Whose side are you on?

The Socialist Party has not and never has been “left-wing.” Its position is unique, being totally opposed to capitalism and all its political adherents including the Left. It is the only political party to consistently advocate and work for the establishment of socialism to the exclusion of everything else.  Other parties talk about “socialism”, but when you analyse the realities behind their words it is clear that they are no more interested in socialism than are avowedly capitalist parties. The left acts as a kind of guilty conscience for capitalism. A kind of safety-valve which always has plenty of steam and hot air to let off.

The word revolution is almost as misused as the word socialism. If a government is changed, a political leader is replaced, a coup takes place, the media shout “revolution!” 

Revolution means a transformation in the object to which the term is being applied. If it is being used about society, then it means a total change in economic relations. The easiest example to understand is the revolution that took place to transform feudalism to capitalism. In feudal society, the majority were tied to their superiors. Over and above what they produced for themselves and their families in order to live, the serfs were compelled to produce for their feudal masters and The Church. That form of society was transformed by a revolution into a society—capitalism—where there is no direct ownership of the lives of people by other people in the same way.

In all forms of society, minorities have owned the means of living, with the result that the other classes have had to submit to the dictates of the minority whilst that particular form of society existed.  Feudalism depended on agricultural production and personal subservience by the majority to the aristocracy. Whilst in feudal society by and large it was birth that determined into which class one fell, in capitalist society it is purely a question of ownership of wealth however obtained. Privilege in capitalism depends not on accidents of birth (though these can be of importance to the individual) but on the ownership of capital.

The revolution that will change capitalism into socialism will involve the replacement of all the relationships of capitalism. Instead of the primary characteristics of capitalism—production for profit, the buying, and selling of all things including labour-power, and private (or state) ownership of wealth, society will be characterized by common ownership and of free access to that wealth. Production will be for human satisfaction only, hence no money nor all the paraphernalia that goes with it, and will be based upon voluntary co-operation by all in the interests of all. To get to that form of society involves a transformation—a revolution. It is only in Socialism that man will solve the major problems he now faces. That is why the Socialist Party is a revolutionary party. Because the next revolution must be the work of the majority consciously co-operating in the work that it will entail, a transformation in mankind’s ideas is the pre-requisite to its successful implementation.

 Class consciousness is greatly determined by social experience, but social experience includes ideas. In fact, mankind is the only species which has been able to accumulate knowledge, systematize it and hand it on culturally, making it unnecessary for succeeding generations to re-learn anew everything which has gone before. It has been pointed out many times that capitalism brings into being its own grave-diggers; the working class. The inability of capitalism to create conditions which would enable the working class as a whole to live full and harmonious lives in line with social potentialities will lead inevitably to the realisation of the need for a new social system. This process needs the intervention of the accumulated knowledge of human society systematized into ideas; not ideas which interpret everything in terms of what is necessary for the continued existence of capitalist society, but the ideas, on a class basis, of what is necessary for the emancipation of the working class; in other words, socialist ideas.

An existing social system cannot be destroyed unless it is at the same time replaced by another, otherwise, this would mean that society would cease to exist altogether. Working-class consciousness means, therefore, a realization of a positive as well as a negative understanding, and this can only be developed by the spread of socialist ideas. When the working class as a class adopts these ideas and brings into being socialism as a working system of society, this will be the beginning of changes in human behaviour in line with the change in social relations.

 Everywhere there is much to do, much to learn, and much to gain.   Vote, then, for socialism. Vote for the Socialist Party, the only party that keeps the revolutionary banner unfurled. 

Forward to Socialism! Forward to the Social Revolution!

The widespread ignorance of class interests among workers offers no permanent hindrance to our socialist policy. That ignorance is due to certain causes, and the lack of interest in revolutionary ideas a is a phase which is true of every country for a time. This lack of interest, however, is not simply a reflex of conditions but a result of capitalist propaganda by the media and other capitalist institutions, which are carefully used ,to mould the working class to capitalist views. There runs the desire of the great majority of working people to make as decent a life as they can despite the odds They seek almost universally to make unpromising surroundings agreeable, to be good neighbours, to provide the best possible future for their children. It is precisely this desire for something better that makes them vulnerable to promises and enticements: only give me your vote today, says the politician or the captain of industry and you shall have jam tomorrow.

Often workers know they are about to be sold-out again, but believe what else is there to do but take the lesser evil? Often too they are aware that an alternative does exist, but hang back from going against what appear to be stronger forces of opinion. Only a little more understanding and a little more will are required: and the next twenty-five years can bring a life altogether different. The problems of society lie in its structure. While ownership of the means of life remains in the hands of one class it means the consequent enslavement of the non-owning class. There is a continual conflict of interests between those who produce wealth and those who possess that wealth. The solution to that conflict can only come by converting the means of production and distribution to the common ownership and democratic control of the whole of society. The understanding required to abolish capitalism and institute Socialism is within the capability of all workers; and the working class who run society from the top to bottom for the capitalist class now, are more than capable of running Socialism for themselves. The quickest way is the only way to Socialism, and that is by a majority of the working class understanding and wanting that change in society, organizing politically for the capture of the powers of government, and using that instrument for its own emancipation. Turn your backs on despair and disillusion, and join with the world’s socialist movement to sweep capitalism from the face of the earth!

