After Capitalism

Widespread feelings of discontent can be found around the world yet outbursts of protest and rage are being followed by periods of apathy and resignation. Today’s anti-capitalist struggles require vision. A total blueprint of socialism is impossible but we can elaborate more on what we should expect in a socialist society. The needs of people, not profit, are the driving force of a socialist society. It can only be accomplished by democratising all levels of society. Under capitalism, labour is a commodity. Workers are used as replaceable parts, extensions of machines—as long as they provide dividends. Employers use their power of ownership to devastate the lives of workers through layoffs, shutdowns and neglect of health and safety. Unions, despite their courageous efforts, have encountered difficulties eliminating even the worst abuses of management power. Socialism will dissolve the economic foundation of one-sided management privilege. We believe in the ability of working people to manage their own productive institutions democratically. We do not offer a blueprint to a better future. We present an invitation to all workers to join us in our common efforts to eradicate a social system based on exploitation, discrimination, poverty and war. The capitalist system must be replaced by socialist democracy. Capitalism has failed, and so have efforts to reform it. That failure puts a campaign for the socialist alternative on the immediate agenda. The flaws of capitalism are too basic, the power of the corporations too great, the chasm separating the compulsions of profit and the needs of people too wide, for anything less to succeed. That is the only hope of humanity. Socialism is shared abundance.

Capitalism is the private/state ownership of the means of production, which gives most people no choice but to sell their labour power. Capitalism functions:

ONLY for the destruction of life, but not for the preservation of life.

ONLY to produce the means of destruction, but not to produce the means of life and the means of enriching life.

ONLY for war, but not for peace.

Capitalists often try to cover up their crimes with a cloak of patriotism, but the only patriotism they know is that of the $ sign. When the workers discover the real nature of the profit system they lose all respect for the master class. They see the capitalists in their true colours as thieves and parasites, and their "sacred" private property as plunder. They see state, church, media and university as tools of the exploiters and they look on these institutions with contempt. They understand the identity of interests of all wage workers and realise the truth of the slogan: "An injury to one is an injury to all." When the workers are organised politically and industrially with an understanding of their interests and their power as a class, it is only a matter of time before they abolish wage slavery. With economic control in the hands of the people, production will be carried on for use and not profit, and all activities of society will be for the benefit of the workers instead of for the maintenance of a parasite class. The world revolution of the working people, directly or indirectly, decisively affects the destinies of every one on this planet.

If the workers are to come to a right conclusion, they must first understand clearly their class position and how they are enslaved by the capitalist class. Wage-slavery is different in form from all preceding systems. It is more effective in binding workers to their task while at the same time conceding them the freedom to leave it. How this can be is easily seen without much knowledge of economics. Workers are free to leave an employer but their physical needs compel them to find another. To use an economic phrase, they are compelled to sell their labour-power in order to obtain the necessaries of life. Wages are the price of labour-power. Workers themselves are not commodities, nor are they treated as such by their masters. Every worker is the undisputed owner of his or her labour-power. We can sell it to any capitalist who is willing to buy. We sell it for stipulated periods and can discontinue the sale by giving notice according to the terms agreed upon. These are the extent of the workers’ rights, the actual position. Commodities are always subject to changes and fluctuations in price. The price of a commodity changes under three sets of conditions: when it is produced with a smaller or greater expenditure of labour-power; when supply and demand are unequal, and when the material of which money is made can be produced with a smaller or greater expenditure of labour-power.

The foulest lie of all is the connection which is drawn between immigration and the shortages of jobs, homes, school places, hospital beds. The Socialist Party makes clear that it is opposed to anti-immigrant propaganda.

Immigration controls are about how the ruling class divides and controls us. The capitalist class is for immigration when it serves their interests to expand the population of educated and skilled immigrants to serve big businesses, and to keep a population to work backbreaking, low-paying jobs. In a few years many countries will be faced with a shortage of labour and some have now to become a country where immigrants are welcomed. Who is going to pay for the old age pensions and social services unless There is an addition to the population which only immigration can provide in the years to come.

Racism is an effective way to confuse and divide white workers from non-white immigrants. The racists have taken hold of the ears and minds of the white working class. Many of our fellow-workers under attack are divided, in part because they have learned to absorb the prejudice, mistrust and hatred that the racists preach. We need to wage our struggles for justice with a long-term vision that ensures health care, economic stability and social recognition are available for everyone, regardless of national identity. Workers must be won away from nationalist patriotic garbage and see through the lies.

Capitalism is a condemned society. Capitalism cannot be made to work in the interests of the whole community. The only course now is for the complete change in the ownership of the world. The only possible hope of the working class is common ownership of the means of production.

Revolutionise Not Romanticise

Those who took part in today’s school strikes to draw attention to the climate crisis we face are doubtlessly sincere and caring young people who want something different. Environmentalists put out an appealingly radical message, but when examined it becomes clear that it is a case for the capitalist market with a green tint. Only by abolishing the system which is the cause of rising carbon emissions can the global warming effects be eliminated. It is simply impossible to reform this capitalist system to permanently benefit humanity. 

 There are members of the capitalist class who recognise that if they are to hold on to their power and wealth, they must appear to take into account the well-informed and vociferous demands of the environmental movement. However, they must also discredit the views of those people who point to the profit system as one of the main perpetrators of ecological destruction and unsustainable resource use. The apologists for capitalism sweep under the carpet the way in which businesses, driven by the necessity to make profit and expand capital, has systematically despoiled and polluted the environment and harmed the health and lives of workers, either at their place of work or where they live. To make money, screw everything and everybody else. This is the profiteers’ mantra.

The corporations propose policies of environmental reform which they believe can be incorporated into their production processes in the interests of the whole of society without endangering rates of profit. It is this poverty of thought which is the most lamentable aspect of their business-as-usual outlook. Capitalists only adopt new technologies and manufacturing methods or make new appropriate products when it is profitable to do so, not because the existing ones happen to be contributing to global warming or polluting the planet.

The Socialist Party has always argued the need for people to take conscious political action to create the framework of common ownership and democratic control of the means and methods of production and distribution, as the only way in which the social problems like pollution can be tackled. A society which was not constrained by private property, commodity production and buying and selling would use as a matter of course the best possible technology at hand to ensure the safety of those working in the plants and the protection of the natural environment. Social cost would be the deciding factor, not commercial cost. Capitalism is unable to do this. It is sheer folly to believe capitalists will adopt an environmentally sustainable plan if their competitors elsewhere in the world market do not. What would the shareholders say to a board of directors which introduced costly practices if it meant that the company lost its competitive edge and market as a result?

Those who believe that the threat to the environment can be dealt with within the capitalist system are hopelessly wrong. These dreamers imagine that politicians whose task it is to run the production for profit system can be persuaded to recognise and act on the danger which pollution brings to the planet. The Socialist Party has been saying for a very long time that people must wake up to the enormous threat of environmental damage which the profit system poses to the world around us. For decades it has been cheaper for capitalists to pollute the air workers breathe than to adopt clean technology. Methods of manufacture which are harmful and disease-spreading have long existed. Ourfood has been adulterated for as long as we have been wage slaves. Animals are made to suffer and die needlessly; endangered species which have no exchange value in the market are free to become extinct. There is nothing new about any of this. In order to make a quick dollar it has long been capitalism’s practice to destroy the Earth’s irreplaceable resources.

