Abuse. Or Deportation

The Toronto Star's edition of Oct.7 continued its series of exposures of the abuse migrant workers are subject to in the Canadian food industry. To read the complete article, the star.ca. I will mention a few significant points here.

Many female workers are exposed to sexual abuse and are afraid of complaining to the authorities because their boss will immediately fire them and they will lose their right to be in Canada. When some want to complain they find a grey area of responsibility between the federal and provincial governments. The federal one has to ensure the employers live up to the terms of their Labour Market Impact Assessments, which means they have to explain why they were unable to recruit Canadians for a job and are paying them the agreed wages.

It was reported that Employment and Social Development Canada does not, to put it bluntly, get-stuck-in. They conduct few on-site inspections and fewer interviews. They have though received tips on their hot line about employers lack of regard for safety, poor living conditions for the workers and threats of deportation. So whatever rights they have become meaningless when faced with the fear of deportation.

Furthermore Ontario is the only province in Canada where agricultural workers cannot form a union. It all reads like a chapter from Steinbecks, Grapes of Wrath, which shows how little things have changed. You may say, something should be done about it, and you would be right -- something can be, but it won't be under capitalism.

For socialism, 

Steve, Mehmet, John & all contributing members of the SPC.

If you seek to lead a movement - take a laxative

To all workers throughout the world, the socialist message is loud and clear. Don't waste any more time or effort attempting to reform capitalism. Instead of campaigning for this or that reform join the movement which has as its sole aim ending a social system which cannot satisfy the needs of human beings, a world-wide system run by human beings for human beings. The Socialist Party strives to make its case as widely known and fully understood as we can. This is no easy task for the Socialist Party—our rotten system is deeply ingrained into the minds and manners of men and women and it is going to take a lot to shift it. 

The socialist movement is not only the heart but is the combination of the heart and the head. When the workers, as a class, couple their latent revolutionary fervour with socialist understanding, they become an indomitable force. 

The Socialist Party emphasises that the ballot is the lever of emancipation. We do this because the conscious, socialist majority takes political action in order to be in a position to transfer the means of living from the hands of the parasites into the hands of society, as a whole. The ballot symbolises the nature of the socialist revolution. We advocate the ballot because we cannot visualise the need for a socialist majority to use violence. Violence does not represent the socialist revolution. However, we can get all tangled up in speculations of projecting possible contingencies that may exist in a future event. History may make liars out of us in predicting the workings of social forces based on scientific analyses. When we say that socialism is inevitable it always implies: barring catastrophes such as environmental climate change wiping out of the human race. However, given capitalism and its laws of motion, the next stage in social evolution is socialism.

For many years we have witnessed the “success” of a procession of practical efforts by the Left to rally workers to socialism by clever policies. We have seen the transformation of these advocates of socialist goals into supporters of the status quo — rebels who have been converted into offering concessions to the system. Their trademark has become the reforming, improving and administering capitalism. 

Where are the convinced socialists they were going to make? 

In the name of building up a socialist movement among the masses, they have emasculated and compromised socialist principles. When elected, they have actually administered capitalism in the only way it can be administered, in the interest of the capitalist class, even to the extent of supporting capitalist wars and crushing workers on strike. They have complained that capitalist parties have stolen their planks (as though any capitalist party could steal a socialist program). Look at the net result. Where are the socialist masses? 

As far as numbers are concerned the Left-wing are not much better off than the Socialist Party. Their practical, realistic policies have proven worse than illusory. They have failed to make socialists! Yet they continue to heap scorn and sneer at the Socialist Party for our small numbers. With smug omniscience, they dismiss us as “ivory tower utopians,” “dogmatic sectarians,” “impossiblists,” etc. The real question is: — Who have ignored the lessons of experience? The SPGB has been confronted with sneers and scorn by those who fight for something “in the meantime” and who are busily actively participating in the “workers’ struggles.” The lure and fascinations of protest demonstrations and making demands at every opportunity is very attractive. (In a sense, it does indicate how deeply-rooted discontent with capitalism really is, and it demonstrates the latent strength of socialism once the masses wake up to the need for changing the system instead of adjusting to it.) But — and this is the vital point — these activities are not in harmony with the immediate needs of our time: the making of socialists. 

The lack of socialists is all that stands in the way of socialism, now.

 You can put the Leftists on the spot by asking: Where are the socialists you have obtained by your efforts? 

Their vaunted “fresh radical tactics” prove to be very stale indeed. For years their antecedents — the Labour Party activists with their gradualism, the Bolsheviks with their “revolutionary” platforms and vanguard strategies— actually gained victories on such policies and programmes. Yet they were responsible for the recruiting of workers for capitalist wars and the crushing of workers on strike. If there is one generalisation that could be applied to the Bolsheviks and Social Democrats is that they stood for their pet “burning issue”’ not socialism. Recall the phrases: “Immediate Demands” and “Ultimate Demands.” We used to be told and are still being told, that “in the meantime” we must fight for some “priority” issue and you in the SPGB should join our ranks to recruit for socialist objectives. 

Observe the  result: Capitalism is being administered by “socialists” and, often, in the name of “socialism.” 

There it is, in all its stark nakedness. Had all that wasted energy and sacrifice (devoted and sincere as it may have been) been harnessed for socialism, what a movement — or society — we would now have! It is easy to forget that human beings are also part of the material conditions and that they play the active role in social change. All those “socialist governments” merely wound up administering capitalism for the capitalist class. And that is all that Labour radicals and the Trotskyist Left will be able to do if they gain their objectives.

