Working People's Interests

 Many on the political ‘left’ will argue that Palestinian nationalism is somehow progressive and different to Israeli nationalism and should therefore be supported. As socialists, we say that this is a dangerous poison that is being spread by the left and that no side engaged in such conflict can either speak for the working class as a whole or be an example to it.

History is replete with minorities in existing states using terrorist methods so that a new state may be formed or territory transferred from the “ownership” of one state to another. The working class of wage and salary earners is never in a position to benefit from this process; it is only in a position to suffer. The working class – by definition the class that does not possess any significant titles to land or private property, including capital – has quite literally nothing to gain from a situation where one group of rulers and owners is replaced by another group.

In the 19th century, when the modern capitalist system was expanding across the globe, “national liberation” struggles, typically led by a local growing capitalist class against the old autocratic empires, were part of the process which swept away the old political arrangements and opened the way forward for liberal democracy and the development of capitalist methods of production. It was often argued that it was in the interests of the working class during this time to take the side of the capitalists against the old autocracies like the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire, etc. It was said that this process would open the way up for working class organisation and for the development of an advanced industrial system which is a prerequisite for a socialist society of abundance and free access to available wealth.

Since then, the capitalist system has become a world system. The alleged justification for the working class taking sides in 'national liberation' struggles has now gone if ever it existed and today all such struggles are just deadly battles between sections of the capitalist class, even though it is the workers – imbued with nationalist poison – that naturally enough end up doing the fighting and dying.

The goal of the World Socialist Movement is not to assist in the creation of even more states and more nationalities, but to establish a real world community without frontiers where all states as they currently exist will be destroyed. In a socialist society, communities, towns and cities will have the opportunity to thrive – and people will no doubt feel an attachment to places that are real and tangible – but the 'imagined communities' that are nation-states will be consigned to the history books where they belong.

The ‘national interest’ is an all time favourite phrase bandied about by all manner of patriots in any crisis. But what is it supposed to mean?

The national interest conjures up an image that we are all one big happy family, all pulling and working together for the good of all; that we all have something to be proud of, to defend and to benefit from. It suggests an absence of strife and antagonism and that the real enemy is 'out there'. We're meant to feel good about the national interest, secure in the knowledge that the well-informed are thinking on our behalf.  National interest is the paternalistic jargon of a profit-hungry elite, trying to rationalise in our eyes the lengths they will go to accrue more profits at our expense. It is used by politicians largely to secure support for a course of action they are finding difficult to promote. It is designed to block serious discussion of an issue - who'll argue against the national interest and risk being denounced as unpatriotic? – and to marginalise opponents, thus stifling a deeper understanding of issues. The interests of the majority - of the working class - are diametrically opposed to the interests of the master, or capitalist, class. True, we all have basic needs and desires, whichever class we belong to, but talking about shared interests in a two-class society is nonsense. The capitalist class have one real interest - and let them deny it - to maximise their investment and to accrue more profit at our expense. How many people get hurt and trod on or slaughtered in the process is of no consequence. Anything is legitimate in the pursuit of profit. 

 We, the working class, on the other hand, own little more than our ability to labour by brain or by hand - an ability we sell to the master class. Our interest under capitalism becomes getting the best price for our labour. Indeed such is the onus on us to sell our labour power at as high a price as possible that its consequences dominate every aspect of our lives.

It has to be remembered that the master class depend on our complacency for their continued survival. Our silence, our willingness to accept everything they say without question, is the victory they celebrate every day.

Our job should therefore be to doubt and question everything they say - if we stand for nothing we fall for anything. For we do have interests. As a globally exploited class, denied so many of the benefits of civilisation in a world of abundance, it is in our interests, our real class interests, to help put a stop to their insane system, not just for the future of humanity, but for the future of our planet.

Our real class interests lie in establishing a global system of society, devoid of borders or frontiers, social classes or leaders, state governments, force or coercion, money, wages or salaries, a world in which production is freed from the artificial constraints of profit and used to its fullest potential and for the benefit of all. These interests are far removed from the national interest we are supposed to identify and moreover, they benefit all of today's classes.

