Capitalism - A Ship Without a Compass

The socialist case is a clear one but its advancement is held back by incorrect ideas constantly pumped at the workers through the media. Socialism can only be brought about by the working class taking conscious and political action to achieve it. As for reforming capitalism, the Socialist Party recognises that any attempt to smooth the rough edges off capitalism will not only fail in solving any basic social problem but will sidetrack the workers from the real path for their emancipation—Socialism. As long as capitalism lasts there will be a conflict of interests; in other words, war is caused by capitalism and cannot be avoided under that social system. Socialism will abolish war because it will bring a community of interests; it will be a society without frontiers, without nations, without classes, without conflict.

Like it or not, we live in an inter-dependent world in which we either all rise together or fall together. Blaming migrants for the problems and crises produced by a global economy that is a tyrant rather than a servant is no solution. To be a migrant is to be human, and to attack migrants is inhuman.

Migrants are blamed for taking up places in housing and schools, burdening the country's health and welfare system and weakening the working class. Anti-migrant xenophobia has become a recognisable feature of vote-catching politics in Britain and have shaped successive election campaigns. One reason why myths hang around so long seems to be that we like simple explanations – such as that immigrants are to blame for crumbling public services – and are inclined to believe them. Scant attention is paid to how policies of privatisation and austerity -- have led to a degradation of standards of living life and a growth in inequality in the UK. Capitalism will be replaced either by new visions of social progress or by a dystopia of racism and authoritarianism.

The impacts of immigration have not been distributed evenly in Britain. The rich have accrued the economic gains while the poor have faced cut and austerity policies. The burdens on public services of an increasing population have been over-stated but there are some neighbourhoods where strains are real. So too in some sectors of the labour market wages have been kept down through the exploitation of new workforces in Eastern Europe, whether through immigration or capital flight. The problem is not immigration per se but the way it becomes a focal point for deeper processes of dispossession. The culprits are not refugees or Eastern European immigrants but the whims of global capitalism. Scapegoating newcomers is particularly outrageous since economic and trade policies have been a major contributor to their plight. The fundamental problem then, as we see, is not migration but the misallocation and misdistribution of wealth and resources, which is a non-negotiable condition of capitalism. Stopping immigration by setting quotas and implementing ever more stringent border controls and measures is futile. The only way to reduce it is to deal with its underlying causes – namely inequality and poverty, stemming from capitalism.

The party of socialism in this country is the Socialist Party which makes socialism its one and only objective. The Socialist Party understands that only a majority of class-conscious workers can build socialism. It has made its task therefore the advancement of an unadulterated, uncompromising socialist its object. We urge the workers of all countries to organise as a class to gain control of the political machinery in order to establish the socialist commonwealth, where shall arise happiness, comfort, and luxury for all.

Speed the day!

Primitive Accumulation (1967) - How they got the Scottish Highlands

From the September 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

How they got the Scottish Highlands

Even after a newcomer to Socialism has seen that capitalism is based on the exploitation of the workers, he may still feel that originally the propertied class must have obtained their property by superior merit. Surely, he will argue, riches were obtained in the first place by worthy individuals who worked hard and saved?

Marx deals with the question of “primitive accumulation”, the original gathering together of wealth, in Part VIII of Capital. This “primitive accumulation”, he says, plays the same part in orthodox economic theory as original sin does in theology. “In times gone by there were two sorts of people; one, the diligent, intelligent, and, above all, frugal, élite; the other, lazy rascals, spending their substance, and more, in riotous living . . . And from this original sin dates the poverty of the great majority that, despite all its labour, has up to now nothing to sell but itself, and the wealth of the few that increases constantly although they have long ceased to work.” The facts, Marx pointed out, are very different. Wealth was originally accumulated by a process of legalised robbery. The land of Britain, for example, once belonged to those who tilled it. The theft of the land by a few has gone on in stages throughout the last fifteen centuries.

This expropriation was perhaps most striking, as we look back now, in the Highlands of Scotland in the 18th and 19th centuries. The reason is that the blight of private property struck in the Highlands later than in other areas, so that the whole of the coercive forces of Britain were available to help on the transformation, which as a result was particularly sudden and brutal.

The Highlands owed their long immunity to their physical configuration. Entrance to the mountainous area could only be gained through narrow passes, where a handful of men could defeat an army; and the glens and straths within the Highlands were easily defensible against invaders for the same reason. Within this area, during the first part of the 18th century, the clans owned their own clan territories as they had done for centuries. The Campbells in Argyll, the Stewarts and Robertsons in Perthshire, the Rosses and Munros in Ross-shire, could have been forgiven for thinking that their ownership of their land was eternal and unchallengeable. It was not individual ownership; no clansman owned this or that stretch of land to the exclusion of all other clansmen; clan ownership meant that every clansman had the right to hunt the game on the mountain and moor within the clan land, to share in the general grazing, and to till part of the clan's soil. The general right to a living off the land had a corresponding duty: the duty to defend the clan land against invasion. At any alarm the croishtarich — the fiery cross, a piece of wood burnt at one end and dipped in lamb’s blood at the other — would go from township to township through the clan land, and every man capable of bearing arms at once repaired to the pre-arranged rallying spot (the Grants, for example, at Craigellachie, and the Clan Chattan at Dunlichity hill) to ward off the danger.

But among the institutions thrown up by clanship was one which was pregnant with future disaster. It was the chiefship. The chief led the clan in war, and judged any dispute in peacetime. When a chief died, another chief would be chosen, usually a new or distant relative of the last chief: although this meant little when every member of the clan believed himself related to every other, and could recount his descent — whether real or mythical — from the clan’s founder. (Clan is Gaelic for children: the Clan Leod were the children of Leod — the originator of the clan — and each man was Mac Leod, or son of Leod, and each woman Nic Leod, or daughter of Leod). In time it became usual for chiefs to be chosen from the members of one family — the system of tanistry. If a chief’s eldest son were old enough when his father died to lead the clan in war, and the clan thought highly of him, he would usually have the best claim to the succession.

The Highlands, however, were not isolated. Together with the English-speaking Lowlands they formed the kingdom of Scotland. This was largely a theoretical arrangement: the king in Edinburgh had no control in the Highlands, and the only way he could force his will on any clan was by leading an army against it — and often not even then. There were in practice many kings in the Highlands — the chief was “king” of his clan territory. The chiefs soon began to meddle in Lowland politics; and to gain their support, the Edinburgh king would often grant a charter to a particular chief to say that he owned the land of his clan. These charters were of no practical effect at the time, since the chief was unable to exercise any of the powers of ownership. The clansmen paid the chief small annual sums, analogous to present-day taxes, to support him; he had no right to increase this annual tax, much less to evict the clansmen from the clan land. Indeed, if he had gone beyond his traditional powers the clan would have evicted the chief. As a matter of historical fact, whenever a chief was found unsatisfactory he was deposed, and replaced by another member of the chiefly family.

The clan (if it even knew of the fact) was probably relieved when its chief did secure a charter to the clan territory, since it meant that no other chief could do so. Occasionally a chief in particular favour at court would obtain a charter not only to the land of his own clan (which did not belong to him) but also to the land of other clans (which, equally, did not belong to him). The chief of Macintosh, for example, got charters to the lands of the Camerons and of the MacDonalds of Keppoch; and both the Camerons and the MacDonalds had to light several battles to assert their right to their own land by beating off Macintosh and his clan who, out of a mistaken sense of duty, had followed him to support his claim.

Some of the Highland clans followed James Stuart, the Old Pretender, in 1715, and Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Young Pretender, in 1745. Both rebellions were defeated. The British Government determined to end the anomaly of having more than a sixth of Great Britain still under a type of society based on communal ownership, a system moreover which produced such superlative fighting men that only a few thousand of them had seemed about to topple the Government twice in thirty years. In addition the Industrial Revolution, beginning in the middle years of the 18th century, both provided the material strength needed to conquer the Highlands, and spawned great cities which demanded large supplies of food from the non-industrial districts, such as the Highlands. Soldiers marched and counter-marched through the Highlands, garrison towns were created, and the old Highland law was crushed, making way for the new private property law of the Lowlands.

