Join us

 Listening to the political parties trying to explain the points of difference in their respective policies reminds one of that popular ditty of a few years back, “You say ‘neether' and I say ‘nyther.' " There is no basic idea now held by any one of the parties which are  not held by the other, though each may express it in different words. The truth is that all parties undertake to run capitalism, and alters its programme of reforms according to what is most likely to retain support. What more damning indictment could be made against any M.P. than to show that he or she is acquiescing in the very measures to which one’s party has long been traditional if only nominally opposed?

What are the lessons to be learned from this growing unity of policy of the main contestants for political power in this country? One is that any party that advocates reforms can command a big following by promising to solve the problems that capitalism engenders, just so long as it is not called upon to form the government. Another is that at a time when it is a toss-up which party will win the next election each must offer the electorate all that is popular in the rival programme plus a little extra in order to tip the balance.

But the most important lesson for members of the working class is that if they want to express their dissatisfaction with the past results of capitalism they are wasting their time voting for any party offering to make a better job of it in future. They must understand that it is capitalism that determines the policies of the governments that undertake to run it, and not the other way round. In the light of this knowledge they will then organise with us for the establishment of socialism, which alone can make a reality the dreams of a better life that capitalism has made potentially possible, but can never actualise.

 

Another lesson to be learned from working-class struggles is that working conditions bitterly fought for and won through struggle on the industrial battlefield over the years can be wiped out, comparatively speaking, in a few minutes by those who control the political machinery. The political weapon is the dominant one and whilst it remains in the hands of the capitalist class no amount of struggle will free the workers from the yoke of capital. If only our fellow workers would raise the cry, “Abolish the wages system” instead of making a modest demand for a tiny wage increase, then they would be heading towards a system free from lock-outs, strikes, poverty, wars, ill-health, bad housing, dictatorships, over-work and the host of other evils which beset them.

When the S.P.G.B. was formed in 1904 one of its earliest warnings to workers was to beware of the delusion that nationalisation is socialism or can solve working-class problems. The warning was not heeded and the penalty has been the waste of precious years campaigning for something worthless. Only socialism can emancipate the working class.

Socialists considers money as the instrument of the market, the means by which individual labour is transformed into socially necessary labour. Where private property and production for the market exist, such an instrument is an essential corollary of it. It is only through it that the separation of consumption and production, or of individual labour and socially necessary labour can be overcome.

Socialism, by abolishing private property, also abolishes the need for such an instrument. In the ultimate communist society of which Marx spoke, all labour would be directly socially-necessary labour, since private property and class distinction would have been abolished. There would be collective ownership of the means of production and this would have led to so great an increase of the available wealth that distribution would be on the basis of 'from everyone according to ability, to every one according to needs.' 

We are inviting you to join the Socialist Party. It is no boast when we say that it is the only political party in this country worthy of working-class support; the only party whose sole object is the overthrow of this fantastic system whereby the majority of human beings —the working class—produce the wealth of the world for the small minority—the capitalists—who own it. You are a worker, so we need hardly tell you that the share you are allowed to have in this wealth just about keeps you living from week to week and capable of producing the goods you cannot possess.

You have listened to our speakers many times and have read our literature and social media, so you know that the system we wish to see established, socialism, under which all human beings will own in common, and have free access to, the world’s wealth, cannot be brought about by tinkering with or patching up by means of reform, the system existing now. For this reason, you do not give your support to the Labour, Tory, nationalist or leftist parties, or any other political organisation—you have seen through their promises of better conditions if only you put them in power. Yet you are not with us in the S.P.G.B. . . . It may be because you feel despondent and think the task of establishing Socialism an almost impossible one in the face of the powerful propaganda pumped into the working class by all the means capitalists have at their disposal—radio, newspapers, politicians and so on. But look at the problem in this way—modern capitalism requires a trained working class to run it, it is no longer a matter of using brute force against Nature in order to produce wealth. Trained people cannot be kept wholly in the dark about world events, therefore the owning class have to “spill the beans” to you and your fellow workers, in half-truths at least. Join us in laying bare to members of our class the facts behind the news, so that they too can analyse it and draw their own conclusions and not those ready-made for them. All the propaganda will then be useless and the world will move forward to Socialism at a greatly increased rate. You see, it all depends on you! Our organisation is small, but it is based on principles sound and irrefutable, which in the forty-seven years of the Party’s existence, have never had to give way to expediency.

If we have your help and that of our many other sympathisers, we will grow, and your despondency will vanish. Just now you may have an indefinable and deep sense of dissatisfaction; life is just drudgery and purposeless, merely a matter of existing from day to day, even if you are one of those “lucky” workers producing beautiful and useful things—unlike the millions who are engaged in many utterly worthless tasks peculiar to capitalism and its monetary and profit system. There are many outlets in the S.P.G.B. which will help to counteract this. There is the satisfaction to be gained by helping with our many meetings, pushing up the sales of our pamphlets and the Socialist Standard, or writing articles for the latter. There are worthwhile discussions and lectures at branch meetings. By no means least, there is the comradeship one feels in being engaged with others in working for a sane system of society.

When can we expect your membership application form?

Why the Socialist Party is Different

 Someone claimed that the lesson of history is that people never learn the lesson of history. Obviously this is untrue (otherwise there could never have been any progress, social or technical) but such a cynical view could be justified if it was based on the antics of the Left, because they never learn.

