The Socialist Party Offers Solutions

The working class still shows no sign of voting for an openly racist party. But if conditions change and the resentments which now smoulder could burst into fire. The workers, unaware of their class standing and interests, bewildered by the continual crises of capitalism, disillusioned at their leaders' failures, are inflammable material. The threat is always there. In many places, the frustrations and restrictions of working-class life are acute and have in some cases seem to have been accentuated by the arrival of migrants and refugees who, because they are so easily identifiable, make the perfect scapegoat for a demagogue.

The Socialist Party's argument is that the majority of workers must arrive at a clear understanding of socialism before they can get it, that a revolution in ideas must precede the revolution in politics and economics, is often sneered at by those who say that the mass of the population (except, for some reason, the extraordinary people who make this statement) are brainwashed robots, puppets manipulated by TV, and the press.

But capitalism is not a conspiracy. It cannot be controlled by a set of individuals, not even the capitalist class.  Current ideas provide a support for capitalism (though the “mass media” are only a part of their reinforcement), yet capitalism is dynamic, constantly advancing and frequently unpredictable in detail. The very ideas which defend capitalism have to be adjusted or replaced, to fit new conditions. Workers must be trained, not only to do their jobs, but also to be versatile, because their jobs are changing all the time, and also to make radical criticisms of the way capitalism is run, because otherwise inefficient and unprofitable blunders would result. As the Communist Manifesto put it:
  "The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production . . . All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their trains of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned . . ."

Today, traditional ideas about work, leisure and “the purpose of life” are under attack, and in retreat. Capitalism has killed God stone dead and is stamping on the twitching corpse. Capitalism extends the juicy carrot of the “Leisure Society”—a golden age of short working-hours and automated abundance, which is ever imminent yet never arrives. Capitalism holds aloft an image of glamour, high-powered pleasure, rest and freedom—whilst the worker’s mind and body are reduced ever more thoroughly to instruments of accumulation. From the belief that work is a grim duty, consumption its reward, capitalism is shifting emphasis to the view that consumption is a duty, work something to be made rewarding.

Around the world, people are questioning the current path that humanity is set on and asking themselves will it lead to disaster, and they’re beginning to ask the harder questions about what to do about it and what sort of transformation is required to create a human future of peace, justice, and equality. We humans now have the knowledge and technology to move beyond the daily struggle for survival that besets the lives of so many. We have the capacity to secure a world of abundance. Achieving such a goal requires that we make the socialist vision our common goal.

People have always moved and explored. We spread to cover the whole world, and we mixed with one another. We continue to do that.  There exists an inevitability of the movement of people, whether as individuals or in groups. But borders are more than just lines on a map. They define the limits of nation-states and their power. We have seen the strengthening and the militarisation of the borders between the US and Mexico, Morocco and Spain, and the EU being described as Fortress Europe, with the deployment of police and troops, the use of razor wire, helicopters, drones, sophisticated people detecting technology, tear gas and rubber bullets, all serving to keep out the poor and desperate, and other "undesirables." Internally, the control includes things like ID checks in public spaces carried out by domestic security agencies such as the police. It means that anyone fitting the profile of an “illegal immigrant” risks arrest — turning parks, public squares, train stations and motorway rests stops into places of potential interrogation for some. Teachers, doctors, landlords in the UK are obliged to check the immigration status and to inform on foreigners. However, people without documentation or the proper papers find different ways to evade controls. The State responds with new strategies of capture. People adapt to evade. And so the process continues.

The Socialist Party advocates and works towards a society where the principle ‘from everyone according to faculties, to everyone according to needs!’ It is not scientific and permissible to lay down an exact blueprint of how future socialist society will be organised. At most, we can enumerate certain basic principles and guidelines, and give an indication in a very broad and tentative outline of the way we think society might be conducted. But the exact administrative structure and precise mode of behaviour of people in a socialist society will be determined by the specific material conditions of that society. What these specific material conditions will be, and how people will react to them, cannot be known to us at the present time.

Most people nowadays hold some grievance with this or that aspect of society. Millions suffer the horrors of capitalist wars. Mental illness is a growing problem. Old-age pensioners are dying from malnutrition, from cold. Slum violence and riots regularly hit the headlines. Waiting lists for hospital beds and operations while the demand for affordable housing outstrips supply. We have no control of the environment.  Most people would agree that each of these grievances could be remedied with a fair measure of goodwill and intelligence.

But the Socialist Party would disagree. 

These problems are all inherent in the way this society is organised. Their solution lies in abolishing capitalism, which embraces the entire world and whose motive is not the satisfaction of human needs or the alleviation of human suffering, but the creation of profit for disposal by the privileged few, and the accumulation of capital.

Capitalism is the society in which a certain group of people, a small minority, monopolise the ownership of the factories, land, mines, transport concerns, and every other point where wealth is produced.  But the mere monopoly of these means of production is not enough to give them a privileged position in society. They must employ workers, people who will produce all society’s wealth but never own more than that which their wage represents. Some say that the workers get a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work, but what is ‘fair’? If the working class produce everything then they should receive all of it. But do they? No. The fact is that the workers' wage represents only a fraction of the wealth we have created. We are robbed—but legally. And although we constantly struggle to improve our wages, too many apparently never dream of abolishing the entire wages system.

Some radical reformers think that this is unnecessary. After all, they argue, if you seize all the means of production from the capitalists and institute state ownership, then only the state (and through the state, the people as a whole) will benefit from the wages system. And if the state machine is managed by people who call themselves Marxists or socialists or communists then this is obviously a more just and sane society. A society where people can at last plan their environments; with human priorities to the fore, and unrestricted by the demands of the market economy. But is it?

