Feasible socialism

There is no effective world socialist movement in the foreseeable future despite our own aspirations in the World Socialist Movement and therefore there is little hope of salvation for humanity. We advocate a decision-making process that must be resolutely democratised by interlocking networks of the councils and communes on a local, regional and world scale. We understand the utopian and unrealisable character of the idea of building of socialism in one country and understand the integrated worldwide character of economics, politics, and social contradictions in our epoch. We maintain that the class struggle is the motor of human history. The aim of socialism is to achieve total control over social forces which humanity itself has generated. Socialism, according to Marx, involves the creation of a society in which “socialised humanity, the associated producers, regulate their interchange with nature rationally, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by some blind power”. Private and state property has to be transformed into social property by reorganising social life as a whole so that the producers have a real say not only in the production of social wealth but also its disposal. Humanity can never attain real freedom until a society has been built where no person has the freedom to exploit another person. The all-round development of the individual and the creation of opportunities for every person to express his or her talents to the full can only find ultimate expression in a society which dedicates itself to people rather than profit. Mankind’s resources will never be used for the good of humanity until they are in common ownership and under democratic control.

Let us describe workers, self-management and what possibly its main mechanisms and institutions could function. Let us assume for the sake of simplicity a global workers’ councils would determine the needs and how it should be divided starting from possibilities previously debated by all in the process of electing delegates for that congress. The choices and the main foreseeable consequences of each option –would be clearly spelt out: average workload (length of the working week); priority needs to be satisfied for all through guaranteed allocation of resources (‘free’ distribution); volume of resources devoted to future ‘growth’ (reserve stocks) The global framework of the economic plan would thereby be established on the basis of conscious choices by a majority of those affected by it. Starting from these choices, a coherent general plan would then be drawn up, utilising input-output tables and material balances, indicating the resources available for each separate branch of production (industrial sectors, transportation, agriculture and distribution) and social life (education, health, communications, etc). The congress would not go beyond these general instructions and would not lay out specifications for each branch or production unit or region. Self-managing bodies – for example, congresses of workers’ councils in the shoe, food, electronic equipment, steel or energy industries – would then divide up the work-load flowing from the general plan among the existing producer units and/or project the creation of additional producing units for the next period, if the implementation of output goals made that necessary under the given work-load. They would work out the technological average (gradually leading up to the technical optimum on the basis of existing knowledge) – that is, the average productivity of labour, or average ‘production costs’ – of the goods to be produced, but without suppressing the least productive units as long as total output elsewhere does not cover total needs, and as long as new jobs for the producers concerned are not guaranteed in conditions considered satisfactory by them.

In production units making equipment, the technical coefficients flowing from the previous steps would largely determine the product mix. In factories manufacturing consumer goods, the product mix would flow from a previous consultation between the workers’ councils and consumers’ conferences democratically elected by the mass of the citizens. Various models – for example, different fashions in shoes – would be submitted to them, which the consumers could test and criticise and replace by others. Showrooms and publicity sheets would be the main instruments of that testing. The latter could play the role of a ‘referendum’ – consumer research, having the right to receive six pairs of footwear a year, would cross six samples in a sheet containing a hundred or two hundred options. The model mix would then be determined by the outcome of such a referendum, with post-production corrective mechanisms reflecting subsequent consumer criticisms. Compared with the market mechanism, the great advantage of such a system would be the far greater consumer influence on the product mix and the suppression of over-production – the balancing out of consumer preference and actual production essentially occurring before production and not after sales, with a buffer stock of social reserves additionally produced – empirically (statistically) optimized after a few years. Factory workers’ councils would then be free to translate these branch decisions at the level of the producing unit as they liked – organising the production and labour process to realise all the economy of labour-times they could achieve. If they could reach the output target by working twenty instead of thirty hours a week after submitting their goods to a quality test, they would enjoy a reduction in work-load without any reduction of social consumption. It should be stressed at the outset that democratic self-management does not mean that everybody decides about everything. If one was to assume that, the conclusion would be obvious: socialism is not possible. Four billion human beings could not find the life-span to settle even the tiniest fraction of each other’s affairs, in that sense. But it is not necessary. Certain decisions can be best taken at work-shop level, others at the factory level, others again at neighbourhood, local, regional, national, continental and finally at world level. Decisions could – and should – be taken on a world scale.  Three spheres immediately present themselves. The first would be all those decisions necessitating a global redistribution of human and material resources to ensure the rapid disappearance of the social and cultural ills of underdevelopment – hunger, infant mortality, disease and illiteracy in the developing world. The second would cover priority allocation of genuinely scarce natural resources – those which could be depleted absolutely, and of which no minority of the human race has the right to dispossess the next generations; only the living population of the world in its totality has the right to decide here. The third would include everything affecting the natural environment and climate of the planet as a whole; all those processes which can pollute or disrupt oceans, poles or atmosphere, or destroy such world-wide bases of ecological balance as the Amazon Forest.

From these global determinations would flow constraints on regional or local resources available for planning and need-satisfaction, which would themselves be decided in each region or district. Thus, for example, once the total tonnage of steel that could be used in North America, Europe or Asia was set, the producers and consumers of these areas would be free to allocate it as they decided. If in spite of every environmental argument, they wanted to maintain the dominance of the private motor car and to continue polluting their cities, that would be their right. Changes in long-standing consumer orientations are generally slow – there can be few who believe that workers in the United States would abandon their attachment to the automobile the day after a socialist revolution. The notion of forcing people to change their consumption habits is far worse than that of another few decades of smog in Los Angeles. The emancipation of the working class – today, contrary to every received notion, for the first time in history the absolute majority of the earth’s population – can only be achieved by the workers themselves, as they are: not people out of another world, but human beings with their weaknesses like all of us.

Such an allocation of resources, of democratic planning and self-management, would be much more efficient than either a capitalist market economy or a state- capitalist command economy. For it would have a powerful built-in self-correcting mechanism, which both of the existing alternatives lack. We do not believe that the ‘majority is always right’, any more than we believe that the Pope is infallible. Everybody does make mistakes. This will certainly also be true of the majority of the citizens, of the majority of the producers, and of the majority of the consumers alike. But there will be one basic difference between them and their predecessors. In any system of unequal power – be it economic inequality, political monopoly or a combination of the two – those who make the wrong decisions about the allocation of resources are rarely those who pay the price for the consequences of their mistakes, and never those who pay the heaviest price. We witnessed that with the Great Recession of 2007 when the CEOs of the corporations were reduced to the unemployment lines. It was the workers who they laid off, and their communities, which suffered although they are completely innocent of the cause of the financial crisis. Likewise, members of Congress did not pay the price for their error in repealing banking regulations.

Provided there exist real democracy, real choice and information, it is hard to believe that the majority of people  would then prefer to see their forests die, their housing stock dwindling, or their hospitals understaffed, rather than rapidly to correct their mistaken allocation. Nor will there be uniformity. People will receive the equipment and tools to produce whatever they wanted for their own satisfaction or that of their families, friends or neighbours, in their leisure-time to put their imagination to work. The scope for practical do-it-yourself initiatives will be enormously enlarged.

Shall we remain chained to “market laws” or do we seize the potential to shape its own destiny. Do we break our shackles or do we allow self-emancipation for all to be forever an unfulfilled dream?

The message of the Socialist Party

The Socialist Party’s conviction about the revolutionary potential of our fellow-workers is based upon an analysis of the historical record and not on irrational faith. If the overwhelming historical evidence showed our assumptions were proven wrong, then we would have no choice but to accept the truth of it. But we contend that the evidence provided by history so far does not warrant any such conclusion. But, also, this also does not mean we wait passively for a victorious socialist revolution. Men and women are actors in history and what they think and do will determine the future of world revolution and, therefore, the future of humanity.