The Socialist Party is well acquainted with the arguments that green politics is about pragmatism, that is, cynical compromise. It is about “lesser evils". But why vote to support those who seek to administer the lesser evil when capitalism, which creates the evils, can be abolished altogether? The usual reformist answer is that the lesser evil will take less time to achieve than the grand socialist aim. It is a foolish myth that partial objectives are worthier of support. There is unlikely ever to be a green government, and if there is, then its greatest critics will be the environmentalist movement who will complain that it has sold them out. It is inevitable with reformism; it must sell out in order to fit in with the requirements of the capitalist system.

The Socialist Party is a materialist organisation, but not in the sense that the term is often used: it does not mean that it is obsessed by consumerism and wants people to have more and more “material” goods, such as cars. To be a materialist is to recognise that human beings are rooted in our social environments. Our consciousness is social, and through conscious action we can alter the material environment of which we are a part. The environment is not something “Out There” which must be protected; it is part of us and we part of it. The eco-warrior dream of a non-urban arcadian utopia, undisturbed by influence of Big Business and its needs, is looking backward at a deeply conservative ideal which serves as a valuable diversion for the ruling class.

Capitalism will pass a few minor reforms because the capitalists themselves realise that their investments are being damaged by the filth created by a lack of environmental concern. Just as they passed The Clean Air Act of 1956, so they will attempt a few more self-regulating laws. Needless to say, these laws will be evaded by those rich and powerful enough to do so. Even when the capitalists are agreed on their common interest, there will always be one or two who will try to make a fast buck at others expense.

The world belongs to the rich. We, who produce everything and run the planet from top to bottom, have given it to them. Our task is to take it back from them; to reclaim the planet for ourselves. If you do not stand for the socialist transformation of global society, in the end, you’ll all end up a rather futile reform group, in a pointless crusade, pleading with the master owning-class to make the planet a little bit better.

And we equally must disillusion those modern-day misanthropes who see humanity as a plague upon the planet and preach catastrophism and the apocalypse.

COOPERATIVE SOCIALISM

30 Years of Scottish Bombast (1953)

From the July-August 1953 issue of The Western Socialist

The political scene in Britain (particularly Scotland) to-day, provides, in some important respects, a striking contrast to that of 30 years ago. To describe and analyse the intervening years would be an inquiry into decay and decline; a study in bilge and bombast; a picture, sad in itself, of promise without performance.

It would indeed be a journey through a period littered dismally with the bones and residue of movements which got their sustenance from the energies and hopes of many thousands of working people.

To-day, in Glasgow, and the industrial belt of which it is the centre, one meets many men and women, now despairing cynics, who were, thirty years ago, enthusiastic, selfless workers in the various movements.

Then, thirty odd years ago, as now, war-time conditions were slowly changing into normal capitalist conditions of “peace”: rationing was giving place to the accustomed sway of the purse, and a greater variety of goods were appearing in shop windows to tease and tantalize working-class housewives. Another obvious feature in common, a natural aftermath of the long war years of unbridled violence and deceit, is an increase in crimes of violence, rape and fraud. And, of course, what is delightfully described as “delinquent youth.” In other words, the behaviour of young men and women, growing up in their most malleable years in a world of organized, colossal murder; whose playgrounds were air-raid shelters and bombed buildings; who accepted as natural the “blackout” with all its inevitable framework.

The drift away from organized religion is ever more marked today and it could perhaps be said that highly organized gambling — particularly the “football pools” — with their billion-to-one chance of winning £75,000, have ousted religion from its former supremacy as a social dope and bulwark of capitalism.

“Tomorrow? Why, tomorrow I may be myself with £75,000” is a faith more potent, and supplanting than of the Sacred Articles and Beatitudes.

A striking commentary on Capitalism is the fact that the gambling industry fast rivals others in order of importance. And that in this retreat of theology, its hired and paid (evidently underpaid) laborers are quisling to the football pools, as scrutiny of the prize winners lists sometimes reveals.

Here in Glasgow, 30 years ago, events had earned the area the totally unjustified title of the “Red Clyde.” The Communist Party had recently been formed out of a host of individuals and movements conspicuous by their sound and fury, and by their lack of Socialist understanding — “Armed insurrection,” “Direct Action,” “Minority movements,” “Collapse of Capitalism,” “Anti-Parliamentarianism,” were some of the slogans shouted by many a man now seated comfortably in Parliament. Some indeed now Peers of the Realm.

The Labor and Independent Parties — then part of the same organization had their stronghold here on Clydeside and in the landslide of 1924 when a record number of I.L.P. and Labor Members of Parliament were elected, scores of thousands of elated workers assembled in the centre of the city to see the conquerors off to London to capture the bastions of Imperial Britain. It seemed to many excited workers that the world was theirs and the late James Maxton M.P., confirmed this impression by declaring “The working class is now the ruling class, so why should they go in rags?” Everywhere in the area. Labor and I.L.P. orators were pushing their themes of Nationalization. Everywhere, there were meetings, demonstrations, United Movements, “New Worlds,” “New Perspectives.” “Revolutionary situations” were perpetually conjured into verbal being.

Joining in the unholy chorus, the Communist Party added its own nostrums of “Direct Action” and “Soviet Power.”

Elements of DeLeonism contributed their proportionate share with their Industrial Unionism and wild talk of “taking and holding the means of Life.”

The Glasgow Branch of the SPGB had just been formed by a literal handful of men. Amidst trouble, difficulties, most of them unemployed, meeting in hovels in which they lived, in the jungle of wind and bombast surrounding them, they presented the case for Socialism. A case which at first, largely met with sneers and ridicule. and on many an occasion, with violent measures being taken against the couple of speakers. Today, what is the general political and industrial position in contrast to that of then?

In the industrial field, the open allegiance of the prominent Trade Union officials to not only Labor Government but the present Tory one exceeds anything of 30 years ago. Indeed, Trade Unions threats to become mere adjuncts of Governments and the employing class instead of what their pioneers intended them to be—organs of working class struggle. Insolent admonitions to work harder and forego wage-claims abound from every quarter of the Trade Union movement. “More production for the export markets” is now an official Trade Union slogan. Here and there, of course, the pinch of the cost of living and the increased tempo of production force workers to take action but, in the main, such episodes meet with, not only the disapproval of the Government, but with the opposition of the official Trade Union movement.

At Conference after Conference, spokesmen ruminate on problems of national self-sufficiency, of capital investment, of the problems of British Capitalism in the markets of the world; on anything and everything except working-class interests.

