Monday, November 07, 2016
Wee Matt's Message to American Fellow-workers
Thursday, January 07, 2016
Common ownership is 'no' ownership.
That the capitalist class have different agendas is true, we have commercial versus industrial capitalists, local versus regional or global capitalist interests. That they compete against each other is true, even globally, unto war, hence the rise of governments to adjudicate upon and manage those different interests and maintain a regulated framework, for the collective 'capitalist' modus operandi. When we have a slump in trade globally, as at present, caused by the anarchy of the capitalist markets, which entails they go hell for leather to satisfy market demand, but crash when demand slackens, with unsaleable commodities and over extended debt, these rivalries come to the fore, but there is at the same time opportunities to carve out market niches, while driving down the rations of workers.
Capitalist democracy is a sham. A growing awareness by the immense majority to the fact that, capitalism cannot be reformed and has to be replaced, by a post-capitalist, production for use, free access society without elites or governments, will see this same oppositionalism and consequent entrenchment of the ruling classes and a subsequent mislabeling and traducing of the growing politically aware majority until it becomes an unstoppable force, as nothing will stop an idea which time has come. It matters not if the new post-capitalist, democratic, free access, society is called socialism, communism, anarcho-communism or macaroni. "What is in a name a rose by any other name would smell as sweet". Marxism is not an ideology, but rather an analytical tool. Even Marx himself was said to have stated,"Thank heaven I am not a Marxist".
Socialism is where we are truly social equals, free from fear of penury to develop further our understanding of our human condition. We are not speaking of a society such as the present one where production is rationed with production of commodities for sale on a market for a profit, leading to scarcity, with potentially rewarding outcomes for hoarding, there will be no elites controlling access etc. A post-capitalist world is also at the same time a post-scarcity one, as production for use, leads to the production of surpluses, as production is not switched off before needs are met, due to a fall in artificial demand via price mechanisms as at present.
Relative to the present day then, there will be a superabundance of necessities. Greed and hoarding would be seen as silly. We would not need to change a person’s behaviour because that person needs first to understand that the world is experienced as phenomena, not objects, and that objects cannot provide happiness because objects are not identical with phenomena. i.e. that happiness is profoundly contingent. Thus we will be able to access all needs freely, without hindrance according to our 'self-determined' needs, operating upon the maxim of "From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs". A new sort of social behaviour will arise out of the implementation of the new society and new challenges. The idea is that, with the full development of socialism and unfettered productive forces, there will be enough to satisfy everyone's needs.
The capture of power of the State initially, is to render it innocuous. The State has to cease to be an administration over 'people' and become, shorn of its oppressive functions and apparatus, as there would be no longer any ruling class, elite interests, become an administration over 'things'. There are useful potential functions, we want doctors and airline pilots to be accredited in some accountable way. There would also be some world bodies capable of co-ordination stuff in an epidemic or a natural disaster to our brothers and sisters, the equivalent of the W.H.O. for instance. The forms and norms of everyday society would be in our own hands to develop, locally, regionally, globally as we extended functional decision making, where necessary over into recallable delegated bodies, free of the possibility of these becoming decision making functions 'over' the populace, as vested interests would not be able to arise to prevail, in a commonly owned production for use society with free access to the common wealth.
The discussions on what forms the 'post-capitalist' world will take are already ongoing, as we see others, apart from people like myself even beginning to use this term post-capitalism. This arises from the crisis of production, the possibilities of automation, a web of cooperatives and shared endeavours in the systems and software technology, alerting us to the possibility of self-regulated stock control, accounting in kind and no more need for monetary exchange. But all of this, interesting even seminal, as those developments are potentially depend upon their maximised fruition upon ownership and control being in the hands of 'all' of us and not some 'elite'.
Tuesday, January 05, 2016
It’s human nature, aint it?
In a society such as capitalism, people's needs are not met and reasonable people feel insecure. People tend to acquire and hoard goods because possession provides some security. People have a tendency to distrust others because the world is organized in such a dog-eat-dog manner. Under capitalism, and the previous systems, people have good reason to worry about tomorrow—they can lose their jobs, or be injured, or grow old, and need a cushion of wealth to fall back on.