The Left, despite referring to themselves as “socialists” have no confidence in the workers to win through. They tell us, that socialism will come eventually someday – presumably when we are all dead and gone. By this, they mean the job falls not to them but to others sometime in the future. There is no logic to this whatsoever. For the world is ready now and painfully waiting – how is socialism to ever come in the future when we are never to explain it to people here now, for it takes a while? What will happen that might cause this future embrace of socialism, we are never told.

We in the Socialist Party reject the conventional method of political analysis that seeks to understand politics in terms of ‘left’ or ‘right’. The left and right are different only to the extent that they provide a different political and organisational apparatus for administering the same capitalist system. This includes those on the left who aim for socialism sometime in the distant future but in the meantime demand some form of transitional capitalism. For this reason, the Socialist Party cannot be usefully identified as either ‘left-wing’ or ‘right-wing’. Many political groups, somewhat disenchanted with orthodox reformist practice, fancy themselves as "the Left". We do not. Typically the Left shares the following ideas:

1. State ownership is socialism or a step on the way to socialism.
2. Russia set out on the way to socialism.
3. Socialism will arrive by violent insurrection.
4. Workers cannot attain socialist consciousness by their own efforts, only a trade union consciousness.
5. Workers must vote for the Labour Party.
6. Workers must be led by an elite - a ‘vanguard’.
7. Workers must be offered bait to follow this vanguard in the form of ‘transitional demands’, a selective programme of reforms.

These beliefs interlock and support each other. If, for example, workers are so feeble-minded that they cannot understand socialist arguments then they need to be led. Socialism will therefore come about without mass understanding, by a disciplined minority seizing power. Widespread socialist education is not only unnecessary, it is pointless. If the best workers can do is reach a trade union consciousness and vote Labour, then this is what they must be urged to do. Since workers must have some incentive to follow the vanguard, 'transitional demands’ in the form of reformist promises are necessary, and since these tactics were successful in carrying to power the Russian Bolsheviks, it is assumed that Russia must have set out on the road to socialism. The basic dogma on which all this is founded is that the mass of the workers cannot understand socialism. When it is suggested that the majority of the working class must attain a clear desire for the abolition of the wages system, and the introduction of a worldwide money-fee community, the Left replies that this is “too abstract”, or “too academic”. Indeed, they themselves do not strive for such a socialist system. None of the Left groups advocates worldwide the immediate establishment of a world without wages, with production democratically geared to meeting people's needs. Some of them say, when pushed, that they look forward to such a world “ultimately”, but since this “ultimate” aim has no effect on their actions it can only be interpreted as an empty platitude. Far from specifying socialism as their aim, they are reticent and muddled about even the capitalist reforms they will introduce if they get power. The Marxist revisionist Bernstein dictum's “The movement is everything, the goal nothing” sums up the Left. The 'Left' may claim that it enjoys the best of both worlds, both supporting reforms and advocating revolution. But in fact its revolutionary posturing.

The Left put forward a whole raft of reformist demands that on paper might seem to be appealing. The only problem is that there is no plan to actually achieve these demands - for the reason they are pretend demands. Trotsky himself called this kind of demands "transitional demands" - the idea being to look at everybody else's demands and make bigger demands so they sound great. Occasionally they might achieve a demand which will make them seem sincere, however, pretend the idea isn't to achieve these demands - it is to not achieve them! This is the Troskyists' grand master plan to make workers dissatisfied, so the latter will become revolutionary and flock behind their political leadership. In other words, the workers are to be the infantry led by the Trotskyist generals. The Left have real aims quite different to the reform programme they peddle. In this, they are being as dishonest as any other politician, from the left or right. The ultimate result of this is disillusionment with the possibility of radical change.

Reformist political parties in opposition always claim how much better everything would be if only they were in power. Everything would be better: the NHS, the environment, the economy, industrial efficiency and productivity. On top of all this, there would be savings of many millions, even billions, of pounds, giving us all more spending power as well as big savings for businesses. And how is all this to be achieved? By two old leftist illusions; taxing the rich and nationalisation disguised as public or social ownership. If all their proposed reforms were adopted – nationalisation, the multitude of changes in the tax system, defence budget cuts, etc., we’d still be living in a money-driven, buying and selling economy, still working for wages and salaries, still insecure, being hired and fired, in short, in capitalism. The demand for reforms will often only succeed if it can be reconciled with the profit-making needs of the system. In other words, the reform will often be turned to the benefit of the capitalist class at the expense of any working class gain. The aim of the left-wing has always been to establish state capitalism, the profit system planned centrally by a miracle-performing state. The source of the wealth would still be the surplus value wrung from the working class. Lacking an honest revolutionary stance for a new society, the Left becomes caught in a pointless and frustrating circular battle with an economic system that is based on exploitation. As long as the accumulation of capital takes precedence, either in the hands of the individual capitalist or state institutions, the primary concern of exploitation of labour and making profit will take precedence over the concerns of human need.

The ideology of national capitalism, reflecting the interests of small-scale capitalists, is still strong and finds support both from the “right-wing ” and the “left-wing” who beat the same nationalist drum. The Left in effect argue that workers should support national as opposed to transnational capitalism (Cuba or Venezuela, arguesfor example). Socialists, on the other hand, don’t take sides in this conflict between different sections of the capitalist class. The Left downplays the idea of directly challenging the system and organising an alternative political economy and is working instead on the terrain of capitalism.