According to this Lowland law, the charters which most of the chiefs had by this time obtained gave them exclusive rights to the whole of the clan land. This was such an enormous change, since it entailed the replacement of an entire system of society by another, that the chiefs themselves were hardly able to comprehend it for a time. Then some of the chiefs, desirous of making a fine figure in Edinburgh or London, realised that by turning out the clansmen and letting the clan land to sheep farmers, they could at one stroke increase their incomes five or six times. The clansmen were as astounded at this turn of events as if they had been told that the sun was henceforward to rise in the west. They had lived in and defended their land from time immemorial: and now the chief had brought in a lawyer who said that because of some writing in a foreign language on a small piece of paper in Edinburgh, the chief—chosen and loyally supported by the clan, and in fact the embodiment of the clan—had now the right to tell every clansman to leave, and to bring in instead a capitalist tenant farmer with great flocks of sheep! Some clearances were met with physical resistance, rioting, and violence; but where that happened, the chief brought up a detachment of Lowland, English, or Irish soldiers, and evicted the clansmen at the point of the bayonet. Often the threat of force was sufficient, especially since the local parish ministers backed up the landlords with warnings of eternal punishments as well as temporal ones. The odds against the clansmen were too great. In district after district the Gaels packed up their belongings, sold off their sheep and cattle, and left the glen for the last time, headed by a piper playing a clan lament. Often the chief cleared out his clan himself; sometimes he sold out to a buyer at such a high price that the new owner obviously intended to recoup—and did recoup—by a wholesale clearance. The tide of evictions crept steadily northwards. From the 1760s to the 1780s there were clearances among the Campbells in Argyll, the MacPhersons in Strath Spey, the various clans of MacDonalds in Glen Garry, Glen Coe and Keppoch, and the MacKenzies in Ross-shire. In the first decade of the 19th century there were many clearances in Inverness- and Ross-shires. MacNeil of Barra, the Chisholm, and MacLeod of Dunvegan were clearing out their clans; Glengarry was doing the same for the MacDonalds, Lochiel for the Camerons, Seaforth for the MacRaes and MacKenzies, and Lovat for the Frasers. Then, from 1807 to 1820, the great Sutherland Clearances took place, the Countess of Sutherland putting to flight thousands of Sutherlands, Murrays, MacKays, and the other Sutherland clans. Lord Reay, chief of a neighbouring clan of MacKays, was doing the same in what was now his land.

The clearances would have been completed sooner than they were but for two complicating factors. Chiefs who still had clansmen to call on found they could raise Highland regiments for Britain's repeated wars between 1740 and 1815; it was financially profitable to them, and in addition they could nominate officers (thus providing for impecunious relatives) and bask in the reflected glory of vicarious military adventure. Further, there was a kind of sea-weed called kelp found in the Hebrides and along the coast of the western Highlands, which when burned was a source of soda (an ingredient of glass) and of iodine. During the Napoleonic wars this burnt kelp brought £20 a ton, at a time when the kelp-worker got only £3 or less a ton. The enormous profits to be made meant that the coast and island landlords were eager to retain as many workers on their estates as they could. For these two reasons landlords would usually allow some of the evicted people to squat (for a rent) on odd comers of marsh and moor that no large farmer would have as a gift. The clansmen were always ready to accept these crofts because any toehold in the venerated land of the clan was better than none, especially when the alternatives were either to undergo the horrors of factory work in the Lowlands, or to go overseas in coffin ships to clear the thickly timbered wilderness in America—an experience many of the emigrants did not long survive.

After Waterloo great wars were few, and the demand for soldiers disappeared. Further, from the 1820s to the 1840s the kelp boom faded to nothing as Free Trade politicians allowed the duty-free import of foreign alkalis, with which kelp could not compete. Finally, the introduction of a Poor Law into the Highlands in 1845 meant that henceforward the landlords would have to pay steep poor rates to help support the very paupers they themselves had created. The clearances now rose to a crescendo. The steady driving out of the Gaels in the 1820s and 1830s (e.g. in Skye, Arran, Morven, Kintyre, Breadalbane, the Menzies country, and Rannoch) was now succeeded by a frenzy of evictions in the 1840s and 1850s. Most notable, perhaps, were those of Seaforth and Sir James Matheson in Lewis, Robertson of Kindeace in Glen Calvie and Greenyards, Colonel Gordon in South Uist and Barra, Lord Macdonald in North Uist and Skye, and Macdonell of Glengarry in Knoydart. These are only examples. Everywhere ships were ordered up to the sea-lochs of the Western Highlands and Islands, and people were herded on them for transportation to Canada or Australia without being consulted, and indeed against their strongly expressed wishes. Any escaping were hunted down and put back on board the emigrant vessels with the aid of the police. In this fashion the Highlands were emptied.

By the time of the 1880s crofters were to be found in any number only in Skye and the Outer Hebrides and along a few lochs on the west coast; even there they clung to patches of land, the good land having all gone to make either sheep farms, or deer forests where rich idlers—noble and royal— came from England and the Continent to make merry in the glens which had seen the tragic and brutal dispersal of the Highlanders. In the 1880s the groundswell of discontent burst out into a series of open insurrections in Skye, Lewis, Barra, Tiree and other places. It was called the Crofters’ War, and resulted in some measure of protection against eviction for the scattered remnants of the Gaels. But it was too late. The Highlands had already been won for capitalism, and great fortunes had been established through the expropriation by a few of what had previously belonged to the many. It may safely be said that the income from Highland land rose fifty or more times between 1750 and 1880.

Today in the Highlands many of the old chiefs’ descendants still own vast stretches of what was once their clans’ land—the Duke of Sutherland, Lord Lovat (chief of the Frasers), the Countess of Seafield (chief of the Grants), Cameron of Lochiel, the Duke of Atholl (chief of the Stewarts), the Marquis of Bute, the Earl of Cawdor (a Campbell chieftain). Lord Macdonald, Sir George Macpherson-Grant of Ballindalloch, and others. Many others of the old chiefs' heirs have preferred to sell their clans’ land, and otherwise invest the proceeds. None of them should be in any doubt as to the real nature of capitalist primitive accumulation.

Alwyn Edgar

Stand Together

"In actual history, it is notorious that conquest, enslavement, robbery, murder, and force, play the great part." - Karl Marx

Arguments against socialist ideas and principles are taught in the classrooms or disseminated by the mass media, are nothing more than the mythological construction of, and obsession with, equating socialism to government authority. Mainstream education and journalists continue to falsely associate capitalism with freedom, private property with liberty, and socialism with dictatorship and theft. There simply is no substance because there has been literally no scholarship on these topics. It is done without any learning, any thought, any investigation, or any historical analysis. It is simply propaganda, designed for one purpose and one purpose only: to justify and maintain a system of exploitation, oppression, and mass inequality. Victims of the capitalist system are made to believe our victimization is not only justifiable but necessary – there is no alternative. This one-liner has been used ad nauseam by proponents of capitalism. It is, after all, a perfect sound bite for those who do not want to take the time to read and learn or to critically think. The notion of private property is lauded by right-wing theories of "libertarianism" as the basis of liberty and freedom. In reality, private property accomplishes the opposite and makes any semblance of human liberty obsolete and impossible. Legalistically, under capitalism and the state's enforcement of property law, the illegitimate ownership of land creates a scenario where land is monopolized by an extremely small and privileged group of people for the sole purpose of extracting wealth (essentially through force and coercion) from both natural and human resources. The essence of capitalism is to turn nature into commodities and commodities into capital.