Will these advocates of state ownership have eliminated the contradictions of capitalism, manifested in a class struggle between the capitalist who strives to intensify exploitation through lower wages, longer hours, and faster production, and the wage slave, whose aim is to raise his or her wage, slow down production, and lessen his or her working hours? And forced into competition with other states and their ruling-classes, will housing have priority over defence or more profitable industries like motor cars and cosmetics? Periodically they crush strikes of dissatisfied workers, ruthlessly, with all the state power at their disposal. Their workers are exploited and oppressed just as surely as we are. 

To summarise, capitalism means the class monopoly of the means of production—its prime motive is profit, and to hell with the interests of the worker. Its mechanism, the means by which it robs, is the wages system. Solutions to capitalism’s problems can be found only after abolishing this system. All other solutions, such as the ‘welfare’ state, social contracts,  treaties end wars, are at best palliatives, at worst,  outright deceit.

And the Socialist Party's solution?

 Don’t follow anyone, don’t believe anyone who offers you paradise—and a wage. And don’t expect us to lead you. We are allergic to sheep. Instead, cultivate your self-reliance and organise yourselves democratically (and that means equal participation in decision- and policy-making, with all tasks not assumed by leaders but delegates) for the conquest of political power. When you have political power as a class, you will be the last class in history to be emancipated. There are none below you, none you will need to dominate to maintain your position as free men and women at last.

Voluntary co-operation on a world scale will replace compulsory economic competition between individuals. Social antagonisms will fade into history. With the abolition of the wages system, the interests of the individual will coincide with those of society. Genuine freedom will have dawned.

The milking system as seen through a glass bottle.

I was listening to a news report dealing with climate change and the effects of plastic bottling of many products, milk being one of the issues. Glass milk bottles have become more in demand result of some people being prepared to pay more for the delivery of bottled milk, this being for them what we all can do to reduce the dumping of plastic. In the same news report, it was pointed out that milk bottles are thicker and heavier than plastic ones, so loading them on trucks would take up more space and for this person to deliver the same amount of milk each day would mean the need of another truck and driver. The costs would be higher and the price was expected to be paid by the consumer. He was hinting that he did not think that this would be welcomed by many others.

Socialists make the point that the driving force in the capitalist system is the need to make a profit. This problem of plastic bottles for milk demonstrates that each business stands on its own to make a profit. When plastic bottles became available for them, hallelujah!,  no longer need to buy glass bottles which don’t last forever, people using them for other things, being smashed etc. No longer having to gather them and wash them. Pluses all around, what people do with them? Who cares, my profits increase and that’s what it’s all about.

I have been making the points around glass bottling: however, the same processes would apply to many other products that are being wrapped in plastic. The best method of solving this and the many other problems the planet Earth is suffering from is to get rid of capitalism, the system at the root of those problems and replace it with common ownership of the means of production.

PH

Our vision of socialism

Many peoples’ ideas of what socialism would be like are dominated by the Stalinist tyranny in Russia or the experiences of Labour or other ‘left-wing’ governments. Socialists have resisted the temptation to draw up a blueprint for socialism as pointless and misleading. If the future society is to be truly socialist, then its details can be decided only by the workers who build it. Consequently, the Socialist Party has limited itself to certain general principles which can be derived from the trends and forces at work under capitalism. For the Socialist Party, its fundamental aim is the creation of a class-free society. 

Capitalism produces its own gravedigger, the working class. To free the working class everywhere from the wage slavery is the prime purpose of the World Socialist Movement. To attain this end the methods pursued and relied upon are based not upon speculation in human goodness or utopian dreams. Socialism is based upon cooperative industry, administered in the equal interest of all. Socialism is a necessity. Production is carried on to-day purely in the interest and for the profit of the class which owns the instruments of production. The means of production should not be used in the interest of the small class which owns them. Socialism would substitute social ownership of these things for the ruling class ownership, and this would also involve the abolition of classes altogether. Socialism does not mean governmental ownership or management. The State of to-day, nationally and locally, is only the agent of the possessing class and as the agent of the possessing class it treats the employees just as other employee are treated. When society is organised for the control of its own affairs and has acquired the possession of its own means of production will be carried on for the use of all and not for the profit of a few.

We mean the establishment of the common ownership and control of the whole of the world’s industry. The entire means of production thus being common property, there would no longer be a propertied class to make a profit. The establishment of socialism means a complete change in society in all its aspects.  Socialism does not presuppose a complete change in human nature and the entire elimination of selfishness. On the contrary, socialism only calls for enlightened selfishness, recognising that it can serve itself only by serving the common interest. Socialism presupposes a condition of things in which the good of all will mean the good of each, and a society so constituted that the individual cannot serve oneself without serving society, and cannot injure society without injuring oneself.

Socialism accepts the theory of evolution in its fullest extent. It bases its view of the universe upon reasoned conclusions. Socialism is materialist, as opposed to antiquated conceptions based on theological dogma. Socialists assert their belief in the speedy downfall of the present system. Social revolution is the objective of the Socialist Party. It is time for the workers’ movement to discard its futile reformism. The working class will use its power to take all important industries and businesses into social ownership and place them under democratic control. All the population will be drawn into administering the new society. This will make rational planning of the economy possible, ensuring an enormous growth in the wealth of society and that this growth serves people’s needs. It will free society from the stains of racial, sexual and national bigotry. It will use the enormous advances of modern science and technology to eliminate the dangers and drudgery of work. It will systematically reduce the hours of the working week and simultaneously raise the educational and cultural level of the people. This will pave the way for the disappearance of any group of privileged experts and for overcoming the divisions between mental and manual labour. It will lead to the disappearance of money and to distribution on the principle, ‘each according to their needs’.

