Capitalism is not forever.

Sham solutions, Shameless capitalism

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.

The capitalist class, liberals or neo-cons, are an economic parasite 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

Brexit and real sovereignty

The Brexit question that was framed in the referendum as having supreme importance (‘a once in a generation chance to set the future course of the country’) was yet again a debate about which particular version or configuration of capitalism should be selected. In this case, the specific question of whether a trans-national system of capitalism or a more traditional national organisation of capitalism, should be chosen. Only when we collectively realize that what are presented as contentious issues such as immigration, taxation, etc. are not the real defining issues of our lives, can we plan a much better society. It's only when workers across the world discard all notions that countries and national identities are a central part of the political landscape that real changes can be made to all our lives.

Capitalism cannot be reformed. If any capitalist reforms have some slight advantage to the working class it is merely an incidental by-product of a measure designed to strengthen and maintain capitalism. The advantages to the capitalist class far outweigh any to the working class. Go and read up what socialism is before you attribute it to any other capitalist experiments. Low wages or higher wages are not a solution. It is in the very existence of waged slavery at the point of production where all exploitation takes place. Governments are merely the puppets of the parasite capitalist class.

Socialists have always wanted working people to ‘take control’ of their collective destiny. That’s what socialism is all about. This is not possible under capitalism because it is a system governed by uncontrollable economic laws which impose themselves on people whatever they want or decide.

The only way to take control (‘back’ is out of place since the majority class of wage and salary workers has never had any control) is to take control of the places where we work and where wealth is produced and run them for the benefit of all. We need to abolish the wages system and establish a priceless commonly owned society with production for use. The politicians are powerless to do anything other than attempt to manage us in the interests of the global parasite class. All government is over us.

Credit Suisse have produced their Global Wealth Report for 2016. It notes, for instance, that 'the 33 million millionaires comprise less than 1% of the adult population, but own 46% of household wealth.' There's lots more data there.
https://www.credit-suisse.com/us/en/about-us/research/research-institute/publications.html

All wealth comes from the world's working class. The capitalist class, liberals or neo-cons, are an economic parasite 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, "From each according to their ability to each according to their needs".

Resisting change may indeed be a good and appropriate option for unions at a particular junction. The parasite capitalist class can run away with the loot they have amassed from the exploitation of workers, at or below the market rate. Unions can sabotage this 'quick getaway' of the industrialist to get some settlement for the workers who will be thrown onto the scrapheap. They are not the cause of any meltdown as all unions know the market rate sometimes above in good times or below in downturns is the best they can do.

The parasitic economic class income is in the millions or billions from exploiting their ownership of the means of production and distribution. In any case trade unions are a part of capitalism and its wage bargaining and nothing to do with a free access socialist society.

It is not a moral question of who are saints or sinners. Workers have no choice upon where raw materials or coffee beans or their shoes come from. It is a question of class interest. They do indeed have more in common with those overseas workers being exploited than with their home grown employers and require ot make common cause with them, to overthrow capitalism and to usher in the post-capitalist society, to end all waged slavery, whether highly or lowly paid.

The supply of cheaply consumer commodities from abroad are intrinsically linked into depressing wages here. The wage is only so much food, clothing, shelter, etc. so cheap produce, built upon waged slavery overseas is incorporated into reducing wage costs here also. Hence wages here have been successfully depressed for many years. The capitalist class can only exist through extracting surplus value from the waged working class. It is irrelevant how highly or lowly paid the worker is. All is economically relative. Nor is it a question of being envious. A much bigger and essentially global question.

It is one of ending a system of ruthless exploitation of human beings and natural resources though intense competition for the benefit of a minority parasitic class in whose interests all governments govern over us, all wars are fought for them, 'business by other means' over trade routes, raw materials and spheres of geopolitical interests even to extent of war science upon hapless civilian populations at Nagasaki and Hiroshima by the 'good guys' and all profit accrues to.

Crocodile tears for workers sufficiently distant in Africa and elsewhere, blind you to the causes of their immiseration both there and here, war by deed or proxy and poverty both absolute and relative, twin concomitants of the system you support and will have you sleep walk into the next world conflagration.

It is at the point of production you exploited your workers and creamed off surplus value. The future of your workers is not your concern, but the profit of yourself is. You may have had sleepless nights wondering how many to get rid off, to maintain your profitability, but I don't think any capitalist goes into business motivated by a desire to create a stable future for a labour force. Codswallop and bollocks to that notion. Capital accumulation is the raison d' ệtre of all capitalists.

Most capitalist revolutions have indeed been minority led ones. In the move from feudalism to capitalism the state often was used in this way forcing state capitalist development in emerging capitalist economies which were trying to leapfrog into the advanced stages of capitalist development in the absence of a large enough domestic capitalist class or sufficient capital is to industry, employing Taylorism etc.

