Hold high the red banner

Fellow-workers, political parties are the expression of economic interests, and in the last analysis are carried to victory or defeat by the development or retardation of economic classes.  It is private property in land and in machinery that creates the division of classes into slave-masters and the enslaved.  To quote the words of Ernest Jones, the Chartist activist:

"The monopoly of land drives him (the worker) from the farm into the factory, and the monopoly of machinery drives him from the factory into the street, and thus crucified between the two thieves of land and capital, the Christ of Labour hangs in silent agony."

We appeal to you then, fellow worker, to rally around the only banner that symbolises hope for you.  Cast off all your old political affiliations, and organise and vote to reconquer society in the interests of its only useful class – the workers. Let your slogan be, the common ownership of the means of life, your weapons the industrial and political organisation to conquer your own emancipation. The Socialist Party remains revolutionary, not in the sense that policemen and politicians understand the word, but in its true historical significance, for it is the conscious expression of the working people’s will, to strive for a radical transformation of society and to enable fellow wage-slaves to substitute socialism for capitalism. The emancipation of the working-class is a historical necessity, and it can only be the work of the workers itself. Wherever folk are drudging under the yoke of capitalism, the organised working men and women will demonstrate for the idea of their social emancipation. This conviction is the keynote of the Socialist Party's message.

Neither regulatory legislation nor the resistance of the trade unions removes the main thing which needs abolishing: capitalist relations, which constantly reproduce the contradiction between the capitalist class and the class of wage labourers. The mass of wage labourers remain condemned to life-long wage labour; the gap between them and the capitalists becomes ever deeper and wider the more modern technology prevails. The reformists would gladly convert wage-slaves into contented wage-slaves, so they must hugely exaggerate the advantageous effects of piecemeal palliatives, etc.  Reforms may sometimes ameliorate the situation of the working class by lightening the weight of the chains labour is burdened with by capitalism, but they are not sufficient to end capitalism and to emancipate the workers from the tyranny of wage-slavery. Fellow members of the working- class declare that they are done for ever with the myth that liberty, or even an effective amelioration of the most cruel evils and sufferings of capitalist exploitation will be granted by the benevolence and justice of the ruling class. Only the action of the working people themselves and organised in a class party for the political struggle, can change wage-slaves into equal citizens of a free commonwealth.

The interests of the workers, as the exploited and oppressed, class of society, are the same in all countries. In consequence our must be an world-wide one. Across the frontiers and seas the workers of all nations reach out to each other the hands for a brotherly union; against the global power of capitalism rises the power of the working class as the workers stand up together in unity to affirm the solidarity of our class interests to show that the capitalist exploitation unites the workers without difference of trade, sex, religion, and nationality, into the one revolutionary force, that is going to conquer the world, where labour has all to win and nothing to lose but its chains.

To the fellow members of the working class, the time has arrived when every man and woman will have to choose whether capitalism with all its attendant miseries and horrors is to remain enthroned, or whether we intend to be free. We shall have to choose whether we really believe in self-emancipation, or whether, for generations yet to come, we prefer to remain the tools of the capitalists, and the slaves of profit. We are confident that socialism is the way out for our class from the horrid nightmare of the competitive struggle which sets nation against nation, class against class, and individual against individual. The struggle between individual capitalists to realise profits sets employer against employer. The conflict between national groups of financiers sets nation against nation, and produces war. But despite their individual and national conflicts the whole capitalist class stands united in their common desire to exploit Labour. Hence under capitalism the freedom of the working class consists in the freedom to starve or accept such conditions as are imposed upon them by the employing class. But the freedom of the master class consists in their untrammelled freedom to buy Labour to create profit. Thus the workers are not free. Neither owning nor controlling the means of life, they are wage slaves of their employers, and are but mere commodities.

In opposition to all other parties—Conservative, Lib-Dem, and Labour— the Socialist Party affirms that so long as one section of the community own and control the means of production, and the rest of the community are compelled to work for that section in order to obtain the means of life, there can be no peace between them. The propertied class controls the State machine, thus our aim demands the capture of the political institutions through the ballot box to afford an opportunity to achieve a peaceful social revolution. Work for the building of the world anew, for the sweeping away of ignorance, for the full physical and mental development of men and women free from class exploitation, and the degradations of poverty. Refuse, and by your neglect you stand for misery, exploitation, greed and war. The eyes of the world are upon you. The choice is yours.

The Decline of the High St

Scotland is losing shops faster than any other part of Britain, according to research. 

Leith in Edinburgh, with a 10.53% closure rate, and Ayr, at 8.3%, were the areas worst affected.

PwC Scotland deals director Mark Addley said: "The average of around one closure per day has been the Scottish average for most years since 2012 - but that will be of little comfort to people who have lost their jobs and livelihoods because of this. Overall, we are seeing far fewer closures due to outright insolvencies, but more due to the lower key restructuring of store portfolios." Addley said: "Looking ahead, I doubt the figures are going to improve by the end of 2017 for areas like banking as we've seen a number of companies announce branch closures of late

Could It Be A Diversion?

