Is Marx out of date?

The insatiable drive for profits, which is fundamental to capitalist society, damages health and destroys lives. Though the capitalist system is inexorably doomed to perish as other systems have perished, its longevity is considerably aided by the ignorance and gullibility of the working class. The capitalist class, naturally enough, are only too ready to seize upon the undiscerning working-class brain and to chloroform and cloud it with hype worked up by the media. The main object of the worker should be to achieve his or her emancipation. Defenders of the capitalist status quo tell people that socialism is not workable. They think that workers are not intelligent enough to run a system of production for use, one where there are no followers and leaders but a system where everyone co-operates in decision making. They forget that workers are intelligent enough to perform the tasks necessary to run capitalist society. It is workers who design, build and operate computer systems. When the working class, want socialism they will have it.

  So many things have happened, they say, that Marx could not know about; capitalism has undergone such unforeseen changes. Unaccountably the questioners forget to put it to themselves. If Marxian theories have long been disproved and discredited why do the opponents of socialism go on, year after year, making new attempts to disprove and discredit them? The answer is that capitalism has not changed in its essentials: it is still a system of society in which the means of production and distribution are class owned, in which commodities are produced for sale and profit by a non-owning working class which lives by selling mental and physical energies to employers. When we come to economic theory, Marx’s analysis of capitalism in operation, value, prices, unemployment, banking, crises and so on is more valuable in depth and scope than anything done by his detractors. One sphere in which Marxian theories hold their own is in the explanation of price changes, including the prices of individual commodities, the price of labour-power (wages), the general upward movement in booms and the downward movement in slumps, the general movements related to changes in the value of gold and finally the general movements related to the volume of currency.

Leaving aside the day to day fluctuations of price caused by market fluctuations of supply and demand and the fact that some commodities normally exchange above or below their value, Marx postulated that the basic element in the exchange of all commodities in capitalist society is value, measured by the amount of socially necessary labour in all the operations required in the production of a given commodity. From which it follows, firstly, that if one commodity requires twice as much socially necessary labour as another, its value will be twice as great, and secondly, that in gold all other commodities find their “universal equivalent”, again related to value. This explains what is behind the value of gold coinage; the coin is a weight of gold representing the value of gold. In concrete terms the Pound or sovereign which circulated in Britain in the nineteenth and into the present century was, by law, a fixed weight (about one quarter of an ounce) of gold.

The next proposition is that in order to carry on the sales and purchases of commodities and other payments a certain amount of gold coin (and subsidiary silver, copper etc., coinage) would be needed. A number of factors enter into the determination of what volume of currency will actually be needed; the volume of transactions, the prices of commodities and the rapidity of circulation etc., for a description of which the reader is referred to Marx’s Capital Vol. 1. Chapter 3. “Money, or the Circulation of Commodities”.

The next stage in Marx’s explanation is that a circulating gold coinage can, without any alteration of the proposition, be replaced by a convertible paper currency, that is freely convertible into a legally fixed and unchanging weight of gold. In 19th century Britain, Bank of England notes, which circulated alongside the gold coins, were by law convertible on demand into gold.

Then comes a completely different situation, the replacement of gold coin and convertible bank notes by an inconvertible paper currency—the situation in Britain today. The Marxian proposition, still based firmly on the concept of value, is that if the inconvertible paper currency exceeds in amount the amount of gold coinage that would be needed, the general price level will correspondingly rise.

 If the quantity of paper money issued is, for example, double what it ought to be, then, in actual fact, the pound, has become the money name of one-eighth of an ounce of gold instead of about one-quarter of an ounce. The effect is the same as if an alteration had taken place in the function of gold as a standard of price. The values previously expressed by the price of £1 will then be expressed by the price £2. (Capital Vol. 1 page 144 Kerr edition).

But the proof of the pudding is in the eating. The economists who reject Marx have to explain why events are explicable on the lines of Marx’s proposition about the effects of an excess issue of currency, but quite inexplicable on their theory that the amount of currency can be disregarded.

Socialism - Pure and Simple

The Socialist Party has always insisted upon two things. Socialism is the only final solution to the problems of modern society. And socialism can be established only by a working class who consciously opt for it because they understand it. This insistence has doubtless hampered our numerical growth. How many applicants have we turned away because, on examination, we have discovered that they were religious or held nationalist attitudes to politics? It might make it easier to gain more support if our attitude were more flexible; if we campaigned for higher pensions. Easier, perhaps; but futile beyond a doubt and In any case, there are enough organisations doing that already and probably making a better job of it. Our achievement, in political terms, is that we have kept out of it. We have kept the only worthwhile issue clear: Socialism versus Capitalism. 

Socialism is a reaction against capitalism and because of this, it is often described in what may seem negative terms. It is often described as a world of withouts—without money, without national barriers, without social classes, and so on. Yet each of these negatives is, in fact, a positive, active element of the future socialist world.

Socialism will be a world without money. This is so because money is essential to Capitalism; in what we are pleased to call an advanced society, it is a convenient method of exchanging wealth. Nobody escapes this. Everyone who works for a living exchanges his labour power for the things he needs to live, and this exchange is carried out by money, in the form of wages.

Money is essential to capitalism because all wealth, in one way or another, is produced for exchange, or sale. This is an inevitable development from the basis of capitalism, which is the class ownership of the materials and apparatus which are needed to produce wealth.

