Prevention Is Better Than A Cure

On May11 Justin Trudeau and Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard announced plans to build a 12.8-kilometer by-pass at Lac-Megantic.

 In 2013 a train carrying crude oil came of the track, exploded, killed 47 people and destroyed most of the downtown area. This was in blatant violation of safety regulations so they could save a few bucks. 

The bypass has been estimated to cost $133 million; the federal government will pay 60 per cent and the provincial one 40 per cent.

 A typical capitalist situation caused by putting a price tag on everything and then having to pay more money because an ounce of prevention wasn't worth a ton of cure. Boy! what a system.

For socialism,

 Steve, Mehmet, John & contributing members of the SPC

Our Red Flag Keeps Flying

Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer
We'll keep the red flag flying here

Contrary to the aims of the anti-capitalist activists, the old social order cannot simply be removed. Its removal is dependent upon its replacement by socialism. The anti-capitalists who know that capitalism is the enemy, but who cannot make time for building a revolutionary socialist party because they are too involved in the campaigns for immediate reforms has not yet grasped this fundamental. They deplore the chaos in the world, the chaos in the radical movement yet there remains the chaos of their own political positions. Fortunately, there is the Socialist Party which fights for socialism and is able to devote themselves single-mindedly to the building of party dedicated to socialism. Let the cowards flinch and the traitors sneer but we reiterate our trust in our fellow-workers and dedicate ourselves again to the emancipation of ourselves from wage-slavery.

Capitalism has shown conclusively that it cannot advance civilisation, but only drive it further along the road of human degradation and ruination. The working class, even those sections of it that have been most cruelly oppressed, has shown a power of recuperation from defeat and powers of resistance to the capitalist class.

The working class is struggling daily to improve their living conditions, defend and expand their democratic rights, and achieve social progress. The history of mankind can be described as the history of the efforts of human communities to free themselves from the constraints always imposed by the necessity of meeting their daily survival needs and reproducing the species. The history of humanity is the history of human communities involved in the struggle for their existence. Unless we understand the implications of this, we cannot wage a systematic and effective struggle. The purpose of socialist revolution is to provide today’s society with a form of organisation that corresponds to the material possibilities open to us today. Socialist principles lay bare the conflict of interest between the owners of the means of production and the workers. Organised society came into existence as the result of experience that taught the lesson of mankind’s common problem and of the realisation that its solution is more likely to be attained through the cooperation of all having a common aim. Standing in the way of social progress and socialism is the capitalist class.

The Socialist Party calls upon the workers of the world to unite. In fact, it is held that it the most famous thing Marx ever said. The Socialist Party seeks to unify the workers across national borders. The International Workingmen's Association, or "First International", was a step toward such a thing as is our own World Socialist Movement. The new workers' movement must be imbued with the spirit and principles of socialism for the building of a genuinely revolutionary socialist party. The zigzag path of the world revolution will emerge more clearly. To change society and end exploitation, we need a plan to get from where we are now to liberation - a strategy that will work. Identifying our real friends and our real enemies is the first step. The capitalists are the powerful enemy and it will require protracted efforts to overthrow them. These capitalists are very wealthy and live off the exploited labour of others. Members of the Socialist Party believes that to be a part of the working class is something to be proud of. The working class constitutes the majority. When socialists look at the issue of class we see that every kind of society, from ancient times until now, is organised around its tools - it means of producing things that satisfy people's needs and wants. Ownership of the means of production is basic. Classes are large groups of people, who have a defined relationship to the means of production, such as ownership. The result of these differences in who owns what and where one fits into the social division of labour, means a difference in who gets how much wealth.

Capitalism is a doomed system whose continued existence stands in the way of all social progress. Huge corporations and financial institutions are headed by a wealthy oligarchy that dominates the political and economic life of this country, blocking the path to prosperity for the vast majority. The ruling class is like a vampire that sucks the blood of the workers. They live off the labour, land and natural resources of others driven to achieve the highest possible rate of profit. The capitalists have accumulated untold wealth based on the exploitation and robbery of the world's working class. We need to turn things around. This means a revolution that advances the cause of the exploited. Workers need political power. as the means to reorganise society in our own interests.

Socialism or barbarism! With the whole world, hard pressed by advancing barbarism to make the choice of socialism must the decision for civilization to survive and to flower. capitalism is objectively ripe for replacement by socialism which is another way of saying that capitalism has become an obstacle in the path of social progress. The Socialist Part faces the struggle for the socialist future with full confidence.   And we bring to this struggle the determination to work for the common good of all.  It is true that the humanity is indeed confronted with a problem of survival on this planet. But in order to survive, mankind will do away with the social system which threatens its survival. The goal is in sight. Socialism will win the world and change the world, and make it secure. 

 

Statistically Insignificant ?

The latest from Stats-Canada is wage growth in April reached its highest level in six years and the unemployment rate stayed at 5.8 per cent, its record low.

 The report issued on May 11 said wages were 3.6 per cent higher than this time last year, but the economy lost 1,100 jobs. You may wonder how this didn't change the unemployment rate; this was explained away by saying that, ''the decline in jobs last month was too small to be statistically significant.'' So according to these brilliant federal employees, everything is just great.

However, we still have unemployment and wages which limit how much of the world's wealth one can enjoy. Why not a society where neither would exist?

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

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.