You are all aware of the cock up at the Academy Awards. The media had a field day with it so there is hardly anyone who isn't aware. Yet over the years, there have been approximately 2000 individual presentations and this is the first screw up! That doesn't seem so bad. 

Could it be the capitalist media used it to divert attention from all the terrible things happening these days? Maybe I'm wrong, but I wouldn't put it passed them.

 Steve and John

Reforms Just Don't Cut It.

Trump is preparing to roll back one of Obama's policies. His intention is to free big companies from regulations on pollution and climate change. On March 14th, he announced his plan to abandon Barack Obama's commitment on car fuel economy standards. This is not to say that Obama's plan would have solved the problems concerning environmental destruction. However, it would have been better than nothing.

The point being that governments can pass reform measures that do some good, but the next government can rescind or change those measures. So obviously, reforms just don't "cut it".

 No reform ever attempts or ever will attack the most fundamental aspect of capitalism; ownership of the tools of production by a small minority. It's not reforms we need, but revolution. 

Steve and John.

Being more than anti-capitalist

"Anti-capitalism" has become a popular slogan, and a good thing too. But if this is to have a positive impact people have to be clear as to what is mean by capitalism. Unless these anti-capitalists take the time to study what exactly capitalism is and how it operates they risk not advocating a viable alternative. Calling yourself “anti-capitalist” is a bit like proclaiming yourself to be “anti-cancer”. We would all like to see an end to cancer, but the only way to bring that about is to understand how cancer works. In the long run, there isn't any point in just trying to treat the symptoms of the disease. Unless you cure the disease itself, the symptoms will keep on coming back. The same logic applies to capitalism. People have been trying to reform capitalism for as long as it has existed. What have they achieved? A polluted planet, scarred by war and hunger, which is owned and controlled by the McMicrosoft Corporation. Why have things turned out this way? To understand this it is necessary to understand what capitalism is. Hundreds of different organisations are not a movement. They are not even anti-capitalist, in the sense that they haven't yet agreed on a definition of capitalism.

For a revolution to be any good, you have to be FOR something, besides being AGAINST capitalism. Any person can be against capitalism and some people are just against big capitalism (the banks and the corporations) as if somehow 'small' capitalism is a completely different thing, and perfectly nice. It's not. They're the same. Capitalism is commodity production for sale on a market and instead of that, we could have co-operative production for use and free distribution on the basis of need. This would involve no markets, no money, no commodities, no private property, no rich class and poor class, no ecological destruction, no famine, no war and virtually no crime. Anti-globalisation is supported by many. It is a movement that is hard to pin down and impossible to characterise in a few words. The proponents seek to constrain the global financial system; restrict the behaviour of corporations; stop the privatisation of public resources such as land and water, among other ameliorations of the world order. Unfortunately, the thinking is stuck very much within the blinkers of capitalism.

We cannot hope to understand world events unless we view these from a class, rather than national, perspective. We live in a world where the dominant world economic system is capitalism, a system that has organised all people into two opposing classes with conflicting interests. The owning or capitalist class lives on profits by virtue of its ownership of the means of producing and distribution wealth. It is their class interest to depress wages and benefits to increase profits. The working class everywhere has nothing and therefore is forced to sell its labour power for a wage or salary in order to live. But the source of all wealth is the product of labour applied to nature, and the very people who produce this wealth are denied access to it by laws and ultimately the state. Government's function is to protect the capitalist class and its legal 'right' to accumulate the wealth created by ordinary working people. The two classes thus have opposing and conflicting interests. The central imperative of capitalism is to expand and to seek new ways of extracting more profit from ordinary working people by seeking out raw material and markets and imposing itself on the people of other countries; transforming indigenous self-supporting people into wage and salary workers. People everywhere are compelled to join the ranks of the world's working class to face the same class struggles as their fellow workers in the industrialised countries. We share a common interest.  

It cannot be denied that capitalism has entered a particularly pernicious phase in its development – euphemistically called 'globalisation' – in undeveloped countries as large corporations viciously compete globally to secure markets and relentlessly exploit labour in countries where they reputedly earn 75 percent of their profits. But exploitation is not just confined to undeveloped countries. Working people everywhere are on the defensive against the class whose imperative is to maximise its profits and perpetuate their mastery over all working people. There can be little doubt that the wages and salaries of the majority of people in industrialised countries have stagnated or declined, working hours and job insecurity have increased and conditions of life have deteriorated. The correlation between economic growth and improving social welfare has been cut as corporations seek to introduce 'Third World' standards into the established industrialised countries. We share a common interest.