Since the middle of the 19th century many reform measures have been introduced, some of which have benefitted both capitalism and the worker. If reforms make capitalism more tolerable for the worker, they make it more secure for the capitalist. Capitalism is never at rest; the gains of yesterday can be dissipated by the events of the present. There are no safe reform anchorages or havens which afford permanent shelter. The battle demands to be fought over and over again, as events in the past have demonstrated. Most workers believe that the choice of introducing social reforms or dealing with major social problems is a matter for the government of the day. This is not the case. Governments of all varieties represent the interests of the ruling class. Reforms have to be paid for out of taxation, and the burden of taxation rests on the employers. Taxes mainly are paid out of income, and the income of the capitalist employer or shareholder is derived from the surplus-value created by the worker. The rate of taxation can never exceed the level of profit, any more than the part can be bigger than the whole. Social reforms are not within the gift of the government. There is a certain amount of room for manoeuvre, but it is capitalism which has developed the powers of government, not the politicians. If its basic function is to secure the capitalist in his privileged position, it cannot contradict the basis of its own existence. It cannot ignore the economics of capitalism and the capitalist’s right to profit. Experience has shown that to the extent that the capitalist introduces reforms which “benefit” workers, so are these taken into account when wages are negotiated. Subsidized rents, subsidized food, free medical treatment, children’s allowances, and any other “benefits” are taken into account by both trade unions and employers when dealing with wage claims.

The idea that prevails amongst the Left that agitation for reforms will provide the worker with sufficient experience to demand Socialism has not stood up to a historical examination. It simply has not worked, despite the ceaseless reformist and trade-union action carried on over the past 150 years or so. The capitalists are in control over the working class so long as reformist ideas form the mainstream of political thinking. The only way to counter the propaganda of the reformer is to show that it hasn’t even achieved the limited objectives of making capitalism tolerable, let alone advance socialism. The difference between socialist society and capitalism is that social requirements would be dealt with and carried out as soon as the community became aware of the facts of the problem, and as a matter of course. There can be no question of reformers begging social reforms from useless parasites for and on behalf of the deprived useful members of the working class. We do not want their charity now, and we will not need it later.

The great majority of society, the working class, are always on the losing end of capitalism, and as a result of this conflict of interests, the two sides are involved in a continuous struggle. The owning class naturally wishes to maintain its supremacy, using its control of the machinery of government, the armed forces, the police and the legal system to do so, while the working class resists the pressure as best it can. What the working class ultimately must do is take this power from them and use it to abolish the divisive system of capitalism.

 We do not want sweat-masters or enlightened employers. We do not want capitalism on the best terms unions can obtain: we want to end it. We stand for the abolition of the wages system. 

Whatever Marx did or did not say, the position of the Socialist Party is the only feasible one: Socialism through democratic political action. The Socialist Party is unique among political parties in this country because unlike all others we propose a revolutionary change in the basis of society. We stand for the establishment of Socialism, a society in which the means of wealth production and distribution will be owned and controlled in common in the interests of the whole of society. Such an idea is not new, but this does not detract from its value and relevance. We argue that a system of world-wide common ownership can only be introduced with the conscious political action of the vast majority and to achieve this a revolution in thinking must first occur. We make this point because other political parties who claim to represent working-class interests seem not to regard it as important.

The social system under which we currently live, capitalism, is popularly portrayed by spokesmen for the so-called left and right wings, as an entity which can be modified in such a way as to meet both the requirements of that minority who own the means of production and distribution; and the vast majority who must work for the owners in order to live. Such a picture may be likened to a group of car salesmen who each promise that their particular model can travel forward and in reverse at the same time. In fact the economic interests of the owner are fundamentally opposed to the interests of the non-owning worker.

The capitalist requires a profit from the production of commodities and will not allow production to take place unless there is a good chance of success in this. The workers, on the other hand, need not worry about the extent of their personal profit—they get none. Instead, a worker receives a wage, referred to in more genteel circles as a salary, which basically accords with the amount it costs him and his family to live. It needs hardly be said that the standard reached by workers compared with that of the owners is a poor one. The necessity for profit means that there is a constant struggle between capitalist and worker over the division of wealth. Workers must attempt to resist pressure from employers to push wages down or to hold them in check, while the owners attempt to increase their share of the wealth which has been produced by the labour of the working class alone. It is accurate to say that members of the capitalist class have no need to work, and play no part in the productive process as such. It is their ownership of the means of production which puts them in this position, and it is a position in turn preserved and defended by the capitalists’ executive — the State and its coercive forces. Far from adopting the revolutionary stance of the Socialist Party—the abolition of property ownership whether private or State—the reformers seek minor modifications within a system founded upon private property ownership.

Today's society is based on the entire productive wealth of society being owned and controlled by a small minority. The rest of society, being thus separated from society’s wealth owns nothing but its ability to work and, in order to live, must sell this ability to the owning, capitalist class, by whom it is applied to reduce commodities and increase capital. It is true that the working class receives wages and salaries in return for its ability, but these represent not the value of work done but only the maintenance of the working class.

