Fight the Good Fight - Class Struggle

"Any city, however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich; these are at war with one another." - Plato

The class struggle is a struggle between collective Capital, i.e. the class of capitalists or employers, and collective Labour, i.e. the working class. A class is a category with common economic interests, the interests defining the class. The interests of employers and workers are diametrically opposed. The capitalists’ interest is to continue private ownership of the means of production, and to appropriate as much as he can of the social product (wealth) which is currently produced by the working class. The working class resist this process by taking defencive action, mainly through trade unions and strike action. Their economic interests can only lie in the removal of the conditions which give rise to this struggle. This means the abolition of capitalism and the replacement of private ownership by common ownership (Socialism). It is not possible to reconcile these opposing interests. The class struggle is an organic part of the capitalist system of production and consequently is inseparable from its operation.

The whole social and economic system rests on the capitalists’ control of the political machinery. That control in turn is based on the support of the majority of the population who either actively or by default vote for political parties who propose to continue and administer the capitalist method of production. The Socialist Party's immediate task is to impart socialist knowledge. Capitalism can last only as long as the majority of the workers are prepared to preserve it, and as long as it lasts the so-called abnormal periods of economic blizzards and wars will continue. These crises are normal to capitalism, and it is the duty of workers to grasp this fact and work to end this system. The social problems we are troubled with to-day can be solved only when everyone has free access to the means of life; when goods are produced solely for use and freely distributed amongst the members of society. Socialism offers all that is worth-while to the workers. It is an historical necessity, and it is in their interests, and we earnestly ask them to give serious thought to it as the solution to their problems. Only from the workers' class-conscious political activities can Socialism be achieved, and war, want and insecurity be banished from the earth for ever. Mere resistance to government policies is insufficient as it cannot even achieve its purpose because it cannot rid the world of capitalism. It is perfectly clear that the class struggle is ultimately a struggle for political power, the issue being common ownership vs. private ownership. There is no half-way house. This is the revolutionary proposition, and this is the sole issue upon which the Socialist Party seek political support.

It is not the function of a Socialist Party to advocate, support, or oppose, or otherwise participate in reformist issues. This includes agitation or protest against the withdrawal of any reform previously granted. Reformist schemes designed to improve the lot of workers under capitalism can never express socialist political activity in the class struggle, or have any prospect of achieving a socialist revolution, and it is a waste of the workers’ time and energy to attempt to improve capitalism. But instead of workers using their votes to abolish Capitalism, they use the same vote to keep it going, even if on a temporary reform basis. This is not in their interests, either in the short or long term, as history has shown. Whilst the “welfare of the working class” under capitalism is not worth the effort wasted on trying to enhance it, the political welfare of the working class is our concern, and ours alone. This is why we are hostile to those political parties and groups, be they right-wing or left-wing, who mislead the workers by pretending that their real interests lie in making capitalism more comfortable.

Reforms are not revolutionary, and it is highly debatable whether or not they are effective in the long or short term. The main point which is sometimes forgotten is that the introduction or the withdrawal of any legislative measures endorsing reforms depend ultimately on the will of the capitalists who control the political machinery. It is they alone who have the final word, and their attitude will be determined by their economic and political interests and not on the particular merits of the reform, no matter what the social need. The struggle to obtain or retain reforms, i.e. changes in capitalism made by and through the machinery of government in such fields as housing, pensions, health, education, , or political activity over prices, and high rents, is not part of the class struggle, because such activity accepts and favours the retention of private property. It is no excuse to justify this on the grounds that the workers are unable or unwilling to understand socialism, and that their lives should be made a little easier in the meantime. This is the Gospel of Despair. By the same political act (the vote) the workers can obtain socialism. What is lacking is socialist understanding. If that is so, then it is the plain duty of those who do understand to devote their entire activity to the spread of socialist ideas. The Socialist Party does not waste time and energy chasing reforms. It seeks political power for the sole purpose of abolishing capitalism.