The real enemy is class society engendering the domination of ordinary working people by the class who live by making profits. Countries don't dominate or exploit other countries; the capitalist class who own the companies and corporations assisted by their respective governments exploit the working class everywhere, regardless of their geographical location. Working people don't benefit from the ruthless exploitation of undeveloped countries; companies and corporations benefit by maximising their profits for their shareholders. Ordinary workers don't import or export commodities; companies and corporations owned by the capitalist class export commodities in order to release the profit generated for them by the world's working class. Ordinary workers don't make trade rules; governments working to further the interests of companies and corporations draft these rules. Ordinary workers don't invest in other countries or claim 'free trade' is an impetus for global prosperity; companies and corporations invest in order to generate 'super-profits' and it is they as a class who prosper, not ordinary working people. Ordinary working people don't live on profits; instead, they struggle on a wage or salary. We have a conflict of interests.  

When anti-capitalist protesters demanded less corporate exploitation of developing countries they were intimating that the indigenous population would be better placed if left to its own devices. This is a delusion; less interference from 'foreign' capital would simply“Read! Think! Study!” allow the indigenous capitalist class or even the state to take over the exploitation of the indigenous working people. The same is true of struggles against colonialism, demands for national liberation, independence and the right of national self-determination. These movements are no more than the struggles of an indigenous capitalist class, striving to gain the right to exploit ordinary workers in their own country. Worker support for such movements is based on the misapprehension that it is somehow less painful to be exploited by someone born in the same country than by a foreign corporation. Workers have no country, just a place where we struggle to live, work for a wage or salary and make profits for the owning class. We have a common interest; we are all wage slaves.

The world cannot be made 'fair' by rewriting trade rules. The WTO together with the IMF and the World Bank and all the other institutions exist only to serve the needs of the companies and corporations owned by the world's capitalist class in their pursuit of profit. Their abolition would not alter the underlying conflict of interests between ordinary working people and their capitalist masters. It is only with the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of socialist society that worker servitude everywhere will end. This is achievable not by demonstrating for reforms to institutions of capitalist society but by a majority of the world's workers understanding the need for socialism and working together to capture political power to abolish capitalism and build a socialist society.

“Read! Think! Study!”

The Socialist Party is the revolutionary organisation of the working class that aims at the overthrow of the capitalist system and the establishment of the co-operative. Socialism comes not as a remedy for the evils of existing society, but as principles for a new society. The Socialist Party strives for a new world, a class-free world, a peaceful world, a world without poverty or misery, a genuine brotherhood of mankind. Workers of all nationalities, immigrants, refugees, political exiles, from every foreign land and native-born must make a common, determined demand: Socialism. It teaches the class struggle where every victory is a step towards the social revolution. Socialist Party, has as its aim is the emancipation of labour and the establishment of the cooperative commonwealth. There is a fighting class spirit today among the people. It aims at the overthrowing of the present system, it aims to take possession of the tools of production from the capitalist class and operate them for the benefit of the working class, which will be the whole of society. It aims is to change the foundation of this society from an exchange of commodities to the cooperative commonwealth.  The Socialist Party is the political expression of the interests of the workers. For socialism is in the hearts, in the minds, on the lips of millions around the world. The future is ours.

The capitalist state, by controlling the old political parties, controls the powers of the state and uses them to secure and entrench its position. Without such control of the state, its position of economic power would be untenable. The workers must wrest the control of the government from the hands of the masters and use its powers in the building of the new social order, the cooperative commonwealth. The Socialist Party seeks to organise the working class for independent action on the political field, not for the betterment of their conditions but for the revolutionary aim of putting an end to exploitation and class rule. To accomplish this aim of the Socialist Party is to bring about the common ownership and democratic control of all the necessary means of production — to eliminate profit, rent, and interest. Political action means participation in elections for public offices to gain control of the powers of government in order to abolish the present capitalist system. Such political action is absolutely necessary to the emancipation of the working class, and the establishment of genuine liberty for all. We have slavery as part of the market-place worldwide. Serfdom. All kinds of brutality in the name of buying and selling goods. 

We all in common depend upon the same common resources of nature. Since all people in common depend upon the sources and tools of production, there can be no individual liberty save these sources and tools belong to the people in common. The private ownership of the common sources and machinery of life is nothing less than ownership of human beings. If a man owns my brea or owns that which I must have in order to get my bread, he owns my whole being. He who sells his labour-power for wages sells himself; for his labor-power is his life. The wages system is merely an advance in the slave-system, but it is no fit system for free men; and there can be no true freedom for all men until there is not another hireling left under the sun. The labour of the world is essentially slave-labour. There is not a wage-earner who has not in some degree debased his soul, even in spite of himself, by his dependence upon the private buyer of his labour. So long as some men own that upon which all men depend, the owners and the dependents are alike corrupted, enslaved, and robbed. Our capitalist system rests upon this power of the employing and the owning class to legally appropriate the fruits of the labour of society.