In a socialist society, everyone is entitled to have their needs met. They won't be kicked out onto the street, or forced to give up the pleasures of life. There will be no poverty. The "cushion" will be cooperatively provided by all. The 'Human Nature' argument is just a fueling of prejudice and all this prejudice, none of which can survive a moment's critical thought, has been used politically to resist progress. It has been used as an objection to socialism.
The arguments that our behaviour is determined by our physical inheritance may pose as science but in reality they are socially determined prejudice, used as part of crude political ideology. In this argument all the bad examples of human behaviour which in the main are generated by capitalism, are called upon to say that a society based on equality and voluntary co-operation is impossible. Human beings are social animals capable of a wide range of behaviours. Millions are engaged in altruistic and voluntarist pursuits.
Their very existence gives the lie to 'Human Nature arguments. The weakest argument around. Human behaviour is culturally created. In any case it is a matter of "enlightened self-interest" to get rid of minority ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, ending competition leading to war and impoverishment, and take them into common ownership with democratic control to have production for use, to produce a superabundance of wealth, from which we can all take according to our needs and contribute according to our abilities.
We leave you to the fantasy that the system in which poverty and war are concomitants, which created two world wars, culminating in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, is the best there is. The imperialist ambitions which caused the horrors of the Congo and Auschwitz, is incapable of being replaced by a humanity centred solution.
Capitalism is an obsolete and outmoded method of production, which can never satisfy human needs while retaining private, corporate or state ownership of resources and the means and instruments for producing wealth as its mode of production can only satisfy market requirements and not human needs. It cannot exist without a vast infrastructure dedicated to waging of war (mis-named defence), poverty, absolute and relative and cannot husband the natural resources of the planet, due to the intense competitive nature of its market led system leading to clashes between rival capitalist interests over raw materials trade routes and geo-political advancement of its dominant market players. Religion is just a tool used by power seekers in the capitalist system to divide and rule it is no more to blame than nationalism, xenophobia, plundering of other countries for vital resources.
Labour -power is the only commodity workers have in a rigged market, where we do not even have a "Right to work" and we do not receive the value of our labour. The only commodity this applies to is the workers labour power. We only receive the market price (wages) which is not equivalent to its value. The capitalist class pocket the full value of the surplus after realising the sale of the products of labour. If you are born poor you will die poor, generally speaking and relatively speaking with few exceptions. If you are born into the parasite capitalist owning class you will die richer than when you were born with few exceptions.
Not only is all wealth produced by the worlds workers, we run this vast wealth production, in the factories and mines and workshops, even electing governments 'over' us, in the interests of the profits of the parasite capitalist economic class. The owners of this system generally do not run or manage it.
The world’s economic activity should all be owned in common and controlled democratically, by the whole world’s population in a new post-capitalist arrangement of, production for use, with free access and democratic control over 'resources' and not people. The ends determine the means and the new society has to be a product of the democratic decision and will of the immense majority. Peacefully if we can, and forcefully only if we must if the democratic will of the immense majority is thwarted.
, Typical lefty Trotskyist behaviour in the Leninist mode think the end justifies the means. Instead of showing capitalism cannot be reformed and advocating its replacement, they advocate supporting of reformism to show later how the workers have been betrayed. They think workers are too dumb to realise their answer lies in replacing capitalism with a post-capitalist society and set out to be the vanguard which will lead them. There will not be a socialist state.
Socialism is a direct democratic, self-organising world society, which achieves economic and political equality equilibrium, by the production for use non-ownership with free access and automatic stock control feedback loops.
Capitalism is not self-organising, it is controlled violence, however, it is certainly a very resilient system, when it gains assent from the populace through the ballot box and ideological state apparatus, education, media etc. but it is just as likely to use direct top-down violence when its hegemony is threatened, by breaking the heads of the populace and proxy adventures, but the state-capitalism is not a product of socialism, no more than Bismarck's Germany was, but a product of trying to direct and develop capitalism, on top of a feudal system within a competitive capitalist world environment.
Socialists seek a class-free, prices-free, wage-free society, with private, state, corporate ownership abolished and replaced, with a tyranny-free, war-free, poverty-free, world commonwealth.
Edinburgh Br.
Friday, December 15, 2006
Corruption inquiry into £6bn Saudi arms deal dropped
This was in the Scotsman today and Wee Matt's comments below was posted up.