Capitalism Moves Into Recession. (1990)

From the December 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

What the media call the "recession" in Britain today provides a classic example of a capitalist crisis. The City yuppies have been surprised by a supply that is exceeding demand to the point that it is provoking a decline in orders and cutbacks in production. The sales slump is giving the economic crisis an unstoppable momentum: reductions in production, investment and employment.

This should be no surprise. Crises of overproduction and a reserve army of the unemployed are integral to the capitalist system. They are not only the consequences but also the necessary conditions of capitalism's existence.

Think back to the early 1980s. An increased intensity of labour and new technology were easily imposed on workers severely weakened by the high unemployment levels of the previous crisis of 1980-82. We are well aware of what this meant for workers in the years of Thatcher's so-called "economic miracle". There was a general frenzy of activity for people in work as the rate of exploitation increased. This went hand-in-hand with the introduction of computers into the office and robotics into manufacturing industry.

The result of this frenzy was a marked increase in the average productivity of workers. A general rise in productivity means a fall in the unit value of all commodities: more of them can be produced in the same period of time so each is worth less. This is disguised by inflation, but a price calculation in hours of labour-time soon reveals the real fall in value.

The sharp economic downturn that we are now facing is the point of overproduction, the sudden failure in the balance of supply and demand that triggers the process in which prices are brought into line with values. In other words, the crisis is imposing the new, lower values that have resulted from rises in productivity on those commodities, particularly fixed capital, produced under previous conditions. The result is losses for the capitalists and unemployment for the workers.

Falling values and the tendency to capital losses are manifested in the unprecedented levels of bankruptcy for small and over-borrowed businesses. “More than 16,500 companies collapsed between January and the end of September 1990", a third more than the previous year (Guardian, 28 September).

Credit boom
The economists in the service of capitalism examine only the surface phenomena of economic activity in the search for explanations of the crisis. The financial pages of the press blame individuals: Nigel Lawson, for one. They blame the banks and building societies for their high levels of lending. They blame workers for pushing for higher wages. But all these things are effects not causes.

The underlying cause, the imbalance between supply and demand, came first. The current crisis, like every crisis of capitalism, is one of overproduction with regard to markets. But until recently it has been concealed by credit. As Marx put it, capitalism

  permits an actual free development only up to a certain point, so that in fact it constitutes an immanent barrier and fetter to production, which are constantly broken through by the credit system. (Capital, Vol III, chapter 27).

Despite all the talk about "tight monetary policy", the crisis has been delayed by neo-Keynsian recovery techniques: that is. by the Bank of England printing money for the clearing banks to lend. And the price of applying this technique is now, as it always was when overtly Keynsian, rising inflation.

For a while the Thatcher government managed to put off the inevitable, allowing inflation to rise. But the crunch had to come because high inflation cannot be sustained forever. For a start, when domestic demand is inflated by credit, imports rise as well, causing a trade deficit. This deficit puts downward pressure on the currency, necessitating high interest rates to hold off its complete collapse. But, on the other hand, a fall in consumer spending cannot be tolerated by industry because of its already high debt burden.

Exchange rate mechanism

Entry into the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) is an attempt to break out of this vicious circle. Thatcher hopes to give flagging businesses a quick fix before the general election without triggering a fall in the value of sterling. At the time of writing there has already been an interest rate cut.

Meanwhile, workers will pay the price of this quick fix. The ERM means that exports can no longer be protected from foreign competition by a devalued pound. John Major has already told workers to shoulder capitalism's problems by taking wage cuts if they want to keep their jobs. The President of the Bundesbank, Karl Otto Pohl, has given an ominous warning:

  A country with an inflation rate three times as high as Germany's cannot link its currency to the Deutschmark without mass unemployment and enormous payments problems . . .  It is very important, and not always understood, that monetary union means doing away with the exchange rate as a corrective to divergent economic developments. (Observer, 23 September).

Entry into the ERM is the policy of both the Tory and Labour parties. It marks a cynical attempt to squeeze more productivity out of workers. It will achieve this by throwing thousands of workers on to the dole queue. Employers will again impose an increased intensity of labour on the remaining workforce weakened by the threat of unemployment. And here we go again!

Are we going to suffer another ten year's frenzy of activity only to find that cut-backs and unemployment are the reward for higher productivity? Do we have to go through the whole predictable cycle again?

Socialists say emphatically no. Socialism offers the means of escape from the tyranny of the market. It offers a society in which all work according to our abilities for the common good. We will all take according to our needs. Goods and services will be produced solely for use, not profit. The capitalist barrier and fetter need never stand in our way again.

John Dunn

ex-member, Glasgow Br

Workers Cost Of Reproduction Verses Profits

If you thought flipping burgers in a fast food joint was a crap for pay job, pretty soon even this sorry excuse for wages will be toast. Shake Shack, a New York based burger and fries chain, says front order cashiers will be a thing of the past at their Astor Place store, undoubtedly with more to come and competitors forced to follow. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/02/shake-shack-to-open-a-cashlesskiosk-in-new-york.html

And on that happy topic of job redundancy, Walmart, one of crapitalism's paramount achievements of parasitical 'success,' announces its jolly robot floor checker that takes stock, reorders when necessary, and generally keeps track of everything, including, one would suppose, the occasional would-be shoplifter ("smile, you're on candid 24/7 robotic camera!"). 

Of course, the days of even the lowly shelf-stocker are numbered. Why the hell would crapitalist skivers like Walmart want a wage slave to pay to stock shelves when they can hustle profits without paying for such viable capital as a worker's cost of reproduction!