The Socialist Party calls upon all people who seek the emancipation of the working class from the chains of wage slavery to join it and through it and to work for the overthrow of the present capitalist system in all its social and economic ramifications, and for the establishment in its stead of a worldwide socialist cooperative commonwealth. The materials for the building of a socialist world are here, but the creation remains to be undertaken. The task of creating a coherent and free society is the mightiest to which mankind has summoned itself. We build on a sure foundation only when we build a system that has for its end the commonwealth, the common freedom and the common abundance for all men and women. The class-conscious appeal of the Socialist Party is not for strife or antagonism, but for constructive purposes. The aim of socialism is the abolition of all classes and parties and the coming in of but one class, the people. The Socialist Party is not appealing to you for support on the grounds that we socialists are better than other men, but on the basis that socialism is better than capitalism. Socialism proposes to bring forth and educate the best that is in men and women; capitalism and competition are bringing forth and educating the worst. Socialism comes not to destroy, but to fulfill.  

Must Man Starve? (1974)

From the April 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

For six months the peasants of the drought-stricken regions of Wello and Tigro in Ethiopia have been suffering from famine . . .  In the five months from April to August between 50,000 and 100,000 died. (Guardian 18 October 1973)
Malnutrition in the Bangladesh villages has reached near-starvation levels among the poor and landless. “I have seen village children who look like Biafro babies”, said a senior official. (Guardian 19 October 1973)

In large parts of Africa, Asia, and South America malnutrition is the norm and starvation common, while even in industrially developed countries considerable numbers eat badly and too little. In Britain’s “affluent society” it is reckoned that 50 to 60,000 old age pensioners die each year through lack of food and warmth.

Most experts estimate that two-thirds of the world’s population are undernourished — and that the situation is getting worse.

Is It Inevitable?

Yes, say many. It’s a popular view that there are just too many people and too few resources for everyone to eat well. This is demonstrably false.

At the Second World Food Congress (June 1970) United Nations experts stated that if present technology were used to the full the world’s population could certainly be fed. Then years ago the International Agricultural Centre at the Hague announced that the earth could support a population of 28,000 million if food production were organised on lines then known to be practical (Times 24 July 1962) (Present-day population is under 4,000 million).

The many studies undertaken by various food production experts leave us in no doubt that it is possible to produce enough good-quality food for everyone.

Why Then Hunger?

Simply because in this society food is not produced to feed people but to make a profit for the farmers and other investors in the food industry. This results in: —

• People starving amidst a sufficiency of food — because they’ve not got the money to buy it. “The problem in Bangladesh, as elsewhere on the subcontinent, is not that the food is not there but that the poor (and especially the landless) cannot afford to buy it” (Guardian 19 October 1973).
• Food being produced, then either left to rot in warehouses or deliberately destroyed — because it can’t be sold profitably. 300,000 tons of “surplus” butter are considered a "grave problem” in the EEC while in Britain perfectly good fish and apples have recently been destroyed.
• Quotas being set to limit foodstuffs production and farmers being paid to keep perfectly good land unused. "It is a known fact that to avoid overproduction of grain, an attempt has been made in various parts of the United States to apply the principle of subsidizing farmers to leave a percentage of their arable land fallow. The same method has been used with other agricultural products”. (Hugo Osvald, The Earth Can Feed Us All).
• Land that could be brought into production by irrigation, and new methods (such as underwater farming) that could be employed, not being used due to the general effort to keep production below a certain level to maintain high prices.

What's The Solution?

Since it’s the basic economic structure that causes the problem all petty reforms merely tinkering with the superstructure are bound to fail. The land and the means of food production, along with all the natural and man-made resources of society, must come under the democratic control of the whole world community. The sole aim of food production must be to satisfy the food requirements of the world and to provide satisfying work for those involved. The buying and selling of food, and the other needs of life, should be abolished and a system of free distribution adopted. Eating is a natural function, not a privilege. In a world based on the common ownership of the means of wealth production, food production would be merely a technical problem — and we already have the technology to meet the task. With the fetters of profit-making removed, today’s potential plenty would be made a reality.

How Can This Be Achieved?

No leader can usher in such a society on your behalf. Its establishment depends on YOUR understanding and effort. Nothing less than conscious political action by a majority of the working class can create World Socialism. The Socialist Party of Great Britain and its Companion Parties overseas are striving to this end.

Aberdeen Socialists

Waiting To Be Burst.

Toronto Housing prices continue to soar; February prices were 27.7 per cent higher than this time last year, and there seems no end in sight. The average cost of a detached home has reached the 1.5 million mark. Be that as it may, a stress test done by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation found that house prices could fall as much as 30 per cent if mortgage rates were to rise by 2.4 per cent over the next two years. This is what happened between 1989 and 1996 when Toronto house prices fell by 40 per cent. 

It's a bubble and like all bubbles, it's just waiting to be burst and after it is those who bought homes at inflated prices will be very upset. So why go through all this nonsense?

 Why not opt for a world where all will have a nice place to live without any price tags on them? 

Steve and John

The Time To Rejoice.

On March 10 Stats-Canada said 15,300 new jobs were added last month and the Unemployment rate is down to 6.6%. Economists were quick to mention it was a sign the economy has picked up steam. As Ben Reitzes, senior economist at the BMO said, ''One more piece of evidence the economy has turned the corner''.

Anyone would think we should all go out, rejoice and be exceedingly glad. 

