HOW TO SKIRT AROUND SHORTSIGHTED SCHOOL RULES! (weekly poem)

HOW TO SKIRT AROUND SHORTSIGHTED SCHOOL RULES!

The Principal of the Isca Academy, Exeter, sarcastically told boys

to wear skirts as she'd banned them from wearing shorts in the

heatwave although girls were excused from wearing stockings.

Preventing schoolboys wearing shorts,

Is all about conformity;

And therefore demonstrates the faults,

Of school dress uniformity.

It's all about 'bow to our rules',

And the perceived 'dead liberty',

Of pupils challenging the school's,

Immoderate authority.

Some school boards act like Daleks, who,

When taking prisoners, often say;

“We are the masters now, so you,

Don't question orders—just obey”.

A uniform has this effect,

On every Army new recruit;

It says to them 'don't dare reject,

The order when it comes to shoot'.

It's not for the convenience,

Of those that have to wear the clothes;

It's all about the dominance,

That we allow them to impose.

So boys, congratulations on,

Your 'V-sign' to the Principal; (1)

Who's 'principle' was woebegone,

And made you nigh invincible!

(1) Aimee Mitchell. (Miss!)

© Richard Layton

Would you credit it

A number of reformists want to solve the problems of capitalism without changing its relations of production and instead find the flaws in some part of the monetary mechanism. For some with their roots in the Social Credit movement of Major Douglas it is in the banker’s credit monopoly that is at fault. The currency reformers of the Social Credit type wish to save capitalism by making changes in the monetary system alone. While the Social Creditors exonerate the industrialist capitalists they concentrate their attacks upon the bankers and financiers. The Social Credit propose to socialise credit only and leave the capitalists in control of industry, and the proposed lever for this social transformation is an alteration in the monetary mechanism.

 Social Creditors had the merit of recognising that the productive forces of capitalist society are being strangled in an economic strait jacket: that poverty in the midst of potential plenty is shameful and unnecessary. They sincerely desire to abolish war, poverty, and the miseries of exploitation, but without upsetting the existing social relations of production and without compelling anyone but a handful of bankers to yield up their power and privileges.

They find the scapegoat in “the money power”, the credit monopoly of finance capital. They insinuate that bankers deliberately create panics and crises by contracting credits or withholding them. They do not know that the calling in and curtailment of credit is simply evidence that the crisis is already under way, instead of being the fundamental cause of its occurrence, and they pass over the fact that bankers, like other capitalists, can only invest money where there is the prospect of profit.

The problem before society to-day is not a financial problem. It is a property problem. The banks belong to the superstructure of capitalism. Private property is the foundation. The financial crises, consumption crises, credit crises and the like are nothing more than the reflections of the fundamental economic crisis arising from the anarchy of production. No amount of credit supply to manufacturers, no amount of currency manipulation which leaves the question of property ownership untouched, can do other than aggravate the crisis of capitalism.

They are mistaken in the belief that money is not (or should not be) a commodity, but a system of worthless tokens, fiat money. They mistake the superficial forms of modern money (its paper dress as currency or its phantom bookkeeping existence as checks) for its inner nature. They completely fail to comprehend the function of money in a commodity producing society, and particularly under capitalism, the most developed form of a commodity producing society. As the general equivalent of value, money is not only a commodity but the king among commodities, destined to reign so long as capitalism endures.

Nor do the Social Creditors understand that money is also subject to all the laws of capitalism. Chief among these laws is the necessity of transforming money into capital, and using capital to appropriate surplus value. The financier accomplishes this by loaning money to the industrialist or the merchant, who, in their turn, appropriate their share of surplus value directly from the working class. The self-same capital is used for exploiting purposes by both groups of capitalists, and yet the Social Creditors condemn the bankers alone. Their position amounts to this: the capitalist may exploit the working class, but the finance capitalist must not exploit his fellow capitalists.
 Social Credit preys on the fear of the small businessman presenting the monster of finance capital which threatens to destroy them. Hence, the Social Creditor’s assault upon the credit monopoly,  which is merely a specialised extensions of the monopoly of the means of production by the capitalist class. The credit monopoly is the means by which large aggregates of capital exploit the lesser capitalist groups, and through them, the working class. The credit monopoly at the apex of exploitation could be overthrown only by an overthrow of the general monopoly of the means of production in the hands of the capitalist class.