By replacing private ownership of the means of production by common ownership, by transforming the anarchy of production which is a feature of capitalism into planned proportional production organised for the well-being and many-sided development of all of society, the socialist revolution will end the division of society into classes and emancipate all of humanity from all forms of exploitation of one section of society by another. The Socialist Party calls upon all members of the working class to join it and to win over to the standpoint of our fellow-workers. Workers are not taken in by the propaganda of capitalism. They can see the corruption, the instability, the pollution, waste, and poverty. They can still feel the effects of the last economic crisis. The idea of the free market or nationalisation as answers is no longer believed.

The socialist answer is the abolition of the right of private property, the right to exploit, the right to rob, the right to cause crises, the right to compete, and to cause wars and instead the common ownership of the means of production, so that all may enjoy the fruit of their labour, and consume it.  The Socialist Party works for the

improvement of the conditions of the people and its understanding teaches that in the long run, such is capitalist development, that improvement can only be attained by changing basic social relations, by a shift in ownership and control from the few to the many and when the whole of society is changed by the elimination of the private ownership of the entire means of production, socialism.

Socialist Standard No. 1372 December 2018

Socialist Standard December 2018 as PDF

• Editorial: The vote and its misuse
  
• Pathfinders: The Only Way Is Ethics (Not)
  
• Letters
  
• Brexit, Schmexit
  
• Cooking the Books: Fukuyama goes reformist
  
• Wood for the Trees: The Cool
  
• Material World: Brazil – people elect a populist
  
• Trump’s Economist Advisors Seeing Red Everywhere
  
• Donald Trump: bog standard capitalist
  
• The problem is not the banks … it’s capitalism
  
• Bolshevik anti-socialism
  
• Cooking the Books: Message from Gotha
  
• Proper Gander: Pulling The Trigger
  
• Book Review: ‘Radical Political Economy – Sraffa versus Marx’
  
• Book Review: ‘Asia’s Reckoning – the Struggle for Global Dominance’
  
• Book Review: ‘The Dutch and German Communist Left (1900–68)’
  
• Exhibition Review: Annie Swynnerton – Painting Light and Hope
  
• 50 Years Ago: Law and Order in the U.S.A.
  
• Obituary: Bob Beckett
  
• Rear View
  
• Cartoon: Free Lunch

A revolution is coming

The Socialist Party seeks a better world founded on common ownership, a society to meet all mankind’s material needs. Distortions of “socialism” has seen common ownership changed into state slavery. Only when this system is replaced by socialism, by the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and distribution can worker's problems really be solved. The capitalist class through its ownership of wealth holds economic power but apart from a few personal belongings, some small savings and perhaps a house, the vast majority of people own nothing but their labour power, their ability to work. The wealth is produced by those who work by hand and brain, far in excess of the wages they are paid. The surplus goes to the capitalist owners or shareholders as profit. This is capitalist exploitation, the basis of all forms of rent and interest. The capitalist system is inevitably marked by sharp social inequality. Capitalism attacks all the essential rights and liberties that have been won over many years of struggle by the working people. People are divorced from the process of decision-making. Trade unions are under attack. The capitalist class does not only hold political and economic power but increasingly control the mass media and the means of communication, everything that influences the minds and attitudes of the people. Time and again industries have been generously subsidised by the state. The rich grow richer while the living standards of the majority are under constant attack. Today millions of people are living at or below the poverty level. They include those in the families of the lowest paid workers, many of the unemployed and their families, many of the chronic sick, millions of old people and children.

The economic basis of socialism is common ownership of all important means of production and distribution. Politically, power is potentially in the hands of the working people. Socialism will enable the community as a whole to benefit from all increases in productivity, all advances in science and application of technological discoveries, and this without the present fears of redundancy, unemployment, rising prices and cuts in wages. By ending exploitation it allows people to make their own future, and by freeing creative energies ensures that the future will bring economic, social and cultural advances. It will bring a new quality of life for individuals, for society as a whole. That is why socialism is the aim of the Socialist Party. Its aim of establishing the rule of the working people in place of rule by the owners of property. The Socialist Party is agreed upon its object, that object being social and economic freedom and equality for all, through the common ownership and democratic control of all the material means of production and existence. Political action is to break down the domination of the master class and hasten the emancipation of the working class. The Socialist Party has been reproached because we spurn the Labour Party rather than subordinate our socialist goal to mere “Labourism” and reformism. The task of the Socialist Party is the realisation of socialism; and only incidentally to assist in the organisation of the working-class and the amelioration of its conditions in existing society. That is for trade unions is to make the best of existing conditions; to make the best terms for its members, and, secondarily, to help on the emancipation of the working-class. We in the Socialist are consequently charged with being hostile to trade unions because we refuse to subordinate the one function to the other. Far from being against trade unions, we offer our full solidarity to workers organising acting upon sound lines.

