Our future is your future

 

The Socialist Party has long argued that an appreciation of history is a key to understanding the present and making the future. Marx pointed out that when studying history you should not analyse social and political movements by what they said they were doing but by the material results of what they did. The materialist conception of history is the essential tool for explaining social development, on the basis of society’s economic foundations.

Under capitalism you do not have free access to bread, or to motor cars, or to anything else simply by taking them without price and without having to get somebody’s permission. Free access would be the condition under socialism; it is not the condition under capitalism. We are always being told of the wonderful technical developments of the age we live in. The politicians who oppose socialism give the theme a propaganda twist by arguing that it is capitalism that gives us these things and we would be foolish to give up the social system that does so much for us. The worker of a century ago, they say, did not have the benefit of all the marvels that the worker today is free to enjoy. But this is the heart of the matter: is the worker free to enjoy them?

 

Under capitalism, you can only have what you can afford to pay for. The other is that the savage class struggles and international conflicts that capitalism incites prevent most of these freedoms from being used for the good of mankind. With socialism, the use of all these technical developments would be freely available to all. This is how capitalism works in all fields. Under capitalism the working class have invented, discovered, and produced, all the technical marvels, but capitalism fetters and distorts them all for the profit-making and military needs of the capitalist groups of the world.

We don’t deny that workers pay, in the sense of themselves handing over the money, some taxes. Our argument is that the burden of taxation does not fall in the end on the working class but on the propertied class and profits.

This is based on the assumption that in the medium-term workers sell their ability to work at its cost of production (or what Marx called its value), i.e. at the cost of what they must buy to keep their skills up to scratch and also to raise a family to take their place on the labour market when they retire. It follows from this that any permanent increase in the workers’ cost of living, whether from taxes or from higher prices will be passed on to employers as higher money wages and salaries (On the other hand, any permanent decrease in their cost of living, as from rent control or from subsidies to food or transport, will end up being a subsidy to employers in the form of lower than otherwise money wages.)

Having said this, most taxes in Britain are not even paid by workers but are collected and paid by businesses. Obviously, this is the case with corporation tax. It is also the case with income tax on wages and salaries, which is deducted by employers from nominal wages under the PAYE system and never even get into the hands of bank accounts of employees (income tax, in fact, is mainly a means of ensuring that workers without families don’t get that part of wages meant for raising a family)

Perhaps less obviously, this also applies to VAT. It too falls on and is collected by businesses. As its name implies it is a tax on “value added” which, in capitalist economics, translates into a business’s wages bill plus its profits. As we have just seen, wages in the medium term represent the cost of production of labour power, so though the amount of VAT payable is calculated on the amount of “value added” in fact just like corporation tax it only comes out of profits. Firms can’t automatically increase their prices by the amount of the tax; they reduce their profits by it.

Excise duties on beer, spirits and tobacco are also paid out of their profits by the firms involved. Only in this case prices are raised. The government in effect creates an artificial monopoly position allowing monopoly prices to be charged – and then taxes away the monopoly profits for its own benefit. lnsofar as these goods, selling at their monopoly prices, enter into the general cost of living of the working class they are reflected in higher wage levels.

owner-occupiers

The taxes workers actually pay out of their own pockets are such things as car licences, TV licences and, if they are owner-occupiers, council tax – but, once again, in so far as these enter into the general cost of living they are reflected in wage levels.

 

We want socialism because it will improve our lives. We are not idealist do-gooders but have made the hard-nosed assessment that only through co-operation with other fellow humans can a better world be built.

What We Need to Do

 

Workers owe it to themselves, their children and future generations to remove the profit motive, the property tag and all the rivalries and suspicions which are inherent in competitive societies. Capitalism distorts relationships. Putting a price on everything and subordinating all activities to the need to make a profit has made us all rivals. 

 The capitalist market that rules the world. Acting like a natural force beyond human control, it has much more power than any national government and forces governments to comply with its economic laws, whether they want to or not. The market creates an artificial scarcity and organised waste that is responsible for poverty and hunger in the world today. The law which governs production everywhere is “no profit, no production”. Global hunger and malnutrition are not natural but social problems. Its cause must be sought not in any lack of natural resources but in the way society is organised.