The Social Creditors, however, have no quarrel with any other form of the power of private property but “the money power”. They charge the banker with converting “the communal wealth into financial debt”, although that process is only a special case of the continuous transformation of social wealth into private property under capitalism. They speak of “the communal credit” as though such a thing existed in a social system based upon the institution of private property. Marx disposed of such nonsense once and for all with the remark that “the only thing which enters into the collective possession of the people under capitalism is the national debt”.

Douglas’ chief contribution to the science of economics is his discovery of a flaw in “the price system”. This flaw is formulated in an algebraic theorem, A over A plus B. According to Douglas, all purchasing power is distributed in the course of the productive process, as follows: Let A represent payments made to individuals..(whether workers or capitalists) in wages, salaries, and dividends. Let B represent payments made to other organizations for raw materials, bank charges, and other external costs. Then A, the rate of flow of purchasing power to individuals, must obviously be less than the rate of flow of prices, A plus B, by a proportion equivalent to B. This permanent deficiency in purchasing power is supposed to be bridged by the banker’s extension of credit against production. When the banks withdraw credits, the gap between prices and purchasing power grows wider and wider, until the crisis occurs.

This theory fails to explain why, if there exists a permanent deficiency in purchasing power, capitalist crises break out periodically. The Social Creditors attempt to get around this difficulty either by asserting that the present crisis is altogether unprecedented, a phenomenon peculiar to current times , or by accusing the bankers of anti-social conduct. Neither of these explanations will hold water. Fourier over a century ago described the first capitalist crisis in the same phrase used by the Social Creditors, “poverty in the midst of plenty”. The financial magnates are as helpless as any other capitalist group to start or stop a general capitalist crisis, although they have induced temporary credit stringencies for their private purposes.

But even as it stands, the fallacy in Douglas’ discovery is not difficult to detect. This lies in the fact that B payments (raw materials, bank charges, and other external costs) are A payments (wages, salaries, dividends) at a previous stage of production. So long as some other, more fundamental flaw does not interrupt the production and circulation of commodities, B payments will continue to be transformed indefinitely into A payments; banks will keep extending or renewing credits, and the industrialist will continue producing profitably. The fundamental cause of capitalist crises is to be found in the antagonisms of capitalist production, which generate all the relatively superficial flaws discovered by Douglas in “the price system”.

Except for scientific purposes, it does not much matter whether the reader grasp this part of the Douglas theory. His panacea does not necessarily follow from it, nor is it understood by most Social Creditors. They put their trust in the scientific attainments of this quack doctor of economics because his remedy is so cheap and palatable.

There are three proposals in the Social Credit program: the socialization of credit, the National Dividend, and the Adjusted Price. First, the power of creating credit is to be taken away from the private bankers and vested in the state. Then the state is to be incorporated and a National Credit Account set up. Out of the Social Credit, calculated from the excess of productive capacity over purchasing power, National Dividends will be periodically distributed to all eligible stockholders of the corporative state. The inflationary rise in prices which would follow the issuance of National Dividends (a fancy name for unsecured currency) will be prevented by the Adjusted Price. The Adjusted Price requires all retailers to sell their goods at a decreed discount and to be reimbursed at the average rate of profit by the government. Thus, Social Credit combines the best features of the dole, perpetual price-cutting, and a bull market.

The scheme is utterly Utopian. If credit was nationalised, as it is for all practical purposes in many capitalist countries today, it would simply put a more powerful weapon in the hands of the monopoly capitalists who control the state and be used, as it is in those countries, to protect the profits of national capitalists against foreign competition. The closest the workers will ever get to a National Dividend under capitalism is the national dole, a subsistence pittance to keep them alive until capitalist production or imperialist war needs them. To put the Adjusted Price into effect would entail the regulation of the .entire national economy, and, short of proletarian revolution, this could only be attempted by a dictatorship of monopoly capital. Credit could only be successfully socialised, however, after all the instruments of production had been socialized.

