No more class-divided society

The manner society will organise on a socialist basis will be by securing the co-operation of all in the production of the articles and the operation of the services needed by all the members of society. Goods will not be produced for sale and profit-making, or to provide incomes for investors in company shares or in government bonds, etc., but solely for use. Men and women will no longer work under the threat of starvation but because they will realise that, at last, the interest of the individual is the interest of the whole community and the interest of the whole community also that of the individual.

To those who believe the capitalist teaching that men and women only work when driven to it by starvation and under the threat of losing their job and their livelihood, this is indeed a revolutionary idea but it is time for the working class came to understand their own capability and potential. There is nothing fantastic in holding that the world has now attained the capacity easily to provide an abundant and varied life for all. It is for the working class to become aware of the mission history has allotted to them, that of ending class-divided society for ever, and to strive for the achievement of socialism under which the principle shall be “From each according to ability: to each according to need.”

Socialist society will function quite differently from capitalist society, although initially at least it will have to use mainly the same equipment. The primary task of socialism will be to produce enough of all the things that people need and to get them to the right places at the right times. This will require a large part of the administrative organisation already built up within capitalism. The difference that will be most noticeable will be the simplicity once the cumbersome paraphernalia of capitalism has been removed. Many people are completely engrossed in the ramifications of present capitalist society. They are so conditioned by the impossible job of trying to make capitalism work effectively that they find it difficult to imagine how a real alternative to it could function. To support the whole process of production and distribution, socialist society will need a highly sophisticated system of information: about what people want, in what quantities; and about what is being produced all over the world. Capitalism has already developed technology and techniques which could make such a world-wide system extremely fast, comprehensive and accurate. But because of competition and the secrecy that goes with it; because of the market and its fluctuations; above all because the main aim of capitalism is to produce profit, not goods, capitalism cannot develop a really sensible and workable information system. A socialist world can.

Socialism is only possible because capitalism has preceded it. Capitalism has developed techniques of production potentially capable of producing an abundance; it has developed a world-wide working class which runs every aspect of modern society and it is rapidly developing information technology making world-wide communication simpler and more direct. But at the same time capitalism frustrates all of the developments because of the workings of capital itself and the interests of the capitalist class. The same sort of pattern can be seen in details. Supermarkets, for example, are a highly efficient method of putting a wide range of consumer goods within the reach of a large number of people. The trouble with supermarkets is the bottleneck at the cash desk. Because money will be useless in a socialist world, so will the cash desks. "Supermarkets" will then be able to function at full efficiency. Their shelves will be kept full by the removal of all the financial and trading restrictions that now cause butter-mountains, milk-lakes, and often ruin for farmers.

Modern production is social production. This means that what society can achieve depends on individuals doing different things in different places, but that all these link up with the effect of improving the quality of life for everyone. In socialism, the human capacity for co-operation would be set free to operate where it matters most — in the organisation, production and distribution of goods and the running of services. Co-operation would then operate throughout the entire structure of society. This will bring work under the democratic control of those who carry it out. It will be the self-determined activity of individuals, responding to the needs of the community of which they form a part and having responsibility and the real power of decision-making and action. Combined with the powers of production which already exist, co-operation in socialism would, in a relatively short period of time, deal with problems that now appear to be beyond control. There are few problems which cannot be solved by useful labour, acting throughout the world in co-operation. This is the prospect that world socialism holds.

Profit, rent and interest.

What is the ultimate source from which the landlord derives his rents, the industrialist his profits, and the banker his interest?

The property-owner knows that he receives rent from his tenants, whether those tenants are factory owners, farmers, or home-occupiers. The factory-owner knows he receives his profit from the sale of the goods produced by the workers employed in his factory. The money-lender knows that his interest likewise comes also ultimately out of the proceeds of the sale of goods. Likewise, the worker who rents a house is able to pay the rent only because his employer has sold goods and can pay wages out of the proceeds of past sales of the goods the worker produced for him. Ultimately, therefore, all forms of income arise from goods produced for sale.

What is it that gives goods of all kinds a value and enables them to be sold at their appropriate prices which provide both for the wages of the workers and for the profits, rent and interest of the propertied class? The explanation is that commodities have values which arise from what Marx termed the “socially necessary labour” embodied in them. To take a simple explanation, a bicycle worth £100, a suit of clothes worth £100, and a certain weight of gold worth £100, all have the same value because the amount of labour required in their production is the same. (The selling price of an article may in practice deviate from value, and secondly only that labour is value-producing which is “socially necessary” labour)

There is one commodity which has two peculiar features. This commodity is the “labour-power”, the physical and mental energies of the worker. Its first peculiar feature is that it is possessed by the working-class who, apart from this, have no commodities to sell. Not having any other commodity to sell, the worker has to obtain his livelihood by selling his “labour-power” to the capitalist, by the hour, day, week or month as the case may be. Like other commodities, it has a value, which is proportionate to the amount of labour required for its production; which means the amount of labour required on an average to produce the food, clothing, shelter, etc., of the worker and his dependents. Under the different climatic conditions of different countries and the different conditions of different occupations the worker requires differing amounts of means of subsistence, but this is a qualification which need not detain us in considering the simple elements of the position.

The second peculiar feature possessed by the commodity “labour-power” is that it has the quality of being able to produce a value greater than its own. When the worker expends his labour-power by working on the employer’s raw materials he is capable of adding a value greater than the wage he is paid, or in other words a value greater than the value of the food, clothing, etc., that he consumes. In a working week of six days, for example, the worker may be working, say, three days producing value equal to the value of his means of subsistence (his wages), but in the remaining three days, he will continue to work producing value which is retained by the capitalist. This “surplus value” is the source from which all forms of property income, all profit, rent and interest are derived.

This, then, is the answer to our question. The property income of the capitalists, like the income of slave owners in former times, is derived from the exploitation of the workers. The workers are carrying on their backs the whole of the propertied class.

It may seem that the contract between employers and employees is just like any other bargain entered into voluntarily, as, for example, the contracts between capitalists when they buy and sell commodities. The wage contract however only appears to be free but, in truth, it is forced. The capitalists, because they are the owners of property and their ownership is endorsed by law and protected by the State, can impose more or less their own terms when they bargain with the property-less working-class. They are able to do so for the reason that the workers are always only a short distance from destitution. The workers must accept more or less the terms that are offered because otherwise they face unemployment and have not the means to hold back for more than a short time. The workers’ bargaining position is helped but necessarily to a limited extent only, by trade unions.  