For socialism, 

Steve, Mehmet, John &all contributing members of the SPC.

Socialism is nothing to be frightened by

Capitalism has been the world’s dominant economic system for a few hundred years now and as it brings the planet to yet more new crises it’s important to imagine what might replace it. The concept of capitalism as something to name and define and study.

Capitalism is the commodification of human labour and nature. In other words, you can buy and sell a local ecosystem, and because of private property rights, you can destroy it if you want to. And you can buy and sell labor, which means that as productivity increases you need fewer people and their worth as a commodity goes down. That’s why we have a lot of unemployed people and low wages.

Basically, capitalism is an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production. The capitalist - the boss, the entrepreneur, the investor, the owner of capital - purchases labour-power from workers (paid in the form of wages or salary) in order to work these means of production, and then collects surplus value as profit. Capitalism seeks to maximise profi because profit can be utilized as additional capital. To maximise profit, expenses, such as labour, must be cut as much as possible. So under capitalism, wages and benefits will be driven down as much as possible, and society must maintain a labour surplus - the large numbers of unemployed people. Capitalism values cheapness above all else by devaluing nature and human resources so that capitalism can continue to concentrate wealth in the hands of the already-wealthy. In that sense, “cheap nature” refers to the way in which land and its resources are systematically given away to businesses for exploitation, “cheap work” refers to wage-slavery, sweated labour  and other anti-worker tactics that keep wages levels down.

Time and time again, politico-economic realities have confirmed that the main role of the state is to protect the capitalist system, or, to use Marxist language , the state is the “executive committee of the bourgeoisie.” Yet left reformers cling to the illusion that the  state can become a benevolent entity an point to  national healthcare  programmes, public education,  council housing, minimum wages, and more. But the  welfare state has always remained vulnerable to cuts or elimination during economic crises, as the recent turn toward austerity  and redced benefits has shown. The welfare state shrinks or disappears as the priority of the  state kicks in—protecting the capitalist economic system and addressing the system’s recurring crises.

 But more importantly the social services of the welfare state contribute to a false belief about the state’s beneficent potentials. By providing helpful and even vital services, the  welfare state legitimates the continuing inequality and exploitation inherent in the capitalist  system. Many respond to the misery we encounter everyday by advocating for the expansion or, at least, the maintenance of the capitalist state’s 'safety-net' protections. They do so even though they understand that we remain perpetually vulnerable by a profits- system that inherently causes exploitation, inequality, hunger, ill health, and early death. Yet we persist in legitimising and advocating for the welfare state that sustains the system.

The word “socialism” has scared many away from even talking about it being an option to capitalism. When we propose socialism as an alternative economic system, some people think of Soviet-style state-ownership and its command economy, where the government controls enterprises as opposed to private individuals. One of the greatest obstacles to socialism in the twentieth century was Bolshevism.

 But that’s not what we are talking about. Socialism calls for human freedom and creativity. It calls upon humanity as a whole to rebuild its world on ecological foundations. It is a revolutionary struggle that must commence with a worldwide movement toward socialism. The time for revolution has arrived, and it is time to act. We have to move in a direction that allows for a better society and a better world to emerge. 

As socialists, we are not pessimistic about the future. We believe that the class that produces all the wealth of the world will wake from this capitalist nightmare and bring about a society based on production solely for use.

“Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number-
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you
Ye are many - they are few.”
Shelley

"If I Fed You Arsenic Every Day"

Disturbing news has recently emerged concerning pollution in Chemical Valley, Sarnia, Ontario. There, companies such as Imperial Oil, Shell Canada, Suncor Energy and Plains Midstream have their plants. 57 companies are registered as polluters with the Canadian government, all within 25 kilometres of Sarnia.

The smell of Benzene pervades the air. An independent company measured the levels at 50 parts per billion. If sustained over 30 minutes that would be 22 times higher than the provincial safe standard. The report, and 500 others conducted in 2014 and 2015, was obtained by a national investigation involving the Toronto Star, Global News and 2 Toronto schools of journalism.

On April 26, 2016 benzene levels were logged at 161 micrograms per cubic meter -- 23 times Ontario's standard – for half an hour. Hospitalization rates for respiratory problems are higher in the Sarnia area than nearby Windsor and London. There are more lung cancer cases and mesothelioma than the Ontario average in part because of the regions production of asbestos.

As one Sarnia resident put it, ''If I fed you arsenic every day I'm poisoning you and you could charge me. These companies are leaking things and slowly doing harm and they get a slap on the wrist or nothing at all. We have to prove it, but there are so many companies how can you point out one? So capitalism doesn't just stink figuratively it all stinks physically.

For socialism, 

Steve, Mehmet, John & all contributing members of the SPC.

Scotland - Increasingly a land of immigrants

Scotland is becoming increasingly diverse, with almost one in 10 of the population born outside of the UK.

EU nationals working in Scotland contribute an average of £34,400 each - £4.4bn annually - to the country’s gross domestic product, according to new data analysis. The evidence demonstrates how the economy benefits from the presence of 128,000 workers born elsewhere in Europe.

Alasdair Allan, MSP, Europe Minister, said, "EU citizens are filling hard-to-fill specialisms and areas of acute shortages." Allan added: “EU citizens and their families also make a positive contribution to the communities in which they live, including in remote and rural areas. That is why we believe fundamentally that continuing free movement of people is in the best interests of Scotland and the UK as a whole.”