The Left like to act as though they are Moses, and lay down the commandments in stone for ignorant followers to obey. Left Wing propaganda offering leadership adds to the impression that the worker is an inferior being who is incapable of thinking, organising and acting and imbues further the master-and-servant mentality of the worker. As already stated all Left organisations start from the premise that workers are too stupid to understand or want socialism by their own volition. Therefore, revolutionary ideas have to be introduced from outside the working class by all-knowing "professional revolutionaries" who will lead workers to the promised land.

When someone comes across the Socialist Party for the first time, a common reaction is to consider us as just another left-wing political organisation. The Left use similar terminology to us, talking of socialism, class struggle, exploitation, etc, and invoking Karl Marx. But digging a little deeper will show that our political position is very different from that of the Left. The Socialist Party is not on The Left. There is so much manipulation, dishonesty, and downright erroneous thinking connected with the Left that we would not wish to be associated with them in any way. We are not and never have been connected with Lenin, Trotsky or Stalin. We are not related in any way to the Socialist Worker's Party or SPEW, the Socialist Party of England and Wales. We've never had any connection with the Communist Party, or any of its offshoots. We have always been opponents of nationalisation and the idea that capitalism can be reformed away. Unlike the Left, we did not feel that the working class should have to experience yet another Labour government to realise that it would be anti-working class. We are a party that consciously does not have leaders and our members are all members of the working class. There's nothing wrong with contesting elections, but if socialists are going to do this it should be done on a sound basis: getting elected on a straight socialist programme but not about trying to get elected through non-socialist votes on a programme of attractive-sounding reforms to capitalism. It should be clear that the Socialist Party is quite unlike the Left , and that we are definitely and for good reason not part of the Left. We in the Socialist Party are very much a different breed from all those others who like to use the term “socialist”.

We have often been told that the real problem is the lack of unity of the working-class movement. Some say to revolutionaries “Don't split the Left. We are all working for the same goal, so why don't you join us? We can get strength through unity.” What we are not told is what basis there can be for unity. It is not the wish of the SPGB to be separate for the sake of being so. Are socialists supposed to unite with those who want to reform and administer capitalism? Or do we unite with those who claim socialism can be established by a well-meaning leadership without a class-conscious working class? Do we unite with those who see socialism as a system based on state control and state ownership of industry: and lastly, do we unite with those who refuse to recognise the parliamentary road to socialism? Revolutionaries must reject this appeal if they are to remain revolutionaries. If there is no common ground upon which agreement can be reached then there can be no unity. Our analysis of the Left is not based upon some narrow sectarianism—it's based upon principle. We do not, nor have we ever, supported capitalist parties, especially those that dress up in revolutionary garb in order to hoodwink the workers. The Left is an expression of all the political mistakes made by the working class last century—from the Labour Party to the Soviet Union. We do not doubt that well-meaning individuals get caught up in such chicanery for no other reason than a desire to see a better world. However, sentiment can never be a substitute. However, a socialist organisation will get nowhere without a firm grasp of democracy, sound Marxist principles, a disdain to conceal its socialist objective, and membership in full possession of the facts about current society and the revolutionary alternative. Unlike the Left, we openly advocate common ownership and democratic control.

Our Planet's Problems and Socialism's Answer

 The dream of a just and class-free society has long stirred the hopes of women and men, shackled by exploitation, poverty, oppression, and war. The early 19th-century labor movement envisioned a cooperative community of producers and many constructed intricate blueprints for egalitarian societies. So we can’t claim that Marx and Engels invented the idea of a society defined by common ownership, mutuality, freedom and equality although they said much about socialism. Climate change in particular has radicalising potential, as more and more people are beginning to question the prevailing economic system’s detrimental effect on the environment. But mainstream environmental groups aren’t offering a coherent critique of capitalism’s ecological consequences or doing the work of presenting alternatives.

The global economy, despite all of the bumps in the road, is delivering aggregate annual growth of 3-4%, leading to a doubling of output every generation. Yet the global economy is not delivering sustainable growth in two basic senses. In many parts of the world, growth has been deeply skewed in favour of the rich; and it has been environmentally destructive – indeed, life-threatening. Climate change is the greatest of these environmental threats. Given the current trajectory of global fossil-fuel use, the planet’s temperature is likely to rise by 4-6 degrees Celsius above its pre-industrial level, an increase that would be catastrophic for food production, human health, and biodiversity; indeed, in many parts of the world, it would threaten communities’ survival. Governments have already agreed to keep warming below 2º Celsius but have yet to take decisive action toward creating a low-carbon energy system.

Capitalism has inflicted incalculable harm on the inhabitants of the earth. Tragically, the future could be even worse for a simple reason: capitalism’s destructive power, driven by its inner logic to expand, is doing irreversible damage to life in all its forms all around the planet. Rosa Luxemburg famously said that humanity had a choice, “socialism or barbarism.” In these days of climate change, her warning has even more meaning. Almost daily we hear of species extinction, global warming, resource depletion, deforestation, desertification, and on and on to the point where we are nearly accustomed to this gathering catastrophe. Our planet cannot indefinitely absorb the impact of profit-driven, growth-without-limits capitalism. Unless we radically change our methods of production and pattern of consumption, we will reach the point where the harmful effects to the environment will become irreversible. Even the most modest measures of environmental reform are resisted by sections of the capitalist class. This makes the establishment of a socialist society all the more imperative.