As a consequence of this basis, an elaborate economic and social structure has developed. Private ownership requires a legal system which defines and protects rights in property. Ownership implies selling and buying, and this requires a means of exchange, money, which today has whole industries devoted to its management, for example, the banking and insurance industries. The vast Civil Service handles the taxation, social security and state industry departments on behalf of the government. While any modern system would require some form of administration, the resources and labour used in administering capitalism are immense in proportion to the productive base. And the expense (or waste) does not end there. A feature of capitalism is economic competition, whether it be between individual nations or international alliances, or between separate companies or groups of companies. Such competition is claimed to be beneficial in that it promotes high efficiency, low costs and therefore low prices. In practice, it leads to duplication, high promotion costs, and wasted resources. Since the capitalist class, as such, exists only to make profit, production and marketing are geared to this end, regardless of the real needs of society. Witness the burned-out wheat fields and coffee plantations of the Americas, the milk-filled mine shafts of England and the butter-mountains and wine-lakes of Europe.

Whereas the working class has this single interest, however, the capitalists are divided amongst themselves, each faction wishing to own and control as much as it can of the available wealth, and to administer capitalism in its own way.  Socialism will present quite a different picture from chaotic, wasteful and inequitable capitalism. Since the means of living will be owned by society as a whole, buying and selling will be unnecessary. The technology already exists to produce more than the world’s material requirements and has only to be organised. With an abundance of production, goods and services will be freely available to all. In the absence of money, the present complex of industries and administration that it entails, and the inherent waste of labour and resources, will also go. Welfare benefits, pensions, wages, and taxation will become words in history books. Armies to procure and protect land and property will no longer be necessary, nor will the prisons and police forces that are used now against people who offend against property-based laws. The Socialist Party exists to bring about Socialism for the first time. This is its sole purpose. The new society having been established democratically, through the ballot box, the Socialist Party will cease to have any function and will disappear as the last trace of capitalist society.

Nationalist Nonsense Again

Once again, the Scottish nationalists took to the streets, this time in Edinburgh, to demand independence and another referendum.

The nation-state was created as the political unit for capitalism in a series of changes which began four or five hundred years ago. It was accompanied by the growth of national consciousness. People were half encouraged and half forced to identify themselves with the countries they lived in. The fiercest jingo nationalism today is to be seen in the new nations. Before the nation-state, partisanship was related to small-scale economic interests. Wars were fought between cities, tribes and the proprietors of rival domains. The peasant population took part only to the extent that it was tempted or compelled to. The armies and mailed knights of the Middle Ages were mostly mercenaries. Nationalists argue that the problems of workers in a given country will be solved, and a golden age for them begin, by recovering or enlarging the country’s supremacy. This is the promise of nationalist leaders in new countries and is also being made by the Scottish nationalists.  Unfortunately, there is little evidence that this could be or has ever been so.  Pleasure in one's place or birth or culture he or she was brought up in has nothing to do with the matter. It is a reasonable sentiment on which nationalist fraud builds, but which capitalism will destroy without compunction.

Nationality is an accident. “Ours” is the deceitful word in nationalist propaganda the world over. In a newly developed country, nationalism is the demand of native capitalists to exploit the workers and peasants lest somebody else should do it and have the profits. What kind of “ours” is being talked about? In Britain and other industrialised countries workers talk about “our” trade, “our” reserves, “our” jobs allegedly taken by immigrants. They are not. They are all at the disposal of those who own the means of living. The worker has no claim on them: we owns nothing but our labour-power. There is a different affinity to recognise. This is the identity of interest of all those who live by selling their labour-power. The working class is worldwide, and as members of it become conscious of the nature of capitalist society and their position in it. The working class have no country. By persuading workers that they have a stake in “the nation”, capitalism obtains their support at critical times. What they should bear in mind is that the nation-state is the political institution of the capitalist system: its raison d'être is to keep the working class propertyless. Nationalism can do nothing for the workers except confirm or worsen their position. Socialism will mean the end of nationalities and frontiers.  Socialism sets out to abolish the antagonisms and divisions between the peoples of the world.

Part of the left has given up on the search of any alternative to capitalism in the name of the “realism” of nationalism. Nationalism is a capitalist ideology and expresses the “yearnings” of the national bourgeoisie for a nation of its own, i.e. a home market and the right to exploit its own people. The workers simply yearn for an end to all oppression.

As the Edinburgh Anarchists put it “an independent Scotland would in most respects have resembled the Scotland of the UK, a patriarchal, capitalist, environmentally destructive society. A country with the most unequal land ownership in the developed world – where 50% of the land is owned by just 432 individuals. A country dependent on North Sea oil for much of its exports – oil that must be left in the ground to prevent climate catastrophe. A country with huge poverty and huge wealth and little in the way of organised working class action to change that dynamic. And in so continuing to uphold the same institutions, the same structures of power, the same business interests, and the same political configuration, our fight against the state, capital and oppression continues.... We have a world to win and only our own working class self-activity and organisation will secure it.”

https://libcom.org/library/dont-mourn-organise

We Need Socialism

Over the past decades nobody can deny that lots of things have changed, but just how much has the social system altered in those years?

