Let’s Face the Future

 “When once the thin end of the opportunist wedge has forced itself into the policy of the party, the thick end soon follow” -Wilhelm Liebknecht (No Compromise)

The working class have trodden many false paths and taken up many unsound ideas in the course of its history. When sections of organised workers engage in sound action by striking for improved wages or conditions, they receive almost unanimous condemnation from the media. This should indicate to them that such action is in their interest. Industrial action on its own is however very limited and has its best chance of success in a boom time when employers need us most. At best, a strike can win the day on a wage issue, but the capitalists still remain in their privileged position as owners of the means of production.

History has proved when organising for socialism, the offering of reforms on the party programme spells ruin. Thousands may flock to the party, but they are most interested in the reform of capitalism, not in its abolition, and these members swamp the socialist element. Socialists inside a reformist organisation cannot convert it and bring it onto the socialist path. The only logical thing they can do is to break with the reformists and organise the clear-cut programme of socialism. 

The working-class cannot hope for Socialism from trade unions, co-operatives or from reform movements.

Trade unions, Rosa Luxemburg, shows, are a part of capitalism itself. They are the workers’ weapons of defence against the capitalist class which aims at increasing its profits. They are useful in that they enable the workers to sell their labour-power under more favourable conditions than would otherwise be the case. However, they are not able to take the offensive against capitalism, to overthrow it, because they are badly handicapped.

Co-operatives are no more able than trade unions to end capitalism. As Rosa Luxemburg points out they can survive within the present system only if they become pure capitalist enterprises. They have to compete with capitalist firms, and to do so successfully they must adopt capitalist methods of production.

Any social reforms that are passed, therefore, will not be harmful to capitalism. Since the struggle for reforms cannot alter the slave position of the working class, it ends by bringing indifference and disillusionment to the workers who look to reforms for emancipation. 

The workers must aim at capturing political power. And they must make use of democracy to that end. The Socialist Party will not barter its support for any promise of reform. For, no matter whether these promises are made sincerely or not, we know that the immediate need of our class is emancipation, which can only be achieved through the establishment of socialism. Our interests are opposed to the interests of all sections of the master class without distinction; whether bankers or industrialists, landlords or commercial magnates, all participate in the fruits of our enslavement. All will unite, in the last resort, in defence of the system by which they live. For the party of the working class, one course alone is open, and that involves unceasing hostility to all parties, no matter what their plea, who lend their aid to the administration of the existing social order and thus contribute, consciously or otherwise, to its maintenance. Our object is its overthrow, and to us, political power is useless for any other purpose. 

The wage system takes away from the workers what they produce, and creates a situation in which money becomes the sole end of human endeavour. The worker is reduced to a creature who seeks a wage packet. Governments running a system concerned above all else to ensure that rent, interest and profit are secured for the capitalist minority are bound to anger and frustrate workers. After all, workers have no real material interest in capitalist prosperity; indeed, the capitalists' privilege is obtained at the expense of our relative poverty. There is a class division arising out of diametrically opposed material interests. Faced with a multitude of problems arising out of the system where production is for profit rather than need, workers become frustrated, angry and determined to do something to change things. Socialists depend on this active desire to change society: every worker who decides to do something to protest against the way things are — however misguided that action might be — is, at least, proof of the fact that workers are discontented and not brainwashed. After all, if workers were wholly contented and totally indoctrinated, there would not be any socialists.  However, wrong solutions to real frustration arising out of real problems will not change society. Socialist understanding starts off with the recognition of the problems and all the anger about them that reformists show. 