The Socialist Party has never claimed socialist society would be a utopia but we do say it will eliminate most of the waste and gross inequalities of capitalism.  For men and women to cease to be a commodity, it is necessary that they are no longer forced to sell themselves, but have "the right to live", so to speak. So it is necessary that the means of production are no longer controlled by an employing class, and not even by the state, but by society. The means of production are no longer to be instruments that pump out surplus-value, that suck up human labour to extract surplus-labour. They are used to perform a labour process required to produce a certain quantity of products which society needs. To end wage-labour means to remove the character of capital from the means of production. Socialist freedom is realised with the disappearance of the old social antagonisms. In socialism, there are neither measures of value nor value. There are no exchanges between men. Only one exchange remains: between human society and nature. There will be no more private property so no more classes or State. There will no longer be a separation between town and country, humanity will spread harmoniously over the earth's surface. The division between manual and intellectual labour will cease, a reflection of the end of class-struggle. The disconnection between private and public life will disappear. Politics in the conventional sense no longer exists, since there are no men or women to be governed. There is, instead, “the administration of things”. Consequently, there are no further leaders and led. As Marx wrote, “The category of the worker is not done away with, but extended to all men [and women].” It is generalised to all of society’s members.

Capitalists can find no solution to their social problems. This small clique of capitalist magnates stands in the way of abundance. To expand production and achieve full material abundance workers have to wrest control of the factories, banks, and other major means of production from the hands of the ruling class and establish their own rule over industry and society. Production for profit must be supplanted by production according to the needs of the entire people and directed by the associated producers themselves. This is the socialist remedy for capitalist anarchy, insecurity and misery. The wealthiest of capitalist nations cannot satisfy the basic needs of its working people for jobs at living wages, decent housing, adequate food and clothing. So long as the rich continue to coin profits out of the sweat and blood of the toilers, they do not care how many are out of work, go hungry and homeless, and lack all hope for the future.

The message of the Socialist Party is not that the worker could better adjust to the situation by demanding a higher price for his or her labour power – insofar as labour power is a mere commodity, he or she already receives the equivalent for it. The implication for socialist theory is that the worker should reject the status of a thing, of a commodity, and change the whole social framework of wage labour itself. The basic feature of the world socialist revolution is that requires a conscious effort by the working class who, through its social conditions, is capable of creating a planned economy and emancipated society, a “society of associated producers,” as Marx put it. World socialism can and will end all want and preventable illnesses and diseases for all human beings; restore the ecological balance and conserve scarce resources for future generations; introduce technology which will be subordinated to human needs. Equality among all peoples and races can become a reality only if it is based on equality in the access to material resources. Socialism will be the first social system in the history of mankind to be introduced by the conscious action of the majority in their own interests and not behind their backs for the benefit of a small minority. The Socialist Party stands by its political position that capitalism can absorb and integrate many reforms and automatically rejects all those reforms which run counter to the logic of the system. You can abolish capitalism only by overthrowing it, not by reforming it out of existence.

The goal of liberation: capitalism or socialism?

The overthrow of the capitalist system can free the tremendous potential energy of the people. The resurgence of the anti-capitalist movement has provoked important debates. Power resides in the ownership of capital where the capitalist elite controls the mass media, the educational system, and all the means of indoctrination in capitalist ideology. This ruling class exercises power through the state machine which they control — the army, the police, the courts, the upper echelons of the civil service, all tied to the corporate bosses by a thousand strings.

People are frequently fact-resistant and don't want to acknowledge reality. We face geo-political uncertainties, such as access to food, water security, and energy supplies. There are a whole series of other problems like the demographics of ageing. Those with power tend to defer problems, pushing them into the future. For example, climate change summits would rather postpone decisions than implement solutions to it. We're experiencing extreme weather conditions which impact on food production, and many other things. All we're doing is piling these problems up. And as we do this, the problems get bigger.

Today’s politicians such as Corbyn and Sanders attempt at “refashioning” socialism into “practical applicable” programmes to meet the needs of the times but it has resulted in the disappearance of basic principles by which the socialist movement was originally inspired. The Welfare State has nothing whatever to do with socialism and constitutes no revolution. It did not originate with the Labour Party and was not opposed by any party. It is not a party issue. That the Tories voted against the Welfare State is not true. Social reform in history has always been a process of tidying up when the cruder forms of exploitation have ceased to pay dividends. There is no exception to this. “The State is the people" is a popular misconception that lives on. It is still widely held that the State embodies the whole community. The illusion is fostered that it is “our” country, “our” government. In fact, the country is owned by a privileged minority. Nationally the State protects the interests of capitalism, and in doing so frequently has to over-ride sectional capitalist interests. To establish socialism, the working class must organise to win control of the state and turn it from the instrument of oppression which it is today into the agent of their emancipation. This principle asserts the conscious, majority, political nature of the socialist revolution. There are things that Parliament and political power can do and there are things they cannot do. Parliament does control the State; it does not control the economic forces that are capitalism. The working class doesn’t need political power to form a government and try to run capitalism but to force the capitalist class to surrender their privileges. The experience of the non-socialist, reformist, using political action is no argument against the conscious, majority applying political action for socialism.

The Socialist Party has no specific objection to particular reforms. We live in a capitalist world that must be allowed to work or we starve. But we do object to the substitution of reforms for what we are supposed to stand for and the consequent neglect of more fundamental things. Especially do we object to calling the social benefits system socialism. The fact is that the Welfare State implies the continued existence of the inherited and the disinherited—Disraeli’s “Two Nations.” It is made a substitute for socialism on the ground that it involves a redistribution of national income. But socialism is not the redistribution of money income. It is production for use and the distribution of that. Socialism cannot be properly garbed as capitalism.

At every election, the illusion is served up that here is a fresh opportunity at last to solve the problems which have been a burden for so long with a series of reform measures, legislation regulating capitalist practices. In spite of the enduring failure of all varieties of political parties to overcome such problems as war, poverty and the general chaos that is a constant feature of capitalism, the Labour and Tory, Democratic and Republican parties will go blindly and blandly into elections as if the experiences of the past had never occurred. Once again, there will be the cheap trade in promises. Once again, there will be the contrived differences between parties who are united in their defence of capitalism. Once again, there will be the complete failure to face up to the realities of life. Once again, the politics of personalities, gimmickry and opportunism will take precedence over a serious understanding of the difficulties besetting society. Their records make a mockery of their claims to be the way towards of social improvement. Their past policies are an indictment which no amount of hollow phrase-mongering can overcome. For all their talk of progress and modernisation, their ideas and actions are imprisoned by the limitations of the status quo—that is—capitalist society.

Although the life of the whole community depends on the way in which the means of production are utilised, all reformist politicians agree that they should be geared to the profit motive. They agree that the working class should continue to live only by selling their labour-power to the owners of industry. They are agreed on protecting the root cause of the problems facing mankind. So far as preserving the fundamental features of capitalist society are concerned, the Labour, Tory, Republican and Democratic parties are of one accord. There will be promises to solve the problems of housing, urban chaos, poverty and international conflict by those who have failed in the past and who cannot but fail in the future. At stake is whether or not the majority of the population will continue to acquiesce in a society of which they are victims. By voting for any of them, the working class will endorse their own exploited economic position. This is the basic conditioning factor of modern life. The trivial controversy between the large parties will avoid this fundamental issue.

