Reasons to be cheerful

The Socialist Party is the only party that stands against the present system and for the rule of the people; the only party that boldly avows itself the party of the working class and its purpose the overthrow of wage-slavery. So long as the present system of capitalism prevails and the few are allowed to own industries, working people will be in poverty as they are today. The Socialist Party is the party of the exploited workers in the mills and mines, on the railways and on the farms, the workers of both sexes and all races and colours. It speaks for the working class in a word, constituting a great majority of the people and in fact THE PEOPLE, demands that the world’s industries shall be taken over by the workers who shall operate them for the benefit of the whole people. Private ownership has had its day. 

The Socialist Party stands for common ownership and co-operation and industrial democracy. The Socialist Party demands the overthrow of wage-slavery. Workers are now doing their own thinking. They have also found that politics express class interests and that the interests of those who make the wealth and those who take it are not identical. The most promising the fact that the working class is organising its power; its economic power and its political power. The workers who have made the world and who run the world, are preparing to take possession of the world. This is the meaning of socialism and is what the Socialist Party stands for.

Our economy of abundance must become the common property of all the people. There is a new and full life to be built. Piecemeal reforms cannot solve the problems our society faces. We want peace, instead of bloodshed and violence and destruction. We want security, instead of insecurity, the terrible business of not knowing today whether or not we will have a job and an income tomorrow. We want to be sure that we will be able to raise our families in decent homes and good schools. We want comfort and prosperity, instead of low living standards, slums, child labour, unemployment, hunger and starvation. We want democracy and freedom, instead of regimentation, bureaucracy, racial and religious and national conflict. These are the simple things which all  people everywhere long for, the simple things we have always wanted for ourselves and our children.

But we don’t have them.

 We live in a modern civilisation. We have huge industries. We have undreamed-of natural resources. We have millions of skilled workers. We can produce in one day what it took our ancestors years to produce. Yet we do not have peace, security and prosperity.

It is the social system that stands in the way, the system of capitalism.

 From the point of view of “logic” and “reason” the waste of the resources of the peoples is utter insanity. But it is the logic of capitalism and the class structure of society. It is the defence of the interests, privileges and income of the capitalist class.

Nothing is more certain than that the social and economic system under which we live is undergoing a process of evolution. A new social system is evolving out of the present chaos. We do not attack individuals. We oppose the system itself. Marxism has always taken the position that there is no final crisis of capitalism as such. A myth evolved that Marxism put forward the idea of capitalism collapsing of itself is of course completely false. Capitalism, even in its period of decay, will not collapse of itself. It falls to the workers through their own organisations, to overthrow it. 

The socialist transformation of society is the only means to guarantee a civilised existence and carry society forward on the basis of the maximum use of the resources created by the labour of the working class. By utilising the full economic, scientific and technical potential  with the enthusiastic creative efforts of the working class, in a society where unemployment, want and hunger are abolished and access to all necessities are guaranteed, the free democratic control of industry  by the working class will ensure a higher development of society on a more civilised and enlightened basis. 

A free democratic society under the control and management of the working class could carry through the new transformation of industry, which would clear the way for the complete transition to socialism.

We demand the means of production and distribution in the name of the workers and the control of society in the name of the people. We demand the abolition of capitalism and wage-slavery and the surrender of the capitalist class. We demand the equal rights of all the people regardless of race, colour, creed or nationality. We demand complete control of industry by the workers; we demand all the wealth they produce for their own enjoyment, and we demand the Earth for all the people.

Remembering Paisley's Radical History

On April 1 1820 an Address to the Inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland compiled by activists who formed a Provisional Government called for workers to “desist from labour” until their rights as free men were recovered. Almost immediately, around 60,000 people took part in the strike in Paisley and Glasgow where the ‘almost the whole population of the working classes’ obeyed orders. The Paisley weavers were at the “vanguard of this new radicalism”, according to historian Sir Tom Devine. The town became a hotbed of protest and anti-established feeling as living standards sharply declined and call for reforms went unnoticed.

A month after the Peterloo massacre, around 15,000 workers gathered on Meiglemoss Moor on the outskirts of Paisley to protest against events in Manchester. Flags were flown, pipes play and drums beaten. Later, the Glasgow contingent returned to the city in a ‘menancing manner” with police officers attacked with brickbats and windows smashed. Back up was called for an the military arrived with canons guarding the bridges. Some calm was restored but “outrage and confusion was renewed” the following day. Magistrates were hissed at as they went to church and, later, open violence erupted once again. Innocent bystanders were wounded, windows broken and street lamps torn down.

