialism is rule by the working people. They will decide how socialism is to work and the task of socialists therefore is to help guide the transfer of political power from capitalists to working people. Socialism means for the first time people taking charge of their own destiny. Humanity has so far been incapable of taking charge because of the class divisions that make it impossible to take decisions for the development of mankind as a whole. The result has been what we see today. Present-day society, based on a mistaken and blind individualism, reaches the very highest pinnacle of absurdity. At the top, we have a small class of owners who have in their possession all the means of happiness but who are incapable of making use of it because they are condemned to live apart from the working people which hates them. They pass their lives fearful of their privileges, fighting all forward-looking progressive movements which threaten their reign. They are more and more obliged to live as it were in a fortress, or gated communities as the real estate agents describe them. Being condemned on account of their riches to a life of idleness which is repugnant to human nature, the majority of them enjoy neither physical nor moral health. On the other hand we have the immense majority of the producing class, the workers condemned to routine work which undermines their health – work without any distraction and with the concomitant of numerous accidents and illness. Enforced idleness is the lot of the working-class on the onset of each periodic economic crisis. Disease and illness, products of poverty, decimates the toilers. Alcoholism and drug addiction through which they seek forgetfulness of their miserable lives, poisons them and helps to bring about their physical and moral degeneration. The life of the worker is twice as short as that of the rich. On the one hand, badly spent and unhappy lives among the upper classes, and on the other, no possibility of leading a normal life among the oppressed toilers. Here indeed is the true picture of society based on an internecine conflict between different classes. It is not the producing class, the creators of life, who rule but the parasites who dominate and oppress it.

Modern technology has created all the conditions for well-being and even luxury. If applied rationally our society would become a heaven on earth but through the absurd profit system in which we live, we find ourselves in a veritable hell. Mankind, instead of co-operating in the building harmonious planet, finds itself occupied in a war of each against all. The result is a useless social waste.

The victory of socialism is desirable because only socialism can put an end to the exploitation of man by man and of women by men. Because only socialism can put an end to the struggle for the re-division of the world, for national possessions, which takes place between the different continents, nations and races. Only socialism can put an end to war and poverty and the innumerable injustices which are an everyday feature of our lives. Socialism by suppressing the cause of these rivalries and antagonism – the monopoly of the means of production – forms a new society based on the principles of human solidarity and reciprocity, and economic soundness. It will put an end to all waste and all unproductive work. It will abolish antagonism of interests and reduce authority to a minimum, making it function not in the interests of a class but in the interests of society as a whole. Socialism consists of a rationalisation of production, of all our activities and our very lives themselves. And that, not in the interests of some, but for the benefit of all. Socialism is possible now. It is possible because it corresponds to the interests of all; because it satisfies the goodwill, the well-being and the common interest of the immense majority. Socialism is possible because the forces of production, thanks to machinery and robotics, have reached an unheard of scale of development. They only need to be put in action for the benefit of everyone in order that all members of society may be assured of complete well-being. Socialism is possible because men and women are more and more brought into close co-operation in pooling their efforts. All sorts of associations and organisations, political and intellectual are accustoming mankind to regulate work and life. Socialism everyday becomes more possible through the social education of the working-class, organised as it is in political parties, trade unions, and co-operatives. Rational organisation of production becomes more urgent as a consciousness of solidarity develops among the producers. The immense army of organised producers can take over control of mass production; everything stands ready by their own very nature to be placed in the hands of the workers who produce them.

The Council Cuts

Scotland faces the prospect of waves of industrial unrest, 'poverty wages', neighbourhood deterioration and rising rates of mental health problems as cuts to council budgets start to bite, it has been claimed. The decision by the country's 32 local authorities to reluctantly accept the Scottish Government's financial package for the year ahead has sparked warnings that the coming weeks will see the human cost of the biggest cash blow to councils in a generation unfold. Councils face a £1billion black hole in the next 12 months, with a £500million cut from Government and the same again in spending pressures.

One major union said the upshot will see many low-paid workers "pushed from stable home environments to foodbanks", adding that neighbourhoods in urban areas would witness a notable deterioration in quality of life as authorities make cutbacks to refuse collection, roads maintenance and parks upkeep.  The trade union Unison said that in South Lanarkshire around a dozen facilities for people with learning disabilities or the elderly will shut, up to 200 posts for people working with children with support issues or providing support to teachers will be axed and the number of social workers and social work assistants reduced. Argyll and Bute sets its budget today and if the proposals are accepted, Unison claims hundreds of council jobs will go including 20 per cent of their clerical assistants, classroom assistants, janitors and all 10 of the high school librarians.