The struggle for higher wages, etc. is not reformist. It is an aspect of the class struggle. It is not the will of the capitalist that determines what wages he shall pay. As the product of labour is divided into Wages and Profits one cannot relatively expand without the other relatively contracting. Almost invariably the employers are opposed to higher wages, or shorter working hours, which is, in effect, the same thing. More money for less labour. Economic forces decide this issue. The Strike by workers, the Lockout by employers, wage increases are gained against the will of the employers, and wage reductions enforced against the will of the workers. This is open class conflict. Workers who take part in strike action, either inside or outside trade unions, are not committed to any particular political point of view. Anarchists, Socialists, Communists, Labourites, Tories, will unite for the common objective — not through choice, but through necessity. They do not have to squander their votes to get higher wages as is the case with reforms. 

A nail in the coffin (1995)

Letter to the Editors from the March 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Comrades,

I was born in 1900 and am four years older than the party. I became a socialist after hearing Alec Shaw destroy Peter Kerrigan [of the Communist Party] at an outdoor debate in Clydebank in 1928. Since then I have voted by writing Socialism across my ballot paper, although in recent years through old age I have not bothered. But recently I was able to vote for a socialist for the first time in my life. Although I had to be taken in a wheelchair and the effort may well have killed me, I feel as if I have finally hammered a nail into the coffin of Capitalism. I feel as if the ice age is over and the next century will be ours.

By voting and reading a comment in the Standard by Steve Coleman "we are a movement not a monument" I feel rejuvenated. Some time ago I was given a book called The Monument which claims to be a history of the SPGB. The author says this is not an official history as he did not have access to the party's records. The book is therefore anecdotal and relies heavily on the writer's memory (or imagination). An example of the dubious nature of this information is the tale of Glasgow branch voting to expel John Higgins for bringing a gas mask to a branch meeting during the war.

This statement caricatures the men and women who were stalwarts in the struggle for socialism in those days. There is no other comment in the book about Glasgow comrades which leads me to think that Mr Barltrop has never been there.

Jimmy Brodie was a joiner, like myself, and he used to give history and economics classes during the lunch hour on whichever boat we were working on. The steel bulkhead was the blackboard (the location was changed daily to avoid the gestapo) and the socialist message remained on the walls for weeks. These classes were attended by hundreds of workers and the debates engendered carried on into worktime much to the consternation of foremen and managers. Not to speak of the Commie second fronters.

It took a lot of guts to advocate the socialist case in the emotional climate of the 1940s. Tommy Mulheron was prominent in the dock strike. Alec Shaw in Howdens. Joe Richmond an apprentice where I worked organised a strike in 1943 which brought the firm to its knees. In spite of Union opposition the apprentices won.

My branch of the union had lots of socialists, Willie Travers, Joe Richmond, Jimmy Craig, Eddie Hughes, John Fitton, Jimmy McGowan, Willie Henderson, so that it became known as the Socialist Sixth. These men were indefatigable exponents of the Socialist case, some of them were speakers for the party, but all of them were influential in the Union. The Socialist Party has never had leaders, it has no need of them. But it has had its heroes and been all the stronger and richer for them. This book, The Monument, diminishes these men whose worth is greater than all the Maxtons, Bevans, Pollitts and Gallachers, whose names are still revered by many workers today.

The present Socialist Party stands on the shoulders of those who have gone before and should give credit to the breadth and depth of those shoulders. Surely, approaching its centenary, the party can write an official history, not only of the party but the whole world wide Socialist movement.

Do not leave it to the Barltrops of this world. Do not let our heroes die without trace if left to word of mouth they will become as myth and legend, more fantasy than fact, and spawn books like The Monument which does the Movement a disservice.

I am now 94 years old and must be one of the last of my generation. I grieve that my old comrades have died unsung although they were heroes all.