But money is one of capitalism’s symbols of restriction. Most of us never seem to get enough of it; even if we earn a bit more—if, say, we get a rise in wages—we usually find that this is wholly or partly wiped out by a price rise. Money is convenient for capitalism but for most people, it is anything but a good idea.

The end of money, then, also means an end to the restrictions which money entails.

This will not leave an economic vacuum, with no method of circulating goods. Socialism will replace money with a system of free distribution. This will spring from the basis of socialism just as money does from the basis of capitalism.

Socialism will be based upon the universal ownership of all the things which go to produce and distribute wealth. One of the consequences of this will be production for use and free access which all human beings will have to whatever is produced.

No more massive effort will probably be needed for this than is needed to turn out Capitalism’s wealth today. The administration of it will be largely a statistical exercise of finding out where each sort of wealth can best be produced and where it is needed, and arranging production and transport.

There will probably be points of distribution, specially designed to hold and to pass out particular types of goods; bread, for example, will need different facilities from clothing. From these distribution centres people will simply help themselves.

Nobody will go along with a pocketful of metal discs or paper notes. Nobody will have to sign any cheques or surrender any coupons. Because human beings need certain things, they will make them and distribute them. Society will devote its knowledge and energy to the task of satisfying its own needs.

The restrictions and poverty of capitalism, negatived by socialism’s basis, will be replaced by the positives of free availability of goods. Socialism will be man's culmination to his search for control over his environment. It will negative each aspect of capitalism with its own positive. It will replace poverty with abundance, fear with security, repression with freedom, strife with brotherhood. In countless ways, we have kept our political honour. We have not urged workers out to slaughter each other on battlefields. We have not broken strikes, nor planned the production of weapons. We still want now what we wanted when we were formed in 1904—Socialism, simple and, yes, pure. We have seen many upheavals in our time, wars, revolutions, strikes. Our analysis has not faltered and in every basic requirement has been proved correct. This is not to say that we have not made mistakes. We did not envisage what the Nazis did to the Jews with their death-camps.

But perhaps as a political party, our gravest mistake was our optimism in thinking socialism nearer than it was.

Glasgow University - An apology

A study by the university into thousands of donations it received in the 18th and 19th Centuries found some were linked to slave trade profits. It included sums for bursaries and endowments.

In total, the money it received is estimated as having a present day value of between £16.7m and £198m. Donations to the 1866-1880 campaign to build the university's current campus at Gilmorehill found 23 people who gave money had some financial links to the New World slave trade.

It acknowledged that the university received "significant financial gifts and support from people who derived some, or occasionally much, of their wealth from slavery."

Glasgow University Principal Prof Sir Anton Muscatelli said: "The university deeply regrets this association with historical slavery which clashes with our proud history of support for the abolition of both the slave trade and slavery itself."

What do you owe capitalism? Your chains.

We are a species in deep trouble. No matter how much our politicians dismiss the reality of global warming, minimise its impact or offer false solutions to climate change, the intensifying weather events and their unpredictability are happening here and now.  The fate of humanity hangs in the balance.  The future looks grim.

Things are not produced today to meet people’s needs. They are produced to make a profit. And that’s the cause of the problems we face. Under the profit system profits always come first, before providing basic services like health care and transport, before improving conditions at work, and before protecting the environment. At the same time, it encourages a get-rich-quick climate where competition to make money takes over from cooperation and community values. Everything is reduced to its cash value and people are judged, not for what they are but by how much money they have.

Look at the results. The health service is crumbling. The transport system is in chaos. Schools have become testing centres. Pollution is rife and the environment under attack. The poor have got poorer. Begging and homelessness have spread. Crime is rising. Racism is reviving. Business culture reigns supreme, with "market forces", "competition" and "profit" as the buzzwords. Life is becoming more and more commercialized and empty. People are becoming isolated from each other, with drug abuse and mental illness on the increase. The standard of living may be going up, but the standard of life is going down.

The health and welfare of the workforce and the effects on the environment take second place. That’s what minimising costs means. This is why at work we suffer speed-up, pain, stress, boredom, overwork and accidents. This is why we have to work long hours, part-time work, shiftwork and zero-hour contract work. This is why the food we eat, the water we drink and the air we breathe are all polluted. This is why the Earth’s non-renewable mineral and energy resources are plundered. This is why natural balances are upset and the environment destroyed. This profit system can’t help doing this. It’s the only way it can work. Which is why it must go.

Under capitalis,m there are no "good times" for the working class, but just so long as the working class does not see through the capitalist "work hard now and wait for reward" fairy story, there will always be Tories and Labourites,. Only the Socialist Party keeps to the sound working class position that the only remedy for the evils of capitalism is socialism, and that the time for it is now.  Our present system cannot be made to function efficiently no matter which government holds office, crude attempts to shuffle off the blame for the current state of affairs onto disaffected workers using the media of broadcasting and the press to do so reveals a blatant and cynical determination on the part of the capitalist class to hide this truth from the only other section of capitalist society which has the power to put things right: the 90 per cent of us who constitute the world's working class.

The Socialist Party has always said that under this capitalist system the most decisive factor in production is the profit motive, and that production itself is geared to a marketing system that does not take any account of the real social needs of the community. We have said that capitalism channels all men's efforts down the narrow inhibited path of commerce and reduces his vast potentialities in the field of production to within the bounds of profit making. What is needed is a system of society wherein the means of production shall be held in common ownership by all of humanity instead of a privileged few. Wherein production can be consciously regulated to meet human needs and requirements. Wherein commodities are not produced for sale to the highest bidder, but are produced for the benefit of all mankind. Only in socialism can there be found the answer to the problems of the working classes of this world. 