 Benny Rankin, the GMB union's organiser in Glasgow, said: "Many of our members will lose around £1,000 in changes to their terms and conditions. That's enough to push you from a stable family environment to poverty wages and foodbanks. Back courts in many places are already in a state. Changes here will make that much worse with overflowing bins and industrial action taking us back to the 1970s."

National GMB organiser Alex McLuckie added: "You're talking up to half of all support staff in schools going in some areas. That's people working with children with disabilities, while home care becomes a pit stop for staff. "We've calculated around 9000 job losses. Nothing we're seeing is alerting that."

Meanwhile, the group which represents care providers for adults with disabilities and for older people through to those with homeless and addiction issues, said there was unprecedented anxiety amongst its 200,000-plus service users and 45,000 staff. The Coalition of Care and Support Providers in Scotland (CCPS) said the Government's requirement councils top up salaries for care sector staff meant they would simply spend less on those who need the services. CCPS director Annie Gunner Logan said: "There are only so many ways disabled people needing a shower can 'do things differently'."

Ian Hood, of the Learning Disability Alliance, said many people requiring social care, particularly younger people with "unfolding needs", would no longer meet eligibility criteria as councils cut back. He added: "We're already seeing people's care cut from 16 hours to three, leaving them stranded at home. Other services are no longer considered essential, like employment services for disabled adults. This keeps the cycle of poverty going and with the closure of day centres means increased mental health issues for many people and their carers."

Scotland - the Tax Haven

A legal loophole that has made Scotland a soft-touch for international money-launderers and tax evaders, according to critics. The legislation governing SLPs date from 1907. The English and Scottish Law Commissions recommended reform as far back as 2003 but no action has been taken by successive UK governments since. 

Scottish limited partnerships (SLPs), The Herald revealed, are being marketed across Eastern Europe as tax avoidance vehicles. They are promoted across Eastern Europe as "Scottish zero-per-cent-tax companies" in the "Scottish offshore zone". This is because - unlike English partnerships - the Scottish firms do not have to provide financial reports or register for tax if it conducts its business overseas. Such firms - often registered in unglamorous housing schemes - were used as part of an alleged elaborate scam to loot $1bn from Moldovan banks.

The number of SLPs has more than doubled since 2009 on the back of a booming Scottish cottage industry creating them for foreign investors, especially from the eastern and south-eastern edges of the European Union. Capital flight, legal or illegal, is a huge issue in the former Soviet Union. Nearly $60bn left Russia alone in 2015. And that was a huge improvement from from than $150bn in 2014.

SLPs are now part of a range of offshore products that law enforcement experts say can be exploited to funnel money out of some of Europe's poorest nations. A classic scheme sees an SLP set up with two shareholders or "members" which are themselves companies based in Panama and the British Virgin Islands, where corporation tax is zero per cent. The resulting SLP carries the kudos of a "British" company and can open a bank account elsewhere, such as Cyprus or Latvia, but has no need to register for UK tax or provide full financial accounts in Scotland. Such a firm can then be used to move money from east to west without attracting the attention of officialdom.

One typical Russian-language advertisement for SLPs offers partnerships, complete with "nominal" or front-man shareholders and a Scottish legal address, for just 2000 Euros. The whole process takes just seven weeks. Another firm, with addresses in England, Cyprus and Russia says it can provide an off-the-shelf "ready-made" SLP in half an hour. The advert says SLPs are an "ideal solution for any investor who wants to work with a company registered in the European Union but at the same time exploit a tax-free instrument".

"Suffragette" - Film Review

The recent movie, "Suffragette" is well worth seeing but buyer beware. Though Meryl Streep is in it, she only appears as Mrs. Pankhurst for about three minutes in which she makes a speech that inspires the main character. This is a young laundress who becomes active in the movement. The strong point of the movie is that so many fictionalized versions of female suffrage struggles have shown them from a rich person's point of view. This main character is from the working class. It also focuses on the plight women where regarding custody battles. Legally, men had the final say in any decisions affecting the children. In the final analysis, the movie falls down by making it seem that political equality between the sexes is the main event but, in capitalism, there is no equality between the sexes or within the sexes. 

John Ayers.