Capitalism, whether in its private or its state form, can never solve the problems that confront wage workers as these arise out of the very nature of capitalism as a system that exploits wage-labour for profit.  We are told that if we get a pay rise, the goods we make will not sell, because China will make them more cheaply, and we shall be worse off. So if we want to keep our standard of living up, we have got to keep it down. If we work for less than our Chinese counterparts, we shall be better off. Then they will want to work for even less, so that they can be better off than we are. Finally, we shall all work for nothing and live like Lords. So their logic inevitably goes.  We live in a society wherein a comparatively small section, by virtue of its ownership of the mines, mills, factories, railways, warehouses, etc., is able to acquire a mass of commodities by exploiting the larger non-possessing section of society—i.e., the working class. But unless each competing section of the capitalist class can ensure a large and ready sale of their commodities by keeping down, and even lowering, their commodity prices, they will find themselves ousted by other competitors. Capitalists, therefore, to keep up the sales that will ensure large profits, must undercut their rivals.

 

 The acceptance of the socialist concept involves a critical examination of the whole of one’s ideas and beliefs. Now, most people we meet are not highly critical, not very imaginative, and not even interested. Their view of a better world is limited to the possibility of another few pounds a week in wages. Sport and showbiz gossip give them all the interest they want. And yet it is just these average working people who must be convinced that socialism is both practicable and necessary. It is not a lack of intelligence that is the stumbling block, it is something else. The case for socialism can be put and has been put in language easily comprehensible by a child. 

It should be the task of our movement to provide socialist knowledge, not in the form of a small monthly journal and via low-traffic blogs and social media, but in every form, the genius of men and women can devise. Capitalists who sell wares have discovered that people are lazy, who move when prodded sufficiently, who are most responsive to repetition, and the continuous reiteration of the same story. They have found that the mere appearance of one word, like “Bovril,” on every railway station, every hoarding, and in every important media outlet, has a powerful psychological effect It becomes by sheer familiarity and persistence, part of the “acquired knowledge” encountered by the questing human mind. When we see ever every hoarding plastered with the word “Socialism"; when every bookshop is full of socialist books and pamphlets; when socialism is mentioned by every newspaper social media post every day, every week, every month, when the average person has socialism thrust upon him or her insistently and persistently, in season and out of season, things will begin to move and change. To take the socialist course lays a heavy burden upon the pioneers of a movement such as ours. That is the essential problem of the immediate present. How can the handful of enthusiasts who initiate the movement, get together sufficient funds to drench the working-class with its literature, to make its presence not only felt, but inescapable, to so familiarise them with its propaganda that misrepresentation becomes ludicrous? How can they, out of their poverty, engender this avalanche of publicity that is to overcome the workers' normal and natural inertia, and get them definitely on the move? Let every intelligent person, who has acquired knowledge by reading this blog, answer for him or herself. Every website visitor,  a member, and every member a party worker, that is our object. We shall move in proportion to our effort.

Solidarity

 

The first of three 24-hour rail strikes by RMT begins Tuesday in Scotland.

Mick Lynch, the union's general secretary, blamed the "dead hand" of government, saying ministers did not allow employers to negotiate freely. This dispute between the RMT union and the companies which run Britain's railway centres on pay, job losses and changes to workers' terms and conditions.

Network Rail's plans to cut 2,500 jobs would put safety at risk.

Gordon Martin, RMT organiser explained they had been "forced" to take strike action.

"This is of the UK government's making," he said. "We have been forced into this as a defensive measure. Our members' jobs and livelihoods are at risk here. More importantly, the safety of the rail infrastructure is at risk and safety in railway stations and on trains is at risk."

The Network Rail industrial action is not related to a separate dispute between ScotRail and train drivers' union Aslef which led to a temporary timetable with 700 fewer services introduced last month.

Socialism is for ourselves

Capitalism produces and perpetuates poverty and hatred.  Wherever capital rules it constitutes an instrument of domination over the vast majority of the population. 

