Is It Buyer Fatigue Or Not Enough Money?

There is a slowdown in the Toronto condo market as borrowing costs have risen for the first time in a decade. The average price is now $560,000. Some developers in their anxiety to sell are offering discount parking and are giving buyers longer than the usual six months to come up with the down payment which usually ranges from15 to 25 per cent. 

What is both amusing and pathetic is the new terminology some developers are using. Shaun Hilderbrand at condo data provider Urbanation Inc. said,'' High prices and buyer fatigue are coming into play'', meaning lots of folk can't afford it. 
Christopher Bibby of Remax, said,'' Your not seeing the same pace of growth or aggressiveness on the buyer side'', I wonder why. 

The question becomes,'' does one want to pay exorbitant rents that increase every year or a condo that will gobble up every cent you make''; a lose-lose situation.

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

Capitalism is the Common Cause of Our Misery

The Socialist Party strives for a world where all members of various communities manage social and economic life.  Each community would coordinate with every other community on a regional and global scale. We believe it will take a social revolution to win. Allocation of public and consumer goods would operate according to calculation in kind, that is the measurement in real quantities. Markets and money prices would be replaced by a system of stock buffering and control to ensure against shortages of consumer goods. Needs would be calculated by direct records of demand from community stores and workers would supply according to pull production responding to consumption. Community councils could prioritise needs when goods are scarce by needs-testing, a points system or even a lottery.

State capitalism is capitalism by the state and for the state. It is capitalism by the government and for the government. It is thus capitalism by the ruling classes and for the ruling classes. State capitalism is not socialism and never can become socialism. The abolition of the State is a necessary precondition for the emancipation of the working class. The first act of the coming revolution which wants to overcome class division is the abolition of the state. The community has to organise production. Government ownership is no better for the slave than private ownership, and it seems as if under government control the workers are in a more absolute slave position (if possible) than ever, bound by rules and regulations and subject to more direct coercion than ever before. National ownership or control is only a more complete development of capitalism and is generated by the commercial jealousy of one section of the capitalist class against another, socialists realise that nationalisation of industry will not remove the slave system under which the working class is compelled to live. Capitalism is to make profits, regardless whether under nationalization or not. Nationalisation would operate and does operate the same as the big chain stores or trusts, to eliminate useless labour and make bigger profits. What about the workers? Would it give better wages or fewer hours and more employment? If the mines were nationalised operating staffs would be greatly reduced and more machinery introduced. The same applies in all industries, it is simply the concentration of labour in the most efficient way. Under private capitalism, the workers must sell their labour power to live and under nationalization, which is state capitalism, they must sell their labour power and be subject to the laws of capitalism, a struggle for existence and hired and fired to suit a capitalist state.

The workers are a slave class; they are as much slaves as their progenitors, the chattel and the serf, but in place of previous methods the worker receives his subsistence to-day through a money payment, he is a wage slave. To the chattel slave, his/her whole labour appeared to be given gratis, to the wage worker his/her whole effort appears to be paid for. Behind this payment lurks the secret of modern methods of exploitation: ever since the dawn of slavery human energy has sustained a set of unproductive idlers out of the wealth produced beyond that required for the sustenance of the producers. As with the slave of ancient society so with the modern wage slaves, the wealth they produce is the property of the masters. Its proportionate increase is enormous owing to the increased powers of mankind over nature’s materials. This surplus over and above the value of the workers' wages is called by the socialist “surplus value." Out of this surplus, whether its form be rent, interest, or profit, its owners have to meet the expenses of their profit-making system, i.e., wars, pauperism, crime, etc. Fellow-workers, heed not your masters' canting cry about “burdens," they are his, and in order to economise as far as possible he would have you think them yours. 

  For Marxists there is no amount that the worker ought to receive, nor was the non-receipt of the full value produced, ever offered as a justification for restitution or for the struggle to rebuild society. Exploitation to the Marxist is not something “wrong,” and therefore to be condemned. Exploitation in various forms has been the necessary basis of different social systems. The need for it is passing, and only that fact calls for and justifies our efforts to establish socialism.  Many misunderstand the Marxian doctrine of the increasing exploitation of the workers. Marx did not assume and build hrs theories upon the inevitability of increased poverty. The change he had in mind was the worsening position of the workers relative to the wealth and power of the capitalist class. What he argued was that the productivity of the workers' increases more rapidly than their real wages. Marx explained that the workers' position gets worse, even although his or her real wages may not fall, but actually rise.


The Socialist Party was born in revolt against the horrors of poverty. It gets its whole philosophy by analysing the modern economic system in search of the cause of poverty. Its aim is opposed to capitalist business and capitalist politics as light is to darkness. This principle no professional politician will adopt. A lot of make-believe capitalist sympathy has been slobbered over the working class recently as a result of the revelations of some of the horrors of working-class existence. That the capitalist may make a genuine effort to improve these conditions is quite possible. But even if they do improve the workers' conditions; if they stable them in palaces and harness them in golden chains, what then? Evolution has given us the possibility of producing by work, as distinct from toil, wealth in such abundance that the amenities of civilisation shall be the portion of all, without stint – is that not worth fighting for? True the world is vain, evil, ugly. But these are mere accidental phenomena, only forms and appendages of the world. Its eternity, truth, goodness and beauty is substantial, existing, positive. Its negative is like the darkness which serves to make the light more brilliant, so that it may overcome the dark and shine more brightly. The spokesmen of the ruling classes are not open to such a sublime optimism, because they have the pessimistic duty of perpetuating misery and servitude. Why fritter your time away on matters that leave you bottom dog. Recognise the real and ultimate contest must be between masters and slaves. In numbers you are overwhelming, armed with the knowledge of your usefulness as a class, no power can withstand you.