Yours for the Revolution,

Paddy Small, Glasgow

Socialist Knowledge is Power

"One advantage the workers do have—that of numbers but numbers are useless unless organised by experience and guided by knowledge." - Marx (Inaugural Address of the First International)

We believe that socialism is the only way to solve the economic worries of the world. The Socialist Party strives at all times to bring to the notice of the workers of the world our ideas. But what good our efforts do is too often dissipated because of the confusing influence of what we call "pseudo-socialists”. Socialism is not central planning and a command economy. It is not nationalisation of the banks, railways, transport, coal mines and heavy industries. It does not mean the bureaucratic dictatorship which rules over the workers as in the former Soviet Union and its satellite states. None of these are common ownership. These are some of the things which are not socialism.

Socialism will have been reached when the raw materials contained in the earth, and all the industrial products which men and women use, all those instruments of production and distribution will be commonly owned, and in that day there will be no nations, but only a community of' people. Democratic control means majority control, and that is directly opposite to state control, which is government for a minority, even though elected by the majority.

 It is the Government, and all the paraphernalia and trappings which go with it, that is the "State." The workers of every country are dimly conscious that the capitalists exploit them. So the State machinery uses propaganda to check their consciousness so long as it is quiescent, and force to put them down if it becomes. The educational machine is used by the State to instil into the minds of children the idea that each nation, and the people living in it, is an almost divine unit that is held together by ties of blood, language, love of country, religion, and way of life. That is the job of the State, to bully and persuade the workers over whom it has power into a perpetual belief that everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

 Those workers who succumb to its influence are its willing wage-slaves. Of those who do not, some become Socialist Party members.

Socialism and Counter-Revolution

The Socialist Party views capitalism as one whole cloth which, although woven into different patterns, and sometimes of mixed materials, nevertheless has one basic texture—the exploitation of the workers by a class that lives on the surplus, over and above that which the worker receives as his or her wages.

WORLD SOCIALISM is a society without frontiers, classes, property or rulers. Only democratic political action by the working class, without leaders or dogmas, will lead to the of a socialist society. A conscious majority, using delegates and not leaders, must take control of the state and abolish its coercive functions and the profit system in all its forms.

 Will socialism need to use the state machine to combat a counter-revolution, begun perhaps, by former members of the ruling class? The answer, in a word, is "no." But how can we be confident of this? If a majority of women and men has decided to abolish the social relations of capitalism and establish a classless society (and the only way that it can be established is by the democratic action of the majority), then a bloody-minded contingent of financiers, aristocrats or factory owners who refused to yield up to society what they once jealously guarded as theirs could be very easily immobilised without violence. In order to be effective, any counter-revolutionary force would need a variety of resources which the majority of us would have to make sure it did not get. It would need electricity, petrol, food, drink and most essentially workers who are soldiers. 

Is it a reasonably foreseeable prospect that after the factories, offices, media, transport systems and so forth have been taken by the community, a significantly large number of soldiers will still be willing to turn their backs on their fellow workers and engage in violence to wrest the factories from the community and put them back into the hands of a minority? When a "revolution" is nothing more than a change of president or regime (because some murderous bandit or junta of professional killers has violently ousted the last lot in a coup) then you can see why, from the point of view of the would-be leaders, a counter-revolution would make sense. 

Counter-revolutions can be enacted in this way without the majority of workers even getting the chance to discover the original revolution. In socialism, anyone who seriously entertained the idea of dissuading the majority from operating the means of life in the interests of all and giving back the farms, factories. offices and media to a minority to operate for profit would certainly have their work cut out, probably for the first time in their life.

One objection to a society of common ownership is that there is just not enough wealth in the world to sustain a system of free access. But this idea is nurtured today by the artificial scarcity created by the profit system: goods and services are only produced if there is a market for them. On the face of it. goods are scarce; potentially, however, there is no shortage at all. Sometimes it may be too costly to, say, extract a mineral from the ground or irrigate barren land. Socialism would do away with all the restrictions of a private property society.

