The need for socialist education

 

The waste of capitalism is so pervasive that the following is a sample list:

1. Cost of capitalist competition (duplication of product ranges between different firms where specialisation would be more economical, duplication of research facilities, unnecessary model changes and differentiation of products, advertising etc.)
 

2. Costs of the capitalist financial system (the stock exchange, the banking system, the existence of numerous banks and building societies.

3. Another cost of capitalism that would be eliminated is the production of luxury goods for the consumption of the capitalist class. How much could be saved for society by cutting out luxury consumption?

4. A most glaring cost of capitalism is unemployment.

 

The full utilisation of society’s resources would allow a massive increase in production even before the longer-term advantages of socially rational deployment of resources were realised. Is it possible to increase production? Where will the money come from? How could a socialist plan be financed? These objections are based on understanding the necessity of money. The fundamental point is that wealth is produced by human labour working with machines etc. There is no question of society being “unable to afford” the extra production potentially available. The whole notion is a piece of capitalist mystification designed to conceal the fact that the reason for the waste of resources under capitalism is that the capitalists will not “afford” to produce more, in the sense that it is not profitable for them to do so. Obviously many goods can be distributed directly rather than by being purchased with money out of wages earned.

In voting for the Socialist Party, the mass of the workers have indicated that they want a complete change from the capitalist system which has brought them misery, poverty, and insecurity. Our objective is the socialisation of society and the breaking down of the idea of private property, to encourage unselfish co-operation all over the globe.

No political system under capitalism is correctly described as fully democratic. However, the political systems of many (though far from all) countries do contain certain democratic elements. These democratic elements have arisen in the course of historical development, often as a result of working-class struggle. It is extremely important to socialists that these democratic elements be preserved and when possible strengthened and extended, even though they can never neutralise the essentially undemocratic nature of capitalism. The stronger and more extensive the democratic elements in political systems, the greater the scope for the spread of socialist ideas and the surer the prospect of a smooth and peaceful transition to socialism.

Scottish bosses are no different from English bosses – a capitalist has to exploit his workers in order to survive as a capitalist. Scottish bosses work together with English bosses to rule the country. The dictatorship of the bosses functions very similarly in the two countries. It is absurd for a worker to have any patriotic commitment to a boss-ruled Scotland. Left nationalists are people obviously much more committed to nationalism than to socialism. Socialism means the redistribution of power to ordinary people and it means democracy at every level of decision-making. The allocation of resources and production for use will have as its goal satisfying the needs of the people. The present system of manufacturing operates primarily for the purposes of capitalist profit instead of producing for the use of all is directly responsible for keeping e wage workers in all countries in constant subjection to the capitalist class. The object of the Socialist Party is to secure economic freedom for the whole community, ie, that all men and all women shall have equal opportunities of sharing in wealth production and consumption. The future of the world is to be cooperative, and not competitive. The time is ripe for great changes, those changes are certain to come, not the mere pettifogging changes of taxation, not the trifling additions to wages, but definite deep-rooted drastic changes, the dethroning of the capitalists, the people themselves becoming direct owners and controllers of themselves and the wealth they produce.

Socialists also look to the working class because it has tremendous potential power because it produces almost all of the wealth in society—and it can realize that power because of the way capitalism organizes us to work collectively. Most workers don’t think of themselves as being part of a class with collective social power. They feel isolated and in competition with other workers—and sometimes even see them as their enemies because of their skin colour, religion, national origin and so on. The Socialist Party teaches, promotes, and agitates exclusively for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of socialism. We, the Socialist Party reaffirm our allegiance to the uncompromising principles of international socialism. We declare that the capitalist system has outgrown its historic function and become utterly incapable of meeting the problems now confronting society. In spite of the development of new technology and the improved methods of industry, the position of the workers becomes ever more insecure, and the class struggle between the exploited and the exploiters become ever more acute. The boasted prosperity is only for the owners of the means of production and distribution; to working people, it means only hardship and misery. It is the capitalist system that is responsible for the increasing burden of arms production, wars, poverty, slums, sweated labour, much of the crime. Mental illnesses, diseases, and the commercialisation of sex. These being some of the manifestations of the present mode of production they can only be eliminated by the removal of the cause — the capitalist system. The method adopted by the Socialist Party for the abolition of the present social order is that of political action.