In the Draft Scheme for Scotland, Douglas proposed to reduce all wages in organized industries twenty-five percent, to deprive the membership of any trade union violating a wage agreement of the National Dividend, and to compel every worker to remain at his present trade for five years after the initiation of the scheme on penalty of losing his dividend. The National Dividend is supposed to compensate the worker for this loss of wages, freedom, and the right to strike.  Social Credit is radical in form and reactionary in substance. Its propaganda panders to all the confused pseudo-socialists covering for their outspoken hatred of finance capital. The Douglasites walk with their heads in the clouds, filled with rosy dreams of the future in which, by their financial feat, there is enough of everything for everybody, God’s in his heaven, and all’s right with their world. Social Credit propaganda has influenced certain sections of the labor movement, who substitute speeches about “holding the the banker’s to account” and the nationalization of the banks of England for a revolution. The bankers won’t flinch from this “onslaught”, but people may be diverted from that which matters more than all else to-day, namely, the struggle to secure the social ownership of the means of production.

Social Credit have ruled two provinces in Canada for a number of years. In New Zealand they had a number of MPs. In both countries they proved themselves to be loyal servants of the ruling class and ardent defenders of the capitalist system.

The Struggle

Much of the left today has abandoned Marx’s Capital.  Many people against certain aspects of capitalism snatch pieces of Marxism to give themselves a progressive legitimacy. Being anti-capitalist does not say much.  It only begs the question: how do we describe capitalism and from what angle are we criticizing it?  Much of the Left chooses to divide capitalism between good and bad ones. They replaced Marx's criticism of capitalism with a host of reformist and even reactionary demands peddled under this name. Marxism stands for the abolition of wage labour. Academics have tried to convert it into a scientific sociology or an alternative economic science for the left wing of the bourgeoisie. Pseudo-socialist presented workers with repulsive examples of despotic societies in the name of socialism, like the Soviet Union, China and Albania. The result was to alienate workers from communism, cut the connection between worker and communism. 

Capitalism is defined in many ways. Each of these definitions of capital leads to a specific political conclusion. The term capitalism has been increasingly replaced by the more clever-sounding “free enterprise,” or " free markets". One definition of capitalism is based on private property. This definition equates capitalism with private ownership and is also defined in terms of market economy and competition. That is a mistake. Those who define capitalism as private property ownership think that to abolition capitalism, state ownership must replace private property. Some others think that we can do away with capitalism if we abolish market and institute a central planning system. Capitalism can just as be run by the government through state-owned companies as privately-owned enterprises. Defining capitalism by the market and private property ownership is a misleading characterization of Marx's criticism of capitalism that led to the failure of the revolution in Russia. Nowhere does Marx says private property ownership is an essential characteristic of capitalist exploitation. What he says is that capitalist exploitation requires that productive labourer to be separated from the means of production and it is irrelevant whether the state owns the means of  production or a person or a group of people. Many take disparity in income level as a way of defining a capitalist society and unequal political power can be also taken as a criterion to defining capitalism. Those who define capitalism as unequal income level seek redistribution of wealth via taxation reform. 

All these definitions of capitalism are all alien to Marx. What is socialism? Marx defined socialism as the abolition of wage slavery and the creation of a society based on common ownership.  Socialism is humankind's liberation from all forms of deprivation and bondage.

Marx’s theory of surplus value is the cornerstone of his analysis of capital.  For him, class means the production of surplus value by the worker and its appropriation by the industrial capitalist. When Marx talks about exploitation, this is what he has in mind. When Marx talks about class exploitation, he has in mind the extraction of surplus-labour from direct laborer by the capitalist enterprise. This surplus is the unpaid labour of the laborer that the capitalist lines up in his/her pocket. Marx's entry point to analyze capitalism was neither private ownership nor market but rather exploitation of  labor power and appropriation of surplus value by industrial capitalists. 

Capitalist exploitation does not occurs in the market. Buying and selling of  labour power is a "fair and equal exchange."  Buying and selling of other commodities produces no surplus value. Whether means of production is owned privately or owned by the state is irrelevant to capitalist production. Capitalist production is production of surplus value and its appropriation by people other than the productive worker.

Marx’s theory of surplus value identifies non surplus-value producing capitalists, for example, merchants and money lending capitalists (the bankers) and where they stand in regards to the production and appropriation of surplus value. To expand his/her production, the capitalist may have to borrow money from money lender who in return gets a portion of the surplus-value in the form of interest.  Moreover, the industrial capitalist can sell his/her products to a merchant to speed up the capital turnover.  The merchant, in return, receives a part of the surplus value in the form of a discount, and the capitalist enterprise can concentrate on the production of surplus value rather than being involved in commodity exchange process. Another part of the surplus-value goes to the state in the form of tax to secure the necessary stability and protection for capital, and so on.

