Fan The Flames of Revolution

The aim of the Socialist Party is to replace world capitalist economy by world socialism.  To change the world and to create a better one has always been the goal of the Socialist Party. The hope that tomorrow's world can be free of today's inequalities, hardships and deprivations, The people can shape the world to come. But clearly, everyone's image of an ideal world is not one and the same, nevertheless, throughout history certain ideas have always come to the fore such as principles of freedom, equality, justice and prosperity. Socialism  is the movement for changing the world and setting up a free, equal, human and prosperous society, a movement that reflects the vision, ideals and protest of a vast section of the people.  Socialism is the revolutionary movement of the working class for overthrowing the capitalist system and creating a new society without classes and exploitation. The history of all societies has been a history of class struggle. An uninterrupted, now open and now hidden, struggle has been going on between exploiting and exploited, oppressor and oppressed classes in different epochs and societies. This class struggle is the chief source of social change and transformation. Modern capitalist society, has greatly simplified class divisions. Present society as a whole is organised around two main opposing class camps: workers and capitalists. Capitalism is based on the exploitation of direct producers — the appropriation of a part of the product of their labour by the ruling classes.   Under slavery not only the slave's product but he himself belonged to the slave- owner. He worked for the slave-owner, and in return was kept alive by him. In the feudal system the peasants either handed over part of their produce to the feudal lord, or performed certain hours of forced and unpaid labour. Under capitalism the workers, are free; they don't belong to anyone, are not appendages of any estate or lord. They own and control their own body and labour power. But workers are also 'free' in yet another sense: they are `free` from the ownership and possession of means of production, and so in order to live, they have to sell their labour power for a certain length of time, in exchange for wages, to the capitalist class — i.e. a small minority that own and monopolise the means of production. The workers have to then buy their means of subsistence — the goods they themselves have produced — in the market from the capitalists. The essence of capitalism and the basis of exploitation in this system is the fact that, on the one hand labour power is a commodity, and, on the other hand the means of production are the private property of the capitalist class.

In capitalism labour power and means of production are shut off from each other by the wall of private property; they are commodities and their owners must meet in a market. On the face of it, the owners of these commodities enter into a free and equal transaction: the worker sells his/her labour power for certain periods, in exchange for wages, to the capitalist, i.e. the owner of the means of production; the capitalist employs this labour power, uses it up and makes new products. These commodities are then sold in the market and the revenue begins the production cycle anew, as capital. However, behind the apparently equal exchange between labour and capital lies a fundamental inequality; an inequality which defines the lot of humanity today and without whose elimination society will never be free. With wages, workers only get back what they have sold, i.e. the ability to work and to show up in the market once again. By its daily work the working class only ensures its continued existence as worker, its survival as the daily seller of labour power. But capital in this process grows and accumulates. Labour power is a creative power; it generates new values for its buyer. The value of the commodities and services produced by the worker at any cycle of the production process is greater than the worker's total share and that portion of the products which goes into restoring the used up materials and wear and tear. This surplus value, taking the form of an immense stock of commodities, belongs automatically to the capitalist class, and increases the mass of its capital, by virtue of the capitalist class's ownership of the means of production. Labour power in its exchange with capital only reproduces itself, while capital in its exchange with labour power grows. The creative capacity of labour power and the working class's productive activity reflects itself as the birth of new capital for the capitalist class. The more and the better the working class works, the more power capital acquires. The gigantic power of capital in the world today and its ever-expanding domination of the economic, political and intellectual life of the billions of inhabitants of the earth is nothing but the inverted image of the creative power of work and of working humanity.  Exploitation in capitalist society takes place without yokes and shackles around the ankles of the producers,  through the medium of the market and exchange of commodities. This is the fundamental feature of capitalism which distinguishes it in essence from all earlier systems. The surplus value obtained from the exploitation of the working class is divided out among the various sections of the capitalist class essentially through the market mechanism and also through state fiscal and monetary policies. Profit, interest and rent are the major forms in which the different capitals share in the fruits of this class exploitation. The competition of capitals in the market determines the share of each capitalist branch, unit and enterprise. This surplus pays whole cost of the state machinery, of its ideological and cultural institutions, and the upkeep of all those who, through these institutions, uphold the power of the master-class. By its work, the working class pays the cost of the ruling class, the ever-increasing accumulation of capital and the bourgeoisie's political, cultural and intellectual domination over the working class and the entire society. With the accumulation of capital, the mass of commodities which make up the wealth of bourgeois society grows. An inevitable result of the accumulation process is the continual and accelerating technological progress and rise in the mass and capacity of the means of production which the working class sets in motion in every new cycle of the production process. But compared to the growth in society's wealth and productive powers, the working class continually gets relatively poorer. Despite the gradual and limited increase, in absolute terms, in the workers' standard of living, the share of the working class from the social wealth declines rapidly, and the gap between the living conditions of the working class and the higher living standards that is already made possible by its own work widens. The richer the society becomes, the more impoverished a section the worker forms in it.

Technological progress and rise in labour productivity mean that living human labour power is increasingly replaced by machines and automatic systems. In a free and human society, this should mean more free time and leisure for all. But in capitalist society, where labour power and means of production are merely so many commodities which capital employs to make profits, the substitution of humans by machines manifests itself as a permanent unemployment of a section of the working class which is now denied the possibility of making a living. The appearance of a reserve army of workers who do not even have the possibility of selling their labour power is an inevitable result of the process of accumulation of capital and at the same time a condition of capitalist production. The existence of this reserve army of unemployed, supported essentially by the employed section of the working class itself, heightens the competition in the ranks of the working class and keeps wages at their lowest socially possible level. This reserve army also allows capital to more easily modify the size of its employed work force in proportion to the needs of the market. Massive unemployment is not a side-effect of the market or a result of the bad policies of some government. It is an inherent part of the workings of capitalism and the process of accumulation of capital.