The founders of the Socialist Party back in 1904 looked on a social system in which the accumulated wealth was concentrated in the hands of a small minority, the propertied class; a world in which the workers' life was harassed with poverty, unemployment, bad housing, pauperism and the threat of war. They maintained that if you want something better it has to be a new social organisation, socialism and that you can't do anything useful with this present social system: capitalism. Our opponents believed otherwise and argued that through social reforms, things could be made essentially different. Over the years the politician has been claiming success and that the great change had already taken place, in what they called the Welfare State. Of course, the political parties differed among themselves on some details, each thinking they could do better than them but they were all at first of one mind that poverty, unemployment, and slumps had been abolished and all agreed that slums were on their way out. Nothing whatever has been solved. As the Socialist Party always said nobody can prevent capitalism from breaking through and showing itself for what it really is. There is a very long list of unsolved social problems that were going to be solved by the reformists. And, to return to the basic question, the accumulated wealth of the country is still concentrated in the hands of the propertied class.

The position may be summed up as follows. As under present conditions, all commodities are produced for profit, production must cease with the cessation of profit. As profit and wages between them constitute and have their only source in the value created by the worker, profit can only appear while wages are prevented from consuming the whole product of labour. As wages, the price of labour power, are regulated by the relation of supply and demand, a surplus of labour-power (the unemployed), is necessary to prevent wages swallowing up all profit. Therefore the unemployed army is a vital necessity for Capitalist production, and there can be no solution under capitalism.

The supporters of some form of capitalism continue their bedraggled slogan-shouting processions. Instead of spending time and thought grappling with the cause of social disharmony, they waste their time and energy in futile protests. Governments are solely concerned with the interests of their capitalist controllers and will fight against, or acquiesce in, changes according to their bearing on these interests. The Socialist Party vision is for a more caring society in which nobody is denied what they need based on income, on property, on capital, a society in which people are valued over profit, in which everyone has access to the things they need not just for basic survival but to thrive, an economy run democratically—to meet people's needs, not to make profits, a society free of all oppression with a democratically-run, ecologically-sustainable economy. Our goal is a socialist world. The Socialist Party has learned through decades that the capitalist system serves the interests of the ruling class. It is designed to meet their needs and protect their power from threats from below. The Socialist Party is about fighting to build a society in which everybody can live in dignity and have the resources to live as equitably as possible and to have]the resources that we need not only to survive but to flourish in our society. It’s about empowering people.  It means that everybody within reason will truly have autonomy and control over their own destinies. 

The Socialist Party has one objective, socialism. This can only be achieved when a majority of the working class reject the squalid expediencies of opportunist politics. We do not think that our small party will establish socialism: the working class will — and the capitalist class cannot prevent the working class from establishing socialism. To establish socialism the majority of workers have got to become socialists. If they don’t, capitalism continues. If there is one lesson the last hundred years has taught it is, above all, that no “seizure of power” by insurrection or a general strike can abolish capitalism. The majority have got to break with social reform. This, for many workers, is quite difficult. The pioneers of Socialism, including Marx and Engels, could have had little idea of the potency of modern “social security”, which siphons off much working-class discontent and seriously retards the growth of class-consciousness. How long it will take the workers in their millions to see through the reformist racket is impossible to say

In spite of this, the fact remains that capitalism is a revolutionizing system: compelled by its very nature to organize, train and educate a revolutionary working class. Sheer disenchantment of itself leads nowhere but to smashing windows, rioting etc. Discontent is the fertile soil for socialist campaigning, but without the seed of socialist theory — no new world will bloom. It is the socialists who provide the catalyst. It is the socialists who make precise the vision of a future society, to turn mere rebels into conscious revolutionaries. The socialists transform the miserable degrading requests of trade union for a few more pennies, or for longer tea-breaks, into the dazzling vista of a new world. It is the socialist who raises mere destruction of the old into construction of the new. The Socialist Party argues that socialist economics provides the answers, and to evade the responsibility of explaining it to our fellow-workers would be criminal.

What Population Explosion?

Many in the past have predicted mass starvation due to catastrophic population growth outpacing food production. This has not happened.

The main drivers of population growth are death and birth rates. Lifespan has lengthened due to medical miracles, while fertility has dropped across the board due to birth controls and family planning because of the education and empowerment of women.

While population growth rates have declined, the total population has continued to grow due to the initial size of the population, referred to as population momentum. The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs projected in 2017 that Earth’s population would surpass 11 billion by 2100, despite these fertility and population growth rate trends. The UN expects that nearly 70 percent of the world’s population for the latter half of the 21st century would be made up of a population with fertility rates below-replacement (less than 2.1 births per woman). And yet, there still has been a steady call for population reduction.

Now it is situated within the context of emission targets developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to meet global warming goals. The concern with overpopulation, now often dovetails with concerns about climate change. Won’t higher population devastate the environment? All developed countries have a high environmental footprint and no developing country can achieve higher standards of living without increasing its per capita consumption. The consumption patterns of humans show no hint of slowing down. Both in developed and developing countries.