The working class hold political power through the vote, they have yet to use it in their own interests. It is a power that can only be fully realised when the working class have the knowledge and determination to end capitalist society. The Socialist Party does not play at politics. It does not pander to prejudice; it does not flatter ignorance; it does not dilute its case in the pursuit of cheap popularity. The Socialist Party does not offer the corrupt relationship of the leader and the led; it offers an understanding of society and the fraternal association of men and women who are equipped with knowledge, and who know what they want and how to get it. We know that compromise will defeat the sane and rational ends to which we are committed. The message of the Socialist Party is a positive one. In addressing ourselves to working men and women, we embrace all those who make a contribution to the wealth and well-being of society, be they factory workers, doctors, technicians or labourers. Only they can rebuild the world to make it a fit place to live in, but not by electing a government to administer capitalism. For too long have their skills and talents been used by a privileged minority to create profit and private luxury. For too long has humanity been subject to the crippling limitations of production for sale. It is not enough to struggle to defend living standards under capitalism. These workers must join the World Socialist Movement to capture political power so to take over industry itself and convert all the means that society has developed for producing wealth to the property of the whole community. Thus commonly owned and democratically controlled, the means of production can serve the needs of the whole community. This action must presuppose any attempt to deal in a practical way with the problems of our time.

Anti-Nationalism 5/5

Socialists are utterly opposed to manifestations of nationalism. In fact, we find disturbing the revival of nationalism around the world.  A “nation” is a false community, and a dangerous illusion because of its divisive nature. Socialists recognise that workers have no country. We are not nationalists, in fact, we are implacably opposed to nationalism in whatever form it rears its ugly head. One of the last things the world needs at the moment is more states, with their own armed forces and divisive nationalist ideologies. Without the ideology of nationalism, capitalist states would be unstable since, being based on minority class rule, they need a minimum allegiance from those they rule over. Nationalism serves to achieve this by teaching the ruled to be loyal to "their" so-called "nation-state".

Nationalism is based on the illusion that all people who live in a particular geographical area have a common interest, against people in other areas. Hence, the supposed need for a separate state and a separate government to defend this separate interest. This flies in the face of the facts. All over the world, in all geographical areas, the population is divided into two basic classes, those who own the productive resources and those who don’t and have to work for those who do, and whose interests are antagonistic. The non-owning class have a common interest, not with the owning class who live in the same area, but with people like themselves wherever they live. Nationalists are spreading a divisive poison amongst people who socialists say should unite to establish a frontier-free world community, based on the world’s resources becoming the common heritage of all humanity, as the only framework within which the social problems which workers wherever they live face today. This is why Socialists and Nationalists are implacably opposed to each other. We are working in opposite directions. Us to unite workers. Them to divide them. We want people to change the economic and social basis of society and establish socialism in place of capitalism.

The problems of the working class of the working class of the world originate in the class stratification of capitalist society. Given capitalism, these problems are inevitable; they cannot be "planned" out of the system. They do not arise out of the "evil" intentions, nor the blundering or stupidity of governments, "home" or "foreign", no more than they could be planned, prayed or fought away by brave, sincere or wise men. They were the facts of capitalism and would continue to exist for as long as the working class, the only class with an economic interest in bringing about a real change, accepted that system. Members of the working class should realise that nationalism is the tool of capitalism. The working class have no country—they have the choice of enduring the miseries of capitalism within the confines of national frontiers or enjoying freedom in a world socialism. Socialist education demands that besides advocating the establishment of Socialism, the obstacles that stand in its path must be pointed out, in order that the workers can march along the road to political power.

As socialists, we refuse to pander to petty nationalism but work to promote a World without frontiers where the Earth’s resources have become the common heritage of all. The idea of "the nation" functions as supreme good, beyond the physical and mechanical functionings of the state, to which any cause may appeal. It is a fantasy which can be used to cover up for problems and contradictions in the practice of the state's daily life. Its function is to legitimise both the state and class rule and sustain a large quantity of support, through workers who identify with the ideas of nationhood and believe themselves to be the same as, and have the same interests as, their masters. An influential and well-funded nostalgia industry which has long been used to persuade workers that there is something great about being the nation's subject. Nationalism is the ideology which seeks to justify the capitalist division of the world into separate “nation-states”, each competing to gain a place in the sun for its ruling class and each with killing machines at its disposal. We utterly reject this view of the way humanity should organise itself. As socialists, we re-affirm that all peoples should seek their emancipation, not as members of nations or religions or ethnic groups, but as human beings, as members of the human race. They should unite to abolish the division of the world into so-called nation-states and to establish a World Cooperative Commonwealth of which we will all be free and equal members - citizens of the world, not subjects of nation-states.

Anti-Nationalism 4/5

The lies that kill

The problem of nationalism cannot be wished away. To do away with it will mean to eliminate the present the system that fosters it. This system ensures that a minority owns and controls the means  which wealth is produced and distributed whilst the vast majority who actually does the production owns nothing. The resources and wealth of the world must be owned and controlled by all humanity. Under such an arrangement, no one will care who goes where or who belongs where. Then nationalism and its present brutalities would have been buried.

We are facing critical situations for which socialism is the sole remedy. The socialist movement strives to trample down national boundaries, recognising the common link between the workers of every land— their poverty and slavery indicts the ruling-class as a robber class, establishes the fact, that poverty need not exist, that slavery can be abolished by the workers themselves, and that the quarrels of the ruling class are of no concern to the working class. The working class of the world have a common bond that transcends every tie of race or nationality—their urgent need for emancipation. What matters the name of the country of your birth, if you are a slave in that country? If you look at the problems that affect the vast majority of the working class in every country, you soon realise that nationalism, and concern for artificial borders between people, hold no solutions. Without you the masters are helpless; without you, the State collapses.

 What bond is it that identifies you with your lordly capitalist? You are chained to his machines, in his factories and workshops, and driven by a need to produce wealth for him. You are the robbed, he is the robber; you are the slave, he is the master. A bond of shame, a tie that is a degradation to every wage-slave. If you are loyal to the class that exploits, you are a traitor to your own class. It is in the interest of your masters that you should be divided by national and religious barriers. It is up to you, then, to study your class position in society, which is cosmopolitan and anti-religious in character. For it is only by so doing that you will become free in the truest sense of the term. Socialists do not care whether the capitalist class divides the World among themselves by rivers and seas, or by the lines of latitude and longitude. What concerns him, is the class ownership, which he works and organises to abolish.

Nationalism is, therefore, an illusion that has no basis in reality and is nothing short of an ideology that seeks to enhance the profit-making interests of the capitalist class. The only real division that exists between human beings is their access to the resources and wealth of the world. In this money-dominated world, the minority ruling class (the capitalists) own and control these resources and wealth - the land, factories, the transport and communication network, etc. The working class has no access to these and has to sell their mental and physical labour power to the former in return for peanuts.

The concept of nationality, the idea that an area dominated by a privileged class which thrives on the enforced poverty of that area's productive class, should grant to the latter the right to live there providing its members accept their wage-slave status and endorse the right of the privileged to live on their backs is offensive to any intelligent working man or woman. Those who promote such nonsense are the real enemies of our class and there will be no lasting peace in the world until the workers refuse to line up behind all the various brands of nationalism.

The cause of Socialism is and must be universal. The working class cannot emancipate itself nationally. So long as you are living in a society that forces you to be a wage slave, you must, if you wish to be free, join hands with your fellow workers of all countries in the task of securing "the world for the workers." Members of the Socialist Party have long since turned a deaf ear to the empty phrases of nationalism, and, instead, look forward to the day when our planet shall be a land of peace and prosperity—its wealth owned and controlled by its workers. This object, we claim, is far more worthy of the attention and support of workers than the empty phrases and chimeras of the nationalists. 