Capital develops unevenly through concentration and centralization. And for that matter capital is still going on accumulating globally whereby one capital kills many giving rise to gigantic conglomerates. Accumulation is going through destruction and annihilation. This is reactionary. This is decadence

Productive forces have developed to the stage of both actual and potential abundance for all. But the working class consciousness and organization have remained subdued under the domination of capitalist ideas and interests – constantly and crushingly campaigned by all pervading 'right', 'left', or 'centre' chronicles and ideologies.

Now capitalism has developed the means and an educated workforce to run things, as they do now from top to bottom, we can proceed to the post-capitalist era.

We are speaking of 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 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. A world without the twin concomitants of capitalism, war by deed or proxy and poverty absolute or relative, will provide its own challenges when we get there.

Wee Matt

Putting world socialism on the ballot

Those who would like to vote the Socialist Party, invariably cast their votes no matter how reluctantly for the candidate most likely to ensure the defeat of the Tory. What is the difference between the Labour Tweedledee and the Tory Tweedledum?

The return of a Socialist Party candidate does not then mean the immediate realisation of a programme of palliatives commonly set before the electors by the rest of the parties. The election of a Socialist Party member to any public body at present, is only valuable in so far as it is the return of a disturber of the political peace. Until socialism attains a foothold any seat captured must simply be regarded as a means of spoiling the political intrigues and games played by the politicians.

As William Morris wrote: “I believe that the Socialists will certainly send members to Parliament when they are strong enough to do so: in itself I see no harm in that, so long as it is understood that they go there as rebels...”

For the third time in as many years we are being asked to make a decision for the capitalist class. Last year it was whether Britain PLC should or should not remain in the capitalist EU.

The year before it was about which set of professional politicians should run the state machine on behalf of the capitalist class. Now, we are being asked to do this again.

But, in voting to continue with capitalism, those who bother to vote will be voting for the problems in fields such as housing, health care, education and the environment to continue, because the root cause of these problems is capitalism and its economic imperative to put making profits before satisfying people's needs.

Britain's oldest socialist party,the Socialist Party of Great Britain (1904) consists of working men and women and has no funding save from its own donations.

It has no leaders and has no wish for followers either and never has done, it holds that the emancipation of the working calss is the task of the working class itself.

A vote for the SPGB candidate or writing “world socialism” across your ballot paper says a plague on all the parties of capitalism and is a vote for your self emacipation.

We do not want a mere protest vote, but an active politically conscious one supporting the democratic post-capitalist society, of common ownership,(not state ownership), production for use and free access run by our selves, not governments over people but the people administering over the commonly owned resources.

But, except in the few constituencies where they will be candidates standing for this, namely these 3 seats in the coming General Election: Islington North, Battersea, and Swansea West, we shan't be voting for any of the candidates on offer but instead casting a write-in vote for "world socialism" by writing this across our ballot paper.

Socialism is an advanced post-capitalist society of common ownership, production for use and free access. Money or any other means of exchange will be unnecessary with the abolition of waged slavery, the last great emancipation taht of the wage slaves, and free access to the commonly owned wealth being the normative distribution method overseen by us all in a recallable delegatory democratic framework as an administration by the people over the commonly owned resources, rather than government over the people, in the interests of and by an elite parasite class.

World Socialism – is a revolutionary advancement for the human species which will make 21st century capitalism look like the Dark Ages, yet the debate is not yet out in the open. Hardly anyone dares conceive of a society after capitalism, so powerful is its hold on the collective mind. But we dare.

Wee Matt/AJJ

The Possibility of Post-Capitalism

Capitalism must be removed and replaced with the post-capitalist majority revolutionary alternative. It can't be reformed in any major way, Swedish and Labour Party models do not impinge in any way upon capitalism' rapaciousness. Its is like trying to make a vegetarian out of a tiger.

Lenin's model was a Jacobin one to win power. Lenin wasn't trying to make socialism, but to make state capitalism, not because socialism was impossible or an impossible dream, but because of the fact, as real Marxists told him at the time, socialism is a post-capitalist society and not a post-feudal one, which Russia was becoming.

Capitalist development creates the tools to eradicate poverty and an educated workforce to create and run ever more of it (the capitalist class are a redundant class now inasmuch as they are not needed for wealth production), (which is why Marx supported capitalist revolutions to overthrow feudalism), but then it has to increase or curtail production to satisfy an artificial 'market' demand in the interest of the minority classes profit accumulation.

The minority class has become a fetter upon the realisation of the productive potential of the technological capabilities of the potential productive capacitive process capitalism has bequeathed to the 95% wealth producers.