A socialist society will abolish the class division of society, i.e., simultaneously with the abolition of anarchy in production, it will abolish all forms of exploitation and oppression of man by man. Society will no longer consist of antagonistic classes in conflict with each other, but will present a cooperative commonwealth of labour. For the first time in its history mankind will take its fate into its own hands. Work will cease to be toiling for the benefit of a class enemy. The road to the emancipation of the workers, and with them, of mankind, is the social revolution. Humankind will be organised into a free federation of producers’ and consumers’ communes. The socialist revolution is the most profound of all revolutions in history. It initiates changes more rapid and far-reaching than any in the whole experience of mankind. The workers striking off their age-old chains of slavery, will construct a society of liberty and prosperity and intelligence. Socialism will inaugurate a new era for the human race, the building of a new world. The overthrow of capitalism and the development of socialism will bring about the immediate or eventual solution of many great social problems, among them war, superstition, famine, pestilence, crime, poverty, drug and alcohol addiction, unemployment, illiteracy, race and national chauvinism, the suppression of woman, and every form of slavery and exploitation of one class by another. The revolution will eventually liquidate these handicaps to the happiness and progress of the human race. Only socialism can fully uproot and destroy all these social evils. As long as there have been class divisions there will be struggles for social mastery. Socialism would prevent the evils of class division, subjection, and exploitation. Although there is little hatred for the capitalist system in the abstract many workers hold a burning anger and disgust for every successive calamity which comes to them as a matter of course. It is a call of every worker who has heart enough to feel a hatred for the wrongs and agonies of the capitalist system to realise the possibility of an alternative.

The capitalist system is behind all the ills that burden humanity today. Poverty, deprivation, discrimination, inequality, political repression, ignorance, bigotry, cultural backwardness, unemployment, homelessness, economic and political insecurity, corruption and crime are all inevitable products of this system. No doubt pro-capitalist philosophers will respond that these have not been invented by capitalism, but have all existed before capitalism, that exploitation, repression, discrimination, women's oppression, ignorance and prejudice are more or less as old as human society itself. What they disguise is the fact that, firstly, all these problems have found a new meaning in this society, corresponding to the needs of capitalism. These are being constantly reproduced as integral parts of the modern capitalist system. The source of poverty, starvation, unemployment, homelessness and economic insecurity at the end of the 20th century is the economic system in place at the end of the 20th century. The brutal dictatorships, wars, genocides, and repressions that define the life of hundreds of millions of people today draw their rationale from the needs of the system that rules the world today and serve specific interests in this world. Women's oppression today is not the result of medieval economy and morality, but a product of the present society's economic and social system and moral values. Secondly, it is the capitalist system itself continually and relentlessly resists people's effort to eradicate and overcome these ills. The obstacle to workers' struggle to improve living conditions and civil rights is none other than the capitalist class and its governments and political parties. Wherever people rise to take charge of their lives, the first barrier they face is the armed force of the local and international ruling class. It is the State, its enormous media and propaganda machinery, the institution of religion, traditions, moralities and educational system which shape the prejudiced attitudes among successive generations. There is no doubt that it is capitalists who stand in the way of the attempts by the people, more or less in possession of a clear outline of a society worthy of human beings, to change the system.

At the height of capitalism's globalisation and in the midst of the greatest technological development, humanity finds itself facing bare physical survival. The dream has given way to the permanent nightmare of war, hunger, and disease.  The miserable promise of the welfare state has resulted in massive U-turns with the resurgence of austerity policies and the abandoning of the livelihood of millions, old and young, to the mercy of the free market. The capitalist system and the primacy of profit have exposed the environment to serious dangers and irreparable damages. This is the reality of capitalism today, boding a horrifying future for the entire people of the world. 

Sylvia's suggestions

With socialism, we shall all satisfy our needs from common storehouses, according to our desires. Everyone will be able to have what he or she desires in food, in clothing and travel. The abundant production now possible, and which invention will constantly facilitate, will remove any need for rationing or limiting of consumption. Every individual will be secure from material want. Material anxiety being removed, and the rat-race for wealth and status eliminated. There will be no class distinctions since these arise from differences in material possessions — all such distinctions will be swept away. There will be neither rich nor poor. Money will no longer exist. There will be no selling, because there will be no buyers, since everyone will be able to obtain everything at will, without payment. The possession of private property, beyond that which is for actual personal use, will disappear. There will be neither masters nor servants, all being in a position of economic equality — no-one will be able to become the employer of another. Theft and all other economic crimes will disappear, with all the coercive law-enforcement institutions for preventing, detecting and punishing them.