There is still unemployment, which there will always be as long as Capitalism lasts, as to what extent isn't a moot point because even a low level of it means hardship for some. Furthermore, the real figure will always be higher than the official ones. There are always people who have used up their EI allowance and others who can only get part-time work. The time to rejoice will be when a majority of the working class has eliminated the cause of unemployment. 

Steve and John.

We aren't all Jock Tamson's bairns

MORE than a third of Scots children have suffered racism, shock new figures have revealed.

The study by charity Show Racism the Red Card shows 37% of young people had experienced racism in a year up to February. The numbers have rocketed 19% since the same study took place last year and experiences recounted by youngsters in the shock study included terrible racial insults, with one child even being told they shouldn’t wear a kilt because of they weren’t white. The charity said their figures revealed that 29% of the young people they worked with had been victim to vile racist abuse. That is 11% higher than stats for last year and an increase of 8% in just two months.

Ude Adigwe, a GMB regional organiser who experienced first hand racism is Scotland’s education system, said: “These shocking figures show any idea Scotland is a haven of tolerance compared to the rest of the UK is absolute nonsense. Brexit and increasing levels of poverty have created fertile breeding ground for divisive racist poison.

“The irony is that, as a child growing into adolescence and then into my adult years, I have always been in love with the inclusive sentiments encapsulated by the wonderful, old Scottish proverb, ‘We are all Jock Tamson’s bairns'. Given these depressing figures, it seems that not all bairns are welcome in the land of Jock Tamson.”

Nicola Hay, campaign manager at Show Racism the Red Card said: “The figures sadly indicate a notable rise is young people’s experiences of racism. It is likely that the spike in racist experiences is a result of Brexit almost legitimising racist and xenophobic views. In addition to this, people living on the poverty line are likely to blame migrants, however, we are losing more jobs to automation than migration – but you can’t deport a driverless truck."

Our lives, their profits

We live today in a world of potential abundance. Yet, while millions are in want and many starve, part of the world's resources are consumed in producing weapons of war and preparing millions of men and women to use them. Modern technology and production, which by its nature can be operated only by the labour of millions of people all over the world yet these millions do not work alone. They work together. No man makes anything by himself but only plays some part in the co-operative labour by which things are today produced. Factories and farms, mines, mills and docks, though spread throughout the world, depend upon each other like strands of a cobweb. They are but parts of one world-wide productive network. 

Commonsense would, therefore, suggest that to derive full benefit for all from this worldwide productive unit, it should be owned and controlled by all humanity; that it should belong in common to all mankind and be controlled by them to satisfy their own needs. In Capitalism, however, the means of production belong to a small capitalist class, and are used to make things, not primarily to satisfy needs, but to be sold to realise a profit on the world market. Those who own the world and its implements of production compete against each other to buy raw materials and in selling products. But competition is not only economic; political means are also used. The competing capitalist groups have at their disposal massive armed forces which exist to protect and further their interests. Capitalist economic conditions make them necessary. Any owning group which controlled no armed forces would be in dire peril and would go under. Not only would it be unable to protect its own wealth, it would also be unable to take and hold sources of raw materials, keep others out of a market, and to control ports and trade routes around the world. The owners, therefore, compete politically and economically for raw materials, markets and trade routes. When other political means fail, all that is left is brute force—organised, scientific killing and destruction— War. Owning groups are always under pressure to equip their armed forces with ever more destructive weapons. In this "arms race" enormous resources are now devoted to research into nuclear physics, biochemistry and space travel. In addition, millions throughout the world are conscripted or enticed into the armed forces and trained to kill, wound and destroy. This is what is behind the paradox of waste amidst want. 

The problem of war militarism and armaments is one of the many which arise from capitalism, from class ownership and production for profit. Militarism is the inevitable outcome of commerce, of the buying and selling that goes with the private ownership of the world's resources. To abolish militarism we must abolish commerce. To abolish commerce we must replace private property by common property; that is, we must establish socialism. This means a worldwide change which will harmonise social production with social needs. Only then will the resources of the world be able to provide the plenty they are capable of. instead of being wasted on such things as arms.

THE FUTURE IS WITH THE PEOPLE.

Humanity faces the danger of complete destruction. The old capitalist “order” can exist no longer. There is only one power which can save it – the power of the working class. The ultimate result of the capitalist mode of production is chaos – a chaos that can only be overcome by the producing class, the workers who must end the domination of capital, make war impossible, wipe out state boundaries, transform the whole world into one cooperative commonwealth, and bring about real fraternity and freedom. Decades have been lost in the swamp of reformism when generations of leaders, gave token recognition to the policy of social revolution but denied it in substance. Reforms generate conservatism. Nobody outside an insane asylum any longer believes that the Labour Party is going to put an end to the capitalist system and usher in the cooperative commonwealth. The purpose of the Socialist Party is not to demand any immediate reforms — for capitalism will grant that — but advocate revolution, and that only. What are we organised for? What is our chief bond of unity? What is our avowed object? It is the abolition of capitalism.  Our goal remains always the same — socialism, the substitution for the present capitalist system of the cooperative commonwealth.

