Knowing about socialism

 The Socialist Party recognises the necessity for all workers to do all they can to maintain wages and working conditions. This is part of the class struggle in capitalism. The working class are the nine-tenths of the population who have to live by selling their only possession: labour-power. It is a commodity. Like all commodities, its price reflects its value, i.e. the labour which has gone to make it, and like all commodities, it is sold on a market where the interests of buyers and sellers are fundamentally opposed. The need for workers to organise and make use of the weapons available to them collectively is clear.

The basis of trade-union organisation is wages and conditions, without any political reference. Many trade unionists support the Labour Party; others are left-wingers, Tories, Greens, etc., all of whom need equally to press to maintain or try to improve their living standards. This shows on one hand that everyone, conscious of it or not, is in the class struggle; and on the other, that the overwhelming majority of trade unionists are not Socialists and do not even think they are. To that extent, the unions have hardly needed persuading that workers and employers have “common interests”.

Political-minded militants believe that in a strike, or when otherwise under pressure from the capitalist class, a mass of trade unionists can be led into a general rebellion against the existing order. The same belief is held about the unemployed; and, as with the unemployed, the position is that (unless they are socialists) they want nothing more than a solution to their immediate problem. When militants are elected to trade-union offices it is in view of their likely success as negotiators, not their political gospels. However, the implication on the part of the militants who profess to be aiming to overthrow capitalism is that they are seeking the support of non-socialists. This was the position taken up by early labour leaders.

Unions are economic organisations with an essential function. It is also a restricted one, and they operate properly by accepting the restriction: political action by them has been chronically damaging to working-class interests. While their success in gaining wage increases depends on the state of production more than anything else, they should always be ready to (as Marx advised them) test the situation and not accept the pleas of the capitalist class and governments.

 

The restriction means also that trade unions cannot change society. The next step for trade unionists is recognition of the position in which they stand and the fact that the path to socialism is a separate political organisation. With this consciousness, they can end the action in support of capitalism which too often characterises trade unions now, and turn from sectional aims to the interests of the working class as a whole. In a resolution he drafted for the International Workingmen’s Association in 1866, Marx wrote:

"By considering themselves champions and representatives of the whole working class, and acting accordingly, the trade unions must succeed in rallying round themselves all workers still outside their ranks. They must carefully safeguard the interests of the workers in the poorest-paid trades, as, for example, the farm labourers, who due to especially unfavourable circumstances have been deprived of their power of resistance. They must convince the whole world that their efforts are far from narrow and egoistic, but on the contrary, are directed towards the emancipation of the downtrodden masses."

Obviously much trade-union action — for instance, that which centres on the idea of a “wages league” in which groups of workers demand of right to be better paid than others — is divisive and unconcerned with the class issue. Trade unions have much to learn. At the present stage, the Socialist Party observe and approve their efforts to get what they can. But the reservations have to be made: our demand is for workers in the unions to see that they are only half-participating in the class struggle. The question is not what socialists do about trade unions, but what the trade unions are going to do about socialism.

Capitalism

 

No to nationalism

 If nationalism was a recognised disease, its terrible toll on human life would excite the demand for a cure.

The Socialist Party does not support the slogan “Self-Determination”. Insofar as this word has any meaning it runs counter to the socialist view that the nation is a capitalist political institution. The whole idea underlying nationalism — that all the people of a particular nation (however defined, and that’s another problem) have some common interest — challenges the socialist analysis which says that the workers have no country and that the “national interest” is a fraud and a trick designed to get them to co-operate on the political field with their rulers. The task of the Socialist Party is to campaign, along with socialists in other countries, for the establishment of a socialist society all over the world.

One argument used in the past by advocates of nationalism has been that until the national question is settled the workers will never be able to recognise their worldwide community of interest in the abolition of capitalism. As against this, the Socialist Party points out that nationality problems never will be settled under capitalism. Hoodwinked by repetition from the mouths of their leaders, of the old fiction of the alleged community of interest between themselves and the employers, the workers are again to be privileged to defend the country they do not own. While the capitalist class dominates the civilised world, and owns and controls all the means of wealth production, the disposal of nations in this or that sphere of economic interest is not the business of the working class. The only hope lies in the deluded, toiling masses of wealth producers mustering under the crimson banner of socialism, determined to gain control of the machinery of government, including the armed forces, to use it as the agent of emancipation, and to usher in the system of society based upon the common ownership of the means of life; the social system wherein the interests of the human family shall form a harmonious whole. 