While the capitalists whose capital is directly engaged in the production of surplus-value,  the industrialist, is engaged in the production of surplus value, the merchant performs the transformation of commodity into money.  In other words, merchants do not produce surplus-value, for buying and selling a commodity simply represents the exchange of value between two equals. However, merchants make the realization of surplus value possible because they turn products of labor into capital. Similarly the money lender does not produce any surplus value, but he/she may lend his money to the industrial capitalist who may lay it out for the expansion of production and creation of more surplus-value.  In other words, the financiers transfer their money to capitalist enterprise only temporarily.  By putting their money at the disposal of industrial capitalist, money lender provide the condition of existence of production and appropriation of surplus-value.  Therefore, merchants and money lenders neither are the appropriators of surplus value nor its distributor.  They are recipients of portions of the surplus value in the forms of discount and interests, respectively.  Therefore, neither buying and selling, whether in domestic or international markets, nor lending or borrowing money, creates surplus value.  In other words, Marx uses his theory of surplus value as a principle tool in locating various segments and groups of people in the capitalist society and where they stand in relation to production and appropriation of surplus value.   

The last bricks of the Welfare State are being dismantled and even the existing basic level of society's responsibility towards the individual, in terms of social welfare and economic security, is being challenged by employers and politicians. In many parts of the world nationalism and religion are on the ascendance. Yet in other regions of the globe workers are gradually emerging out of their previous political apathy. The world is entering a turbulent period of intensified worker protest movements. Today the destructive results of the recession and government austerity policies for the workers - unemployment, loss of social services, etc. - are felt more than ever. In the whole of Europe questions such as unemployment and lack of job security and so on are becoming a focus for a renewed surge of workers' movement, and the ruling class is losing its capacity for the political intimidation of the workers' movement through its once tried and tested populist mobilisation of the "middle-class" strata. The decline of trade unionism, while having immediate detrimental effects on the life of millions of workers, has created an environment for new thinking and alternative practices in worker organisation in Europe. The workers' movement has already moved towards more radical actions organised outside the traditional union structure, creating alternative organisations, as witnerssed by the recent Walmart protest wildcat strikes. The worker is realising that it is the worker and worker alone who should take care of his economic interests and political rights, without hoping for anything to come from the politicians who fill parliamentary seats or the bureaucrats in their professional union posts. The era of workers' strength on the political stage is once again arriving.

Many political activists shrug their shoulders at socialism and socialist organization, preferring participation in the host of one-issue struggles and while socialists should actively be involved also in these fields, this doesn't preclude theoretical work for communism. Capitalist society will assimilate protests and re- formulate them after its own image, incorporating them into the establishment. To resist this requires the existence of independent socialist parties. The issue of the primacy of theory over movement, or vice versa, has little meaning. They are the different levels of a single social movement. Socialism is a movement for working-class and communist revolution. We regard this revolution possible and on the agenda right now. But as a class which is under pressure, we also fight for every improvement in the social situation which enhances workers'  political and economic power and promotes their human dignity. We also fight for every political opening which may facilitate the class struggle. We are activists of the worker's protest movement. We are fighting for the establishment of the worker's social and economic alternative as a class. The worker's position in production does not change. The economic foundation of society does not change. This class's alternative for the organization of human society does not change. The worker still has to sell his or her labour power daily in order to live, and thus views the world from the same standpoint and offers the same solution to it. Socialism is the worker's movement to destroy capitalism, abolish wage-labour and do away with exploitation and classes.

There is a need to express the socialist vision in more concrete terms where more practical models of economic and political organisation in socialist society are elaborated.  Many socialists say it is not for us to devise blueprints and utopias, that our task is to organize a revolution against the existing system, to make our goals clear but it is the process of workers' revolution itself which will provide the practical forms of their realization.  Nevertheless, to some degree, we must offer positive alternatives. Socialists should, firstly, communicate the precise meaning of socialist aims, and, secondly, to show the feasibility of their realization. It must explain that the abolition of bourgeois ownership does not mean the introduction of state ownership, and show how the organization of people's collective control over means of production is practical. It must stress that socialism is an economic system without money and wage labour, and then shown how organizing production without labour power as a commodity is possible. Our job is not to make models and utopias and prepare a detailed blueprint for production and administration in a socialist society but to show in what ways socialist society differs from the existing one. For example, we show the process of the withering away of the state following a socialist revolution by explaining the material basis of the state in class society and its superfluousness as a political institution in a classless society, and not by producing a step by step guide programme for the dismantling of state institutions and its departments.