What then is to be done? If the working class realise that political action need not consist of a repetitive switching from one futile government to another, what else is open to them? First, they must grasp that politicians have only a limited relevance. They are prevented by something outside their plans and claims and deceptions from organising society as they say they would have it. That “something” is the capitalist social system, which from its basis outwards can only be run in the interests of the parasitic minority who own the means of wealth production and distribution. Just a couple of weeks ago we saw two representative members of this minority dress up and parade through the streets to get married. Everything about that event—the opulence, the cynicism, the ballyhoo in the media emphasised the class division of capitalism into those who own but do not need to labour and those who must labour but do not own. The workers, who made all that went into the wedding, owned none of it. Their part in the cruel farce was to stare and wonder and to cheer, to testify to their own degradation.
And in that fact there is the reason for the impotence of capitalism's politicians. Workers are ready to blame MPs for their problems, overlooking the fact that they themselves vote for these leaders and all that they stand for. It is the working class who choose their own repression, who respect and admire their exploiters and who are therefore responsible for their own plight.

We are arguing here, as always, for another approach. The Socialist Party insists that workers need to examine the basis of capitalism as the cause of the world’s problems and to act to change society from that basis. We are arguing here, as always, for a social revolution to abolish capitalism and replace it with socialism—a social system based on common ownership of the means of wealth production and distribution. Socialism will be a classless society, without privilege and poverty, a society in which all human beings will stand equal in their freedom.

In face of that, the posturing, impotent leaders of capitalism fade into their true proportions. It is not they who will change human society into one of abundance but the mass consciousness of the working class. Socialism is something for the workers of the world to get excited about and then act to achieve.

Revolution can’t be outsourced to some sort of heroic leader who will come to the rescue. As the Internationale says:

No saviour from on high delivers
No faith have we in prince or peer
Our own right hand the chains must shiver
Chains of hatred, greed and fear

The only real saviors are the people themselves. We are going to win this war—the CLASS War. Join up and do your bit. 

What is the socialist revolution

The liberation of mankind must be the work of mankind itself, must be majoritarian and democratic. No elite, whether violent or non-violent, can substitute. Peasant-based insurrections do not and cannot lead to the establishment of a democratic, classless society since the peasants, being incapable of ruling society, must hand over power to some minority. Such insurrections bring to power a new ruling class as has been shown in China and Cuba and Vietnam. Contemporary revolutionists claiming the Marxist label are not really Marxists at all. In different ways, they all represent rule by an elite, but they use Marxist language and peasant revolution (consciously or not) to justify their present or future rule. This may not be the intent but it does seem to be the objective function of the contemporary peasant revolution and of its ideologies.

In modern industrial countries, an insurrection can only succeed if the vast majority of the people support it (or are at least neutral) and if the government's machinery of suppression has broken down. In the absence of these conditions, an isolated urban insurrection will be crushed with great bloodshed. This was demonstrated in Paris in 1871, in Dublin in 1916, in Shanghai in 1927, in Vienna in 1934 and many places since. A possible alternative strategy for an active minority in a modern industrial country is to wage a protracted campaign of sabotage—or even of non-violent civil disobedience—in a bid to bring about the collapse of the machinery of government. This would probably rather lead to the rise of a fascist dictatorship and, even if successful, being the work of an active minority only, could easily lead to the rule of a new privileged class as in peasant-supported revolutions.

To succeed the revolution must be essentially non-violent and democratic involving the vast majority of the population, especially white and blue collar workers for they are the only class which, due to their relationship to the functioning of modern society, have both the potential for making a revolution and the capability of carrying it through on a democratic basis. To attempt a revolution without such majority support is almost inevitably bound to result either in a counter-revolutionary fascist society or in a revolutionary dictatorship which destroys the goals for which the revolution was undertaken.

 A socialist party must be democratic and open and so reflect the society it wishes to achieve. It must not get involved in conventional politics or seek to form the government. We cannot agree however that it should engage in the day-to-day struggle as well as agitate and organise for Socialism. To do so runs the great risk of becoming yet another conventional political party since engaging in the day-to-day struggle of people under capitalism necessarily involves advocating reforms. A reform programme would attract people who want reforms rather than Socialism. In a democratic, open party such people would come to dominate it and turn it into an instrument for trying to get reforms rather than for carrying out the social revolution. We look back at the fate of the German Social Democratic Party. The best way to avoid this danger is for a socialist party, while not being opposed to reforms and always being on the side of the oppressed against the oppressors, not to advocate them.

We are able to see that existing more or less democratic institutions can be transformed into instruments of the socialist revolution. Given that there is effective universal suffrage, local councils and some central elected body like Parliament or Congress it seems pointless not to use them both to register majority support for the revolution and to co-ordinate the measures needed to carry it through. Why bother to set up also institutions that would parallel existing structures of government? No doubt as the socialist revolution approaches people will be organising in all kinds of informal bodies ready to take over and run society after the end of class rule, but as long as democratically-elected councils and parliaments exist winning control of them through the ballot-box must surely be central to the strategy of any socialist party in a modern industrial country. The socialist revolution cannot take place on a national scale but must be international and lead to the establishment of a world society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of life with production solely to satisfy human needs.