The Queen's Scotland

 

The Scottish government has given the Queen advanced access to at least 67 parliamentary bills deemed to affect her public powers, private property or personal interests under an arcane custom inherited from Westminster. They include legislation dealing with planning laws, property taxation, protections from tenants and a 2018 bill that prevents forestry inspectors from entering crown land, including Balmoral, without the Queen’s permission.

The Queen’s consent procedure, which critics have called anti-democratic, has been used repeatedly by the monarch in recent decades to secretly lobby for changes to proposed UK legislation before it is passed by parliament. The extent of the practice in Scotland, where it is known as crown consent, has until now been unknown to the public.

The royal court and the Scottish government declined to say how many of these laws were amended as a result of the monarch’s lobbying. However, the Guardian revealed how the Queen’s lawyers recently successfully persuaded a Scottish minister to give her an exemption from a law that was designed to cut carbon emissions through the construction of heat pipelines.

The monarchy is allowed to vet draft laws that potentially affect her sprawling private estate around Balmoral Castle in the Highlands.

She is one of Scotland’s largest private landowners, owning about 24,900 hectares (61,500 acres) at Balmoral and a further long lease on 4,730 hectares of Abergeldie estate, bordering Balmoral. Balmoral has been in the royal family’s possession since it was first leased by Queen Victoria in 1848. The estate has received hundreds of thousands of pounds in farming and forestry subsidies. These have included EU funds for the Highland cattle the Queen breeds at Balmoral, environmental improvements, rural development and, most of all, forestry. In 2018, Balmoral was given nearly £107,000 in EU subsidies, including £104,000 for “rural development” projects.

The Queen’s officials recently succeeded in getting the business rate valuations for all four of her grouse moors and “deer forests”, used by the royals for deer stalking at Balmoral, cut by 45%, from £45,600 to £25,500, backdated to 1 April 2017, using widely available appeal powers. There are numerous businesses on the Balmoral estate: holiday cottages, “luxury” Land Rover tours, a nine-hole private golf course, salmon fishing on the River Dee, an estate restaurant, coffee shop and gift shop.

Prince Charles, known in Scotland as the Duke of Rothesay, will inherit the estate in turn when he succeeds the throne, without paying any inheritance tax.

In last year’s Agriculture (Retained EU Law and Data) (Scotland) Act, a letter sent by John Somers, Nicola Sturgeon’s principal private secretary, to Edward Young, the Queen’s most senior aide, in July last year. In his letter, Somers asked the Queen to give her consent to the legislation – a requirement before it can be passed by the parliament – as it had the “potential to affect the Queen’s personal property and interests, and the hereditary revenues of the crown”. He pointed out that, for example, the bill could “result in an increase or decrease in the amount of subsidy that can be claimed”. Somers added that the Scottish government would amend the bill to exempt the crown from being prosecuted over specific offences related to food quality, purity and labelling rules and the collection of farming data, say on pollution, animal health or climate. Somers asked if the bill, and the planned amendments, were “acceptable” to the monarch. They were. Eight days later, Young, writing from Windsor Castle, confirmed the Queen was content to give her consent.

In the unlikely event, Balmoral was suspected of staging a circus featuring tigers, lions or elephants – something now banned in Scotland – clauses inserted by ministers into the Wild Animals in Travelling Circuses (Scotland) Act 2018 mean the police are barred from searching the estate or circus vehicles without her consent. No other private land has that exemption.