Manifesto of The Socialist Commandments, 1912

These socialist commandments were taught to children who attended socialist sunday schools, emphasising to children that socialism was the secular embodiment of Christianity.

The socialist sunday school movement arose out of the London dock strike of 1892 when food kitchens and educational classes were set up for the children of striking dockers. It was at these classes that children were taught the causes and results of poverty for working people. By 1912 there were over 200 socialist sunday schools organised throughout Britain.

In their early days, they encountered much opposition from local authorities and other official bodies, as many Conservative and Liberal politicians argued that socialist sunday schools were subversive and were poisoning the minds of young people with political and anti-religious doctrines and teachings.

This is for those who are fed up

Fed up with the failures of this dreary system
Fed up with leaders and the false promises of career politicians
Fed up with poor hospitals, poor schools, poor housing and an unhealthy environment
Fed up with having to live on a wage that struggles to pay the endless bills
Fed up with serving the profit system and seeing poverty amidst luxury. 

We, in the Socialist Party, reject the view that things will always stay the same. We can change the world. Nothing could stop a majority of socialists building a new society run for the benefit of everyone. We all have the ability to work together in each other’s interests. All it takes is the right ideas and a willingness to make it happen.

By calling themselves ‘democratic socialists’ progressive Democrats such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has revived interest in the subject of ‘socialism.’ More people are trying to find out what ‘socialism’ means. For them, ‘socialism’ means a series of reforms to make American society fairer and more democratic—more like what exists in West European countries and especially Scandinavia. They want the capitalists who own most of the means of life—the land and other productive wealth—to pay more taxes. They want more effective government regulation of their business activity but never talk about the need to replace capitalism by a fundamentally different system. There are other people for whom ‘socialism’ is associated by the ‘communist’ dictatorships that used to exist in Russia where the means of life were owned by the state and controlled by officials. However, there exists another tradition of socialist thought in which socialism means neither the reform of capitalism nor state ownership. It means social (or communal) ownership—that is, democratic control of the means of life by and for the whole of society (or the whole community). It also means production for use, not profit. It views socialism as a worldwide society. The interconnected nature of today’s world makes it impossible to create a new society in a single country. Capitalism is a world system, so socialism too must be a world system.

The position of the workers is the hopeless one in that they must always struggle to maintain their wages at subsistence level, but that they cannot do more. All the vast and wonderful improvements in the productive processes which mean such stupendous wealth for the owners mean only more intensive conditions for the workers. They can have no share in it. All the reforms and all the philanthropy cannot touch this position. Remove the unemployed to-day, to-morrow machinery will have produced them again. Give the workers free houses or free bread—they must struggle just as hard for the remainder of their necessities. Attempts at reform, therefore, are useless. They are defeated by the very operation of the economic laws of our competitive system. As a matter of fact, capitalism is always being reformed. Reforms are the red-herring by which the capitalists keep the workers on the wrong scent. Reforms and palliatives keep the wage-slaves running from Tweedledum to Tweedledee and from Tweedledee to Tweedledum. And when, after much fighting, each reform or palliative is gained, it is only such as is necessary to keep capitalism safe for capitalists.

For many generations, human misery has been so obvious. The Socialist Party set itself up to form an organisation which would serve the revolutionary purpose, the establishment of a social system for the furtherance of human happiness and well-being. The only hope of any real betterment of their condition lies in abolishing the social system which reduces them to being mere sellers of their labour-power, to be exploited by the capitalists. Workers will see then that this involves dispossessing the master class of the means through which alone the exploitation of labour-power can be achieved. A class which understands all this is class-conscious. It has only to find the means and the methods by which to proceed,  in order to become the fit instrument of the revolution.

The world we want is one where we all work together. We can all do this. Co-operation is in our interests and this is how a socialist community would be organised – through democracy and through working with each other.

To co-operate we need democratic control not only in our own area but by people everywhere. This means that all places of industry and manufacture, all the land, transport, the shops and means of distribution, should be owned in common by the whole community. With common ownership, we would not produce goods for profit. The profit system exploits us. Without it we could easily produce enough quality things for everyone. We could all enjoy free access to what we need without the barriers of buying and selling.

Capitalism is an Unnecessary Evil

The Socialist Party provides no career for any individual, but some organisations, the capitalist political parties, for example, normally allow their political leaders to use the party machine as a means of carving out a career full of honours and wealth.  Much more then must this be true of the Government, the executive committee of the ruling class. The Cabinet, representing the outlook of the capitalist majority in Parliament is the servant of a minority of the population, the minority which owns and controls die resources of the country to the exclusion of the mass of the population. This state of affairs will continue until the workers cease sending defenders of capitalism to Parliament.