Socialism is the result of social development and is seen as evolving from capitalism in much the same way as previous forms of society have evolved, that is, growth and development up to the point where change, a complete change, is essential — a revolution. Capitalism, by its own development of large-scale organisation and high technical efficiency, its production of a working class owning no property in the means of production, has performed its historical task and must give way to its successor, a system of society based upon the common ownership of the means of production — Socialism.

No social system, however, has ever disappeared in a mechanical fashion, out of recognition of historical necessity as it were, and there is no evidence that suggests capitalism is an exception. The class position of the capitalists generally make it impossible for them to understand that their social usefulness has ended; they are deaf to all socialist appeals because such appeals are in essence appeals for them to commit social suicide. The poverty and destitution of a large portion of the world’s population, wars, economic crises, and financial panics contain no lesson for the capitalists who will use all the power they possess to keep the present system in being. Expecting only opposition from the capitalist class, the Socialist Party is compelled to turn to the working class, the class which produces all the wealth, performs all the necessary services in modern society yet suffers all the social indignities of to-day, the class which has nothing to lose by a change in the system, but everything to gain. The only class which can make a revolution. The working class is always in conflict at numerous points with capitalism. In this conflict, however, the working class lacks the understanding of its basic cause. It is and must be the work of present-day socialists to place such understanding at the disposal of their fellow workers. Workers do not need convincing of the necessity to establish socialism by Utopian experiments or plans, as capitalism itself gives many practical reasons as to the need to change society. The details of the future society on which Utopians love to dwell, fade into insignificance in face of the importance of gaining political power.

Political power is centred in governments as is demonstrated in the ability to make and enforce laws by means of the judiciary, police and armed forces. This power is used when necessary to protect the interest of one national group of capitalists against a competing foreign group. This can and often does, lead to war. In this modern capitalist world, the educational system is under the control of the central power and in many parts of the world the whole medium of propaganda and communication is included. This form of power which exists in all those countries where the capitalist mode of production prevails can only be maintained by the active or passive consent of the majority of the population, that is the working class. This consent must be withdrawn and replaced by the deliberate and conscious act of taking over this power in order that the basis of society can be transformed from a capitalist one to a socialist one. The refusal to continue capitalism and the readiness to replace it with the new form of society presupposes that a class which has become revolutionary has at its disposal the requisite organisation to carry out its purpose. In those countries which have developed a political party system, a party which has for its object the establishment of Socialism, with a built-in refusal to compromise with capitalism, will if not already in existence, have to be formed. In those parts of the world which have developed a different political form, the struggle for political power must take place in line with such development.

As it becomes imperative for society to progress and remove the last form of slavery, the state which is a barrier in its present form must be taken over, altered and shaped for the task of social revolution. Once this has been achieved it can fade away. The taking of political power and transforming it from a means of oppression to one of emancipation is the historical mission of the working class. This mission requiring as it does the conscious understanding by that class places the responsibility on present-day socialists for creating and maintaining the organisation which can be used by the revolutionary class. Also to make available political knowledge to speed the development of revolutionary consciousness. The false and dangerous notions about barricades and armed risings must be exposed and the difference between revolts and revolution understood and explained. For modern capitalism has been compelled to provide the weapon which can be used for its destruction. The ballot used by a sophisticated working class can make possible the use of political power to establish a world society where the problem of access to food and shelter will be solved by making these freely available to all.

The Solution is Ending Capitalism

Away with all the quack remedies for patching up capitalism—the sugar-coated pills of reforms, and let our fellow-workers prescribe the only scientific treatment for the ills of society—socialism. So long as capitalism remains, so long will doctors be overworked in the thankless task of patching up people, whose chief affliction is not the ravages of some viruses, but overwork, anxiety, and poverty. In these times of the internet and global cable news services, we are given the advantages of knowing fully and almost at once what the other half of the world is thinking. We find that they are thinking very much the same as we are. They are thinking that life is very hard, and the outlook very cheerless for the humanity. If they are workers they are wondering why it is so difficult to get and to keep employment; why there is food and the means of producing food alongside idle men who lack a sufficiency of it; why it is that work is so drab, tedious and exhausting when obviously it could be made very much more agreeable; why the ingenuity of craftsmen, scientists, inventors and so on is being devoted so largely to producing and perfecting weapons of destruction; why the world’s statesmen all proclaim their brotherly sentiments, but cannot translate them into the practical form of abolishing or reducing the military. These and many other questions flow through the minds of the world’s workers as they set off to or return from their employers' factory, mine or office, or line up at the Labour Exchange or its equivalent, in New York, in London, in Tokyo, and in Berlin.

The Socialist Party can look at the world without pessimism or despair. We in the Socialist Party never built up false hopes, and have not been disillusioned. Seeing the world as it is we know how great the task is, but we know what can be done by determined, organised work towards a clearly-outlined goal. The world is out of joint because the social system is faulty at the foundation. The private ownership of the means of production and distribution is no longer necessary or desirable. It produces the evils of poverty, unemployment, competition, war and class hatred. It has got to be abolished. Instead of an anarchistic war of private owners seeking profit and permitting the workers to produce wealth only when profit is to be obtained by so doing, the social system needs to be refashioned on the new basis of common ownership. Society must assume possession of its means of life. The private owners must be dispossessed. Their private interests and their class privilege must not be allowed to stand in the way of social progress and the welfare of the whole community. The Socialist Party has taken on the great task of organising for that end. We concentrate on the one vital question, capitalism to be replaced by Socialism, private ownership to give place to common ownership, privilege to give place to equality. Our aim is one to which the workers of the whole world can rally, ‘without distinction of race or sex’. The World Socialist Movement is the one movement able to face the present global worries and troubles with understanding and confidence. Socialism can only come about when a majority of the working class want it

Workers should reject the nonsense idea of nationalism and should unite for their common good to abolish capitalism and nationalism and work for socialism.