Revealed: Queen vetted 67 laws before Scottish parliament could pass them | The Queen | The Guardian

We Seek a New Type of World

 

Do you really believe that any war is in the interests of the working class? capitalists may wish to grab mines and ore deposits abroad but for you, there is nothing to be gained. Money men may hope to make millions with speculation on the foreign markets but for you, it is all for nought. There is one war which you should fight not with artillery, but with organisation - party groups and trade unions. That is the class battle in which you should enrol yourselves. That war is not against a foreign enemy - that is only a decoy with which they try to lead you astray - it is against the internal enemy, the enemy of the people's happiness, of progress and human civilisation and that, is capitalism, private ownership of all means of production, factories and machines, mines and land. We will do away with capitalism in this war. Knowledge is power. You cannot begin too soon to absorb the world of thought of socialism. We must understand how to turn unconscious fellow-workers into conscious socialists. The circle of conscious socialists will spread more and more, and that must be our aim. This education of real conscious socialists is an indispensable part of evolution.

Socialism means a society of associated producers that is characterised by common ownership of the means of production, the immediately social nature of labour and the planning of production to satisfy needs (production of use-values and not commodities). It means a class-free society without a state. Such a society can exist only if it is managed by the producers and consumers themselves and only if it takes its destiny into its own hands. It must free itself from the tyranny of the “laws of the market” (the law of value), from the tyranny of despotic authorities, and from that of the State.

Opponents of socialism say that there are different kinds of socialists and different kinds of socialism.

The productive forces have developed to such an extent that they have now created the preconditions for the abolition of all poverty. A worldwide redistribution of the resources and net products required to eliminate famine and poverty does not necessarily imply a fall in the standard of living enjoyed by the average producer in the developed world.

 Capitalism is completely incapable of solving the problems of the world peoples. There is the colossal wastage of warfare and the insanity of national frontiers. More...More...More, is the capitalists' insistent theme. When the diseased economy breaks down the capitalists demand that the working class pay the price with cuts in living standards to restore profitability.

The capitalist case is that they perform a service to society, but in doing so they generally have their own profit in view. Production dominated by private interest is necessarily anti-social, giving rise to the waste of social resources. In order to obtain a production directed towards social ends, society must control production absolutely, that is to say, the common ownership and control of the industries and services essential for the satisfaction of the people's needs should pass from the capitalists to the community. Socialism is the systematic pooling of production. Socialism is not an “improved” nor a “more just” version of the system of wage labour, but a wholly new mode of production. 

Our labour, or rather our power to labour is what we must sell to employers from day to day and week to week in order merely to live. No matter how enormously the capacity to produce wealth may increase only a fraction of the value of the work we have done goes to support ourselves and our families. All the rest of the value which we create goes to be divided up among the landlords, capitalists, bankers, money-lenders and so forth. The increasing wealth benefits them and us very little, or not at all.

There is not a worker in the world today who can indicate with any degree of clearness how we can bring about the cooperative commonwealth except along the lines suggested by the Socialist Party. We stand for socialism, the abolition of capitalists. We believe that it is possible so to organise production to end poverty, inequality and war. Economic and social development has brought us unconsciously, and through much sorrow and misery, to the point where this transformation is possible. It is for us to benefit ourselves and others by understanding, and taking advantage of, the work which our predecessors have done.

 

A Pricey Run

 Highland Kings Ultra, a four-day camping race covering 120 miles on the west coast of Scotland, costs £15,499 per person to enter.

In contrast, the 95-mile West Highland Way Race costs just £120.

It offers luxury few could afford - including butlers, hydrotherapy pools, speed boats and Michelin-star chefs.

'Luxury' race will be among most expensive on earth - BBC News

Going Beyond Capitalism

 

We live in dark depressing days; is there anyone to whom this thought has not occurred? Many think there is no way out and nowhere to go. Capitalism creates the conditions and forces for the socialist movement: the necessary technical basis, science and the working class itself. That is its major contribution to social progress. It also provokes the working class into action and is the involuntary promoter of the class struggle. We need a new social system that does not put production in conflict with human needs or the well-being of humanity and the planet. We call this socialism.

Many workers are indignant when they are “exploited” and “oppressed.” They have been taught false pride, not the pride of refusing to be exploited, but the pride of refusing to admit that they are exploited. But their denial doesn’t change the fact or the reality that the capitalist barons squeeze the last drop of their sweat for the sake of their profits and the State crushes their resistance. It should be clear to all that the State is the executive committee and the strong arm of entrenched privilege and wealth. There is war. It is a class war. It is waged by the representatives of one class, the oppressors, against another class, the oppressed. In this war, the State is always and invariably on the side of the oppressors. Some representatives of the ruling class may try to achieve their ends of capital using the carrot. But they always keep the big stick ready. The State — that is the big stick of the owners of wealth.  Everyone who believes that the State is your ally, a neutral protector, that the State is an honest broker is mistaken.