The Socialist Party stands in uncompromising opposition to reformism. We reject all attempts to make capitalism run efficiently from the working class's point of view. That does not mean that we have nothing in common with reformist workers — in fact, we have much to agree about. They want change and so do we; they envisage the possibility of eradicating unpleasant features of society which conservatives say are inevitable, and so do we; they are anxious to alert their fellow workers to particular problems and so are we. Where is the big difference, then? Socialists are aware that the changes which reformists want are futile for three reasons: firstly, they are usually directed to just one problem of capitalism, leaving all the others intact and, even in relation to these "single issues”, the reformists are often willing to compromise (abolish nuclear bombs but keep conventional ones, for example); secondly, the reformist is unaware of the fact that capitalism produces social problems as a matter of course, and that therefore it is as idealistic to seek to eradicate mass starvation without ending production for profit as it would be to abolish the spots without curing measles; thirdly, socialists want more than to make capitalism tolerable for the working class — we want to end capitalism and, in so doing, to abolish wage slavery as a permanent social condition for the vast majority of people.

The Vicar of Bray (music)

 

No Masters, No Gods, No Saviours

 

The question of religion is not infrequently raised by socialists. A variety of cases are made ranging from the absolutely irrefutable word of God, as recorded in the  sacred scripture of choice) to attempts to reconcile religious faith with Marxism. The Socialist Party responds to religious entreaties, insisting that atheism expressed as materialism is the only credible way of understanding capitalism and bringing about the conscious change required by the working class, the vast majority, to strive for and achieve socialism. Atheism is limited to merely attacking the symptom, religion, rather than the disease, capitalism.

What is religious faith? In this case, faith is belief, or trust, in a religious system, the head of which is God. In short, faith is belief in God. What is fact? Fact is truth, reality, something that actually happens; something that is made known to us by one, or more, of our five senses; something we can see, or feel, or hear, or smell. Now we cannot know God through our senses. That is to say, he does not show himself to us; we cannot hear him speak or sing; we cannot shake hands with him. We cannot send a letter or a telegram to God, because we do not know his address, nor are there any means of communication with his supposed place of abode. The reason for this negation is, there is “no such being.” The idea of God was born through mankind’s ignorance of the workings of Nature. God did not create man; on the contrary, man created God. God only exists in the imagination and has no external existence. We only hear of God what pleases certain people, for certain reasons, to tell us.

 Religion—and its core belief that only some outside super-being, not humans themselves, by their own collective efforts, can bring about a better world—reflects this lack of power and lack of control over their own lives which most people experience. But most people experience this under capitalism too, which is based, precisely, on their exclusion from the ownership and control of society's productive resources and on the subordination of production to blind and uncontrollable market forces. So, a consistent criticism of religion leads to a criticism of capitalism. As long as capitalism continues—or at least until there is a mass, conscious and self-confident movement for socialism— religion, as the anti-human doctrine that we humans can’t control our lives but need the help of some outside super-being, will continue to survive in one form or another. The form changes—traditional religious beliefs are being replaced by New Age mumbo-jumbo—but as long as humans don’t in fact control their lives then religious beliefs will survive.

Religion is not simply a jumble of confused ideas. It is a powerful weapon in the hands of the capitalist class. It divides us and blinds us to the class action that is required to overcome the menace of capitalism. Religion is the ideological expression of a long-gone world and its ancient social conditions, a world of superstition, slavery and little education. Far from providing an answer to today’s problems, it tells us to put our faith in the supernatural hopes of a past age. Instead of uniting us as a class, we are to become meek and mild and submit to the whims of an ancient god that was dreamt up in the bronze age.

Many people have now largely, for all intents and purposes, given up on religion. For all that religion has been abandoned by the majority of the working class, it still exerts an obviously strong influence in many parts of the world. Where that is the case religion continues to fulfil its role as a reaction to poverty, both economic and philosophic. In extremis, the opiate proves deadly, as with the Taliban.

The Socialist Party alone maintains its hostility to all forms of religion. It considers all religious beliefs to be incorrect and a barrier to the acceptance of the socialist case. Therefore one of the tasks of a socialist is to show the falsity of religious ideas and not to compromise with them. A socialist cannot be religious, and when socialism is established religion will be dead, for the overwhelming majority of the world’s population will have become socialists. If anyone remains who wishes to tell rosary beads or sing hymns will be tolerated. But a world of enlightenment and security will not provide fertile soil for the growth of religious ideas, which flourish in the rubbish heap of misery and ignorance.