A slave owned by a slave-master, knew very well that he was labouring to provide for the slave-owner as well as himself. He did not imagine that he was entering into a voluntary arrangement. Similarly, a serf, obliged to work unpaid for the Lord of the Manor could clearly see that he was being robbed and exploited. To-day exploitation takes the form of “wage-slavery”.

Defenders of capitalism do their best to argue that their incomes arise from sources other than the exploitation of workers. They talk of the thrift and self-denial of the capitalist. They talk of their own long hours of “work”, and that they are indispensable as “supervisors” and “organisers”. They make much of their superior business knowledge and entrepreneurial skills. Or that they are inventors and discoverers.

But at the end of it all, the propertied class provide the facilities and the instruments of they allow the working-class to produce and operate them – on condition that the workers agree to their own exploitation, working part of the week to produce the equivalent of their wages and the rest of the week creating surplus-value which is the source from which all the sections of the propertied class derive their profits, rent and interest.

Socialism is all about organising

Socialism is the planned organisation of production for use by means of the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and is the abolition of all classes and class differences. Socialism is not a utopian ideal or a blueprint for society that exists in the minds of some people. It is a social necessity; it is a practical necessity; it is the direction that people, in order to satisfy their social needs, must take in order to save society from disintegration. To be a socialist merely means to be conscious of this necessity, to make others conscious of it, and to work in an organised manner for the realisation of the goal.

Production is already carried on socially. Labour has been socialized. Capitalism has become concentrated and centralised which organises a great multitude of little operations under a single direction. Capitalism has already accomplished a great deal in eliminating the need for high skills by simplifying the operations in production. The only important thing that has not been socialized is the ownership and the appropriation of the products of industry. They remain private. And therein lies the root of capitalist exploitation and oppression, of the anarchy of production and of crises. Social production represents the seeds of the socialist society growing right in the soil of capitalist society itself.

Capitalism also produces the force capable of reorganizing society - the working class, brought into existence and developed by capitalism itself. Capitalist production organises the workers as a class. The very way in which work is carried on assemblies the workers for cooperative labour. Capitalism wipes out the basis for the workers’ interest in maintaining private property. The workers are now propertyless workers. The workers suffer intensely from the rule of capitalism. Their interests are diametrically opposed to those of the capitalists. The struggle between working class and capitalist class is the sharpest and most irreconcilable. The workers cannot rid themselves of their sufferings without abolishing the domination that the machine has over them. They can do this only if they gain control of the machine itself. In doing so, they must destroy capitalism and proceed with the complete reorganisation of society. The working class is thus the bearer of socialism.

Humanity will no longer be the slave of the machine. Automation and robotics will serve mankind. Every increase in productivity through technological innovation will bring with it two things: an increase in the things required for the need, comfort and luxury of all; and an increase in everyone’s leisure time, to devote to the free cultural and intellectual development of humankind. Despite all the restrictions that capitalism places upon production, industry, properly planned and organised, can produce the necessities of life for all in a working day of four hours or less. Men and women will not live primarily to work; they will work primarily to live. As the necessities and comforts of life become increasingly abundant, and the differences between physical and mental labour, between town and country, are eliminated, the last vestiges of inequality will disappear. These divisions will be eliminated as will all aspects of commodity production (production for sale and profit rather than production for use.) Wage-slavery will be seen as just as criminal and absurd as ancient slavery. The slave-owners and the capitalists have one fundamental thing in common–they are both exploiters, and they both regard it as the correct and perfect order of things for a small group of parasites to live off the majority of laboring people. They differ only in the form in which they exploit and therefore in their view of how society should be organised to ensure this exploitation. The working class has no interest in promoting private gain at the expense of others and every interest in promoting cooperation. For only in this way can it emancipate itself and all humanity.

Fracking Awful

A series of new reports published by the Scottish Government into the potential health effects of fracking found there was “sufficient” evidence to suggest that a number of “air and water-born environmental hazards” would be likely to occur should the operations go ahead.

Workers could also be at risk from breathing in dangerous crystalline silica during operations, the report found, a risk to health that could also affect those living near to fracking sites. Energy and Climate Change Minister Paul Wheelhouse emphasised the importance of remembering that shale gas and coalbed methane resources are located in the most densely populated part of country. Increases in traffic could also result in more noise and emissions in the affected areas. However, the report found that there was “inadequate” data to determine whether the development of shale oil and gas or coal bed methane would pose a risk to public health overall. He told MSPs that a “precautionary, evidence-based approach” would continue.  

Also, analysing the impact fracking could have on climate change, experts from the Committee on Climate Change concluded that developing unconventional oil and gas (UOG) would make it harder for the country to meet environmental targets. Left entirely unregulated, the emissions footprint of unconventional oil and gas production could be substantial,” the report warned.

Researchers reported it was “unclear” if the fracking industry was “commericially viable”, with current low oil prices providing a “challenging” financial climate. The industry would contribute an average of 0.1 per cent GDP.

Friends of the Earth Head of Campaigns Mary Church said: "Fracking is bad for the climate, bad for public health and won't do much good for the economy. That's the damning verdict of the independent studies published by the Scottish Government today, echoing the concerns of communities across the country.

Poverty Scotland

Up to one in three children grow up in poverty in parts of Scotland, a new study for the End Child Poverty coalition suggested. 

3.5 million children are living in poverty in the UK - with 220,000 of them in Scotland. The worst-hit local authority area in Scotland is Glasgow, where 34.1% of children are affected.

Peter Kelly, director of the Poverty Alliance, explained: "Poverty in Scotland continues to harm the lives of children across Scotland… Living on a low income not only affects their well-being now, but can have a negative impact in the future. This is an unnecessary situation and one that requires urgent attention."

A separate study has revealed that 63,794 three-day supplies of emergency food were handed out to people in Scotland at Trussell Trust foodbanks. The figures showed that problems with benefits remain the most significant reason for foodbank use, accounting for a total of 42% of referrals. One in four were due to benefit delays and 17% were sparked by benefit changes.