Majority of EU migrants to Scotland speak English, are here to work or study, and have low healthcare needs

Social Democracy as it should be

The simplest definition of democracy is that it is decision-making by the whole people involving procedures such as free and open debate, free access to information, one person one vote, and the accountability of public officials and elected representatives. Such a decision-making system can be regarded as desirable because one key aspect of the nature of human beings is their ability to reflect and weigh up options before deciding what to do. In other words, a system in which the people as a whole freely decide what to do is the only decision-making system worthy of humans as self-determining ("free") agents.

The idea of democracy is also bound up with that of equality, if only in the sense that it is a decision-making procedure in which every human deemed capable of making a reasoned decision has a vote of equal weight. Ensuring each person an equal as possible say in the decision-making process requires a high degree of social equality and not mere equal political rights. ‘Democracy’ under capitalism is different from the generally accepted meaning of the word as a situation where ordinary people make the decisions that shape their lives, frequently summarised as being the ‘rule of the people.’ But democracy is not simply about ‘who’ makes decisions or ‘how’ the decisions are to be made. It is an expression of the social relations in society. If democracy means that all have equal opportunity to be heard, then this not only implies political equality but also economic equality. It further presupposes that people have individual freedom. A genuine democracy is, therefore, one where people are free and equal, actively participating, without leaders, in co-operative discussion to reach common agreement on all matters relating to their collective as well as individual requirements. We are told we are ‘free’ but in reality, our only freedom is to sell our labour power to someone who is ‘free’ to buy it – or not, as the case may be. If we choose not to exercise this freedom then we are ‘free’ to go without or even starve. It is quickly apparent that in capitalism freedom is an illusion because freedom cannot exist when the conditions for the exercise of free choice do not exist.

Scottish Homeless

Shelter Scotland has said that 28,000 Scottish households were assessed as homeless last year.

The charity said an estimated 5,000 people sleep rough on Scotland's streets all year round.

Across the UK the number of people recorded as homeless has reached 307,000 - equal to more than half of the population of Glasgow.

Deputy director of Shelter Scotland Alison Watson said the number of homeless people is "shocking".

She said: "On a daily basis, we speak to hundreds of people and families who are desperately trying to escape the devastating trap of homelessness. A trap that is tightening thanks to decades of failure to build enough affordable homes and the impact of harsh welfare cuts which are now, for many, being compounded by the roll-out of Universal Credit."

Those Dudes Are All Heart

Disputes between capitalists over the Ontario governments proposed minimum-wage hikes are too stupid to be taken seriously therefore are good for a laugh. The Toronto-Dominion Bank and the Ontario Chamber of Commerce are outraged at the thought of workers getting paid at least $14 bucks an hour next year and $15 in 2019.

The ''worthies'' at the chamber, which is heavily dominated by Progressive Conservatives, (an oxy-moron), claim if this is allowed to go through, 185,000 jobs will be at risk. The TD Bank's economists said 50,000 to 150,000 jobs will be lost by the end of the decade. Now isn't it touching(?), those dudes are all heart, they'd be so much happier if workers struggled along at the present $11.40 an hour. They would probably argue the costs of products would increase to a point that people won't buy and companies would go bankrupt, whereas research has shown that the impact of wage hikes has never seriously damaged an economy. If wage hikes could have it would already have happened, especially when one considers the fat salaries and bonuses many of the complainers pay themselves.

A recent report by professional economists said that recent wage hikes in the US showed, ''There is no credible evidence that this clear trend in labour policy is hurting job creation''. Employers who pay high wages benefit from reduced turnover, lower recruitment costs and greater productivity. Insofar as it concerns manufacture, a survey conducted some years ago revealed that only 7 per cent of the cost of a product, on average, went on wages. The plain fact of the matter is that in a world without money we could all think of the above nonsense and laugh.

For socialism,

Steve, Mehmet, John & all contributing members of the SPC.

Socialist Ideas

There are many organisations claiming to fulfill the requirements of a workers’ party. We are not the only group calling ourselves socialist. Anyone seeking to understand what is wrong with present-day society will come across others, all having some such word in their names as “socialist”, “workers”, “revolutionary” or “communist”. Most of these will be of Leninist or Trotskyist origin and have aims, theories, and methods which are not shared by ourselves. By fostering wrong ideas about what socialism is and how it can be achieved these organisations are delaying the socialist revolution. Their basic position is that ordinary people are not capable of understanding socialism, that only a minority of people can understand socialism and are organised as a “vanguard party” with its own hierarchically-structured leadership to lead the workers and hand down “the party line” to the rank-and-file. Contempt for the intellectual abilities of the working class led to the claim that the vanguard party should rule on their behalf, even against their will. Having satisfied themselves that the task is impossible, they then proceed to matters of the moment, reaching an accommodation with capitalism and endeavouring to reform it. Vanguardists may protest at this summary, they may insist that they are very much concerned with working class consciousness, and do not assert that workers cannot understand socialist politics. However, an examination of their propaganda reveals that ‘consciousness’ means merely following the right leaders. Their basic idea that most people are not able to understand socialism is just plain wrong. Becoming a socialist is to recognise that present-day society, capitalism because it is a class-divided and profit-motivated society, can never be made to work in the interest of everyone. These are conclusions which people can easily come to on the basis of their own experience and reflection and in the light of hearing the case for socialism argued. Not only can people understand socialism, they must understand it if socialism is to be established. What has been lacking is the understanding and will among those men and women who would most benefit from it. This view held by the Socialist Party, that socialism can only be established when a large majority of the working class understand it, is constantly being attacked. If left-wing parties refuse to take up the revolutionary position which aims at the abolition of the wages system and the conversion of state and private property into common property, then they remain parties of capitalism regardless that they claim to oppose it. Socialism depends on working-class understanding in the same way as capitalism depends on working-class acquiescence and support. The socialist transformation of society is different from all previous ones. It must be the work of the majority acting for themselves by themselves. 