To Relax Is To Say....

Every month we include wise words from such luminaries as Marx, Engels and Gustav Bang; but this month we are going to give them a rest and cross the pond to the glamour and glitz of Hollywood though we'll be looking at a man not so glitzy, movie director, Robert Aldrich. He came from a wealthy family and was, in fact a cousin of Nelson Rockefeller. 

Aldrich turned his back on the prosperous life his family offered him for which he was ostracized. Starting as a $50 dollar a week clerk at R.K.O. Studio he progressed to directing some socially conscious movies, such as ,''The Dirty Dozen'', ''The Longest Yard'' and Twilight's Last Gleaming''. Though Aldrich was no Marxist, he nevertheless had a detestation of capitalism and believed that struggling against it was important. Perhaps he summed up well why socialists fight on against the odds.

''Well, I don't think you can relax and enjoy it. To relax is to say,'' well I'm dead already''. Why not struggle and maximize the victories. They may not come, probably won't come, but they might come, and when they come your one victory ahead of total defeat''. (R. Aldrich, 1918-1983. Body and Soul, by Tony Williams (2004), Scarecrow Press.)

For socialism, 

Steve, Mehmet and John

Non-Profit Company? Fat Chance.

British Premier, Theresa May and London Mayor Sadiq Khan have ordered an inquiry into the cause of the devastating fire at the Grenfell Tower. The tower is, or was, a public-housing project, owned by the local government and managed by the Kensington and Chelsea Tenants Management Organisation, which is ''officially'' a non-profit company--fat chance! Last year this group completed a $16.91 million renovation that included new outside insulating panels, double glazed windows and a communal heating system.

Flames raced up the outside of the tower, triggering speculation that the new panels contributed to the fire by not being up to the specifications of the fire code. Fire resistance panels cost $40.60 per square meter which is $3.40 more than those which the company is said to have used. If this is true it underscores the fact that people's safety comes with a price, which is sometimes too high for, even, non-profit groups. 

Steve and John

Socialist Ideas

The SPGB ideas about Parliament will continue to be debated and in the end it will be the working class who will vote with their feet and choose whether they consider the Socialist Party's approach the most appropriate or not. However, we do take issue that our understanding of political action is essentially non-marxist as many claim.

The fundamental position of the SPGB is that"Where it is a question of a complete transformation of the social organization, the masses themselves must also be in it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they are going in for [with body and soul] - ( Engels 1895)  The same article repeatedly counsels the use of the vote and of Parliament.

Our case remains:
"The state is an expression of and enforcer of class society. Intrinsically it is a coercive institution...but it has assumed social functions that have to exist in any society and which have nothing to do with its coercive nature: it has taken over the role of being society’s central organ of administration and co-ordination.... it would have to be reorganised on a thoroughly democratic basis, with mandated and recallable delegates and popular participation ( my emphasis again) replacing the unaccountable professional politicians and unelected top civil servants of today....The only people who can introduce socialism are the great majority of men and women. Socialism is a democratic society that can only function with the active participation of its members. It will be a participatory democracy...This is not to say that the socialist majority only needs to organise itself politically. It does need to organise politically so as to be able to win control of political power. But it also needs to organise economically to take over and keep production going immediately after the winning of political control. We can’t anticipate how such socialist workplace organisations will emerge, whether from the reform of the existing trade unions, from breakaways from them or from the formation of completely new organisations. All we can say now is that such workplace organisations will arise and that they too, like the socialist political party, will have to organise themselves on a democratic basis, with mandated delegates instead of leaders.With the spread of socialist ideas all organisations will change and take on a participatory democratic and socialist character, so that the majority’s organisation for socialism will not be just political and economic, but will also embrace schools and universities, television, film-making, plays and the like as well as inter-personal relationships. We’re talking about a radical social revolution involving all aspects of social life."