The trust's Scotland network manager, Ewan Gurr, said: "… we are still experiencing an epidemic of hunger in Scotland. Benefit delays and changes are still the primary reasons underpinning the increased number of referrals to foodbanks. What is more concerning, however, is that hunger is also clearly and consistently being driven by low income. A decrease in the cash in people's pockets leads to an increase in the use of foodbanks."

Financial Insecurity Can Be Very Dangerous Under Capitalism

An SPCer asked a delivery guy for Pizza-Pizza why they had extended the time limit for a free pizza from 30 to 40 minutes. "Too many accidents,'' was the answer. He didn't say that the fear of losing their jobs made them hurry. 

This clearly shows how the financial insecurity that daily life under capitalism creates can be very dangerous. 

John Ayers.

Is There Anything Capitalism Cannot Destroy?

A recent television program focused on the plight of the Horseshoe Crab which is an endangered species, because its spawning grounds are being polluted. This species has existed for 450 million years and now, thanks to the effects of capitalism, it may soon become extinct. 

This begs the question, ''Is there anything capitalism cannot destroy?

Why not preserve the Horseshoe Crab, which has, obviously, survived many climatic changes and make capitalism extinct? 

John Ayers.

The industrial cooperative commonwealth

Unity does not mean locked-in agreement on every issue or detail, it does mean bringing together our presently atomised struggles for peace, the environment, racial, social, and economic justice together. None of our struggles can achieve our only objective for social change – socialism - without all the struggles joining in class solidarity.  We all know it but have not been able to bridge the divides.

Thus, we find ourselves in the eleventh hour of a deep global crisis of climate change with expanding wars. It is increasingly clear that all global people's movements must arise around the world to save the planet and civilisation. Hungry people are hungry for positive change. The transformational revolution needed by our people and our planet is possible. Organised groups must persuade fellow-workers of our common interests and to do this we need to be united in ways we have not been in the past but that is possible to do.

World peace, social equality, work for all and job satisfaction are what every worker, young and old male and female black and white, wants and needs. And they are exactly what capitalism cannot provide. Since the inception of capitalism and long after it had exhausted any and all of its initial progressive features, each succeeding period has produced its spate of apologists, confusionists, and mystifiers of the real nature of this brutal system of exploitation of one class by another, have offered reforms and palliatives to make capitalism work better. All to no avail. They still keep presenting a host of hopes and aspirations, sweeping all their past failures under the carpet.

There is surprisingly little discussion there is today among those who call themselves socialists about socialism. They concern themselves exclusively with the ‘practical’, ‘day-to-day issues’ of the class struggle, leaving the future revolution to take care of itself, little different from Bernstein’s famous saying ‘the goal is nothing, the movement everything’. If there is no goal, there is no movement.

What is socialism? Socialism is not the rule of state bureaucrats over the people. Socialism is a society without any classes. Socialism is a new system built on the ruins of the old capitalist system. Socialism is about freedom, not merely juridical sense but freedom in the most concrete sense: freedom of people in their everyday lives and activities to decide collectively how much to produce, how much to consume, how much to work and how much to rest. Freedom to decide, collectively and individually, what to consume, how to produce and how to work. Freedom to participate in determining the direction of society, and freedom to control one’s own life within this social framework.

Socialism means, above all else, that political and economic power is been taken out of the hands of the capitalists and placed in the hands of the people. Political power will be used immediately to place the means of production and distribution into common ownership, taking it out of the hands of the capitalist class. From the present day organisation of production for profit, the purpose will be changed to production for use, production of what is wanted and needed by the people. Work will become more interesting and more meaningful as its results will go entirely to benefit the people.  Industry will have only one purpose in socialism, to serve the people. Democracy will be extended in a way not imaginable under capitalism. Socialism will enable us to overcome the brakes placed on progress by capitalism. It will release the creative energies of the people, making it possible to meet their needs in food, clothing and shelter, and will open vast horizons of cultural and educational possibilities of which we as yet have no conception. Different classes will cease to exist. The oppressive functions of the state as we know them will become redundant and will wither away as they fall out of use. What will remain will be only a democratic administration of production in the hands of the people. With the harnessing of science and technology to industry, boring and repetitive work will be eliminated. Work for all will become as it is today for only a very small minority—interesting and satisfying. Mankind will be able to develop its talents and potential to the full. The boundaries between mental and physical labour will be removed as all people receive the freedom and means by which to exercise their latent abilities.

The Socialist Party is for depends on industry. The support of the majority of the population is necessary for the socialist transformation of society. The Socialist Party envisage the restructuring of the ownership and control of means of production in the economic process of society whereby the means of production will be controlled and owned in common by the working class and not by the capitalists.

the industrial cooperative commonwealth founded upon the social ownership of land and the means of production and distribution where the requirements of life, the responsibility for this production should rest with the community collectively. The control of industry today is left to the care of the capitalist class whose sole concern is to make profits for themselves, although life and death

Towards a new society

Capitalism is based on the production of goods for sale. The capitalist class owns and controls the social necessaries, the economic resources of the world. That class, for its own protection and perpetuation in power, subjects all institutions, political, judicial, educational, religious and others, to its own interests. On the other hand, however, there is the working class which is eventually going to change the whole system of ownership of the means of production. The working class alone is interested in the removal of economic inequality. The workers, collectively, must take over and operate all the means of production and distribution, for the well-being of. No return to barbarism but instead a higher civilisation is to be achieved. People will use the knowledge of ages to build the foundations of a new social system. Harmonious relations will evolve out of the change in the control and ownership of the resources of the world. All members of society will enjoy in equal enjoyment all the good things and comforts of life. They will be the arbiters of their own destinies in a free society. The life of human beings will not consist only of drudgery when all the good things created by the workers are available to them.

The feudal lords had to surrender to the ascending capitalist class. There is no escape from the inevitable result that they too are fated to be relegated to history. It all seems so solid and permanent right now, as once did slavery and then feudalism after it! But within the capitalist system, the force is being created and organised that will destroy capitalism and usher in socialism—the working class. The frantic appeals and clamour of reformers will not in the least affect the course of events. The working class have a historic mission to perform; a mission that they will carry out, despite the bribery held out to them that a restoration of past conditions would accrue to their benefit. The workers of the world, conscious of their historic mission, will learn to avoid the mistakes they would make should they depend on other forces than their own industrial power for the solution of the world’s problem. Agencies and institutions deriving their lease of life from the political and industrial masters of today cannot be looked to for support. They may feign being in favour of radical changes in the effects. They will, however, strenuously, even violently oppose any attempt at destroying the cause. They will strive to perpetuate the wages system at all costs.