Anti-Nationalism 3/5

“Nationalism of one kind or another was the cause of most of the genocide of the twentieth century. Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people's brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.” Arundhati Roy

Nationalism is anathema to socialists. The Socialist Party has always argued that the workers of all countries have more in common with each other than with those representing the interests of capital. We ask that workers set aside the reaction of nationalism, religious bigotry, ethnic hatred, racism and join together to root out the real problem itself—capitalism. We are all faced with the fundamental problem of capitalism which forces worker against worker not for their own interests, but for the interest of profit. Nationalism is sold to voters as a movement to liberate us all. And sadly many workers will back it. Unique amongst all political parties, both left and right, The Socialist Party has no national axe to grind. We side with no particular state, no government. We have no time for borders. Once again the socialist assertion that nationalism can never serve the interests of the working class is being attested to daily amidst the horrors of the war around the world. Workers are always the victims. They have to do the fighting and the dying, they are raped and "ethnically cleansed".  It is their lives and homes that become "collateral damage" regardless of whether or not they swallow the nationalist filth of their leaders. Yet they find themselves fighting and dying together for what will be a capitalist state that exploits them. These wars are not the results of ancient hatreds but are the result of capitalism and can, therefore, happen anywhere in the world, even here.

We, the people, the power to invent the technology to create abundance. We, the people, have the power to make this life full of joy and happiness. Let us use that power and unite to fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men and women have an opportunity for useful work, that will give youth a future and old age a security. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason and science. It is impossible to imagine how capitalism would function so smoothly without the poison of nationalism.

Working class unity enables us to combine our tactics for defending our class with the strategy of liberating our class. Socialists do not fall into the trap of nationalism which does not strengthen the campaign for socialism or create a united, class-conscious working class, but fragments and weakens it. Nationalism will not improve your condition one iota. Only the class struggle could do that and only with difficulty. Instead of tragically wasting time fostering nationalism, workers should be struggling for a socialist society without national borders. Most people do not get beyond the position of support for the country they are born in while some calling themselves ‘socialists’ progress no further than ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’. Until the hold of nationalist and racist poison on the minds of the world's workers is destroyed, it will not be possible to live the full and satisfying life of socialism. Stand up for yourself as a human being and fight for the only worthwhile end — the achievement of a free humanity. The Socialist Party’s object speaks of the means of production being owned and controlled ‘by and in the interest of the whole community’. This means what it says: all the people of the Earth will own the land, factories, offices and so on in common. And we will form a true community, one with shared interests but not distinct from or in opposition to anyone else or any other group. The global community of world socialism will truly be a positive notion, offering support and opportunity for all those who are part of it. Nationalism only bequeaths to the working class a change of hand which holds the whip.

Anti-Nationalism 2/5

What an extraordinary notion it is that so many members of the human race should be forced to remain on that small section of the earth's surface in which they happened to be born. Who gave the world's rulers the right to tell us which bit of land we should live on? Nationalism has indeed proved to be a more potent political force than class consciousness. The concept of the nation is a very real force in the minds of people today. The outlook of “us and them” is a strong notion in the lives of many people. The idea that the world is naturally divided into nations is widespread. But, in the face of its results, we re-assert the original socialist position that workers ought to act as a world-wide class with a common interest in working to establish a single world community without frontiers based on the world's resources being the common heritage of all humanity.

The phrase ‘Nation-State’ itself assumes that the states into which the world is divided are the political expression of pre-existing ‘nations’. In fact, it’s the other way round. It is the ‘nation’ that is the creation of the state. States inculcate into their subjects the idea that they form a community with a common interest and that the state represents that interest. The result is that people come to refer to themselves and other subjects of the same state as ‘we’ and ‘us’. Socialists do not speak of ‘we’ and ‘us’ in relation to so-called ‘Nation-States’ in which they happen to have been born or live. We know that, in every state, there are two classes with opposed interests: the class of those who own and control the means of production and the rest, the vast majority, who do not and, to live, have to sell their mental and physical energies to those who do for a wage or a salary.

Wars are not fought between ‘nations’ but between states, and states represent the interest of their ruling, owning class. Wars arise out of the conflict of economics between states, representing the owning class within them, over sources of raw materials, trade routes, markets, investment outlets and strategic areas to protect these. Nationalism is used by states to win support – and cannon fodder – for wars. Our advice to fellow workers during any capitalist conflict is, first: Do not do anything, in word or deed, which might encourage further killings of your working-class brothers and sisters. And, secondly: Think carefully about the situation to see if the issue is worth a single drop of working-class blood. Is this an issue worth killing and being killed over? Socialists reply, a thousand times No! Nationalist feelings arise because of the incessant propaganda of the ruling class in each country to persuade the working majority that they are in some way essentially different from and superior to everyone from other countries. Without this propaganda, each country's government would find it very difficult to get its people to join up and fight in its unavoidable wars with foreign states. Historically, nationalism and national feeling have been the tool of the capitalist class for both winning and retaining power.

Workers, of course, do not share a common interest with their masters. It does not follow that if the "national wealth" increases, or if trade increases, or even if profit increases, that higher wages will be gained by workers. In fact, capitalists can only make a profit by appropriating the wealth produced by the workers to themselves; but in the topsy-turvy world of ideology, it seems that workers will only have good pay and wealth when the capitalists are doing well. So it appears that workers and capitalists share a common interest. In fact, the interest of workers is conditioned by the interest of the capitalist, in exactly the same manner as hostages held by a kidnapper: unless the kidnapper-capitalists's demands are met, they will not allow the hostage-workers to have what they need to live. There is a well-documented effect of hostage situations, called "The Stockholm Syndrome" in which hostages under duress began to identify with their kidnappers, and believe in their cause. Nationalism works in much the same way. It is the Stockholm Syndrome on a grand scale. The working class who are dependent (under the current system) on the capitalists, to whom they are bonded by state-boundaries across which they are not permitted to escape, begin to believe that they share an identity with them.

Nationalism is utterly opposed to socialism. Socialists, therefore, oppose nationalism in all its forms. The world of nationalism is full of contradictions, odd ideas and illogical notions. The idea that a line of a map, a so-called “national border”, should actually mean something concrete to the workers is laughable. Nations have taken a great deal of building. There is almost no nation-state that has not had its boundaries drawn in blood, its foundations dug out of human flesh. The illusions of nationality are yet another tool of the ruling class, intended to trick workers into thinking that this really is some kind of collective society, and to misplace their passions that could otherwise be directed into the class struggle. It's interesting that in a way people admit the logic of common ownership when they refer to “our country” as if it really does belong to all of us. It's this inescapable logic that will one day become clear in the minds of the workers, as they find all the meaning they need in socialism and put an end to class tyranny once and for all.

The socialist message is that working people everywhere must end the servitude, insecurity and poverty that capitalism is incapable of curing by embracing socialism, a world community without nations, class discrimination, production for profit or money. In socialist society to each according to their individual taste. We are all members of the world working class and have a common interest in working together to establish a World without frontiers in which the resources of the globe will have become the common heritage of all the people of the world and used for the benefit of all. It is clear, then, that socialists must oppose nationalism in all its forms: not just refusing to espouse their creed but defying the rituals, the anthem singing, flag saluting and other expressions of craven loyalty to the nation-state, that help enforce the idea of nation in our minds.