A social revolution in tandem with the capture of the state machine through parliament which the SPGB does describe as the ultimate source of political power. For Marx, universal suffrage was “the equivalent of political power for the working class” and its “inevitable result” would be “the political supremacy of the working class.” Engels argued that “democracy means the dominion of the working class”and so workers should “use the power already in their hands, the actual majority they possess... to send to Parliament men of their own order.” The worker “struggles for political power, for direct representation of his class in the legislature” (quotes taken from an anarchist website who appear to recognise the Marxist roots of the SPGB's strategy better than some "Marxists")

Some upbraid the SPGB for holding non-Marxist ideas such as taking little account of what he posits as hesitant and uneven process both within particular countries and accross the globe in contrast to the SPGB vision of world revolution. But is this a non-Marxist position? But i know he knows that this is SPGB shared the same view as Engels once again."It follows that the communist revolution will not merely be a national phenomenon but must take place simultaneously in all civilized countries – that is to say, at least in England, America, France, and Germany...It will have a powerful impact on the other countries of the world, and will radically alter the course of development which they have followed up to now"

It is not the SPGB who envisage the non-Marxist process what Engels de-rided with the dismissive comment "one fine morning, all the workers in all the industries of a country, or even of the whole world, stop work, thus forcing the propertied classes either humbly to submit within four weeks at most, or to attack the workers, who would then have the right to defend themselves and use the opportunity to pull down the entire old society." 
The SPGB adheres to the Marxist view that Engels puts elsewhere which is "whenever we are in a position to try the universal strike, we shall be able to get what we want for the mere asking for it, without the roundabout way of the universal strike"

“The word Revolution, which we Socialists are so often forced to use, has a terrible sound in most people's ears, even when we have explained to them that it does not necessarily mean a change accompanied by riot and all kinds of violence, and cannot mean a change made mechanically and in the teeth of opinion by a group of men who have somehow managed to seize on the executive power for the moment. Even when we explain that we use the word revolution in its etymological sense, and mean by it a change in the basis of society, people are scared at the idea of such a vast change, and beg that you will speak of reform and not revolution. As, however, we Socialists do not at all mean by our word revolution what these worthy people mean by their word reform, I can't help thinking that it would be a mistake to use it, whatever projects we might conceal beneath its harmless envelope. So we will stick to our word, which means a change in the basis of society." —William Morris in How We Live and How We Might Live.

The world is crying out for change. Millions of children die each year of starvation while those with millions spare themselves no indulgence. People say that we in the Socialist Party are utopian because we hold to the view that a new society is the only lasting solution to the mess we're in and because we dare to suggest that we could run our lives in a much more rational and harmonious way. Some people on the "Left" decline to define socialism, because they think that any account of a future society is a waste of time and that we should concern ourselves with present-day struggles. But unless you do talk about where you're going, how will you know when you've arrived? 

More and more people today recognise that the present system of production for profit makes our lives needlessly painful and is ruining the planet.  Unless you do have a clear idea of socialism then anyone can claim it, defame it and say it doesn't work. And unless we keep the idea of working directly for a worldwide co-operative community on the agenda people will always be sidetracked. It is essential that the ideal of the new society should always be kept at the fore.

It cannot be stressed enough, that without a widespread and clear idea among workers of what a socialist society entails, it will he unattainable. The reason is simple. The very nature of socialism—a moneyless, wageless world of unrestricted access to the goods and services provided by voluntary cooperative effort—necessitates understanding. There is absolutely no way in which such a sweeping fundamental transformation of social relationships could be thrust upon an unwilling, unknowing majority by some minority, however, enlightened or well-meaning.

The Socialist Party is not prepared to associate with organisations which carry on propaganda for the reform of capitalism, recruit members on that basis and seek the votes of reformists. Our case is that work for socialism is the essential end and it cannot be combined with reformism. Socialism cannot be achieved without a social revolution, that is a change in the property basis of society, from private ownership to social ownership and democratic control.  Alone, we have stood for a social revolution to overturn capitalist society and replace it with socialism.

Dishonesty. Well, It's Capitalism.

On June 7, a committee of federal M.P.s heard testimony from ex-bank workers about how all of Canada's top banks pressured them to get results by foul means or worse. They were forced to hit unreachable goals, coax clients into raising their credit card limits, offer mortgages beyond what the customers could afford and in general sell unnecessary products and services in order to increase revenues and meet very high sales targets.