As soon as people are working together some sort of organisation of work and of distribution becomes inevitable. Production cannot be carried on without organisation. In each industry, the workers concerned in the work must form and control the organisation, directed by the community an society as a whole. The various industries are interlinked in interest and utility; therefore the industrial organisations must be interlinked. When wages have disappeared, when there exists economic equality, when the position of manager, director, supervisor, etc., brings no material advantage, the danger of oppressive behaviour by the management will be largely nullified and organisers and administrators will be chosen and workers will be free to change him. Co-operation for the common good is necessary. Since co-operative work and mutual reliance on mutual aid render some kind of organisation necessary, the best possible form of organisation must be chosen: the test of its worth is its efficiency and the scope for freedom and initiative it allows to each of its units. Committees and delegates, built up from the base of the workshop and local assemblies, presents the best form of organisation yet evolved; it arises naturally when the workers are thrown upon their own resources in the matter of government.  We live always, however, in a state of flux, and there is and happily can be, no permanence about human institutions; there is always the possibility of something higher, as yet undiscovered.

Consider the position in London with capitalism abolished; the tubes and buses, the mainline stations, the docks, the waterworks, the power stations require to be operated. Millions of people are waiting for their food and groceries requirements to be brought to them. If any of these things cease, then people will be deprived of accustomed necessaries. Thus everything has to be reorganised and built upon a new basis; production for use, not for profit, and capitalism is overthrown. Everyone, both as worker and consumer, has new hopes and desires and new claims upon life, for has not the socialist revolution come? Everyone demands more leisure and more relaxed work , improved food, better clothes, more pleasant housing. Everyone is demanding a share in deciding how things shall be done. The only people who could deal with the great new situation would be the people who already do the work and who produce. All inter-connected as they are in this busy hive of activity. Workers and consumers would come together and talk the matter over; appoint one of their number to take stock and to coordinate supply and delivery. All this will be done purely by way of managing affairs so that all may be, as far as possible, satisfied that the needs of all may be explained and understood by those who have to supply them. But there should be no compulsion; some people may say: “What the majority decide is good enough for me.” Others will say: “I like to have a voice in it.” As a rule, when things affecting a group of people who are working together come up for decision everyone of the group will join in and give his or her opinion, and generally the thing will be decided by mutual agreement. Compulsion and coercion are repugnant to the socialist ideal. No-one may make a wage-slave of another; no-one may hoard up goods but the only way to prevent such practices is not by making them punishable; it is by creating a society in which no-one needs to become a wage slave, and no-one cares to privately hoard goods when all that is needed is readily supplied as required from the common storehouse. To recapitulate, workers’ and community councils structured in interlocking levels, will form the administrative machinery for supplying the needs of the people in socialist society. 

Socialism necessitates the creation of initiatives which shall animate the entire people. Under capitalism, people are like a flock of sheep shepherded by their owners. With socialism, on the contrary, they will be free co-operators, producing, inventing, studying, not under the compulsion of law, or poverty, or the incentive of individual gain, but from deliberate choice and with an eager zest for achievement. Socialism will provide the material conditions which will make voluntary co-operative labour possible. Only by willing service and intelligent initiative can true socialism develop. The establishment of the socialism entails a complete breach, both in practice and in ideas, with capitalism. There are no half-way compromises. 

Abridged and adapted from here

https://www.marxists.org/archive/pankhurst-sylvia/communism-tactics/index.htm

Lavish And Totally Socially Useless Spending

While watching a recent program about Leonardo Da Vinci I found out something I had missed at the time. 

In October 2017, at an auction in New York, a Saudi prince bought his, ''Salvatore Mundi'', for 400 million American dollars. 

Some may defend this on the grounds that it will be in a museum for all to see, but, nevertheless, it says something very loudly about an economic system, where such lavish and totally socially useless spending can occur when millions live in abject poverty.

 For socialism,
Steve, Mehmet, John & contributing members of the SPC.

A New Vision for the Working Class

The motivating aim of capitalism is not satisfaction of people's needs, but profitability of capital. The essence of the socialist revolution is abolition of private ownership of the means of production and their conversion into common ownership of the whole society. A socialist t revolution puts an end to the class division of society and abolishes the wage-labour system. Thus, market, exchange of commodities, and money disappear. Production for profit is replaced by production to meet people's needs and to bring about greater prosperity for all. Work, which in capitalist society for the overwhelming majority is coercive and compulsory gives way to voluntary, creative and conscious activity to enrich human life. Everyone, by virtue of being a human being and being born into human society will be equally entitled to all of life's resources and the products of collective effort. From everyone according to their ability, to everyone according to their need — this is a basic principle of socialism. The development of each person will be the condition of development of the society. Socialist society is a global system. National boundaries and divisions will disappear and give way to a universal human identity. Socialism will be free of religion, superstitious beliefs, and archaic traditions and customs that strangle free thought. In socialism the state withers away, society is a society without a state. The administrative affairs of the society will be managed by the cooperation, consensus and collective decision-making of all of its members. The wage-labour system, that is the daily compulsion of the great majority of people to sell their physical and intellectual abilities to others in order to make a living, is the source of the social violence which is inherent of this system and applied against anyone who stands up to any oppression. In this system, thanks to the rivalry of capitals and economic blocs, war and genocide have assumed staggering proportions. The technology of war and mass destruction is far more advanced than the technology used in production of goods. The global arsenal can annihilate the world several times over. This is the system that has actually used horrendous nuclear and chemical weapons against people.