At the Scottish Trade Union Congress held in Rothesay in April of this year, a Mr. T. O’Brien, M.P. who is chairman of the British T.U.C. delivered himself of the following piece of unvarnished nonsense:

  "There were workers who thought of efficiency as something to do with the boss, but nothing to do with themselves. I say this to all of them — if they persist in such attitudes for long, then all they will have to live on will be their illusions. And illusions are a poor currency in World Markets. We are right in a period when we can’t afford inefficiency in management or low productivity in the workshops. Whether industry is privately or publicly controlled or owned it is everybody's job to help the nation to earn its living. These are not class issues. They are the plain unvarnished economic facts." Daily Express, April 13, 1953.

An even more penetrating and squalid insight into the functions of the Labor Party and its allies — the official Trade Union Movement — during the so-called boom years, was given by the last Labor Chancellor of the Exchequer in his Budget speech reported by the National Press on April 10, 1951:

  "During the past few years of labor scarcity and sellers’ market, workers had been in a position of unexampled strength of bargaining power. Had they considered only their own immediate interests they could have pressed their advantage home."

Little wonder the more sober-minded Capitalist press greeted somewhat ruefully the narrow victory of Churchill and his Tories in Oct., 1951. Apprehensive forecasts of subsequent widespread industrial disorder were speedily proven wrong. Trade Union leaders like O’Brien, Deakin, Lowther and others were not slow in assuring the new Government of their support. So that, shortly after, Mr. Churchill could gurgle happily the famous understatement, “four-fifths of both parties were agreed on four-fifths of their programs. ”

In Scottish Labor Party circles this process goes on apace, so that a Mr. G. McAllister writing in a Labor Party paper the Glasgow “Forward” could opine that while Churchill stood for 10 per cent Socialism in the national economy, Mr. Morrison, the second in command of the Labor Party, stood for 15 per cent and that the new bogey man of Wall Street — Mr. Aneurin Bevan — stood for somewhat more!

The same “Forward” had an article recently by a prominent Labor M.P., Mr. Arthur Woodburn on “What do we mean by Socialism” wherein with a nonchalance worthy of the Stalinists, he threw overboard the theories of half-a-century .— “Planning and not Nationalization is the cornerstone of Socialism.” In the usual run of reformist politicians, not a word of apology does he express for a lifetime of sedulously identifying Socialism with Nationalization, the aspirations and energies of humble workers, lending their support to the Labor Party, do not appear in his balance sheet.

The formerly mighty I.L.P. now shrunk almost to nothingness, still maintains a precarious existence. Boasting sometimes of how it differs from the stinking organization which preyed, vulture-like, upon the workers for so many years, it reveals the same old lousy story of reform. With its divisions of Pacifism, Quakerism, Catholicism, Secularism, jostling side by side with a counterfeit Marxism, it presents the same old mixture of confusion and futility. And even more productive of sardonic comment is the ease and facility with which prominent members of the I.L.P. can leave the I.L.P. for the more comfortable and secure Labor Party.

It would, perhaps, be illuminating to digress temporarily in order to examine briefly a prime and significant example of this phenomenon.

In the noisy days of 1923-24 onwards, Gorbals, a constituency in Glasgow of world renown (or notoriety) was represented, on behalf of the I.L.P., by a Mr. G. Buchanan. His seat embraced the most squalid slums in Europe, possibly the world. Rows and rows of the most terrifying, rat-infested slums. Lice-ridden, the habitat of millions of bugs, with a population of the most diverse in Scotland, where Scottish, Irish, Jewish (from all parts of Europe) and Indian workers lived literally on top of one another, it had, and sadly still has, the greatest infantile mortality in Europe. An area where criminals were bred, where gangsters and bullies were ten-a-penny and yet withal thousands of men and women retain their dignity and integrity.

In short, a working-class constituency, par excellence.

Mr. Buchanan, who held the seat for twenty years with one of the biggest majorities in Britain, and on the basis of “decent homes,” “high wages” and all the other vote catching nostrums, decided blandly around 1945 to leave, in between elections, naturally, the I.L.P. for the Labor Party.

Regardless of the blazing fact that his constituents were still in in the company of lice and vermin, still in the same old filthy slums, with their infants still dying in greater numbers than anywhere else, he transferred his allegiance. Although the men and women who had supported him all through the years were still exploited, oppressed and insulted, exacerbated by years of bereavement, sacrifice and hardship in the years of war, and although he had won the seat in 1935 in the teeth of Labor Party opposition which seemed to indicate their preference for the I.L.P. Without even going through the motions of consulting his electors, he joined the Labor Party. Since then he has fared much better than the workers of Gorbals. He is now Chairman of the National Assistance Board, which, after a Means Test, relieves the poor and needy (over 2 million cases in 1952). The remuneration of the Chairman of the Board is £5,000 per year. He, McGovern, Carmichael, F. Brockway and many others left the I.L.P. and joined the Labor Party when the writing appeared on the wall for the I.LP.

For the first 30 months of the Labor Government elected in July 1945, the Communist Party supported the Government. This support, of course, was directly in line with Soviet foreign policy, best seen in all its naked callousness by the statement of the late demi-god Stalin in Crimea 1945: “The alliance between the Soviet Union, the United States and Great Britain, is based not on casual and transient motives, but on vitally important and long-standing interests.” This also led the Communist Party to oppose every strike during this period. For example, the strike of the Grimethorpe miners in Sept., 1947, was denounced by the Party as a “stab in the back of the working class.” Their General Secretary, Mr. Pollitt, who had in his pamphlet “Questions and Answers,” 1946, so obsequiously re-echoed Mr. Stalin’s Crimean declaration, however, in December 1947, in his report to his members was compelled to abandon as unreal, his own and his semi-divine leaders prognostication by stating:

  “Because of the United States and British policy of refusing to co-operate with the Soviet Union, the differences have deepened to the point where today there are two world camps. It is necessary that important changes be made in C.P. policy.”

Thereupon, the C.P. attacked the Labor Government until its defeat in 1951, The attack, naturally, was mainly in the area of foreign affairs. In recent months the C.P. has reached the depths of nationalistic slime in its anti-American policy. Defenders of native culture against Wall Street; on guard against Yankee music, literature and films; assailants even of the “crew” hair-cut and the “drape” suit; disdainful of the crepe soled shoes, coat shirts and ties of America, they present a sordid spectacle.

Starting from the stellar heights of “Go home Yank” in which they suggested in a front page article of the “Daily Worker” that an inebriated G. I. who had allegedly misappropriated a crucifix from “an old Saxon Church,” should get life imprisonment; rising to dizzy cosmic heights of a knight-like solicitude and concern for the sexual virtue of the innocent, unspoilt British womanhood beset by threats and wiles, by the dollars, nylons and other merchandise of the PX of the licentious American soldiery, they have descended to the noisome depths of “Let Britain Arise" 1952, in which Mr. H. Pollitt proposes as a serious measure: “That no foreign worker shall be employed while a British worker is unemployed or on short-time." In other words: “Workers of the world — divide — you have nothing to gain but your jobs.’’ Or: “Did your mother come from Ireland? or Italy? or Spain? or America?"