The point is not to abolish religion but to transcend it through socialism harnessing the material resources available to humanity and employing them democratically for the commonweal, if not for heaven on earth, then as close as mankind can get to it. Unless people can cast off the superstitious beliefs inculcated by priests, shamans and witch doctors then it is impossible to build a more rational society. The Socialist Party aims at taking from the masters the power they wield and the wealth they have stolen. Its object is to raise the workers from slaves to free men and women. It is therefore opposed to religion. If the workers would cast off the chains of wage slavery, then they must cast off the slavish doctrines of religion which counsel them to love, honour, and obey those who oppress them.

Pie in the Sky (music video)

 

No Time For Gods

 

A frustration shared by socialists and many scientists is the persistence of belief in a god to explain the world. This is partly because ‘god’ is such a quick and easy answer to so many important questions: How did we get here? Why should I behave morally? Why am I here? While science has provided a comprehensive explanation of how and when we got here, and what we are made of, it is less certain when answering the question, why?  Instead, many people have turned to religious or other unfounded explanations.

The reason why the Socialist Party doesn't admit religious people to membership is that we regard their views, on what is after all a key issue (the nature of human existence), as wrong. In the same way, people who want to support the Labour Party or who think that Russia was socialist are not admitted to membership.

Actually, although this is, probably inevitably, how others would classify us, we do not call ourselves “atheists”. The word “Atheism” suggests a concern with opposing religious ideas in particular whereas we are concerned with promoting socialist ideas. (In fact, pointing out the mistaken ideas of religious people only forms a small part of our activity, as you have noticed.) We prefer to describe ourselves as “materialists”, i.e. as people who hold that all we humans know and can know, is derived from the experiences of our senses of the material world that surrounds us and of which we are a part.

The existence of a super-being called god or of an afterlife for humans is theoretically possible, as part of this material world. These can’t be ruled out a priori. However, neither of these hypotheses has been confirmed in accordance with methods and tests of science—the phenomena brought forward to confirm them can be much more plausibly explained in other ways. A rational, logical person ought therefore to dismiss them as disproved hypotheses.

Religious people do not do this. They are therefore thinking illogically. This wouldn’t be so bad (Socialist Party members don’t think logically all the time) if it didn’t concern a key aspect of the socialist case: human nature.

The materialist approach, which socialists take, sees humans as the product of biological and social evolution (not the creation of some super-being), that individual humans have brains and minds which cease to exist when they die (and not souls or a spirit that pre-dates birth and survives death), and that the only way humans can improve their lives is by their own collective efforts (not by relying on some outside intervention from some super-being or beings). This life is the only one we are going to get and we should therefore try to make it the best possible both for individual humans and for the whole human species. Given the present stage of human social evolution, this can only be done within the framework of a society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the Earth’s resources.

This is the, if you like, "philosophical’’ basis of the case for socialism. It follows from a scientific approach to human existence and problems. Religious people don't, and can’t share, this view. They can only see this life as some sort of preparation for a better life after death. Since not all of them are committed to the pessimistic and anti-human doctrine of the depraved nature of humans (though they have to be if they are orthodox followers of the world’s two main religions, Christianity and Islam), some unorthodox religious people can find a religious justification for wanting socialism. We know from experience that such people exist (perhaps you are one). What they then do is up to them. Some subscribe to the Socialist Standard or support our work in other ways. They don’t need our permission to do this. It’s their choice made, presumably, in the knowledge of our views on religion. 

 

Workers who are suppressed and exploited under capitalism should keep their attention on the real, material world in which they live; this is the only life we know we have and we must struggle to make it the best of all possible experiences. All religion is a diversion from the workers’ urgent task of abolishing capitalism and establishing socialism. Apart from this, there is no evidence which can stand up to a scientific assessment to indicate that there is a supernatural life or any of the other mumbo jumbo associated with religious beliefs.