Can such a system be swept out of the way of human liberation?  Law is the will and interest of the ruling class made to bind all. The ruling ideas in every society are the ideas of ruling class. But the extent of intellectual, cultural and moral domination and control of the bourgeoisie over the life of society today is now unprecedented. The scientific and technological advances and the powerful mechanism of the market transcends all national, tribal, political and cultural barriers, and today provides the wealthy with enormous ideological power on a world scale.  In this society, self-interest and competition, i.e. the rationale behind the capitalist's behaviour in the market, are portrayed as human nature as such and sanctified as exalted human values. Here the relations among people are a reflection and an extension of the relations among commodities. People's worth and status are measured by their relation to ownership. The bourgeoisie broke up the local and narrow arrangement of the old society and organised nation-states. Tribalism and parochialism gave way to modern bourgeois nationalism and patriotism as the heaviest ideological yoke ever put on the shoulders of the working people. The mass media is now indoctrinating and controlling minds, intimidating and isolating people, countering critical and dissident ideas. These institutions and the modern forms of thought-control are pillars of political stability, particularly in times of crisis, uncertainty and popular unrest. A critical requirement for the progress and victory of the social revolution is to put forward a revolutionary perspective before the working class. Capitalism is a world system, the working class is a worldwide class, workers' conflict with the employing class is a daily struggle on a global scale, and socialism is an alternative that the working class presents to the whole of humanity. The socialist movement must also be organised on a global scale.

The immediate aim of a socialist party is to organise the social revolution of the working class. A revolution that overthrows the entire exploitative capitalist relations and puts an end to all exploitations and hardships, the immediate establishment of socialism; a society without classes, without private ownership of the means of production, without wage labour and without a state; a free human society in which all share in the social wealth and collectively decide the society's direction and future. A socialist world is possible this very day. 

Votes for women commemorated

Women marking the 100th anniversary of the Representation of the People's Act, which gave some women the right to vote, will march through Edinburgh. The procession is due to start in The Meadows at 14:00 BST and finishes in Queens Drive in Holyrood Park. The march will see participants follow in the footsteps of Scottish suffragettes, who marched along Princes Street in 1909 during a demonstration arranged by the Women's Social and Political Union.

The People Act, which was passed by the UK Parliament in 1918, gave women over the age of 30 and who also owned property the right to vote.

Many find the Socialist Party's relationship to the suffragette movement unique. We opposed the suffragettes because their demands were against the interests of workers, women as well as men. Their proposals would have strengthened the political power of the capitalist class by increasing the proportion of rich people who had the vote. The movement, we stated, was “only a means of providing votes for the propertied women of the middle class, and faggot votes for the wealthy”. They wanted not votes for women, but more votes for property. We warned “the women of the working class are being used for the purpose of obtaining a limited suffrage in the interests of propertied women”. The Women’s Social and Political Union we denounced as “essentially a rich women’s organsation”. The Suffragette proposal to extend the Household Vote to women on the same terms as men and we opposed it for that reason. Universal adult suffrage was a different proposition. We were not opposed to this and frequently said so. We were of necessity Universal Adult Suffragists. However, we did not advocate universal suffrage or seek support on the grounds that we thought it useful. This was because there were already sufficient workers with the vote to win political power for Socialism if they were so minded. We held that in the political conditions of pre-1914 Britain there was no need to advocate extension of the franchise.

  The Socialist Party is not opposed to Adult Suffrage, but maintain that the working class have quite sufficient votes at their disposal to effect the revolutionary purpose when the class are sufficiently class conscious to make the time opportune. It is a question of education, not of extensions of the franchise (December, 1910).

   While Adult Suffrage would be a useful measure for the working class, to enable them to more quickly and completely take control of political power when they understand how to use their votes, yet as the working class have a franchise wide enough for the initial steps of their emancipation, it is not the business of a Socialist Party to spend time and energy in advocating the extension of that franchise, but to educate the workers in how to use the voting power which they already possess; hence the business of a Socialist Party is to advocate Socialism only (November, 1913).

If women are to do something about their place in society, they must first face the fact that most of them are workers, with labour power to sell, just like the majority of men. They must realise that their vote has solved nothing, changed nothing, because—again like the majority of men—it is a vote not backed by an understanding of society. But with that understanding the vote can do more than any Suffragette ever dreamed of — it can bring ". . .  the emancipation of all mankind without distinction of race or sex."

No fun during the summer holidays

In a study, titled 'The Cost of School Holidays for Children from Low Income Families',  published in the journal Childhood by researchers at the University of Glasgow, hunger, food insecurity, isolation, boredom, and stress are the reality of the summer break for many children in Scotland.

Far from the happy and carefree time it should be, the study found the summer break for children from low-income families is weeks of additional stress. Researchers found the effects of poverty increased during this time. The study said poor childcare, limited access to activities and food worries all had an impact on children's health.

Prof Nicolas Watson, from the Institute of Health of Wellbeing at the university, said: "The long summer holidays can offer children the chance to have new experiences, opportunities to play, relax, create memories and develop essential social skills. While this is true for many children, for some the school holidays are a stressful and impoverished period of isolation, boredom, and inactivity." Prof Watson added: "For low-income families, summer holidays often entail increased financial pressures, food insecurity, poor health and exclusion from culturally enriching and healthful activities."

The lack of educational and developmental opportunities enjoyed by more affluent children means that the long summer break may be one of the most fundamental contributors toward the attainment gap between richest and poorest children, accounting for almost two-thirds of the gap by the time children reach the age of 14.

"These children need help immediately," said Prof Watson. "First and foremost, steps must be taken to address the national problem of food insecurity to ensure that children do not go hungry or become malnourished during the school holidays. Second, providing accessible, good quality childcare that meets the diverse needs of families is vital if children's learning and wellbeing are to be supported while enabling parents to pursue better paid and more secure employment. Third, although there is a substantial amount of evidence to support the claim that summer learning loss is a problem - and a particular concern for low-income families - there is a lack of research on the long-term impact upon attainment and life outcomes, a gap that must be addressed through rigorous academic scrutiny." "These children need help immediately," said Prof Watson. "First and foremost, steps must be taken to address the national problem of food insecurity to ensure that children do not go hungry or become malnourished during the school holidays.