 Capitalism is the pursuit of profit maximisation - the thing that underpins capitalism. Socialism is an economy which nurtures our capacity for solidarity, cooperation, reciprocity, mutual aid, altruism, caring, sharing, compassion, and love. Increasingly, research across many disciplines has shown that we are hard-wired to cooperate—that in fact, the survival of the human species has depended on our ability to work together.  The Socialist Party holds no blueprint but possesses a broad framework which aligns with the values of humanity - solidarity, participatory democracy, equality in class, race, and gender, with sustainability and pluralism, which means that it can’t be a one-size-fits-all approach. Nevertheless, the idea of living well and in harmony with nature and each other permeates everything the World Socialist Movement advocates. The idea of the socialist solidarity economy is to build and knit together all of these practices in order to create a new society.  We need to build an economy that provides social solidarity. We will all be engaged in the valuable social and economic work of providing for our children, elders, neighbours, and communities—not for money, but from our innate capacity for companionship and compassion. Two roads lie ahead before humanity. The first road leads to annihilation. The second road leads to a new world.  The onus is on the creation of people’s movements, grasping growing political power to change the fixation on profits and markets rather than on an economic system that understands the rhythms of life.

It is time for action and the time left is short

On the political field the Socialist Party has no common ground with any other political party; being a working-class organisation, we have all the “sympathy” in the world with members of our class. This "sympathy” is shared by many members of the capitalist class, who are always prepared to shed a tear for the underdogs of that class and to throw charity at them. But our “sympathy” finds practical expression as a political body in seeking to show the way out through socialism. Anything short of that leads to muddle-headedness; it delays understanding and therefore is detrimental to socialism. To be told this may hurt the feelings of the enthusiastic young leftist lad or lassie; it may bring painful surprise to the conceited old fools who were a “socialist” long before you were born.

The Socialist Party holds that the material factors in the capitalist world have ripened to the point of plucking the unexpected fruit of socialism; the harvest awaits reaping; the banditry of a decayed feudalism, glorified Banksters and Factory Robber Barons are now stage- at the gates of the Socialist Paradise. The really effective enemy barring the way is the slimy monster wooing Eve with the deadly apple of Reform.

A socialist organisation cannot seek alliances with groups dominated by, or subordinated to, a capitalist ideology. The Socialist Party is right in its insistence that socialism will come, not as the result of impersonal economic processes, not in consequence of the manipulation of the masses by astute demagogues, but only when the majority of the workers consciously desire socialism. One of the main arguments of the opponents of the Socialist Party is that which accuses us of being "dreamers" because we claim that the working class are astute enough to establish socialism without the use of leaders. True, the Socialist Party not only denies the necessity of leaders in the socialist movement but declare that socialism cannot be established until workers have dispensed with the notion of leadership.

Throughout the ages, men and women in their struggle for survival have continually turned to the strongest and the wisest among them for inspiration and courage in their battles with nature and with each other. To-day, however, when everyone has access to the knowledge needed for the achievement of socialism, and the necessities of life are produced in abundance, there is no longer any need for "chiefs". The minimum knowledge that a wage slave requires before he or she is fitted to take his or her place in the revolutionary struggle is easily obtained, and well within the range of proletarian comprehension. Workers must know they are poor and why, and must then find the solution to their economic problems. What does this imply? The knowledge of a Marx and Engels or comprehension of Hegelian philosophy? Certainly not!

It is sheer impudence and indeed megalomania when leftist vanguards claim that by trusting them, the workers will, in consequence, become free men and women. The Socialist Party has continually attacked and exposed these "pseudo-socialists," who are among the working class's greatest enemies. We have stated that the workers must emancipate themselves, and establish the new society, not with the aid of “leaders," but in spite of them!

Workers must learn that they are poor because they sell their labour power to a master for wages; which at all times are at a subsistence level. They must understand that in a capitalist society wealth is produced for sale at a profit. They must realise that the capitalists are able to live in abundance because of the poverty of the masses and that the latter are dispossessed of the goods they produce by masters who in the main take no part in the production, but who nevertheless own and control all wealth.

When we all assimilate that basic knowledge we will then have the mental capacity to immunise ourselves to the false slogans mouthed by nationalist and religious leaders. We will treat with contempt the rogues and who said we were too ignorant to know the solution to our own social problems. The conclusions we will draw are socialist conclusions, and we will realise the necessity of organising for political action within the workers' own party, the Socialist Party. By capturing control of the State machine, workers will abolish private property, and convert the means of producing wealth into the property of society as a whole. This will end for all time poverty, social degradation and war. Such, then, is the minimum knowledge that the exploited class need to acquire. With it, socialism will be something easily understood, enthusiastically acclaimed; and the worker will laugh disdainfully at the futile and absurd idea of the necessity of leaders.

Taxing Empty Homes

More than 15,000 empty homes were charged double council tax last year in a bid to reduce the number of unoccupied properties in Scotland.

Since April 2014, Scotland's local authorities have been allowed to charge 200% council tax on properties that have been unoccupied for more than a year. The aim of the law change was to reduce the estimated 37,000 homes lying empty across the country and was intended to encourage owners to bring empty properties back into use and reduce the blight of unoccupied homes.