The social revolution will never be achieved by solely elections. The revolution will be a success when we have the workers organised and conscious of their strength to run industry and civic society. Therefore it naturally follows that the workers must work to set themselves free. That means that there is no room in our movement for leaders. The words of Marx still ring in our ears, “that the emancipation of the workers must be brought about by the workers themselves.” The world socialist movement must be a movement of revolutionary workers. When the workers are politically and economically organised and made conscious of their power, then the foundation is laid for a successful social revolution. Let us weigh anchor and set sail for the cooperative commonwealth.

The fight is not going to be easy. We shall need men and women with a mind to think and a heart to do and courage to dare. Do not be pessimistic. We urge the workers to continue and strengthen their participation in the universal struggle for emancipation from the economic masters of the world and the establishment of the socialist commonwealth. The only solution of the many social problems confronting men and women is the abolition of capitalism. When every worker is assured of the full product of his or labour through the common ownership of the means of production, there will be no room on earth for division and prejudice. We call on all workers, regardless of coluor or creed, to organise politically and industrially, to win our emancipation from the chains of economic slavery that now bind us down and apart from one another. There is no more promising field for socialist activity than organising and crystallizing the sentiment that already exists against the private ownership. We are convinced that the people are ready for the approach of the cooperative commonwealth. The Socialist Party intends to use all its influence, (albeit, at this moment in time, that is very little) toward the socialist cooperative commonwealth and against capitalist ownership. As socialists we teach that the lives and conduct of men and women are governed by their economic interests, and we think we meet this principle when we point to the economic gain, the material reward involved in securing the establishment of the cooperative commonwealth which must be built; not by the magic of wishing but by the brain and brawn of the workers. The word “comrade” expresses worldwide brotherhood, stronger than the national or religious ties. There is no more urgent task today. There is no hope for fellow-workers except by the pathway mapped out by the Socialist Party, the advocates of the cooperative commonwealth.

The fetters of the slave and the lash of the master symbolise the reign of capitalism, that barbarous system we are suffered to endure. Not until slave and master have both disappeared, and forever can we lay any proper claim to civilisation. Cooperation presupposes that men and women work together in harmony for one another’s happiness. The socialist cooperative commonwealth, is entirely within the realm of the possible. 

Housing and Child-Poverty in Scotland

About 70,000 Scottish children have been pushed into poverty as a result of soaring housing costs, new figures reveal. One in four children in Scotland are now living in poverty and the problem is escalating. Rent levels have soared across Scotland in recent years, with hotspots in particular areas like Edinburgh. This eats into the incomes of poorer households and can push them into in hardship.

Some 260,000 Scots children found themselves in poverty last year – including an extra 70,000 who were pushed into this situation because of high housing costs, Scottish Government figures have shown. The latter figure is 20,000 higher than when the SNP came to office in 2007. It means 26 per cent of children in Scotland are living in relative poverty, up from 22 per cent the previous year.

Alison Watson, Deputy Director of Shelter Scotland, said: “Recent figures confirmed the devastating impact the lack of affordable housing is having on families and individuals living in Scotland, pushing more into poverty and damaging their wellbeing and life chances – especially children. That 170,000 more people have been pushed into poverty because of their housing costs should be yet another alarm bell for the Scottish Government that much more needs to be done right now to tackle Scotland’s housing crisis.”

Capitalism refreshes those parts that other beers cannot reach

BrewDog, the Aberdeenshire-based craft brewer, is now worth more than £1bn after selling a stake to a US private equity firm. BrewDog was founded on crowdfunded cash and has 55,000 small investors but now the brewer has raised £213m from TSG Consumer Partners, for a 22.3% stake. The deal will see about £100m paid out to the brewer's co-founders, a further £100m go into the business and the rest used to buy shares from early investors. BrewDog grew rapidly from its founding in Fraserburgh in 2007, with a £20,000 bank loan, and opened its first pub in Aberdeen in 2010. It had revenues of £71m last year and returned a pre-tax profit of more than £7m. The private equity cash comes at a time of further expansion for the firm, which is building a new brewery in Columbus, Ohio, and hopes to launch in Australia and Asia after that.

Founders James Watt and Martin Dickie had previously said they would never sell to a multinational beer maker,

The Old And Poorly Funded

With its usual reforming zeal, the Toronto Star called attention to the plight of seniors in nursing homes, informing us, in its issue of March 11 that they are fed on $8.33 a day. Some, run by the province of Ontario are not for profit homes, but nevertheless, have to break even. Some of these homes have contracted out to privately run nursing homes which do have to make a profit and therefore have tighter budgets. 

A 2015 report by the Dietician Of Canada concluded that Ontario homes are, ''serving cheaper protein foods and fewer fresh fruits and vegetables due to budget constraints. The 320 long-term care nutrition managers and registered dieticians surveyed in the report said that improved funding would result in better nutrition, which is a brilliant deduction.