The first condition for the success of socialism is that its adherents should explain its aim and its essential characteristics clearly so that they can be understood by everyone. We must do away with many misunderstandings created by our adversaries. The main idea of socialism is simple. The Socialist Party believes that society is divided into two classes by the present form of property-holding, and that one of these classes, the wage-earning is robbed by the owning employing class. Workers possess nothing and can only live by their work, and since, in order to work, they need expensive equipment, a machinery which they have not got, and raw materials and capital, which they have not got, they are forced to put themselves in the hands of another class that owns the means of production, the land, the factories, the machines, the raw material, and accumulated capital in the form of money. And naturally, the capitalist, possessing class, taking advantage of its power, makes the working and non-owning class toil for them. Therefore, in our present society, the work of the workers is not their own exclusive property. Since, in our society founded on intensive production, economic activity is an essential function of every human being, since work forms an integral part of the personality, it may be said that the worker does not even own his own body absolutely. The worker alienates a part of his or her activity, that is, a part of his or her being, for the profit of another class. All the misery, all the injustice and disorder, results from the fact that one class monopolises the means of production and of life and imposes its laws on anotSocialism will realise the ideal “from each according to one’s ability, to each according to one’s need.” Classes will have disappeared, the state will “wither” away, and a new era of human freedom and prosperity will arise.

her class and on society as a whole.  

The purpose of the Socialist Party is to break down the supremacy of the capitalist class. All differences of class must be abolished by transferring the ownership of the means of production and of life, which is to-day a power of exploitation and oppression in the hands of a single class, from that class to the whole community. The abusive rule of the minority must be substituted by the universal co-operation of all citizens associated in the joint ownership of the means of labour and liberty. And that is why the essential aim of socialism, is to transform capitalist property into common property. Socialism is not some Utopian scheme. Capitalism has created the economic conditions for socialism. Today there is social production but no social ownership. Socialism will bring common ownership of social production. It is the next step in the further evolution of this society. Socialism will be a higher level of social development. Socialism will be won through the capture of political power by the working class and the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. In socialism, the working people will take over the economic forces developed by capitalism and operate them in the interests of society. 

 Working people will control the great wealth they produce and they will be fundamentally able to determine their own futures. The end of exploitation of one person by another will be an unprecedented liberating and transforming force. Socialism does not mean government control. The state serves the interests of the ruling capitalist class. Government involvement in the economy is state capitalism. When the government intervenes does so to help, not hurt, capitalism. The Socialist Party vision of socialism is that the means of production – the factories, mines, mills, big workshops, offices, agricultural fields,  transportation system, media, communications, medical facilities, big retailers, etc., will be transformed into common property. Private ownership of the means of production will end. The economy will be geared not to the interest of profit, but to serving human needs. This will release the productive capacity of the economy from the limitations of profit maximisation. A great expansion of useful production and the wealth of society will become possible. Rational economic planning will replace the present chaotic system. Coordinated planning of production will benefit the people. Socialism will open the way for great changes in society. resources would be used to help the weak and vulnerable. The protection of the environment would be ensured. The elimination of private ownership of the means of production and will be cherished as the builders and masters of society. The means of production will be the property of society. Transforming the productive resources of society into common property will enable the working people to assume administration of the economy. Workers will be able to manage democratically their own workplaces through workers’ councils and/or elected administrators.

Socialism will realise the ideal “from each according to one’s ability, to each according to one’s need.” Classes will have disappeared, the state will “wither” away, and a new era of human freedom and prosperity will arise.

A Lesson in Marxist Economics

Workers produce things, not directly for themselves or for the personal use of their employer, but for him to sell for money. Things made in this way are called “commodities” – that is, articles produced for sale on the market. The worker receives wages, the employer receives profit – something that was left after the consumer had paid for the articles, and after the capitalist had paid wages, the cost of raw materials and other costs of production.

What was the source of this profit? Indirect robbery. Making the worker work more hours than is necessary for his keep, and appropriating the value of what he makes in those extra hours of work – the “surplus value.” The capitalist uses a part of this surplus value for his own maintenance; the balance is used as new capital – that is to say, he adds it to his previous capital, and is thus able to employ more workers and take more surplus value in the next turnover of production, which in turn means more capital – and so on. The capitalists have a compulsion to accumulate. Capital appears in the form of accumulated money, thrown into circulation in order to increase in value. No owner of money capital will engage in business in order to recuperate exactly the sum initially invested, and nothing more than that. By definition, the search for profit is at the basis of all economic operations by owners of capital. Competition in a capitalist mode of production is competition for selling commodities on the market. While surplus-value is produced in the process of production, it is realised in the process of circulation, i.e. through the sale of the commodities. The capitalist wants to sell at a maximum profit. A capitalist has to strive constantly to get the better of his competitors. This can only occur through operating with more capital. This means that at least part of the surplus-value produced will not be unproductively consumed by the capitalists and their hangers-on through luxury consumption, but will be accumulated, added to the previously existing capital. The logic of capitalism is therefore not only to ‘work for profit’, but also to ‘work for capital accumulation’. ‘Accumulate, accumulate; that is Moses and the Prophets’, states Marx. It is competition which basically fuels this terrifying snowball logic: original investment – accumulation of value (surplus-value) – accumulation of capital – more accumulation of surplus-value – more accumulation of capital.  The growth of the value of capital means that each successful capitalist firm will be operating with more and more capital. Marx calls this the tendency towards growing concentration of capital. But in the competitive process, there are victors and vanquished. The victors grow. The vanquished go bankrupt or are absorbed in a merger. No amount of capitalist ‘self-regulation’, no amount of government intervention, has been able to suppress this cyclical movement of capitalist production. Nor can they succeed in achieving that result. This cyclical movement is inextricably linked to production for profit and private property

 The main weapon in competition between capitalist firms is cutting production costs. More advanced production techniques and more ‘rational’ labour organisation are the main means to achieve that purpose. The basic trend of capital accumulation in the capitalist mode of production is, therefore, a trend towards more and more sophisticated technology. The compulsion for capital to grow, the irresistible urge for capital accumulation, realises itself above all through a constant drive for the increase of the production of surplus-value. Capital accumulation is nothing but surplus-value capitalisation, the transformation of part of the new surplus-value into additional capital. There is no other source of additional capital than additional surplus-value produced in the process of production. The history of the capitalist mode of production is therefore also the history of tighter and tighter control of capital over the workers.