Most people wonder what the future holds for them. They want to know if it is possible to share a future free from poverty and the anxiety that their pay will be able to keep up with prices, the payments on the house, the furniture and the car.  They want to be assured that there will be work to be had for themselves and their children.  People seek a secure and happy future for all without the rat race.  They don’t agree that a small number of privileged rich folk should cream off the benefits of technology, while the rest of us spend our days in drudgery and boring monotonous work. Many no longer consider such things arranged because of “human nature”, of his “natural greed”. More and more people think that life can be improved to make it better for all. Lessons have been learned from experience and also from the study of what life was like in the past, how it has changed and what made it change. People are increasingly understanding that it is not “human nature” that is the cause of the problems people face today but the way society is organised where a small minority of people owning and controlling the wealth can exclude the vast majority of us from any real say in the running of society. This is what lies at the root of the problems that working people face. It is this system, which we call capitalism that cannot guarantee security nor provide the good things of life for all. It is this that must be changed. The working people who have produced all the wealth around us must come into ownership and control of what is their own by right so that they can then build the society and produce the things they want. With the ending of capitalism, the people would decide how the world should be run. The vast majority of the people gain nothing from capitalism and would lose nothing with its passing.

Class struggle is built into capitalist society because it is not possible to satisfy the capitalists’ aspirations and those of the workers at the same time. The workers fight for better wages and conditions, and the capitalist lives to make the maximum profit out of the labour of the workers. Profits can only come from the value created by the workers. Hence the conflict. The capitalist is interested in organising the production of those goods alone which will make him a profit, while the worker is interested not in profit, but in being able to buy what he wants and needs. The higher the wages paid to the worker, the greater the threat to the capitalist’s profits.

The ruling class have kept a tight check on the mass media, allowing no real opposition viewpoints to try to control people’s thinking and to withhold information. Men and women cannot be fooled by lies and false promises forever, however. The working class has always fought the injustices of the capitalist system. The trade unions organises the workers for the day to day struggle under capitalism. The trade unions were formed to improve the living conditions of the working class through struggle. They are defensive organisations, to stop the capitalist reducing working conditions and to stop workers undercutting one another for jobs. Other organisations of struggle on particular issues have been by the whole course of the struggle for a better and more secure life for the people to win housing, education, a health service reforms. To change the system, however, bodies are needed that can generalise the experience gained in all the struggles, and give a perspective to the working class as a whole – a political party for the workers, a socialist party. While people think and act as individuals, they are effective as a class, organised together and conscious of what needs to be done. This is the lesson of hundreds of years of struggle. To be put into practice, to become reality, ideas must be adopted by the people. To bring about change, therefore, demands an explanation of the facts. Man’s struggle for a better life cannot be confined to just fighting for increases in wages, more to eat and better housing. Today workers can defend living standards but they cannot end exploitation and wage-slavery while capitalism continues. All the reforms that have been enacted to date have not taken us one inch closer to socialism. No reform will end in socialism.

No leader, no political party can do the job of ending capitalism and building socialism. This can only come about when the majority of the people engage in action themselves. The Socialist Party believe that no progress in improving the lot of the working class will be brought about without the struggle of the people themselves. Decisions can never be left to others. The emancipation of the workers must be achieved by the working class itself. This is the call to all the downtrodden all over the world. Helping to build a new society is the aim of the Socialist Party.

America elects a new leader

US workers, who are getting poorer and working longer, settle in for another US presidential election farce. American workers, like workers throughout the capitalist world, support a society which must impoverish and degrade them. The American voters will give their verdict on all the familiar issues of reform and futility, ignoring the real issue—capitalism or socialism—which faces them all the time. When the fan-fare ends and the next President is settled in the White House, capitalism will grind on, spreading confusion and despair on all sides. The inability of presidents to deal with the situations confronting them and to keep their promises to the electors is not lack of sincerity (although it often is) but that they are attempting the impossible - make capitalism work. The hope many have in Obama to implement policies that will benefit the working class was misplaced. The outcome of US elections carries one truth: namely that whichever candidate becomes president, he has but one remit once in office – to further the interests of the US corporate elite. It’s just not a feasible option for any newly elected president to entertain any idea other than guaranteeing a safe playing field for the domestic profit machine and doing what’s needed to try to ensure the US maintains its global hegemonic status.

The reality behind the American Dream is the sordid money-grubbing, back-stabbing rat race of capitalism; where politicians are merely the message boys of the rich and powerful and where the poor and exploited are left behind. The American Dream is a horrendous nightmare. It is depressing that American workers should be impressed by—indeed be part of—slick, high-pressure salesmanship and cynical drives for power. For after the shouting and the ballyhoo have died, capitalism, in America and the rest of the world, remains unscathed. This social system produces the horrors of war, poverty, insecurity and racial hatred. The Democrats and Republicans, like the other capitalist parties, can offer no end to these. Voters invest a lot of hope in the mystifying images that are placed before them. There is a lot of noise and movement, a feeling of anticipation. And then the penny drops. If you are running capitalism, the fact that you are a Jew or a Gentile, or black or white, or Christian or Muslim, or Hindu or atheist, or male or female, is completely irrelevant. Whoever you are, you can’t run a turkey farm for the benefit of the turkeys.

Only the establishment of socialism can give us a world of peace and plenty. As socialists, we are not pessimistic about the future. We believe that the class that produces all the wealth of the world will wake from this capitalist nightmare and bring about a society based on production solely for use. After all, as old Abe once said, “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”

Wee Matt's Message to American Fellow-workers

Capitalism cannot be reformed to work in the interests of the wage worker.

Whoever becomes president; capitalism will continue with its poverty, homelessness, and hunger for many Americans. It’s not a new president that is needed but a new economic system. It makes no difference is that politicians and governments do not, and cannot, control the way the capitalist economy works. They have to navigate by sight in the face of what the capitalist economy throws up and so can do no more than react to how the economy moves. This quite apart from the fact that their remit to govern in the overall interest of the capitalist class. In fact, far from them controlling the way capitalism works, it's the other way round. Both Clinton and Trump want the power to organise the country for the benefit of its owning class. To support either candidate in this presidential election requires a massive feat of collective amnesia or delusion by the working class.