Prof Watson said: "Unless we take steps to tackle this problem, the evidence would suggest that attempts to rectify the attainment gaps in education, health and wellbeing that exist between the wealthiest and poorest school children will be unlikely to succeed."

Child Poverty Action Group reported the number of children living in poverty in the UK is now four million and that in-work poverty is the most prevalent form of child poverty with 67% of poor children living in low-income households.

John Dickie, director of the Child Poverty Action Group, said: "There is no question the summer holidays place a lot of pressure on low-income families who struggle to meet the extra costs of activities, lunches the children would normally be provided within school and childcare.

"We hear parents talk of their guilt and sadness that they cannot provide the carefree summer holidays they would like to for their children. Some give up work or reduce hours to look after their children in the long holidays. The ultimate solution is to boost family income to make sure they can afford the extra costs."

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-44411518

The SPGB vision of the world

Our global society is in crisis with the rise of the right and left demagogue populists. It is an old pattern, economic recessions often result in society becoming very much more brutal for most people. The class struggle was not invented by Marx. It is a fact, which exists whether we wish it or not. While capitalism lasts, so too will the inevitable class struggle. The change from capitalism to socialism is a revolution, the most far-reaching revolution in human history.  The abolition of private ownership of the means of production is what the capitalists oppose with all their might. We do not consider that socialisation is a piecemeal process. It is the Socialist Party's determined intention to do all in our power to spread the principles of socialism throughout the world. Being socialists our politics always includes socialism. The most important work that men and women can engage in is that of helping on the overthrow of capitalism, and the building up of the Socialist Co-operative Commonwealth.

For Marx and Engels socialism meant a free association of completely free men and women, where no separation between ‘private and common interest’ existed: a society where ‘everyone could give himself a complete education in whatever domain he fancied’. For ‘man’s activity becomes an adverse force which subjugates him, instead of his being its master’ when there is ‘a division of labour’; everyone must then have a profession, that is a ‘determined, exclusive sphere of activity’ he has not chosen and in which ‘he is forced to remain if he does not want to lose his means of existence’. In their socialist society, on the contrary, a person would be given ‘the possibility to do this today and that tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, to go fishing in the afternoon, to do cattle breeding in the evening, to criticise after dinner’, as he or she chose (‘The German Ideology').

The 'dictatorship of the proletaria't is a much misused phrase; when socialism is in being there will be no proletariat, as we understand the term today and no dictatorship. The dictatorship, so far as it is genuine and defensible, is the suppression by workers’ of capitalism and the attempt to re-establish it. This should be a temporary phase. Once the capitalist have given up any attempt to re-establish capitalism, then away with dictatorship; away with compulsion.

There would be little compulsion in socialism; some people may say: “What the majority decides is good enough for me.” Others will say: “I like to have a voice in it.” As a rule, when things affecting a group of people who are working together come up for decision every one of the group will join in and give his or her opinion, and generally the thing will be decided by mutual agreement. Compulsion of any kind is repugnant to socialist ideals. No-one may make a wage-slave of another; no-one may hoard up goods for himself that he does not require and cannot use, but the only way to prevent such practices is not by making them punishable; it is by creating a society in which no-one needs to become a wage slave, and no-one cares to be encumbered with a private hoard of goods when all that he needs is readily supplied as he needs it from the common storehouse when all things that nature and mankind produce are free in abundance for the asking.

Capitalism is based on the exploitation of the working class. Labour Party politicians talked about socialism, in practice they carried on running capitalism. They did introduce certain reforms which ameliorated the effects of some of the worst features of capitalism in the spheres of health, housing, and family support. Collectively, these became known as the ‘Welfare State’ – but they were not socialism. The essential feature of capitalism, that very thing which makes the system one of exploitation and robbery of the mass of wage workers by the ruling class of capitalists, namely the private ownership of the means of production and exchange, this remained untouched.

The Socialist Party proposes that all resources, all land and buildings, all manufacturing establishments, mines, and means of transportation and communication, should be, not private property, but the common property of all. We propose that production be made to serve the needs of the majority, rather than to serve the needs of a few parasites.  We hold that production and distribution of goods can be planned to avoid anything resembling the crises in capitalist society. Such an economy on the basis of common ownership without any class divide is called socialism. Experience has proved that planning under capitalism is impossible. When the Socialist Party speak of planned economy we do not mean nationalisation or the mixed economy which leaves all the wastefulness, all the inefficiency and all the criminal parasitism of capitalism untouched, only increasing the power of the big industrialists, the financiers, and the government bureaucrats.

We mean something entirely different. What we have in mind is very simple and clear-cut. Do away with production for profit. But isn’t it a utopia? Isn't that a socialist dream? The members of the Socialist Party are realists, claiming that our case is not only capable of fulfilment, but that the forces to realise it are already in existence. With the workers coming into their own, the road is open for economic and cultural progress undreamed of under capitalism. Production is rapidly increased. Standards of living rise higher and higher. Education, art, invention blossom in socialism. Exploitation of man by man is abolished. The rule is soon established: “let each person work according to ability; let each person receive from the common stock of goods according to needs.” This is socialism. Man himself changes under such conditions. Soon the State is no more needed. In a classless society, there is nobody to suppress or keep in check. They manage their affairs without the State force. Mankind is free, forever.