The Government then represents the collective interests of the capitalist class. The principal part of its task is to keep the propertyless working class from challenging the position of the exploiting class. The workers must, in other words, be fobbed off with promises, bemused with fine-sounding, but empty, phrases, bought off with petty concessions, and—if everything else fails— beaten down by force in the name of the law. What, then, is the first qualification of the politician who wants to be useful to the ruling class? Obviously, it is that he shall have the confidence of the workers or at least of a large number of them. He must be popular. Only so can he misdirect the sheep on behalf of the wolves, who are his paymasters. Like the quack doctor, he must have a patter. He must speak the language of the factory and market-place. He must be able to dress up his capitalist nostrums in phraseology which makes them look like the real thing for the workers. As with the man so with the institution. The politician and the Cabinet must be trusted and respected. No breath of suspicion of personal self-seeking must be allowed to blow on them. In order to serve most effectively as cover for the brutal methods of factory exploitation and the tortuous ways of finance, the political institutions must stand forth as beacons of purity and unselfishness. That is all there is to it.

How You Are Robbed.

From whence come the dividends upon which the capitalists live? From the results of the work you do. Let us illustrate this point by taking a particular instance. You and some of your fellow workers are employed by a certain company and that company pays you wages and salaries. Now if the company makes a profit they must make it out of employing you because your class does all the work of producing for the company. In other words, you and your fellows produce a quantity of goods that sell at a value which is greater than the value of your wages plus all other expenses. There is a surplus and it is out of this surplus that the capitalists of this country, and the rest of the world, live luxuriously and amass fortunes.

The capitalists pay you as little as they possibly can and urge you to increase the amount of your production, because the more you produce and the less you take the more there is for them. They are helped in this process by the fact that you compete with each other for jobs and those who work most efficiently for the wages they get stand the best chance of getting and keeping a job. Efficiency does not necessarily mean doing the best job. You may be constructing jerry-built houses or doing similar shoddy work. Efficiency under capitalism means producing the greatest possible amount of profit for the capitalist which also involves working at high speeds. Sometimes, as in America, they pay higher wages because they have found they can get more out of you by doing so; that is by exploiting you more efficiently. But such higher paid workers are more rapidly exhausted, and, in the long run, are no better off than those on lower pay.

Another method adopted by the capitalists to increase what they can get out of you is the introduction of new technology and automated methods of production. This increases the amount of wealth each worker produces and reduces the number the capitalists need to employ—Puts many of you out of a job to swell the unemployed army. It is class ownership of the means of production that is the root of our troubles. This is what is wrong with society to-day. This is why we suffer poverty and insecurity and all the misery associated with poverty and insecurity. No reforms put forward by any political party touch this class ownership of the means of production; at best they only aim at easing some of the worst evils. Even in this, they are generally unsuccessful as you know from your own experience. No sooner is one evil eased than another, maybe worse, appears in its place. While you remain dependent on the capitalists giving you a job, in order that you may live, reforms cannot relieve you of poverty and insecurity.

To-day you do all the work of society yourselves. The capitalist does nothing except draw his dividends. He tells you that you cannot get on without him because, according to him, nothing can be done without money and he has the money with which to pay your wages. But money does not make anything and people have made things where money was unknown. Even your ordinary history books tell you about people who made the things they needed without having to use money. It is only because goods are bought and sold that money is needed. If buying and selling were abolished money would lose its function. If you distributed to your, selves the goods you produce you would not need wages. Just as you produce and distribute goods now at the behest of the capitalist, in return for wages, which only enable you to buy a portion of them back, you could distribute them freely to the whole of the community, including yourselves, to-morrow, without the need for wages. If all the people who make up society take over the means of production and distribution and own them in common, the work of production would still go on. But instead of an idle class taking for their own enjoyment a large portion of the wealth produced, they would take part in the production of it, and it would be distributed according to the needs of each member of the community. That is socialism.

Nothing short of socialism can alter your condition of life for the better. We, in the Socialist Party, are neither dreamers nor good-natured idealists. We are working men and women. Like you are. like you, we belong to the working class and consequently we are poor. Our poverty has limited the amount of propaganda we could do. Our Literature will show you how steadfastly we have adhered to the same position since we first formed our party. Our funds come out of our own pockets and those of our sympathisers. We have not, and we do not want, any rich benefactors, who might try to influence our policy. Our party is ours and it can also be yours.  We are faced with the same problems as you are; our interests are the same as yours. We have found the only solution to our troubles and we want you to join us in helping to overthrow capitalism and establish socialism.  Society is controlled through Parliament. Parliament makes and administers the laws. It does so at present on behalf of the capitalist. That is to say, laws are made and administered on the basis of the private ownership of the means of production. The laws are made to protect this private ownership. But you and your fellow workers are the people who have voted the nominees of the capitalists, and others who support the continuation of the wages system, into power at each election. Therefore, if you want to abolish capitalism you must vote into Parliament delegates whose sole business will be to abolish capitalism and introduce socialism. This they can do as soon as a majority of workers like yourselves become convinced that Socialism is the only remedy for social ills and vote a majority to Parliament to introduce it. Remember we are not going to do anything for you, and no "leader” can get you out of wage slavery. It is you who must do the job yourselves. It is the working class itself that must take charge of its own destiny and build a new society worth living in.