For after the shouting and the ballyhoo have died, capitalism, in America and the rest of the world, remains unscathed. This social system produces the horrors of war, poverty, insecurity and racial hatred. The Democrats and Republicans, like the other capitalist parties, can offer no end to these. Only the establishment of socialism can give us a world of peace and plenty. And for that, we do not need stage-managed ballyhoo. We need knowledge and the social responsibility that goes with it.

The majority of people—the working class, the useful, productive people in this society—are content to keep capitalism in being under the delusion that it is rather like a movie in which the baddies come to a bad end and goodie prevails. The problem is that there are so many baddies—war, poverty, starvation, mental stress, homelessness, alienation, crime, disease . . . And the "heroes" and "heroines are powerless to do anything about it but all those speech writers, strategists, and spin doctors try to tell us differently.

The socialist message to the American people is that they should think long and hard about what their new President will represent before casting their vote because the periodic election of Presidents function is to protect the class interest of wealth and privilege that perpetuate our servitude.

Wee Matt

Society's Addictions

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte sounds like a guy way out of control in his ravings against drug dealers and users, 3,000 of whom have been killed in the Philippines since he took office on June 30. To quote ,''Hitler massacred 3 million Jews.....there is 3 million drug addicts; there are. I'd be happy to slaughter them''.

It is disgusting, inexcusable, but not very surprising that a man in a position of power would make such an inhumane comment. 

Though one can understand Duterte's revulsion of drug addiction it would be better for all concerned if he worked for the establishment of a society where no one would feel a need to take drugs. 

John Ayers.

The proletarian commonwealth.

Capitalism is synonymous with violence, and it is the handmaiden of chaos. Capitalism is based on wage slavery. The capitalists hire wage workers to produce wealth, give them part of that wealth in the form of wages and keep the rest. We do not sell our labour to the capitalists; we sell our labour power. But capitalism is only a passing stage in the economic development of mankind. As capitalism spreads over the earth it produces the working class the great class whose historic mission is to end the exploitation of man by his fellow man. Workers want to escape from wage slavery. Some soon learned that reforms are either economically unsound or politically impossible. That the workers can get only what they have the power to take. If they have the power to take, and begin to exercise that power, the capitalists will often try to get ahead of them and give, hoping to get credit that they do not deserve and deceive the workers into the belief that the benefits do not come because of their own organised powers but because of kindness in the hearts of the capitalists. Rest assured, that if the workers allow their organised power to weaken, the hearts of the capitalists will harden accordingly. We, the workers, are many, though divided because of ignorance. They, the capitalists, are, few, but strong organisationally, ruthless in policy, grimly determined to increase in power and to perpetuate their dictatorship over the hopeless existence of a robbed class.

The employing class, organised in business associations, know that if one group of workers fight and win, other workers will be encouraged to do likewise, and the more they get the more they will want. So, no matter how much the capitalists fight among themselves, they are as one against labour. This resulted in the grand idea of solidarity of labour, a solidarity that knows no race nor country. Class systems are not eternal. Everything in the universe, from atoms to solar systems, is continually moving, changing, transforming, developing; likewise, the history of the human race is nothing but a ceaseless change, a continuous development. In the course of its history classes are formed; these classes continually struggle for supremacy and, after prolonged struggle, one class succeeds another in the dominating position. The struggle continues until class divisions themselves are dissolved and a new, classless society results. When the power of workers becomes greater than the power of the capitalist class, then comes the revolution! Every class system in society has ultimately been overthrown by revolution. The old power will disappear before the greater power of the new. Capitalism based on production for sale will give way to production for use. Thus will end the world’s last class struggle in which the workers will be the only class, embracing the entire human family, with ownership and control of the means of life in the hands of the collectivity. This is the final solution of social problems—industrial democracy. The age-long exploitation of man by his fellow-man will cease forever, and this will be the crowning achievement of the human race. The necessity that gave rise to classes in society has passed. The social economic structure‘s capacity to produce wealth has increased to a point where it is more than ample to provide sustenance for all. Production has been socialised. It remains only to socialise control of the economic structure and eliminate expropriation.

We have reached an era where action may not much longer be delayed if we are to escape an environmental collapse unprecedented in the annals of mankind. Workers of the world, unite. You have the world and life itself to gain!

Even the churches condemn the Tory cuts

A UK benefits cap that has just come into force is "indefensible", church leaders in Scotland have said. The Church of Scotland, the Baptist Union, the Methodist Church and the United Reformed Church said the cap would hit children the hardest. The churches believe the number of Scottish families with capped benefits will increase by more than 10 times. The churches said the cuts were "manifestly unfair".

Rev Dr Richard Frazer, convener of the Church of Scotland's Church and Society Council, described the cap as punishment for hundreds of children and said those who carried the heaviest burden were the "least able to suffer it". He explained, "We cannot tackle poverty by making people poorer and we cannot leave families without enough to meet their basic needs."

Paul Morrison, policy officer for the Methodist Church, said: "Over 2,000 single parents with babies under a year of age had their housing benefit cut because of the cap each month. Does the government seriously expect that cutting housing benefit will make it easier for them to find work?"

Socialism is coming

WORKERS UNITED

The Socialist Party indicts capitalism as a threat to civilisation. The present political struggle is a struggle to the death; either capitalism, with its wealth and power for its owners and the brutal, degrading struggle for existence for its workers, or else the capitalist class will surrender to socialism and people will progress to undreamed heights and establish a civilisation far in advance of capitalism. The Socialist Party challenges the right of capitalism to exist and proclaims socialism as its legitimate successor.  The Socialist Party appeals to the world’s workers upon the basis of their class interests. Capitalism is founded upon production for profit. Socialism is going to be planned production for use.

Whenever the employers fail for any reason to make a profit, it is in their power to end production for they dictate the terms upon which their privately owned factories are used machinery. Their workers have naught but their labour power, of hand or brain, to sell upon terms dictated by another. We are wage-slaves. We are asked to fight and die for a better world, and the better world they promise is only enough to keep body and soul together. The thing to observe is that the ruling class has been unable to solve the basic ills of capitalism. They all seek to do the impossible: make capitalism work. Capitalism has become an obsolete oppressive system that ought to be got rid off. This vast and resourceful planet should be free from the scourge of poverty and the blight of ignorance. If this system cannot give peace and plenty to its people, socialism will.