At one time the environmentalist was all about conserving a unique spot of nature or protecting this or that rare animal. Now, they are activists against the extractive industries, campaigners against the consumer culture and increasing protesters against the profit system. They are fighting for the planet. People may not care much about a few islands disappearing. But untold millions of people will face the need to escape cities worldwide that will not be able to cope with and survive many feet of higher oceans flooding their infrastructure, streets and housing. Where will those millions of people go? How will such a deep economic disaster be managed by governments? Scientists are unanimous in warning us that unless we very rapidly reduce CO2 emissions, we risk passing a tipping point beyond which we will be powerless to prevent uncontrollable global warming. We risk a human-produced extinction event. Before irreversible climatic feed-back loops take over, making human action useless, we must replace fossil fuels completely by renewable energy. This is by no means a hopeless task. The technology needed is already in place. The main obstacle to be overcome are the fossil fuel industries. They will use any method, fair or foul, to cash in on the vast deposits of fossil fuels which they own.

“If you want parents to make the choice to reduce their number of offspring, there’s no better way than making sure those offspring survive,” said Joel Cohen, author of the magisterial book How Many People Can the Earth Support? “There’s no example of decline in fertility that has not been preceded by a decline in child mortality that I know of.” There is abundant evidence of this pattern all over the world, regardless of religion. Where children die and women are repressed, population booms. Where children thrive, and women are empowered, population growth stops.

Sustainable agriculture expert Gordon Conway writes in his book, One Billion Hungry: Can We Feed the World?:

“A popular misconception is that providing the developing countries with more food will serve to increase populations; in other words, it is a self-defeating policy. The more food women have, the more children they will have and the greater will be their children’s survival, leading to population growth, so goes the argument. However, the experience of the demographic transition described above suggests the opposite. As people become more prosperous, which includes being better fed and having lower child mortality, the fewer children women want. Providing they then have access to family planning methods, the fertility rates will drop and the population will cease to grow.”

The key factor connecting child mortality and lack of women’s rights is poverty. Therefore, environmentalists have to do is, first and foremost, campaign for social justice. If ending all poverty were as simple as producing enough food to feed everyone, our work would be done. Farms already grow enough food for every person on the planet — 2,800 calories a day, if it were divvied up equally. But we have never shared resources equally.

Clearly there’s tremendous room for improvement, and increasing yields. In Sub-Saharan Africa, farmers get a little over a ton of grain per hectare in an average year — about what farmers in Europe were getting during the Roman Empire. During the Green Revolution, the push to increase yields was focused on large farmers, and sometimes smaller farmers did not benefit. There’s a huge amount of conflicting literature on this point. As Conway writes, “A review of over three hundred studies found that for 80 percent of the studies inequality had worsened.” In addition, the heavy use of pesticides and fertilizer during the Green Revolution caused all sorts of environmental problems.

The current jargon is “sustainable intensification,” which — as happens with jargon — is taken to mean everything and nothing. Sustainable intensification includes a panoply of agroecological techniques. Farmers are planting nitrogen-fixing trees, which shelter crops, prevent erosion, and provide fertilizer. There’s the push-pull strategy, where farmers push bugs away from grain by growing insect-repellent plants along the rows, while also pulling pests away from the crops by planting attractive flowering plants outside the fields. Aquaculture is on the rise, creating an opportunity for more fish polyculture. Farm technology isn’t a war between good and evil — it’s a quest for whatever works. Small farmers have proven that they can use tools of industrial ag in a non-industrial way. They use high-tech hybrid seeds to get record-breaking yields with an alternative cropping technique. In Niger, farmers developed a method of using Big Ag fertilizer on a tiny scale: by filling a soda-cap with a mix of phosphorus and nitrogen and dumping this micro-dose in with each seed.

Many people worry that giving poor farmers industrial technology will lock them into an industrial path. There’s no doubt that is true, as far as it goes. If it’s easy to get nitrogen, you may not want to do all the work, and develop the skills needed, to nurture nitrogen-fixing trees to maturity. GMOs, because they are politicized, are especially controversial. Genetic engineering is not a silver bullet. At the same time, the goal of helping small farmers improve their lives gets a lot harder if they are held to an impossibly high standard, and we keep rejecting the tools that they’d like to use. Small farmers are already taking a middle path — it’s not as if use of some modern technology will forever corrupt them. In Ghana, farmers trained by 4-H in agroecological techniques abandon them when they actually have to manage their own land and make a living. And an organic farmer training people in Malawi has found that teaching small farmers how to use a little bit of synthetic fertilizer and herbicide is much more likely to work than the all-natural alternatives. As the U.N.’s former special rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, put it, “While investment in organic fertilizing techniques should be a priority, this should not exclude the use of other fertilizers.”

A wider issue is the lack of infrastructure, the lack of good transport. Roads and railways are terrible for the environment when built through undeveloped wilderness, but great for the environment when built through poverty-stricken rural regions.

http://grist.org/food/so-can-we-really-feed-the-world-yes-and-heres-how/

One way or another, the coming decades will be decisive for the fate of human civilisation. Unless greenhouse emissions are swiftly and drastically curbed the result will be an environmental catastrophe on an almost unimaginable scale, threatening the survival of all life on the planet. The reality of climate change is already manifesting itself in an increasing number of extreme weather events, such as heat-waves, droughts, floods and typhoons. Melting ice sheets are resulting in rising sea levels and increased flooding of low-lying areas. Some islands will soon be totally submerged, turning their inhabitants into climate refugees. Some solutions to climate change are known and simple: rapidly phase out the use of fossil fuels, make the switch to renewables and halt deforestation. But significant economic interests at the heart of the capitalist system have big investments in coal, oil and gas. Protecting these interests, governments refuse to take more than token measures to halt climate change. The goal of the big corporations is to secure the greatest possible profits for their super-rich owners — regardless of the consequences to the planet and its people.