Anti-Nationalism 1/5

Across the world nationalism is rearing its ugly head again. Nationalists believe that all classes in society should hold allegiance to "The Nation". Socialists do not and point out how nations have always been the creation of a ruling group having nothing to do with working-class interests. What is a nation? It is simply the people and the territory which have been appropriated by a class of robbers at some point in history. It has less to do with a common language, religion, race, culture, and all the other things which nationalists imagine or pretend are essential ingredients in the making of nations. The presence of political nationalist ideas is an indication that some groups in society feel its real material interests are being frustrated by forces outside or even inside the nation. Of course, the desire to achieve their aims is never expressed in terms of their own needs only. In order to enlist the necessary working class support such arguments as “justice”, “freedom”, and “the nation” are used to justify the real bone of contention and to give it an aura of sanctity.

Socialism and nationalism are opposed. They are irreconcilable. For the socialist the propertyless working class have no country. The nationalist, on the other hand, ignores the class division of society and the class struggle. For him or her, the nation is all-important. The worker is encouraged to believe he or she has a country. Nationalism is, in fact, one of the means which capitalism uses to blinker the workers to class society. The Socialist Party urges workers 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 and without nations. Certainly, socialism will allow the fullest linguistic and cultural diversity, but to make this the basis of a political programme is something altogether different. The goal of the socialist movement is not to assist in the creation of even more states but to establish a real world community without frontiers where all states as they currently exist will be destroyed. In a socialist society communities, towns and cities will have the opportunity to thrive – and people will no doubt feel an attachment to places that are real and tangible.

Socialists explain how workers are exploited not as individuals or particular nationalities, but as members of a class. From this perspective, identifying with a class provides a rational basis for working class political action. We argue that every nation state is by its very nature anti-working class. The “nation” is a myth as there can be no community of interests between two classes in antagonism with one another, the non-owners in society and the owners (the workers and the capitalists). And the state ultimately exists only to defend the property interests of the owning class at any given point in history. One popular misconception about nationalism is that it's synonymous with fascism. This is inaccurate. Fascism is the most degenerate form of nationalism but any kind of patriotism no matter how soft or innocuous can only be defined as anti—working class. It not only diverts workers minds away from the problems that surround them.

Nationalism has always been one of the biggest poisons for the working class. It has served to divide workers into different nation-states not only literally but ideologically. Today it is probably fair to say that a majority of workers—to one extent or another—align themselves to their domestic ruling class. After all, the ideology of nationalism ultimately means that workers and capitalists living in a particular geographical area must have a common interest. It has never been explained in what way capitalism administered by Scots from Edinburgh or by the Welsh in Cardiff will be better workers than capitalism administered from London. The simple truth is that capitalism will be just the same as far as the working class are concerned. What is required is another system of society, not new administrators for the old one. Nationalists cannot will or legislate away those problems of capitalism. No country in the world, no matter how independent or rich in resources, has yet succeeded in eliminating poverty, unemployment, or insecurity. For the working class, there will be wages while they are working and pensions when they are too old or disabled.

Nationalists see themselves as visionaries but they cannot see beyond the narrow confines of the nation-state, conceived in pre-medieval times and now outmoded by the global nature of society. It is the Socialist Party who are the men and women of vision, who look forward to and struggle for a new world of common ownership and democratic control of society's resources, and uncluttered with the frontiers and class divisions which go hand-in-hand with "the nation".

The objective would be a stateless world community of free access. Given that nationalism does nothing to further this understanding it is an obstruction to world socialism. Because of the international nature of capitalism, workers are exploited everywhere and therefore the attack against exploitation must be on a broad front recognising no national barriers. Socialists say without any hesitation that there can be only one way to achieve lasting peace across this planet and that means an organised retreat from nationalism in all its forms and an escalation of the struggle for global working class emancipation. Workers own no country, so why should we care which section of the class of thieves owns which national portion of the world? Workers have a World to win, not nations to fight for.

May Day: Fellow Workers Joining Together

Once again we celebrate May Day, the international holiday of the working class. These May Day celebrations are small in comparison to the great numbers and strength of our class. But throughout the country, in every major industrial center, workers are uniting. Today is our great day, the day when the solidarity of the international proletariat is expressed throughout the world by demonstrations as the sign of solidarity. May Day is there for us to renew our bonds of international fellowship. Throughout the world, people today are adjusting themselves to the chaotic conditions created by world upheaval. Capitalism has left countries in ruins and made their peoples exiles and refugees. The capitalist world sinks ever deeper into the crisis. It heaps misery upon misery upon backs of the helpless and the vulnerable. For countless millions of human beings, life today is torturous hunger, unbearable toil, and dark boding anxiety. At the present time, war and pestilence and famine, started by capitalist rivalries, have got out of hand. Everywhere the reformers look for remedies. Yet the profits of the big corporations continue to pile up bigger than ever. Perhaps there has never been another May Day of such importance to the workers as the symbol of their international solidarity because there never was a May Day when capitalist interests were more solidly welded and soldered together in the international exploitation of the workers than they are at the present moment.

 When we come to see these events with clearer eyes, unclouded by media misinformation but instead with discerning insight and understanding in our hearts, we must realise that even the most adverse situations light the fires of revolt and foster the forces that feed the social revolution. We in the Socialist Party are not fooled into believing the working class is the midst of a "revolutionary upsurge" nor that the idea that they wallow in "docility". Our fellow-workers are not revolutionists as yet but there are fresh signs of hope appearing around the world. 

We revolutionary socialists, who celebrate May Day in the spirit of international comradeship throughout the world, are content to leave reforms to Tory and Labour Party mis-leaders. We know that the more the workers are organised politically and industrially on a revolutionary basis, the faster and the thicker will reforms be offered up. They are the desperate sandbags that defend the trenches of capitalism. But it will be a fight to the finish for the ending of capitalism. The drive for the establishment of a world socialism is unstoppable. 

On this May Day let us stand proud and upright to be counted. We need to get together. The world will always be against us if we are not for ourselves. We have been oppressed, we have suffered; we have endured, now let us unite and rise united against capitalism. “Why cannot we always be together?” is the thought in the mind of every active worker in the labour movement after the May Day demonstrations.

May Day is the preparation for social revolution, a trial mobilisation of the forces of the working class. When the workers of the world are united we are ready for battle.

The tyranny of profits

“The anarchy of the market produces the tyranny of the factory.” – Marx

“Market socialists” raise objections to the Socialist Party call for free access. Their argument rests on some dubious assumptions.

First, that left to themselves human beings will produce goods that other human beings do not need.

Second, that human beings have and always will resist producing things efficiently and well in the absence of outside pressures.

Thirdly, that because they are innately lazy, human beings will not work unless compelled to.

Finally, they say that in an economy without a market there would be no price system and therefore no way to compare the production costs of different things. The increased waste would arise, they claim. The prices which people are prepared to pay for goods act as signals which tell individual firms what to produce and what not to produce.