Socialism is “an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” As such, it is the watchword for free individual fulfilment – to be confused with neither the mirage of individualism without individuality mired in the conformism promoted by advertising; nor crude egalitarianism. The development of the specific needs and talents of each person contributes to the universal development of the human species. Reciprocally, the free development of each person implies the free development of all, because emancipation is not a solitary pleasure.

SNP and their Scotch Myths

The SNP's annual conference takes place in Aberdeen over this weekend so it is apt that we remind ourselves of the poison of nationalism.

The SNP talk about the Scottish culture and the Scottish way of life. But in what way is the life of a Scottish wage-slave basically different from that of any other nationality.  There is no basic difference in the way of life of the world’s working class because we all suffer from the same problems such as poverty and insecurity. Independence from England will not cure the poverty and insecurity of the Scottish workers, because they will still be the wages, labour and capital relationship. There is no truly independent country in the world because international capitalism has made sure of this.

The illusions of nationality are yet another way the ruling class trick workers into thinking that this really is some kind of collective society, and to misplace their passions that could otherwise be directed into the class struggle. Nationalism is the ideology which seeks to justify the capitalist division of the world into separate “nation-states”. We utterly reject this view of the way humanity should organise itself. We condemn all nationalisms equally. When countries achieved independence little changed except the personnel of the state machinery, the local politicians, who would be able to award themselves grander titles and grander salaries.

The SNP separatists see themselves as visionaries but they cannot see beyond the narrow confines of the nation-state, conceived in pre-medieval times and as outmoded as the clan system it replaced. It is the Socialist Party who are the true men and women of vision, who look forward to and struggle for a new world of common ownership and democratic control of society's resources. Socialists recognise the essential unity of the human race and the urgent need to celebrate it by building a society on that basis. In a socialist society the traditional knowledge and expertise held by small communities will be respected, especially where this relates to local ecology and sustainable systems of land use, and hence priority given to local decision-making over whatever has to be delegated to wider regional or global democratic control.

Expropriation of the Expropriators

At the present moment, the difficulties of capitalism are increasing in every country. There is a scramble all over the world for control of oil fields, ore deposits and sources of supply of all kinds. The result of this scramble has been war. In such a situation, the capitalists have only one solution of the difficulty, i.e., the increased exploitation of the working class. There are two ways in which the capitalists can increase this exploitation: (1) to reduce the wages of the working class, and (2) to speed up the working class while continuing to pay them the same wages. These methods are not mutually exclusive. Very often both of them are adopted by the same body of employers, one after the other. Political leaders hold that capitalism, as a result of the 2007/2008 Recession is not in a “normal” condition. If wage reductions and cuts in working conditions will help in getting capitalism back to “normal,” then they hold that these austerity policies ought to be agreed to by the working class. They have pursued this policy, not merely in theory, but in action in the endeavour to induce the workers to help capitalism back to “normal.” This policy to make sacrifices in order to help capitalism back to normal runs through the whole policy of the politicians. The Socialist Party contends that the difficulties of the capitalist system are due to the normal development of the capitalist system itself, and no amount of concessions by the workers can ameliorate the difficulties which the capitalist class face.  Sooner or later new crises will arise in the development of the system, and the capitalists will call upon the workers for further sacrifice.   The Socialist Party, therefore, call upon the workers to resist all attempts to lower their standard of living, to unite their forces industrially and to make their resistance as widespread and as united as possible, and to then attack the capitalist system itself. 

If we look at the production of wealth in present-day society, we find that that production of wealth can only take place through the co-operation of many diverse trades and industries interlocked one with the other. Within a given factory, the whole variety of workers, manual and mental, co-operate together in order to produce a common product. Within society as a whole, all industries co-operate together in order to produce wealth, the raw material of one industry being the finished product of the other. Without this co-operation of all the useful elements of society in production, there can be no society as we understand it to-day. Wealth to-day can only be produced and industry maintained through this co-operation.

The vast industries in which men and women co-operate to produce wealth to-day are not the creation of any particular class, but have only been created and can only be maintained by the co-operative labour of all useful elements in society. The technical knowledge, the science which is utilised by these industries is not the creation of any particular social class but is the shared legacy of all co-operating together in society.

This knowledge and its application to industry, is constantly increasing, and with it, the power to produce wealth quickly and efficiently. Within our lifetimes we have seen tremendous progress in science and technology. The ability to produce wealth grows every year, and with it, in a rational system of society, the welfare of the mass of the people should grow also. Yet in the capitalist society, the opposite process is taking place. Alongside growing power to produce wealth, there is growing poverty. The wealth which is produced by the co-operative labour of all active workers in industry is divided in most hopelessly unequal fashion. In addition, the existing powers of wealth production are not being used to their fullest capacity.

The cause of the flawed distribution of wealth lies in the nature of the capitalist order of society. Whilst wealth is cooperatively produced, while industries can only be maintained by the co-operative labour of millions of workers, these industries are not owned by the workers who operate them, but by a small idle class owning the land, and the means of production. Because this class owns the means of life, it is able to dictate to the producers the terms on which they will work. These terms may vary for different classes of workers, in accordance with their scarcity, skill, or organisation, but they are always of such a character as to allow to the employing class the lion’s share of the wealth which is produced by the labour of others.