Yes well, the Scotsman,as scummilly establishment, as all the other newspapers, doesn't have this on the front page either.Its water everywhere,Diana Parasite Doolittle's inquest,who gives a toss,and a nice wee Xmas story,funny how the poor are rediscovered at Xmas.The UK is one of the biggest arms dealers in the world after the US.They are as perfidious and shabby as any arms dealers.If you are going to have capitalism you will have arms being produced for sale with a view of making a profit.'twas ever thus.It is not a cop-out to say we won't work for fighter aircraft producers,any more than it is a cop-out to refuse to take part in the army or other services', slaughter of fellow/sister workers under any circumstances.
Workers of all countries.and none, have nothing in common with employers of any country, including their own.
Their interest lies in making common cause with workers all over the world and removing capitalism and its infrastructures of government,nation- states,buying and selling markets.root branch and all and establishing a free access socialist/communist society,(not the state capitalism of the Bolshevics Leninists Trotsyists SSP'ers/Solidarity/SWP Respect,Old Labourists,War Mongerers also in their day) ,democratically controled ,locally,regionally and globally by all the world's citizens.Real socialism in other words,"From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs."
Wednesday, January 06, 2016
Get off your knees.
Their self-interest is a class interest even if some do not see it in those stark terms. It is the impersonal anarchy of the competitive global market system which determines embarkation upon ventures with outcomes such as "business by other means" war, mass lay-offs and redundancies, pressure upon labour costs to drive down subsistence levels of the wage slaves in order to render a leaner fitter business model for the purpose of further competition with advantageous outcomes over competitors.
No more money, banks, bankers, politicians and governments lording it over people. This would mean houses built to live in, food to eat, clothing to wear, medicine to treat the sick, rather than for sale on a market with a view of profit. Poverty is relative and absolute. It is an essential component of capitalism. How else will we agree to be wage slaves? Exploitation takes place at the point of production regardless of how well or poorly educated we are. Regardless of the size of the wage or salary.
Miniscule we may well be, as we want people to educate themselves to aim for socialism for themselves, rather than lead them into being followers, as the Left-wing and capitalist supporting parties seem to do. We tell people 'don't vote for us as a 'protest' vote, only as a recognition of your understanding of the case for socialism.
Britain's oldest socialist party, the S.P.G.B., has no leaders and all their meetings are open to the public, including Executive Committee meetings. The E.C. act as housekeepers, but do not run or govern the party. Only the members can make policy by individual Party poll. It is effectively ruled by the members, who have to satisfy the party they know what socialism is and is not, before they can join, as each member's vote carries equal weight.
"The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves. We cannot, therefore, co-operate with people who openly state that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must be freed from above by philanthropic big bourgeois and petty bourgeois.’ Marx and Engels
To change this we need to move into a post-capitalist narrative, in preparation for a (re-callable) delegated democratic, free access, post capitalist future. Socialism will be a system which would not have money, other than as a curiosity for decorating the living rooms, or in showcases in museums of antiquity, for children to learn how we wealth producers (labour) kept ourselves enslaved within a waged system in which the wealth producers (labour) received a waged ration of the collective produce and the idle parasite class (capitalists) received the bulk of the wealth produced. We collectively 'make' or build, everything. Why do we, the workers, the 99%, 'have to' buy anything, when all wealth comes from labour?
But workers now run capitalism from top to bottom and are more than capable of running the new society without elites. So the capitalist class are superfluous to the production process, a mere parasite class, redundant in the process and we can take it all over and have a production for the use of all, free access society with no need to compete with and against others, thus ending the rat race of war and all the other aspects of capitalism. The biggest catastrophe for the labour movement, (as opposed to the Labour Party,) is that the workers elected a capitalist party to reform capitalism, rather than electing themselves to remove capitalism with its inevitable war and poverty. You do not need leaders. It is a capitalist political snare.
Freedom from the anarchic tyranny of markets, in conditions of waged slavery for the profit of a few, replaced by production for use by free workers, to satisfy the needs of humanity. Rationed access by prices, for the producers of wealth, replaced by free access according to self-determined needs. Privileged ownership by individuals, corporation, states replaced by common ownership by us all. Government 'over' us to protect the privileges of the few and limit our democratic impulses within those which best serve the continued dominance of privilege, rather than the democratic freedoms of a delegated administration over things and resources by true social equals. If you are born poor you will die poor, generally speaking and relatively speaking, with few exceptions. If you are born into the parasite capitalist owning class, you will die richer than when you were born, with few exceptions.