It is evident that a growing population puts an enormous burden on natural resources, energy sources, habitats for all other species, and on land use change. Birthrates across the globe have been declining. One complication is that fertility decline tends to increase GDP per capita, as families invest more in human capital for each child. While the educated and empowered women have fewer children, the main motivation for that is to provide more resources to each child. Per capita consumptions continue to grow when each child is given more resources or wealth. Per capita consumption shows no decline anywhere on the planet. Even in countries like China and India, where the per capita emissions are half and one eighth, respectively, of those in the U.S., the wealthy denizens of these developing countries tend to have a similar per capita emission to the US. The averages are thus not an indication of lower consumption across the board but just an indication of poverty. Even if the developing world accomplishes miraculously high reductions in populations, the total emissions will not come down unless per capita consumptions are reduced even faster. 

However, unintended consequences cannot be ignored. The developed world has a narrow base of younger population with a nearly even distribution up to the aging population. Japan stands as a stark example of an ever growing aging population due to stagnating birth rates. 

 Developing countries, on the other hand, display a pyramidal age structure with a large base of population under 25. This offers a golden opportunity to educate and empower girls and young women. Nothing has proven more effective as a contraception than educating and empowering women. Population is a problem that is solving itself. Our penchant for high-energy lifestyle shows no signs of diminishing. Our energies are best focused on evolving into carbon-neutral sapiens who will naturally settle into a healthy population level.

Blaming over-population is misanthropic. Humanity will be the source of the solutions we need to the problems that humanity has created for itself. As an argument, it is often inherently racist - it is directed at those populations growing fastest, which happen to be mostly black and brown.  It is intended to excuse what is the real culprit: CAPITALISM

There is only one way to effectively prevent, alleviate, or reverse dangerous climate change: SOCIALISM. Population has little to do with it   

 Consider that the European Union has approximately 300 people per square mile, making it as dense as the ninth-densest US state (that is, similar to Pennsylvania or Florida). The continental United States, on the whole, has about 110 people per square mile (excluding Alaska), making the US less than one-third as densely peopled as the EU.  If the continental United States were as heavily settled as the EU, the US would have nearly a billion people living in it. If just the states east of the Mississippi had European-style population density, and the other states maintained current population, then the United States would still have more than 400 million people. 

Adapted from here

https://www.newsweek.com/global-human-population-explosion-carbon-emissions-consumption-1138996

The Problem With All This hatred Of The U.S.A.

Everywhere I go I hear people express anti-American sentiments, intensified now there is a real jerk in the White House. 

It's at least half-way to understandable considering what the American capitalists have done all over the world. 

They offer loans to countries, knowing they can never pay them back, then force them to accept their companies going into these, little better than colonies, and then proceed to legally steal their natural wealth, particularly oil. In the process, they destroy the environment, force the locals to slave for them for low wages and turn the rivers into flaming cesspools. In some cases, they blatantly invade, such as Iraq and Afghanistan. 

The world's financial institutions, such as the World Bank are largely American controlled as are the major global corporations. 

Furthermore the leaders of the countries the US rape have to play ball or they will be forced out like Mossadegh was in Iran in 1951 and Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954. Some guys weren't so lucky and were murdered, typical cases being Trujillo in the Dominican Republic in 1961, Roldos, Ecuador 1981, Torrijo, Panama also 1981, a busy year, and Allende in Chile in 1973. They even offed one of their own boys, JFK in 1963, who wasn't playing ball with powerful American capitalists.

 The problem with all this hatred of the US blinds people to the truth, which is the Americans are not the enemy; not the working class, the capitalist class, the banks or the global corporations, but the entire capitalist situation which creates all the social evils we find so despicable. 

Kicking the Americans out, however hard that would be, would not solve anything if the locals were exploited by local capitalists.

 Hate is all very useful if leads to understanding, but if it doesn't its conducive to a continuation of crapitalism.

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

Where Trade Is Used For Other Than Economic Means.

Saudi Arabia cancelled its four-flights-a-week between Toronto and Riyadh and halted its purchases of Canadian wheat and barley on August 7, in retaliation of Ottawa's criticism of its human rights abuses. 

In July the Canadian government protested the detention of activists, including Samar Badawi, whose brother, Raif was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes for insulting Islam. His wife, Ensaf Haidar, is a Canadian citizen.

 In 2017 Canada sent 135,000 tonnes of barley to Saudi Arabia and 70,000 tonnes of wheat. 

Nor does Ottawa show any signs of backing down. Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said,''We continue to call for the release of both Raif and Samar Badawi''.

 Protectionism is one of the new trends capitalism is going through, where trade is used for other than economic means. 

We, of the SPC, cannot say that nobody elected to a position of responsibility will behave in a childish manner in a socialist world, but two things we can say; first that it would not be tolerated, and also, that circumstances like the above could not occur.