Capital is simply money and commodities assigned to create a profit and be reinvested. Profit is made by the "magical" addition of surplus value to the value inherent in the product. The "added value," the profit, is produced by workers. And this capital is born to expand or die. To be useful, the investment must result not only in a profit but in a growing rate of profit. Capitalism is an irrational, disorganized operation that enormously rewards crooks, gangsters, exploiters, con-artists, gamblers, stock manipulators, and all manner of corruption. It's a ruthless economy that survives by inflicting anguish on untold billions. The underlying profit system is perpetuated by mostly unknown industrialists and financiers, and the governments they own. The value of a commodity comes from the labor invested in it, including the labor that manufactured the machinery and extracted the raw materials used to create the item. And the boss' profits do not come from his smarts or his capital investment or his mark-up, but from the value created by labor - specifically, surplus-value.

Surplus value derives from unpaid wages. The worker is never paid for the value of the product, only for the value of her or his labor time, which is considerably less, and which meanders widely depending upon the historical, cultural and social conditions of a country.

Labor-power is miraculous, like the Virgin Birth. You get more out of it than you put in. Workers produce a commodity which has more value than what they get in wages to keep them functioning. This differential is surplus value, which is the source of capital.

The only way to eliminate all basic sources of disequilibrium in the economy calls for the elimination of generalised commodity production, of private property and of class exploitation, i.e. for the elimination of capitalism.

The Socialist Party is the champion of the class interests of the working class and constitute a revolutionary party.  The liberation of the working class is only possible through the overthrow of private property of the means of production and rulership, and the substitution of production for profit with social production for use. The Socialist Party recognise that the power of the State is an instrument of class domination and that the social revolution for which the working class strives cannot be realised until it has captured political power.

 Automation, cybernetics, robotics, whatever you call it, is a genuine innovation, not merely a little more of the same. It is the way of producing more, better, with less work. That can spell trouble for our economic system tends to reverse the normal ways of thinking about economic problems.  It is an economy of production for profit rather than for use and thrives on scarcity. The media is filled with reassurances conceding that there will be job-losses and hardships, but in the long run, more jobs will be created, as experts tell us we’ve had this before, and we’ve seen that, in the end, technological innovation led to more jobs instead of fewer. It is clear that capitalism can assimilate rapid technological advances only if it can expand greatly, to invest new hoards of capital and thus re-employ some of the displaced workers. If capitalism succeeds in accomplishing a more complete automation – which is the logical end which industry is heading the effects will be devastating.

Socialists will produce for use according to a reasonable plan and without a thought for the odious notion of profit. And with no insatiable parasitic class to maintain, socialist society will produce abundance for all. That's a fact. The global human family will arrange its standard of living as easily as families do today.

Against Radical Reformism

The commodity is a product of human labour not intended for the direct consumption of the producers but for exchange. Production of commodities, in the history of human society, is counterposed to the production of use-values. The former is produced for the market, the latter for the direct use of the producers.

The assumption that capitalism can be planned in the interests of society, that reforms in terms of improved living standards etc. can be guaranteed is false. In fact, the capitalist system cannot operate rationally and democratically, leaving society’s resources to be wasted by its subjection to the anarchy of the market. The wastes of capitalism are so pervasive but for example, we have the cost of commercial competition (duplication of brands between rival companies, built-in obsolescence, advertising etc.) Costs of the capitalist financial system (the stock exchange, the banking system, all the financial speculative activity.) Similarly the costs of many of the repressive functions of the state (the military, the police, courts, and prisons.) It is not possible to calculate all resources that would potentially be released by the ending of capitalism. Some benefits would come rapidly others may take longer. Of course another big saving would be the end of the production of luxury goods for the consumption of the capitalist class. The final most glaring cost of capitalism is the waste of the skills. The experience and the talents of all those condemned to unemployment. Fully applying all of society’s resources would allow a massive increase in production even before the long-term advantages of a rational deployment of resources materialised. Before you can get the production for need and not for competitive accumulation, you first have to have a social revolution but this system cannot be stopped by force. It is violent and ruthless beyond the capacity of any people’s resistance movement.  What we want is not workers’ participation in their own exploitation, but society’s control over production, so that they can impose our own priorities, the priorities of production for need. 

 Socialism will be the replacement of a society based on accumulation for profit with one based on production for need. But that will not come about if we wait for it, no matter how long or patiently. There is only one way and that is to put an end to the capitalist system. The abolition of the capitalist mode of production requires the appropriation of the means of production by society.  In socialism, the products cease to be commodities and will be distribution in accordance with the needs of consumers. We in the Socialist Party analysed the absurdity of unemployment when there were want and the cruelty of the suffering in the midst of plenty. But ideas alone do not make a socialist movement. We must take our ideas and put them into life. The political weapon is necessary for the capture of the power of the State, of the legislative and administrative machine and the forces of law and order. It must be used to effect a transfer of the ownership of industry from the capitalist to the community and the co-operative commonwealth. The workers must also be economically organised as to be ready to take over the control and management of industry from the capitalist. The aim of the socialists is to place society in control instead of the capitalist, to organise production for use instead of for profit, and to replace capitalist autocracy by industrial democracy. Instead of the worker being “a hand” depending for his or her livelihood on the willingness of someone to employ him or her, without status and subject to the command of a master, we will be free men and women controlling industry in association with our fellow-workers in the interests of all. The task of eliminating capitalist ownership and control belongs to political democracy; the task of organising the new industrial order belongs to economic democracy. The present social system must pass away, but only when a new society is ready to take its place. That new social system is now in the making. A socialist revolution does not ‘happen’: it must be made by people’s actions and choices, decided the extent of the maturity and activity of the people. We should no longer think of disaster and a cataclysm as the catalyst for revolution. In William Morris’ words, it means the “making of socialists”. 