According to Sally Watson, a Scotia bank worker for 33 years,'' It is absolutely profit before anything else. It has nothing to do with servicing the clients''.

At the time of writing it is not known what the outcome of the enquiry will be, but it is pointless telling the banks to clean up their act when the very nature of capitalism breeds dishonesty. 

Steve and John.

What is socialism?

Capital Expansion

There are no supreme saviors,

Neither God, nor Caesar nor tribune;
Producers, let us save ourselves,
The International 

Capitalism, as its name suggests, is quite simply, the system of capital.  Its sole purpose is the accumulation of capital through the exploitation of human labour.  It is a system that accumulates capital in one phase simply so that it can accumulate still more capital in the next phase -- always on a larger scale. Capitalism requires unlimited economic growth. It cannot stand still. The capitalists' task is to expand their profits, capital, wealth. Corporations are machines for accumulation. It is as simple as that. 
Capitalism is also a system of periodic crises. Capitalism has a tendency to break down. The fact that production is organised not to satisfy human needs but to make profits for the capitalist class is the ultimate cause of the system's recurrent crises. The alternative is a real socialism in which workers replace production for profit with production to fulfill human needs and create a society with democratic control over workplaces and society as a whole. We need an ecological and social revolution.  We have all the technologies necessary to do this.  It is not primarily a technological problem because the goal here would no longer be the impossible one of expanding our exploitation of the earth beyond all physical and biological limits, ad infinitum.  Rather the goal would be to promote human community with the earth.

Few words can have suffered as much as "Socialism". There have been countless claims for having implemented Socialism. If Socialism as a word is to have any meaning, by its nature it must be a precise one. Contrary to a widespread, but wrong idea, socialism is not a transitional society preparatory to communism. Socialism for Marx is communism (including the two stages). Marx called post-capitalist society identically and indifferently, communism, socialism, republic of labor, cooperative society, union of free individuals, society of free and associated producers, or simply association - all equivalent terms for the same society.

The victorious outcome of the workers’ self-emancipatory revolution is the socialist society. A socialist revolution is according to Marx, the “dissolution of the old society” It is not the so-called `seizure of power' by the oppressed, least of all by a political party in the latter's name. There is also no political power, no state, and so no “workers’ state” in the new society. InMarx already wrote in the 1840s that the “proletariat can and must liberate itself  and that “the consciousness of a profound revolution, the communist consciousness, arises from this class (itself)” As Engels  summed up Marx's ideas: “For the final victory of the ideas laid down in the Manifesto Marx counted only and singularly (einzig und allein) on the intellectual development of the working class as it necessarily had to come out of the united action and discussion"

So what is Socialism? Simply stated the means of production would be held in common, with people giving voluntarily to that society whatever they were able and taking that they required satisfying their self-defined needs. The productive forces in such a society would be so developed to meet those needs, liberated from the restrictive necessity to accrue surplus value, profit. It is not enough to take productive property into state ownership, for this merely transfers property from private to public control. The essential relationship between that property and the actual producers, the workers, remains unaltered.

  A productive enterprise transforms raw materials into saleable commodities: trees into furniture, for instance. In simplistic terms, the raw material arrives at the entrance to a factory, undergoes various processes throughout the factory and emerges from the exit as a product ready for sale. The raw material remains inert unless subjected to labour which transforms it into the finished article. It is the labour that gives the item its value. The process is enacted not to produce any particular commodity, the final product is irrelevant. It is the realisation of the acquired value of the commodity through sale that is the objective and the consequent profit it entails. For the labour is bought at a rate less than the value it creates in the product so that the eventual sale brings a greater return than that paid for labour. This is surplus value, profit, the whole purpose of the enterprise. This surplus value accrues to the holders of the productive process, those with title to the "economic" property that is the social relation for making profit.