As post-Peterloo fervour intensified, committed radicals began to meet in secret in counties from Ayrshire to Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire

Paisley Book Festival will celebrate Radical Stories and Rebel Voices across the town from 20th to 29th February 2020. 

An opening night event celebrating Renfrewshire Rebels will feature an exclusive reading from Scottish radicalism author Maggie Craig, poetry from Renfrewshire born Jim Carruth, and music from Glasgow-based singer-songwriter Heir of the Cursed.
 

As part of the festival, playwright and artist John Byrne will return to his native Paisley for a Big Birthday Bash celebrating his 80th year. The event has been described as "part retrospective of his incredible body of work and part a raucous knees-up". The Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers - aka an all-star line-up of Val McDermid, Christopher Brookmyre, Mark Billingham, Doug Johnstone, Stuart Neville and Luca Veste - will swap murder for music an perform a special gig. 

Meanwhile, broadcaster Kirsty Wark will be in discussion with Ruth Wishart about her new novel and her life at the forefront of political reporting, as part of the University of the West of Scotland’s Inspiring Women series.

Socialist Standard No. 1386 February 2020

As PDF

• Editorial
• Pathfinders
• The Pensions Struggle: The Financial Iceberg
• Letter to David Attenborough
• Cooking the Books I: Not for the squeamish
• Wood For the Trees: Life without socialism
• Material World: Nigeria: need poverty exist
• Green ‘New Deal’: Naomi’s Fantasy 
• Green Capitalism: Ideology for Oxymorons
• Jeremy Corbyn: Last Stand of the Left
• Money: Icon of Slavery
• Religion: New Opiates
• Cooking the Books II: Boris’s Gift Nag
• Proper Gander
• Even if He Wasn’t an Idiot
• Reviews
• Bad Marx – See Me!
• 50 Years Ago: Slaughter in Vietnam
• Obituary: Jim Ryder
• Meetings
• Rear View
• Free Lunch

Humanity has arisen

We know much better today than before what the needs of mankind are — one of the great developments of modern times is this knowledge of human needs and of how to do something to meet them. The facts are that we are now in a position where the means to meet these needs for every human being are not only to hand now, but have been to hand for at least generations. Nevertheless the hungry and the poor are still here, and very little effectively is being done to feed them. It’s not because the food isn't there or that it couldn’t be brought very easily to those who need it. Satisfying the demand for food is a very small part of what could be done, because if we look into the possibilities of the various types of ways of improving conditions, we see that it is not a question of doubling, it is a question of achieving ten-fold or more the present material requirements within a few years. In fact, the tragedy is that of all the world with its enormously greater possibilities than actualities. What is lacking. as the economists points out, is not that people just need things, but that they lack what is called ‘effective need.’ An effective need is that of a person who has got the money in his pocket to pay for what he wants. Of course in a famine prices go up, and naturally you have got to be pretty rich to afford food then.

On these strictly economic lines, hundreds of millions have starved and most people still go hungry. But the essential thing is that we have got to find a different way of satisfying need than following the lines of nineteenth century economics. We know very well that the world is deeply divided. The distribution of resources and raw materials in various parts of the world would not be a very serious affair were it not for one thing—capitalism. The basic ideas of economics has always been described as the science of scarcity and it was right to do so, because before there was sufficient knowledge, there was real scarcity. Now, all scarcity, all unfulfilled need in the world, is henceforth due to capitalism’s laws. The means are there, the knowledge is there, and what is needed is the will to apply it. The difficulty is a political difficulty and not a material shortage.

New technology is going to transform the world and we must face the complete alteration of our way of life which will be brought about by removing the chief evil of the modern factory system — machine minding. Any job that is dull and repetitive can be better done by robots and automation than by a human being.

More important than this is the knowledge of knowledge itself: the knowledge that if you don’t know the answers, you know how to find them out, and this is shown in the other aspect of human affairs, one that affects all of us as individuals — the questions of health and disease, the questions of life and death. We have seen already the  beginnings of enormous transformation — the curse of diseases like smallpox has ended and diphtheria has almost entirely disappeared. The chance of a child dying between the ages of five and eighteen are practically limited to road accidents, the major cause of death for this age-group.

Disease has disappeared from youth, and is disappearing from middle-age. It has not yet disappeared from old age. We could of course already do a great deal more with our knowledge than we do. We could for instance stop poisoning people simply by ending the toxic fumes we are putting into the air from factories and power stations.