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

Socialism - A rational civilisation

People are right to be concerned about what is happening to the environment. There is a serious environmental crisis but the issue is not whether it exists but what to do about it. The Socialist Party explains that no government nor any international treaty can protect the environment. Governments exist to run the political side of the profit system. And the profit system can only work by giving priority to making profits over all other considerations. So to protect the environment we must end production for profit. Production today is in the hands of business enterprises, all competing to sell their products at a profit. All of them — and it doesn’t matter whether they are privately-owned or state-owned — aim to maximise their profits. This is an economic necessity imposed by the forces of the market. If a business does not make a profit it goes out of business. Under the competitive pressures of the market, businesses only take into account their own narrow financial interest, ignoring wider social or ecological considerations. All they look to is their own balance sheet and in particular, the bottom line which shows whether or not they are making a profit. The whole of production, from the materials used to the methods employed to transform them, is distorted by this drive to make and accumulate profits. The result is an economic system governed by uncontrollable market forces which compel decision makers, however, selected and whatever their personal views or sentiments, to plunder and to pollute.

Governments do not have a free hand to do what is sensible or desirable. They can only act within the narrow limits imposed by the profit-driven market system whose rules are "profits first" and "you can’t buck the market". Too many environmentalists are not against the market and are not against profit-making. They imagine that, by firm government policy, these can be tamed and prevented from harming the environment. This is an illusion. You can’t impose other priorities on the profit system than making profits. That’s why environmentalist activists will fail. They also fail to realise that what those who want a safe sustainable environment are up against is a well-entrenched economic and social system based on class privilege and property and governed by the overriding economic law of profits first. If the environmental crisis is to be solved, this system must go. What is required is political action aimed at replacing this system by a new and different one which will allow us to meet our needs in an environmentally-friendly way. To do this we must control production but to be able to control production we must own the means of production. That’s the only basis on which we can meet our needs whilst respecting the laws of nature. And it’s the only basis on which we can begin to successfully reverse the degradation of the environment already caused by the profit system.  Until those who do the work of the world understand that only when privilege in all forms, and class ownership of the means of living, have been abolished will it be possible for the people of the world to live in harmony with their surroundings and their neighbours.

The world’s governments are “nowhere near on track” to meet their commitment to avoid global warming of more than 1.5C above the pre-industrial period, according to an author of a key UN report. A massive, immediate transformation in the way the world’s population generates energy, uses transportation and grows food will be required to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5C and the forthcoming analysis is set to lay bare how remote this possibility is.

“It’s extraordinarily challenging to get to the 1.5C target and we are nowhere near on track to doing that,” said Drew Shindell, a Duke University climate scientist and a co-author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. Shindell said that the more ambitious 1.5C goal would require a precipitous drop in greenhouse emissions triggered by a rapid phaseout of fossil fuels, particularly coal, mass deployment of solar and wind energy and the eradication of emissions from cars, trucks, and airplanes. The fading prospect of keeping the global temperature rise to below 1.5C has provoked alarm among leaders of low-lying island nations that risk being inundated should the world warm beyond this point. Last year, global greenhouse gas emissions rose slightly again. A difference of 0.5C in temperature may appear small but the IPCC report, which is a summary of leading climate science, is expected to warn there will be major impacts if warming reaches 2C.

“Even 1.5C is no picnic, really,” said Dr. Tabea Lissner, head of adaption and vulnerability at Climate Analytics. Lissner said a world beyond 1.5C warming meant the Arctic would be ice-free in summer, around half of land-based creatures would be severely affected and deadly heatwaves would become far more common. “0.5C makes quite a big difference,” she said.

The Only Democracy Worth Campaigning For - A Socialist Society.

On July 27 Doug Ford caused another uproar when he said he will use his constitutional right as Ontario's Premiere to slash the amount of councillors in Toronto from 47 to 25. 

What upset so many candidates is the fact that many have campaigned, long and hard for election to seats that may not exist at the by the time of the election, October 22. 

Ford argues it will save the city money and will make it easier for them to come to an agreement during debates. That there is opposition to this heavenly decree would be putting it mildly. 

Would it be more democratic Ford's way or less are hardly matters that concern socialists and should not concern anyone else, because in the final analysis there is only one form of democracy worth campaigning for - a socialist society.

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

Don’t be fooled by words

As socialists, we don’t go in for moralising in this way about the "goodness" or "badness” of whole sections of the working class. We too are concerned about the conditions our fellow workers in other parts of the world have to live and work under. We know that the role of the police and army is everywhere to protect private property and the existing political set-up. Yet we base our views on an analysis of the material conditions. “

"All I want to see is my country free, happiness peace and prosperity" is a familiar refrain, we in the Socialist Party often hear. But let's see what they really mean.

FREEDOM: In capitalist society means the right of the vast majority to be property's wage workers producing wealth to be sold on a market with a view to profit.

MY COUNTRY: The countries of the world are owned by a privileged minority. The working class has problems and interests that are produced by capitalism and not by the existence of national barriers.

PROSPERITY: All workers are poor, some are destitute. A prosperous working class is a contradiction in terms. Capitalism is as incapable of producing a working class that is prosperous as it is of producing a government that is popular. 

PEACE: Even if the shooting stopped the class war would remain, that is the struggle which goes on all the time over the ownership of the wealth of society, whether it be in a so-called “United” Ireland, the “United" States, the "United" Kingdom, the "United” Arab Republic, Russia, Africa, in fact wherever capitalism is the predominating form of society.