Malthusians believe that the meagre resources of the earth would be insufficient for the needs of an ever-increasing population. As a result the vast majority of mankind would always be condemned to exist at the lowest level. Marx utterly repudiated this notion and showed that the evils of Capitalism flowed from the way it produced and distributed wealth. Marx denied that there was some abstract law of population. Different societies he contended would have different laws. Over-population, said Marx, was intimately connected with the growth of capital accumulation and took the form of relative over population i.e. an industrial reserve army.

That capitalism did regulate levels of wages, Marx did not deny; wages could not, he thought, proceed to levels which seriously threatened surplus-value, or eliminated it, but this had nothing to do with the Malthusian doctrine of an iron law of wages. Marx did not believe in an iron law of wages which maintains wages at a mere physical subsistence level. In fact, he devoted much time against Lassalle and others to show the falsity of such views.

There are many politicians appealing for your support to-day. Some of them do so with the claim that they are socialists, but you have no touch-stone to guide your judgment. You are bewildered by the multitude of political parties who all claim that their object is to help you. In fact, there is only one way out of your dilemma—to help yourself by gaining a little knowledge of the society you are living in; its basis, its capacities, and its contradictions, the Socialist Party.

A society is a group of individuals bound together by a common principle. The larger sense in which the word society is generally used refers to the common principle of obtaining a living. Whatever is referred to as “social" concerns a person in connection with others. Thus when we say a thing is socially produced we mean that a number of people produce different parts of an article and their combined efforts produce the finished article. That is the way almost all we eat, drink and wear, is produced to-day, and workers from all over the world produce different parts of the final product. No capitalist need spend an hour in this work, and very rarely does. But by reason of their ownership of the means of production the capitalists, as a class, own the products. Thus the products are socially produced but privately owned.

You are living in a society today in which the things produced, and the tools by means of which they are produced, are privately owned: that is, owned by one individual or by a relatively small group of individuals—either a single capitalist a small group of capitalists, or the capitalist investors in a State concern. The aim of the Socialist Party is to make these things social property; to convert these privately owned goods and tools into goods and tools commonly owned by the whole of society. One  who acts in such a way as to bring this state of affairs into being is a socialist: one who acts in a way that hinders progress to this end is evidently not a socialist, no matter what he may call himself.

Owing to the private ownership of the means of production the majority of the people of this country are unable to obtain the things they need except by working for those that own them; the capitalist class. These two types, owners and non-owners, masters and workers, broadly speaking make up modern society. They form two distinct classes, one of whom depends for a living upon working and the other upon owning what is produced.

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You, to whom we address these lines, belong to the working class. Whether you are paid wages or a salary, you depend for your living upon selling your mental and physical energies to an employer. Between you and your employers there exists a constant struggle over the destination of the wealth you produce. By wage-claims, strikes, or threatened strikes, you struggle to obtain as large a share of the wealth you produce as possible. It is a share you think of, you don*t think of obtaining the whole, because you think of and argue about a “high” or a “low" wage. Your thoughts are bound up with the wages system. The employers on their side resist your wage claims and try to pay you as low wages as possible. This struggle over the division of the wealth you produce is an expression of what the Socialist Party calls the class war.

As long as you accept the present class ownership basis of society there is no hope of a fundamental improvement in your conditions. Wars, recessions, bad housing and the other evils that are a permanent feature of your lives will continue, no matter what political party is in power. There is only one road to salvation—the establishment of socialism. When the wealth produced, and the tools by which it has been produced, have been made into the common property of society there will be no more war, nor will anyone lack either food or shelter. Each will give to society the best and receive in return the best society can give, regardless of age, sex or occupation.

We are members of the working class, and we want you to join us and help us to carry on the struggle for socialism. Why are we anxious for your help? We are in the same mess as you are, and we cannot get out of the mess except in the same way as you. We want socialism because it offers us the only means of leading secure, healthy and comfortable lives; but we cannot get socialism until we want it. Therefore we want you to want socialism and to join with us in the struggle to obtain it: then we will all have an equal opportunity of enjoying the best that life can offer.