Arguing “that if we have to have a Coronation, let’s make it a British one — untainted by the products of Broadway or Hollywood," agitating for a lowering of the cost of production of labor-power, squealing about the need for “East-West Trades,’’ defending every tortuous twist of Kremlin policy from Vishinsky’s “No” to Molotov’s “Yes,’’ bleating about Scottish, Irish and Welsh Home Rule; moaning about the “sell out of Britain to Wall Street,’’ the C.P. of Great Britain is in truth, indeed, an object of contempt in the eyes of workers with even a spark of working-class principles.

The small Trotskyist party, the R.C.P. were compelled to “liquidate” when their counterparts, the C.P. became slightly critical of the Labor Government. Its self-appointed leadership is now in the comfortable bosom of the Labor Party. All its noise and its innumerable and uncomprehensible theses, its fury and bombast, now muted to a safer and more respectable key.

The Scottish Nationalists, with no real roots in the working class, still shout the funny slogan of “Scotland for the Scots.” Some of their misguided followers, infuriated by the choice of the title of Queen Elizabeth II, and quite obviously motivated by an over literal interpretation of Thurber’s “Secret of Walter Mitty,” and encouraged by the indignation of the regal title expressed by Scots, Tory and Labor M.P.s are engaging in the pleasant pastime of sticking home-made bombs in mail-boxes bearing the obnoxious slogan “ER II.” In the West of Scotland there is a very small but vociferous crew of Anarchists. People who take the discordant views of Jesus Christ, Proudhon, Stirner, Bakunine, Tolstoy, Kropotkin and the Syndicalists, yes and even the I. W. W., in one indigestible swallow and confront the workers with the confusing result.

That is the dark side of the picture.

On the other side, we have, first of all, the Socialist Party of Great Britain, plugging away at the serious, un-melodramatic job of spreading the Socialist idea. The two branches in Glasgow, although faced yet with great difficulties, meet with nothing like the hostility encountered by the pioneers of 30 odd years ago. The myth of Socialist Russia is not nearly as widespread. Nationalization as a panacea has lost its vogue. The stupid theories of armed insurrection and the like, are virtually extinct. Perhaps the most hopeful sign of the times is that the younger workers, in discussion, seem to value more serious argument than the shouting of windy slogans. It rather seems, too, that the day of the reformist party is past. And as more and more of the working class recognize the already open identity between Sir Winston Churchill and Major Attlee, they must turn their attention to the Socialists.

Therefore, the Socialists in Scotland, like Socialists the world over, are confident of the working class ultimately accepting the view that the world and all that is in or on it, should belong to all.

It is a hard task, but one well worth the doing.

Tony Mulheron, 

Glasgow Branch, 

Tony Mulheron was a Glasgow dock worker, who was a member of the SPGB from Feb 1935 to May 1938 - briefly resigning his membership - before rejoining the SPGB in Dec 1938, and remained a member of the Party until his death in 1982.

Taken from
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2019/03/30-years-of-scottish-bombast-1953.html

Climate Change - Socialism is the Answer

THE CAUSE OF CLIMATE CHANGE IS CAPITALISM

Today many thousands of youngsters are expected to walk out of their schools to protest the inaction of governments over the climate crisis we are all confronted with. Since one teenager – Greta Thunberg – held a solo protest outside the Swedish parliament the school student movement has spread across the world. Anna Taylor, 17, who co-founded the UK student climate network, said: “Young people in the UK have shown that we’re angry at the lack of government leadership on climate change. Those in power are not only betraying us, and taking away our future, but are responsible for the climate crisis that’s unfolding in horrendous ways around the world,”  adding that “those least responsible for contributing to climate change are already suffering the worst effects”. She continued: “It is our duty to not only act for those in the UK and our futures, but for everyone. That’s what climate justice means.” 

In Scotland, the Guardian is aware of strikes planned in 19 different locations, from South Uist in the Outer Hebrides to St Andrews on the east coast, with large gatherings expected in Glasgow’s George Square and outside the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh.

One of the UK’s most prominent school strikers, Holly Gillibrand, will be taking part, after staging a weekly action outside her school in Fort William, in the Scottish Highlands. Asked whether she feels optimistic about the potential of Friday’s protest, Holly replied: “I wouldn’t say optimistic is quite the right word. It shows there are thousands of students out there who care very deeply about the environment and are willing to miss school to demand that politicians take this ecological crisis seriously.”

Méabh Mackenzie is organising a protest with about 30 fellow pupils from Daliburgh primary school on the island of South Uist, with the express purpose of standing in solidarity with other threatened island communities across the globe.

The 11-year-old explained: “I just wanted to share what I believe in. Uist is really low lying and I really love the place and don’t want it to disappear. I think all the striking around the world will let politicians and lawmakers know that they have to do something because it is falling down the list of priorities. They are arguing about things like Brexit but we need them to act now on climate change because in 12 years we can’t turn anything back.”

During the last hundred years or more, irreversible damage has been done to the natural environment by human action than in any previous period in recorded history. Rarely a day goes by when our attention is not drawn to the various issues of environmental degradation and how the increase in human activity is impacting on large areas of the natural environment globally. There’s a lot of proposals in the pipeline, but when stripped of their jargon, in practice it means that capitalism has to go green. This shows a lack of understanding of the workings of capitalism. No sensible person is going to deny that the sooner we work with nature, rather than against it, the better. By increasing our understanding of the interaction between the natural environment and the impact of human activity, society will be in a better position to minimise the damage on natural resources, and be able to arrive at rational judgements on whether or not any interference in the natural environment is justified and warranted.

But capitalism is not a rational system when you consider that the capitalist class have their own agenda which is totally blind to the creation of a common interest. The only interest the capitalist class have is to obtain profits through the quickest and easiest way possible so that the accumulation of capital continues. A fundamental contradiction of capitalism is that although the capitalist has a common interest — as a class — to cooperate to keep the system going, by necessity they also have to compete within the market. If they don’t compete, they go under or are at best taken over by other capitalists. This built-in rivalry between the sections of the capitalist class always results in casualties in some form or another. It is these conditions of competition which make it extremely difficult to reach any regulatory agreement which can have a global application. But not impossible. When it has been in the common capitalist interest to facilitate an expansion in the global market capitalist governments have drawn up international agreements, for example on postal services, maritime law, air traffic control, scientific research at the poles, etc. These agreements are generally abided by, specifically because they do not reduce the rate of profit. It’s when any such proposals come into conflict with the rate of profit that the competitive self-interest of the various national sections of the capitalist class becomes focused on the problems of winners and losers appears. This is usually announced in the media as, “There was a failure to reach an agreement over who is to pay the bill”.

If market forces essentially cause and create environmental damage by literally encouraging an irrational human impact, how can you realistically expect those self-same forces to solve it? This conundrum will almost certainly intensify. When confronted by barriers of environmental legislation which are designed to diminish the rate of expected profits and the accumulation of capital, the capitalists will do what they have always done in their search for short-term profits: finding or creating loopholes, moving the goalposts, corrupting officials, trying to bribe the local population with empty promises, or shifting the whole concern to an area or region where a more favourable reception is expected and profits maintained. The simple fact is that businesses will not take the risk of falling behind in the struggle for profits and nor will any government enforce policy that will result in a drop in the profits of its respective capitalist class. Capitalist businesses survive by forcing out their competition, by cutting costs and sidestepping policies that hinder their expansion. They seek new outlets for their wares, to sell more and more, because this is the law of capitalism, and it is a law antagonistic to ecological concerns. It is the crazed law of capitalism that compels the big oil producers to pay teams of scientists to prepare reports that refute the findings of environmentalists who forewarn of the dire effects of current production methods.