The aim of the Socialist Party in simple terms is to guide our fellow-workers workers in their struggle for their interests, to teach them what is important and necessary in the political struggle against the capitalist class. To aid in the political development of the working class, to help break away from capitalist politics and capitalist politicians. The Socialist Party is blazing a trail toward the socialist future. We are prepared for it by the conviction that there is no hope for a new and better world except through the achievement of the new social order of socialism, a world of peace, freedom and plenty for all.

 

Against Capitalists but for Capitalism

Are today’s anti-capitalist movements against capitalist and globalisation moving towards a common vision of a new social system? For sure, they are against the many negative aspects of capitalism – excessive inequality, un/underemployment, alienated working conditions, sweated labour, poverty, misery, disappearing democracy and environmental degradation – all necessary results of capitalism. They view social justice as something that will not require a thorough social restructuring but which can be carried out on a national scale by way of a few palliative reforms implemented by electing a radical-inclined government. The anti-capitalist protesters present a litany of demands, consisting mostly of government legislation and regulations. Some support and encourage cooperatives and worker participation in a firms’ decision-making, that they describe as economic democracy. They argue that eliminating extreme disparities in wealth and reducing the sizes of giant corporations would be to democratise capitalism. These “radicals” aspire to an economy of locally-based small businesses whose ethos would be concerned with the general public welfare. Such a society is considered as a non-capitalist system.  

To members of the Socialist Party, this seems a very strange perspective. Capitalism it as an economic system consisting of three basic components: private ownership of the means of production, a system of exchange in which prices are primarily market-determined, and the condition that most people in the society are wage labourers. How can one be anti-capitalist if you do not confront the concept of private property (sectional ownership) exchange value (the prices system) and the wages system (wage slavery.)

Instead, these anti-capitalists believes that certain features (democratic management, social control of investment) can be tacked on to an existing market economy and the result called non-capitalism. And what is to prevent a small mom and pop store growing into what became Walmart? They will have to resort to the power of the State to impose limitations on enterprises.

Socialism represents the best hope for a human future. In essence, socialism means replacing a capitalist economy of production for profit by production for need. The labour theory of value, which we hold to, refutes the notion that capitalists have “contributed” something other than workers’ labour to the social product, and therefore have earned their profit. Socialism guarantees that associated workers will produce what society needs without squandering or misallocating available labour time from the commercial pressure among competing enterprises to undersell one another. It is socialism which resolve the contradiction between production for exchange and production for use, to satisfy humanity’s needs and wants. Workplace decision-making and/or elected managers will continually strive to lower labour costs and cut corners in the manufacturing process as a survival strategy. Those activists against capitalism have failed to examine the reasons why profits are important under capitalism or explain the imperative of capitalism’s growth tendency to accumulate capital. These profits, or the further capital they acquire in search of future profits, may be used to apply new technology, enter new markets, or encroach on the competitors’ market share. Levels of profits and liquidity are weapons in a war between rivals. This activity is a matter of survival; if one firm does not undertake it, the competition will. Instead many critics of “capitalism” seek to attribute its faults to the flawed nature of the individual fat-cat capitalist’s or CEO’s search for profit simply to their psycho-pathic desire for ever-increasing wealth, a very moralistic biblical answer that it is their love of money which is the root of all evil, while ignoring the economic function of the role they perform.

Today, the anti-capitalist struggle requires an alternative vision to hankering back to the days of the ‘Little House on the Prairie’ and romantic nostalgia of some sort of supposedly self-sustaining small communities. What they are aspiring towards in reality is to repeat the whole process of capitalist development again, and because they cannot comprehend the dynamics of capitalism, they are fated to repeat all the same mistakes and errors committed throughout history.

For the world’s working class, there’s but one solution - socialist revolution.

Climate Change Hit Salmon Catches

 Global warming is being blamed for Scotland’s worst salmon season in living memory. 

Some beats on famous rivers like the Spey and the Nith recorded not a single salmon caught during the entire season. Just two salmon were caught on the River Fyne in Argyll this year, where once more than 700 were caught each season. The number of fish caught by anglers has been so low that some estates have stopped selling permits for once-popular beats because there is no fish to catch. Tourism has been hit, sales of salmon tackle have slumped and ghillies have lost their jobs.

 Experts believe rising temperatures blamed on global warming have badly hit the salmon’s feeding grounds with related changes in current patterns also affecting their migration. Survival rates for salmon at sea have fallen as low as 3 per cent with global warming and ocean fishing fleets among the likely causes.

https://www.scotsman.com/news/global-warming-blamed-for-scotland-s-worst-ever-salmon-season-1-4834860

Remembering Black Douglass

When abolitionist Frederick Douglass arrived in Scotland on a speaking tour in 1846 from the United States, 13 years had passed since Britain enacted the Slavery Abolition Act.