 

Most certainly, workers in Scotland there have plenty to complain about— no job prospects, low incomes, bad housing, etc,—but they are terribly mistaken in imagining that independence would in any way improve their position. They are suffering because they are property-less workers in a world where the means of life are owned by a privileged minority. Their problems are caused not by British rule but by capitalism.  The solution to the problems facing workers in Ireland is the same as that to those facing workers the world over. We must organise together to replace capitalism everywhere with a system based on democratic control and the common ownership of the planet’s resources. The struggle for such a socialist society has to involve implacable opposition to nationalism, of whatever variety, whenever it rears its ugly ahead.

Your birthright, like that of workers anywhere in a capitalist society, from New York to Moscow, from London to Peking, is that of a wage slave. Our "right" is the right to try and sell our mental or physical ability to produce wealth to any employer who thinks he can get a return on investment. Our "right" is to accept the poverty of employment or the dire poverty of the dole. Our "right" is the freedom to do what we are told, whatever the colour of the rag flutters at the top of the political masthead.

There is an alternative to permanent want and insecurity. As capitalism is a world system, however, we cannot end it solely by our own efforts. Rather than butcher one another, we must band together with our fellow members of the working class in other countries to organise a system in which the resources of the earth would be owned and democratically controlled by society as a whole and used to produce the things that all human beings need. This is the only action we urge you to consider.

Free with socialism

 

Voters do not understand that the real issue is not whether British capitalism should be run by the Conservative or the Labour Party but the urgency of replacing capitalism with socialism. One thing is certain: a proper understanding of what is at stake and how we can authentically change society can only be helped by the exposure of the contemptible creeps who tell us that under Keir Starmer things can only get better. The Labour Party. New ruses. New lies. The question of socialism—the abolition of private ownership of the means of life and the consequent ending of wage-labour and capital—is never mentioned.

The motor of history, according to socialists, is the struggle of classes. Today, in a capitalist society, it is the struggle of the working class of the world for security. Socialists seek to eradicate the basic causes of war, unemployment, poverty and fascism, which it knows are the products of capitalism. National boundaries are obsolete not only because they breed fear; they are obsolete because they choke and distort the inevitable need for political integration in a world where economic integration is already a fact in various ways. No nation can live within its borders alone. Each rival ruling class seeks to integrate the world for itself, for the economic necessities we have mentioned.

Capitalism is a society based on the exploitation of the many by the few. Because it is founded on massive inequality, it requires various means to oppress and keep down the working class and the poor. The ruling classes of the world know the value of “divide and rule,” both as a means to weaken any opposition against them, and as a means to squeeze more profits from the working class. The working class is not only an exploited class – it is also an oppressed class. Workers receive worse education, worse housing and worse job opportunities than the sons and daughters of the rich. Workers are constantly reminded that they do not possess the intelligence or the capabilities of those above them on the social ladder. Workers are disadvantaged at every step, stressed under financial and family constraints, forced to work in dangerous jobs and, therefore, more likely to suffer from various physical and mental ailments. In turn, they are then forced to accept the poorest quality health care. capitalism – a system based upon the exploitation of wage labour for profit – was founded on enslavement and oppression from its beginnings.

Everyone accepts the idea that the oppression of slaves was rooted in the class relations of exploitation of that system. Fewer recognise that under capitalism wage slavery is the pivot around which all other inequalities and oppressions turn. Capitalism used racism to justify plunder, conquest and slavery, but as Marx pointed out, it also used racism to divide and rule – to pit one section of the working class against another and thereby blunt class consciousness. The bosses consciously foster divisions among workers in order to weaken and defeat their struggles for better conditions. The very conditions of capitalist exploitation and competition also help to foster divisions among workers. While capitalism propels workers toward collective forms of struggle, it also forces them into competition. The unremitting pressure from a layer of unemployed workers, which exists in most economies even in times of ‘full employment,’ is a deterrent to struggle – a constant reminder that workers compete for limited jobs which afford a decent standard of living. By oppressing a section of the working class on the basis of its sex, race, sexual orientation, language or national origin and driving those workers’ conditions of existence down, capitalism is able to drive the conditions of all workers down. A white worker may perceive that their conditions of work and pay are better because of the lower pay received by Black workers. The reality, however, is that the bosses use the conditions of the lowest-paid workers to drive the conditions of all workers down. The worse the pay and conditions of the most oppressed workers, the more the bosses can lower the pay of all workers. Conversely, when the conditions of the most oppressed sections of the working class are improved, the conditions of all workers improve.