Blarney

Tongue in cheek award for December – Spanish company, Grifolos, a world leader in blood-plasma products, announced it was moving its $100 million distribution centre and treasury department from where all payments are made, to Dublin. The Irish government has just announced a new business-friendly corporate tax category. Grifolo insists it is not 'tax engineering' but has moved to Dublin to take advantage of the skilled work force there. Those who believe that, please raise your hands. John Ayers.

This is how socialism will be (1/4)

We grow more and more isolated from each other. Nobody seems to enjoy things anymore. Nobody seems to know the joy of life. What everybody does know, however, is that this society seems to be falling apart and this misery will continue as long as we allow it to. Everywhere people sell their lives in order to survive. Everywhere life has been reduced to daily subjugations and a series of humiliations. Even our "free time" lacks any freedom. The esteemed experts tell us that it's our fault for being too "greedy" or too "selfish." But there is nothing mysterious about it. Capitalism has become a fetter on our existence and development as genuinely human beings.

Capitalism is a system of society based upon an exchange economy. It has now become a fetter on our further development as human beings. Every time you stand in a line at a supermarket check-out you do not accomplish any productive or socially useful function. The only reason you're waiting in line is to pay for the food, even though it would be every bit as good whether or not you pay for it. But unless you pay for it, it cannot be realised as a commodity, as exchange-value. In terms of its social use-value it would be much simpler and indeed more efficient, if you simply walked out with it. In place of capitalist society with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free development of each individual is the condition for the free development of all. Production for profit will be replaced by production for pleasure. The end of the law of value will be the decisive beginning of the end of all alienations.

The "Left," of course, believe the problem with private capitalism is only that it doesn't do what it's supposed to on its own terms -- that there aren't enough "jobs," that people don't get high enough ("fair") wages for selling their lives, that women and "third world" people don't get their fair share of the shit pie, that Capital accumulation doesn't go on peacefully as it should. The "Left" has so little understanding of the actual workings of capitalism that when its tendency toward centralisation and monopolisation is pushed to an extreme such as was in Russia they think that it is no longer capitalism. In spite of their self-acclaimed "radicalism" they are really the staunchest of conservatives. And as capitalism -- the highest form of hierarchical society -- is falling apart, they dutifully try to come up with new ways of holding it together. As for the "Left," they can take their "transitional demands," "correct leadership" and "revolutionary self-sacrifice” and shove it where the sun don’t shine.

There will be no law of value no commodity exchange, no State and no religion to decide our activities for us; no "general interest," no "national interest," no pre-defined "human nature." Just our desires, skills, imagination, passions, and intelligence - developed over centuries and now freed for the first time, freed for the first time with all the world at our disposal. Unlike any previous revolutionary movement, the socialist revolution must be carried through actively and consciously by the overwhelming majority of the world's people. No "vanguard" Party can "lead" us, "represent" us, or seize power "on our behalf." Instead we must organise ourselves.

Capitalism has produced the largest and the most potentially important revolutionary class in all history – the working class which consists of all of us who are separated from control and ownership of the means of production and therefore have no control over our own life.  We are the overwhelming majority of the people in the world today. Our class includes not only industrial "blue collar" workers, but furthermore, white collar and "service" workers (skilled and unskilled alike), teachers, unemployed, welfare recipients, students, agricultural workers, and even a growing number of "professionals," artists and musicians The means of social production includes everything used for the production and reproduction of human beings and of society: not only factories, mines, raw materials, agricultural land, etc., but also all the implements and all the space and territory which are part of our overall life. We have no control over any of these because Capital has taken them all over and uses them all as Capital. Everything that is produced is produced and tolerated only insofar as it serves the needs of Capital i.e., of exchange-value which expands for the mere sake of expanding.

When the ruling class is fully overthrown we will be free to take on the re-organisation of everything. Each of us will be a co-owner of the entirety of the world's wealth and means of production. Planning and decision making will not be a separate or specialised activity. It will be an integrated part of production and of life, just like any other. We could easily begin by regularly holding popular assemblies in local public areas and production places of all sorts. Here ideas and plans could be initiated and elaborated with the full and direct participation of all those concerned. (Obviously not everyone will be interested in every question: the point is that anyone could, if they chose, participate in making any decision they think is important.)