Do you want to live under a free social system, owning your own means of production and using them for the equal benefit of all, or are you content to remain a human beast of burden, fettered to the insecurity of life as a wage worker? The choice is before you.

The fruits of the earth belong to all, the land to no one

Human beings are not machines and we could, if we wanted to, choose to change the way we live completely. Instead of choosing from the limited menu we face today, we could invent new recipes and set the menu ourselves. In the world today the potential exists to satisfy everybody's needs. People would not need to eat sub-standard food, live in unfit housing and have to make do with what they can afford. Everybody would have free access to all the world's goodies. In this type of society, there would be the widest possible choice. People would be free to travel anywhere they fancy. They would be free to choose what work to do and what methods they use to do it. Socialists do not live in the "taken for granted" world. We do not take for granted that there will always be wars, starving millions and homeless people. We recognise that these problems result from the way society is organised at present and they are not inevitable. When the vast majority of the world's people decide that enough is enough, a new society can be built. Socialists are simply people who have a clear understanding of how such a society can be built and the Socialist Party exists to persuade people that a society where the world's resources are used to satisfy human need is sensible — now.

The history of all hitherto existing society", wrote Marx and Engels at the beginning of the 1848 Communist Manifesto, "is the history of class struggle." To which Engels added the qualification, in the English edition of 1888. "all written history”. Certain historians have understood this to mean struggles in which one or other of the contending groups recognises itself as a class and is consciously pursuing its interests. In other words, that class struggle has necessarily to involve an element of class consciousness. The drawback of this view is that class-conscious struggles have by no means been a permanent feature in all written history, thus negating the claim. The Socialist Party, on the other hand, has always understood the class struggle to be a basic feature of any exploiting class society, whether or not those involved are aware of their historical role. The class struggle necessarily goes on whenever there is exploitation of one class by another; whenever, that is, part of what one section of society produces is appropriated by another section. It is the struggle between members of the two classes to maximise or minimise the amount appropriated. The slaves who refuse to work hard and the slave owner who whips them are both engaged in the class struggle, even if neither consider they belong to one of two separate classes in society with antagonistic interests. So is the modern wage or salary earner who demands better working conditions, higher wages or shorter hours, or who resists having to work harder; or, indeed, who turns up late for work or takes days off. The class struggle — resistance to exploitation by the exploited class — is a daily, permanent feature in any class society. We say that class struggle is a permanent feature of any class society—governments continually seek to extract as much profit as they can from the wage and salary working class and workers resist in any ways they can. individually as well as collectively.

 G.E.M de Ste Croix of New College. Oxford, in his The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World (1981) puts it

  “Class (essentially a relationship) is the collective social expression of the fact, of exploitation, the way in which exploitation is embodied in a social structure. By exploitation I mean the appropriation of part of the product of the labour of others: in a commodity-producing society this is the appropriation of what Marx called "surplus value". A class (a particular class) is a group of persons in a community identified by their position in the whole system of social production, defined above all according to their relationship (primarily in terms of degree of ownership or control); to the conditions of production (that is to say. the means and labour of production) and to other classes. . . The individuals constituting a given class may or may not be wholly or partly conscious of their own identity and common interests as a class, and they may or may not feel antagonism towards members of other classes as such.
  It is of the essence of a class society that one or more of the smaller classes in virtue of their control over the conditions of production (most commonly exercised through ownership of the means of production), will be able to exploit — that is. to appropriate a surplus at the expense of — the larger classes and thus constitute an economically and socially (and therefore probably also politically) superior class or classes.”

One of the important pre-requisites for a major political figure is a personality distinctively different from any other politician. Yet all potential leaders must have one thing in common — they must conform to the current interests and values of the ruling class.  Naturally, for capitalists, the successful personality reflects the "instinctive” ambitious drive for competition among individuals. All potential candidates in the personality stakes find it beneficial and essential to project the image of being a captain of industry or the right politician. To be successful, candidates must ensure that the selection process carefully irons out all the unacceptable personality traits and enhances all fashionable characteristics.  Out of the necessity to gain the workers’ overall support and to cater for individual workers’ preferences and phobias, politicians are presented as a particular ideal type. Every election is a confirmation that capitalism, despite its defects and outdated social and productive relationships, only survives because of working class support. What is not widely discussed is the reason for a fundamental contradiction in interests. On the one hand, there is the majority who suffer, as a class, the consequences of poverty, homelessness, unemployment, conflict, and human misery. On the other, there is a minority who profit, as a class, from these social problems. Yet the majority see no contradiction in this state of affairs and, indeed, regularly supply and provide the means for the minority to live in luxury. Clearly, the working class view of the world is distorted, both by them and for them. Before capitalism’s image-makers can fulfil their role, and in order for them to perpetuate the process, certain conditions must prevail. They thrive on plausibility and promises, depending on a degree of gullibility and ignorance, and literally profit from a poverty of knowledge. Without these pre-conditions no image-making industry would be able to mould the working class into passive and docile individuals.  From our present experiences and past circumstances, we know there have been periods when trade has increased and unemployment decreased. Therefore, like night follows day. we know any talk on future periods of prosperity are not only plausible and a promise but a virtual guarantee. But this does not tell us what will be the main consequences of such a state of affairs: firstly, it will be a period of prosperity for capitalists; secondly, it will be followed by a period when trade will decrease and unemployment will increase. Promises need constant renewal. What better attraction to capture a person’s attention than another one dressed up in the image of a leading politician? At a stroke, plausibility is retained and in addition, the human interest angle is provided with a more feasible object against which to register discontent. Political figures, therefore, serve as a distancing mechanism between the system itself and the working class. The non-solution of problems is presented as a fault in the make-up of the personality, whereas in reality social problems demand a social solution. When people suffer a contradiction between their prejudices and their daily experiences, it is experience which is ultimately the stronger force. 