One can hardly expect the Capitalist Class to give a damn about workers who are no longer productive, though they can always find money to spend on weapons for war. Since money, or lack of is the issue, wouldn't it be better to have an economic system where it wouldn't exist? Then such problems would not exist. 

 Steve and John.

Think About It.

A recent episode of ,''Museum Mysteries'', mentioned that from the 16th to the 19th centuries 8 million native American who had been enslaved by the Spanish section of the Capitalist Class, died working in their mines through the inhalation of mercury fumes.

 Nor can this be dismissed on the premise that it happened years ago; there are still millions of chattel slaves in the World today and millions more wage slaves.

 Yet still many think Capitalism is the best of all possible systems; wake up and smell the coffee folks.

 Steve and John.

Scottish Myths

In his book, Scottish History For Dummies, former-SPGB member and one-time Edinburgh branch secretary, Dr William Knox , highlights some lesser-known historical facts about Scotland. Dr William Knox is a senior lecturer at the Institute of Scottish Historical Research, University of St Andrews. He is the author of seven books and more than 30 articles covering the past 300 years of Scottish history

1) There is no genetically pure or original Scot

There is no common ancestral or genetic heritage that links the peoples of Scotland. The country was a patchwork quilt of various peoples grouped together in tribes who certainly never thought of themselves as Scottish. They owed allegiance only to their kith and kin, but in the campaigns against Roman imperialism they built federations that laid the basis of kingdoms. Ancient Scotland was made up of four separate groups: Angles, Britons, Picts and Gaels (or Scoti), who each spoke a different language. Latin became the common language of the whole country only after the Christianisation of Scotland in the 6th century AD.

2) Kenneth McAlpin (810–858) was not, as is popularly claimed, the first king of Scotland

What McAlpin did was in 842 take advantage of the Picts who had been severely weakened militarily by punitive Viking raids, and unite the kingdom of the Gaels with that of Pictavia. But while he ruled over the whole of Scotland north of the river Forth, large parts of the country were still in the hands of the Vikings in the north and Islands, and in the south the Anglo-Saxons ruled. But McAlpin was referred to as king of the Picts – a title conferred on him at his coronation on Moot Hill at Scone, Perthshire, in 843 AD. It was not until the reign of Donald II (889–900) that the monarch became known as the ri Alban (king of Alba). McAlpin’s achievement was to create a long-lasting dynasty that gradually extended the territorial borders of Scotland both north and south, but it was not until 1469 that what we know as Scotland today was established.

3) William the Lion (1165–1214) was not, as his name suggests, a strong and fearless king

Although he was on the throne longer than any other Scottish monarch, with the exception of James VI and I, never was a king so humiliated as William. Captured by the English, he gained his release only by signing the treaty of Falaise in December 1174. By the terms of the treaty he only ruled Scotland with the permission of the English crown. The treaty lasted 15 years and was repealed when the Scots agreed to pay a hefty sum of money. But the humiliation didn’t end there, as in 1209 he was again forced to pay homage to John I.  Therefore, his contribution was to heraldry rather than statecraft; he put the lion rampant on the Scottish flag.

4) William Wallace was not the only patriotic leader of the resistance to the English occupation of Scotland

Equally important was Andrew de Moray. In the winter of 1297 he escaped from an English prison and immediately began to organise the resistance in the north of Scotland against English rule. By the end of the year his forces were in control of Morayshire and had taken possession of the principal castles of the region, including Elgin and Inverness. De Moray’s success in the north was matched by Wallace’s in the south. After the defeat of the English at Stirling Bridge in September 1297 de Moray was mentioned along with Wallace in letters as ‘the leaders of the army and of the realm of Scotland’. However, victory came at a price: de Moray was wounded at Stirling and died two months later. Some historians have argued that too much of the credit for this has gone to Wallace, and that the successful campaign of 1297 owed more to de Moray than it did to his more celebrated contemporary

5) The Scots never won a battle when they were favourites

At Flodden Field in 1513 the largest Scottish army ever assembled to invade England was annihilated by a much smaller English army that inflicted 10,000 causalities on the Scots in just two hours. Again at Solway Moss in 1542 a Scottish force of 15,000 men was defeated by 3,000 English soldiers – and 1,200 Scots were taken prisoner. The defeat was so demoralising that James V took to his bed and died of shame. When the Scots were the underdogs they did best. At the battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297 a vastly outnumbered Scottish army inflicted a devastating defeat on the English. Just 17 years later at Bannockburn an English army three times that of the Scots was decimated by the forces of Robert the Bruce. In 1745 the rag tag army of the Young Pretender, Charles Edward Stuart, walked through Scotland and in to England as far as Derby where it inexplicably turned face and marched home with London within its grasp.

6) The proud boast that Scotland has never been conquered is nonsense

This view is part of the folklore of the Scottish people handed down from one generation to the next. There are of course a few grains of truth contained in the assertion: the Romans were frustrated in their attempts to conquer Caledonia and so resorted to building walls to keep the warring tribes from attacking them. Likewise Edward I, the hammer of the Scots, occupied large swathes of Scottish territory, but that only sparked a resistance that ended with the defeat of Edward II at Bannockburn in 1314.