When initial decisions have been made, the people at the assemblies can elect delegates who will then meet in regional and finally global councils with other delegates sent from assemblies throughout the world. They will meet simply to coordinate decisions already made by the people at their assemblies and will have no separate governing power of any kind. Their function will be rotated periodically among the population and monopolized by no one. Furthermore, they could be removed and replaced by their assemblies at any time. Even for planning and coordination of world-wide production, it is hard to say to what extent such meetings of delegates will prove necessary. With telecommunications equipment already existing, it would, in many cases, be simpler for the local assemblies to contact each other directly via the airwaves, and take part in each other's discussions. Such methods would be especially useful if you consider that in some cases even initial plans could not be made only locally and might immediately require direct dialogues between the respective assemblies. By means of mass communications networks such as the internet, each of us could be in instantaneous contact with each other in any part of the world, as well as with all the wealth of knowledge of the entirety of human history. Resources could be coordinated globally in order to maximise use-value and minimise difficulties in fulfilling desires. No longer would people be compelled to be competitive with each other. Instead the enrichment of others would only be a further enrichment of ourselves when we experience each other. The full and free development of each individual around us will be our own direct self-interest.

Whereas in capitalist society each individual can usually only pursue his interests narrowly, at the expense of others, in socialism every individual will have as his or her own the entirety of society and of social wealth. Each individual's pursuit of an ever-richer life would mean the pursuit of an ever-richer society. Nobody's activities need be restricted to a given "job" or locality. Each person can fish in the morning, plough the soil in the afternoon, compose and play music before dinner and write poetry in the evening, chop wood one day, cast steel the next, build castles one month and sail around the world the next (perhaps distributing the goodies they've made). And all of this without ever having to become as such a fisherman, a farm-worker, a musician, a poet, a woodsman, a steelworker, a construction worker or a sailor. There will no longer be a "work day." Nor a separate "leisure" time. Just life -- just the process of consciously creating and recreating ourselves and our world. With all the modern means of production at our individual disposal, each of us will have a direct self-interest in the building and rebuilding of the world in the image of our desires, and in participating fully in the accurate executing of this. Successful production in a socialist society will depend only on the real and immediate determination of each individual to live their life fully, to realise their wildest imaginations -- in the real world (that, by the way, is "how the work will get done").

Boffin the night away (1978)

Under the heading “Britain’s Biggest Daily Sale” the Daily Mirror recently told us something important. Well, important enough to run to 3 pages on Wednesday 8 March and 2 pages on Thursday 9 March. Now that’s important and no mistake.

Who could resist it? I mean, a question like “Why Has This Man Captured A Princess’s Heart?”

Forget the heart, you sneer (for after all it is the Wednesday tea-break in the Heart Attack Machine Factory). How about her income? Now there is something worth capturing. Princess Margaret has a £50,000 annual income. Having squandered your 7p on the Daily Mirror you want the goods. “Why Has This Man Captured A Princess’s Heart?” You want a short, easy, fool-proof method.

Well it seems a distinct advantage, if you are in the Princess heart capturing business, for your old man to be well-heeled. We are informed by the biggest daily selling newspaper “Roddy’s brother Dai, older by 18 months, is fascinated by sport and hunting. Even these days, he will race home to the family’s 2,000 acre estate near Abergavenny, Gwent and hunt with unashamed zeal much to his father's delight”. Roddy wasn’t interested: "I am not particularly interested in killing small animals.”

So there’s a clue. Be a sort of gentle guy. Oh, and by the way, make sure your old man has 2,000 acres. Dustmen don’t capture Princess’s hearts.

O.K., you say, the guy isn’t a dustman so what does he work at? The biggest selling daily is ready to inform you. After all, knowledge is power.

The Daily Mirror is a little vague on this one though: “. . . a fair haired young landscape gardener (and would-be pop singer). . .”

The would-be pop singer is easy. Who isn’t? The Saturday nights of Clapham and Maryhill ring to the bath-room echo of plenty of potential Jaggers and Bowies. Gardener? No sweat there either. Their income is as poor as yours.

So what’s the Princess heart-winning ingredient? Let’s take a look at big brother—yes, the fox-hunting one. Whatever else you could say about Roddy Llewellyn’s occupation, his brother could never be accused of gardening.

Vagueness creeps over the biggest selling newspaper again. “Dai has done a variety of jobs. From the travel business (“I wore a bowler and stiff collar in those days”) to his present endeavours which involve boosting British goods in the US”.

But if they are vague on the work-life of the brothers they describe as “Two of Britain’s most intriguing bachelors” they are quite specific on the love-life. How do you think they became Britain’s top-selling newspaper?