When we use the term "exploitation" it is to refer to the relationship between the small minority who own the means of life and the great majority who produce all of the wealth and live in poverty. We are not out to quarrel about the varying degrees of poverty suffered among ourselves. So long as that is all that workers are doing — arguing about whether a teacher should get more or less than a civil servant or a transport worker — the wealth owners will be laughing all the way to the bank. The wages system is really a form of institutionalised robbery whereby the rich get rich by paying the wealth producers less than the value of what they produce. In return for a price (a wage) the boss buys the labour-power of a worker for say a week. During that week the worker produces or helps to produce goods worth greatly more than they could buy back with their wage. That is the nature of exploitation in capitalism. The price of the labour power of a service worker. like a teacher, is calculated with reference to such factors as how much on average needs to be spent in the training of the worker and roughly what standard of living needs to be enjoyed (or suffered) by that worker in order for him or her to be in the right sort of condition for the demands of the job. Also taken into account is the need for money to be available for workers to rear another healthy generation of geese to lay more golden eggs. But this last factor is progressively being taken account of less as females have entered the workforce more prevalently and two incomes have almost become an expected prerequisite (from the employer's view) for having a family.

Capitalism exerts a constant downward pressure on the living standards of workers as the owning class try to get the best screw from the wealth producers as possible. Capitalism is a worldwide social system which is founded on the fact that a small minority of men and women and governments own and control society's means of life. The social conflict engendered by the antagonistic interests of the wealth producers and the wealth owners means that a police force is needed in the same way as the competition between rival factions of the owning class create wars and the need for the most murderous weapons with which to fight them. These needs are endemic to the social system and you can no more have one without the other than you can have a war without casualties. Socialists are not in the political arena to negotiate with the bosses for a few more crumbs. We want a majority to democratically take over the bakery. 

Democratic Socialism

It is quite obvious that capitalism can never feed everyone, or allow those who can only afford to buy cheap food to eat well. In terms of both adequate nutrition and quality taste, the diet of workers will always be inferior Capitalism is polluting the very soil in which food is grown, and profit can never be compatible with human well-being. Our society currently faces a major food problem. Millions starve and many millions more are malnourished. Each month brings news of a new foodstuff which is harming us so that some capitalist can make a profit. Only by taking into the common possession of humankind the means of producing food—and all other wealth—can we tackle the urgent task of feeding the starving, providing decent food for the ill-fed. and living in harmony with the other animals which inhabit the Earth. In business, there is an axiom “No margin, no mission.” Meaning, you may desire to have other priorities than profit, but “realistically” you must prioritise profit BEFORE anything else if you ever want to be able to prioritise anything else. If you want to be a “green ecology” business, that’s nice, but you must be a “money” business first and foremost. Capitalism proves wholly unsuited for a sustainable planet.

Repeat the following parrot-fashion: all resources are scarce and always will be; human wants are unlimited and so can never be satisfied; without a class of entrepreneurs nothing can be produced. The truth is, of course, that human wants are not "unlimited". "unending" or "insatiable". In practice what we want is relatively limited and quite reasonable. We want decent food, clothes, housing, household goods, travel facilities, healthcare and entertainment. What most people want is no doubt greater than what we are allowed to consume today as a result of the restrictions imposed by the size of our wage packets or salary cheques, but this is not at all the same as saying that our wants are unlimited. The same goes for the claim that resources are scarce. This is just as absurd. Of course, if wants really were unlimited then resources will always be insufficient to satisfy them—by definition. But this tells us nothing about the real world, about whether or not resources are in practice sufficient to satisfy people's actual—and relatively limited— wants. All the studies that have been done regarding people’s food needs have shown that resources are more than enough to meet them. And don’t challenge either the peculiar definition of "scarcity" as meaning what is "limited in supply”. Most of the resources needed to satisfy our wants, except perhaps the air we breathe and the rays of the sun, are limited in supply in an absolute sense, but that's not the same as saying that they are "scarce”, i.e. in short supply. Just the opposite is the case. In relation to people's actual reasonable and limited wants, most resources are not in short supply, but are or could soon be made available in adequate quantities, in fact in more than adequate quantities.