Common ownership is when products socially produced by the workers are be owned by those workers and ordinary people. Production is no longer guided by the profit of the handful of owners but by the requirements of the community, who now own the means of production. This is production for use and not for profit. The old coercive state apparatus of the exploiters is ended. This is the basis for socialism. Socialism must be the aim. The social producers become the social owners. Marx and Engels described this process and showed that capitalism had called into being its own gravediggers – the working class. This is the essence of socialist change.

Socialism means that one working class is not pitted against the others in wars. It means that one worker is not pitted against the other in the fight for a job. It means that one working class is not cutting the throat of the other by producing at lower wages than the other. The criteria for production under socialism would be – how much is needed? Some people will argue that it can’t work, it’s a utopia. We can only answer that capitalism has demonstrated that it cannot work. A society organised on the basis of production for use would have more of a chance of working than our present economic system.

It is not to reform the evils of the day but to abolish the social system that produces them that the Socialist Party is organised. It is the party not of reform but of revolution, knowing that the capitalist system has had its day and that a new social order, based upon a new system of production must soon replace the old one we now have.

He who controls my bread, controls my head

The capitalist system prevails not only by brutal force but by ideas which it instills into the heads of the people. The schools, the media, and the church are all the means by which the thoughts of people are shaped. They are used by the ruling class that controls them to argue that the society we live in is fundamentally good and correct. By and large, the working class accepts these ideas. If it did not, capitalism could not exist very long. Because he or she is stuffed full of these ideas, the worker will usually accept that it is the normal state of affairs.

It is perfectly right that if a person who has genuine talent and applies diligently to study and practice, rises to prominence as a violinist, a painter, a writer. If someone with no talent and is lazy, he or she  cannot rightfully complain if I am not recognised as a prominent artist. But the great artist who has risen to the heights cannot be compared with the capitalist. The artists entertain us and enrich our lives. They do not employ us, exploit us or oppress us; nor does they have or claim to have the power to do so. They cannot and does not bequeath his skills and talents to their heirs. The social consequences of “being at the top” are in no way the same as in the case of the capitalist.

It is also clear that the whole working class, which numbers tens of millions, cannot become capitalists, who number only thousands. If ten workers rose, by one means or another, to the ranks of the capitalist class, that would change the social position of ten persons but would leave the fundamental division of society unchanged. If worker Dick became a capitalist and capitalist Tom was forced to become a worker, that would change the social position of two persons, but everything else would remain the same.

It is plain to see we see many capitalists who do not lift a finger to do work of any kind and yet remain the wealthy and powerful owners of industry and finance. Others do perform a useful task, but their tremendous incomes and powers do not correspond to their labour but rather of their mere ownership of capital. Still, others never did work of any kind in all their lives, or haven’t a trace of ability or a functioning brain cell in their heads, yet they are wealthy and powerful and part of the ruling class only because of the accident of birth and the law of inheritance.

Wherever we look we can see workers by the millions who sweat and toil at their job, who are skilled in their trade or profession, who prudently save every penny they possibly can, and yet do not become capitalists.

The worker is interested in production primarily in so far as it is production for use, that is, in so far as it makes it possible for him to have the things needed to preserve and expand life – food, clothing, shelter, comforts.

The capitalist is interested only in production for profit. He will produce whatsoever yields a greater profit. If he cannot, he suspends production. He closes down his plant and hard-working employees are thrown out of a job.

The workers’ interest in production is not based on whether or not it yields a profit to the capitalist. It is based on their needs. The capitalist, on the contrary, will produce only if it is profitable to do so. Capitalism cannot reconcile these two conflicting social interests. To repeat, the capitalist produces only if a profit can be made. When there is no profit, he does not keep his plant working but closes it down or disposes of it to someone else.

Let us always bear in mind that capitalism is based on commodity production, that is, production for the market. For capitalism or a capitalist, to provide an article, it must, therefore, have exchange value. That is nothing but the quality of an article, of a product, that makes it possible to exchange it on the market for other commodities, usually through the medium of money.

The exchange value of the commodity known as labour power is received by the worker in the form of wages. With his wages, the worker buys other commodities which enable him to maintain and renew his ability to work. But while it takes him only a part of the working day to produce the value represented by his wages, the capitalist has the use of his labour for the whole of the working day! A shirt is worth more on the market than the cotton originally used to make it. In transforming cotton fabric into a shirt, the worker has added to its value. But if the worker is to be paid in wages to the amount of the value he has added to the cotton fabric, the employer, as in the illustration above, has not advanced an inch. He does advance if the worker adds a greater value than he receives in the form of wages. That is exactly what happens. During the first three or four or five hours of the working day, the worker adds enough value to equal the wages he receives. But he contracted to work a full day. He continues to create value during the balance of the day. This additional value is known as surplus-value. It goes, not to the worker who created it, but to the capitalist who hired the worker for the full day (or week, or month, as the case may be), and who pockets this surplus-value in the form of profit. It is only because the worker can create this surplus, and only because the employer can pocket it, that labour is hired and capitalism can produce.

That is the basis for the exploitation of the working class by the capitalist class. The ownership of the means of production as the private property of capitalists makes it possible for them to exploit the workers, to squeeze out of them surplus-value and thereby profits. The capitalists give every explanation possible for their profits, except the real one. They talk about “ business risks,” about the “entrepreneurial skills ” about their own “hard work from the bottom up” and a thousand other things. But if they were a million times more enterprising than they are, and took a million more risks than they do, and if they cheated each other and everyone else a million times as much as they do – there would still be no other way of making profit under capitalism than by exploiting labour, by forcing labour to create a surplus-value above that which is represented by wages. And the methods they use to reduce labour to the position of a wage-slave rests on the private ownership of the means of production and exchange.

That is why capitalists always seek to reduce wages. The lower the wages paid, the higher the profits made. That is why they seek to intensify the working day and cut out unproductive time so that the worker devotes more hours to producing surplus-value. That is why they always seek to speed-up the worker, to introduce more and more machines to do the work of more and more workers. The more intensely the worker labours, the more value he or she creates; therefore, the more surplus-value; therefore, the more profit. Profits can be obtained and increased only by a constant intensification of the exploitation of labour, by reducing labour’s share, by lowering labour’s standard of living. The greed for profits knows no limit. If capital makes five per cent profit, it is not content until it makes ten; when it makes ten, it seeks every possible way of making twenty.