The working-class struggle cannot be successful unless workers are able to throw off the yoke of oppression that divides them. That is why, as a class, workers not only do not benefit from oppression but also have a common class interest in fighting oppression. Capitalism would have no need for dividing workers if there were not another dynamic at work – the tendency for capitalism to compel workers to collectively fight back against the various aspects of their oppression and exploitation. To engage in class struggle it is not necessary to “believe in” the class struggle. The interests of workers, as a group organised by capital, lead them to struggle.  The working class moves toward class struggle insofar as capitalism fails to satisfy its economic and social needs and aspirations. There is no evidence that workers like to struggle any more than anyone else; the evidence is that capitalism compels and accustoms them to do so. For any oppressed group to fight back there is a need for hope. And that is to be found, not in the isolation of oppression but in the collective strength of the working class. For the Socialist Party the notion that the working class, by liberating itself, will liberate the whole of humanity, is central. 

Green Lairds

 In Scotland, the average price of land, according to research by the estate agent Strutt & Parker, jumped by 87% in the last year. Some estates have seen a 333% price increase since 2018. 

Many of the landowners are colloquially and pejoratively titled “green lairds”, echoing the Highland clearances of the 18th and 19th centuries. 

 In many cases, land is bought and trees are planted to “offset” the owner’s carbon emissions from elsewhere. The new Somerset-based venture Real Wild Estates recently said its business model was “making nature pay, by delivering sustainable business returns” for investors. The investment companies Aviva and Standard Life have also bought land to plant forests and restore peatland. The land bought for offsetting is often framed as derelict – an empty wilderness devoid of community. Rarely does corporate rewilding consider the displacement of communities living and working on the land. It is also having impacts on agriculture: threatening crofting in Scotland.

 Langholm Moor community buyout bought 5,300 acres of land to put back under communal ownership. Another inspiring initiative can be found on the Isle of Ulva, which was brought back into community ownership in 2018. In 2015, the population had fallen to just five people. Now they’re seeing the “repeopling” of the island.

 Rewilding should not be about profit and offsets, remote and alien from rural communities. The value of a real, democratic rewilding is that it doesn’t just to  sequester carbon dioxide – but for people too.

Rewilding, or just a greenwashed land grab? It all depends on who benefits | Eleanor Salter | The Guardian

A Message for Scottish Workers

 Let every socialist face the fact that ‘patriotism’ is not socialism, and that the achievement of independence nationality, even up to the highest professed ideals of patriotism, namely the complete political separation of Scotland from Britain, would not ‘free Scotland’ one iota in any sense satisfactory to the international socialist and absolutely demanded by socialist principles. This age-long struggle of  ‘patriots’ to ‘free Scotland’ is, therefore, from the Socialist Party's point of view, an utter chimera which, if it could be achieved, would be to the wretched wage-slaves of Scotland. The international socialist who happens to be a Scot can, and does feel profound sympathy for all the struggles of his or her countrymen and even their pathetic efforts to achieve the utter futility—from the strictly socialist point of view—of sovereignty, which can excite pity for their useless sufferings, even though he or she cannot take part in their misdirected exertions. 

In common with the rest of capitalism's half-baked left-wing. Nationalists  are utterly blind to the real problem. They see all evils only in the shape of private capitalism — the source of working class poverty is not to be found in the fact that we, as wage workers, are exploited by capital, but in the identity of capital's owners. Nationalists are concerned with the shadow of exploitation not its substance. Despite the wealth of evidence to the contrary, collected over the past century and more in every country in the world, they maintain that capital in the hands of the state performs the miraculous feat of transforming itself from the exploiter of wage labour into its servant.