They tell of Dai and one of his mates pulling a couple of “very English, very debby girls” in a nightclub of course. Dinner and on to another club. He then hired “a famous Latin-American singing group” to accompany them to Annabels and the Clermont Club. . . . and then on to a friend’s house.

And so to bed. In this case “eventually Dai and his companion ended up making love to the two girls side by side on a huge bed. while the group stood round serenading them—stark naked.”

To all dustmen, engineers, school teachers, labourers and other ungrateful workers who may be reading this—a word of warning.

If you want to find out how a section of society can lead this sort of life-style don’t read the Daily Mirror.

Oh, sure, they’ll give you details of Roddy’s visits to Barbados, Istanbul and Acapulco. You’ll get the details of "Dai’s 4 or 5 cocktail parties in a night...” 

But to find out why you live the dull repetitive life you do; while Dai can say “My motivation is simple. Eat, drink and be merry—I genuinely don’t care what people think. I believe I should experience everything in life that is possible”—don’t look to the top selling newspaper.

Better take out a subscription to one of Britain’s lowest selling newspapers—The Socialist Standard.

For only in this newspaper will you read that the Dais and Roddys of this world lead their jet-set lifestyle only because you—the useful members of society —provide the wealth that makes it possible. Dai’s income comes from your endeavours. The wealth you produce is more than you get back in the form of a wage or a salary. The surplus you produce makes it possible for these parasites to live the way they do.

All this is bad enough, but the Daily Mirror going on about how Princess Margaret refers to her parasite boyfriend as “my darling angel” and similar gushing nonsense, is to add insult to injury.

The one piece of information to emerge out of the whole silly story is the item . . . "He’ll (Dai that is) eventually take her home, indulge in a bit of “boffing” (current upper class slang for you know what) and drive her home.”

Boffing. Now there’s a new one.

Next time the gaffer tells me that I'm not working hard enough. I can reply “Away and boff yourself.” 

Let’s hope he doesn’t read the Daily Mirror.

Dick Donnelly

Glasgow Br.

Lift the curtain, look behind it and see the world as it really is

Our everyday our lives is sold hour after hour, week after week, generation after generation. Few of us have property or even less of us possess a business we can make money from, so we are forced to sell our time and energy to someone else. We are the working class — the proles.

WORK

"Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour,and lives the more, the more labour it sucks." –Karl Marx

We don’t work because we want to. We work because we have no other way to exist. We sell our time and energy to a boss in order to buy the things we need to survive.

We are brought together with other workers and assigned different tasks. We specialise in different aspects of the work and repeat these tasks over and over again. Our time at work is not really part of our lives. It is dead time controlled by our bosses and managers. We live in limbo like zombies – the walking dead – or more accurately the working dead.  During our time at work we make things that our bosses can sell. These things can be objects like tee-shirts, computers and skyscrapers or services like cleaning floors and helping to maintain healthy patients or driving the bus to take you where you want to go, being fast-food worker to take your order or being the person who calls you at home to try to get you to buy things you don’t need. The work is not done because of what it produces. We do it to get paid, and the boss pays us for it to make a profit. At the end of the day the bosses re-invest the money we make them, and enlarge their businesses. Our work is stored up in the things our bosses own and sell—capital. They are always looking for new ways to store up our activity in things, new markets to sell them to, and new people with nothing to sell but their time and energy to work for them. What we get from work is enough money to pay for rent, food and clothes—enough to keep us coming back to work.

When we’re not at work, we spend time traveling to or from work, preparing for work, resting up because we’re exhausted from work or trying to forget about work. The only thing worse than work, is not having it. Then we waste our weeks away looking for work, without getting paid for it. If welfare is available, it is a bureaucratic pain-in-the-ass to get and is never as much as working. The constant threat of unemployment is what keeps us going to work every day. And our work is the basis of this society. The power our bosses get from it expands every time we work. It is the predominant force in every country in the world.

It is very different for the employers. They are very satisfied with the capitalist system. Why shouldn't they be? They get rich by it. At work we are under the control of our bosses, and of the markets they sell to. But an invisible hand imposes a work-like discipline and pointlessness on the rest of our lives as well. All sort of other activities tend to become as alienating, boring and stressful as work: housework, education and leisure. That’s capitalism.

For our bosses, work is the way that they get their money to make more money. For us, work is a miserable way to survive. The less they pay us, the less we make. The faster they can get us to work, the harder we have to work. Our interests are opposed, and there is a constant struggle between bosses and workers at work—and in the rest of the society based on work. It is about time that everybody wakes up to the fact that we "the people", the working class, and our employers have nothing in common.