Socialists are confronted daily by those who believe that the answer to social ills is to reform society a little at a time, and a section in the pamphlet is therefore devoted to the issue of reformism. What emerges clearly is that there is no common ground between reformism and revolutionary action: if you seek reforms you openly accept the political and economic structure of society and limit your activity to effecting superficial changes. By opting for revolutionary action, on the other hand, socialists are aiming solely at a fundamental alteration in social relationships. 

Socialists possess no blueprint as to how administration will be conducted within a system of common ownership and democratic control, but two points are quite clear. Firstly, socialism will not be a centralised society. After all, we are talking about a world society (socialism cannot be established in one country or city) and it is inconceivable that there will be a single global administration. Secondly, it is very likely that there will be plenty of opportunities for local community involvement in decision-making in a socialist society, with local bodies and global bodies feeding ideas and initiatives into one another on the basis of dynamic democracy. But not until society and everything in it belongs to the people who inhabit it can we speak of genuine democracy.

The Socialist Party's Pledge

Marxism holds that the leading force in transforming society from capitalism to socialism is that class which is itself a product of capitalism, the working class or, as Marx more precisely defined it, the proletariat, i.e., wage workers who earn their livelihood through the sale of their labour power and have no other means of existence. Everywhere people are waking up and fighting against the oppression and exploitation which is a daily fact of their lives. The lies of the ruling class about “prosperity” in this country are being further exposed everyday. There is prosperity alright – but it is for a handful of rich capitalists – the conditions of the working people are getting worse and worse. Capitalism casts all the burden on the workers – wages stay the same, but profits continue to rise. The situation in health care, housing and government services is rapidly deteriorating. The source of all these conditions and injustices is capitalism. Once it is no longer possible to make a profit from racism, from bad housing and from the general misery of people, these problems can be quickly solved. 

Capitalism is set up with one thing in mind – to make the most profits possible for the handful of people who own the banks and corporations. It is the system under which we, and our parents and grandparents before us, have done all the work. We mine the mines, build the buildings, manufacture all the products: and then get just enough to live on – if we fight hard enough for it! On the other hand the small capitalist class builds up huge fortunes off of our labour and do no work themselves, except running all around the world spending the money that we made for them. No movement can afford to neglect its educational activities, and that the mischevious results of the false ideas spread by the enemies of Labour can only be combated by the spread of socialist ideas.

The goal of the Socialist Party is to replace world capitalist economy by world socialism. It is mankind’s only way out, for it alone can abolish the contradictions of the capitalist system which threaten to degrade and destroy the human race. The Socialist Party appeals for support, believing that the wage-earners must take into their own hands all available means of emancipating themselves and their children from wage slavery. A socialist society will abolish the class division of society, i.e., simultaneously with the abolition of anarchy in production, it will abolish all forms of exploitation and oppression of man by man. 

Society will no longer consist of antagonistic classes in conflict with each other, but will present a united commonwealth of labour. For the first time in its history mankind will take its fate into its own hands. Instead of destroying innumerable human lives and incalculable wealth in struggles between classes and nations, mankind will devote all its energy to the struggle against the forces of nature, to the development and strengthening of its own collective might.

By abolishing private ownership of the means of production and converting these means into social property, the world socialism will end the competitive and blind processes of the market, by consciously organised and planned production for the purpose of satisfying rapidly growing social needs. With the abolition of competition and anarchy in production, devastating crises and still more devastating wars will disappear. Instead of colossal waste of productive forces and spasmodic development of society-there will be a planned utilisation of all material resources and a painless economic development on the basis of unrestricted, smooth and rapid development of productive forces.

The abolition of private property and the disappearance of classes will do away with the exploitation of man by man. Work will cease to be toiling for the benefit of a class enemy: instead of being merely a means of livelihood it will become a necessity of life: want and economic inequality, the misery of enslaved classes, and a wretched standard of life generally will disappear; the hierarchy created in the division of labour system will be abolished together with the antagonism between mental and manual labour; and the last vestige of the social inequality of the sexes will be removed.