Anti-socialist propaganda is based upon four basic presuppositions:

(1) that capitalism equals freedom; or, at the very least, is the only alternative,

(2) that capitalism naturally produces "winners" and "losers,"

(3) that capitalism is as meritocratic as possible, and thus everyone has an equal opportunity to become a "winner" or "loser," and your individual outcome is based solely on your "hard work" or lack thereof, and

(4) that "winners" have earned their wealth through their own exceptionalism, and thus deserve it; while, in contrast, "losers" have earned their impoverishment through their own shortcomings, and thus deserve it.

These ideas are ahistorical, they rely on a theory - that human beings, as we exist today, have just appeared in our current state, and that this state and was not shaped by history, as history does not exist. With this blank-slate approach, investigation is not necessary and inquiry is not necessary. Because finding the roots of these ills is a painstaking and overwhelming process that would rather be deemed unnecessary. For the world is as it is, the systems we live in are the best we can do, and emotion and instinct are all we need when reacting to the problems placed before us. In reality, there are historical causes and effects that have created modern conditions. Wealth, land, and power are accumulated in only one fundamental way: through the murdering, maiming, coercing, stealing, robbing, or exploiting of others. There simply is no other way to amass the obscene amounts of personal wealth as have been amassed on earth. Certainly not by hard work or abstinence. The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer has been the case throughout history. It's no secret that capitalism has run amok over the past centuries

Capitalism is a system of property owners and property-less workers and respective governmental systems have always used their power to keep that division intact, literally for the sake of keeping wealth with wealth, and thus, power with the powerful. The founding fathers of the United States, as wealthy landowners and aristocrats, had no intentions of swaying from this model. When constructing a unique federal system in the colonies, John Jay captured the consensus thought of the Constitutional convention in Philadelphia, proclaiming that "those who own the country ought to govern it." And, in the influential Federalist Papers, James Madison echoed this sentiment, urging that a priority for any governmental system should be to "protect the minority of the opulent (the wealthy, land-owning slave-owners) against the majority (the workers, servants, and slaves)."

No new social class came to power through the door of the American Revolution. The men who engineered the revolt were largely members of the colonial ruling class. There was nothing egalitarian about this experiment. Roughly 10 percent of the American settlers, consisting of large landholders (the landed aristocracy) and merchants (the commercial aristocracy), owned nearly half the wealth of the entire country, and held as slaves one-seventh of the country's people. The founding fathers and settlers sought to create a political and governmental system that avoided handing any meaningful sense of power or influence to the people, while also establishing a rule of law capable of protecting the extreme unequal distribution of land and wealth. A general insecurity and fear of the masses, or "the mob," was a primary motivation in the birth of the nation. The makers of the constitution had direct economic interests in establishing a strong federal government: The manufacturers needed protective tariffs; the money-lenders wanted to stop the use of paper money to pay off debts; the land speculators wanted protection as they invaded Indian lands; slave owners needed federal security against slave revolts and runaways; bondholders wanted a government able to raise money by nationwide taxation, to pay off those bonds.

Whether speaking of caste systems, nobility, aristocracy, feudalism, indentured servitude, chattel slavery, or capitalism, all modern socioeconomic systems have carried one common trait: they all amount to a minority using the majority (through exploitation or displacement) as a source of wealth, and thus have enforced and maintained this causal relationship by the threat and use of physical force and coercion in order to protect their minority interests. An economic system that relies on structural unemployment (a "reserve army of labour"), mass labor exploitation, the concentration of private property via the displacement of the majority, the forced extraction of natural resources, and constant production for the sake of conspicuous consumption needs a coercive, powerful, and forceful apparatus to protect and maintain it. The capitalist state serves this need,

In 1937, investigative journalist Ferdinand Lundberg obtained tax records and other historical documents in order to expose this perpetual chain of concentrated wealth. His findings, duly titled "America's 60 Families," concluded that:

"The United States is owned and dominated today by a hierarchy of its sixty richest families, buttressed by no more than ninety families of lesser wealth. These families are the living center of the modern industrial oligarchy which dominates the United States, functioning discreetly under a de jure democratic form of government behind which a de facto government, absolutist and plutocratic in its lineaments, has gradually taken form. This de facto government is actually the government of the United States - informal, invisible, shadowy. It is the government of money in a dollar democracy."

Nothing has changed. The unequal beginnings have remained consistent through history and have been maintained through a governmental system designed to protect them. From chattel slavery to wage slavery each epoch has continued seamlessly by constantly replacing and rebranding forms of human exploitation - peasant, servant, slave, tenant, labourer - as sources of concentrated wealth. Humanity is kept in line with drugs, television, and armed force. The world's problems are the result of capitalism. It is working exactly as it is supposed to work, intensifying as time goes on. Wealth and greed continue to rule the day and the wealthy are unapologetic.

62 individuals have been allowed to amass the same amount of wealth as 3.6 billion people combined. As of 2010, " the top 1% of US households (the upper class) owned 35.4% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 53.5%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 89%, leaving only 11% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers). In terms of financial wealth (total net worth minus the value of one's home), the top 1% of households had an even greater share: 42.1%."

“In virtue of this monstrous system, the children of the worker, on entering life, find no fields which they may till, no machine which they may tend, no mine in which they may dig, without accepting to leave a great part of what they will produce to a master. They must sell their labour for a scant and uncertain wage." - Kropotkin in ‘The Conquest of Bread’

The basic mechanisms of capitalism is the relationship between capital and labor. No matter what argument one may make in support of capitalism, this fundamental relationship can never be denied. Everything from entrepreneurship to small, family-owned businesses to corporate conglomerates must rely on this foundational interaction inherent to this economic system. Whether branded as "crony-capitalism," "corporate-capitalism," "unfettered-capitalism" or any one of the many monikers used to distract from its inherent flaws and contradictions, proponents can't deny its lifeblood - its need to exploit labor. And they can't deny the fundamental way in which it exploits labor - by utilizing property as a social relationship. It is in this relationship where masses of human beings are commodified, essentially transformed into machines, and forced to work so they may create wealth for those who employ them. This fundamental aspect of capitalism is not debatable. It is explained by Marx in Capital, Volume One:

 "As soon as this process of transformation has sufficiently decomposed the old society from top to bottom, as soon as the labourers are turned into proletarians, their means of labour into capital, as soon as the capitalist mode of production stands on its own feet, then the further socialisation of labour and further transformation of the land and other means of production into socially exploited and, therefore, common means of production, as well as the further expropriation of private proprietors, takes a new form. That which is now to be expropriated is no longer the labourer working for himself, but the capitalist exploiting many labourers. This expropriation is accomplished by the action of the immanent laws of capitalistic production itself, by the centralisation of capital."

The use of private property as a way to exploit others is unique to capitalism. For example, in contrast to feudalism, capitalists only allow workers access to their property during times when said workers are laboring to create wealth for said owners. In feudal times peasants were allowed to live on this land, and even use it as a means to sustain themselves and their families, as long as this personal activity was done after the lord's work had been completed. Now, with capitalism, workers "clock in," proceed to labor for a specified amount of time in exchange for a fraction of the wealth they create, "clock off," and then are left to find their own means of housing, food, clothing, and basic sustenance with only the wage they receive. This latter task has proven to be difficult for a majority of the world's population for the past number of centuries, even in so-called industrialized nations, which is why welfare states have become prominent as a means to facilitate the mass exploitation of the working class. Capitalists, and their governments learned long ago that workers must be able to survive, if only barely so that they may continue to labor and consume.