The patriotic Scottish boast regarding national prowess begins to look more than a little threadbare when we take account of the Cromwellian occupation of Scotland in the 1650s: Cromwell’s New Model Army inflicted a crushing defeat on the Scots at Dunbar in 1650, and followed it up with another at Worcester a year later – 2,000 Scots were killed and more than 10,000 were taken prisoner, including almost all the Scottish leaders. Scotland was incorporated into 'the free state and Commonwealth of England', with 29 out of 31 shires and 44 of the 58 royal burghs assenting to what was known as the ‘Tender of Union’.

Under the terms of the Cromwellian union, the Scots were given 30 seats (half of them held by English officers) in the Westminster parliament. With General George Monck in charge, the conquest of Scotland was complete, and it was only Cromwell’s death in 1658 and the political chaos that followed it that allowed Scotland to regain its sovereignty.

 7) Flora MacDonald [who became famous for helping Bonnie Prince Charlie escape to France after he was beaten at the battle of Culloden, the final confrontation of the 1745 Jacobite Rising] died a Unionist and Hanoverian

MacDonald was and is a Scottish icon ever associated with the romantic but essentially doomed attempt by the Stuart dynasty to reclaim the throne of Great Britain in 1745. After the adventure collapsed following defeat at Culloden in 1746, Charles Stuart took refuge on the island of Benbecula in the Outer Hebrides. Dressed as Flora’s Irish maid, Betty Burke, Charles made his escape.

MacDonald was arrested for her part in the escape and spent some time in the Tower of London, but it was only temporary. Under the amnesty of 1747 she was released from captivity as a prisoner on parole, and lived with Lady Primrose in London. She became a celebrity, and among the many fashionable people who visited her was Frederick Prince of Wales, eldest son of George II.

At the age of 28 Flora married Allan MacDonald of Kingsburgh and moved to the Isle of Skye. Difficult economic times saw the couple emigrate to North Carolina in 1774. When the American Wars of Independence broke out in 1776, her husband and five sons fought not on the side of the rebels but for George III’s royal British army! This gives some credence to MacDonald’s claim that she had helped Charles Stuart out of compassion rather than politics.Her husband was taken prisoner and she left for Scotland. He joined her two years later, and the family took up residence on Skye once more where she died in 1790 a British patriot

8) The Labour Party was not a wholly working-class party in Scotland

Although working people constitute the largest section of society north of the border, they were not always supporters of Labour. Most workers in Scotland in the late 19th and early 20th centuries voted Liberal and it was only after the First World War that the vote went to Labour. However, it was never hegemonic, as the religious divisions in Scotland ensured there was always a sizeable Protestant working-class Unionist (a party that merged with the Conservatives in 1965) vote. The party itself in Scotland was an alliance of skilled male workers and the middle classes – as such it preached against class-based politics, such as those advocated by the far left. A study of the social backgrounds of inter-war Labour MPs found that around 45 per cent of them were from non-manual backgrounds; a social trend that was to intensify after 1945.

9) Sectarianism was not just a west coast phenomenon

Most people would identify Catholic and Protestant rivalry with Glasgow and its satellite towns. But the bitterest conflicts in the 20th century took place not in Glasgow, but in middle-class Edinburgh in the 1930s.

Led by rabble-rouser John Cormack, leader of the Protestant Action Society, Catholics faced harassment and violence. Employers were pressurised into sacking Catholic employees, priests were spat on in the streets, and Sunday congregations were subject to verbal and physical assault.

On top of this, huge demonstrations were held to disrupt important events in the Catholic Church’s calendar. The high water mark was the riot of 1935, when Cormack led a mob of 20,000 Protestants baying for blood against the Eucharist Congress that was taking place at the Catholic priory in Morningside.

The activism was rewarded with seats on the Edinburgh Town Council; indeed, Protestant Action in the municipal elections of 1936 won 31.97 per cent of the Edinburgh vote, pushed Labour into third place and returned nine councillors.

But the popularity of Cormack and Protestant Action was short-lived, as the outbreak of war in 1939 pushed sectarianism on to the sidelines of politics in Edinburgh. In spite of this, Cormack held his seat on the Town Council until his death in the 1960s.

10) Outside of Canada, the central belt of Scotland was the highest recipient of American inward investment anywhere in the world between 1945 and 1970

This little strip of land in the middle of Scotland saw the influx of giant American corporations such as IBM, Timex, National Cash Registers, Caterpillar and many more besides. Why did they come? For three good reasons: firstly, it opened up British and European markets; secondly, there existed a highly skilled and educated pool of workers earning historically relatively low wages; and, thirdly, there were no linguistic barriers, as English was the common tongue

Fact of the Day

Greenpeace concluded that Coca-Cola sells in the region of 108 to 128 billion thowaway plastic bottles each year, 3,400 a second.

Some 16 million plastic bottles end up in the environment every single day in the UK, according to Greenpeace.