The Socialist Party is the only political organisation in present-day society that recognise the basic nature of the capitalist State. The State may change its outward appearance.  The forms change. The phraseology differs according to time and place. The essence remains. The essence of the capitalist State is service in the employ of capitalism for the preservation of capitalism.

It may use the parliamentary system, with freedom of speech to opponents — as long as this opposition is not too threatening to the capitalist class. If so, then the State tightens the screws to silence opposition.

 

Progressive liberals on the Left frequently find themselves dissatisfied with the functioning of the State and its “shortcomings.” They complain of inequality. They understand the war-like nature of the capitalist State. But what do they propose? A little tinkering here and there. An improvement in the electoral laws, an extension of the freedom of the press, improve the State — and you have made it more flexible, more capable of adapting itself to circumstances; you have made it a better instrument of oppression. But that has nothing to do with the very nature of the State as a bulwark of private property and capitalist exploitation.  no matter how important for the working class, reforms do not touch upon the fundamentals of the capitalist State, namely, its being an instrument of power in the hands of the big owners of wealth.

Nevertheless, limited as it is, bourgeois democracy has prepared for the workers all the means necessary to achieve socialism. Let the workers use universal suffrage, we say, to send socialists into the legislative assemblies. Let the socialists form a majority in these assemblies. When this is done, the road is open to pass laws abolishing the capitalist system. Neither democracy without socialism, nor socialism without democracy.

If capitalism makes prosperity, peace and the end of poverty impossible, then the system must give way to a better one, whose aim is not profit-making but the satisfaction of the needs of humanity and whose basic means of expansion thereby calls for free cooperation instead of the intensification of competition and the exploitation of labour. The Socialist Party programme boils down to the struggle of the workers to end capitalism.

An argument against socialism is the assumption that capitalism had always existed and would naturally always continue to exist because it corresponded with “human nature.” Hard facts upset this naive assumption. Capitalism is but a newcomer among economic systems; it is less than five hundred years old. A related argument was that socialism represented a beautiful ideal but lacked a basis in reality; socialists were, therefore, nothing but Utopians. Marxist theory upset these contentions. The working class, created by capitalism itself, was shown to have a decisive economic interest in the development of socialism, and since socialism signifies a higher level of economy and culture, leading to a class-free society, the working-class movement in this direction represents the interests of society as a whole. In addition, the worldwide industrial system established by capitalism provides a sufficient base for the enormous increase in productivity required to realise socialism.

Proclamation to Working People

 

What the plutocrat calls progress – palatial mansions, sycophantic servants, luxury limousines. designer clothes, a profusion of jewelled trinkets – sickens the socialist. The plutocrats promote the patriotism of prejudice, of the plunderer and the pilferer, the patriotism of the property owner and the profit-monger. Perish the plutocracy. A vast amount of ignorance prevails against socialism. The ruling class the world over hates it and must decry it. To the plutocrat it is a peril; to the proletarian a promise to all the oppressed and downtrodden on the planet. Plutocrats glorify this capitalist system of robbery as the foundation of democracy. The Socialist Party is organised for the very purpose of destroying despotism and establishing democracy, to end the most brutal autocracy on the face of the earth, that of capitalist rule. The Socialist Party exists to arouse the apathetic from their dangerous sleep.

If we were civilised human beings, we would share in the hunger pangs of our fellow men and women and little children, even if we can not see them. The Earth is ample with the fullness and fruits of its produce,  sufficient for all the children of men, women and children. We can possess no stronger reasons for being a socialist demanding the overthrow of capitalist misrule, and the tragedy is continuous, upon the social fabric upon a basis excludes of cooperation, collaboration, and compassion. Partnership with the plutocracy is a fraud upon the workers. Capitalist society’s cornerstone is wage slavery. The control of industry today is left to the care of individuals whose sole concern is to make profits for themselves, although life and death depend upon industry.