The market economy demands that businesses only take into account their own narrow financial interests. Pleasing shareholders takes far more priority than ecological considerations. The upshot is that productive processes are distorted by this drive to make and accumulate profits. The result is an economic system governed by anarchic market forces which compel decision-makers, whatever their personal views or sentiments, to plunder, pollute and waste. They may well be loath to contaminate ecosystems, but the alternative is closure should they invest in costlier eco-friendlier production methods. Little wonder then that nature’s balances are upset today, and that we face problems such as melting glaciers, rising sea levels and the like due to global warming from carbon emissions.

Once the Earth’s natural and industrial resources have been wrested from the master class and become the common heritage of all humanity, then production can be geared to meeting needs in an ecologically acceptable way, instead of making profits without consideration for the environment. This the only basis on which we can meet our needs whilst respecting the laws of nature and to at last begin to reverse the degradation of the environment caused by the profit system. The only effective strategy for achieving a free and democratic society and, moreover, one that is in harmony with nature, is to build up a movement which has the achievement of such a society as its objective.

Capitalism and Hunger (1978)

From the June 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

The world is overpopulated, we are told, and this alleged overpopulation (often confused with density of population) is the cause of hunger. Hence, in order to eliminate the problem of hunger, the world’s population must first be reduced.

This is the reasoning behind the many attempts to force Indian villagers to limit their families to only one or two children, whether by persuasion or compulsion. The moral persuasion advocated by Malthus in the nineteenth century has given way in the twentieth century to government campaigns for mass sterilization.

But this argument is, although widely accepted, totally false. The facts do not support it. For example, a special issue on “Food and Agriculture” in Scientific American (Sept. ’76) invite the conclusion that we are capable, now, of feeding not just the present world population but an even greater world population. The cause of hunger, starvation and malnutrition, whether in the so-called “Third World” countries or in the West, is to be found in our economic system.

Why is it that the capitalist economic system does not produce enough food? In the first place, under capitalism the production of food, like that of other commodities, is deliberately restricted. If there is “too much” food, the price falls, farmers lose profits and sooner or later, governments intervene with policies aimed at restricting production so as to maintain the market price at a profitable level, if all else fails the stuff can always be destroyed — dumped at the bottom of the sea, for instance: anything will do just so long as the market price is maintained. Above all, it must not be given away to the hungry.

Which brings us to the other half of the equation. Why are people hungry when shops and warehouses are full of stored food? Here we have to state the obvious. The only reason for most people doing without the food they and their families need is quite simply that they cannot afford it. Poverty restricts the ability of most of the world’s working class to buy what food is available—the price is too high. The old “Let them eat cake” problem!

Along with this view of food as simply a commodity to be marketed, like houses or oil, with production controlled and restricted in such a way that supply should never catch up or overtake demand, we see agriculture exploiting the earth as a source of profits. Mother earth is raped by profit-seeking agro-business. The farmer’s business is not growing food for people to eat. Like every other capitalist, he is in business to accumulate more capital. Therefore he cannot afford to concern himself much about soil erosion, the destruction of humus, the loss of wild flowers or eagles. His real concern has to be the balance sheet: that his capital investment should produce as big a profit as possible.

Capitalist agriculture has found a few crops exceptionally profitable. In some areas, the West Indies for instance, monoculture has replaced the cultivation of a variety of food and other crops. In Europe a lot of arable land is now devoted to non-food crops — barley for the brewers in Britain, grapes for the wine trade on the Continent. Cotton, tobacco and sugar are all still dominant in many areas noted for their hunger. Forests are felled for the sake of a quick buck. Rivers are polluted by profit conscious industries. The seas are scoured to the point where even herrings become scarce; they are drilled for gas and oil and suffer pollution from oil tankers, all in the interests of maximising their owners’ profits.

Capitalism puts pressure on agriculture and industry alike to produce as cheaply and as fast as possible. Hence the excessive use of pesticides and mineral fertilisers, with consequent damage to the soil and destruction of the eco-balance. In our society the earth is capital — wealth which must be used to produce profits.

The working class throughout the world suffer poverty and hunger. This hunger is not a natural phenomenon. It is not caused by the alleged inability of people to grow enough food. It is caused by the fact that, on the one hand, it is often more profitable to grow non-food crops, and on the other hand, food is produced as a commodity to be sold at a profitable price and is therefore never produced in sufficient quantity to satisfy all man’s needs, any more than housing is. Profits first, people’s needs last — that’s capitalism.

Only if we end this system where production is primarily for profit, only if we end the money-based economy and the wages system based on class ownership of the earth and other means of production, only then do we stand any chance of both satisfying human needs and at the same time developing production techniques which will safeguard the natural environment. It is high time all “friends of the earth” recognized that profit-based capitalism is the real enemy both of those who are concerned about the problem of the “starving millions” and of those whose main concern is ecology and the environment. In Socialism there will be no conflict between the satisfaction of human needs and care for the environment.

Charmian Skelton

Reformism is no solution

A capitalist is someone who owns capital, and through his ownership receives an income; and the capitalist system is one in which this form of ownership predominates. Capitalism is a system in which the means of producing wealth are privately owned. There have been other systems of private ownership, such as Feudalism and Slavery, but in them the wealth has not taken the form of capital. Before them again there were societies in which there was no private ownership of the means of producing wealth and no exploitation of one class by another. We say that it is private ownership which is at the root of our problems, and we propose that society should take over the means of production and use them, the only sensible suggestion to satisfy the needs of the members of society, instead of allowing a class to make a profit out of their use. Today, there is a class of poor people who have no property, and who live by working, and another class of rich property-owners, who live by owning property. The workers get wages, which they have earned by their labour. It is they who have grown the food, made the clothes and built the houses and factories, and carried goods from one place to another, and it is they who have organised this work and supervised and directed it. On the other hand, the property-owners have received rent, interest and profit without having to labour for it at all. From what source then do their incomes arise? Is it not plain that these people who own the means of production are living on the labour of those who use them to produce wealth?

At present we have the workers compelled to ask permission of the owners before they can get to work, and the condition on which permission is granted is that the workers should keep the owners in idle luxury. And this private ownership has other evil effects besides being a means of robbing the workers. We have workers producing goods of greater value than they receive back as wages, the difference being a surplus for landlords, bankers, and manufacturing capitalists. So that after the workers have spent their wages there is still a great mass of goods in the warehouses which the owners must sell before they can realise their profits, and it is much more than they can possibly consume themselves. It is in this way that unemployment is caused. The people who own the goods want to sell but cannot find buyers, while the workers who want the goods have no money to buy. Production has to be curtailed, and goods are wasted or slowly consumed by the unemployed who live on doles and other forms of relief. Alternatively, capitalist countries are forced to go to war to try to snatch markets from their rivals, and destroy their powers of production. But whether they win or lose, the problem is only aggravated.

