Tuesday, November 07, 2017
Socialists for a bloodless revolution
Monday, November 06, 2017
Dreams and Fragility
Hiding the History of Scotland's Slavery Past
Against religion
Sunday, November 05, 2017
Catholicism and Socialism: Mr. Wheatley's Lie (1925)
From the April 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard
In the “Daily Herald” (March 23rd) Mr. Wheatley defended the Catholic Church against the charge of being anti-Socialist. His argument took the following form. The Catholic Church does not oppose State ownership as advocated by the Labour Party; the Labour Party is a Socialist party; therefore, the Catholic Church does not oppose Socialism.
In this Mr. Wheatley is using his customary Jesuitical method of reasoning. Of course, the Church does not oppose State capitalism; why should it? But as Mr. Wheatley himself showed (“The Catholic Working Man”) the Pope and the Church do oppose the abolition of private ownership. The latter means the end of exploitation, while the former merely makes the State the direct instrument of exploitation. The capitalists as bondholders still control production.
He says:—
It is merely playing with words to differentiate between the Labour Party and the British Socialist Party.Unfortunately for him, Mr. Wheatley declared (”Forward,” November 3rd, 1923)
There is no good blinking the fact that the policy pronounced at Plymouth will seriously strain the Labour Party. It would not do so if it were a Socialist Party. But it isn’t.He omitted to mention or deal with the fact that the only organisation in Great Britain, calling itself the Socialist Party, opposes the Catholic and every other religion.
He is reported to have stated last year at a public meeting at Barlanark, that "The Roman Catholic Church is the Church of the Proletariat.” What he no doubt really means is that the Catholic Church promises him security as an exploiter of labour.
A Society Where There Are No "Good Laws"?
SP of C
Let's Protest For World Socialism
Saturday, November 04, 2017
Things Can Get Crazier.
Whadja mean things cant get any crazier? A couple in Toronto's plush Forest Hill neighbourhood sued a neighbour for having her house renovated to look like theirs. They were seeking $1.5 million in damages, $20,000 in statutory copyright damages and an injunction on the copycat to change the design of her house. Nor was she the only defendant; they also sued the builder, the architect, the contractors and the real estate agent who profited from the sale - well I guess theirs nothing like going for overkill. The allegations were not proven in court so the parties agreed to settle out of court and the terms were not disclosed. Logic, if it came in anywhere was that the plaintiffs felt there house was robbed of its uniqueness and therefore devalued. Whatever you make of the above one things for sure, within capitalism everything has a price tag.
For socialism, Steve, Mehmet, John & all contributing members of the SPC.
The Non-Violent Class Warriors
The members of the Socialist Party often meet demands for our solutions to the on-going struggles in Palestine, in Syria and all the other places over the world where despots are repressing peoples. We are asked how we'd deal with someone like Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein or who is the latest personification of evil is. We are accused of offering no immediate answer and it is true - we are no aspiring Che Guevaras - thankfully. Socialists don't want to die for socialism, we want to live for socialism. By shortening of our lives with martyrdom, we can make no constructive useful contribution to the future.
If protesters don’t have a clear objective, then they are likely to be sadly disappointed. Protest alone accomplishes very little. If you don’t have that basic understanding of what you’re doing, then you’re not going to win anything. One struggle doesn’t always do the job; sometimes you have to have two or three or four or five struggles in succession. Class war is in fact very much like war, a series of class-struggle battles with both victories and defeats. Cutting off our enemy's sources of sustenance, its power, is the ultimate goal. But it won’t happen easily, or quickly, or always. Non-violence is not passive, nor is it a way of avoiding conflict. Any non-violent movement that takes on a well-entrenched dictatorship. Those who start such a movement must be prepared for a long struggle, with setbacks and numerous casualties. After all, only one side is committed to non-violence. Nor is there any guarantee of success, even in the long run. However, the other option entails even larger casualties and has even poorer prospects of success.
Violence is not all that effective in a revolution. People have long thought that power grows out of the barrel of a gun.and it's taken a number of historical events to prove that is not true. When non-violence fails, the method is condemned. But when violence fails, strategy or tactics are blamed—not violence as a method. And partial success is seen as total failure.