Since our inception in 1904, our objective has remained the same - "The establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of society as a whole." 

From this statement, it follows that a socialist society must be one without social classes, the abolition of nation-states and governments, the end of money and prices and wage-labour. We socialists speak of a community based upon co-operation, free labour, of free access to all goods and services produced by society for all, based on their own self-determined needs, of democratic administration but the absence of government; a society where the fundamental needs of every human being could be met. Democratic control is not an optional extra of socialism. It is its very essence. Socialism is a society based on the common ownership of the means of life but, since something cannot be said to be commonly owned if some have a privileged or exclusive say in how it is used, common ownership means that every member of society has to have an equal say. If there wasn’t such democratic control there wouldn’t be common ownership, so there wouldn’t be socialism. This being so, socialism cannot be imposed against the will or without the consent and participation of the vast majority. It simply cannot be established for the majority by some vanguard or enlightened minority. That is our case. The socialist revolution can only be democratic, in the sense of both being what the majority of people want and of being carried out by democratic methods of organisation and action. No minority revolution can lead to socialism. Hence our conclusion that the movement to establish socialism, and the methods it employs, must “prefigure” the democratic nature of socialism. The very nature of socialism as a society of voluntary cooperation and democratic participation rules out it being established by some minority that happens to have got control of political power, whether through elections or through an armed insurrection. People cannot be led into socialism or coerced into it. They cannot be forced into cooperating and participating; this is something they must want to do for themselves and which they must decide to do of their own accord. Socialist society can function on no other basis. Socialists place participatory democracy at the very core of our social model.

The word democracy comes from the Greek: "demos" and "kratia". It essentially means "people power" or "rule by the people", i.e. it is about the majority being able to make decisions and put them into effect. Socialism and democracy are complementary; more than complementary – indivisible since the only possible basis for creating an enduring, a truly democratic community is the conscious choice of strong, independent, politically aware individuals. Capitalism is the antithesis of democracy. Mainstream political theory and practice try to separate politics from economics. "Political democracy" is allowed in an approved form, but economic democracy is impossible because of economic inequality; the majority are deprived of ownership and control of the means of life. Only when people have real, democratic control over their own lives will they have the freedom that is socialism. Socialism will do away with the inequality of capitalism. With free access to what has been produced, everybody (that's absolutely everybody) will be able to decide on their own consumption and living conditions. Poverty will no longer limit people's lives and experiences. There will be no employment, no employers and no capitalist class. Nobody will, therefore, be able to make decisions about the livelihoods and, indeed, the very lives, of others. Nobody will have privileged access to the media and means of communication and so be in a special position to influence the views of other people.The uncontrollability of the capitalist economy will be a thing of the past. Production will be for use, not for profit. A free environment of free people will have no private property, consequently no exchange of property, therefore no need for a medium of exchange. With all the paraphernalia of money, prices, accounting, interest rates, there will be no obstacles to people producing what is wanted.

Socialism will involve people making decisions about their own lives and those of families, friends, and neighbours - decisions unencumbered by so many of the factors that have to be taken into account under capitalism. The means of production (land, factories, offices) will be owned in common, and everybody will help to determine how they will be used. This need not mean endless meetings, nor can we now give a blueprint of how democratic decision-making in socialism will work. Quite likely there will be administrative structures at different levels, local, regional and so on. This will not just be the trappings of democracy but the real thing - people deciding about and running their own lives, within a system of equality and fellowship. The essence of democracy is popular participation, not competing parties. In socialism, elections will not be about deciding which particular party is to come to "power" and form the government. Politics in socialism will not be about coercive power and its exercise and so won't really be politics at all in its present-day sense of the "art and practice of government" or "the conduct of state affairs". Being a classless society of free and equal men and women, socialism will not have a coercive state machine nor a government to control it. The conduct of public affairs in socialism will be about people participating in the running of their lives in a non-antagonistic context of co-operation to further the common good. Socialist democracy will be a participatory democracy. The socialism, as envisioned by the Socialist Party, in the words of Marx, will be "a society in which the full and free development of every individual forms the ruling principle", a society "in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all." Voluntary solidarity, not compulsion. The greatest degree of individuality is found where there is the highest social organisation and co-operation. This will apply to human beings in socialism. Individual self-expression, self-interest, and social responsibility are the natural incentives for human activity and will prevail in a sane socialist society. In socialism, we wouldn’t be free to do whatever we wished. A socialist society will have to operate according to rules. But the constraints on our personal freedom would be self-determined by local communities agreeing as equals and not imposed on us by the state.

It benefits the workers of the world to organise to defend and extend democratic rights; to widen the democratic space as much as possible. For democracy is the way in which we can unite to free ourselves from the insanity of the profit-system and domination by a minority ruling class. We can replace oppression with equality, waste of resources with production directly for use, and systemic competition with cooperation for the common good. We can create the world that we want, fashioned by the majority, in the interests of the majority. All past changes were due to humans acting in their interests. We have the opportunity to act in ours. Engels wrote that “when it gets to be a matter of the complete transformation of the social organisation, the masses themselves must participate, must understand what is at stake and why they are to act”.