There are also conflicts inside the capitalist class. Each capitalist seeks to dominate others. Each seeks to control, absorb, expropriate the other for his own benefit. Such conflicts rage within the capitalist class of each nation, and between capitalist nations themselves. But the capitalists are united as a class for the maintenance of their own social system and the defense of their class interests. They can and will differ on a thousand subjects, but they are united in defense of the system of capitalist private property upon which rests their power and rule. The class struggle between capital and labour is, therefore, basic to modern society. It is a struggle that goes on all the time, now hidden and now open. It is not only unceasing but also irreconcilable. The basic class interests cannot be harmonised. One or the other must triumph. Let us do our best to ensure it is our own class that prevails in this war.

The Jungles of Capitalism

Nearly 100 migrants a day arrive at the refugee camp at Calais. 

French authorities have tried for a year and a half to dismantle the vast camp known as ''The Jungle''. In March, when 4000 lived there, they leveled half of it, since then it's numbers have swelled to 10,000. 

It's very visibility is proof of Europe's inability to cope with the influx of so many people. Most want to go to the U.K. and so the Brexit vote has not put any off. There is nothing new in this, think of the migrant camps in the thirties, the Nazi death-camps, and the post-World War2 Displaced Persons camps. Whether it be economic or governmental pressure people are constantly going into camps. 

The French authorities don't know what to do because they are looking for answers within capitalism and they're aren't any. 

John Ayers.

The ballot - the Achilles heel of capitalism

We argue we should use the Achilles heel of capitalism - democracy and the vote - to have a majority revolution, the immense majority has to be won and be a politically conscious class for and in themselves to not require 'leadership', i.e. complete change of social system to an elite class free one.

The contradictions of life under capitalism have engendered deep-rooted feelings of frustration. The wealth pouring from the factories and the farms has not assured many of prosperity nor offered security about the future prospects. Instead, of an expected welcome release from burdensome toil, the prospects of automation and robots have become a source of anxiety, producing the threat of chronic unemployment and the spectre of a new recession to follow, rather than the promise of peace and plenty. No wonder people feel alienated.

We could actually eradicate poverty and war (capitalism's twin concomitants) now. Workers produce all wealth. But receive a rationed access to it (wages) just sufficient enough to require us to subject ourselves to more waged slavery in order to produce a surplus value over and above our wages, which accrues to the parasite owning/ employing/ capitalist class.

We could also address the restricted access to medicine by the capitalist market system,(can't pay can't have in many countries), by ending production of commodities (for sale on a market), introducing a new post-capitalist society, run democratically by us all, with common ownership and production for use, with free access to all necessities from the commonly owned pot.

The problem is that ownership and control are in the hands of 1-5%, whether individuals, corporations or states. The 95-99% need to make common cause and end this state of affairs.

We have a post-capitalist, poverty and war free, world of superabundance to win. Our health and the health of the planet depends on us eliminating waged slavery and introducing the free access society.  Food grown to eat, houses built to live in, medicine to treat illness, Dissolve all government and elect yourselves for the last great emancipation that of the wage slaves.

In these secular times the negative, 'human nature' argument has proven to be unscientific in the light of a surfeit of human-centred goodness and voluntarism often in very trying circumstances. This is not to argue the opposite. There have been many humanistic socialists also.

The ethical assumptions of all varieties of what is called the humanistic socialist view are based on the fixity of human nature. They share this view with theological theorists, the difference being that the former hold that this basic human nature is good and the latter that it is bad.

Marx denied that human nature can be placed in such absolute categories. Both Marx and Engels held that human nature was not an absolute constant but an historic variable. In fact, they always insisted that the "human nature" to which humanists and the clericalists appeal, each in their different ways, cannot serve as a guide to social organisation. It is not human nature which explains society, but society which explains human nature.

There can be no overall moral agreement or ethical unity in a social system split by class interests and antagonisms. People change themselves by changing the environment in which they live. Such too will be the change from capitalism to socialism. This will be the product of conscious human activity; in changing their environment from class to common property people will at the same time be changing the way they behave or, if you like, changing themselves. There is nothing in the make-up of human beings that would prevent their freely working together and then freely taking from the common store what they need.

The working class always vote against their class interest when they support any of the political parties of capitalism, whether allegedly Labour or unashamedly Tory. In fact, many of the working class think they are not members of this class but somewhere in a non-existent middle category. There is no such thing as a 'middle class'. They disappeared either upstairs into the ruling class, or downstairs into the working class. Even as they fret over getting young Dimkins privately educated, if they have to work for a wage or a salary, they have more in common with the working class in this country and worldwide, than with the capitalist parasite class they emulate in the country they live in.

If you have to work for a wage or a salary in order to live, then you are a member of the working class.

1. The capitalist class owns and controls the means of production and distribution.

2. The working class neither owns nor controls the means of production and distribution. What their relationship is to the means of producing and distributing wealth, this is relevant to their economic and class position in society.

3. As a result, the working class lives by producing wealth for the capitalist class.

The working class accepts the necessity of its dependence upon the capitalist class for permission to work for it, to get wages from it, and to buy means of consumption from it in order to live. The working class rationally resigns itself to continuous exploitation under capitalism as a tamed dog rationally continues serving its master to survive off its master’s scraps. They have more in common with a Bangladesh cotton spinner than with their domestic or global capitalist class.

Capitalism is not like some benign country estate and it cannot be organised as if it were. It cannot put human welfare in the forefront of its concerns. It cannot be controlled by any leader or expert. It must produce problems like poverty, sickness and war. Workers who are seduced into thinking that things would be different under a government of less abrasive personalities are deluding themselves. The promised prosperous futures with steadily rising living standards have never appeared and, of course, they never will. You don't have to be a socialist to be sceptical on this point.