The unnatural and unequal distribution of power among humanity can be understood by simply imagining the start of any such society, where all would have equal footing, equal rights, equitable futures, and the basic will to satisfy needs (without taking that will away from others). However, if and when a member of that community decides to take more than they need, they immediately create a scenario where others will inevitably go without, be subjected to an exploitative social relationship, and/or rely on the illegitimate landowner for basic needs (in the form of some sort of exchange). Those who own property exploit those who do not. This is because those who do not own have to pay or sell their labor to those who do own in order to get access to the resources they need to live and work (such as workplaces, machinery, land, credit, housing, and products under patents).

And because of this inherently exploitative and dehumanizing labor process found under capitalism, the state has been needed to act on behalf of those who accumulate the illegitimate wealth from this process. Without the state, this unequal social arrangement - where the majority is essentially born into bondage - would not survive. In every system of class exploitation, a ruling class controls access to the means of production in order to extract tribute from labor. Capitalism is no exception.

Jean-Jacque Rousseau, in his 1755 ‘Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men,’ wrote:

"The first man who, having fenced off a plot of land, thought of saying, 'This is mine' and found people simple enough to believe him was the real founder of civil society. How many crimes, wars, murders, how many miseries and horrors might the human race had been spared by the one who, upon pulling up the stakes or filling in the ditch, had shouted to his fellow men: 'Beware of listening to this impostor; you are lost if you forget the fruits of the earth belong to all and that the earth belongs to no one.' "

The wealthy few have stolen from the world; and have enslaved, impoverished, and indebted the rest of us (over 7 billion people) in the process. They have no right to their wealth. It belongs to us - it belongs to global society, not so we can all live extravagant luxury lifestyles, but rather so we can satisfy the most basic of human rights and needs - food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, education - and thus carry on our lives as productive and creative human beings. Imposing new forms of taxation is a pathetic compromise. Reforms and regulations have tried and failed. Expecting representatives from the ruling class (who are directly employed and controlled by the owning class) with hopes of them voting away their own wealth has been proven to be a perpetual act in futility. The only just solution is to re-appropriate the stolen wealth; to end the capitalist system; to allow human beings the dignity and self-determination they deserve and to expropriate the expropriators once and for all. Righting centuries of wrongs is not "theft," it's social justice.

Adapted and abridged from an article by Colin Jenkins of the Hampton Institution. Full article can be found here.

Socialism will not fall from the skies.

Elections bring a renewed interest in politics. For at least a moment, it is a time to reflect on deep issues and concerns. However, beneath all of the political discussions lies an uncomfortable and overwhelming truth: Nearly all of our problems are rooted in the massively unequal ownership of land, wealth, and power. These problems are rooted in the majority of the planet's population being stripped of its ability to satisfy the most basic of human needs. This predicament is far from natural and is the product of centuries of political and economic policy carried out by a minuscule section of the world's people. If we are to ever establish a free and just society, mass expropriation of personal wealth and property will be a necessity. In other words, the few dozens of families who have amassed personal riches equal to half the world must be forced to surrender this wealth. This is a harsh and discomforting truth, indeed. But it is an undeniable truth. It is a truth that we must recognise. It is a truth that, despite being conditioned to resist, we must embrace if we are to construct a just world for all. After centuries upon centuries of being subjected to extreme hierarchical systems - from monarchies to feudalism to capitalism - we are on the precipice of making a final choice: economic justice through the mass expropriation of the capitalist class or continual wage-slavery.

Make no mistake, expropriation is not theft. It is not the confiscation of "hard-earned" money. It is not the stealing of private property. It is, rather, the restoration of massive amounts of land and wealth that have been built on the back of stolen natural resources, human enslavement, and coerced labor, and amassed over a number of centuries by a small privileged minority. This wealth, that has been falsely justified by a vast array of courts, judges, executioners, policemen, and gaolers, all of whom have been created to protect the interests of the ruling classes. Before we can take collective action, we must free our mental bondage (believing wealth and private property have been earned by those who monopolize it; and, thus, should be respected, revered, and even sought after), open our minds, study and understand history, and recognize this illegitimacy. With this understanding, we can move beyond the futile process of trying to reform systems that are rotted from the core and move forward on deconstructing this formidable autocracy and plutocracy.

Socialism is the system under which classes and exploitation are abolished for good and the differences between town and country and between manual and mental labour no longer exist. With socialism people are not forced to obey the division of labour as slaves, work no longer becomes a means of making a living, and the people will perform their social duties without any special coercive apparatus for the public good.  To eliminate the old society and build a brand-new social system is a great cause.

The basic cause of capitalist ills are the right to private property, the right to exploit, the right to rob, the right to cause crises, the right to compete, and cause wars by the lords of capital who herd people into factories and offices. Our choice is between two worlds, a world of exploitation, social injustice, chronic insecurity, economic crisis, and recurring wars ... and a world of proper economic planning, progressively increasing living standards, prosperity, and peace.

Socialism will not fall from the skies. Socialism can be realised only as the outcome of the class struggle of the workers. Every attempt to find another way, by supporting the capitalists, by conciliating them, by collaborating with them, in peace or in war, has led not toward the socialist goal but to defeat and disaster for the workers.

Socialists are not out to create a bloody insurrection. Socialists strive for the improvement of the conditions of the people. Our understanding of society teaches us that that improvement can only be attained by changing basic social relations, by a shift in ownership and control from the few to the many in an all-embracing socialisation - the elimination of the private ownership of the entire means of production - socialism. The day has passed for patching up the capitalist system; it must go. And in the work of abolishing it, we all will co-operate together. We will work together so that we may enjoy together. Socialism, real socialism, is the only alternative to capitalism; and it is worth fighting for. If society is to change in a socialist direction and if capitalism is to be replaced by socialism, the source of that change must be the fight against the exploitative society by the exploited people themselves. Socialism is, and must always be a revolutionary idea. Unless it means the transfer of economic power from a small, greedy and irresponsible elite to the democratic control of the majority it means nothing. Socialism means nothing unless it means taking control of society from below. There has never been a time when real socialism is more relevant.

The Socialist Party is anxious that the interests of the workers as a class shall come before all other interests, either individual or sectional. The purpose of the Socialist Party is to gather these conscious workers together, to organise them, so that they can actively agitate and pursue the aim of achieving socialism. The object of the Socialist Party is the overthrow of capitalism, the emancipation of the workers from their oppressors and exploiters, and the establishment of the socialist commonwealth.

Being a footballer - it is just a job

Kevin Thomson played for Hibernian, Rangers, Middlesbrough and Dundee and has represented Scotland. He began his career with Hibernian before joining Rangers in 2007 for a £2m transfer fee. Middlesbrough signed Thomson for a fee of £2m in July 2010.

At 14-years of age, Thomson thought about jacking in football altogether after he earned a move to Coventry City. "Things didn't work out for me at Coventry," he recalls. "I felt I had a real chance to make it, but I hated it. It was such a hard environment for a young boy being away from home…When I came back up the road I'd lost my love for the game and felt being around my mates was more important. I had three or four months when I wasn't interested in football. I enjoyed the freedom of playing with my mates with no pressure," he says. "At that point, I wasn't interested in being a professional footballer."

Upon making his life-changing move to Rangers, Thomson was roundly derided by the Hibs faithful for selling his soul to the devil. However, while acknowledging their reasons for feeling betrayed, Thomson insists supporters need to understand that footballers are like everyone else in the sense that when money talks, you've got to listen. 

"Fans will only have read bits and pieces about what went on, so I understand why a lot of them dislike me. If I was a Hibs fan paying my money and a player signed for Rangers I would want them to fail as well, so I totally understand the fans' point of view. But I think all fans need to realise that in any walk of life if you can get ten times your salary elsewhere, then there's no way you'll stay where you are. The argument that a footballer shouldn't be influenced by money is just stupid. If you are offered better money and better opportunities elsewhere, why are you going to stay at a club just because you support them? I know there's a lot of Hibs fans that would say they'd play for Hibs for nothing, but let's not beat about the bush - for footballers it's a job first and foremost…If you've no desire to go from Hibs to a bigger club and then another bigger club, what's the point of playing football?”

http://www.scotsman.com/sport/kevin-thomson-i-ve-never-lost-my-love-for-hibs-1-1702268

We aim for a new society – The Socialist Commonwealth.