Colonial slaves had gradually been freed and Britain's slaveowners were financially compensated for their loss of "property".

Douglass's 19-month visit to Britain and Ireland began in 1845; seven years earlier he had fled slavery himself from the US' slave-owning South for the free North.

"One of the things about his travels in Scotland was his Scottish surname," said Alasdair Pettinger, author of the forthcoming book, Frederick Douglass and Scotland, 1846: Living an Antislavery Life. "He picked up the fact that Douglas [or Douglass] was a name that resonates in Scottish history."

Douglass often connected with Scottish audiences by referring to the "Black Douglas".

"When he addressed audiences, he quite enjoyed the fact that he could make a connection to the 'Black Douglas', which, being black himself, was quite an opportune connection," said Pettinger. 

He was born around 1818 as Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey. By the time he arrived in Massachusetts as a fugitive, he needed a new name. Nathan Johnson, a free person of colour who gave him shelter, had been reading a narrative poem by the Scottish author Walter Scott - The Lady of the Lake, which had a character named James Douglas.

Douglass impressed Scottish audiences with powerful speeches opposing slavery in the US, which had yet to end the practice. He worked as Scotland's anti-slavery agent from an address in Edinburgh, where there is now a commemorative plaque in his honour, and toured the country's cities and towns - including Glasgow, Paisley, Dundee and Perth - between January and October 1846. Delighting in the warm Scottish welcome, he described a "conglomeration of architectural beauties" in Edinburgh, and even contemplated settling in the capital with his family.

He demonstrated his literary knowledge of Scotland by visiting the birthplace of Robert Burns. According to Pettinger, the first book Douglass bought after escaping from slavery was an edition of Burns, and he was known to quote the 18th-century Romantic poet as another way of engaging with Scottish audiences.

Douglass arrived amid controversy over the separation of the Free Church from the Church of Scotland. The Free Church required funds, which saw it accept donations from pro-slavery churches in the US. Douglass latched on to the issue and denounced the Free Church by repeatedly calling to "send back the money" on his tour. At Edinburgh's Music Hall, 2,000 people attended his talk.

 The Scottish capitalists' appetite for making money fed off the back of human misery. Scottish merchants and doctors often staffed Africa-bound British slave ships that took enslaved African people and transported them to colonies in the Caribbean.  By around 1800, a staggering 30 percent of slave plantations in Jamaica, where there are still Scottish surnames and place names, were owned by Scots. As Scotland's Tobacco Lords reaped great wealth from their investments, Glasgow boomed. Glasgow, street names mark the city's merchants who amassed extraordinary wealth from the transatlantic slave trade, like Glassford Street, named after Scottish Tobacco Lord, John Glassford.  Other connections include Jamaica Street, named after the island where slave plantations saw the city's industrialists grow fat on the proceeds of sugar and rum.  In Edinburgh, Henry Dundas, a prominent Scottish politician who infamously delayed Britain's abolition of slavery by 15 years, is immortalised by a statue in the capital.

As for Douglass, he visited Scotland again between 1859 and 1860. After his first tour, he arrived back in the US in 1847 a free man, after supporters in England made provisions to buy his liberty.

“In the country, this conflict is not so apparent; but, in cities, such as Baltimore, Richmond, New Orleans, Mobile etc; it is seen pretty clearly. The slave-holder with a craftiness peculiar to themselves, by encouraging the enmity of the poor, labouring white men against the blacks, succeeds in making the said white men almost as much a slave as the black slave himself. The difference between the white slave, and the black slave, is this: the latter belongs to ONE slave-holder, and the former belongs to ALL the slave-holders, collectively. The white slave has taken from his, by indirection, what the black slave had taken from him, directly, and without ceremony. Both are plundered, and by the same plunderers.” 

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/scotland-hosted-abolitionist-profiting-slavery-181124233607376.html

One for all and all for one

What will socialism mean in practice? It will mean that the capitalists will be deprived of their ownership and control of the factories and communications, mills and mines, and transportation. All these means of production which they have used and misused only to pile up profits for the owning employing class will be taken from them. Socialism will make an end of production for profit and will carry on production for use. The needs of all will be met, and new needs and pleasures now denied to the working class will be created and satisfied by a socialist organisation and expansion of production. Workers will produce far better and more willingly under their own management than they do now. For the first time the workers will know that greater productivity will no longer be a threat to their livelihood but will make it possible to raise the whole standard of living of all and shorten the hours of labour.

The capitalist is interested only in production for profit. The fact that people always need shoes and food and shelter is of absolutely no concern to him unless he can realize a profit for himself in producing these articles. If he cannot, he closes down his factories.

The ending of capitalism will put an end at the same time to the threat of wars, to the maintenance of armed forces in preparation for war abroad or suppression of the workers at home. The building of socialism will lead the whole of humanity towards a new world. This is the new world for which many generations of workers have struggled. It is for us in our generation to bring this new world into being. Revolution becomes possible when the working class is not prepared to live any longer under intolerable conditions and has a will to overthrow capitalism. A socialist party is based on the work of those who first taught how society develops and changes, on the revolutionary ideas of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. A socialist party has no interests apart from those of the working class as a whole an so it will not betray the interests of the working class—for it has no other interests. The Socialist Party is distinctively the party, and its vote is distinctively the vote, of the working class. The revolutionary party of the working class cannot be grown overnight. It arises from the class struggle; and it develops with the development of the class struggle, in the fight against capitalism. But the working class must know how to struggle, to have an understanding of the laws of development of society and of the laws of revolution.