The only way to end the boom-bust cycle is to abolish the capitalist system and replace it with socialism. Instead of the market determining what is produced, the community will decide this as part of caring directly for the needs of all its members. Unemployment, exploitation, profit-making and all, the destructive effects of boom and bust will be impossible. In their place, with production solely for needs, the community will be able to use all its productive resources in line with its policy decisions. This is what socialists mean by democratic control.  Anyone who spends any time observing the erratic workings of capitalism will realise that it almost never lives up to the claims made for it. It is a social system supported by mythology. One myth—that it provides for everyone—is easy to debunk. You only have to look at the Third World or even the poor sections of the West. Another—that its competitive motor always produces the best products—is also easy to debunk. But the biggest myth—that which keeps people voting for political parties to run capitalism—is that it is indeed possible to "run” capitalism. With no steering wheel, no brakes and no happy end in sight, capitalism is nevertheless not short of prospective "drivers" who will do and say anything for a chance to sit up front with the big hat on. Governments of the world govern by the myth of control. They persuade us that they can control market forces, but only until the next crisis, whereupon they blame market forces or foreigners, or both. Evidence for the chaotic nature of capitalism is not scarce. Since the days of Adam Smith in the 18th century, economists have been trying in vain to find the right combination of knobs, levers, sliders, switches, and buttons with which to control the monster reactor of the money and market system. Each would-be government has to claim that it has everything finally figured out. so that you will vote for them. If they admitted that they can’t control capitalism, nobody would bother electing these self-styled "market managers" at all. What the world will look like in 20 or 30 years from now is anyone’s guess, and what the world's economy will look like is also anyone's guess. So the "experts" frankly don’t know. They can’t predict what the market will do. And they can't control it anyway. It is on this basis that they are suggesting a slump-free economy. In short, when nothing is predictable then anything is possible.

Mandating delegates, voting on resolutions and membership ballots are not just trade union practices; they are democratic practices for ensuring that the members of an organisation control that organization and as such key procedures in any organisation genuinely seeking socialism. Socialism can only be a fully democratic society in which everybody will have an equal say in the ways things are run. This means that it can only come about democratically, both in the sense of being the expressed will of the working class and in the sense of the working class being organised democratically — without leaders, but with mandated delegates — to achieve it. In rejecting these procedures what the Left is saying is that the working class should not organise itself democratically, but should instead follow a self-appointed, undemocratically organized elite. This is pure Leninism. 

 If you are prepared to be a follower in a leadership-run organization, join the Left. On the other hand, if you want to organise democratically to get socialism, look no further than the Socialist Party.

Secularism Grows

Weddings staged by Scotland’s leading humanist body have overtaken Church of Scotland ceremonies. 

There were 3,283 ceremonies staged across the country by the Humanist Society Scotland in 2017 compared with 3,166 couples who get married in the Kirk. It marks an ongoing shift away from religion. Roman Catholic weddings in Scotland sunk to 1,182 last year, a new low for the modern era.

The Humanist Society Scotland is now the biggest provider of marriage ceremonies of any belief or religious group, while the Caledonian Humanist Association held 325 last year, in its first year of recorded marriages.

Lynsey Kidd, Director of Services at Humanist Society Scotland said: “These numbers also reflect a wider trend of a decline in religious identity within the Scottish population. While it is important to recognise that faith plays an important part in a significant number of people’s lives, Scotland has become a nation where it is now the norm, not the exception, to have a non-religious Humanist approach to life.”

Lenny Love is a celebrant in Edinburgh with the Caledonian Humanist Association  says “We find that more and more people these days are not so keen on a religious ceremony because it’s actually quite impersonal and humanist wedding ceremony is very personal."

https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/humanist-weddings-overtake-church-of-scotland-ceremonies-1-4777088

Changing the economics

The absence of a vigourous socialist movement today is an indisputable and depressing fact. It has been noted so many times by so many. Dozens of explanations abound. In the meantime, socialists remain ineffective. It is impossible to explain the marginal status of socialists apart from the social reality in which we are situated. A sober analysis of our reality reveals a society that is, by and large, de-fanged and depoliticised. The majority are absorbed in their own job, family, friends and are incredibly unaware, misinformed, or downright uninterested in many aspects of social life.  Every year new coalitions form to plan “mass” demonstrations and rallies. While such activities have some worth, they usually attract only the “faithful” and have become little more than media events. Moreover, such “demonstrations,” have become an almost institutionalized form of protest. Subsequently, with mounting boldness, the world's ruling class is staging a major attack on the workers' movement. Employers are imposing stringent labour “discipline,” defeating trade unions driving tough negotiations. But some of the most dramatic blows of all are being inflicted as a result of investment and disinvestment decisions made by the corporations over which the unions have no control with pro-business legislation being passed by the state such as tax relief that favours business, which cut budgets for public and social services, defeats that result in widespread public disillusionment with the union movement. While workers try to defend themselves with strikes and sacrifice in a thousand ways to defend their standard of living yet we run up against the same situation: the working class has little economic or political clout, and so must constantly retreat or forfeit the fruits of its occasional successful struggles.

The social revolution can only be accomplished by men and women with a clear understanding of the economics of capitalism.  The social revolution depends in the last analysis upon the growth of class-consciousness amongst the working class, that therefore the chief task of a socialist political party is to educate that class consciousness along correct lines. A socialist party must look beyond the immediate situation and be willing to outline a vision of a future society.  The issue is how goods are produced and distributed, who owns the means of production or how work is organised and administered. It questions the very way we spend our lives.  Overcoming scarcity, i.e., meeting people’s elementary material needs for food, clothing, shelter, etc., is obviously necessary but must transcend the growth/profit model of capitalism itself.  The ideas of progress and human freedom must be envisioned as democratic, non-exploitative and egalitarian.