There are just two classes in this world. One owns tools it cannot use, and the other uses tools it does not own. The capitalists have the tools, which they cannot use. Working people have not the tools, without which they cannot live. Socialism comes because nothing else can come. The competitive system has become disastrous; it was useful, for it paved the way to the socialist commonwealth. The Socialist Party’s goal is to organise the large working mass in the whole world for the overthrow of capitalism, the emancipation of the toilers from oppression and exploitation and the establishment of the socialist commonwealth. It shall carry out a wide agitation and propaganda of the principles of social revolution for the purpose of overthrowing the capitalist system.

The Socialist Party stands for the socialist cooperative commonwealth. The only issue for the working class is the abolition of the wage system and to rescue themselves from their commodity status in modern society. Knowledge and experience have demonstrated that no reform under capitalism can be of any benefit to the working class as a whole. The revolutionary spirit seeks to make changes as great as can effectively be made, the reforming spirit seeks to make changes as little as can effectively be made. History is a chronicle of the slavery of the working class in many forms -chattel slavery, serfdom, wage-slavery. At various periods one group of exploiters has wrested the power from another—kings from priests, barons from kings, merchants from barons, plutocrats from them all; but always the workers have toiled, and always the product of their labour has been taken from them. Capitalism can no longer satisfy even their most elementary daily needs. Many attempts have been made by the workers to overthrow their exploiters, and to enjoy the fruits of their labour, in the words of John Ball, “without money and without price.” Today the workers are becoming conscious of their power and ability to win the world. When the working class heaves its giant shoulders like Atlas , the entire superstructure of Capitalism cracks and falls in ruins. Socialism is the hope of the whole working class. A classless socialist commonwealth cannot be attained without the overthrow of the rule of capitalism. To accomplish this aim is the mission of the working class.

Under state-capitalism the important industrial plants, the means of transport, and trading belong to the State. In the hands of the government, they are run on a profit basis. Thus enormous power is concentrated in the hands of the government. A powerful bureaucratic machine springs up ready to crush the individual citizen. The State is everybody’s employer, everybody’s landlord, everybody’s tradesman. The individual citizen finds himself completely at the mercy of the State. State capitalism, therefore, always develops strong tendencies towards dictatorship. Workers need to stand together against the worldwide system of oppression and exploitation that is capitalism.

Socialists often hear the comment that "Socialism is a good idea but it’s not practical." But today it’s becoming more apparent than ever that it is the present system — capitalism — that is impractical and unworkable. The quality of life is deteriorating. Reforms will not change the condition of working people. Working people are moving into action in defense of their rights and everywhere there is a searching for a solution to the problems confronting working people. We, in the Socialist Party, stands for a socialist society: where ownership and control of the means of production are taken out of the hands of the tiny minority of capitalists and placed in the hands of the majority — the workers. The capitalist system is run for the profits of the few, not the needs of the majority.

Working people can be educated to socialism, but they cannot be driven, lured, or bulldozed into it. The socialist conception of the world process is not cataclysmic. Socialists have come to build, not to destroy. For in this way alone shall the world be freed forever from war and oppression, from hunger and ignorance. Capitalism — the rule of business — must be abolished. The needs of working people can only be met by creating a planned economy, where ownership and control of production and distribution are taken from the tiny minority of capitalists and placed in the hands of the working people, to be run democratically. When the vast resources available to us are used to serve the needs of all instead of the profits of the few then the way will be opened for unparalleled growth in culture, freedom and the development of every individual. Such a society is worth fighting for. Capitalism has had its day and is doomed. Socialism is dawning.

The ruling class has no use for us because we know them, and they know we know them. We did not begin this class struggle, as others charge, but we are going to end it for others.

The problem is not Trident, it's capitalist wars

Anti-Trident demonstrations are taking place across Scotland ahead of a House of Commons vote on whether to renew Britain's nuclear deterrent. Thousands of people are attending 36 protests in cities and towns including Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee, Inverness and Dumfries. The Scottish Scrap Trident Coalition, which organised the rallies, said about 7,000 people had attended. A demonstration at the Mound in Edinburgh attracted about 500 peoplewhile there was a rally at Buchanan Street's steps in Glasgow. Smaller rallies also took place outside Scotland's cities, including Cromarty in the Highlands and the North Ayrshire town of Largs, where about 50 people attended.

Getting rid of Trident makes barely a dent in the global killing machine fuelled by capitalism's wars over our bosses' markets and resources. Long ago at the corner of Sauchiehall Street, stalwarts of the Socialist Party of Great Britain stood to greet a CND march with a huge banner and slogan which read: "This demonstration is useless—You must first destroy capitalism." Sad but true, nevertheless.

If you are opposed to war and all that it represents—as any right thinking person should be—you will advocate policies and take actions which will make war impossible, by removing its causes. That is, you will seek to transform society in the interests of human beings as a whole, without restriction to so-called race, nationality or gender, by establishing socialism in place of capitalism. To object to some weapons which might be used in wars, whilst implicitly tolerating others—is to accept the inevitability of war, and the social system which underpins it. Your efforts, because they oppose only certain kinds of war, and not war itself, serve, whether intentionally or otherwise, to make war more likely. It makes the likelihood of enlightenment and desirable change the more difficult. However concerned you may feel about the welfare of the human race, your actions betray the very constituency you claim to serve.  Campaigning against nuclear weapons is an irrelevance. Nuclear weapons are unlikely to be used in Syria, or Iraq, or South Sudan, or any of the other myriad "trouble spots" across the globe. Tens of millions of people have been killed since the end of World War II, and not a nuclear weapon fired in action. Are you unconcerned about such matters? By what contorted logic does "manner of death" come to mean more to you than "fact of death"?

We accept that the protestors were well motivated: that to use a cliché, "they care". But actions if they are to be effective require more, to be effective it must be appropriate. If you really care you will want to campaign for an absence of nuclear weapons and war—in a word, for socialism. What is needed is to go beyond a moral outcry and to attack the system which creates war. Good intentions will not solve the problem of war but there is a revolutionary alternative: "You must first destroy capitalism".

Corrupt Scotland

Off-the-shelf Scottish firms are being used for money-laundering and tax evasion in the former Soviet Union. Shell firms - advertised as "Scottish zero-tax offshore companies" - are being marketed across the European Union complete with official UK Government documentation that enables their owners to open bank accounts. Concerns have been growing for more than a year over controversial limited partnerships - a unique Scottish corporate structure used in the elaborate looting of $1bn from Moldovan banks in 2014. The use of an SLP and a bank account in an EU country allows former Soviet "investors" the ability to bypass so-called blacklisted tax havens. Several former USSR states have banned direct contact with offshore zones. However, an SLP enables them to deal indirectly with jurisdictions such as Belize and Panama. That is because SLPs while registered in Scotland are often owned by "members", or partners, in the Caribbean. So the SLP is used to provide a financial bridge between the former Soviet Union and tax havens by, nominally, provided a corporate based in the respectable European Union jurisdiction. That SLP then opens doors to a bank account in another EU jurisdiction. However, the SLP does not need to publish financial accounts if it does not business in Scotland, meaning it effectively enjoys the secrecy and tax advantages of its offshore parent companies.

At least a dozen agencies in Latvia, Ukraine and Russia are selling Scottish limited partnerships (SLPs) along with Certificates of Good Standing, essentially references from Britain's Companies House confirming that the SLPs are bona fide. Such papers are then used to secure bank accounts in, say, Riga, Latvia, or Nicosia, Cyprus. Russian-language adverts seen by The Herald show such certificates being offered for a price of 350 euros - on top of one-off payments of 1700 euros for an off-the-shelf SLP, typically registered in a virtual office or private flat somewhere in Scotland.