Would the working class be worse or better off with independence? Would there be anything to choose between the two “solutions”? Surely, in both a sovereign Scotland  or a United Kingdom, the workers’ standard of living would be much the same. So would the slums, the unemployment and the other problems of capitalist society. And world socialism would remain the only solution to these problems. The only difference would be the colour of the flag that would fly over the government buildings in Edinburgh: Union Jack or Scottish Saltire?

The problems of the working class in Ireland were, and remain, the problems of the working class of the world and originate in the class stratification of capitalist society. Given capitalism, these problems were inevitable; they could not then, no more than they can now, be “planned” out of the system. They did not arise out of the “evil” intentions, nor the blundering or stupidity of governments, “home” or “foreign”, no more than they could be planned, prayed or fought away by brave, sincere or wise men. They were the facts of capitalism and would continue to exist for as long as the working class, the only class with an economic interest in bringing about a real change, accepted that system.

Our sincere urging to our fellow Scottish wage-slaves is, to let them use their remaining strength to shake off the leeches of capitalism, that are sucking their lifeblood, instead of hastening their destruction in a mad effort to set up Tweedledum in place of Tweedledee. 

What Is and What Could Be

 

The obvious barrier to the socialist transformation of society is the simple fact that most workers are not socialists and indeed most accept capitalism and believe it can’t be changed. Businesses are run for profit and society is divided into classes so it is believed these things are ‘natural’. Most view socialists as utopian idealists. Even successful struggles in the class war do not automatically lead to those involved drawing socialist conclusions even though it provides fertile ground for this to happen. For this reason, the  Socialist Party need to advance the vision of how society can be transformed even as they engage in common struggles. The history and traditions of the working class must be commemorated for a new generation. 

The ruling class controls the formation and promotion of ideas, owning the media and being in charge of education and political institutions.  As Marx put it: ‘the ruling ideas of any age will be the ideas of the ruling class’. The generally-held ideas of society reflect the way society is organised. 

If socialism cannot be created on behalf of workers as we hold and must be the act of the working class itself, how can this happen when the working class is so dominated by capitalist ideas? We accept that our fellow worker's  ideas clearly cannot simply be changed on a mass scale by any campaign by the Socialist Party. The socialist intellectual may  be a miner or factory workers or an academic university professor. The socialist intellectual must keep his or her eye on the main task, the formation and circulation of revolutionary ideas.

It is often assumed that the more people suffer, the more revolutionary their resistance grows. But if this were so, then the revolution would have happened long ago. In fact, it is not suffering, but the experience and lessons of struggling against exploitation and oppression that is the basis for the growth of socialist ideas.

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The central tenet of socialism is the assertion that the working class is the sole historical agency for the achievement of socialism, and that it is upon its conscious practice that the possibility of revolution depends. For the Socialist Party, the possibility of revolution rests upon the conscious and free acceptance of socialism by the working class. If workers’ struggle results largely in defeat, then workers – with little control over their own working lives – feel that society cannot be changed. But if victory follows victory, then workers’ confidence in their ability to change their own lives increases, and they become more able to see that alternatives to capitalism are possible and then socialist ideas can spread like wildfire. The Socialist Party seeks liberty, equality, and fraternity for workers’ all human beings, regardless of race, religion or origin. 

None of this means that the attempt by the Socialist Party to spread our ideas is not necessary. Socialist ideas have to be present to be picked up, and an organisation is required to inform, articulate and generalise from these worker’s experiences to prove their relevance and point the way forward. A working-class not guided by socialist theory can play into the hands of its class enemies. If workers do not believe the emancipation of the working class is the act of the working class, then they will look for salvation from above, or, worse still, come to the conclusion that no emancipation is possible at all. The struggles of those who see beyond the limitations of reformism are bound to be difficult. But the development of capitalism, with its inexorable laws, provided the foundation upon which the ideas of socialism must survive, no matter how weakly or what the setbacks. People want to develop a political consciousness, a sense of fellowship, and a satisfaction of human and cultural needs, within the present society and within a radical social movement that is possible.