Marx by Mark Steel 1/3 (video)

 

Don't live in a political vacuum

 We have every reason to be fearful for the future of humanity. The war in Ukraine could easily escalate into a nuclear exchange. The environmental crisis could lead to irreversible tipping points. The possibility of another virus pandemic is always present.  Many countries are in the throes of economic meltdowns.  Capitalism cannot be trusted to run the world in the interests of humanity and governments serve the interests of profit first. No reform, nor attempt to improve the system, can do more than ameliorate its inconsistencies and contradictions. There can be no democracy in a complex system designed to justify inequality, a system in which the power of money carries the right to govern, in which the governed accept their own inferiority, lack of self-respect and sense of worth, a system in which crime, conflict, nationalism, racism, ethnic cleansing is inevitable.

Money has enabled the human species to develop the technology with which it dominates the earth, but it has become an excuse for ignoring the factors that impede its own social advance. Money has made work a bad name, with connotations of long hours, stress, tiredness, and monotonous, yet, even in this acquisitive society of ours, most of us do some sort of voluntary work, helping others is enjoyable provided that we do not feel that it is augmenting other people’s interests at our expense. In a money-free world, people's power available would be virtually limitless. There would be plenty for them to d our fellows, our environment, our towns and cities, our talents and potentialities. There would be enough to keep us occupied for generations. We assume that without money there would be anarchy, but it is the chaotic complexity of the money system and the governments required to maintain it that is anarchic.

The greatest benefit of all would be in the reduction or elimination of the anti-social emotions of greed, hatred, selfishness and aggression, which the money system makes inevitable and we would be able to treat ourselves and each other as the sort of human beings that we claim to be.

 Suppose we are ever to take control of this planet and run it in the real interests of its inhabitants. In that case, we must do so ourselves, without leaders and with a view to establishing a global system of society in which production is freed from the constraints of profit and in which each person will have free access to the benefits of civilisation.

 

The Socialist Party is in favour of democracy, and socialism will be a fully democratic society, but full democracy is not possible under capitalism. Supporters of capitalism who talk about "democracy" always mean only political democracy since economic democracy - where people would democratically run the places where they work - is out of the question under capitalism, based as it is on these workplaces being owned and controlled by and for the benefit of a privileged minority.

You can have the most democratic constitution imaginable but this won't make any difference to the fact that profits have to come before meeting needs under capitalism. The people's will to have their needs appropriately met is constantly frustrated by the economic laws of the capitalist system, which no political structure, however democratic, can control.

It is not imperfections in the political decision-making process that are the problem but the profit system and its economic laws. And the answer is not the democratic reform of capitalism's political structure but the replacement of capitalism with socialism.

As a society based on common instead of class ownership of the means of production, socialism will fulfil the first condition for genuine democracy. Because it will be a class-free society without a privileged wealthy class, everyone can have a genuinely equal say in the way things are run. A few will not be more equal than others, as they are under capitalism, because they own more wealth.

 Socialism will be a society where the laws of profit no longer operate since common ownership and democratic control will allow people to produce to meet their needs instead of for the profit of a few as today.

War is a Racket (video)

 

Book Review - The People of the Abyss

 

Those vaguely familiar with Jack London know him as a skilled writer, basing many of his stories on experiences from his rich, colourful and often dangerous life. Few remember him as the skilled political commentator and social critic who exposed many of the injustices of his day. The People of the Abyss is Jack London the investigative reporter relating an impassioned account of the degradation and squalor endured by the people of the East End of London in 1902, and this year marks the centenary of his visit to this part of London.

Living in the East End doss houses, London posed as a stranded American sailor, down on his luck. He mingled with the poorest of the poor, worked alongside them, ate with them, drank with them and slept amongst them in the workhouses. His observations are documented in full in People of the Abyss, and this is no work of fiction. This is the London in the days when the SPGB was about to be formed, and reading London’s account of the privation endured by millions of his fellow workers, one can’t help but ask why the clamour for an end to capitalism was not being screamed from every rooftop. He attempts an answer himself:


“Unhealthy working and living engenders unhealthy appetites and desires. Man cannot be worked worse than a horse is worked, and be fed and housed as a pig is fed and housed, and at the same time have clean and wholesome ideals and aspirations.” (p.162).