Green MSP Andy Wightman WHO has campaigned for reform of SLPs, said: "These revelations are further proof that Scottish Limited Partnerships are now the vehicle of choice for a growing number of criminal enterprises. The ease with which they can be registered and exploited for nefarious purposes such as money-laundering emphasises how urgently the Scottish and UK governments should be dealing with this issue."

Socialism - A sustainable co-operative commonwealth

To substitute common, for private, ownership of the means of production and abolishing the present system of production means substituting production for use for production for sale that is the economic development the Socialist Party urges. The Socialist Party’s objective is the social or co-operative production for the satisfaction of the wants of a commonwealth. Mankind has always been a social being, as far back as we can trace ourselves. Until the present system of production (production for sale) was developed, co-operative production for common use was the norm.

If the modern state nationalises certain industries, it does not do so for the purpose of restricting capitalist exploitation, but for the purpose of protecting the capitalist system and establishing it upon a firmer basis, or for the purpose of itself taking a hand in the exploitation of labour, increasing its own revenues. As an exploiter of labour, the state is superior to any private capitalist. Besides the economic power of the capitalists, it can bring to bear its political power.  The state has never carried on the nationalising of industries further than the interests of the ruling classes demand, nor will it ever go further than that. Nationalisation will never be carried so far as to injure the capitalists and landlords or to restrict their opportunities for exploiting the proletariat. The state will not cease to be a capitalist institution. The Socialist Party has set to call the working-class to conquer the political power to the end that and to establish a self-sustainable co-operative commonwealth.

The fact remains that none of the reformist parties has so well-marked and clear an aim as the Socialist Party. It may, indeed, be questioned whether the other political parties have any aims at all. They all hold to the existing order, although they all see that it is untenable and unendurable. Their manifestoes contain nothing except a few little piecemeal palliatives by which they hope and promise to make the untenable, tenable and the unendurable, endurable. The Socialist Party, on the contrary, does not build on hopes and promises, but upon the unalterable necessity of social progress. All other political parties live only in the present, from hand to mouth; the Socialist party is the only one which has a definite aim for the future, the only one with a consistent purpose. Those who oppose the Socialist Party declare that the co-operative commonwealth cannot be considered practicable and cannot be the object of the endeavors until the plan is presented to the world in a perfected form, and has been tested and found feasible. They start with the notion that “human nature” is unchangeable. Socialists are told that they must come out with their plan of a future socialist society; if they refuse, it is a sign that they themselves have not much confidence in it. The predictions and blueprints can at best show that the socialist commonwealth is not impossible and they are bound to be defective. They can never cover all the details and minutia of social life; they will always leave some loophole through which critics can object to.

The capitalist social system has run its course; its dissolution is now only a question of time. The substitution of a new social order for the existing one is no longer simply desirable, it has become inevitable. Socialism is not only to be possible, but to be the only thing possible. If indeed the socialist commonwealth were an impossibility, then mankind’s civilization will relapse into barbarism. As things stand today we must move forward into socialism. Working people live in such conditions that, increasingly, they realise that the only way out of their grave situation lies through socialism. Thus, increasingly favourable conditions are being created for bringing them into the active struggle for socialism.

The next form of human society is called socialism

Our goal is a socialist world, a new social order based on common ownership of our resources and industry, cooperation, production for use and genuine democracy. Only socialism can turn the boundless potential of the people and their resources to the creation of a world free from tyranny, greed, poverty and exploitation. Business corporations, of a scope and size unimaginable to previous generations, treat the entire planet as their domain. They are a law unto themselves, free to roam the globe in search of cheaper labour, more exploitable resources, more pliant governments and greater profits. These empires now hold the power of life and death over every region and industry across the planet. By their dictates, our resources are plundered. Workers are their pawns in a global game of mergers, lay-offs, and relocations. These conglomerates have robbed us of our wealth and of the very power to determine our own future. Incapable of turning their technology and organisation to the needs of people, world-wide suffering and hunger are the legacies of these profiteers. The capitalist system of production, under the rule of which we live, is the production of commodities for profit instead of for use for the private gain of those who own and control the tools and means of production and distribution. Out of this system of production and sale for profit springs all the evils of misery, want, and poverty that, as a deadly menace, now confronts civilisation. The socialist option is the only alternative. The needs of people, not profit, are the driving force of a socialist society.

The Socialist Party is the party of the dispossessed and oppressed struggling to build a new world. Under capitalism, labour is a commodity. Workers are used as replaceable parts, extensions of machines—as long as they provide dividends. Employers use their power of ownership to devastate the lives of workers. Unions, despite courageous efforts, are unable to eliminate even the worst abuses of the employers’ power. The Socialist Party believes in the ability of working-people to own and manage their own productive institutions democratically. Human power and natural forces are wasted by this system, which makes “profit” the only object in business. Science and invention are diverted from their humane purposes and made instruments for the enslavement of men, women and children.

Humanity faces the danger of complete destruction. With the destruction of the environment and the consequences of climate change there has never come to socialism so plain an opportunity as that now being offered. We have reached the psychological moment when socialists may define the issues of life and death for the world. There is only one power which can save it – the power of the people. Civilisation hovers at the edge of an abyss. Socialism is the salvation. The only power that can save humanity from the peril of barbarism is the working class. It must free itself of all dependence on the possessing classes. It must cease all collaboration with the exploiters and embark on the road of class struggle, the road of socialist victory. The resources of the world must pass into the possession of working humanity. All other problems, the problems of nationality and of race and colour will be solved once society is freed from exploitation and class divisions. Every step taken will be in the direction of the co-operative commonwealth, since there is no difficulty whatever in creating wealth far in excess of our requirements, by the scientific organisation and application of the right labour of all to the satisfaction of our social needs. The motto, “From each according to ability, to each according to needs,” will cease to be an aspiration and become a reality. The problems of society will no longer be affected in any way by money values. Labour will be devoted to this or that by the desires of the community. Work that, after all possible amelioration, remains dangerous or difficult will be shared by all of the community who are fit, instead of being relegated to a class. The standard of life for each and all will be far higher than anything ever yet attained or suggested. The best possible conditions will be so obviously to the general benefit that the elevation of the level of society will be the aim of each individual as of the whole community.

On with the class war

The Socialist Party aims to replace the present capitalist system, with its inherent injustice and inhumanity, by a social system from which the domination and exploitation of one class by another will be eliminated, in which economic planning will supersede unregulated private enterprise and competition, and in which genuine economic equality will be possible. The aim of the Socialist Party is the establishment by democratic means of a cooperative commonwealth in which the supplying of human needs and enrichment of human life shall be the primary purpose of our society. the ownership of the world by a small propertied class is driving the people of this planet swiftly along the path to perdition. The hope of humanity and the path to progress lies in the revolt of the wage-earners against the propertied class, the seizure of political power from the propertied class, and the seizure of the land and the means of production from the propertied class. The capture of political and economic power constitute the social revolution. This great change means that the common people (the workers) will own the world in common, produce wealth in common, possess in common all wealth produced, and by common agreement distribute that wealth to the common advantage.

Capitalism fosters competition, strife, and bloodshed. In its path to mayhem hundreds of millions of helpless people are being crushed by a growing poverty. The present order is marked by glaring inequalities of wealth and opportunity, by chaotic waste and instability; and in an age of plenty, it condemns the great mass of the people to poverty and insecurity. In spite of great economic advancement, large sections of people do not benefit from the increased wealth produced. Great wealth and economic power continue to be concentrated in the hands of  relatively few capitalists and corporations. The gap between those at the bottom and those at the top of the economic ladder has grown. Thousands still live in want and insecurity. Slums and inadequate housing condemn many families to a cheerless life. Older citizens exist on pensions far too low for health and dignity. Many too young to qualify for pensions are rejected by industry as too old for employment and face the future without hope. Many in serious ill-health cannot afford the hospital and medical care they need. Educational institutions have been starved for funds and, even in days of prosperity, only a small proportion of young men and women who could benefit from technical and higher education can afford it.