There is but one issue from the standpoint of labour, and that is Labour versus Capital. Upon that basis, the political alignment of the future will have to be made. There is no escape from it. For the present, the ignorance of the workers stands in the way of their economic and political solidarity, but this can and will be overcome.

What we aim at is a socialist party to take into membership all class-conscious wage-workers, thus making an injury to one the concern of all. The Socialist Party stands firmly on the bed-rock of the class struggle, and; declares, that so long as the means of production are in the hands of a numerically small class, the workers will be forced to sell their labour-power to them for a bare subsistence wage. Consequently, between these two classes, a struggle must go on until the toilers come together on the political as well as on the industrial field and take over for themselves that which, being the result of their labour, justly belongs to them.  We believe that the economic struggle against the employing class must give way to the mass political struggle against the capitalist state.

Anyone looking for answers to the problems of the workers’ movement will not find them on the Left. Blundering ahead without vision it has stumbled first into this path, then into that, it has made mistake after mistake, and all too often dissipated its strength in hopeless struggles which could have been avoided had it possessed socialist theory to guide its footsteps. 

 Class war between employers and workers over the product of labour goes on without letup. The employers will continue to try to destroy the workers’ standard of living and break the unions; the workers will continue to build their unions and to advance their interests.

Our world today

The Socialist Party seeks the abolition of the private ownership of the means of production and the elimination of competition and production for exchange value and its replacement by democratic planning and production for use with the people’s management of the economy and society. Socialism will be based on the abolition of wage labour, the elimination of classes, the disappearance of the state and the full development of the productive forces in the context of world socialism, and “From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.”

 Capitalism itself has created the objective basis of socialism, within the old class-economic relations. It comprises the collective forms of production, a cooperative mass organisation of labour within industry and the abundance modern industry is capable of producing where collective forms of production, and their accompanying technical-economic changes, has resulted in the enormous increase in the productivity of labour and the creation of abundance. The abundance makes possible and necessary socialist distribution of goods, a socialisation of consumption to correspond with the objective socialisation of production. Capitalism rejects this possibility and necessity: it means its own abolition. Last but not least the proletariat, a property-less class.

Socialisation requires expropriation of private ownership and replacement of production for profit with production for use: new social relations of production. Rational planning of industry is possible, with the exclusive aim of meeting community needs. As this means the abolition of capitalism, it is forcibly resisted by the dominant class interests. The clash of the old and the new becomes a struggle of classes, a struggle for power between the classes representing the old and the new, the capitalists and the workers. To maintain its ascendancy, the capitalist class must repress the forces of production and the movement toward socialism. It becomes clear, particularly as the class interests of the proletariat are realisable only by destruction of the older relations of production. This means the proletariat cannot realise socialism without abolishing itself as a class to be replaced by the association of organised producers.

The struggle for power aims to get control of the State. The State is an organ of class rule and suppression, under capitalist control, enmeshed in all the class-economic and exploiting relations of the existing order. Wresting control of the state from the capitalist class makes it possible for the working class to overthrow capitalism and suppress the old ruling class, to destroy the old social relations and create the new. The socialist revolution is much more fundamental than the earlier bourgeois revolution. Where the latter replaced older forms of property and exploitation with newer forms, the former annihilates all forms of private property and exploitation. There can be no compromise between capitalism and socialism. The compromise between feudalism and capitalism revealed their mutual exploiting identity. The aristocracy merged with the new men who rose to power as a result of industrial exploitation of mineral resources on the great landed estates and many nobles became pioneers of capitalist enterprise. An older class adapted itself to the rule of the new and became part of the new system. But capitalists cannot be absorbed into the new socialist order; hence there can be no compromise between socialism and capitalism.

Capital and labour interests of each of them is fundamentally different and exclusive. Capital is interested in production for profit, labour in production for use. Capital is based upon a constantly increasing exploitation of labour, in order to maintain its profit; labour constantly resists this exploitation. There is and can be no such thing as a “legitimate profit,” inasmuch as all profit is derived from paying workers less than the value they add to the product. There is and can be no such thing as a “fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work,” inasmuch as wages are the payment for only one part of the day’s work, the other part of which the worker is compelled to contribute to the employer in the form of surplus-value, or profit. Labour cannot get away from the fundamental fact that capital always seeks to intensify the exploitation of labour by reducing wages, increasing the work-day, or speeding-up production, or by all three at once; and labour always seeks to raise its wage and working standards. Capital always seeks to increase its profits, which can be done only by exploiting labour; labour always seeks to resist exploitation, which can be done only at the expense of profits. These are fundamental economic facts. Under capitalism, nothing that all the capitalists, or the whole government, or all the labour leaders, or all the workers, or a combination of all these, will ever do, can succeed in wiping out these facts.

The world to-day is in the hands of billionaires - owners of the biggest corporations, the biggest banks, and the biggest media; in short, nearly everything we use or need. These billionaires, these capitalists, not only own or control the means whereby we work and live but, in fact, control the whole governing machine. They pull the strings. And they use their power to make themselves richer and richer—at our expense. They hire workers to make profit out of their labour; their capitalist production is for profit, not for use: and to get more profit they slash wages, carry through speed-up and worsen conditions. This mad race for profit ends in a crisis; and then they try to get out of the crisis — at our expense. Look at the result. Poverty, insecurity and misery making their inroads in the homes of millions of workers: low wages, sweated labour to the point of physical exhaustion, is the lot of the workers in the factories with increases in the number of accidents, sickness, and a high death-rate amongst working-class mothers and babies. This is world to-day for working men, women and their families.