The Socialist Party is an organisation of equals. There is no leader and there are no followers. Everybody in the Socialist Party has equal value and equal power. As previously explained many of the so-called socialist parties do not accept the statement of Marx that the emancipation of the working-class must be the work of the working-class itself but contend that the workers must be aided and guided by the more enlightened. The Socialist Party is committed to a policy of making sure that hearing the case for socialism becomes part of the experience of as many people as possible. It is committed to treating other workers as adults who are capable of being influenced by open discussion, public debate, and rational argument and will not to try to hoodwink or manipulate them. It commits us to oppose the whole concept of leadership, not just to get socialism but also for the everyday trade-union struggle or community action to survive under capitalism. We do not seek to lead such struggles but limit ourselves to urging workers to organise any particular struggle in a democratic way under the control of those directly involved. Our own party is organised on this basis and we envisage the mass movement for socialism, when it gets off the ground, being organised too on a fully democratic basis without leaders. The Socialist Party doesn't have a leader because leadership is undemocratic. If there are leaders, there must be followers: people who just do what they are told. In the Socialist Party, every individual member has an equal say, and nobody tells the rest what to do. Decisions are made democratically by the whole membership, and by representatives or delegates. If the membership doesn't like the decisions of those it elects, those administrators can be removed from office and their decisions overridden.

The more who join the Socialist Party the more we will be able to get our ideas across. And the more experiences we are able to draw on and the greater will be the new ideas for building the movement. That is where the Socialist Party can come in, through making socialists, through that and that alone—making people committed heart and soul to working class interests, democracy and the establishment of socialism. When workers have a strong emotional and practical commitment, they can make grassroots democracy work. It's up to us to encourage that commitment. Because we want socialism, we see our party’s task as to concentrate on spreading socialist ideas. The Socialist Party does not advocate reformism, i.e. a platform of reforms with the aim of gradually reforming capitalism into a system that works for all. While we are happy to see the workers’ lot improved, reforms can never lead to the establishment of socialism and tend to bleed energy, ideas, and resources from that goal. Reforms fought for, can, and frequently are, taken away or watered down. Rather than attempting gradual transformation of the capitalist system, something we hold is impossible and has been proven by a century of reformist platforms of so-called workers’ parties which have led instead to the reform of such parties themselves to accept capitalism, we believe that only socialism can end forever the problems of our present society such as war, poverty, hunger, inadequate health-care and environmental degradation. Social harmony is to be sought not by a legislative reform, but by removing the causes of antagonism.

We, socialists, have never tried to forget the obvious fact that the working class does not yet want socialism, but we are encouraged by the knowledge that we, as members of the working class, have reacted to capitalism by opposing it. There is nothing remarkable about us as individuals so it cannot be a hopeless task to set about changing the ideas of our fellow workers - especially as they learn from their own experience of capitalism. The self-emancipation of the working class remains on the agenda. It is not the wish of the Socialist Party to be separate for the sake of being so. The position is that we cannot be a popular reform party attempting to mop up immediate problems, and revolutionary at the same time. We cannot have a half-way house; nor can we accommodate the more timid members of our class who abhor what they describe as "impractical" or "impossible" policies, and spend their time looking for compromises. The socialist case is so fundamentally different, involving as it does the literal transformation of society, that we must expect mental resistance before socialist ideas have finally become consolidated in the mind. The master-and-servant mentality is imbued in the worker. Left -Wing propaganda offering leadership adds to the impression that he is an inferior being who is incapable of thinking, organising and acting. If workers do not accept the need to establish a revolutionary system of production based on democratic control and common ownership, there is no other way open to them to achieve their release from capitalism. It is all or nothing. There has been no shortage of diversions along the way. How much stronger would we be if our fellow workers had not experienced that bitter disillusionment of failed reformism and the indignity of abandoning principles for the sake of short-term gains? Pitiful has been the wasted energies of workers who, instead of uniting uncompromisingly for the socialist alternative, have gone for reformist or other futile options. We have seen a century of cruelly extinguished hopes of those who heaped praise upon the state-capitalist hell-holes which posed as "socialist states" which pseudo-socialists promoted. The system which puts profit before need has persistently spat the hope of humane capitalism back in the face of its advocates. The progressive enthusiasm of millions has been stamped out in this way. Dare we imagine how different it will be when all that energy which has gone into reforming capitalism goes into abolishing it? As for the claim that the capitalists might use violence to stop the establishment of socialism, well they might, but what chance would they stand against a conscious movement of well-organised workers? Would the army and police ( just wage slaves in uniform) allow themselves to be used to murder their brothers, sisters, parents, and friends?

The Common Good

Why is it that capitalism has accumulated more resources than human history has ever witnessed, yet appears powerless to overcome poverty and starvation? What are the mechanisms by which affluence for a minority seems to breed hardship and indignity for the many? Why does wealth seem to go hand in hand with squalor? Is there is something in the nature of capitalism which generates deprivation and inequality? Capitalism has developed human powers and capacities beyond all previous measure. Yet it had not used those capacities to set men and women free of fruitless toil. On the contrary, it had forced them to labour harder than ever. We sweat every bit as hard as our ancestors. This, Karl Marx considered, was not because of natural scarcity. It was because of the peculiarly contradictory way in which the capitalist system generated its fabulous wealth. Equality for some meant inequality for others, and freedom for some brought oppression and unhappiness for many. The system's voracious pursuit of power and profit had turned foreign nations into enslaved colonies, and human beings into the playthings of economic forces beyond their control. It had blighted the planet with pollution and mass starvation and scarred it with atrocious wars.