Imagine an alternative, a society where each individual has the means to live a life of dignity and fulfilment, without exception; where discrimination and prejudice are wiped out; where all members of society are guaranteed a decent life, the means to contribute to society; and where the environment is protected and rehabilitated. This is socialism — a truly humane, a truly ecological society. With socialism, our work would engage our skills and bring personal satisfaction. Leisure time would be expanded and fulfilling. Our skies, oceans, lakes, rivers and streams will be pollution-free. Our neighbourhoods would become green spaces for rest and recreation. Communal institutions, like cafeterias will serve up healthy and delicious food and offer a menu of cultural events.

Pirates and Emperors (video)

 

Overpopulation myth (video)

 

The Great Money Trick (video)

 

Emma Goldman on Patriotism (video)

 

The dead hand of the past

 

Socialism is a social system, not a political regime, or a phase of some other system. It requires a revolutionary change for its establishment and the cooperative effort of the whole community for its successful functioning. It necessitates fundamental changes in the relationships of the members of the community, the casting aside of long-cherished and deep-rooted ideas and customs. This change cannot be brought about except by the conscious effort of at least the majority of those concerned. No dictatorship, no matter how determined, how well-intentioned, how efficient, how “human,” could ever impose such fundamental changes on society. Dictatorships have crashed for attempting less. If the establishment of socialism requires a majority effort then majority decisions “in meeting each and every situation” are necessary for the struggle for its achievement. This is not a “dogmatic assertion.” We are not concerned about whether “democratic methods are always good and dictatorial methods are always wrong.” We are concerned only with effective means of achieving socialism.

Those who seek to explain by reference to “ideologies” the swift movement of events in the world, the sudden collapse of impregnable positions, the seemingly inexplicable changes which show the grand old men of yesterday to be the dodderers of to-day, must be bewildered and confused by what is going on before their eyes.

The idealist who tries to discern the pattern in history, past and present, is prevented from doing so because he believes that ideas and beliefs have an independent origin and that one set of ideas will triumph over another if only the men who hold them have leaders of goodwill and integrity. The socialist who looks to social relations and economic forces is better placed. Not, of course, that the socialist can predict with certainty just how and when a conflict of forces will work out in the future, but at least he or she knows what is the nature of the forces on which the issue depends. Knowing, as Marx puts it, that “it is not men’s consciousness which determines their life,” but “their social life which determines their consciousness,” we also allow for the fact that at any given period of history the vital forces at work have to struggle with ideas which resulted from past conditions—”the tradition of all past generations weighs like an alp upon the brain of the living.”

The safeguarding of property interests is the dead hand of the past, but what of the more active forces pushing towards change and reorganisation in Europe? Can the men who appear as leaders hold developments in check, or failing that can they guide them into the channels they desire? Are they the creatures or the masters of the forces behind and below them?

Socialist Ideas

 The Socialist Party differs from all other political parties in this country. We do not promise to do anything for you. We do not canvass for passive support so that we may rule, but ask for your understanding and active participation in the task of ridding the world of capitalism.

 

While the working class continue to put their faith in leaders they will continue to be disillusioned by political treachery, double-dealing and broken promises. We ask the working class to trust in their own abilities. They already run a complex world system from top to bottom and could quite easily run a socialist society in their own interests. All that is needed is socialist knowledge on the part of the working class. With this they can liberate themselves by voting socialist delegates to the centres of political power with a mandate to abolish capitalism.

 

A conscious socialist majority cannot be sold out, side-tracked or misled by leaders. In the absence of leaders promising to do things for the workers the “corruption” or degeneration of the revolution will be impossible. Delegates will be held to the sound Socialist political principles clearly understood by those who elected them.

 

 

Socialism will be world-wide in nature. It cannot exist in one country only.  Socialism will mean an end to the working class and the capitalist class—both will disappear; together with the need for a repressive state machine needed by rulers to keep the ruled in their place.

 

An individual is unique—by definition. Having said that one is no further forward—one has learnt nothing, clarified nothing, explained nothing. Our emphasis on class is an important part of our analysis of society. History shows that all propertied societies have been divided into economic (and social) classes each of which has a different relation to the means of production. In capitalist society there are two classes—owners and non-owners of the means of life. We call these classes capitalists and workers respectively.

 

The class to which any individual belongs is determined objectively by his relationship to the means of life. No matter how unique he is as an individual, if he is a member of the working class he will have interests in common with other workers, interests which conflict with those of the unique individuals who make up the capitalist class. The most obvious clash of interests being the price at which labour-power is bought and sold. This is the interminable wages struggle which is inseparable from capitalist ownership.

 

The expression of one’s unique individual personality is viciously limited by economic circumstances. For many people at present the highest aim in life is simply to be the same as everyone else. Look round you at the armies of workers churned out by the so-called education process as machine minders and office fodder. Millions of passive participants in the labour process stripped of virtually all individuality by the need to conform to a system of class exploitation. Your example of China (which is not Socialist but state-capitalist) is just as repellent as anything the “free” west has to offer.