And who could blame them? For many in the East End of London in 1902, the daily struggle to live absorbed all their energies. Their life expectancy was 30 years; 55% of children died before the age of 5. Hundreds of thousands of impoverished men and women yearned only the public houses and alcohol in a pathetic attempt to “express their gregariousness” and because intoxication finally “brings the oblivion that nothing else can bring” (160). This is the England “where a constant army of 8 million lives on the border of starvation.” (155); where hundreds of thousands of families inhabit one room, and where “children take turn about in sitting up and drive the rats away from the sleepers (148); where the lucky go insane and the courageous commit suicide. And all of this when Britain had the largest empire ever know and milked the world.

The SPGB were not alone in the formative years of the 20th Century in pointing out the world of potential abundance we live in. Lamenting the widespread starvation of the day, the ‘hunger wail’ that echoed across the British Isles, London comments:
“And this in face of the fact that five men can produce bread for a thousand; that one workman can produce cotton cloth for 250 people, woollens for 300 and boots and shoes for 1000….and who dares to say that it is not mismanaged, this big house, when five men can produce bread for a thousand, and yet millions have not enough to eat?” (160)


The People of the Abyss is a masterly recording of the lives of the masses in 1902, and a poignant indictment on the capitalist system, and London is to be commended. However he affords us no panacea to the ills of the system he lambastes, but rather finishes with a lengthy note about how the system is being mismanaged, before ending:

“There can be no mistake. Civilisation has increased man’s producing powers an hundred-fold, and through mismanagement the men of Civilisation live worse than the beasts, and have less to eat and wear and protect them from the elements than the savage Inuit in a frigid climate who lives today as he lived in the stone age ten thousand years ago.” (p.170)

The People of the Abyss deserves to be read, for it is still possible to record the same, in spite of all the scientific and technological breakthroughs that have occurred since 1902 and which should be benefiting humanity.

John Bisset

Power in the Union (techno music)

 

Capitalism Has No Solutions

 

If capitalism is presently incapable of solving the more pressing problems faced by humanity, we can well ponder what a difficult time ahead we face in a world in which we are increasingly at the mercy of the elements.

For many, environmental issues are new. As socialists, forever scrutinising the effects of the capitalist mode of production, we have been aware of them for generations. In fact, Engels commented:

“At every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing over nature – but that we, with flesh and blood and brain, belong to nature and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly. We are gradually learning to get a clear view of the indirect, more remote social effects of our productive activity, and so are afforded the opportunity to control and regulate these effects well. This regulation, however, requires a complete revolution in our existing mode of production…in our whole contemporary social order” ( Dialectics of Nature, 1875).

In spite of all the evidence that suggests that deforestation, present production and transport methods are primarily responsible for the climatic warning – the disappearing polar ice caps, global flooding, rising sea levels, vegetation dieback, the loss of thousands of species of life, and that the speed and scale of global warming have no precedent – the world’s governments still insist these wasteful, though profit-generating methods must remain.

The problem is as always over the issue of loopholes which allows countries to minimise cutting back on carbon emissions.  Instead of cutting their fossil fuel (carbon) emissions, they buy carbon credits from countries that are not likely to exceed their carbon emission quota, with countries paying for a project in a lesser developed country, with the aim of reducing carbon and counting it against their own emissions. This is already proving a lucrative business.  Those companies can get excited about the profits to be made from trading in pollution credits – whilst the planet we inhabit faces environmental catastrophe from pollution – says much about the insanity of the system we live in and very much begs the question: are you with us or against us?

You name the dodge and the profit-greedy have thought of it. This includes feeding cattle, pigs and sheep new diets that help reduce the amount of methane they emit when they burp.

The perennial problem is that countries are reluctant to promote investment in more environmentally friendly methods of production and transport because their respective governments, being the executive arm of the capitalist class, prefer to bow with suppliant knee to powerful oil, coal, iron and steel lobbies, rather than openly acknowledge that we are ecologically fast approaching the point of no return. We can well expect the next round of talks to be another waste of time whilst providing us with further evidence that capitalism has long outlived its usefulness and that it is time to hand over control of the world to those who could best decide its future – a global socialist majority. 