“Human Nature" is the oldest and stubbornest cry against socialism. It is stubborn because the arguer believes he knows things about human beings that make a harmonious society of equals impossible: either too many are perverse, or the whole lot of us have greed and aggression built in. The “human nature” argument is that it would ruin socialism if it were tried. What is being described is human behaviour, which (with estimates of particular kinds of it as “good” or reprehensible) continually changes. Man is a social being whose strongest tendency is to co-operation and order, or we should not be here today. Against examples of the “bad” can be set countless opposite ones. Yet everyday anti-social expressions are a fact in present-day society, and their causes are other social facts. Violent personal behaviour is not “human nature”. It is a reaction forced out by social conditions, and its manner is on the lines of accepted social formulae.

Socialism would make it possible to increase the production of useful articles in two main ways; by utilising the large numbers of able-bodied people not working at all, and by transferring to useful production all those workers now engaged on operations necessary only to capitalism — war and armament production, the armed services, financial, insurance and similar occupations. Overall it would be possible by these means to increase useful production to something like double the present level simply by revolutionizing the basis of the social system. When the Socialist Party was formed to achieve this social revolution it was opposed by various reformist organizations which offered as an alternative the gradualist doctrine of relying on legislation and trade-union action to make continuing progress towards the abolition of poverty and inequality. As regards the concentration of ownership of accumulated wealth in the hands of the small capitalist minority, all their efforts have achieved practically nothing. They cannot claim that any of the social problems they promised to deal with — housing, unemployment, low wages — has in fact been remedied. At most, it can be said that some of the worst aspects of poverty have been lessened.

Our present society is founded on the exploitation of the propertyless classes by the propertied. This exploitation is such that the propertied (capitalists) buy the labour-power of the propertyless, for the price of the mere costs of existence (wages), and take for themselves, i.e. steal the amount of new values (products) which exceeds this price, whereby wages are made to represent the necessities instead of the earnings of the wage-labourer. If now and then one of the propertyless class become rich, it is not by their own labour, but from opportunities which they have to speculate upon, and absorb the labour-product of others. With the accumulation of individual wealth, the greed and power of the propertied grow. They use all the means for competing among themselves for the robbery of the people. This system is unjust, insane, and murderous. It is, therefore, necessary to totally end it. We must keep the socialist ideal alive and struggle to make it a reality if humankind is to avoid the path to barbarism or collective self-annihilation.

Wheatley - The Red Clydesider, 1924

The Capitalist Housing Bill (1924)

From the July 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Wheatley, the Labour Minister of Health, speaking on his housing Bill in the House of Commons, said :—

   "Labour does not propose to interfere with private enterprise in the building of houses. Labour does not propose to interfere with private enterprise in the manufacturing of building material. Labour only touches private enterprise here at one point, and that is in the investment of private capital in the ownership of these rented houses. But what does Labour do in return for that interference? It says to the man with small capital: "Instead of putting your private capital into a risky investment, lend it to the local authorities at 4½ per cent. Without your having any trouble at all you will get a safe return for your money, with all the security behind it of a municipal investment.” The Labour party’s programme on housing is not a Socialist programme at all.”—(Parliamentary Debates, March 26th, p. 1470.)

They don’t "interfere with private enterprise” except at one point, he says. The point where they interfere is when they borrow money from bankers, etc., promising them a safe return! Such is the "Red” from the Clyde.

Defend Refugees

A statement from Living Rent, the tenants' union active in Glasgow, on Serco's eviction of vulnerable asylum seekers. You can also donate to an emergency appeal for the asylum seekers here.

The situation we are facing in Glasgow today must be seen as a turning point, or we else must turn it into one.

As a Tenants’ Union, we will not allow this brutal attack by SERCO on some of the most vulnerable people in our city to become just another episode in the shameful history of housing in Glasgow. Our position as a union is clear: We are against all evictions; we are against homelessness; we are against the victimisation and intimidation of tenants by those who hold power, wealth and property in their hands.

The Home Office has handed hundreds of millions of pounds of public money to SERCO – a giant multinational, a company who views detention centres, prisons and housing for victims of war and persecution as only some many sides of the same giant charnel house of profit. For years, politicians have seemingly been content for thousands of asylum seekers to be placed in the poorest areas of the city, furthering perceived competition for housing and services among the people who need them most. All while money, investment and contracts have lined the pockets of developers and speculators. This news is not a bolt out of the blue but the culmination of a policy of forced destitution, community abandonment and racism, of a hostile environment which we are not completely immune to in Scotland.

Living Rent Glasgow are clear:

- We call for resistance to all evictions by any and all means necessary, regardless of any attempts to render them legal or otherwise.

- We are calling for absolute opposition to forced destitution and homelessness on our streets.

- We are calling on all landlords, housing associations, councillors, social services or any other body in Scotland not to accommodate SERCO’s mass eviction policy in any way.

- And as a tenants’ union, as a union committed to building neighbourhood power, we are calling for a wholescale programme of community engagement in Glasgow, to challenge the hostile environment created by a racist narrative.