It does not apply to second or holiday homes, where the owner can prove they are used for more than 25 days a year.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-45476146

The poor face dying alone

People in the most deprived areas of Scotland are more likely to die alone at home, according to research that reveals the significant impact of health inequalities on end-of-life care.

Researchers at Edinburgh Napier University discovered found that, in the last 12 weeks of their lives, 37% of those in the least deprived areas lived with a family member or friend who was a carer, compared with 28% of those in the most deprived areas and that elderly people in those areas which were most deprived were 37% less likely to die in a care home or hospice than those living in the least deprived areas.

Higher deprivation was connected to a greater chance of living alone. In the last 12 weeks of their lives, 23.3% of people in the least deprived areas lived alone, as opposed to 38.4% of those in the most deprived areas.

The researchers found that, of those who died in the most deprived areas during the research period, 13% did so in a care home, 6% in a hospice, 53% in hospital and 28% at home. They died on average aged 72.5, 6.3 years earlier than someone in the least deprived areas.

For those in the least deprived areas, 22% died in a care home, 8% in a hospice, 20% at home and 50% in hospital. On average, they died aged 78.8.

Scotland continues to have some of the lowest life expectancy rates in western Europe, with the country also trailing behind the UK as a whole. The average male life expectancy north of the border is 77.1, compared with 79.2 for the UK.

https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2018/sep/13/scotlands-most-deprived-more-likely-die-alone-at-home

Auld Reekie's Child Poverty

About 22% of children in Edinburgh live in relative poverty - defined as their household income being below 60% of the average income. It can be as high as 35% in some areas.

The city council has set up a child poverty action unit to help reduce the number of young people in Edinburgh living in relative poverty.

Glasgow Branch decides to contest election (1945)

Party News from the April 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

Glasgow Branch of the Socialist Party of Great Britain has decided to contest a seat at the next municipal election in Glasgow.

Already, candidates have been selected, a campaign committee is busily engaged in the task of organising meetings, and planning the assault on Woodside (the ward to be contested), and a tremendous wave of enthusiasm has enveloped the members of the branch, who are now making an all-out effort to put the S.P.G.B. bang on Glasgow's political map.

Years of unremitting toil by the small group of pioneers who struggled on determinedly against the apathy and political backwardness of the working class, is now bearing fruit; and whatever vote the party obtains at the forthcoming election, in Glasgow at least, our opponents are going to know that the S.P.G.B. is on the march and that we mean business!

Over a dozen young speakers are now in training for the outdoor propaganda season. They will be assisted then, by a number of London speakers who will be visiting Scotland during the summer months.

In the meantime, a series of indoor lectures are being held every Sunday in the Central Halls, and the response here has been encouraging.

We expect to be installed in our own election premises very shortly:—a shop where literature will be sold, and discussion groups, etc., held every evening. Members are resolved that we must make more headway in Scotland this year than ever before in the history of the organisation.

Here is the opportunity of all members and friends to “come to the aid of the party."

We will need money, and plenty of it! How about digging deep into the pocket. Every little donation will help, and you can be assured that it will be made good use of. Address all envelopes to Socialist Party of Great Britain, Central Halls, 25, Bath Street, Glasgow, C.2. And mark envelopes "Campaign."

Every donation will be acknowledged as received.

Do not fail us, in this hour of endeavour. We have the members and the speakers, you can help us obtain the funds!

Fred Crowe (Campaign Organiser).

We, the workers, want change

All of the marvelous complex technology and the scientific methods are under capitalism not for the welfare of the many nor the social good of the majority. It is for the exploitation of working people and for the enrichment of a privileged class. It is a system based upon exploitation for profit making in the interest of a capitalist class. Capitalism is organised for a class purpose. All machines, inventions, processes and scientific knowledge are made subservient to it purpose.


Only working people can act in their own self-interest. The employers will not. The government, controlled by the wealthy, will not. Politicians will not, for they seek to control the power of the many for their own personal gain. To create that new vision there needs to be a foundation to build upon. At the beginning of the labour movement, workers organised into trade unions. When they found that this was not effective, they organised into political parties. What’s good for the capitalists -- poverty wages, freedom to destroy the environment we live in, no protections against abuse at work, no social assistance to those who have been hurt by their policies -- is bad for us. What’s good for us -- control over working conditions, wages, and benefits that let us lead dignified lives, protection against lay-offs -- hurts profit and the employing class will do all they can to increase profitability.   Those in power portray working families as the problem, yet they lead lives of wealth, privilege and power most of us can’t imagine and will never experience.

The self-interest of the working people is a society that is based upon the well being of all, not a society that is designed for the benefit of a few. Think about it; think of your own well-being, and that of your family and your fellow workers. Think about the well being of future generations. If you are tired of working for the benefit of the wealthy few, then think about joining the Socialist Party and start to work for those who really matter to you. The Socialist Party stands in solidarity with workers all over the world who are struggling against capitalism. The ruling class has diverted the minds of working people away from the true cause of their problems. They create the myth that black people are out to take jobs from white workers, that so-called “illegals ” or “immigrant” workers are trying to steal jobs away, or that women are taking jobs from men. In reality, these workers only want what every worker wants, a decent living. Rather than blame each other, working people need to place the blame for low pay and rotten conditions where it belongs, and that is on the employers who profit from our misery. All workers are oppressed by class.