Since our Party’s founding, we have consistently reported the misery and sufferings our class has endured in the name of the profits derived from mineral wealth and its possession by an elite. We expect, for the foreseeable future, to carry on in this tradition until our class truly wakes up. Few make an attempt to set the problem in a wider social and economic context - for instance making that crucial link to the priority of profit before human need. 

The solution remains the same. There is one world and we exist as one people in need of each other and with the same basic needs. There is far more that unites us than can ever divide us along cultural, nationalistic or religious lines.

 Together we can create a civilisation worth living in, but before that happens we need the conscious cooperation of ordinary people across the world, united in one common cause – to create a world in which each person has free access to the benefits of civilisation, a world without borders or frontiers, social classes or leaders and a world in which production is at last freed. 

No More War (music)

 

A world without frontiers

 Many distractors point their all-knowing finger to China and Cuba as 'proof' that socialism has failed. But nowhere have we ever claimed, or will claim, that these countries were socialist. These are examples of state capitalism (China, Cuba, the former Soviet Union etc - all of which had a wages system, commodity production and every other trait we associate with capitalism).

Many critics suggest that for socialism to be impemented would require the coercion of everyone who disagrees with it and the death of democracy, which is the exact opposite of everything we have always argued. We maintain that socialism will only come when a majority of the world's people understand what socialism means (and, no it has nothing to do with Lenin, or Mao or Castro), want it and are prepared to organise for it peacefully and democratically, without leaders and in their own interests.

Socialists are criticised for jumping on the environmentalist bandwagon. For the record socialist have been warning about the dangers capitalist production methods pose the environment for 130 years.

In 1875, in Dialectics of Nature,  Engels had this to say:

“At every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing over nature – but that we, with flesh and blood and brain, belong to nature and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly. We are gradually learning to get a clear view of the indirect, more remote social effects of our productive activity, and so are afforded the opportunity to control and regulate these effects well. This regulation, however, requires a complete revolution in our existing mode of production…in our whole contemporary social order”

Our priority remains the same – abolition of the profit system and the establishment of a system of society where the earth’s natural and industrial resources are commonly owned and democratically controlled.

Socialists are no different from others in desiring an envirionment in which the safety of all animal and plant spieces is ensured. Where we differ from our poitical opponents is in recognising that their demands have to be set against a well entrenched economic and social system, based on class privilege and property and governed by the overriding law of profits first.

It has long been our case that human needs can be satisfied without recourse to production methods that aversely effect the natural environment, which is exactly why we advocate the establishment of a system of society in which production is freed from the artificial constraints of profit. We are not talking about nationalisation or any other tinkering with the present system, but rather its entire abolition and replacement with a global system in which the earth’s natural and industrial resources are commonly owned and democratically controlled; a society in which each production processes takes into consideration not only human need but any likely effect upon the environment.

Once the Earth’s natural and industrial resources have ben wrested from the master class and become the common heritage of all humanity, then production can be geared to meeting needs in an ecologically acceptable way, instead of making profits without consideration for the environment. This the only basis on which we can meet our needs whilst respecting the laws of nature and to at last begin to reverse the degradation of the environment caused by the profit system. The only effective strategy for achieving a free and democratic society and, moreover, one that is in harmony with nature, is to build up a movement which has the achievement of such a society as itsobjective.

 The "carbon trading" and "green taxes" are just tinkering with the market system, whereas if carbon emissions are to be stabilised and the consequences of global overwarming tackled effectively it is the whole market system of competitive production for profit that must go.

Its replacement would be a world without frontiers where the Earth's natural and industrial resources have become the common heritage of all humanity. Only then will a world body capable of taking the necessary co-ordinated global action exist. Only then can the Earth's resources be used to satisfy people's needs not to make a profit for those who own and exploit them.The buying and selling of the market system would be replaced by giving and taking in accordance with the principle "from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs".

I Ain't Marching Anymore (music)

 

Think Local or Think Global?