We must win the eyes and ears of our neighbourhoods, the working class people of Glasgow hold the key to defending their neighbours against this practice. Where Glasgow defeated dawn raids in the past and built solidarity that made a real difference, it was through the solidarity of working class communities, through solidarity in action, physical resistance to raids, dawn raid watches on the top of tower blocks at 5am every morning, through education, agitation and action.

We call on everyone to engage, challenge and organise against these evictions.

This must be only the beginning.

Taken from here

https://libcom.org/news/glasgow-tenants-union-statement-serco-evictions-asylum-seekers-31072018

Politics is a battle of ideas.

A society of human fraternity, equality, freedom and peace, that is socialism. It is the noblest of aims that mankind has ever aspired to. It has reason and truth on its side. It will eliminate all the pettiness, narrowness, conflict that now saps humanity’s potential. All will gain. The first requirement for the workers in all countries of the world is to oppose the capitalist class and their political parties,  taking the political power out of the hands of the capitalist class and into their own hands. The Socialist Party opens up the possibility of galvanizing the entire working people in alliance with the struggles of the workers in other parts of the globe, to eliminate once and for all the recurring problems spawned by capitalism and to eliminate its wars and to usher in a new world of peace and plenty. Despite the campaign of lies and distortions about the socialist viewpoint we are confident that developing realities, will make the Socialist Party take a powerful leap forward on the march to a socialist world. The revolution that is coming will place the working women and men of the world in full command over its vast resources, that will link it to the worldwide struggles of the working class, and lay down the foundations of the new socialist order of peace and freedom.

The Labour Party is reformist when the task is revolutionary—that is, socialist. While capitalism is moving out to slash the many gains already won, imposing new burdens, straight-jacketing organized labour with union-busting laws, cutting down on social legislation, the politicians talk in terms of the amelioration of class conflicts. They project a perspective of merely removing what they present as minor defects in the existing capitalist order of things, of patching capitalism up and making it more tolerable, instead of a perspective of fundamental change. The Labour Party teaches conciliation, peaceful co-existence with capitalism, not class struggle against it. Capitalism promises the people not amelioration of conditions but economic recessions, austerity, oppression and repression. Only through an irreconcilable struggle against capitalism, towards its elimination and the establishment of socialism, will the people of the world find the full freedom, equality and democracy for which they aspire.

New technological progress is now reaping vast profits for the industrial and financial oligarchy yet condemning millions of workers to the prospect of permanent unemployment.  The Socialist Party fights on the terrain of democracy by arguing that we can make our planet more productive, more just, and more sustainable by extending and deepening social democracy. Capitalist production uses human wants for making profit. Human wants are satisfied on the prior condition that this is profitable, within the system of producing commodities for sale on the markets. We need a society which is concerned with the interests of all its members. The alternative to capitalism is a new set of productive relationships—socialism. The alternative to the present world where resources are monopolised by a privileged minority is a world which is held in common and at the free disposal of all humanity. The alternative to commodity production for the market is the production of useful wealth directly for human need. The transfer of the world into the hands of all humanity and its conscious democratic control for the human interest is the political act of socialism. This transformation of productive relationships will remove the economic limitations of capitalist production and enable us to deal in a practical way with social problems. The Socialist Party conclusion is that capitalism can only operate in accordance with its own structure and economic laws and that the way out is to abolish capitalism and establish socialism. It's easy to forget why people are socialists: the vision of a world free from poverty, wars and social hostility, where co-operation, freedom and democracy are the order of the day.  We are transformed by the possibilities of a better, freer, co-operative and caring world.

Socialism is a science of interrelationships. Indeed, because it emphasises the importance of the way living things get their means to survive it is the application of the same approach that Marx's materialist conception
of history takes to human society; it is a materialist conception of the world of living things.

 The view of Marxian socialists since the time of Joseph Dietzgen who expounded it under the name of "dialectical materialism" (not to be confused with the official ideology of the former state-capitalist countries which had the same name) is  to hold that the things we perceive don't exist as separate, independent things but are only parts of an interrelated and interacting universe which alone has an independent existence ("holism", as it is now called) and that everything in the universe is composed of the same "stuff’ or material ("monism”).

Socialist Standard No.1368 August 2018

Due to a security incident, the websites for the World Socialist Movement and the Socialist Party of Great Britain are currently down for extended maintenance. The Socialist Standard published without interuption since 1904, is therefore unable to publish the web version in the usual manner on their website, so this is for  the time being, is a version, using the Socialism or Your Money Back blog to deliver backup pages in real time.

• Editorial: Ruling class split
• Pathfinders
• The Future: Socialism or Barbarism
  
• Cooking the Books 1: Bitcon
• Wood for the Trees; Competition: a race to where?
  
• Material World: Co-operatives no way to socialism
  
• Brexit: Sound & Fury signifying nothing?
• The Trump Circus: Don in Trumpton
• Philanthrocapitalism IV: The Messianic Rich
  
• Cooking the Books 2: Are we exploited twice?
• Angelica Balabanoff: Picaresque Leftist Adventuress
• Proper Gander: Counter Culture
• Reviews:Books Film Exhibition
• 50 Years Ago: Rail Go Slow
  
• Meetings
• Rear View
• Free Lunch

       PDF Version

  We will to be back on our own websites very soon. propagating socialism, we have never stopped, with important historical archival material dating from 1904 to the present day.