This is the capitalist system, and we propose to abolish it. We want to destroy entirely the right of any individual or class to live by privately owning something which society wants to use. We say this results in robbery, and we are out to end it. Nobody would deny that capitalism brought with it great economic, political and social advantages, but we say that it also brought the seeds of unavoidable evils and conflicts, and that the evils are now so great that only a new and higher system can be of any use. Such a system is socialism.

Socialism will mean not only the end of capitalism, but also the end of all private ownership of the means of production and exploitation. Of course, when we talk about common ownership we are only referring to the means of production, like the land and the factories, not personal possessions and such personal things like these. There is but one course, and it is for the workers to take it. It is to end capitalism, with its absurd contradiction, super abundance, and want, coexistent, and to establish a community of interests—socialism. Socialists talk about the means of production and by this we mean all the instruments and technical know-how that man has developed for the purpose of producing wealth, from hand tools to nuclear power stations. All reformist politicians agree that these means of production should continue to be monopolised by a small privileged section of the population.

We are facing an environmental crisis. Exploitation. Consumerism. Waste. Pollution. Greed. All contribute to global warming. Poverty, extreme inequality, racism, sexism, nationalism and militarism these are the roots of of capitalism. Without fundamental changes, ecosystems will continue to deteriorate all around us. To combat climate change along with widespread ecological degradation and inequality, we need more than reformist policies. We believe the capitalist system to be the enemy. We see that CAPITALISM as the cause of most if not all of our problems, not the selfishness of the capitalists, nor the incompetence of their governments. We see that the workers are wretchedly housed and badly fed and shoddily clothed and vilely mis-educated, because they are poor. We see that they are poor because they are robbed, and they are robbed because the capitalist system is based on robbery. When we say that it is the system itself which is at fault it matter not who administers it. It will still be a system of exploitation of one class by another. If it ceases to be this, it will cease to be at all, because that is its nature. A system which is based on the robbery of the workers obviously cannot be made to work out to their benefit. We do not want anyone to administer capitalism; we want to destroy it. We say that profit-making is robbery.

To sum up, we see that capitalism is the enemy, and that socialism is the only remedy. Socialism necessarily means the denial of the right to live by owning. All who can work must work in order to earn the right to enjoy the products of labour. Socialism can be introduced only by a socialist electorate, and the present owners, as a class, cannot be expected to yield their rights until they must.

Reformers do not condemn the system of living by owning. They are not committed to socialism. Their attempts to patch up an obsolescent system of society will fail. Reforms cannot give the workers that comfort and security which alone can end their discontent, without attacking the foundations of capitalist society. Those who set their leaders the impossible task of solving the insoluble contradictions of capitalism will themselves be responsible for the inevitable disillusionment and betrayal. The issue lies in the hands of the workers. We appeal to your intelligence, confident that sooner or later, the brutal pressure of economic forces will compel consideration and acceptance of our case—the case for socialism, a society in which wage labour and the production of value have been abolished, where each person contributes what they can according to their abilities and each person receives goods according to their need. A socialist society would not compel its members to work for a wage. It would provide goods to its people for free, allowing them to fulfil their needs without having to worry about artificially produced scarcity. Production would be carried on entirely through voluntary work and would be defined by a cooperative spirit.

Rejoice in Socialism

The world is in desperate peril and what is needed now is not an uncritical acceptance of the qualities which capitalism needs and honours but a penetrating questioning of the social system. The sad fact is that it is the workers who suffer under capitalism, who so ardently stand up for the system. It would be pleasant to be able to wash our hands of capitalism but we cannot do this—we cannot live outside the system. The reason for this is that at present the capitalist class hold their power by the support of the workers. As this support lessens, as the socialist movement grows, the power of the capitalists diminishes. Their promises, their threats, their sops, which are so readily accepted by workers now, will lose their effect. As the number of socialists grows the class struggle will take on a different appearance. Socialist trade unionists, for example, would never fall for threats and promises from a Labour government and agree to reduce their living standards, as some unionists are doing now. And, of course, as this situation develops the ruling class would be eager to try to divert the movement with ever more generous reforms. It is true that at present few people are inclined to grasp socialist knowledge. Some of the blame for this rests on organisations like the Labour Party, which have spread confusion among the working class and have dragged the name of socialism through the mud. Perhaps our attacks on capitalism inspire Labourites and Leftists. What effect, then, do our attacks on those parties, as pro-capitalist, have on those people? We hope to make them think about society, and about what to do with the power in their hands. This is the positive side of socialist propaganda—every attack we make upon capitalism has two edges and the other is the conclusion, that socialism alone can end the problems of the modern world.

A minority of socialist MPs would certainly support genuine reforms in working class standards and conditions but they would not be allowed to make the mistake of becoming reformist — of offering reforms as a political programme and an alternative to Socialism.

The class ownership of the means of production and their use to make profits is the basis of modern, capitalist society. It means there are two opposed classes: those who own and those who because they don't own must work for those who do. Mere democratic reform that leaves untouched this class basis of society is not nearly enough. A genuine democracy in which all the people would have a free and equal say in the conduct of political, economic, and social affairs. That, more or less, is our aim too. But we say it can be achieved only on the basis of the common ownership of the means of life. For as long as the means by which society must live belong to a class there will be the exploitation, oppression, and social inequality that frustrate democratic control today.

We are not really surprised that many who want a new and better society should tend to steer clear of the word ‘socialism’. We ourselves are only too painfully aware of what it means to many people—the oppressive regime of the former Soviet Union and its satellite states, the discredited Labour parties, the swindle of nationalisation. The Socialist Party has always tried to keep alive the real meaning of socialism as a democratic world community based on the common ownership of the means of life where the one aim of production will be to satisfy human needs. With the end of class ownership everybody will be socially equal and free to take part in the running of social affairs. The oppressive government machine, which is needed only to maintain ‘law and order' in class society, will be dismantled and replaced by the democratic administration of industry. With common ownership and production for use, the barriers to abundance will have been removed so that society can rapidly go over to “from all their best, to all their need”. People will work as best they are able and then take from the common store whatever they need. This is socialism.

Because full democracy can be achieved only through socialism it is futile to separate the pursuit of the one from the pursuit of the other. To fight for democracy alone could mean the achievement of neither socialism nor democracy. Efforts should be concentrated on the struggle for socialism. It is not from contesting elections, but from advocating reforms, that the danger comes. Parliament, which makes the laws the police enforce, is a body those who want to reform capitalism, let alone replace it by socialism, must capture. A socialist majority outside parliament, using their votes to elect a socialist majority inside parliament, could use political power to institute the common ownership of the means of production. That in fact is our policy and why we have ourselves had candidates in the past. So, it’s not elections in themselves that are dangerous. Far from it. It is vitally important that those who want to change society should take part in elections. The danger comes from fighting for reforms of capitalism, outside as well as inside parliament. Socialism, as a democratic community based on the voluntary co-operation of its members, can be set up and run only by people who are fully aware of its implications. It can be set up only when a majority understand and want it. Support built up for reforms cannot be turned into support for socialism, for most of those who want the reforms will have illusions about what present-day society can offer. They will assume that all that is needed is the will to do something—end the housing scandal, stop unemployment — and that implementing this is just a simple administrative matter. Capitalism, however, is not a rationally-organised community, but a class society subject to its own economic laws. Because it is based on the profit motive and on the exclusion of the workers from ownership it cannot be made to serve human needs and can never solve the housing or health or education or employment problems of the workers. Capitalism is a class system that can work only one way: as a profit-making system in the interest of the class that lives off profits.