Everywhere capitalism exists it creates conflict. Capitalism pits state against state over positions of military and economic influence, capitalist against capitalist over markets, raw materials and cheap labour power, capitalist against worker over wages and conditions and worker against worker over a continuous scramble for scarce jobs. Conflict is capitalism’s permanent condition; the problem is that there is no shortage of people whose ignorance and bigotry enables the conflict to masquerade as one based on nationalism, religion or race. The only way to stop racism and fascism is to understand its cause — the competition between workers engendered by the capitalist system — and, instead of wasting time fighting the effects, remove the cause once and for all. Let’s look at what unites rather than divides workers

Protest movements are nothing new. They exist everywhere and show that everywhere workers are discontented with some aspect of their lot. It is by promising to do something about this that politicians obtain your votes — and it is their failures that lead people to protest on the streets. The politicians fail not because they are dishonest or incompetent but because capitalism cannot be made to work for the good of all. If you accept this, then you will see that direct action is in the end as futile as voting for parties that stand for capitalism. You will see too the uselessness of nationalism and independence as a way of solving the problems of workers. This would merely be a political re-shuffle — a change of masters — that would leave unchanged the class basis of society which is the real cause of these problems.  It is because of the Left’s policy of mouthing the lunacies of nationalism in practically the same breath as they spout platitudes about their spurious socialism that most workers are openly hostile to even discussing socialism.  Their entire vision of the world resolves itself into supporting “good” nationalists against “bad” nationalists, “good” governments against “bad" governments, and, ultimately, much as the religious superstitionists do, “good” people against “bad" people.  State-capitalism supporting “socialists” have done their best to alienate workers from real socialist ideas. But they haven’t entirely succeeded. Some members of the working-class are now starting to articulate their position in a more positive way. They recognise that discrimination everywhere in capitalism, was not practised by those who fought over the crumbs, it was practiced by those who took the cake and left the crumbs to be fought over. If a few workers were relatively materially any better off, it was because their majority strength compelled the ruling class to fob them off with slightly bigger crumbs. The state was born in violence and was governed and politically structured both to resist violence and promote violence as an instrument of establishment policy.

 The vast majority of us in a class which is economically exploited by a small minority of capitalists who use "love of country" and cultural differences to persuade us that we must continue to engage in economic battle with each other simply to preserve the privilege of the few. Little Englanders use this to whip workers up against European workers and pro-Europeans use it to engender competition against the rest of the world. All this nonsense is about their interests, not ours. We should begin to ponder our everyday lives in a social system which continues to isolate and alienate us all from the possibility of living full human lives as free men and women in a community of equals. An essential ingredient for the solution of internecine strife will be the throwing-off of national an religious beliefs which stand in the way of workers recognising their common class interests and adopting rational ways of thinking and socialist principles. The building of the necessary consciousness would not call for the relinquishment of valid cultural differences, although once rid of the divisive factor of imposed dogma it is remarkable how similar is the traditional dress, folk-music and dance, cuisine and life-style of all lands. A working class, united in its determination to establish a Socialist World undefiled by national frontiers, will bequeath to future generations a democratic global village in which cultural variations will be a stimulus to creativity rather than pretexts for those seeking to become a new ruling class. 

Crime Is Endemic To Capitalism

One might think that with all the gang violence in Toronto there may be some steps taken to prevent it, but no way Jose.

One gang prevention program is closing down due to lack of federal funding. It is called Taking Action to Achieve Growth Success or TAAGS and was operated by the Agincourt Services Association and ends on August 31. 

During its five year run, TAAGS provided counselling and help with education, housing and employment for 380 youths, 285 of which had been on probation or charged with a crime when they entered the program. The records at TAAGS show that 25 per cent had no police involvement after they left. 

Once again capitalism creates a problem it can’t fix, but how can it when crime is endemic to capitalism? 

The fundamentals of capitalism are themselves conducive to crime - the legalized theft of the world's wealth from the many to a few. A socialist society would see the end of all crime illegal and legal.

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

The New Clearances

Last week, the Duke of Buccleuch put a portfolio of land on the market called Evertown, which includes farms, productive farmland, commercial forestry and planting opportunities near Canonbie in Dumfries and Galloway. The 9,000 acres is composed of 18 lots on sale for £19.5 million – most hill ground is priced at three times its agricultural value and advertised as “suitable for forestry planting”.

The practice of moving people off the land for tree-planting is no more acceptable today than evicting tens of thousands for sheep farming and deer hunting in the Highlands or agricultural and industrial uses in the Lowlands.  Recent removals of tenant farmers show that grim way of life continues. 

https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/lesley-riddoch-scotland-s-modern-day-clearances-under-way-1-4807527

Rovics in Glasgow (8/10)

Radical songster, David Rovics is performing  on:

8 October, 2018 – 7.30 p.m -

 £10.00

At:

The Doublet Bar, 74 Park Road, Glasgow G4 9JF

Some of his songs will appeal you, others less so.

Austerity Kills

The National Records of Scotland figures show life expectancy for a boy born between 2015 and 2017 is 77 years. For baby girls, it’s 81.1 years. The figures are the worst in the UK and both are down by 0.1 year on the estimates for births during 2014 and 2016.

How on earth can it happen with all our breakthroughs in medicine, science and technology?