Non-violent means will increase our chances of the military refusing to obey orders. But if you go over to violence, the soldiers will not mutiny. They will be loyal to the dictatorship and the dictatorship will have a good chance to survive. An armed response from the revolutionaries will not succeed, as the regime is invariably stronger on the military front. As soon as you choose to fight with violence you're choosing to fight against opponents in possession of the best weapons. The state's police and army are better trained in using those weapons. And they control the infrastructure that allows them to deploy them. To fight dictators with violence is to cede to them the choice of battleground and tactics. Using violence against experts in it is the quickest way to have a movement crushed. That is why governments frequently infiltrate opposition groups with agents provocateurs—to sidetrack the movement into violent acts that the police and security agencies can deal with. Non-violence is an aspect of resistance that the normal forces of co-ercion are ill-prepared for. When the ruling class chooses to use their superior force against nonviolent activists, they sometimes find that it does not bring about the desired results. First, all sanctions must be carried out by the ruler's agents (police or military personnel) who may or may not obey or may reluctantly make a show of obeying to commit brutal acts against people who are clearly presenting no physical threat. It could have the effect of converting them to our point of view by winning over their hearts and minds. Even if a non-violent campaign is unable to change our adversary's way of thinking, it can still wield power and influence the course of events who may decide it is too costly to continue the fight or forced to make concessions because its power-base has been dissolved.
People turn violent because they feel there is little alternative but to resort to violence. Socialists organisations will develop the substitutes to militarising the class struggle and then people will have a choice of psychological weapons, social weapons, economic weapons and political weapons which can be applied and are ultimately more powerful against tyranny. Once enough people and organizations within a society (trade unions, community groups) are engaging in civil disobedience and withholding their cooperation from a regime, the capitalists' power will gradually wither from political starvation.
The success or failure of any peaceful revolt largely depends on the campaign’s ability to undermine the regime's supporters and weaken the allegiance of its civil servants, police, and soldiers to the regime; to persuade those neutrals sitting on the fence to join the opposition. The worse the regime suppresses protests, the more steadfast ought the opposition be in its commitment to non-violence and the more the people resist, the more we will realize our own power and discover the means of re-shaping our destiny.
Non-violent popular civil-disobedience has an important role in moving forward from limited political democracy to full social democracy, which is what we mean by socialism. Not as a substitute for electoral and constitutional action, but as an additional guarantee that the socialist majority will achieve its goal under any conceivable circumstances. Socialists are not pacifists on principle but purely as a practical tactic. We acknowledge that there might be instances in which violence is a legitimate means to use.
Thursday, November 02, 2017
Why not now? Why wait?
Socialism will mean the end of the profit motive, to be replaced by production solely for use, arising from the common ownership and democratic control of the earth's bountiful natural and industrial resources. In a socialist society, there will be no market. no buying and selling, no money, no prices. Defenders of capitalism's chaos claim that without the present economic mechanisms production would be inefficient. But. from the angle of the working class, who produce all wealth and suffer all deprivation, the waste and anarchy of the profit system are far from efficient. Only when the sole criterion of production is the usefulness of the product will we be able to speak meaningfully about the efficient allocation of resources. And only when we have got rid of world capitalism and established socialism will such a condition exist.
Wednesday, November 01, 2017
Cancer and poverty
A Change of Fish
Socialist Standard November 2017
- Editorial: 1917 – The Left-Overs
- Pathfinders: The Fall and Rise of the Electric Car
- Throw Away the Stick
- Russia 1917: As We Saw It
- Cooking the Books: The 'Engels pause'
- Greasy Pole: Adonis As It Is?
- Material World: Catalonia - Referendum (Why Not), Nationalism (No)
- Cooking the Books: The Wages Trap
- North Korea: Capitalism in a Mao Suit
- Whatever Happened to 'The Vietcong'?
- Cuba: No ‘New Man’
- Chinese ‘Marxism’: Not Even Trying
- Death by Consultation
- Ideology and Revolution pt.2
- Book Reviews: 'Lenin the Dictator - An Intimate Portrait', 'October - The Story of the Russian Revolution', & 'Battling the Gods - Atheism in the Ancient World'
- Exhibition Review: Wyndham Lewis - Life, Art, War
- Proper Gander: Music For The Masses
- 50 Years Ago: Scarborough Follies
- Rear View
- Cartoon: Free Lunch
The voiceless working class
People In Crisis
42,000 applications for crisis grants were made between 1 April and 30 June - up 11% on last year.
Tuesday, October 31, 2017
Guy Aldred an the SPGB (March 1952)
“There is also the attitude of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, who issued a manifesto urging people not to vote until everyone had joined the S.P.G.B. or became a Socialist. This curious attitude— which approaches Anarchism—was the result of the 1950 experience at the ballot-box. Carefully analysed, the attitude of the S.P.G.B is seen to be one of futility and hypocrisy. Instead of uniting at this time of crisis in a stand against war and rearmament, which could have been done without a single sacrifice of principle and actually with a great advantage to the propaganda status of the S.P.G.B., members of this stupid and stagnant party wrote ‘S.P.G.B.' across their ballot papers.”
‘THE THOUGHT OF CHAIRMAN XI’ (poem)
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Paternalism is a common attitude among well-meaning social reformers. Stemming from the root pater, or father, paternalism implies a patria...