Prevailing society, controlled by the ruling class, is based on a Eurocentric viewpoint. In other words, European or “Western” civilisation is the centre or standard of the “civilised” world. A good example of this is a world map familiar to most of us where Europe and North America dominate the centre and occupy two thirds of the map, with the remainder of the world squeezed onto the edges and the remaining third. The map distorts the world and our perception of it to the apparent advantage of the dominant countries. For example, India appears on this map to be smaller than Scandinavia, even though the subcontinent is three times the size of the combined Scandinavian countries. The Euro-centric ideology often views indigenous peoples as “uncivilised”, even though many of these peoples live in social systems far older and more complex than Western society. Accordingly, the dominant society sets out to “civilise” the native people by stealing their land and natural resources and turning them into wage-slaves or corpses to facilitate the theft. The working class must cast off this Euro-centric ideology and try to develop a more international view, where all people who work within any sort of social system are regarded as being of equal importance and worth, and where indigenous people, like all working peoples, have a right to their land, their lives, and their self-determination. If the labour movement fails to do this, it will be nothing more than a pawn used by the ruling classes to defeat foreign fellow workers and, ultimately, to defeat itself.



When we workers act as a group we are making a statement to each fellow worker involved. This statement is clear; We are willing to stand here with you, if you are here to stand with us. We may win this fight, or we may lose, but that statement always stays with us. It resonates with us as we go through our lives. When we organise and when we take action that effectively challenges our ruling class, we have the power to demand the changes we want to see. 

Our Objective

We are often told we do not work hard enough nor long enough. Facts, however, prove the contrary to be true. The more we work, the greater our poverty becomes; the more we work, the greater the wealth of the master class becomes. Fellow-workers, you have the power to alter all this; you have the power to make life well worth living, by gaining control of the means of living. You have this power because the numbers of the working class far exceed those of the capitalist class. Riots, strikes, and bloody revolutions of the past have not given workers control of the means of living. To-day, these methods are still useless. But we have one method which is a sure method—the vote. To be able to use the vote to advantage requires knowledge. Workers, study socialism, fight for socialism, and bring about the socialist commonwealth which will free you from your chains and give a full and happy life to all.

 The simple fact that socialism can only be established by a socialist working-class is ignored. The leaders are criticised not because they are leaders, but because, in the eyes of their followers, they are not "good” leaders. The bewildered following look around for other leaders, but do not realise that similar results must follow. All leaders are "good” (i.e., make extravagant promises) so long as they are still on the climb. Their intentions may be benevolent or merely ambitious, but in the long run, their actions are determined by the conditions of their existence. These conditions are capitalist society, and a blind following, which, though dissatisfied therewith, does not understand how to overthrow it. Ignoring the necessity for socialist education of the workers has led, and can lead, to nothing more than the elevation of a series of "leaders” to office and favour with the master-class. If working-class history is any guide, it is only a matter of time before each little group of "leaders,” as it arises, follows its predecessor along the path to "responsibility” to the capitalist class and practical inability to reduce Utopia to a working formula. A knowledge of the economic laws of capitalist development would prevent the workers indulging in day-dreams about "a living wage,” and would impel them to organise for the abolition of the wages system.

The Socialist Party advocates the conversion into the common property of all industrial undertakings which are indispensable for the provision of the wants of the workers, and we see no reason why the workers are obliged to pick and choose, in a piecemeal manner, the industries to be dealt with. That process is only necessary to the "Labour” politicians who know that they have no mandate for socialism, and are thus obliged to frame a programme which will suit the interests of some section or other of the capitalist class. Any attempt to introduce socialism with a non-socialist electorate is foredoomed to failure, and it is only the dupes of the "Left Wing ” that imagine otherwise.

The Socialist Party was formed with a definite revolutionary objective expressed in unswerving tactics. Marx and Engels have been a guide. Hence for us, there has been no wandering in circles; no futile attempts to advance before we have accumulated the army for the attack. That we are satisfied with our rate of progress we do not, for one moment, pretend; but we have at least the satisfaction of knowing that if the workers exhibit the signs of confusion, it is not due to our educational campaigns. When the workers learn to see in socialism their only hope, when they realise that it can only be gained by their own efforts in the teeth of the opposition of their masters, then we know that they will march forward as one body, blundering neither to right or left, till their emancipation is achieved.

The Dundee Poverty Divide

Plans to create a community fridge in the West End – a converted shipping container that would allow people to pick up free produce at any time day or night – have outraged some businesses in the area. They fear the fridge would see the West End inundated with ne’er-do-wells of all hue who might, it is suggested, scare away their customers by getting up to, presumably, all manner of vegetable-related anti-social and threatening behaviour. While everyone is keen to stress they are not against the idea of a community fridge per se, they are just against having it in their own back-yard. Some business owners said that while the fridge is probably a very good idea indeed, it would be far better suited to areas of the city where there is greater deprivation.

 It’s true the West End is generally more affluent than other parts of Dundee, the harsh truth is that poverty is no respecter of postcodes. Just because someone lives in one part of a city rather than another does not mean they are free from money worries or do not need assistance. The sad fact of the matter is that while some areas have greater numbers of people in poverty than others, there are people in every street, in every block, struggling to make ends meet and to put food on their table.

Does a child go to bed less hungry just because they live in one part of the city and not another? Perth Road and its environs may be, on the surface, far more affluent than Lochee, Charleston or Menzieshill, but it is wrong to think that poverty does not affect people there, or that some invisible line is enough to separate the haves from the have-nots.