The market is not the answer. There is only one way to escape for workers from the detrimental effects of capitalism and that is for the economy to be run by the immediate producers themselves. Once in control of the process of production they would have no interest in wasting effort on producing goods that no one wants, on turning out goods of low quality, or resisting innovations that would make their work easier. Think about it. Even in existing capitalist society when people produce for their own immediate consumption, you rarely find people cooking themselves meals when they are not hungry, deliberately spoiling the food or shunning the use of a food-processor to lighten the work. It would relatively easy for people in socialism particularly with all the computer potential at our finger-tips to get together so as to work out what and how much we should produce and in what ways we can use less labour and resources– and to do so without the devastation of lives that occurs when this happens at present in today’s capitalist economy. The price mechanism does not let firms know what to produce in advance any more than the free associated producers are able to foresee all needs and all links in the production process. But they would be quite capable of working out what their main needs are likely to be, if only because they can calculate what is needed in the same way that capitalism does – by seeing what was needed in the past – and then adjust it according to their own democratically expressed preference. Supply can be made to correspond to demand

The view that socialism is equivalent to single-party with all industry nationalised and is the Marxist idea of the socialisation of production is widespread within the workers’ movement and it is a false idea. That such a flawed conception of socialism should continue, despite all the experiences of the working class, is witness to the power of misinformation about socialism and Marx. It is the result of the 57 varieties of reformism which passes for socialism. The overthrow of capitalism demands the overthrow of its State. A victorious working class would not institute a new state but rather use its machinery so as to be able to realise its real goal, the appropriation of the means of production and their irrevocable transformation into social means of production under the control of the association of free and equal producers. Although assuming functions previously associated with those of the state, it does is not become a new state, but merely a means to the elimination of all suppressive measures through the ending of class relations. There is no room for a “socialist state” in socialism, even though there will be a certain need for a central coordination of the socialised economy, which, however, is itself a part of the organisation of associated producers and not an independent entity set apart and against them. Workers taking over the system of production would use their power to eliminate waste.

Socialism is a system of planning and management in which the workers allocate resources and democratically determine priorities themselves. Such a system demands that the people themselves articulate their needs as producers, consumers and citizens, in other words, that they become the masters of their conditions of work and life, that they progressively liberate themselves from despotism and diktat of the market and its tyranny of the wallet. Socialism will be a democracy of various diverse workers and community councils. The rule of bureaucracy or technocracy is irreconcilable with the conscious control and direction, through planned democratic association of self-managing producers.

Socialism is the exercise of power by the associated producers.  Worker self-management, which is not exclusively or mainly limited to enterprise level is articulated by general assemblies, workers’ councils, and democratically elected local, regional, global congresses of workers’ councils in which the associated producers freely plan production on the basis of various plan alternatives, determine priorities in the satisfaction of needs, and decide the extent of postponed consumption (“socialist accumulation”). There will be a collaboration and coordination with communities formed in federated communes or civic polis. A democracy of workers’ councils also means the beginning of the “withering away of the state”, by handing over more and more spheres of administration to direct democracy -i.e. the immediate self-management of those concerned.

Socialism is the end of commodity production, of money, of classes, and of the state, i.e. the construction of a classless society.  Socialism is an entirely new social system resting upon the abolition of exploitation. Socialist production permits cooperative rather than competitive production to flourish. Socialism pre-supposes a social organisation based on co-operation and solidarity for the common good, i.e. self-managing socialism where humanity becomes the masters of its society and there is no danger of it becoming enslaved by new technology and automation. If we don’t achieve socialism then the threats are innumerable: annihilation by war; suffocating in the poisoned air; ecological destruction; massive poverty; widespread famine; and decline of personal liberties; and now as speculated by some futurologists, possible enslavement by robots. What a terrifying prospect we and our children and grand-children may have before us. The tyranny of profits and capital accumulation reshapes our way of thinking yet it is not the fault of science but how it is being used against us. 

Missionaries come to Glasgow

US Christian activists, Hope Scouts – which describes itself as a worldwide charity - are raising cash to spread the word in Glasgow – because they reckon it’s so poor and deprived. 

It has organised relief projects in Abidjan, Ivory Coast and Bangalore in India. It says Glasgow is now in their sights because of the so-called Glasgow Effect, a term used to describe the low life expectancy and levels of poverty in parts of the city. 

Hope Scouts – which says it was inspired by the scriptures to serve the poor, sick and suffering - say poverty, stress, alienation and pessimism are rife in Glasgow where, it claims, a third of children live in deprivation.

http://thirdforcenews.org.uk/tfn-news/us-poverty-group-targets-glasgow-because-its-so-poor

Socialists in Scotland

Most of us don’t own a single square inch of Scotland. It doesn’t belong to us: we just live here and work for the people who do own it. During the referendum debate, the partisans of independence were painting an unbelievable picture of how life would be so much better if Scotland was no longer ruled from Westminster. A social democratic paradise was to be established in Scotland. Reformism, despite failing to do so on every previous occasion it has been tried, would somehow be able this time to make capitalism work for the benefit for wage and salary workers and their dependents. Socialists didn’t believe this either. And with the dramatic fall in the price of oil, few can now support the idea that an independent Scotland could have afforded those reforms.

 The Socialist Party does not oppose reformism because it is against improvements in workers' lives lest they dampen their revolutionary ardour; nor, because it thinks that decadent capitalism simply cannot deliver on any reforms; but because our continued existence as propertyless wage slaves undermines whatever attempts we make to control and better our lives through reforms. Any fortune – whether in the form of money payments or subsidised services – that falls into our laps becomes an opportunity for those that live off our labour to lower their costs, and increase their profits. So long as there is a class divided society, it becomes impossible for us to enact measures to benefit the whole community. Socialists point to the continuing condition of our class as wage-slaves and affirm that whatever the gains we may receive, the wages system will take away.

The reason why lies in the very form of wage slavery. We are, collectively, compelled to sell our capacity to work – our labour power – in order to get access to those things which we need in order to live as members of our community – our food, clothes, housing, transportation and the like. The value of this labour power is the cost of maintaining and reproducing our capacity to work – and this entails the cost of keeping and rearing the next generation of workers, our children. This value is found through the struggle between ourselves and our employers, as they try to drive our wages as low as possible, and we try to prevent this or push up the price they pay us. It is not driven by the living costs of any one individual, but by the general costs of living in society. These general costs of living form a pressure on wages, which can force them upwards, as can the level of class consciousness and understanding of the workers; whereas counter-acting forces, such as the availability of a particular type of labour, general unemployment and the use of state power, combine to create downwards pressures on wages. All of which is to say that our wages are set by class struggle. This is a continuous struggle in which every gain has to be defended, and in which there is no relenting. If the price of one of our necessities of life falls, this will be reflected by a decrease in the upwards pressure on wages. Without a corresponding relenting in the downward forces on wages, our real wages would begin to dwindle towards a new level (either through direct wage cuts or by allowing inflation – that is a decrease in the value of money – to eat away at our spending power). Our objection to reformism is, then, that by ignoring the essence of class, it throws blood, sweat and tears into battles that will be undermined by the workings of the wages system. All that effort, skill, energy, all those tools could be turned against class society, to create a society of common interest where we can make changes for our common mutual benefit. So long as class exists, any gains will be partial and fleeting, subject to the ongoing struggle.

It is always difficult to understand why some alleged leftists will go to an infinite amount of trouble to avoid recognising an unpalatable truth. Although they cannot wait to propagate socialism, they are prepared to go on forever, alternately denouncing known enemies of the working class and supporting them for "tactical" reasons. They will discard every principle and make themselves personally ridiculous and contemptible by perpetual shuffling, all in order to gain something by manoeuvre which they cannot gain in open fight. They never do get anything worth having, and the working class have to pay the price of failure in the despair of the disappointed followers of these blind leaders. The cause of this lies simply in their refusal to recognise the fact that socialism cannot be won without socialists. They shelter behind the excuse that the workers are too ignorant and foolish ever to understand their own interests, but, as Voltaire very shrewdly remarked, "He who dreams that he can lead a great crowd of fools without a great store of knavery is a fool himself."