We are out for LIFE for the workers. The world is beautiful. Life is glorious. Even work is joy if a man may, as Morris said, “rejoice in the work of his hand.” Evolution has given us the possibility of producing by work, as distinct from toil, wealth in such abundance that the amenities of civilisation shall be the portion of all, without scrimping.

Let’s End Charity

Members of the Socialist Party are frequently perceived as stingy scrooges for we often criticise the idea of giving to charity and we scold philanthropy. We do not doubt the sincerity or compassion of those who donate to charities or volunteer to help them (although the latter is somewhat tarnished by the unemployed living under the threat of losing benefits if they do not put in unpaid hours at the local charity shop.) But what is fostered is the dangerous illusion that, either through charitable alms-giving, the many problems of capitalism can be solved by good-will and kind gestures. Socialists are not indifferent to human suffering but we point that society is well capable of solving the problems of poverty, hunger and homelessness. What does not exist is the social system of production and distribution can be matched to people’s need. Capitalism is a world of deliberate scarcity, in order to pursue the aims of competition and profit.

The voluntary efforts via a host of charitable institutions and associations do not tackle the cause of such problems that they profess to alleviate. The main beneficiary of charities is the capitalist class, who otherwise would pay, via taxes, for State expenditure for the Welfare State, the NHS, and the local councils’ responsibility and obligations. To fill the gaps in state spending on “welfare” is the function of the legions of charities. The never-ending problems they seek to ameliorate are caused by the fact that what we produce is not for our use but for the capitalist class’s profit. Since the State is funded by the capitalist class, you get the absurdity of the have-not’s giving from the little they earn to organisations whose real reason for existence is to save the capitalist class money.

What then is the Socialist Party’s attitude towards charities? This can best be answered by another question: Why do the workers need charity? Because they have not access to all the things that could give them joyful and healthy lives (a sure preventative measure of most ailments). Our answer, then, is that all our spare time and money, which is very limited, should be spent on furthering the cause of socialism, the sure cure-all for the economic and most other social ills which humanity suffers. Achieving socialism will be far simpler and quicker. It is the direct method of solving the poverty problem. The sad thing is that charities, despite the enormous amount of human energy and goodwill that go into them, can rarely do more than touch the surface of the problems they were set up to deal with. They can never get to the root of these problems. Only political action aimed at revolutionising the whole structure of society and abolishing its profit system can wipe out the problems that give rise to charities.

The Socialist Party believes that poverty is unacceptable and unnecessary. We want to persuade people of the severe limitations of organised charity and also of the unfortunate effect it has in wrongly suggesting to people that, by giving money, they are doing something about solving the world’s problems. What charities never suggest is the plain truth that the perpetual calamities and suffering they exist to cope with are due not to any inevitable defects in man’s capacity for organising the world but to a social system which puts profits-and armaments to guard these profits-before human welfare. Charity will end when we get socialism. People won’t need it then. It’s something worth thinking about.

Some say, considering socialists are out for a society where each gives of their labour and its produce freely, why we are so negative about charity. Our answer is, is that for us, socialism is not about moralistic giving and self-sacrifice, but a condition of society wherein helping others is the best way of helping ourselves though working to help others. The fruits of the common effort of socialism will not be gifts but, rather, the common wealth of all.

 “I had become convinced as Ernest was when he sneered at charity as a poulticing of an ulcer. Remove the ulcer was his remedy; give to the worker his product; pension as soldiers those who grow honourably old in their toil, and there will be no need for charity. Convinced of this, I toiled with him at the revolution, and did not exhaust my energy in alleviating the social ills that continuously arose from the injustice of the system.” - Jack London in ‘The Iron Heel’

What is to change with socialism

Capitalist society is rushing headlong towards some form of barbarism. So long as the insane striving for profit in this private property economy exists, and it must exist as long as capitalism exists, war is forever the prospect of life, while environmental destruction is forever the reward of the overwhelming majority of the peoples of all countries. Capitalism is incapable and unwilling to produce in the interests of the common good of the people. Its production is organised solely in the interests of profit. Invention, which could lighten the lives of the people and produce enough to have plenty for all, is impossible in an economy where the main aim of those who own the industries, mines, transportation and utilities is production for profit. The capitalist vultures whose main occupation is to exploit workers for their own class benefit gorge themselves on profiteering in war. Society cannot and must not be controlled by capitalism. Society is doomed to destruction if this happens. Only a socialist society, a society without classes, without war, without competition, without unemployment, and poverty can properly utilise the harnessing of the planet’s resources. A class society which lives by exploitation can only subordinate such natural wealth to the interest of private profit. Let our fellow-workers ponder this fact. Let them understand that when the media talks about the risk of destruction to the world, they are not joking at all. The destruction of the world is a grim reality unless the social order of capitalism is abolished and replaced by socialism, the society of all the people.

The Socialist Party does not accept the necessity for inequality, poverty and war as a social and historical fact. On the contrary we can see that social harmony and the common good can be achieved without them. Capitalism has become an obsolete oppressive system that ought to be got rid off. A relatively small minority recognise this and are consciously anti-capitalist, but the masses continue trying to survive within the system rather than by overthrowing it. So, there is no real possibility of overthrowing that system and attempts to do so degenerate into futile reformism and/or terrorism, whatever the “revolutionary” rhetoric. The injustices of slavery and serfdom were eliminated by abolishing the social institutions of slavery and serfdom themselves, not by prohibitions against maltreatment of slaves and serfs. The injustices of wage labour, including unemployment, will be eliminated by abolishing the social institution of wage labour itself, not by directions to employers to treat their workers better. The social revolution as profound as abolishing the ownership of slaves by slave owners. We are talking about a transformation of private/state property to become social property working to a common plan. The social revolution required to transform capitalist enterprises into associations obviously involves far more than government decrees transferring ownership. The revolution itself would have produced various models of workers’ councils in many establishments, which would have taken over responsibility for management from the previous authorities. But that only establishes pre-conditions for the transformation, without actually solving the problem itself. Moreover, in many enterprises the workers’ councils would be weak or non-existent, or a screen behind which the old bosses are still in charge, since revolution develops unevenly.