In addition to the unequal distribution of wealth, capitalism wastes many of the advantages of science and invention because of the unplanned character of modern industry taken as a whole. In a single enterprise, or even within a single industry, production may be planned according to the most scientific methods, but in capitalist society as a whole, there is no plan regulating the production and distribution of wealth. The whole system is based on the pursuit of profit by the owners of the means of production. The regulator of the whole system determining whether industry shall be expanded or shall go on short time is the rise and fall of prices on the market, reflecting the rise and fall in the possibilities of profit for the capitalists whose industries produce for the market.

The chaos of capitalism taken as a whole renders it incapable of completely utilising the results of modern science and invention or of overcoming the crises in the basic industries in this country. No capitalist will make any effort to reorganise an industry on more efficient lines, however, unless there is the prospects of a vast profit accruing from the expenditure on that reorganisation. Even when capitalism was on the upgrade, however, continually expanding year after year, the workers did not receive the advantages of the mighty technical progress that was being made.

The scramble for profit leads also to the scramble for markets for sources of investment and raw materials on an international scale and leads inevitably to war. In the period of the greatest expansion of capitalism, colossal wealth existed alongside the most heart-rending poverty. The idea promoted is that the more capitalism produces wealth the better off everyone will become. This is not the case. The more wealth capitalism produces the greater its difficulties as a functioning system; the more difficult it is to obtain markets, the more intensive international competition becomes; the greater becomes the danger of the antagonisms created by this competition ripening into war. Thus, on the one hand, capitalism, in its development, widens the gulf between the active workers and the non-producing capitalists, increases the difficulties of capitalism to dispose of its product, and drives the capitalist states irresistibly towards war.

Remembering the Miners' Strike

While the UK government ruled out an inquiry into the "Battle of Orgreave", an independent review of the impact of policing on communities during the miners' strike has been set up by the Scottish government.

It is estimated that 500 Scottish miners were arrested during the year-long strike, with Scotland seeing 30% of the arrests during the disputes despite only having 10% of the UK's mining workforce.

 David Hamilton, a former miner's leader who went on to become Labour MP for Midlothian, explained, "They'll be able to look at what's happened, they'll be able to see the mistakes that were made.

"They'll be able to see that it was a state versus a trade union.

"And I think if they come to a conclusion that proves beyond doubt, something that we've always known as miners, that the general public have never known, and young people don't understand, that the power of the state was used in a way that should never have been used...It's about recognising they were criminalised during that strike and they should never have been criminalised."

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-44402284

Scotland's Empty Houses

Figures used in the report from the National Records of Scotland suggest there is nearly 80,000 empty homes in Scotland.

Edinburgh came out with the highest number of empty properties, with the city having nearly 8000 empty properties, followed by Glasgow which had over 7500.

In 2007, 2.67 per cent of properties in Scotland were empty, but this has grown to over 3 per cent in 2018.

https://www.commonspace.scot/articles/12851/over-100000-empty-homes-and-under-used-second-homes-scotland-worsening-housing-crisis

The Price of Death

The basic cost of a burial in Scotland has risen on average by 75% since 2010.  Citizens Advice Scotland said of the 55,000 funerals taking place in Scotland each year 10% of families struggle to pay the bill.

Jim Brodie, of the Scottish Association of Independent Funeral Directors, believed council charges for interment and cremations were "immoral". Mr Brodie said grieving families were being subjected to a "postcode lottery" because of the variety of fees being levied by the country's 32 councils.

BBC Scotland showed that the basic cost for an interment varied between £310 in the Western Isles to £1,780 in Stirling, with the Scottish average being £730 - a rise of 75% in eight years. In Shetland, interment fees have increased by 355% from £110 to £500 since 2010 and in South Lanarkshire and East Renfrewshire the charge has risen by 151% and 136% respectively.

Pay an additional £67 to Dundee Council for "extra depth
Permission from Dundee Council to scatter ashes will set you back £47
Music for a cremation service by Falkirk Council will cost you an additional £147

Overthrow capitalism and replace it with something nicer

Socialism is not some idyllic Utopia, which we OUGHT to establish but a future system which we MUST attain if humanity is to continue civilisation. Capitalism is tremendously wasteful and destructive of men, goods, power, land. The ultimate destiny of all useful goods is to be consumed. Yet under capitalism goods are not produced to be consumed, but for profit, and if a greater profit can be made by destroying the goods, the destruction takes place. While production is a social act, the appropriation of the product, under the present system, is individual. As capitalism develops, larger and larger factories are built, thousands of labourers co-operate in the production of a single article, yet the article does not belong to them but to the owner of the means of production. The labourers are merely paid wages for the use of their labour power, wages which constantly grow less and less an aliquot part of the total product as the total product ever increases. Simultaneously the owner of the industries becomes progressively more divorced from the productive process. Small mom and pop enterprises become big corporations or are driven out of business, the original entrepreneurs become mere rentiers. The corporation also develops, becomes more and more a public utility. The state begins to take a hand and to run the industry. The former individual owner now becomes a purely parasitic hanger-on, his dividends paid regularly by the state apparatus which he controls.  The greater the productivity of labour and the greater the amount of production, the greater becomes the surplus product in the hands of the owners, the greater the need for markets, the greater, therefore, the competition among the capitalists, and the greater the tendency to lower the rate of profit, the greater the lowering of the wages of the workers, the larger the army of unemployed and paupers, the more vigorous the drive for foreign markets for exploitation, and the more violent the military interventions to control the world. The greater the globalisation of markets, the greater the need to have a military machine to defend the market interests, the greater grows the oppressive burdens of the state apparatus, the greater grows the necessity to transform the whole nation into an armed, economically ruthless, chauvinistic state.