Our duty therefore nowadays includes first the understanding and then the changing of the world we live in to see that there are in the world enormous potentialities for human development, for thought, for science, for poetry, which is stifled at the moment by sheer poverty. The Socialist Party wants to see mankind realise its full potential.

Industrial Democracy or Industrial Slavery

Society has been divided into two hostile economic classes and that they are at war with each other is inherent in the capitalist system itself, and not due to any malicious agitation of demagogues, as the capitalist media would have deluded wage-workers think. There can be no compromise that is more than temporary and no peace for the working class except at the price of slavery. The issue is socialism versus capitalism. We are only too aware that socialism is little understood and that it is everywhere a target for denunciation by the media. When analysed it means a more equitable distributions of the products of labour; cooperation instead of competition; common ownership of land and all the means of production and distribution. It proclaims the coming of the cooperative commonwealth to take the place of wage slavery. The present capitalist system is not only a failure, but a colossal aggregation of crime. It robs, it degrades, it starves; it is a foul blot upon the face of our civilisation. it promises only an increase of its horrors. There is no hope other than by the pathway mapped out by the Socialist Party, the advocates of the cooperative commonwealth.

The Socialist Party is a “reform” party. It has a most radical reform program. It aims to do away with the present economic system and substitute common ownership and cooperative control of all means of production and distribution. The Socialist Party’s “reform” is to do away with industrial servitude and wage slavery, to abolish the capitalist system.

The Socialist Party starts out upon bedrock facts and builds upon them. It deals with actual conditions and applies rational remedies to the social ills diseases which afflict society. The Socialist Party engages in a century-old struggle against all the pretenders who  under a socialist label advocate policies and theories that have nothing in common with socialism. One reason capitalism has survived beyond its time, and inflicted untold miseries upon the world can be laid t the feet of those who falsely speak in its name. We of the Socialist Party have nothing to do with these various brands of so-called “socialism” or “communism.” We are Marxists, because we know that Marxism is the only revolutionary socialism of the working class, and that is the only genuine socialism. History has demonstrated the spuriousness of every other brand. Marxism is a theory of social evolution which affirms that capitalism is obsolete and that it must be, and inevitably will be, replaced by a higher form of social organisation which Marx and Engels called socialism, or communism. Socialism will not fall from the skies. Neither will it be gained by any appeals to the good will and compassion of the capitalist exploiters, as the Utopians, who preceded Marx, used to think, and as some people still seem to think. Socialism can be realised only as the outcome of the class struggle of the workers.there is an irreconcilable conflict of class interests between the workers and their capitalist exploiters. All the political actions and judgements of the Socialist Party must always be directed against the capitalist class, and never be taken in collaboration with them. The class war is the central and governing principle of socialist politics. It is by carrying the class struggle to its logical conclusion — the abolition of capitalism — that the socialist society will be achieved. This is the teaching of Marxism. There is no other way. Every attempt to find another way, by supporting the capitalists, by conciliating them, by collaborating with them has led not toward the socialist goal but to defeat and disaster for the workers. 

The Socialist Party is an irreconcilable opponent of the capitalist class and of so-called “socialists.” The Socialist Party pursues an independent policy designed to serve the interests of the working people and not of their masters.

To have true power, the workers’ movement must be class conscious. Until it is so, it will be among the bulwarks of capitalism and wage-slavery. While the members strike against the consequences of the system, they steadily vote to perpetuate the system, and their leaders encourage them to adhere to, and not depart from the status quo the present conditions, are marked with increasing impotency and are necessarily resulting in disappointment and failure. workers at all opportunity— economically, politically, and otherwise — must use their entire organised class-power in resisting the capitalist system, and in charging it at every point until finally it is overthrown and the world’s workers stand forth free men and women. Our ideal is a humanity secure and happy.

Young footballers - exploited as a commodity

Efforts to prevent child abuse in Scottish football are at risk of being undermined by an "imbalance" in the youth football contract system, it has been claimed. Ex-children's commissioner Tam Baillie said professional clubs hold too much power over the future of players. 

Tam Baillie, who was Scotland's children's commissioner between 2009 and 2017, praised the SFA's inquiry into historic sexual abuse but warned the issue will not be properly tackled unless the "commercial exploitation of children" is ended.

He said: "If you think about it these clubs have the dreams of these young players in the palm of their hand. There is a power imbalance between the clubs and the young players.

"Some of the control that the clubs want to exert over the children actually exacerbates that power imbalance and we know from painful tragic experience that people who seek to harm children it is that power imbalance which is one of the things that silences children. As long as you have the registrations and contracts in the way that they're set up just now you will have that power imbalance, and as long as you have the power imbalance then there's the potential for undermining whatever good efforts or changes are made through that narrow prism of child protection."