Most of us spend most of our time working and are mostly poor, while the owners, who are mostly rich, manage and profit off our work. All the communities and institutions of society are built up around this basic division. There are racial, cultural and language divisions. There is division around sex and age. There is the division between nations and those with and without citizenship. We are divided around religion. Yet we are all brought together to buy and sell on the market. We are all now organized around capital. We are all used to help our bosses to accumulate more. Poor people from one country can be made to identify with their bosses from the same country and can be made to fight poor people from other countries. Workers have a harder time organizing a strike with workers who look different and speak a different language, especially if one group thinks it’s better than the other. These divisions are reflected in and reflect the division of labor at work. The “nation” is imaginary and false. It denies the basic division of society. Business owners run the government and the media, the schools and prisons, the welfare offices and the police. We have our lives run by them. The media put forward their view of the world. We are taught their history. The government provides services to keep their society running smoothly. And when all else fails, they have the police, the prisons and the army to enforce their will if “consensus” falters.

The ruling class organise us against each other, but we can organise ourselves against them. The whole point of class and being “the proles” is the recognition that people from different communities have essentially similar experiences, and to show that people should not hate each other. This is the starting point to fight our masters. When we begin to fight for our own interests we see that others are doing the same thing. Prejudices fall away, and our anger is directed where it belongs. Differences become irrelevant and our fight becomes more effective by involving people from different experiences.

There will be no need money when there is no need for buying and selling or to measure work-time. There will be no need for a government to manage society, when society is not divided between employers and employees and when people can run their lives themselves. The more we are governed, the less we are free. The only thing that interests us about the State is its abolition.

When we start to fight against the exploitative conditions of our lives, a completely different kind of activity appears. We do not look for a leader to come change things for us. We do it ourselves, with other working class people. We organize in a way where everyone takes part in the activity, and there is no division between leaders and followers. We do not fight for our leaders, for our bosses or for our country. We fight for ourselves. We’re in a war—a class war. There are no other solutions other than winning this war. We cannot reform capitalism with palliative measures into something more humane. The cure does not lie in forming a new government, or even ourselves becoming the new bosses. We are workers who want to abolish work and class. This is what revolution really means. Our political platform is to end politics.

Killing Animals In Zimbabwe

An article in the Toronto Star of November 14, focused on the illegal hunting of animals, specifically, lions and elephants in Zimbabwe. Poachers are poaching and killing dozens of elephants with cyanide. This is a problem for the local capitalists because they aren't getting their cut. Zimbabwe's 'hunting' industry brings in more than US$200 million annually, and, they claim, benefits 800,000 people living in communities that allow hunts on their land and getting income from the fees paid by operators and hunters. In other words, killing animals helps to keep the economy going. 

One hunter paid $50,000 for a hunt in which he killed a lion that he probably located easily since it was wearing a GPS collar. This may be sickening news but capitalism is all about money and profit. Obviously, it must be clear to anyone that this has got to change!

 John Ayers.

We are the people to change the world

“The earth shall rise on new foundations” - The Internationale

The aim of the Socialist Party is to build a socialist society. This aim is shared by all the companion parties within the World Socialist Movement. Socialism will be a classless society, in which all the means of producing wealth are owned in common. Instead of being divided into workers and employers, rich and poor, society will be an association of free people, all making their special contributions to the well-being of society, which in return will supply them with what they need in order to live full and happy lives. Such a society can be summed up in the slogan: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

For this to be possible, socialism must be based on abundance. Production will be organised in such a way that there is plenty of everything for everybody: not only food, houses, and so forth, to satisfy material needs; but also schools, theatres and concert-halls, play-grounds and sports-fields so that people can lead full, physical and cultural lives.

The nature of work will itself have changed. Through the development of science much of its drudgery will have disappeared. With the abolition of the exchange economy, of buying and selling, a whole range of occupations based upon commerce and finance disappears. Because it will be a community of plenty, where there is enough for all and therefore no advantage can be obtained by theft or other forms of crime, all need for courts of justice and police will have disappeared. In other words, the State, which is the sum of all these institutions and organisations, will itself disappear. Instead of one section of society ruling and oppressing another, men will have grown accustomed to living together in society without fear and compulsion. Thus, for the first time, mankind, united in a world-wide family of nations. It is obvious that by the time such a stage of human development has been reached many institutions which we accept today as essential, such as policemen and prisons, employers and workers, armies and civil servants, will have disappeared.