Government bail-outs are state-capitalist measures in the interests of the capitalist class as a whole, even especially when they are pitched as and seem to be, helping workers. For workers, there is always a sting, whether to dampen wage demands (family allowances) or fob off social discontent (welfare state). They are ultimately a good deal for the capitalist parasite class and can be clawed back if profit erosion occurs. Socialism does not exist and has never existed. Any top-down direction in capitalism is state capitalism. Socialism is a post-capitalist society. So the idea of it will seem alien at first. Just as capitalism must have seemed strange in feudal times. But nothing will stop an idea which time has come. The most pressing need facing humanity is to progress from the anarchy of capitalism to a post-capitalist society. The price to pay for delaying this task will be more poverty, increasing hunger, mounting disease and continuing wars. To these has now been added the climate change and global warming which could make all the higher forms of life extinct.

"Rise like Lions after slumber

In unvanquishable number,

Shake your chains to earth like dew

Which in sleep had fallen on you."

Ye are many - they are few."

Shelley

Wee Matt

Period Politics

An MSP is calling for the Scottish government to provide free feminine hygiene products (tampons) - saying it is a matter of "dignity" for women who cannot afford to pay. “I, Daniel Blake” by Ken Loach - includes a scene where an impoverished female character shoplifts a packet of tampons. Scots scriptwriter Paul Laverty wrote the scene after meeting UK females who struggled to afford such essential hygiene products. Scottish Labour MSP Monica Lennon is calling for the Scottish government to provide free female sanitary products "for anyone who needs them". A similar proposal has already been approved in New York City where they will be freely accessible in New York City's public schools, prisons, and homeless shelters.

The Trussell Trust’s Scotland network manager, Ewan Gurr, said some women had even resorted to using toilet roll, socks or newspaper because they were unable to afford female sanitary products. 

Surely, when toilet paper is available without charge in all public places, it is not too much to expect that  women are treated with a similar understanding and respect.

However, the Socialist Party goes much further and demands that women and men have the right to free access to whatever they determine to be a requirement for their needs and well-being.

Capitalism has outlived its usefulness

The most pressing need facing humanity is to progress from the anarchy of capitalism to a post-capitalist society. The price to pay for delaying this task will be more poverty, increasing hunger, mounting disease and continuing wars. To these has now been added the climate change and global warming which could make all the higher forms of life extinct.

Socialism is a post-capitalist society where the private, corporate or state ownership of the means and instruments for creating and distributing wealth, for the profit of the 1-5% in conditions of wage slavery for the 95-99%, is abolished and replaced by common ownership by us all, of all resources. Socialism is not state-ownership. It is common ownership by us all and administered by us all.

Instead of technology being utilised to produce for sale, only to make a profit for the minority parasitic owning class, with a rationed access to the wealth that workers create, (wages) for the working class (all wealth comes from the workers), production in socialism will be for use and will be ratcheted up to create surpluses for the satisfaction of human needs. Over-production, because of competition, sends capitalism into crisis, as human needs are still unmet, 'can't pay, can't have', is the cause of disputes and wars over trade, trade routes, raw materials and spheres of geopolitical influence.

Capitalism has outlived any useful purpose it might have had in building up the technology and educating workers, so the workers not only produce the wealth, they effectively run capitalism from top to bottom. The twin concomitants of capitalism poverty (absolute or relative) and war, (proxy or arms sales or otherwise) will always persist.

Therefore socialism is a production for use society, democratically owned and controlled by us all, without the need for the anarchy of markets, state-control over people or a means of exchange (money). Government ceases to be 'over people' and becomes the people self-administering 'things'.

Time for an end to wage slavery. The last great emancipation will be that of the working class freeing themselves from waged slavery and taking the world into common ownership and democratic control. Time for a societal upgrade to an elite free, democratic, post-capitalist, production for use, free access society, owned and run by us all, as part of a truly socially equal human family.

The capitalist class are the parasitical class. All wealth springs from labour. Capitalism has outlived any useful purpose it might have had in building up the technology and educating workers, so the workers not only produce the wealth, they effectively run capitalism from top to bottom.

It is not just a question of abolishing money but of common ownership with production for use and then money becomes obsolete. You can paper your walls with it then or soften it for toilet tissue. Capitalism’s technological change allied with its competition creates conflict which capitalism cannot resolve and sows the seeds of the possibility of the demise of capitalism with production for use of a superabundance of wealth harnessed for the common good.

Money is merely a means of exchange. Commodity exchange does not create wealth but is a reflection of the exchange values already contained in the wealth exchanged. The workers' commodity 'labour power' produces a surplus value above what its market exchange value is and is the source of profit once the surplus is sold on the market. Poverty, relative or absolute, is then the essential element within the exploitative relationship of capitalism which keeps the wage slave presenting himself for exploitation and productive in excess of his rationed waged access.

The Labour Party is not and never has been a socialist party. “The Labour party has never been a socialist party, although there have always been socialists in it – a bit like Christians in the Church of England,” said Tony Benn

But some argue that British socialists should at more like the Spanish party Podemos but what advantage would that give any real socialist? They would be in precisely the same position as any other capitalist party and have to govern over the people as representatives rather than be proceeding, from the people with a mandate for the social revolution in which power resides with the people with recallable delegated functions when required by the people. Don't confuse parties which call themselves 'socialist' or 'socialistic' yet aim to govern over people with the real thing. They are all capitalist variants, at best 'reformist', at worst charlatans.

Socialism will not come in," like a thief in the night", as that balloon Keir Hardie once said, but as the conscious act of the immense majority, who know what it is they are doing and why the democratic end results of a democratic revolution determine the means used to attain it.

Socialism is such a revolutionary transformation of society, from private corporate or state ownership of the means of producing and distributing wealth, into common ownership and democratic control of all resources, from production of commodities for sale, with rationing of access via wages and prices to the producers, into production for use, of utilities for free access and use by all.

Once common ownership is established and wage slavery abolished, the world will not be the same as it was. Children will laugh at those money tokens, bank cards, credit cards and cash registers and card machines, in the museums of antiquity.

However, the twin concomitants of capitalism poverty (absolute or relative) and war, (proxy or arms sales or otherwise) will persist as long as capitalism persists. War arises from competition over raw materials, trade routes and spheres of geo-political, national, global, transnational capitalist, interests.

Time for an end to wage slavery. The last great emancipation is that of the working class.

Time for a societal upgrade to an elite free, democratic, post-capitalist, production for use, free access society, owned and run by us all as part of truly equal humans.

It is not the job of politicians, but our job to see it as necessary and to make it so happen, we move into the post-capitalist society.

Wee Matt