 

If we want to improve things we are going to have to act for ourselves. We're going to have to organise democratically to bring about a society geared to meeting human needs, not profits. But production for use (not profit) is only possible on the basis of genuine common ownership and democratic co-operation - what we call socialism.

This kind of society may seem like a million miles away, but remember we already have the resources and technology to make it possible! After all, this is a world of plenty. What prevents us from enjoying it is class division. Under capitalism, only a tiny minority of the world has ownership and control over the economy. The vast majority of us have nothing except our ability to work which we are then obliged to sell to the minority. 

WE are the ones who create all wealth in society - but then we hand it over to the minority, the capitalist class!

One World. One People

We have a world to win. The Socialist Party cannot bring this about on your behalf, and we're not promising to. As workers ourselves all we promise is to play our part in bringing about a sane and rational democratic society where we collectively make the decisions that affect us without needing to worry about how to pay. A society where meeting our needs is the only priority!.

The Socialist Party

What happens locally depends mainly on what happens in the country and even in the world. That is why socialists are working for a different world. But it can't happen unless you join us. The job of making a better world must be the work of all of us.

Since 1904 The Socialist Party has completely opposed the idea of leadership; has rejected all forms of nationalism and advocated a world without borders; and has opposed both the phoney 'socialism' of the Labour Party and the state-capitalist dictatorship of the Soviet Union.

The world we want is one where we all work together. Co-operation is in our interests and this is how a socialist community would be organised - through democracy and through working with each other.

To co-operate we need democratic control not only in our own area, but by people everywhere. This means that all places of industry and manufacture, all the land, transport, shops etc. should be owned in common by the whole community. That way we could all enjoy free access to what we need without the barriers of buying and selling.

FOR A WORLD OF GENUINE COMMON OWNERSHIP AND FREE ACCESS!

An End To Pessimism

We, in the Socialist Party, reject the view that things will always stay the same. We CAN change the world. Nothing could stop a majority of socialists building a new society run for the benefit of everyone. We all have the ability to work together in each other's interests.

All it takes is the right ideas and a willingness to make it happen.

Politicians are fond of telling us that we must take responsibility for our own lives and that we must see to it that our world is a fit place for our children to grow up in. I’ll not disagree with that, but what I will ask is how can we seriously do anything about it when the real decisions are not in our hands? Because of the way things are organised at present, none of us are allowed to take part in the really important decisions that affect us – the ones about our schools, about health and housing, peace and pollution and the distribution of wealth. We are no more consulted on the closure of schools or the selling of council properties to private landlords than we were consulted on the decision to invade another country.

What the Socialist Party suggests as the alternative to this insane set up is a truly democratic society in which every person has a free and democratic say in the decisions that affect them – a society without leaders and the led.

In such a society, people would co-operate to run all of the world’s natural and industrial resources in their own interests, freeing production from the artificial constraints of profit and establishing a system of society in which each person has free access to the benefits of civilisation.

Today we have the technology, the resources and the know-how to satisfy everyone’s needs. That fact is well established. However, we cannot utilise society’s assets sensibly because of the profit-driven requirements of the market-system.

In a society in which the fundamental need of production is profit, our needs come a poor second. The profit system exerts such an influence in society that it impinges upon every aspect of our lives, and you’d be hard pressed to think of some service or product that is not balanced against cost – something to muse on whilst waiting for the bus, the police or visiting the local shops.

You may consider that the society outlined sounds nice, but that socialists are demanding the impossible. All we are asking is that you think for yourselves, value yourself and your fellows higher; expect more for your children and grandchildren. Is it not the case that our world would be a better place to live in if we each had a real democratic say in the decision-making process and real control over the means and instruments for producing and distributing the things we need to live in comfort? Is it not high time that we took back control of our destiny from the profit mongers and their lackeys in power?

Voting for socialism is a step in the right direction and at last puts the ‘real issue’ on the political agenda.

At the end of the day it is up to you as a member of the waged class. It is up to you to decide whether you favour the present system or the rationally organised system we call socialism.

If you agree, if you think we are each capable of cooperating to run a society of free access in our own interests – but only if you agree – then vote for socialism and yourself.

Should Ever I Be A Soldier (music)