It is often argued that, however desirable socialism may be, it could never be made to work, because, whatever changes are made in the form of society, human nature will always remain fundamentally the same: there must always be rulers and ruled, rich and poor, employers and employed. This argument springs from ignorance of the facts. The study of history, and the observation of primitive communities still living in the world, prove that in the earliest kind of society not only were the land and the tools (what are called the means of production) regarded as the common property of the tribe, but everyone shared in the common tasks of production as well as in the product of their labour. Because of the low level of technique such communities were necessarily extremely primitive and poor, but because there was common ownership, and therefore no classes, they are correctly described as “primitive Communism.” Gradually, however, as mankind achieved greater mastery over the forces of nature through increased society the exploitation of the vast majority by a small privileged section, and the class struggles resulting from that, were unavoidable because of the low technical and productive development. Now, however, capitalist society has led to such a tremendous improvement in technique and to such a vast increase in the productive forces that there is no longer any need for the division of society into classes. Moreover, by explaining how the capitalist class exploits the working class Marx was able to show that the very existence of the capitalist class, instead of helping forward the development of the productive forces, is now increasingly hindering such development.

It follows, then, that the next step forward in the development of human society can only be taken by the working class. By taking this step, the socialistworking class, being itself the great majority of the people, will end the exploitation of man by man.  Socialist society needs to be global. It is not something which can be established in one country, isolated from the rest of the world. On the contrary it must eventually embrace all the peoples of the world; and in so doing it will put an end to war. Because no wars can take place in a truly international society there will be no need for armies or the manufacture of armaments.

Capitalist society is a society divided into two main classes: the capitalists, or bourgeoisie; and the working class, or proletariat. The former own the land, the factories and the machines, and all the means by which wealth is produced (the means of production), and are therefore the ruling class, though they do no productive work themselves. The latter though they do all the real productive work of society, own neither the means of production nor the wealth they create; and, therefore, are forced to sell to the capitalists their ability to work and produce. Numerically, the capitalists are an insignificant minority, while the workers constitute the vast majority of the people.

Capitalism is not based on plenty. Though it has developed, for the first time in history, the possibility of providing enough for everybody, it has always condemned a great part of the people to live in poverty and insecurity. This is because the capitalist class, who decide what is to be produced, base their decisions not on what people need but upon how much profit they will make when the goods are sold in the market.

Capitalist society is not a peaceful, international society, but, on the contrary, nationalist. Just as within each capitalist country the various capitalists and groups of capitalists compete with each other in order to sell their goods at a greater profit, so capitalist countries as a whole enter into competition with other capitalist countries. This competition inevitably leads to wars: on the one hand to enslave more backward countries; and on the other, to re-divide the countries which have been enslaved between the different capitalist countries. Such wars are not in the interests of the working class, but only of the capitalists.

 Because capitalism is a class society, in which the small class of monopoly capitalists exploits the great majority of the people—not only the manual workers, but also the professional and technical workers, and the small farmers and shopkeepers—it is necessary for the capitalists to impose their will upon the people. It does this, partly by filling all the key posts in the armed forces, the Civil Service and all legal institutions (that is, in the State) with members of its own class; partly through its control of the media , by which public opinion is influenced.

Thus, while in a capitalist democracy it is true that the majority of the people have the opportunity of taking part every few years in the election of the Government and of the local authorities, and in addition have won a number of democratic rights such as the right to organise in trade unions and political parties, freedom of the Press, etc., nevertheless the real power of the State remains in the hands of the capitalists.

Under capitalism, human society is condemned to a series of bitter struggles; class against class, nation against nation, and individual against individual. Inevitably, therefore, the great majority of the people, instead of being inspired by a common social purpose, are forced to struggle for their own individual and selfish interests. Moreover, since capitalism condemns the majority of people to poverty or insecurity, there is a continual waste of human talent and ability.

We’re in so many urgent crises that we have to change everything. Or else. And there’s no one to do it for us. There’s just us. Everyone, everywhere who cares what happens to each other, to humanity, to Nature and the planet, to the future can make a difference. Possibly all the difference. What do we have to do is to change the system in which we live. We have to be radical. Revolutionary in our thinking and actions.