Were not Marx's ideas responsible for despotism, mass murder, labour camps and the loss of freedom for millions? The truth is that Marx was no more responsible for the monstrous oppression of the "communist" world than Jesus was responsible for the Inquisition. Marx would have scorned the idea that socialism could take root in impoverished, backward societies like Russia and China. If it did, then the result would simply be what he called "generalised scarcity," by which he means that everyone would now be deprived, not just the poor. It would mean a re-cycling of "the old filthy business"—or, in less tasteful translation, "the same old shit." Marxism is a theory of how developed capitalist nations might use their immense resources to achieve prosperity for their people. It is not a programme by which countries totally bereft of material resources, a democratic civic culture, and heritage, or a skilled, educated workforce might catapult themselves into the modern age. Marx was not foolish enough to imagine that socialism could be built in such countries without more-advanced nations flying to their aid. And that meant that the common people of those advanced nations had to wrest the means of production from their rulers and place them at the service of the wretched of the earth. Marx's goal is leisure, not labour.

Marx was not some utopian. He believed that the world could be made a considerably better place. In this, he was a realist, not an idealist. Those with their heads in the sand are those who deny that there can be any radical change. The whole of human history disproves this viewpoint. A man who witnessed the horrors of England in the midst of the industrial revolution was unlikely to be starry-eyed about his fellows. He understood that there are more than enough resources on the planet to resolve most of our material problems. Socialism does not depend on some miraculous change in human nature.

The way we go about our business, the way we are organised in our daily life is reflected in the way we think about things and the sort of world we created. The institutions we build, the philosophies we adhere to, the prevailing ideas of the time, the culture of society, are all determined to some extent or another by the economic structure of society. This did not mean that they were totally determined but were quite clearly a spin-off from the economic base of society. The political system, the legal system, the family, the press, the education system were all rooted, in the final analysis, to the class nature of society, which in turn was a reflection of the economic base. Marx maintained that the economic base or infrastructure generated or had built upon it a superstructure that kept it functioning. The education system, as part of the superstructure, therefore, is a reflection of the economic base and served to reproduce it. This did not mean that education and teaching is a sinister plot by the ruling class to ensure that it kept its privileges and its domination over the rest of the population. There are no conspirators hatching devious schemes. It simply means that the institutions of society, like education, are reflections of the world created by human activity and that ideas arise from and reflect the material conditions and circumstances in which they are generated. Some of those who defended feudalism against capitalist values in the late Middle Ages preached that capitalism would never work because it was contrary to human nature. Some capitalists now say the same about socialism. No doubt there is a tribe somewhere in the Amazon Basin that believes no social order can survive in which a man is allowed to marry his deceased brother's wife. We all tend to absolutise our own conditions.

Marx explained that "each new class which puts itself in the place of the one ruling before it, is compelled, simply in order to achieve its aims, to represent its interest as the common interest of all members of society i.e. ..to give its ideas the form of universality and to represent them as the only rational and universally valid ones". Ideas become presented as if they are universal, neutral, common sense. However, more subtly, we find concepts such as freedom, democracy, liberty or phrases such as "a fair days work for a fair days pay" being bandied around by opinion makers as if they were not contentious. They are, in Marxist terms, ideological constructs, in so far as they are ideas serving as weapons for social interests. They are put forward for people to accept in order to prop up the system. Ideas are not neutral. They are determined by the existing relations of production, by the economic structure of society. Ideas change according to the interests of the dominant class in society. Gramsci coined the phrase "ideological hegemony" to describe the influence the ruling class has over what counts as knowledge. For Marxists, this hegemony is exercised through institutions such as education, or the media. Again the important thing to note about this is that it is not to be regarded as part of a conspiracy by the ruling class. It is a natural effect of the way in which what we count as knowledge is socially constructed. The ideology of democracy and liberty, beliefs about freedom of the individual and competition are generated historically by the mode of production through the agency of the dominant class. They are not neutral ideas serving the common good but ruling class ideas accepted by everyone as if they were for the common good.

Marx was against people setting themselves up as superior to ‘ordinary’ workers as if they and only they had the ability, foresight, and knowledge to discern what socialist society would be like. This elitism had no place in the socialist movement for Marx. Marx was keen to emphasise the creativity and spontaneity of the drive towards socialism and to chart and assess the practical experiments of workers in this endeavour. Thus, for example, he enthusiastically followed the course of and wrote about the Paris Commune of 1871, where workers’ power was manifested in novel and exciting ways. The tragedy of labour is that we labour to create a vast, global social structure powered by capital (which depends upon us for its existence) that oppresses us, and limits and constrains human and social possibilities. We work to build our own cages. The struggle for communism is both the struggle against the constraints and limitations of capitalist social life and for a new form of human society. Alienation, boredom, the length of the working day, and so on can be key issues. Explaining the mode of exploitation in the capitalist labour process would be essential – how it is that value and surplus value are produced. The exploration of the perverted form of human life in capitalist society, and the ways that human life is being capitalised (the human as a form of capital – human capital). Any ‘anti-capitalist’ revolution worthy of the name would have to break with the totalising and all-consuming ‘logic’ of capital from day one of any revolutionary transformation. The ‘education of the future’ is part of the struggle for a new society

Marx believed in the uniqueness of the individual. The idea permeates his writings from end to end. He had a passion for the sensual. His so-called materialism is at root about the human body. Again and again, he speaks of the just society as one in which men and women will be able to realize their distinctive powers and capacities in their own distinctive ways. His goal is pleasurable self-fulfillment. To achieve true self-fulfillment, human beings must find it in and through one another. It is not just a question of each doing his or her own thing in grand isolation from others. That would not even be possible. The other must become the ground of one's own self-realization, at the same time as he or she provides the condition for one's own. At the interpersonal level, this is known as love. At the political level, it is known as socialism, a set of institutions which will allow this reciprocity to happen to the greatest possible extent, a socialist commonwealth, in which each person's participation in the project augments the welfare of all the others and vice versa. This is not a question of some saintly self-sacrifice. The process is built into the structure of the institutions.