 

Only socialism can give the individual the freedom to develop his or her personality and abilities to the full, unrestricted by today’s profit-seeking and measurement by money. When we have established common ownership the individual will take one’s place as a free and equal member of society, able to give of one’s best secure in the knowledge that society is being run in a harmonious way for the benefit of all its members.

 

Capitalism disgusts us, and most Socialists would say that their outlook is rooted in indignation at what they have experienced and seen. Nevertheless, the case for Socialism must be based on material interests and not ideas of moral superiority.

 

Whatever enrages you and us by its inhumanity and unreasonableness in the capitalist world, in fact arises from the class ownership of the means of living. Articles in the Socialist Standard point this out: it is the socialist (materialist) analysis in contradistinction from beliefs that all can be made well by adjustments of capitalism, or by changes in attitudes and “values”.

 

Large numbers of capitalists and workers do profess moral attitudes. Political speeches abound in them. But what happens in practice, inexorably, is that “necessity” —i.e. the daily compulsions of capitalism—reduces them to either humbug or impractical personal philosophies. Everyone disapproves of wars, “the rat race”, and misery of all kinds: all who support capitalism go on doing (often expressing reluctance and impotence) the things which cause them.

 

On the question of relationships between people, we think you have been seduced by one of the claims made by religions and ethics—that “the brotherhood of man” is their preserve and depends on adopting their viewpoint. Man is a social creature with a natural tendency to co-operation and order; if he were not, we should not be here today. Class society opposes that tendency, setting man against man when neither wants it. In this circumstance “love thy neighbour” appears as a special moral teaching, but it is redundant.

 

Our position is the one stated by Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto: instead of seeking morality, justice, etc., we want to do away with them and have socialism instead. As ways of thinking about capitalist life they obstruct, not facilitate, harmonious relationships between men. And when socialism is established, people will be able to behave as you, quite correctly, want them to; to cite Marx again, we shall have “human” instead of “civil” society.

 

The capitalist class have economic power because they have political power and not the other way round. They control the state machine and the armed forces through Parliament and are confirmed in their control by the working class at election times.

 

We are organised as a political party not out of preference (which implies that there are other ways of achieving our object) but because all the evidence of history and an analysis of capitalist society shows that this is the only way to achieve working-class emancipation. Without first gaining control of the state (the public organ of coercion and repression) through which the capitalists maintain their privileged relationship to the means of life by keeping the working class in its propertyless position, any minority movement seeking to challenge them will inevitably be beaten by the armed forces and the police who remain under the control of the capitalist class.

 

It does not follow that because Parliament is at present an institution of so-called “representatives” it must necessarily remain so. Once a working class who know what they want and how to get it send their delegates to Parliament with a mandate to capture political control of the state machine, it will cease to function as an instrument of class rule and become the indispensable instrument for our emancipation.

 

Soviets cannot establish socialism

1. because they are economic organizations and not political; and

2. because they are based on the workplace, not on the centre of political power;

Before an electoral demonstration of a Socialist majority, socialist ideas will have penetrated all strata of society — including central and local government, the police and the armed forces and this would strengthen the growing demand for socialism.

 

However, control of the state machine is necessary

1. to lop off its repressive features; and in order:

2. to prevent any possibility of their being used in desperate attempts by counter-revolutionary groups to frustrate the wishes of the majority.

Armed forces will continue as long as capitalism because capitalism needs them. The capitalist class won't simply give up armed forces in the face of opposition. That is, they will still exist until consciously done away with.

Scots Nationalism

 