By socialism we understand the system of society in which  production is for social use; that is, the production of all the means of social existence — including all the necessaries and comforts of life — carried on by the organised community for its own collective use. Today, production is carried on purely in the interest and for the profit of the class which owns the instruments of production. In socialism,  production will be carried on for the use of all and not for the profit of a few. Socialism does not mean governmental ownership or management. The State of today, nationally or locally, is only the agent of the possessing class. Socialism is essentially revolutionary, politically and economically, as it aims at the complete overthrow of existing economic and political conditions

The Socialist Party’s vision is one of a new world, a better world, a world worth fighting for, a world to win, an end of the miseries and exploitations we all endure and suffer. Capitalism, for the first time in history, has developed productive forces so huge that everyone in the world can share in what is produced. There is now no longer any need for class society. No person knows exactly what the future society will be like at any given stage. But we do claim to know the direction in which it will tend and this knowledge we teach. Education is not achieved in a day.

Stated simply, the aim of the Socialist Party is the common ownership of the means of production and distribution, and the consequent economic equality of every human being on earth. As plain as this statement is, there are people who construe it to mean all kinds of silly and grotesque things, which no socialist thinks, and which makes socialism seem supremely ridiculous to so many people. The trouble is not with socialism, but with what these people imagine to be socialism. The Socialist Party is basically peacefully preparing the way for the socialist commonwealth. The organisation of industry upon a cooperative basis is its aim. Rent, interest, and profit in every form are to disappear and with them the small clique of parasites. Socialism is the only possible cure for that poverty and its countless accompanying festering ills. Every piece of technology will be used in reducing the hours of labour. The industrial prison, now called a factory, will be transformed into a temple of science and art. Peace and plenty will abound. The cooperation of all for the good of all will inspire compassion for all. The Socialist Party plan for a world free from want. The Socialist Party is the champion of the working people. Granted that the danger of society’s relapse into barbarism now looks more menacing than ever. Throughout history every advance in mankind’s power has increased its capacity for oppression and destruction but

‘Dum spiro spero’ – ‘As long as I breathe I hope’. Socialists presuppose an abundance of material and cultural wealth, that will enable society to satisfy the needs of all its members and abolish class divisions. 

 Socialism cannot be brought about within its national boundaries. Socialism and the nation-state are incompatible. Socialism cannot be achieved within a single country. The Socialist Party is the only world political party. A socialist is a socialist irrespective of nationality, colour, or sex. The socialist recognises no national boundary lines. The nation in which he lives embraces the working class of the world. Every worker everywhere is his brother and sister. Across the borders of all lands, socialists clasp hands as comrades. The socialist movement, therefore, is a world movement. It knows of no conflicts of interests between the workers of one nation and the workers of another. It stands for the full freedom of all humanity. Socialism means that all those things upon which the people in common depend shall by the people in common be owned and administered; that all production shall be for the direct use of the producers; that the making of goods for profit shall come to an end; that we shall all be workers together.

Limbo (film review)

The national political discourse has been obsessed with immigration and refugees for much of the past decade, with consequences that barely need explaining, yet the issue has been largely absent from the cinema screens. Faced with a determinedly xenophobic government and sections of the media that dehumanise, feature films could be doing much to create understanding.

 A Scottish comedy Limbo tells the story of a Syrian refugee seeking asylum.

"Bet you never thought you’d end up here pal, eh?” says a Scottish islander to Syrian refugee Omar in the new movie Limbo. 

The place looks idyllic, but if you’re an asylum seeker waiting for your application to be processed like Omar, there’s little to do there except wait. Despite Omar’s plight, and actor Amir El-Masry’s deadpan expression, Limbo is actually a dry comedy that makes us feel immensely for its subjects without patronising, caricaturing or belittling their plight 

Its Scottish writer-director, Ben Sharrock, previously worked in Syrian refugee camps).

Why is British cinema so reluctant to tackle immigration? | Film | The Guardian