We didn’t know (music)

 

Social Revolution Not Reforms

 Ever since its formation the Socialist Party’s attitude towards reforms as palliatives has been criticised. The Socialist Party has always maintained that nothing short of socialism could possibly effect a cure and has consequently steadfastly refused to be drawn into any reform agitation whatsoever urging that the quickest way to get “something now” even, is to organise to obtain the whole, many holds that the best policy consists in agitating for this or that reform with a view to assisting the workers to get something now.  We were called impossibilists for holding such an analysis that said the workers of the world must organise for socialism and refuse to be drawn from the straight path. The ills afflicting the working-class are due to capitalism, with its profit-making motive. The Socialist Party stands for the revolutionary transformation of society. Because of this and because history has proved that a party for revolution cannot be built up on reform programmes, the Socialist Party does not seek to win support by advocating reforms.

Change is needed. What kind of a change is it going to be? Is it to be only the reform of present-day society, capitalism? This is the kind of change the capitalist class envisage. Or will the workers act in their own interest, and perform the revolutionary act of abolishing capitalism and establishing socialism? The choice rests with the working-class. If they want reforms, mere modifications of capitalism which will still leave them fundamentally in the same position as they occupy to-day, they can have them. On the other hand, should they decide to have done once and for all with capitalism, its private property, profits and privileges for the few and its wage-slavery and poverty for the vast majority, there is no one who can prevent them. Should the workers support plans for the reform of capitalism? Or should they take matters into their own hands, abolish the present system, and establish socialism?

Since the early days of capitalism, efforts have been made to make the lot of the worker more bearable, to ease the chafing of his chains. The reformists who busy themselves with this task start with the assumption that capitalism will remain. Any changes they advocate are to be brought about within the framework of capitalism. This is the essence of reformism. Capital and wage-labour, the two bases of capitalism, they leave fundamentally untouched. They do not seek to eradicate these roots of capitalism. They merely try to lessen the pains inflicted on society by the capitalist system.

Capitalism cannot be so modified by reform measures that it becomes “the best of possible worlds” for the working-class. All reformist efforts to solve the fundamental problems of the workers are bound to fail. Capitalism, it must be understood, is a system of society organised so as to provide profit to the owners of industry, the capitalist class. To do this, the wage-worker is set to work, and what he produces belongs to the employers, the capitalists. The wage-worker is given back, in the form of wages, only a portion of what he produces; the rest, the surplus, the capitalist owner retains. Thus, the worker exploited and kept on the poverty line, for the portion he receives as wages is just about sufficient to keep him fit enough to perform his particular job and reproduce his kind—future wage-slaves for the service of the capitalist class. Hence the worker is born poor, he lives his life in poverty and dies still poor.

Frequently, to increase his profit, or to compete more successfully in the markets of world, the capitalist cuts down his production costs. Then he seeks to enforce wage reductions, or he may replace workmen with labour-saving machinery or by adopting a new technique. Moreover, the growth of the unemployment problem has been particularly favourable to the capitalist class in its attack upon the workers’ standard of living, for as soon as there is a reserve army of unemployed workers, the keeping down of wages becomes a more simple matter for the owners of industry since the workers compete with each other for jobs.

The motor of capitalism is the lust for profit, any wage increases won by the workers are, if possible, offset by the employing class, for wage increases mean an attack on profits. Hence wage increases are usually the signal for the introduction of more labour-saving devices, more machinery. Thus, very frequently, more production is squeezed out of fewer workers. The exploitation of the worker becomes more intense.

Whatever reforms are introduced, so long as the present system remains, the following evils will persist:

1. The bulk of what the workers produce will be taken from them.

2. They will be kept on or near the poverty line, and will be thus forced to continue in a slave position, dependent on the capitalist class for a living. They will still stand in need of doles, old age pensions and all the other accessories of poverty.