Nationalists believe that all classes in society should hold allegiance to “The Nation”. Socialists do not and point out how nations have always been the creation of a ruling group having nothing to do with working-class interests.   What is a nation? It is simply the people and the territory which have been appropriated by a class of robbers at some point in history. It has less to do with a common language, religion, race, culture, and all the other things which nationalists imagine or pretend are essential ingredients in the making of nations.   This is certainly true of Scotland and far from having a common history or anything else the population there are mainly the descendants of native Picts, invaders from Ireland (the original Scots), Western Europe and Scandinavia. After centuries of what were really tribal wars the whole land came under one king by the middle of the ninth century and the nation was born–by the coercion of the people and in the interests of a class of bandit chieftains.   Right up until the union of the Scottish and English parliaments in 1707 there were really two distinct nations in Scotland. The Highlanders  spoke Gaelic and had a culture (way of life) very different from that of the dialect-English speaking Lowlanders. Indeed “In rural districts, the Scottish dialect or dialects was barely intelligible even to a Scot of another district” (James G. Kellas. Modern Scotland–the Nation Since 1870. p. 7) So the nationalist idea of a once united Scotland is just a myth. Yet no one can deny that despite over two hundred years of Scotland’s incorporation within the United Kingdom most Scots feel themselves to be part of a separate nation. This can be explained by the fact that the Act of Union allowed Scotland to retain its own law, religion, and education system thus ensuring the continuation of national identity.   Why, then, has nationalism never been a strong political force until recently? The answer is that after 1707 the Scottish bourgeoisie, the only ones who could have provided a nationalist impetus, were far too busy building their fortunes through the Empire trade which had hitherto been denied them by the English Navigation Acts. Later on there was the industrial revolution and even greater opportunity to find wealth and contentment within the Union.   Even so, there were some malcontents and by the middle of the nineteenth century we find some bourgeois complaining “that England was getting very much more out of the Union than was Scotland . . . that during the last few years public expenditure had been largely for the benefit of England . . . Naval expenditure was almost exclusively allocated to English dockyards, shipyards and arsenals. (H. J. Hanham. Scottish Nationalism, p. 76). This discontent resulted in the founding of the National Association for the Vindication of Scottish Rights in 1853 and it was composed of Tory and Liberal notables plus some aristocrats. Although the Crimean war soon killed off the Association this didn’t prevent some Scottish propertied interests (the Tory Marquess of Bute among them) returning again and again to the theme that not enough time was devoted to Scottish business in the House of Commons, that public money (their taxes) was being spent unfairly, etc.   And as if to emphasize the propertied interests represented by nationalist ideas the Scottish Home Rule Association was formed in 1886, again comprising Tory and Liberal bigwigs but this time with a sprinkling of Labourites. Basically the SHRA represented those sections of the Scottish owning class who wanted more time spent on and more control over their affairs in a separate parliament in Scotland but still within the United Kingdom. The movement took its inspiration from the Irish bourgeoisie who were struggling to obtain Home Rule for themselves, and Gladstone’s support for this fanned the flames in Scotland.   Of course Home Rule met with opposition from other sections of the owning class who had different interests. Liberal business men who had trade links with Ireland feared any kind of Home Rule, Scottish or Irish, while Liberal MPs representing seats in west and central Scotland had to make sure they didn’t antagonize the Orange vote. The result was a split in the Liberal Party and the emergence of a group of Liberal-Unionists who allied themselves with the Tories against Home Rule.   Tories generally opposed Home Rule for the same reasons as did Liberals. Also the landowning section opposed it because they were outraged at Liberal plans for land reform, while the ambitious politicians were worried about how their career prospects would be affected since there wouldn’t be the same opportunity of landing plum jobs in “the government of Empire” if Scotland were to have its own parliament.   So although support for and opposition to Home Rule cut across party lines the growing band of nationalists usually supported the Liberals who had created the post of Secretary for Scotland and because the party in Scotland was committed to Home Rule. Various Bills for a Scottish parliament were submitted to Westminster until in 1913 one actually looked like succeeding but was cynically dropped by the Liberal government because of political complications over Ulster.   The emergence of independent Labour politics at the turn of the century meant that much working class support was drained from the Home Rule party, the Liberals. By the end of world war one the Liberals were completely shattered so Home Rule looked a lost cause to any Scottish capitalists who had been interested. In any case, as the division between the Liberals and Tories became more and more blurred the owning class had gradually been turning to the Tory Party, which had strong working class support, as the guardian of their class interests.   Nationalist now had to look elsewhere for support and they found it in the growing Labour Party and Trade Union movement in Scotland. John MacLean, plus James Maxton, Tom Johnston, and other prominent Labourites were ardent Home Rulers and they followed in Keir Hardie’s footsteps by pandering to nationalist sentiment in their writings and speeches. Indeed Scotland is currently plastered with a Scottish National Party poster which quotes one of Maxton’s contributions: “I am convinced we can do more in five years in a self-governing Scotland than could have been done with 25 or 30 years of heart-breaking struggle in the British House of Commons.” Today the Labour and Communist Parties, along with various “revolutionary” groups continue the reactionary work of spreading nationalist ideas among the working class.   However, the honeymoon with Labour was soon over and eventually it dawned on the nationalists that they could hope for nothing from the three major parties, none of which had even included Home Rule in their 1924 general election manifestos, so the warring groups swept their differences under the carpet and merged in 1928 to become the National Party of Scotland.   The presence of political nationalist ideas is an indication that some groups in society feel its real material interests are being frustrated by forces outside or even inside the nation. Of course the desire to achieve their aims is never expressed in terms of their own needs only. In order to enlist the necessary working class support such arguments as “justice”, “freedom”, and “the nation” are used to justify the real bone of contention and to give it an aura of sanctity. Next month we will continue to show why the workers in Scotland should oppose nationalism.   We traced the development of modern nationalism in Scotland up till the founding of the National Party of Scotland in 1928.   