 In classical capitalism, the owners of the factory might be an individual, a family, a partnership or a group of shareholders. It is clear that in terms of the factory's raison d'etre it is irrelevant which of these are the legal owners. The twentieth century brought forms of ownership that apparently blur such a simple distinction. Transport the factory to the Soviet Union and the claim would be that the social relations had significantly altered. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat, having abolished private ownership in all its forms, had freed labour from its former exploitation, ie it being robbed of part of the value it created. However, it had done nothing of the sort. The State fulfilled the function of owner, buying labour and accruing the surplus value created. Essentially, the factory operates in precisely the same manner, the "economic" property is unaltered. What has changed is the "juridical" property, who has legal title to the factory. Even if the Soviet authorities used all the profit for the benefit of the workers, building hospitals, schools etc., the essential element, the accumulation of surplus value, remains central. How a capitalist spends profit is irrelevant, it is still capitalism according to the "economic" property no matter how the "juridical" property is altered. In this country, miners remained bought labour after nationalisation as much as before under private ownership. The same is true of co-operatives who must realise profit or go bankrupt. The legal ownership of things, factories, and machines etc. does not determine the operation of "economic" property. The only way a significant change can be made is to bring all "economic" property under the democratic control of society so it can be deployed to produce to meet needs and not profit. 

With the fall of the Soviet Union and the capitalist transformation of China and Vietnam, the lauded triumph of capitalism is a hollow victory in that it was bound to win in one form or other, private or state. Socialism cannot have been defeated or proved invalid as it has never been tried.

 Marx identified the working class as the liberators of society. In the latter part of the nineteenth century they were easily recognisable as factory workers. A century later the worker has become as diverse as the modes of work. However, they are still in that crucial relationship with the means of production, having to sell labour for less than its actual value. If this were not so, there could be no profit at all in the world. The suburban house-owner ith a mortgage or the rented council house tenant have that relationship in common no matter how different all other aspects of their lives might be. It is that common element that makes socialism a possibility.

Saving Us From Ourselves!

 In British Columbia the three capitalist parties that ran for the provincial power of the legislature have now traded hats – but not capitalism's: NO WAY! 

Smiling as Cheshire cats, the three brimming halfwits, Clark, Horgan, and Weaver, well know their bread is still getting buttered running capitalism BC style.

With gasping maneuverings from the Clark tribe openly stumping the NDP-Green election platform reforms right before they fell no one could easily tell one political capitalist stripe from the other. 

They could have made it easier for wage slaves to figure out and just announced they were running capitalism together in the interest of, well, capitalism (you dummies!), not workers. 

Now smile for the cameras and get back to work idle readers. These birds of a feather who flock together have a job to do: make profits from your labour! Thank goodness they are saving us from ourselves. 

Steve and John.

A Steady State Society

We in the SPGB are seeking a "steady-state economy" which corresponds to what Marx called "simple reproduction" - a situation where human needs were in balance with the resources needed to satisfy them.

Such a society would already have decided, according to its own criteria and through its own decision-making processes, on the most appropriate way to allocate resources to meet the needs of its members. This having been done, it would only need to go on repeating this continuously from production period to production period. Production would not be ever-increasing but would be stabilised at the level required to satisfy needs. All that would be produced would be products for consumption and the products needed to replace and repair the raw materials and instruments of production used up in producing these consumer goods. The point about such a situation is that there will no longer be any imperative need to develop productivity, i.e. to cut costs in the sense of using fewer resources; nor will there be the blind pressure to do so that is exerted under capitalism through the market. Of course, technical research would continue and this would no doubt result in costs being able to be saved, but there would be no external pressure to do so or even any need to apply all new productivity enhancing techniques

Since the needs of consumers are always needs for a specific product at a specific time in a specific locality, we will assume that socialist society would leave the initial assessment of likely needs to a delegate body under the control of the local community (although, other arrangements are possible if that were what the members of socialist society wanted). 

Capitalilsm's Priorities

Over the last 15 years scientists and scholars pursuing independent research in Canada have had their funding cut by 35 per cent. This fact was made public by Dr. David Naylor, former University of Toronto President, at a meeting in June of many of Canada's top scientists and researchers at the Toronto Convention

Center. 

These cuts have,''Robbed the future of innovations in science, health and technology.'' Yet the Federal Government have announced a massive increase in spending on armaments. So much for capitalism's priorities. 

Steve and John

Two Ways To Wreck The Environment

This writer has a buddy who has just returned home after 4 months in Peru. He said,''It rarely rains there but this time the rain was torrential. The rivers couldn't hold it; they burst their banks and 30 towns were destroyed.'' 

Dare I suggest it was another symptom of how capitalism is wrecking the environment it

its pell-mell rush for profits? 

Steve and John