St Enoch Shopping Centre and Tax Cheating

Private equity firm Blackstone avoided tens of millions of pounds in UK taxes on property deals in Glasgow, the Paradise Papers show.

The documents reveal it used offshore companies to purchase and operate the St Enoch Shopping Centre in Glasgow (and Chiswick Business Park in London.)

The papers show how accountancy firms mapped out strategies to minimise or avoid every significant tax.

In 2013, the private equity giant also bought the St Enoch Centre in Glasgow, a large city centre shopping complex housing almost 100 stores, for about £190m.

Documents show it would have avoided stamp duty of £7.6m and corporate tax on up to £10m annual rental income. St Enoch Centre, which Blackstone still owns, (and Chiswick Park) were already held in property trusts known as JPUTs, in the tax haven of Jersey, when it bought them. This allowed the firm to purchase the properties without paying millions of pounds in UK stamp duty.

George Turner, from the Tax Justice Network, told the BBC: "What they are doing is buying into the trust so when the original owners sold the property to Blackstone, then they weren't selling the property itself. "They were selling an interest in the trust that owns the property and because that trust is owned offshore, they can avoid stamp duty." George Turner, from the Tax Justice Network, said: "The language really is quite shocking in places because it's so clear and blatant what the intention is. What you have here is a whole myriad of companies being set up, mostly in Luxembourg but also you have this trust structure in Jersey, and it seems to be to all intents and purposes an economic fiction."

Under the tax structure revealed in the leaked documents, the Jersey trusts were owned and funded by a series of companies that Blackstone registered in Luxembourg. Money for the purchase of the properties was filtered through the Luxembourg companies from central Blackstone funds in the form of inter-company loans. The interest payments on these loans, which were effectively passed from one Blackstone company to another, could be written off against the profits of the rental income, meaning that minimal tax was paid in Luxembourg.

The central purpose of which was to avoid:

• Stamp Duty - by holding the property in an offshore trust in Jersey, and maintain them as collective investment schemes
• Income Tax - on the rental income, by funding the acquisition through a series of inter-company loans and Profit Participating Loans (PPLs), the interest payments on which can be used to write off against profits
• Capital Gains Tax - on disposal, thanks again to the Jersey trust

Profit from rental income at the St Enoch Centre had normally been about £10m a year. The structure allowed Blackstone to turn that into tax free income, by writing it off against interest charges generated from the loans its companies had made to each other.

In some years, just a few thousand pounds appears to have been paid by the Blackstone Luxembourg companies owning St Enoch and Chiswick.

Mr Turner said: "What appears to be happening is that the rental income which is coming in, the companies receiving that are then borrowing huge amounts of money from other companies which are part of the Blackstone Group. Now when they borrow that money, they need to pay interest on it and those interest payments destroy any profitability in those companies. They're borrowing money from themselves and they can claim a tax deduction on that."

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-41899034

Cyber Bullying

 An article in a recent issue of the Canadian Jewish News focused on a problem that rarely makes front page news but is, nevertheless, another disgusting aspect of life under crapitalism, that of cyber-bullying. 

During the summer 12 year old Courtland Millman created the hashtag #StopTheBully in hopes of raising awareness among her peers about the effect cyber-bullying can have on people. Ms Courtland did this in response to the bullying received by her friend and her sister, who was told,''You are fat, you are ugly, you are not worth it''. She reported that 75 per cent of the response she has received has been positive. The effect of bullying on young people's self esteem can be devastating and can effect their personality for the rest of their lives, particularly if they do not feel comfortable enough to discuss it with their parents, which Ms Courtland strongly advises. 

The effects of daily life in capitalist society have a dehumanizing effect on most people and sooner than attempting to analyse why many folk of all ages try to drag others down to give themselves a lift. The young observe it in adults and follow suit. 

One must applaud Ms Courtland for her efforts but realize she is attacking the symptoms not the cause. It would be so much better if we lived in a society where the very effects of it would give everyone a lift. 

For those interested in the article see CJNews.com October 12.

Lest we forget

Obituary: Jimmy Purvis (1966)

Obituary from the July 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Glasgow Branch have just learned of the recent death of our comrade James (Jimmy) Purvis.

Jimmy joined the party in the early thirties and was a very active member. A lot of his time and attention was devoted to constant attendance of Branch and propaganada meetings and in other ways helping to further the Socialist case. Jimmy did a great deal of valuable, though unseen, work in this regard at his place of employment. He introduced our case and literature to his workmates and created interest in workshop discussions, etc.

Unfortunately, over the past twelve years, Jimmy was unable to continue this valuable work on behalf of Socialism. A serious illness prevented him from continuing to work and greatly reduced his general activities. But despite this misfortune, he did not lose his enthusiasm or interest in Socialism. He continued to attend both branch and propaganda meetings until the end.

The loss of such members is a serious and grievous blow to the Party. We extend our sincere sympathy to the family and relatives of Jimmy Purvis.

Glasgow Branch