Jim Sinclair, former director of youth development at Rangers, that the compensation scheme for young players "can turn into a transfer market or end up in a bartering situation", adding that some parents "do not have full knowledge of the ramifications" of their children signing deals with clubs.

Scott Robertson, a youth coach with more than 30 years' experience,  said "Why have we created a system where we have to transfer money for 13 or 14-year-old children and if the money's not paid they're stuck with the club whether they like it or not." Robertson said it was often difficult for players or parents to talk about the situation for fear of being "blacklisted" and effectively putting an end to their career.

Ross McArthur, chairman of Dunfermline Athletic, explained, "I think sometimes in football that people are treated as though they are a commodity but they're not, they're a person and that's the culture that we try and push down all the age groups and look after people."

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-51297745

Manifesto of the Socialist Movement

Capitalism is an economic system based on three things: wage labour (working for a wage), private ownership or control of the means of production (things like factories, mines, farms, and offices), and production for exchange and profit.

While some people own means of production, or capital, most of us don't and so to survive we need to sell our ability to work in return for a wage, or else scrape by on welfare benefits. This first group of people is the capitalist class or "bourgeoisie" in Marxist jargon, and the second group is the working class or "proletariat".

It is a basic simple process that has gone on for centuries. Money is invested to make more money. When money functions like this, it functions as capital. For instance, when a company uses its profits to hire more staff or open new premises, and so make more profit, the money here is functioning as capital. As capital increases (or the economy expands), this is called 'capital accumulation', and it's the driving force of the economy.

Those accumulating capital do so better when they can shift costs onto others. If companies can cut costs by not protecting the environment, or by paying sweat-shop wages, they will. So catastrophic climate change and widespread poverty are signs of the normal functioning of the system.

Furthermore, for money to make more money, more and more things have to be exchanged for money. Thus the tendency is for everything from everyday product to carbon dioxide emissions – and, crucially, our ability to work - to become commodified, something to be sold on the market. In a world where everything is for sale, we all need something to sell in order to buy the things we need. Those of us with nothing to sell except our ability to work have to sell this ability to those who own the factories, offices, etc. And of course, the things we produce at work aren't ours they belong to our bosses. That is crucial - money does not turn into more money by magic, but by the work we do every day. The wages we get roughly equals the cost of the things necessary to keep us alive and able to work each day. The difference between the wages we are paid and the value we create is how capital is accumulated, or profit is made. This difference between the wages we are paid and the value we create is called "surplus value". The extraction of surplus value by employers is the reason we view capitalism as a system based on exploitation - the exploitation of the working class. It’s essentially the same for all work, not just that in private companies but government employees also face constant attacks on their wages and conditions in order to reduce costs and maximise profits across the economy as a whole.

In order to accumulate capital, businesses must compete in the market with other companies. They cannot afford to ignore market forces, or they will lose market share to their competitors, go bankrupt or get taken over in a merger. 

Therefore even the CEOs aren't really in control of capitalism, capital itself is. It's because of this that we can talk about capital as if it has agency or interests of its own, and so often talking about 'capital' is more precise than talking about bosses, who are the functionaries of capital.

Both capitalists and workers, therefore, are alienated by this process, but in different ways. While from the workers' perspective, our alienation is experienced through being controlled by our boss, the business owners experiences it through impersonal market forces and competition with other companies.

Because of this, both management and politicians are powerless in the face of ‘market forces,’ each needing to act in a way that facilitates the continued accumulation of capital (it is incidental that they do quite well out of it). They cannot act in our interests, since any concessions they grant us will help their competitors on a national or international level.

So, for example, if a manufacturer develops new technology for making cars which doubles productivity it can lay off half its workers, increase its profits and reduce the price of its cars in order to undercut its competition.

If another company wants to care for its workforce and not make people redundant, eventually it will be put out of business or taken over by a less compassionate  competitor - so it will also have to bring in the new technology and have a policy the lay-offs to stay competitive.

The primary role of governments in capitalist society is to maintain the capitalist system and assist in the accumulation of capital. As such, a government will pass laws against workers when we try to further our interests against capital. When the excesses and conflict between the employer and the employee threaten the general stability of society with disruption governments will endeavour to create a “balance of power” but one which always favour the capitalist class but with enough compromise and concessions to the workers to placate any determined dissent.

Abridged and slightly adapted from here
http://libcom.org/library/capitalism-introduction