The climate on Earth has gone critical—greenhouse gases, poisoned waters, dying oceans, melting ice, heat waves, drought, floods, cyclones, air pollution. Then there is the constant poverty, the hunger, the seemingly endless wars, the forced migrations, the joblessness, the hopelessness. It’s all inter-connected. It’s capitalism. It’s up to us to change everything. We’ll have to have everyone we can, doing what they think best, giving everything they have. And when we give our all things change. We are stronger so we have something more to give. Will it be enough? Who can say? Who knows which future we’ll have? Who can measure the power our imagination? Who knows the limits of our creativity?

Now is the time. 2016 is our year. Don't wait for everyone to get on board before YOU make change. The first thing to do is for YOU to change. Stop being afraid.

“Alone, we can only do so much to fight for justice and inequality. But, if we stand together and spark a fire, we will discover that we are more powerful than we ever imagined. We are the people we've been waiting for.”

Ending War

Capitalism is war, plain and simple. It’s not just market society with a war on top, it is war all the way down, and can only be properly understood as such. Peace is a social myth we have constructed to delude or amuse ourselves in our leisure moments eating rat stew in the trenches.

War is an inevitable concomitant of capitalist competition for trade, trade routes, raw materials and exploitative opportunities. When tough negotiations fail, war is always an option under some pretext.

Nation states, schools and commercial businesses are organised hierarchically, like armies, and we are all reluctant conscripts, squaddies whose task it is to fight whoever we’re told to fight, whose received ambition may be to make NCO or officer but whose real ambition, if we’re not blinded by patriotism or xenophobia or bloodlust, is to not get killed.

Understanding that capitalism is war helps to make sense of the news in a way that nothing else does. Random acts of violence no longer seem random. The fear and the paranoia and the endless search for scapegoats and snake-oil cures become explicable, even predictable. The impotent and irrelevant posturing of politicians are meaningless precisely because they are war propaganda, as bogus as Hollywood fantasies, monarchical pomp or religious preaching. This is not civil society with a few oddballs and quirks, it is society in shellshock, having a continuous mental breakdown.

And where do you fit in? There’s no room for shirkers or ‘conshies’ in this war. You don’t have a choice not to fight. If you struggle to make ends meet, you’re in the war. If you struggle against disability prejudice, you’re in the war. If you feel oppressed by white racists, loud-mouthed bigots, the council, the boss at work, the ‘male gaze’, you’re in the war. You don’t have a choice not to fight, but you do have a choice what to fight, and how to fight.

For socialists, the only part of this war that makes any sense, which is worth fighting, that might realistically stand a chance of ending war forever, is the class war, the war against the idea of capitalism itself, the mindset of private property and public poverty, the universal acceptance of oppression. Everyone else is fighting to win, or not lose, or just survive. If we were to win the class war, it would remove the main reason for fighting all the other wars. In socialism, society could finally start to recover from the hell it has put itself through.

Stop electing leaders and elect yourselves to common ownership and democratic control of all the world’s wealth with workers worldwide.

All wars are fought on behalf of the ruling class. Fought over markets, trade routes, vital resources, with intense competition and geopolitical rivalries and ambitions and the last two great wars were not fought for any grand ideal, despite the rhetoric employed to engage workers in the slaughter of their brothers and sisters fellow workers, whom they had more in common with than the bellicose parasite capitalist class of all nations, sending them to their doom.

War, wrapped in the cant of nationalism is used by ruling elites to thwart and destroy the aspirations of workingmen and -women and distract us from our disempowerment.

“Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder. … And that is war, in a nutshell,” the five-time socialist presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs said during World War I. “The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.” Debs, who in 1912 received almost a million votes, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for saying this. “I have been accused of obstructing the war,” Debs said in court. “I admit it. I abhor war. I would oppose war if I stood alone.”

A member of the IWW once addressed a court:

“You ask me why the I.W.W. is not patriotic to the United States. If you were a bum without a blanket; if you had left your wife and kids when you went west for a job, and had never located them since; if your job had never kept you long enough in a place to qualify you to vote; if you slept in a lousy, sour bunkhouse, and ate food just as rotten as they could give you and get by with it; if deputy sheriffs shot your cooking cans full of holes and spilled your grub on the ground; if your wages were lowered on you when the bosses thought they had you down; if there was one law for Ford, Suhr, and Mooney and another for Harry Thaw: if every person who represented law and order and the nation beat you up, railroaded you to jail, and the good Christian people cheered and told them to go to it, how in hell do you expect a man to be patriotic? This war is a business man’s war and we don’t see why we should go out and get shot in order to save the lovely state of affairs that we now enjoy.”