The Socialist Party stands not for an independent Scotland nor a united Britain but a world without frontiers. We have no objection to cultural diversity. Differences of language, food, music and the like will continue to exist in a united socialist world; indeed, would no longer be subjected to globalisation and “Mcdonaldisation” as today under capitalism. We would add that different cultures can exist in the same geographical area and that individuals can partake of elements of different cultures (you don‘t have to come from India to enjoy a curry). Our objection is to the exploitation of cultural differences for political ends, as for instance to set up or maintain a state or as the basis for a political party. The nation and nationalism are not an eternal and essential characteristic of human beings as some would have it, but are solely a tool for pursuing the further interests of sections of the master class at given points in history. The interests of our masters are not our interests. What workers have to realise clearly is that the interests of fellow workers in other lands are nearer to their own than are those of the masters in one’s own country. The bonds which bind worker with worker, irrespective of nationality, are those of class solidarity.

The voice of the Socialist Party in Scotland is a small but a constant one. All parties are in opposition to it but it persists. It will continue to expose those who, under the guise of liberators, continue to mislead the working class, included in this category being the nationalists, whether, left or right. What those who want a better society should be doing – should have done – is to campaign to change people's minds, to get them to realise that they are living in an exploitative, class-divided society and that the only way out is to end capitalism and replace it with a new and different system based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production, with production to satisfy people's needs, and distribution on the basis of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”. Once a majority have come to this realisation, they will know what to do: organise themselves into a socialist party to democratically win political control and use it to bring about a socialist society. That's what socialist politics should be about.

We want the best in life

Capitalism continues to exist not only by force but also by the power of ideas. These ideas are instilled into people from the day they start thinking to the day they die. The schools and colleges, the newspapers, magazines and books, all the media, the church pulpits, are all the ways by which the thoughts of people are shaped. They are used by the class that controls them to argue that the society we live in is fundamentally correct and the natural one. By and large, the working class accepts these ideas. If it did not, capitalism could not be kept alive for very long. Because we are stuffed full of these ideas, workers will usually accept the division of wealth to different classes as fit and proper. Some of us are made to toil, others are made to prosper. Why complain if you have not the talent to make money and become rich? Don’t the wealthy provide you with a job? Wanting to change the natural order is only the politics of envy”

Marx always describes socialist society as a society of associated producers. Socialism is an economic system based upon conscious planning of production by associated producers (not by the State), made possible by the abolition of private property of the means of production. As soon as that private property is completely abolished, goods produced cease to be commodities. Value and exchange value disappear. Production becomes production for use, for the satisfaction of needs, determined by the conscious choice of the mass of the associated producers themselves. This a post-capitalist society.  Humanity will be organised into a free federation of communities where work will have transformed itself into meaningful labour, making possible the development of each and every individual’s human personality. The State, the division of labour between manual and intellectual labour, the separation of town and countryside, will have withered away. The socialist future in a classless society of democratically self-administering associated producers.

It is a welcome sign of the times that a serious exchange of radical opinion is now under way concerning what is socialism and how can it be achieved. The first step in a class analysis is to understand the antagonism of the two basic classes: capitalist and worker. The capitalist class owns and controls the means of production, distribution and communication. The working class owns none of these, and therefore, workers must sell their labour power to the capitalist for wages in order to live. The worker creates a product of value, part of which is returned to him as wage, and the rest of which is taken from him by the capitalists as profit. Thus is created the basic antagonistic contradiction between worker and capitalist, since the interest of one is, and has to be, directly opposed to the interest of the other. This most fundamental of contradictions will not end until capitalism with its private ownership and/or control of the means of production is itself ended and replaced with socialism.

Racism, like nationalism and sexism, is the product of class divided society.  It is an ideology which serves to divide the oppressed classes and strengthen the oppressors. Capitalism is the basic cause of war in modern times. Capitalism controls the entire globe and war result from the struggles of the elites to divide and re-divide the world. The way forward for workers is through the establishment of socialism. Socialism puts an end to wars and the dangers of war because inside socialism there are no capitalists who are interested in war profits and the conquest of new markets and possession of raw materials. The solution is to end the private ownership of the means of production and replace it with social ownership and production planned to meet the people’s needs, that is, socialism. Socialist planned economy abolishes anarchy of the market and thereby puts an end to depressions and unemployment. Instead of production for profit, there is production for the benefit of the people. Social ownership ends the exploitation of man by man because it is through private ownership of the factories and workshops, mills and mines, and farm-lands that the wealthy minority exploit the great mass of the people. Socialism does not destroy democracy but, on the contrary, enormously extends democratic liberties. There can be no real democracy – no rule by the people as a whole –while the means of production are owned and controlled by a small minority, the capitalist class. Socialism, for the first time, creates the conditions for the free expression of the people’s will. The only “liberty” which socialism ends is the liberty of the privileged class to own industry and amass wealth at the expense of the great majority. Socialism ends all exploitation and oppression of the producers by a privileged parasitical class. Socialism does not “worship” the State and with socialism the State “withers away”. Future society will be one of world-wide co-operation for the common good of all people, a peaceful, free world instead of one torn by rivalries, prejudices and war.

The aim of the Socialist Party is the ownership by the people of the World’s natural resources and the means of production and distribution. Socialism is a thorough-going social transformation and it can be achieved only by the majority of the people agreeing to and desiring it.

"Why should it just be the bankers, politicians and the idle rich who get all the best things? As a militant trade union we demand a standard of living for our members that enables them to share in the fine wines and fine times that the likes of David Cameron and his Old Etonian mates take for granted." – Bob Crow, RMT, Gen.Sec

Real Scottish Socialists

It would a most wonderful experience to live in socialism, yet, many workers cannot see socialism coming in their lifetime. However, the Socialist Party says to our fellow-workers that the next best is to fight for it.

It certainly does not require a great genius to understand that Scotland, like every other country, has a population which is divided into a majority who are non-owners and a minority who are owners. And that after centuries of joint development with England that all means of producing wealth are owned and controlled by large businesses whose shareholders are spread throughout Britain and the rest of the world. Just as certainly it does not need extraordinary intelligence to know that workers in specifically "Scottish" companies merely receive in wages enough to continue working—barely enough, as for workers everywhere.

Scottish workers don't have to attend a university to know that the ruling class of Scotland since the days of the Highland "Clearances" are any less brutal and avaricious than their English counterparts. The Scottish nation, whether independent or united with England, is divided into classes, as is society elsewhere. It is this division which accounts for the existence of the evils from which the Scottish workers suffer. English rule did not account for the fact that the depopulation of the Scottish Highlands led to the congestion in its industrial slums. The Scottish chieftains themselves turned out their own clansmen in order to make way, first for sheep and later for deer, in order to fill their own pockets. The notorious Duchess of Sutherland, for example, had 15,000 people hunted out in the six years 1814-20 and called in British soldiers to enforce the eviction. The political union merely facilitated the development of capitalist robbery with violence.

Capitalism was born and flourished on brutality, both at home and abroad. The history of Scotland, while differing in detail from that of England, followed the same general course. By their divorce from the land, a nation of peasants were converted into wage-slaves, exploited by a class ready to convert the world into one gigantic market. The forces of competition thus let loose may be held in check to some degree by national legislatures, but no final solution for the havoc they create can be found along such lines. The problem is essentially an international one, and must be internationally solved. That, however, calls not for nationalist parties, but for parties in all countries which clearly recognise the common interest of the workers of the world, namely, to achieve their emancipation as a class. The simple truth is that capitalism will be just the same as far as the working class are concerned. What is required is another system of society, not new administrators for the old one.