 At the same time, the organs of class domination, and the State in the first place, will disappear also. The State, being the embodiment of class domination, will die out in so far as classes die out, and with it all measures of coercion will expire. Under such circumstances, the domination of man over man, in any form, becomes impossible, and a great field will be opened for the social selection and the harmonious development of all the talents inherent in humanity. Culture will become the acquirement of all, which in turn will release human energy for the powerful development of science and art.

Thieves Falling Out

Please permit Socialist Courier a moment of schadenfreude.

A court's upheld an eviction notice from its landlord at a distribution warehouse in Gourock, Inverclyde. The site is owned by the M7  Real Estate which owns 800 industrial assets in 13 countries on behalf of its investors, with a fund worth more than £4bn. 

It is claimed the rent is as much as 60% below the market rate and last February, the  M7 Real Estate gave Amazon six months' notice to quit. It believes its action was the only way to get Amazon to respond to its demand for a rent increase, and those discussions are now under way. M7 is now seeking not only to evict Amazon but it also wants damages from the retailer for remaining on the site since August. 

Retail chains have been putting immense pressure on commercial landlords to lower rents. Although Amazon relies on a different type of commercial property, it is known for its muscular use of bargaining power. But the property investor is warning that there are no other similar sites in central Scotland to which Amazon could move at short notice.

Social Liberation

The supposed obstacle placed by unchanging human nature in the way of work and progress is a myth. Human knowledge and understanding and with them human conduct have changed, are changing, and will continue to change. With the development, through human agency, of mankind's control of natural forces and the power of producing wealth in greater abundance the potentialities of human co-operation have been more and more understood and consciously fostered. Co-operation was never entirely absent, though in the past much of the work of human beings was individual and it was possible to think and act in terms of individual effort and personally benefit from it. Now that the productive powers of co-operative effort have reached gigantic new levels it has become a possibility for each individual to benefit enormously from the conscious reorganisation of society on a socialist basis. All that will be needed is that the individual shall intelligently appreciate the place he will occupy in the life and work of society as a whole. The worker to-day who understood nothing of political organisation might refuse to take part in an election on the plea that one vote counts for nothing in an electorate of tens of millions. So also under socialism he might lack incentive to work if he knew nothing of the part he or she plays in co-operative production and the benefit he and every other person will derive therefrom. Yet the understanding voter uses his or her vote and the understanding worker will gladly and enthusiastically play his part under socialism.

“Liberty” has ever been the cry of our rulers, but the cry for “ Liberty ” is to exploit and plunder the workers. Clear the fog from your minds and study socialism. You cannot have “Liberty” within a system that enslaves you, neither can it be benevolently bestowed upon you. It is the power which private ownership gives to a handful of men over the remaining millions of society—our class. Whether we shall work or not, and consequently whether we shall have enough to eat or not or house ourselves, depends the capitalist: and, being at work, we expect with certainly that at every opportunity our wages will be forced down, our hours extended, our pace sped up. If the capitalist pleads that he himself is in the grip of circumstances, that competition in the world market makes it necessary for him to dispense with men wherever possible, and get the utmost out. of those who remain, we know that it is just because things are privately produced, with a view to sale, that this scramble for orders is possible. Here are we, on the one hand, needing all manner of things to keep us alive and make life happy; here, on the other, are the land, the factories, the transport systems that could satisfy these needs. We could produce in such abundance that no one need go short. We do produce even now enough to give us all such a standard of life as no worker enjoys. Why aren’t we getting it? Why are multitudes of us not working at all? Why do those who are in work live so meagerly? And how is it that such an enormous part of what we make goes to the upkeep of the masters, who did not work in its making?

We know why. We don’t create goods out of nothing. We work upon raw materials, and they come from the earth, and the masters own it. We work with tools and machines in workshops; and the masters own them. Consequently, the products when they are finished belong to them too. The only condition on which we are permitted to work is that this product can be sold at a profit. A profit can only be made when the goods fetch a price which will pay wages and leave a margin for the employer. In order to compete with his rivals, the capitalist will always try to fix his price below theirs; and since he is naturally unwilling to reduce his rate of profit, he will always reduce costs when he can.