There have been particularly high numbers of deaths amid 50 to 74-year-olds over the past few years - the middle-aged and older. Experts say they have detected the change since about 2012. And the last time a similar effect was noticed was in 1983, during the Thatcher years.

So we could hazard an educated guess at what’s happening. This comes in the wake of the most brutal slashing of welfare budgets anyone can remember. We’ve had eight long years of austerity.

Last year, a study by leading academics found there were 45,000 more deaths in the first four years of Tory austerity than would have been expected before the policies were enforced.

Professor Sir Michael Marmot, who has advised the Government on health inequality, said: “My general view is while we have been reluctant to join in and say austerity is killing people, the fact is you can’t keep cutting social services, welfare benefits, adult social care, local government and expect nothing to happen.”

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/austerity-given-scotland-cruelest-cut-13332924

The Realisation of Socialism

 Einstein suggested, “…we should not assume that experts are the only ones who have a right to express themselves on questions affecting the organisation of society.”

An economic system such as capitalism, based on profit competition, brings out the worst, predatory instincts. In contrast, socialism, based on cooperation in fulfilling society’s basic needs, brings out the best. From the perspective of class struggle, people are on one or the other side of the barricades.

The Socialist Party challenges any alternative as a firm basis for final socialist triumph than the “conscious” political action of the working class. Socialist knowledge is the keystone of the future socialist edifice.  The workers of all capitalist countries are faced with the SAME problems. Workers, be they British, French, Nigerian, Chinese or any other, are without the means of existence unless they can sell the only thing they possess (i.e., their power to labour) to the capitalist class. All workers are alike in this respect. They possess no means and, to live, they must work to produce a profit for a capitalist.

Workers get a wage which is, on an average, just sufficient to enable them to live and reproduce future wage-earners. This again applies equally to workers of all lands and colours. Often they are overworked, ill-clothed, badly housed. They find it hard to make ends meet, so that at death, after a life of toil, they are just as they were at birth, i.e., without property.

The capitalist, however, is far from being in that position. To whatever race or nation he belongs he owns the machines and instruments which produce the means of life. Furthermore, he insists that whenever the wheels of production turn he gets a handsome profit. “No profit. No production!” that is the watchword of the capitalist. If his workers are of the same race and religion as himself, the rule still holds: if profits are not forthcoming from production he will close the doors of the factory and his' workers are left workless in the street.

The enemy, then, of the workers of any country, is not the worker of another. Their enemy is the system of society—capitalism—which keeps them in poverty, overworks them and throws them on the scrap-heap when profits are not being produced. Sooner or later, the workers will realise this. Capitalism itself will make them realise it because capitalism can give them no solution to their problems. Then, the workers will be class-conscious, they will realise that all workers of all lands must join together against the common enemy, capitalism. They will scorn the attempts of the capitalists to stir up hatred between workers of different nations. Instead of slaughtering each other in the interests of the capitalist classes, they will unite to establish, in their own interests, a system of society which will bring security to every worker—Socialism.

The lowest-paid sections of the working-class are generally the most reactionary: the apathy and indifference of the poverty-stricken to the facts underlying their miserable condition is one of the most appalling factors of the situation. The insecurity of the worker’s employment, as a result of the means of production being owned by the capitalist class, is the secret of the latter's power and is the source of the mental and moral degradation of the working class.

The wage-slaves, with any courage left inside, feels instinctively the secret power of the chains which keep them in bondage and tries to break or weaken them by means of union with fellow workers. When they force increased wages, shorter hours, or better working conditions from their exploiters they feel they have achieved something. Their struggles though cannot suspend the working of economic laws or prevent the downward tendency, but it can counteract the results of the economic process on the psychology of the working class. In addition, the fight itself develops eventually the desire for ultimate freedom and educates working-people to an understanding of the causes and conditions of the struggle. And, at the same time, the struggle must be growing more intense.

For the fight only affecting the results of the downward tendency, and being powerless to remove its cause, whatever gains are made cannot be kept unless the fight for them is kept up, and the fight must be intensified as the tendency increases. The working class is steadily advancing in economic power and independence, in the sense that it takes possession of more and more responsible positions in the economic life of the nation, diverts to itself, by means of the corporation and otherwise, all the growth of the concentration and centralisation of capital; and particularly with the development of the corporate form of economic activity, the capitalist class abdicates its functions, the proper functions of a ruling class, those of economic management, into the hands of the working class.  The working class thus not only becomes revolutionary in its ideas, desires, and aspirations, but it has the organised power to carry the revolution into effect, and is fully equipped to take hold of all social and economic activities and functions after the revolution and carry them out successfully.”

‘Clans and Clearance'

‘Clans and Clearance – The Highland Clearances Vol.1’ by Alwyn Edgar

e-book published by Theory and Practice (www.theoryandpractice.org.uk). ISBN 978-0-9956609-3-9.

This volume ‘looks at the clearances generally, and at some surprising orthodox beliefs about them; and then examines the Highland clans as they were before the Jacobite rebellion of 1745-6, an account which sometimes differs from what is now often affirmed’.

For a previous article by the same author on the same subject see: https://tinyurl.com/y75ey9y6