The world’s workers not only produce all of the world’s wealth, but we run capitalism from top to bottom. We manage it and make decisions on behalf of the minority capitalist class. We are more than capable of running the new society, utilising its informational technology, in conditions of common ownership of the means of production and distribution and collective common ownership of the resulting output of production for use, within a genuine democratic framework of genuine social equality, with free access to the collective produce. Those post- capitalist conditions of real social and economic freedom for all, will ensure a flowering of humanity, the advancement of creative and scientific solutions, such as the world has never seen. We have a world to win.
Friday, March 11, 2016
The Need for a New Economic System
Monday, January 04, 2016
Dissolve all governments and elect yourselves
Nothing is forever, including capitalism. It is an obsolete and outmoded method of production. It can never satisfy human needs while retaining private, corporate or state ownership of resources and the means and instruments for producing wealth as its mode of production, can only satisfy market requirements and not human needs. The ideas of capitalism, overthrowing feudal relations and the Divine Right of Kings, would have seemed a fantasy in feudal times.
The bourgeois democracy brought in by capitalism, is its own Achilles heel. The educated working class who presently produce all of the wealth, but do not own it, who run capitalism from top to bottom, yet it is not in their own interests, but the interests of a privileged minority, will dig the grave of capitalism. The wealth producers 99%, are compelled to wage-enslaved production (for sale) of wealth for the 1% capitalist parasitic class. The interests of the 99% lies in removing ownership and control from the 1% and establishing a commonly owned society. Nothing will stop an idea which time has come.
Communism/Socialism, (the terms are interchangeably), is a democratic, commonly owned, production for use, money-free, post- capitalist society which has yet to arrive and not to be confused, with the post-feudal state capitalist regime of the Soviets era, or the reform capitalism of the Labour Party or Social-Democratic parties of Europe. The NHS is a product of capitalism, designed to be cheaper for the capitalist class, employers etc. than private healthcare insurance options. Realistically within capitalism, we could have massive council house building projects, but there would be screams of rage from those whose profit was affected, the same parasite capitalist builders who prosecuted the Shrewsbury workers, also from those whose house values were eroded and yet another government would eventually try to rein this in. Capitalism cannot be reformed. Profit is paramount.
Friday, October 09, 2015
Money free, wage free, market free
Capitalism cannot be reformed and must be replaced, by a post-capitalist society, a commonly-owned, production-for-use, not a for-sale society.
Monday, May 15, 2017
Putting world socialism on the ballot
Wednesday, November 30, 2016
What is Money
Sunday, July 10, 2016
Time to wake up.
Friday, January 08, 2016
De omnibus dubitandum
Marx and Engels are spot on there. Marx saw the struggle of the bourgeoisie to win power from the landed aristocracy as inevitable. It heralded, not just the birth of capitalism, but its assumption of power as an economic and political class, which would in turn help develop the forces of production changing them from the small handyman craft productive systems into the socialised production methods with a skilled educated workforce, however unconsciously this heralded the possibility, that they may be eventually captured by the subject wealth producer working class. Now, we workers, run capitalism from top-to-bottom. A free access society of common ownership and democratic control has been possible since the start of the 20th century. A change of ownership from elites, individuals, corporations, states, to common ownership, is a simple matter of changing political awareness and consciousness to this end, as in the ultimate self-interest, of all of humanity.
Socialism is a post-capitalist world which indeed may be one of a superabundance of the necessities of living a useful and productive life free from wage-slavery, poverty, the booms, busts, wars and other attendant social ills of capitalism. “We'll look after you cradle to the grave,” was the promise of the capitalist class to the wage-slaves. They can’t afford that and we can't afford them. Don't settle for crumbs. Inequality has nothing all to do with immigration.
Workers from the UK work elsewhere in the world including the E.U. The capitalist class as a whole supports the free movement of labour, if and when profitable, except when this proves unpopular, but it can then be used by their political opportunists and lackeys to scapegoat my fellow workers, rather than the instigators of the poverty and terror they flee from. We all have more in common with fellow workers worldwide than any of our home-grown capitalist economic blood-sucking class.