The growing concentration of corporate wealth has resulted in a virtual economic dictatorship by a privileged few.  Power has become more and more concentrated into the hands of a small irresponsible minority of financiers and industrialists and to their predatory interests, the majority are habitually sacrificed. When private profit is the main stimulus to economic effort, our society oscillates between periods of feverish prosperity in which the main benefits go to speculators and profiteers, and of catastrophic depression, in which the common man's normal state of insecurity and hardship is accentuated. We believe that these evils can be removed only in a planned and socialized economy in which our natural resources and means of production and distribution are commonly owned, collectively controlled and operated by the people. The new social order at which we aim is not one in which individuality will be crushed out by a system of regimentation. What we seek is a proper collective organization of our economic resources such as will make possible a much greater degree of leisure and a much richer individual life for every person.

The world’s productive capacity is not fully utilized. Its use is governed by the dictates of private economic power and by considerations of, private profit. Similarly, the scramble for profit has wasted and despoiled our rich resources of soil, water, forest, and minerals. This lack of social planning results in a waste of our human as well as our natural resources. Our human resources are wasted through social and economic conditions which stunt human growth. Industry can and should be so operated as to enable people to use fully their talents and skills. Such an economy will yield the maximum opportunities for individual development and the maximum of goods and services for the satisfaction of human needs. Unprecedented scientific and technological progress have brought us to the threshold of an industrial revolution. Opportunities for enriching the standard of life are greater than ever. However, unless a n careful study is given to the many problems which will arise and unless there is intelligent planning to meet them, the evils of the past will be multiplied in the future. The technological changes will produce even greater concentrations of wealth and power and will cause widespread distress through unemployment and the displacement of populations. Economic expansion accompanied by widespread suffering and injustice is not desirable. Our society must be built upon a relationship based on mutual respect where everyone will have a sense of worth and belonging.  

We do not believe in change by violence. This social and economic transformation can be brought about by political action and through elections. The Socialist Party aims at political power in order to put an end to this capitalist domination of our political life. It is a democratic movement. It appeals for support to all who believe that the time has come for a far-reaching reconstruction of our economic and political institutions and who are willing to work together. The hungry, oppressed and underprivileged of the world must know democracy not as a smug slogan but as a way of life which sees the world as one whole, and which recognizes the right of every person to the highest available standard of living. The Socialist Party will not rest content until every person on this planet is able to enjoy equality and freedom, a sense of human dignity, and an opportunity to live a rich and meaningful life as a citizen of a free and peaceful world. This is the cooperative commonwealth which the Socialist Party invites fellow workers to build.

The present structure of society, capitalism, based on the exploitation of the working class and the division of the spoils. Capitalism, the private ownership of the means of production, is responsible for the insecurity of subsistence, the poverty, misery, and degradation of the ever-growing majority of people. It has necessitated the adoption of socialism, the common ownership of the means of production for the collective good and welfare. The Socialist Party declares its object to be the organization of the working class into a political party to conquer the public powers now controlled by capitalists and the abolition of wage slavery by the establishment of a system of cooperative industry, based upon the social or common ownership of the means of production and distribution, to be administered by society in the mutual interest of all its members, and the complete emancipation of the socially useful classes from the domination of capitalism. The Socialist Party is not a party of patchwork reform, nor a party of sham revolutionary phrases, but operating on a policy of education. We fight for nothing short socialism, because we believe that nothing short of that will save the workers. To us the fight for socialism is the life and soul of the working-class movement and help to bring to the surface the fundamental antagonism of the classes when the workers will be able to control production and distribution by socially owning the great agents of production. What our fellow workers have to learn is that the socialists are in the end the only practical men and women, because the only real practical work for the people is the transformation of capitalism into socialism. Let us cast doubts aside and proceed heartily than ever into the fight, knowing that not many years will have to pass before the world’s socialist movement will prevail.

The safety of society rests not in the hands of a few leaders or party heroes, but in the growing mass of workers becoming conscious of the need for a new society. The more quantitative change on our side, the more will become qualitative, it becomes. In other words, newer and clearer views will come with numbers, and the moment will come when the workers will challenge capitalism to the last fight and win through to the world society of a united human race, producing each for all and all for each. The workers are linking up all over the world, are preparing for the final clash of the class war.

On with the fight, comrades!

Many workers now understand that the capitalist system fails to provide for the needs of the vast majority of the human race and that it must be overthrown before the people can have freedom. But there is considerable difference of opinions as to the means by which this can be accomplished. Some advocate the ballot, or parliamentary action; some armed insurrection and some industrial action.

The advocates of armed insurrection’s reasoning is superficial. They deal with effects, not causes. The big capitalists who control industry are the real government, and the state is only a committee to represent their interests. Capitalism means a state of society in which production is carried on for profit. This necessitates control of industry by capitalists. The state is only an effect of capitalism. Overthrowing of the state would only mean a political revolution which could be of no lasting benefit to the workers. Overthrowing of capitalism would mean a social revolution, a complete change in the methods by which production and distribution are carried on. It would mean production for use instead of for profit. This can only be accomplished by the workers taking control of industry out of the hands of capitalists and running it for themselves.

Common Ownership Not Public Ownership

Common ownership not public ownership is the aim of the Socialist Party. Public ownership has a nice sound to it but it is simply another expression for nationalisation (or municipalisation) – state ownership. The goal is to bring about collective ownership of the means of production on behalf of the capitalist class instead of direct ownership by individual groups within that class as to-day. That is, organising the whole of production on a similar system to that of the Post Office once was and similar state-owned concerns. Even though nationalisation is sometimes called “public ownership”, it is not really ownership by “the public”, i.e. the community, i.e. all of us, but only ownership by the state, i.e. by the minority whose interests it serves. Nationalisation, as the experience of the nationalised industries since 1945 shows, is really state capitalism with the employees still needing trade unions to try to get better pay and working conditions from their employer.

There can be quite easily a gradual change from private to state property but there cannot be a gradual change from private to common ownership. The latter change is a fundamental change, in which one form excludes the other. In a modern state private and common ownership cannot exist side by side as the Bolsheviks found to their cost. It can only be all or nothing.  Nevertheless, many on the left are apostles of public ownership (although these days they are always careful to add the caveat under workers control). Nor is it unknown for the Tories to take businesses under the government’s wing for the work of repairing capitalism for the capitalists. Sections of the capitalist class teetering on the edge of bankruptcy are only too happy when government pull their chestnuts out of the fire for them. The post-war Labour government did nationalise coal, the railways, gas, water and electricity but mainly in order to ensure that the rest of private industry got these provided in a more efficient and subsidised way.

 No stone is left unturned to make efficient a lame duck and then return it good as new back to the private sector. People who are prepared to tolerate and support capitalist ownership (whether private or “public”) are full of plans. They have to be. The problems created by capitalism are so numerous that those engaged in its administration spend their time necessarily in endeavouring to solve them and in finding ways and means of reconciling the antagonistic interests involved. Socialists, on the other hand, recognise that the most fundamental antagonism of all, that between the workers and the capitalists as classes, can find no solution in any form of capitalist ownership. What can it matter to the workers whether they are exploited by a joint-stock company, a public utility corporation set up by a Labour government, or by a government department with the minister in charge? People also often overlook that the Miners’ Strike was a strike against an industry “owned” by the nation.