Often reforms are carried out to improve the lot of the worker prove but of short duration. Should they be of inconvenience to the capitalist class in whose interests present-day society operates, they are, as soon as a favourable opportunity arises, either abandoned altogether or modified to the disadvantage of the workers. All that is necessary is for an industrial crisis or a war to arise—and both these come crashing in on us with regularity—and years of effort for reform measures are as nothing. Then we must say good-bye to the reforms “for the time being,” or at least the reforms are drastically altered. 

Because no solution is possible for the worker under capitalism, we are out to abolish it and replace it with socialism. We aim at nothing less because we know nothing less will satisfy the needs of the class to which we belong. It is also for this reason that we are opposed to all other parties, all of which, at the most, aim merely at modifications of present-day society.

Fellow workers should study socialism. That is the first step. We are confident that a little study will convince them that only by going to the root of their problems can their position be permanently improved. They will realise the need for abandoning reform movements. They will realise the need for revolutionary action, for replacing capitalism with socialism, that is by a society wherein there will be no private property, no profit-making and no wages.

 Socialism is, in fact, a social system wherein the means of life belong to all society and wherein, consequently, production is carried on to satisfy the needs of society. Socialism, having no “ulterior motive,” will make unnecessary the present-day strivings for “a living wage” (which still leaves the workers robbed of the bulk of what they produce). Let the worker, with Marx, say, “Instead of the Conservative motto, ‘A fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work !’ they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, ‘Abolition of the wages system !’ ”

We do not expect tto gain the support of people still unconvinced of the need for socialism—nor do we desire to be supported by non-socialists. Until the majority desire and are prepared to organise for the specific job of establishing socialism, the achievement of the new society is an impossibility. Our task now then is, to propagate socialist principles, to make socialists. Non-socialists, people interested in the reform of capitalism, would hamper us in that job. Once a revolutionary party begins to compromise with capitalism and is willing to help in its administration and reform, such a party is doomed as a weapon for socialism. It ceases to be revolutionary. Once a party adopts reform programmes, it appeals to many kinds of people who are anything but socialist. The result is that the socialists are swamped, and socialism is pushed further and further into the background of the party programme; socialism ceases to be the object of the party. Let the workers, then, reject reformism, and embrace revolution. Let them cease to spend their forces on reformist futilities.

What did you learn in school today? (music)

 

An Administration, Not a Government

1. Society is, broadly speaking, divided into two classes, the slave class and the slave-owning class.

2. Between these two classes there is a conflict of interests—centred around the sale and purchase of labour-power—which can be ended only by the abolition of the slave-owners, i.e., the capitalist class.

3. No one but the slaves themselves can abolish the capitalist class, and so doing achieve the freedom of the workers.

4. As the slave class, i.e., the working class, is the last class to be emancipated, there is no other class to be exploited, hence the need for government automatically disappears. 

The difference, then, between administration and government is that the first serve the people and the other represses them. A good example of administration is to be found in the constitution of the Socialist Party.

The control of the affairs of the Party is vested entirely in the membership of the Party. We have certain officials who are responsible for the execution of the instructions given to them by the Party. If they fail in this work or do it in an unsatisfactory manner, they can be removed from office at any time the Party thinks fit.

We apply this principle to the affairs of society and point out that while we do not dispute the ability of the master class to govern, we do affirm that they cannot administer, for such a function must necessarily be performed in the interests of the workers, and hence can only be carried out by the workers themselves. To talk of a socialist State is to talk in contradictions. The State is a machine designed to maintain the subjection and exploitation of a large mass of people by a few. It developed when the production of wealth surplus to the needs of the producer became possible. Its function was to protect the system of the expropriation of that surplus wealth. Thus, it is a very old institution—and now that we live under capitalism, with its exploitation of the working class under modern industrial conditions, it still carries out the same function. Today, as ever, the state is there to preserve and protect the private ownership of the wealth, power and privilege of the relatively small dominant class in society.