The real outrage – and it is as an outrage – is that in the developed world something like a community fridge or a food-bank is necessary at all

https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/local/dundee/721032/dundee-matters-west-end-furore-cannot-mask-truth-about-poverty/

Knowledge is Power

Labour theory of value 

Socialism may be divided into three parts.

In the beginning is the Materialist Conception of History, which examines man’s social development and relates it to his power of wealth production. In this perspective, history is the process of struggle between classes for social and economic dominance.

In the end is the recognition of the class struggle under the present capitalist social system. Modern society is divided into workers and capitalists, who are in dispute over the division of wealth. When the subject working class take conscious political action to overthrow the capitalists' dominance, society will evolve into its next and higher stage—Socialism.

These two ends are linked by the Marxist analysis of capitalism. This analysis probes to the economic root of the system uncovers the course of capitalism's sustenance and expands into its outermost branches. The basis of Marx's examination of capitalism is the Labour Theory of Value.

 Karl Marx opened his great work Capital with the statement:

  "The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as "an immense accumulation of commodities ” . 

What, then, is a commodity? It is not simply something which has physical properties. It is also something which has social properties, something which exists and operates under certain social conditions. Commodities in the mass are peculiar to capitalism and therefore typify that social system.

To understand capitalism, then, we must understand the commodity. To do this we must first isolate the commodity from its social sophistication so that it can be seen in its pure form. Only when we have thus examined it can we introduce the complications of its real existence.

A commodity is an article—a loaf of bread, a pair of shoes, or a service—a haircut, technical knowledge, which has use value. That is, it is useful to human beings because it satisfies some need or some fancy. A commodity must be able to be constantly reproduced in social production, as are the goods which come out of modern factories. It is produced, not for the individual consumption of the person who worked on it, but for sale on a market at a profit.

Selling a commodity is, in fact, exchanging it for another, with money intervening as a convenient method of carrying through the exchange. When commodities exchange they do so in a certain regulated proportion. If at a certain time a ton of coal may exchange for half a hundred-weight of tea, something must explain why the coal does not equal more or less tea. What is it that regulates the proportion in which commodities exchange with each other?

The only way in which commodities can be compared is through something which they have in common. This means that a commodity's physical properties, which are obviously dissimilar from that of other commodities, must be disregarded. Coal has nothing physically in common with tea, or butter, or any of the other things with which it exchanges.

There is only one thing which all commodities have in common. They are all produced by the application of human labour to some available material. Human labour, then, is the common property of all commodities and this, measured in time, is what must determine the proportion in which commodities exchange with each other.

But the labour time taken up in producing a commodity varies with the occasion and the condition of its production. With coal, for instance, it varies with the abundance of the seam which is being worked and with the degree of mechanisation involved. Thus the exchange value of a commodity is fixed by the amount of labour time which is socially necessary to produce it, under average conditions and intensity of work, at the time and place at which it is wanted.

This value regulates the rate at which commodities exchange with each other. It fixes the line above and below which a commodity’s price, under the pressures of market forces, may vary.

This conclusion applies to the commodity which we are all born with, but which emerges as a commodity only under the necessary social conditions—labour power. When our employers engage us, they are buying our labour-power at the price of our wage. This wage, just like any other price, can fluctuate. But the fluctuations are regulated to the value of the labour power.

Now what is the value of labour power? It is the amount of socially necessary labour involved in producing it—the labour in the houses, clothes, food, entertainments, and so forth, which contribute to the re-energising and reproduction of our ability to work. This value can be varied by a number of influences—among them the workers’ struggles in their Trade Unions.

So far so good. But if all commodities, including labour power, exchange generally at their value, how does profit arise? The answer to this question is found in the peculiar nature of labour power.

Employment is the process of synthesising part of the value of a number of commodities—of raw materials, of machines, of part finished products, and so on. At the end of this process, the finished product has a value greater than that of all the commodities embodied in it. It is labour power which, in the acts of its application, has done this—it has created value.

This is how it comes about that a capitalist buys his materials, his buildings, his machines and the workers’ labour power, all, on average, at their value. When these are all joined by human labour the result is a commodity of a value greater than the sum of all the commodities originally put into it.

It is from this surplus value, from the exploitation of human labour, that the capitalist gets his profit out of which he pays dividends, rent, interest on loans, taxes for the upkeep of the State, and so on.

This exploitation is the mainspring of capitalism; by understanding it we also understand the mechanisms of the system. We understand why capitalism works as it does, why it produces the problems that it does and why it must end as it will. The practice of modern capitalism in concentrating upon reducing the time spent in producing articles in order to sell cheaper, is a tribute to the truth of the labour theory of value. 

It is this understanding what makes the Socialist Party a distinctive organisation, marked by its exclusive ability to understand capitalism and to work for the next and higher stage in mankind's social advance.

Confessions of a Labour Leader (1944)

From the September 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Tom Johnston, Labour M.P., says we are better fed during the war than ever before: —

  Nutritionally, we had never been better fed in our history than we were now, Mr. Tom Johnston, Secretary for Scotland, said at Dundee yesterday.
  Despite shortages, other difficulties and the rationing system, everyone for the first time was able to get three meals a day.
  It was tragic that it took the war to ensure that the most necessitous—children and infants—got priorities, fruit juices, and so on. (News Chronicle, August 19th, 1944.)

Mr. Johnston was a supporter of the Labour Government in 1924 and again in 1929-31, and held office under the latter as Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Scotland and Lord Privy Seal. Will he explain why the Labour Governments did not tackle this elementary problem of nutrition?