We should take those things that are indispensable to the life of the community out of private hands, and make them the common property of the workers. That done, the task of supplying food for the hungry, or houses for the homeless, will have become relatively simple. The fine details do not matter. The particular working out of each part of the plan will no doubt be best done by the workers concerned in our farms, factories, offices, and so on, as the case may be. In its general outlines, the scheme of production can be shaped by the general legislative assembly, elected, as it will be, by workers, for the supreme purpose of co-ordinating all the varied activities of social life. This new character of the legislative assembly will be the reflection of the new character of society—a community of workers with full ownership of their means of livelihood. Many means will suggest themselves by which each worker, having performed his or her share of the necessary labour, will receive what is needed from the common store. There might be depots, similar to shops, where people would make their choice of goods. If so, the actual machinery for distributing goods would not differ greatly from that of to-day : the difference—the revolution—will be in the basis of production. The goods which are made will be made for the direct and sole purpose of satisfying the needs of the makers. Society will have organised itself for co-operative production. It will be the day of the workers, taking possession of and controlling the vast instruments of wealth production which all this time we have operated for the benefit of the masters.

When the means of life are socially owned, the State, which grew up with private property, will give way to something better. Direct control by the workers, all officials being elected, responsible to those who elected them, and capable of being recalled if they prove inefficient or unscrupulous. Needless to say, under capitalism the world is turned upside-down. Instead of being ordered and driven by taskmasters appointed from above, and rewarded at the end with a fraction of the value they produce, they should be able to decide by vote their working conditions, elect their officials, and have their needs richly satisfied, that is very midsummer madness! To the revolutionary worker it is a sane and obvious thing: the righting of a world which is already upside-down. The time has gone for both the private ownership and the state ownership control of industry. It is only on the basis of common ownership and direct democratic control that we can build the free and comradely life for which we have waited too long.

Sylvia Pankhurst's Socialism

So-called “socialists” hold that the idea of socialism consists in various reforms of the capitalist system: Parliamentary legislation to secure such things as more social services for the poor, higher taxation or taxation to pay for the upkeep of the State, subsidies to various businesses. Such policies amount to what is termed “state-capitalism.” Such aims from the Left differ little if any from those of the most confused and vague of the reformists. Programmes and policies are proposed in numerous platforms and soon become Holy Writ, as the accepted formula for social progress. Yet without discovering for ourselves what our aims really are, without defining them so that they may be understood by others, how shall we work for them, how shall we sow the seed that shall create a movement to achieve them? There is no hopeful vision of the new life socialism is meant to usher in.

Our goal is socialism and it is not a Party affair. It is a theory of social organisation. It is where property is held in common; in which the community produces, by conscious aim, sufficient to supply the needs of all its members; in which there is no trading, money, wages, or any direct reward for services rendered. It aims at the abolition of the State. It emphasises the interdependence of all members of the community and the need that the common storehouse and services to provide an insurance against want for every individual. We aim at the common storehouse, not the individual hoard. We desire that the common storehouse shall bulge with plenty, and whilst the common storehouse is supplied we insist that none shall go without. Let us produce in abundance; let us secure plenty for all; let us find pleasure in producing in lavish measure, plenty for all - in material comfort, in art, in learning, in leisure. In the socialist society at which we aim, all will share the productive work of the community and all will take a part in organising that work. Under capitalism the masses are as a flock of sheep driven by their owners. Socialism, on the contrary, there will be free co-operators, producing, inventing, studying, not under the compulsion of law, or poverty, or the incentive of individual gain, but from deliberate choice and with an eager zest for achievement. Socialism will provide the material and spiritual conditions which will make voluntary co-operative labour possible. Only by willing service and intelligent initiative can a true socialist society develop.