The incredible hotchpotch of ideas contained in the new organisation soon became a cause for alarm among the more sensible members and drove one, Lewis Spence, to complain that the party was “… a maelstrom boiling and bubbling with the cross-currents of rival and frequently fantastic theories, schemes and. notions we have people who wanted all Scotland to speak the Gaelic…. some hark back to the hope of a sixteenth-century Scotland regained … still others a Jacobite restoration. A certain group sees in the expulsion of all the English and Irish in Scotland the country’s only chance of survival. All is hubbub, outcry, chaos. There is no plan,. Nothing approaching a serious, practical Scotsman-like policy in -either art or politics. (H. J. Hanham, Scottish Nationalism. p. 154) Poor Spence, but he should have known. With the loss of interest in Home Rule of the Scottish ruling class and their political sidekicks, the nationalist cause had fallen into the hands of all sorts of cranks, literary and otherwise, who were more concerned with “culture” than economics or social matters. Certainly they had little idea of the history of the toilers’ conditions as could be seen by their constant harking back to a mythical time when “our people were prosperous and contented” before the Union.   Anyway, the party was established and membership was open to all. Tories and Liberals as well as Labourites flocked in and even Lord Beaverbrook showed interest. Inevitably, some of the more opportunist leaders wished to “broaden the base of the party” and after an internal battle the party merged with a Tory splinter group to become the Scottish National Party (SNP) in 1934. From then until the 1950s the party endured the usual Right versus Left squabbling and several splits occurred, the largest of which was the setting up of a rival organisation, the Scottish Convention, in the 1940s.   Today the SNP seems to have left the lunatic fringe behind and appears as a modern, mass political party using the techniques of public relations and advertising industries to give it a new slick image, and the Executive Suit has replaced the kilt as standard dress for the party candidates. Not only does the party have a large and youthful membership of 120,000 but they carry out their propaganda with a style and enthusiasm which leaves the older reformist parties gasping. At the October general election they all but demolished the Liberals, hammered the Tories, and promise it will be Labour’s turn next time.   So the SNP may be poised for victory within the foreseeable future. How have they produced this rags-to-riches transformation? Obviously, their case is an economic one. They have taken advantage of working class discontent over insecurity, unemployment, low living standards, low expectations, and all the other problems which capitalism brings to workers the world over in one degree or another. They were also helped by widespread disillusion with the two major parties and Labour and Tory supporters have deserted to the nationalists in their tens of thousands.   Basically, the SNP is just another reformist party angling for support on a programme of reforms and even styles itself on the Scandinavian social democrats. After their first breakthrough in l968 the party went into a serious decline which lasted until 1970. Then came the discovery of vast quantities of North Sea oil. Now they can outbid all the others by proposing that the wealth from this oil be divided among five million people only, instead of fifty million, and paint a picture of how, given self-government, oil revenues will provide a paradise in Scotland.   Predictably the nationalists claim that their first priority is to launch a “war on poverty” and the party’s manifesto, Scotland’s Future, gives some idea of how they intend to do this.   For example, pensionable couples are told their combined pension will amount to the national minimum wage which, at today’s level, will be £25, with a single pensioner getting £15. So after a lifetime of producing fortunes for the parasite class worn-out wage slaves are to be “rewarded” with this ! Other dramatic SNP proposals include spending an extra 10 per cent on education and on health services, and just what significant difference this will make to working class life is a mystery to us. The important thing to note is that these are merely promises, and politicians have always found these far easier to make than fulfil.   The writings and utterances of SNP spokesmen present a bewildering display of confusion and contradiction and it is difficult to say whether they are more naïve than dishonest. William Wolfe, the party Chairman, claims the class-struggle can be avoided by passing legislation which outlaws “undue concentration of wealth in a few hands”. We wonder if they mentioned this to the capitalist Sir Hugh Fraser when he joined their ranks last year?   The party repeats the hoary old lie “that it is a lack of communications between management and workers that causes industrial strife”. It could not, of course, have anything to do with a fundamental clash of interests like, for example, the workers wanting better wages and conditions and the management, on behalf of the owners, not willing to grant these.   Despite the SNP’s indignant denials the idea somehow persists in some minds that the party is “socialist”. William Wolfe in his book, Scotland Lives, writes that he wants to give “….the Scottish people opportunities for their own enterprise and capital to be used in giving their fellow Scots employment.” (p. 43) Obviously, by “the Scottish people” he means owners of capital like Sir Hugh Fraser. Perhaps the latter joined the SNP on reading this passage in Wolfe’s book?   Another leading member, Mrs. Margo MacDonald, was asked in an interview how she reacted to the suggestion that there’s no advantage in replacing English or American capitalists with Scottish capitalists. She replied “Well there is, actually. In the strict material sense there is. The Scottish capitalists, while still making lots of money, will be creating jobs in Scotland. They will realise that there is a quicker return to be made by, for instance, refining all of the oil in Scotland. So we would be slightly better off. Of course I agree exploitation by Scots is just as immoral in the long run. (Glasgow News, 12th March 1974) So there it is. For the Scottish capitalist, “lots of money” and a “quicker return”. For the worker, the promise that he will be “slightly better off”.   The nationalists have shown they are fast learners when it comes to political cynicism. They pretend to the workers that should independence come then all the oil revenues will automatically go into the Scottish exchequer and be used mainly for the benefit of the workers. They must know that the United Kingdom would get some of the revenue as part of any deal made over the granting of independence, and that the capitalist class in Scotland would insist that oil revenues be used to reduce the burden of taxation which rests on them.   Will the Labour government’s proposed Scottish Assembly, but still under Westminster, outflank the SNP? This is possible since it is doubtful if the electorate in Scotland want complete independence as various opinion polls have shown. However, as the Assembly will have no more success in abolishing capitalism’s problems than the SNP’s claim that only full independence can succeed, it will probably gain more support.   Should self-government eventually be established the SNP will discover that they cannot will or legislate away those problems of capitalism. No country in the world, no matter how independent or rich in resources, has yet succeeded in eliminating poverty, unemployment, insecurity, etc. For the working class there will be wages while they are working and pensions when they are too old or disabled. An ominous glimpse of what leading SNP members regard as “prosperity” can be gained from their repeated claim that “Scotland was the wealthiest nation in the world” (Wolfe p. 12) up till the end of the 1914-18 war. How the working class lived in those days does not seem to have even occurred to them.   The SNP see themselves as visionaries but they cannot see beyond the narrow confines of the nation-state, conceived in pre-medieval times and as outmoded as the clan system it replaced. It is the Socialist Party of Great Britain who are the true men and women of vision, who look forward to and struggle for a new world of common ownership and democratic control of society’s resources, and uncluttered with the frontiers and class divisions which go hand-in-hand with “the nation”. Vic Vanni