  It was capitalism which created the working class who bear the full weight of capitalism upon their backs and as the working class fights against its increasingly worsened position it comes to the realisation that the only way out is for labour to take what it has produced for itself. To take over the means of production, the mines, mills, factories, resources, utilities and run them for their own benefit. Then we will have production for use and not for profit. Then we will end both despotism in the factory and anarchy in the market. Then society will allocate its resources and labour power according to a social plan that will benefit all. It is capitalism which sharpens the workers' intelligence and gives it its science. It is capitalism that arms the workers with knowledge and gives them the strength to carry out their own interests. In short, capitalism, as it grows out of date, creates its own grave-diggers. The interest of the workers is diametrically opposed to the interest of the capitalists and exploiters of the workers who, controlling the government and the social educational agencies, strive to keep the workers down. Surely, the victory of the working class cannot be forever delayed as the capitalists, blinded by their interests, try to stop the Juggernaut of progress. When the workers of the world unite to take political power and to supplant the capitalist system, then the rule over people will begin to give way to an administration over things. The state and religion will begin to wither away. There will be no exploitation. There will be no classes. The productivity of labour will greatly increase, each will receive according to needs and will contribute according to his ability.

When we have reached socialism we will have reached a rational economic where society will be a free one and mankind emancipated. 

Nationalist Questions

Only 59% of people in Scotland say they feel strongly British, well down on the 79% who do so in Wales and the 82% in England.

 More than four in five say they feel strongly Scottish. Indeed, as many as 61% saying they feel "very strongly" Scottish.

In contrast, only 54% of people in England feel "very strongly" English, while just 41% of those in Wales claim they are "very strongly" Welsh.

 A strong Scottish identity - and a weak British one - is the hallmark of SNP support. No less than 79% of those who voted for the party in last year's general election say they feel "very strongly" Scottish, whereas only 9% say they feel "very strongly" British.

 Only one in six people in England say they are English and are not British. No less than 70% of "English nationalists" say that "England was better in the past" and only 13% that its "best years are still in the future". In contrast, just 16% of SNP supporters believe that "Scotland was better in the past", while as many as 64% feel that the country's best years are yet to come. The optimism of SNP supporters is sustained by the prospect that one day Scotland will become independent and their belief - disputed by others of course - that Scotland will be better off as a result.

The SNP has long argued that it promotes an inclusive sense of Scottish identity - anyone who comes to live in Scotland has the right to be regarded as Scottish, irrespective of whether they or their parents were born in Scotland or not. In England, however, politicians have tended to promote Britishness rather than Englishness as the identity to which all living in England can lay claim.

Only about half (47%) say that someone who has lived in Scotland for more than 10 years makes someone Scottish. However, that is nearly twice the proportion of "English nationalists" (25%) who say that having lived in England for more than 10 years makes someone English. Half say that Scotland's "diverse cultural life" adds strongly to their sense of belonging to where they currently live, whereas only 22% of "English nationalists" do so. Half say that Scotland's "diverse cultural life" adds strongly to their sense of belonging to where they currently live, whereas only 22% of "English nationalists" do so.

There is one thing on which SNP supporters and "English nationalists" agree - that their country is better than most others. Three in five SNP supporters (60%) and almost two in three "English nationalists" express that view. In both cases, little more than a handful think that their country is worse than most other countries.

The novelist, Victor Hugo once said, “Let's not be English, French or German anymore. Let's be European. No not European, let's be men. Let's be Humanity. All we have to do is get rid of one last piece of egocentricity - patriotism." 

Why love a country more than any another simply on the basis of the bit of soil you happen to have been born on? The Socialist Party case against nationalism is straightforward. We do not advocate re-drawing the border. No socialist will ever fight to defend any border — we want to do away with the divisiveness of countries and states. Nationalism can never be a solution to the problems of oppression. The problem is class, not national, racial, or religious origins. As a class, workers have no country. The Scots do not own Scotland.

The independence movement seeks to persuade all those who live here that a better Scotland is possible. Nationalists endeavour to prove an independent Scotland would make everyone better off yet political power lies with a global elite and the economics is inter-linked across borders. Multi-national companies lobby and fund political parties across the world. No nation in a capitalist world has economic independence, they are all interconnected though obviously, the more powerful economies dominate the rest. Given the growing globalisation and unification of the world – contrary to the will of nations and governments – some people cling to what is familiar. 

Would an independent capitalism Scotland be any different than now - of course not? You've got to ask yourself, will the average Scot really gain much by Scottish independence? Or will he continue to be part of an exploited majority in a system run by a privileged minority, whether they be Scots or English?  If you think that some people have "rights" based on "nation" ("right of nations to self-determination" or a "right of abode" based on national/ethnic criteria) then you are arguing for nationalism and the right of bourgeoisie to dominate its "own" working class, not internationalism. If you support the "right of a nation to self-determination" you merge the population comprising this so-called nation into a homogenised mass with an over-riding common interest and common identity that is their national identity. Class differences are suppressed or even completely ignored for the sake of upholding this national identity. This is class collaborationism for the sake of an abstraction called the "nation state" which is itself a product of capitalism. Nationalism is not only a product of capitalism but a major means by which capitalism perpetuates itself. By buying into the illusion of nationalism you are aiding capitalism.