What Being A Socialist Means

 

SOCIALIST EDUCATION

Capitalism, twist and turn how it may, is dogged and thwarted by inherent contradictions. The establishment of socialism alone can ensure the utter and complete annihilation of poverty. Progress towards socialism is not helped but hindered by propaganda which represents as socialism what is no more than Labour Party administration of capitalism. We do not argue that Labour Governments fail in their task of administering capitalism through want of will or bad faith. They may be well-intentioned but the road to capitalist crises and capitalist war is paved with the good intentions of social reformers.

We live in a society wherein a comparatively small section, by virtue of its ownership of the mines, mills, factories, railways, warehouses, etc., is able to acquire a mass of commodities by exploiting the larger non-possessing section of society—i.e., the working class.

 

But unless each competing section of the capitalist class can ensure a large and ready sale of their commodities by keeping down, and even lowering, their commodity prices, they will find themselves ousted by other competitors. Capitalists, therefore, to keep up the sales that will ensure large profits, must undercut their rivals.

 

This can be done in two ways—by lowering wages, or by reducing the amount of labour spent on the production of their commodities. The lowering of wages, however, has, from the capitalist viewpoint, this disadvantage—wages cannot profitably be lowered below the level that will maintain a standard of satisfactory working fitness.

 

Therefore, in order to reduce the prices of their commodities, capitalists find themselves mainly reliant upon reducing the amount of labour embodied in commodity production. The only means of doing this is by displacing human labour by machinery.

 

Thus we find sections of the capitalist class competing keenly against each other in the introduction of new technology, by which means alone they can appreciably lower their commodity prices and thus capture the trade of their rivals.

 

Only the introduction of such machinery will assist in retaining that essential in capitalist competition—a rate of profit that will prevent being ousted from the competitive field.

 

Only such machinery, therefore, will be in great demand by the capitalist class, and the competition to secure this machinery will send up its price and bring a rich reward to the owner of the invention. On the other hand, machinery that will bring benefits to mankind will not be in great demand unless it also aids the raising or maintaining of profits. Inventors and scientists, therefore, faced by the fact that only the ideas that will fill a capitalist need will bring ample payment, are, in the main, compelled to concentrate on such ideas. When the competition for trade, fields of exploitation, etc., can be divided by the border-lines of the competing countries, you will find the capitalists of each country uniting against the menace of being ousted by a capitalism from outside.

 

So urgent is the need for capitalist countries to expand their markets, and secure new fields for trade that the strings of diplomacy are overstrained, and finally break, throwing the people of the opposing nations into the blood-drenched arenas of modern war. When this happens the most urgent need of sectional capitalism is for its own nationalistic entity to survive against the nations that threaten it. Thus the individualistic competition within the opposing countries is, temporarily, almost abandoned, and every muscle is strained to achieve a greater task for national capitalism—i.e., winning the war. In this manner the demand for labour-saving machinery is almost entirely displaced by the demand for machinery most effective in the prosecution of the war; machinery, in short, that would be most destructive against the opposing country. Thus, although certain machinery will certainly throw many men out of work, or bring new horror into warfare, scientists, in order to live, are compelled by capitalism to create such machinery.

 

Not until capitalism is ended and replaced by socialism will there be a welcome for all mechanisation beneficial to society. Only then will inventors and scientists be unrestricted by the question, “Will it be profitable to the capitalist class?”

 

Some of those who use the technique of setting one body of worker against another know exactly what they are doing. They know that capitalism will be safe enough while workers can be divided by nationality, colour, religion, sex, skill, craft or any other side-tracking characteristic. Others are the muddle-headed dupes who cannot see the use that is being made of them. They might start by asking themselves exactly what principle they think should underlie the claim they make. Is it the principle of equality for all? If so, they will find our masters their bitter enemies. Or is it the principle that while it is most important to have equality between disabled men and disabled women, between men wage-earners and women wage-earners, there is nothing wrong with a system which breeds vast inequality between the classes, between the wealthy property owners and the poverty-stricken workers?