The defenders of capitalism adopt sundry devices to hide this fact of life and one of the handiest ones has been for years to play on the difference of nationality and the seat of government. Their anti-working class nonsense and buffoonery rests upon the political ignorance of the Scottish workers whose political and social interests—like their fellow-workers everywhere—are opposed to those of their masters and does not lie in schemes which will enable their employers to wring yet more surplus value from their skill and energy. Capitalism in Scotland, in England, America, Germany, Russia, in every country in the world produces the same set of problems to workers—poverty, unemployment, insecurity, war, and so on. These problems arise with sublime impartiality as to forms of government, climate and previous political history, they arise in democracies and dictatorships in the two hemispheres and in big and wee countries. Scotland is only a small part of an economic system which embraces the whole world. It could never enjoy any real autonomy or self-sufficiency in the face of the world market. From day one it will be buffeted by hostile economic forces entirely beyond its control.

The defence against this stratagem is, as always the re-statement of the socialist case and an iron confidence in the working-class ability eventually to solve their own problems without the assistance of any Lairds. The duty of the Scottish workers—like the workers the world over—is to-day—not tomorrow—to attempt an understanding of the basic nature of their problems and having done so, to organise democratically to take political power to establish socialism.

There are many parties claiming to be socialist who ally themselves with the capitalist class for temporary gains, ignoring the fact that working men and women will not make a distinction between those parties. If their votes are asked for in support of reforms which do not make any fundamental difference to their social position or problems, the workers naturally tend to support the political party that will make the most enticing promises, whatever be the label. Those who do not fulfil their promises are simply deserted. Too often, so-called ‘progressives’ and ‘radicals’ publish a mish-mash menu of wishful goals as an election manifesto. Such electioneering opportunism tries to give a movement size without substance and only raises false expectations and leave the way open for the inevitable disillusionment and collapse. On the other hand, had those parties based their case on sound principles, had all compromise been excluded, the parties in question would have been smaller, but would have raised no false hopes nor brought to many the inevitable despair.  Socialist education demands that besides advocating the establishment of socialism, the obstacles that stand in its path must be pointed out. So they offer their support and their vote for political parties that offer them half-a- loaf instead of the bakery and the wheat-fields.

When the workers get on the right track of understanding their position they will cease to worry over comparatively trivial differences in their conditions, whether as between nations or between districts or separate towns. They will recognise that they suffer varying degrees of poverty because at present they exist merely to produce profits for their masters and that it is a matter of comparative indifference to them whether these masters are English or Scots, Germans or Japanese. Their aim will be to abolish masters of every nationality and to organise the production of wealth for their common good.

The socialist case will continue to be heard and advocated in this part of the world despite our few numbers.

Why the SPGB?

In 1904 a small group of workers got together and formed the Socialist Party of Great Britain, aiming to bring the message of the necessity of a socialist solution to the gathering world crisis. That small group did have a few things going for it. They knew where to start and based their principles on the experiences of Marxist thought and action. The Socialist Party named the enemy—the capitalist profit system organised around the world. While supporting the workers’ organisations, the trade unions, the socialists in the SPGB saw their task as advocating action to establish socialism, the need for a socialist revolution, and for politically conscious working class to be the agent of social change. Members of the Socialist Party still hold that revolution is required if humanity is to survive the ever-present threat of extermination. There is nothing more threatening to the rule of the corporate oligarchs and plutocrats than the prospect of a party of hundreds of thousands that fearlessly tells the truth to the people. Only such a movement can in time become millions, then tens of millions and eventually win.

The Socialist Party can and will win the hearts and minds of people when they see us as reliable and unshakeable if we stand our ground. In due course, it will lead to respect and then support. Truth can only be ascertained upon the battlefield of ideas. The Socialist Party does not consider itself a substitute for other movements, such as peace groups and other single-issue organisations but seeks to unite people around one specific platform – the establishment of socialism. We continue along the road of political independence, building a party of, by and for the people. We disown the most well-trodden path of “lesser evil” politics. Those who call for a “lesser evil” make possible the greater evil. It has always been a dead-end strategy for working people.

In modern times the privileged groups are neither capable enough nor numerous enough to do the work of suppression themselves and so they beguile sections of the oppressed into the belief that the interests of all are identical with the continuance of privilege and they endeavour to weaken the movement for change by setting other sections at loggerheads. Such being the position the only thing that will combat capitalist movements is clearness of understanding—the spread of knowledge among the workers. Temporary expedients that give a movement size without solidity only raise false hopes and leave the way open for the inevitable disillusionment and collapse. While parties claiming to be “socialist” ally themselves with capitalist groups to gain temporary ends, working men will not draw a line of fundamental distinction between any of the groups that solicit their support. While their votes are asked for in support of reforms that do not make any fundamental difference in their social position, the workers naturally tend to support the group that makes the most enticing promises, whatever be the label—in fact, the newer the label the better. Those who do not fulfil their promises are temporarily deserted. The capitalists know this quite well, hence, their misuse of the term "socialist” so much lately.

Capitalism was born and flourished on brutality, both at home and abroad. As far as Britain is concerned, what a record of brutality is contained in the history of the treatment of its factory and agricultural slaves during the last century, of the treatment of the Irish, the African and the Indian. While there is no justification for a conclusion that capitalism can be knocked down with a feather, there is more and more evidence that people no longer hold their old confidence in capitalism. All around us all around the World, we have signs of a changing attitude towards capitalism. But there is an undeniable gulf between the objective revolutionary conditions and the political consciousness of workers that requires being bridged. Agitating for minimum demands realisable within the framework of capitalism has now outlived its usefulness, if it ever had one but we can affirm with absolute certainty, the working class will meet with disillusionment.  Our task is to build the socialist movement. The central issue is the burning need to replace the present profit system with socialism — a society geared to human needs. The Socialist Party uses its election campaigns to explain causes of the fundamental problems confronting working people today. It is the irrationality of the profit system.

Poverty, Cancer and Processed Meat in Glasgow

Glasgow has long been notorious for the astonishing gap in life expectancy between rich and poor. Men who can expect to die at the age of just 54 live within a few miles of those who will survive well into their 80s.

Now researchers believe they have found a key reason for this disparity – the regular consumption of cheap, processed meat, particularly by the city’s poorest men. Last year the World Health Organisation warned that processed meat caused cancer and red meat was also “probably” carcinogenic. 

High levels of phosphate in red meat was linked to premature ageing and kidney damage. And the study found that phosphate was much more easily absorbed by the body from meat containing additives. Phosphate occurs naturally in many foodstuffs, such as meats, fish, eggs, dairy products and vegetables. But consuming too much of the substance wears down telomeres, vital structures on the tips of a person's chromosomes that help protect against a range of diseases -- from cardiovascular disease to Alzheimer's and cancer. Telomeres are so important that some scientists even believe they can be measured to give an accurate prediction of when someone will die.

The researchers found the link between high phosphate levels and more frequent consumption of red meat only in men. The most deprived men had 7.4 per cent higher phosphate intake than the least deprived. The type of meat appears particularly important. Someone eating red meat might absorb 60 per cent of its phosphates, but would take in 100 per cent from red meat with additives, Professor Shiels said.

The Glasgow study analysed people from the most deprived and the least deprived areas covered by NHS Greater Glasgow. The results, reporting in the journal Ageing, suggested that phosphate from red meat consumption increased a person's biological age in contrast to their actual age. While some people in less deprived areas ate a similar amount of red meat, they also tended to eat more fruit and vegetables which helped offset the effect.

One of the researchers, Professor Paul Shiels, of Glasgow University's Institute of Cancer Sciences, said the main reason people were eating a bad diet was because they could not afford a better one. 

“It’s poverty, it’s not a personal choice. Addressing poverty is the route to tackling this properly,” he said. “You need to be able to afford to buy good-quality food. If you don’t and you can’t get quality red meat without additives, you’re going to have an issue.” [Socialist Courier emmphasis]