 Anarcho-syndicalists seem to imagine that if everybody democratically discusses everything, production units will be able to exchange their products to supply each other’s needs, and to supply consumer goods for the workers, with no more than ’co-ordination” by higher level councils of delegates from the lower level establishments. Actually, things are not so simple, and any attempt to realise that vision would only mean preserving market relations between independent enterprises, still not working to a common social plan. No amount of elections from below, directives from the revolutionary government, or consultations with the masses will change the fact that these people will be responsible for the policy decisions in industry and will have to know what they are doing. Nor would it change the fact that they are doing the job currently done by capitalist “bosses” and will have ample scope to develop into new capitalist bosses themselves (and bosses with wider and more totalitarian powers). Electing different bosses does not abolish the boss system. The big issues are not decided “on the shop floor”, to use a phrase much loved by advocates of “self management”. Capitalism is already transferring more and more authority on the shop floor to workers themselves rather than supervisors or lower level line management. This only highlights the fact that questions like unemployment are imposed by market forces outside the control of “shop floor” management, or higher management for that matter. Elected workers’ councils would be in exactly the same position of having to lay off staff, if there is no market for the goods they produce. Revolutionaries have to raise their sights above the shop floor, to places where more important decisions are taken, and to issues on which decisions simply are not taken in a market economy, because there are no decision makers with authority over the economy as a whole, and our fate is still subject to the blind workings of economic laws beyond our control. Just saying “the workers will do it” does not solve a thing. Who are these workers who will do it after the revolution, without discussing what they will do, before the revolution? Power will pass from the hands of the bourgeoisie to the hands of the working class, because the working class will put forward a clear cut program to rescue society from the impasse it finds itself in under bourgeois rule. Slogans simply demanding a change in power because it is “more democratic” will get nowhere. The question of centralisation and decentralisation of enterprise management, is quite separate from the question of abolishing commodity production. The issue of “who decides, who rules” only arises in the context of “what is to be done”.

The socialist solution is to dissolve the antagonism between separate enterprises so that each is directly aiming to meet social needs as best it can, rather than responding in its own separate interests. How do you decide whether to build a steel mill, or a hospital, or a thermal or hydro-electrical power station? Not just by democratically consulting steel workers, or hospital patients, or construction workers, or delegates from all three and others concerned. There must be some definite economic criteria for decision making. It is no good just saying we will build socially useful things like schools and hospitals instead of profitable things like steel mills or power stations. You need steel to build schools and hospitals, and you need electric power to run them. At present the only criterion according to which goods and services are produced and investments are made to produce them, is market profitability. The actively functioning capitalists today are the financial managers and similar functionaries who are not the nominal owners of the capital they control, but carry out the social functions of the capitalist controlling it, and live it up accordingly.

Scotland, the Bereaved (1959)

From the No. 6 — 1959 issue of the Western Socialist

  “Baith faither and wee Willie oot o' a job . . . It’s worse than a death in the hoose.”

This piece of ungrammatic but nevertheless heartrending conversation happened to catch my ear one night while travelling in one of Glasgow’s tram cars, that ancient mode of transport which most of the city’s workers are obliged to use despite the “cheap” family automobiles now on sale. Although at first glance the wee Glasgow housewife’s remark may have seemed a peculiarly dramatised one it is undoubtedly true that a household that finds its two bread-winners unemployed is a pretty cheerless place.

The television and probably the furniture has been procured on the “never never” system and, with nothing but a few pounds coming in from the unemployment benefit and national assistance, the house in all probability will not only be a sad one but pretty soon — an empty one. The agonising round of cap-in-hand job-hunting commences and soon men who had a passionate pride in their skill as shipwrights, carpenters and electricians find themselves thankful for the chance of a couple of days’ work as labourers in casual employment on a building site, as part-time workers in bar rooms and cinemas.

And with the edge of poverty and insecurity sharpening day by day, the home that was a haven of sociability becomes a place where frayed nerves lead daily to bickering and squabbling. Soon the nagging thought, that perhaps it is due to some failing on his part as a worker that he can’t find a job, drives the breadwinner, bit by bit, to lose confidence in himself and gradually his self respect is destroyed. So desperate is the plight of the unemployed worker that not only is his physical condition denuded of virility by denial of the barest necessities of life, but his moral fibre is destroyed by conditions which degrade him to the extent of losing his self respect. He becomes in fact a mere shadow of a man, a shell whose substance has been torn from him by the monster that is present-day society.

It is at this point, that the most objectionable of social disease, unemployment, throws up to the surface its cancerous, parasitic growth — the Labour leader — that detestable embodiment of all that is unscrupulous, insincere and unprincipled. The emotion-filled speeches fill the air as workers are coaxed, implored and railroaded into giving their support to this or that great man. Later when the worker has been wooed and won and the political honeymoon is over, the disenchantment occurs. The great men turn out to have feet of clay, "right up to the elbows.” It is then that phrases such as "sold up the river” and "stabbed in the back” become the every day parlance of embittered working men.

The history of working class politics in the west coast of Scotland serves as an object lesson as to how much faith workers should place in the promises of silvery tongued "rebels.” The old days of the "Red” Clyde are past but if the working class can learn from the disastrous mistakes of their fathers then some of the blood which has been spilled by the old misguided fire-eaters of yesteryear will not have been spilled in vain. If the problems of unemployment, insecurity and poverty are to be solved it is obvious that a knowledge of how these problems arise is necessary. Instead of calling on the "assistance” of the political witchdoctors to solve these problems, we must seek the cure on our own behalf. We must wave aside the "nationalisation balms” and the "state control incantations” as these "remedies,” these political prescriptions have proved not only inadequate but injurious when applied to the body politic.

Whether you, as a worker, are engaged in a shipyard, a mine or a factory you cannot ignore the threat of unemployment. This threat hangs like a cloud over the heads of all workers whether they produce tankers, coal or papier mache dolls. If there is no longer any profit to be realised from your particular product, the owner of that industry will dispense with your mental and physical energies. You will in fact be unemployed although, in Britain, there is a tendency in the press to call it "redundant” rather than unemployed. However a garbage heap by any other name would still stink.

All commodities today are produced for profit — no profit. . . . no production. . . . no work. It is an undeniable fact, difficult as it may be to realise, that goods are not produced for use; coal is not mined in order that your house may be warm, clothing is not tailored to be worn nor are houses built to be lived in.

Recently miners in Scotland have become unemployed because, as officials of the National Coal Board assure us, there is too much coal; but go into any house in Scotland and ask if there is too much coal and you will receive dark looks from the inhabitants who will in all likelihood be huddled around a pathetic fire which could well do with some of this surplus coal that is piling up. It is because we live in a society where production is carried on for profit that we have to endure such insane situations as thousands of people homeless, or ill housed, and an army of building tradesmen out of work.

The Glasgow housewife, with whose comment I started this article, will probably never read this but hundreds who have the same fear of the insecurity of modern society will and it is to them that I say, let us, the working class, the only people of any consequence, get to the cause of this insecurity and by our understanding change society from Capitalism to Socialism where the good things of life will not be produced for profit but for use. For then, and only then, fellow workers, will such a plight as can be described as " . . . worse than a death in the hoose” be a part of man’s prehistoric past.

Dick Donnelly 

Glasgow Kelvingrove Branch

From 

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