Inequality is an essential component of capitalism in order that we are subject to waged slavery to enrich the parasite capitalist class. It is the capitalist class of social leeches who are the enemy and not our fellow workers from overseas or at home. The poor are the essential part of creating the wealth for the rich. It is from labour that all wealth is derived. Capitalism cannot be reformed in any lasting way. To remove the blight of poverty disease and war from the planet we must hasten, the introduction of common ownership and democratic control of production and distribution.
'We' the public at large, do not sponsor the state, except in local community charges and VAT through taxation. It is the capitalist class as a whole from their profits who sponsor the state. It is precisely because of the dominant interests of the capitalist class as a whole, the state cannot be reformed to represent a common interests of 'We'. That this assent to be governed 'over' has to be won in a bourgeois democracy via an extended franchised plebiscite, (won through trade unions and political struggle) only makes it a necessity for the P.R. pretence that we share a common purpose vis-a-vis taxation and the like. It is a manipulated delusion, that taxation should be a concern of the vast majority, which disguises the real interests of those ruling groups, upon whose interests governments govern over us. Your employer pays all of it, as it is deducted before you receive it. Your wage/salary IS the bottom line. If by government magic the 'nominal' tax you pay was removed your wage/salary ration would be reduced, as this would mean an increase in the bottom line and the employer won't pay twice for the upkeep of their government and give you a rise. The adjustment is to ensure if you are single, unmarried etc. you don't get the same ration as someone with kids (future wage-slaves) to support etc.
Thursday, January 18, 2007
A Bit of Light Relief
The little boy replies, "Well, while Capitalism is screwing the Working Class, the Government is sound asleep, Human Needs are being ignored and the Future is in deep shit."
Friday, May 26, 2017
Capitalism is not forever.
Left and Right are a part of the same capitalist shithole. Instead the Socialist Party stands dedicated to achieving the following objective:
"The establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community."
This post-capitalist society of social equals, will not require rationing of access to social wealth, via waged slavery, based upon ability to pay for them, but will proceed from a production for use, free access principle of:
"From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs."
We are addressing the need of a post-capitalist society utilising the existing available and future technology, which capitalism cannot do, as it would implode and lead to war (over-dumping, trade routes and raw materials).
One run by us all in common, (no governments over people) with free access (no rationing by wage or prices) to the collectively produced super-abundance, that this would produce from a production for use society, and not some state capitalist monstrosity such as existed in post-feudal experiments such as Russia was.
Because the rate of exploitation is greater, with the intensification and new technology as capitalism’s productive forces have outgrown the production relation, this means capitalism has achieved its limited potential, of creating the possibility for its own obsolescent redundancy and the new post-capitalist society of super-abundance and free access is now more than possible, as it has been since the start of last century.
We do not need decadent 'Capital' any more as we presently, the world’s working class 95%, run society from top to bottom and are quite capable of running the new post-capitalist era without elites.
The employer has the upper hand always. Do you not understand what wage slavery means. The choice is work or dole. It is time we stopped expecting politicians to deliver salvation for us and took ownership and control into our collective hands to end the capitalist system, the immense majority being self-led and using democratic means, the end of governments over people and utilisation of this political awareness to have the people themselves administer over things, utilising recallable delegates when necessary.
You have to make a mental leap from considering how things are done today, with standing armies and competing local, regional and global interests allied with anarchic production for sale market allocation for the benefit of 1-5% minority privileged owning groups, with the majority in waged enslaved conditions of rationed access to the wealth they collectively produce, into commonly owned production for use cooperative, global, regional and local, endeavours with free access and the situation is resolved into cooperative allocations and sharing of raw materials as opposed to warring competition.
The material productive forces of society have come into conflict with the existing relations of production. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations have turned into their fetters or, in other words, the productive forces have outgrown the production relation.
But nothing will stop an idea which time has come.
All wealth comes from the world's working class.
That class is easily removable when the workers of the world aspire to a free access, democratically controlled, commonly owned world where production is for the use of everyone to satisfy all human needs, where the organising principle is:
"All for All".
Wee Matt
FOR A MONEY-FREE WORLD |
-
Right now there are hundreds of campaigns globally for fossil fuel divestment as a strategy in the fight against climate change. Many are pr...