With socialism, all shall satisfy their material needs without stint or measure from the common storehouse, according to their desires. Everyone will be able to have what he or she desires in food, in clothing, books, music, education and travel facilities. The abundant production now possible, and which invention will constantly facilitate, will remove any need for rationing or limiting of consumption. Every person, relying on the great common production, will be secure from material want and anxiety. There will be no class distinctions for all such distinctions will be swept away. The desire for freedom will be tempered by the sense of responsibility towards the commonweal, which will provide security for all. Co-operation for the common good is necessary, but freedom, not domination, is the goal. 

There will be neither rich nor poor. Money will no longer exist, and none will desire to hoard commodities not in use, since a fresh supply may be obtained at will. There will be no selling, because there will be no buyers, since everyone will be able to obtain everything at will, without payment. The possession of private property, beyond that which is in actual personal use, will disappear. 

There will be neither masters nor servants, all being in a position of economic equality -- no individual will be able to become the employer of another. Stealing, forgery, burglary, and all economic crimes will disappear, with all the objectionable apparatus for preventing, detecting and punishing them. 

Compulsion of any kind is repugnant to the socialist ideal. No-one may make a wage-slave of another; no-one may hoard up goods for him or herself that he or she does not require and cannot use; but the only way to prevent such practices is not by making them punishable; it is by creating a society in which no-one needs to become a wage slave, and no-one cares to be cumbered with a private hoard of goods when all that needs is readily supplied as required from the common storehouse. 

Prostitution will become extinct; it is a commercial transaction, dependent upon the economic need of the prostitute and the customer's power to pay. Sexual partnerships will no longer be based upon material conditions, but will be freely contracted on the basis of affection and mutual attraction. 

With the disappearance of the desperate struggle for mere existence, which saps the energy and cripples initiative, a new vigour, a new independence will develop. People will have more courage to desire freedom, greater determination to possess it. They will be more exacting in their demands upon life, more fastidious as to their choice of a vocation. They will wish to work at what they enjoy, to order their lives as they desire. Work will be generally enjoyed as never before in the history of mankind. 

In these days of great populations with varied needs and desires, people should not be willing to return to an earlier stage of evolution at which every individual or family made its own house, clothing, tools, and cultivated its own small-holding. By discarding useless toil, we desire and expect to see, many workers co-operating in coordinated endeavours. The complicated and complex network of manufacturing and transport are dependent on the worldwide cooperative efforts of incalculable numbers of people. It is probable that developments in new technology and future inventions, will render less the requirement for resources and labour. Moreover, the influence of profit-making being eliminated, the unhealthy urbanisation of people will be checked. Nevertheless for at least a very long time, the large-scale production by many inter-linked workers, will remain a necessary condition of maintaining both plenty and leisure for all.

In order to promote initiative of the individual, as well as for the welfare of the collectivity we emphasise the need for the autonomous workers and neighbourhood councils, co-ordinated along the lines of production, distribution and transport. Everything has to be reorganised and built up on a new basis; production for use, not for profit.

Collated and adapted from various writings of Sylvia Pankhurst

Scottish Poverty

A new report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation  says that, "poverty in Scotland is rising, from an already unacceptably high level. More people are facing situations where they cannot afford the basics nor play a full role in society."

According to the latest official figures, just over one million people in Scotland are living in poverty, including 240,000 children - which is the same as one in four children.

The Resolution Foundation, who have also been involved with the study, predict that poverty will rise to 29% by 2023-24. They say this is because of cuts to financial support and help from by the UK government, called social security.

Poverty measured before housing costs (things like rent or mortgage, energy bills and council tax) is very similar between Scotland and the rest of the UK. However, when poverty is measured after housing costs there are significant differences in poverty levels, with lower levels in Scotland than in the rest of the UK overall. This is mainly because, on average, houses cost less in Scotland than in the rest of the UK. The report warns that the Scottish government needs to focus on increasing the amount of affordable houses in the country.

The latest data shows that 20% of Scots are in poverty after housing costs compared with 22% in the rest of the UK. This difference is biggest for children whose poverty rate currently stands at 24% in Scotland compared with 30% in the rest of the UK.