Businessmen at present prefer, or pretend, to believe along with members of the Labour Party, that socialism means the same thing as nationalisation. But nationalisation is a purely capitalist reform. Its chief object is to equalise the conditions of exploitation for capitalist competitors. The workers gain little by nationalisation. Their status is unchanged. The more capitalism is changed in detail the more it remains  basically the same—a system resting on the exploitation of the working class. The capitalists still control the means of wealth production and guarantee the profits to themselves. They still compel the workers to sell their energy for wages that barely cover the cost of living. The Left should remind themselves of the thousands of workers in the past, in the nationalised coal, steel and railway industries who had to go on strike in an attempt to protect their living standards, and indeed of the thousands of these workers who were eventually sacked, just as would have happened under private ownership. That is the way capitalism works, whether it is run privately or by the state.

Only common ownership of the means of living can abolish this conflict of interests and it is our undertaking to make this plain to fellow-workers. The reason for government nationalisation of certain industries in countries like Britain where capitalism is operated under what is referred to as a mixed economy, is not for the purpose of providing a better social service, as such, but to ensure that the surplus-value-producing machinery of the whole national capitalist class continues to exploit the working class with the maximum possible efficiency. Common ownership is unthinkable to the capitalist class, something utterly impracticable and unjustifiable. To a class that has been in possession for generations, the idea of common ownership is abhorrent. To-day they will not even admit the possibility of it. When they are forced to recognise it as an alternative to their own system, they will use all the forces at their disposal to thwart its advance.

The employers are full of promises of better things for those whom they exploit. They will, as Tolstoy said, do everything for the workers except get off their backs. The workers, therefore, must cast off the parasite-class for themselves. Nationalisation was a technocratic act, placing industries under the control of managers thought better capable of running them than their predecessors, though they were often the same persons.

Karl Marx used the word “association” to indicate the society he envisaged as replacing capitalism. And this term is useful in terms of emphasising how the members of that society will freely enter into production relations with each other to produce social wealth.

The greatest strength of the Socialist Party is our ideas and our thinking. The aim of the Socialist Party is to convince our fellow workers that the overall and permanent solutions to all the economic problems we endure require a revolution to overthrow capitalism. We treat the Labour Party with the disdain it deserves. Do not waste efforts over it, and, certainly, do not attempt to resurrect it as a “true” labour party. Do we really want to re-run the setback and disillusionment and betrayal of the last 100 years? Let it wither on the vine. Let its decline be terminal.

We have a future to gain. Workers must do for themselves: we are many, they are few. There are but two classes and class is everything. Without clarity about it, we do not know who we are or what we are doing. We are at war against the capitalist enemy. The ruling class only has apparent strength due largely to our apathy and passivity; our ignorance and lack of activity. The Socialist Party stands firmly on the bed-rock of the class struggle, and; declares, that so long as the means of production are in the hands of a numerically small class, the workers will be forced to sell their labour-power to them for a bare subsistence wage. In recognising that there never can be anything in common between the employing class and the working class, the Socialist Party strives to instil into the workers’ minds class solidarity on the economic and political fields. It is also the duty of socialists to teach the solidarity of the interests of the working class, regardless of the race that some section of the class happens to belong to. Let’s build a great socialist movement. 

Welfare isn't working

Hungry families are seeking help from Citizens Advice Bureau after being without food for several days, while others are unable to afford basics such as electricity or gas, a damning report into the state of poverty in Scotland has revealed. Citizens Advice Scotland warned that the state support network is failing vulnerable people, forcing them into extreme poverty.

Experts say that recent changes to the social security system, benefit rates not keeping pace with inflation, low pay, insecure work and rising costs of living have all contributed to people’s decreasing resilience to income shocks. John Finch, right, an advisor at the Citizens Advice Bureau in Leith, said he had witnessed a notable increase in people living in dire conditions before seeking help.

Susan McPhee, head of policy and public affairs at Citizens Advice Scotland, warned that the social security system is “simply not working” for vulnerable people.

The social security system is no longer providing an effective safety net for Scots in poverty and in many cases is actually causing people to become destitute. Huge numbers of inquiries at Citizen's Advice Bureaux from people in need of foodbanks and hardship payments prove the system is failing. Almost two thirds of clients surveyed said periods without income had forced them to cut down on gas and electricity use (63 per cent), and 71 per cent said they went without food. More than half (56 per cent) said money worries were affecting their physical health and 64 per cent said such worries affected their mental health.

Now’s the Day and Now’s the Hour

The Socialist Party seeks to inaugurate a system of industrial democracy in place of capitalist autocracy and control to replace our current system of self-destructive capitalism. Capitalism has outgrown its usefulness and must be supplanted by a system of greater stability. Capitalism knows only profit, socialism knows only the exploitation by which profit is possible. To gain control of production and distribution for the benefit of mankind instead of capitalism is the object of the Socialist Party. Socialism is not getting more wages, lesser hours and better conditions but achieving social power. Socialism is the means to insure for workers their own free development and their own liberation. Socialism is non-bureaucratic. It is non-autocratic. It is an industrial democracy, by, for and of the workers, first, last and all the time.

State-capitalism (misleadingly designated as state-socialism) emphasises the fact of the state being an economic agency of the ruling class,  the government and ruling class, become one and indivisible. Socialism eliminates the state. Socialism rejects state-capitalism as a phase of socialism or a transition towards it. State-Capitalism is not socialism and never can become socialism. State-capitalism accentuates and sharpens class divisions. State-capitalism regulates and directs capital and labour; it seeks to realise peace between the classes, of the abolition (or at least suspension,) of the class struggle. State-capitalism is fundamentally and necessarily undemocratic; it cannot be democratised, it must be abolished by revolution.

Naturally, the coming of a socialist society would call for the adoption of new methods of running industry. The point to be decided is: How shall the workers organize? This question is of supreme importance. If the workers allow themselves to be misled and tricked into organizing in a way that will not only fail to free them from wage-slavery or even to better their condition but will put them more thoroughly in the power of the industrial masters, much valuable time will be lost and discouragement and despair will result. What is needed is unity of thought and action. Far better no organization at all than a fake form which divides the workers against themselves and misleads them in the interests of the employers. Socialists will overthrow capitalism and establish in its place a system of industrial democracy. Capitalism is world-wide. It pays little attention to national boundary lines. The modern wage worker has neither property nor country. Ties of birth and sentiment which connect him or her with any particular country are slight and unimportant. It makes little difference to him or her what country he or she exists in. Socialist organisation must not confine themselves to geographical divisions or national boundary lines but must follow the world-embracing lines of industry. The workers of all countries co-operate to carry on industry regardless of national boundary lines, and they must organize in the same way to control industry. When the workers are educated to the real nature of the profit system they lose all respect for the masters and their property. They see the capitalists in their true colours as thieves and parasites, and their "sacred" property as plunder. They see state and media as tools of the exploiters and they look on these institutions with contempt. They understand the identity of interests of all wage workers and realise the truth of the I. W. W. slogan: "An injury to one is an injury to all."

Socialism is merely an extension of the ideal of democracy into the economic field. At present, industry is ruled by the owners of the machinery of production and distribution, who have literally the power of life and death over the subjects. We know not what the people will do when they control the means by which they make their living, but we believe they will use them in their own interest and with a reasonable degree of intelligence. They can make it possible to banish want from the face of the Earth. They can make it possible for every family to have a home and to be immune from the fear of want for themselves and their children. They can make it possible for every child to have a good education, to be able to see the world, and to make its way without the least danger of losing out economically. They can make it possible for every woman to be free economically so that she may get along whether she marries or not. These are the ideas that the socialist cherishes.

The Socialist Party is democratic in principle. It tolerates no official autocracy within it. Officials are elected and all questions are decided by a referendum vote of all the membership. The Socialist Party is the result of the past experience of the labour movement. It has learned from the mistakes and failures of former parties. These are not mere visions but are things that may be brought into concrete form, whenever men and women shall have free access to the means with which things are produced and distributed.