The establishment of world socialism will involve the abolition of the state, but this must be achieved by first gaining control of the entire powers and machinery of governments, including the armed forces. The practical question involved in this is that the socialist majority must be in a position to implement its object. It must be in a position to control events, which means being in a position to enact the common ownership of the means of production and to ensure that society is completely transformed on this basis. At the centre of the capitalist class, power is their control of the forces of the state, therefore this must be taken out of their hands.  The capture of political control by the World Socialist Movement will establish the position whereby socialist delegates will be in control of the machinery of governments at local and national level throughout the world. Their first action will be to implement the common ownership of the means of production. Classes will thus be abolished and an egalitarian community come into being.

Socialism will be a society in which there will be no place for governments, armies, police forces or any of the other oppressive institutions required by capitalism. In socialism the means of production and distribution of wealth will be held in common by society, enabling production to be carried on with the sole purpose of satisfying the needs of human beings. This means that, for the first time in the history of the human race, society will be in a position to eradicate forever the conditions of poverty, want, fear and insecurity, along with violent, aggressive beings which these conditions breed. A society which caters for the needs of its members, because its members will be in control, will not need to set above itself a group of people to rule over it and dictate its actions. When all freely avail themselves of the wealth freely created there will be no need for policemen to stand guard over it to prevent people from taking what they need from what they produce.

Capitalism is a social set-up which produces goods for sale. Socialism will be a society which makes things because people need them. Capitalism has competition, the wages system, and the State. Socialism will have cooperation, open access to wealth, and democratic freedom. Remember this, the next time somebody peddles a socialist State nonsense about the need for a "workers' state". 

Engels is quite clear:

“The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal collective capitalist. The more it proceeds to the taking over of the productive forces, the more it actually becomes collective capitalist, the more citizens it exploits. The workers remain wage-workers, proletarians. But the capitalist relation is not done away with; it is rather brought to a head.”

No Green SNP

 The UK Committee on Climate Change (CCC), an official advisory body, said the Scottish government would almost certainly miss its world-leading carbon reduction targets for 2030 by a substantial margin.

In its annual report on Scotland’s climate strategy, the CCC said there were “glaring gaps” between its ambitions to cut emissions by 75% by 2030 and its success in meeting them. It was failing on farming, building emissions, recycling, peatland restoration and on cutting car use.

Lord Deben, the CCC’s chair, indicated growing irritation with the devolved government’s faltering progress, which has been the subject of repeated warnings from the committee.

“In 2019, the Scottish parliament committed the country to some of the most stretching climate goals in the world, but they are increasingly at risk without real progress towards the milestones that Scottish ministers have previously laid out,” Deben said. “One year ago, I called for more clarity and transparency on Scottish climate policy and delivery. That plea remains unanswered.”

Hitting the 2030  target was now “extremely challenging”. Emissions only dropped in 2020 because of the Covid crisis; as things stand, Scotland’s emissions would probably fall by 65% to 67%, leaving the country up to 8 megatonnes of CO2-equivalent short of its legally binding 75% target. It also reported that if the climate impacts of Scotland’s consumption of imported goods and energy was included, the rates were 22% higher a head in Scotland than the UK average, at 13 tCO2e a person in 2018.

It found that:

Despite pledging to stop the sales of all petrol and diesel vehicles by 2030, sales of electric cars in Scotland had fallen behind England.

Scotland’s plans to rapidly decarbonise heating in buildings “were still wholly inadequate” despite recent funding increases.

Scottish ministers were failing to tackle high levels of meat and dairy consumption, key causes of CO2 emissions from farming.

Scotland was meeting only half its target to restore 20,000 hectares (50,000 acres) of peatland a year.

Scottish ministers were failing to work collaboratively with other UK governments on shared climate strategies.

Sturgeon told Scotland’s climate targets are ‘in danger of being meaningless’ | Scotland | The Guardian

FREEDOM (music)