It can not distribute resources to satisfy human needs without destroying itself in the process and it also doesn't lift us out of the relative poverty, but retains it as a necessity, to ensure a constant supply of waged slaves. as Voltaire wittingly put it, "The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor."

The comparison is not with early capitalism nor today's version, but between the social and economic position of the immense majority relative to the wealth they collectively produce. The needs of industry demands an educated , fed workforce in many instances, as workers also run capitalism from top to bottom, the diseases of poverty can jump class barriers, so self preservation of the system requires different scenarios to early developmental models but can revert to smokestack circumstances and shanty towns also, as the developing world shows us.

Poverty in those twin senses relative and absolute, is entrenched forever if capitalism is retained, as is war (business by other means), trade wars, war over resources and geopolitical interests.

Don't forget also the horror of two world wars for economic dominance and the war science upon Nagasaki and Hiroshima by the kind hearted capitalist class as they currently pick sides for another go.

To say that 'true socialism is impossible' is akin to a person in feudal times expounding against the coming impossible capitalist revolutions. Nothing will stop social change or an idea which time has come.

The post-capitalist revolution has of necessity to be a majority one. The first time ever for majority revolution and not some vanguardist, Leninist-style minority putsch as all previous revolutions have been minority led, 'meet the new boss' ones.

Using the Achilles heel of bourgeois democracy a politically aware immense majority, conscious of their class interest in abolishing the last great slavery that of wage slavery, can transform the world into a commonly owned, production for use , free access socialist society without elites and change the operating tenet from a minority "Accumulate, accumulate" into a majority one of, "From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs".

It will not happen by gradually reforming capitalism,nor by premature nationalist adventures or mislabelling state capitalist monstrosities, but the primary task of socialists these days is education.


If you open any textbook on economics you will find the definition at the beginning as to what economics is will include the concept of ‘scarcity’. On the one side, it is taught, there are scarce resources and, on the other side, unlimited wants, and that economics is the study of the choices people make (as individuals and societies) to deal with this.

However, the concept of ‘scarcity’ used in these definitions is an abnormal and circular one and human wants are not unlimited. The relationship between scarce resources and unlimited wants is not what economics actually studies. The definition above is an ideological construct to justify one particular way of organising the production and distribution of goods and services – the capitalist system of production for profit, involving markets, money, prices, profits, wages, interest, banks, etc. That’s what economics really studies.

The technological means of the modern age make it possible for everyone in the world to live a comfortable, safe, interesting and happy personal and social life, with all our needs provided, and totally free from hardship, misery and the constant frustration, worry and embarrassment of not being able to afford what we require.
Modern production techniques are entirely capable of providing an abundance of nutritional food for many times the present world population. There is no need for anyone anywhere to starve, to lack nourishment or even to make do with cheap substitutes.

There is enough raw materials, knowledge and manpower in the world to ensure comfortable hygienic accommodation for everyone everywhere. It is possible for everyone to live in houses which are safe, weather-resistant, fitted with up-to-date appliances and decorated and furnished according to individual taste. There is no need for anyone anywhere to be homeless or to live in poor, dangerous and ill-equipped accommodation.



Real socialism is a post-capitalist society where waged slavery will have been abolished. As capitalism is run from top to bottom by the working class, 95%, so it can be replaced by a commonly owned, production for use, free-access,society with no elite access to its products. The capitalist class, liberals or neo-cons, are an economic parasite class. All government, however well meaning politicians are, whether Leftist, Rightist, Centrist,or "Can't make up their minds", to win power, are governments over us in the interests of the dominant economic capitalist parasite class. Capitalism cannot be reformed into some kind of egalitarian system. It cannot be managed in some state-capitalist, soviet-style system, nor can it end the cycles of boom and bust with waged slavery driving the production of wealth. The cause of the Labour Party is not the cause of socialism and never was. It's original reason for existing was to get reforms for working people. Damn all to do with socialism. “The Labour party has never been a socialist party, although there have always been socialists in it – a bit like Christians in the Church of England.” (Tony Benn)
 There is no such thing as a middle class. It is a conceit. Class is a person's relation to the means of producing an ddistribution of wealth. If one HAS ot work for a wage or salary in order to receive a rationed access ot wealth then one is by definition working class. The phrase working class was, as we saw, originally “working classes”, but this usage is loose and theoretically wrong since there is only a single working class. But there is another confusion arising out of the phrase’s association with “working man” and “workman” which refer to manual labour, so that it is often assumed that the working class is confined to manual workers, in the factories and mines', on the railways and docks, etc. This mistake is made not only by those who do not want to be considered as members of the working class, but also by manual workers who do not consider civil servants, clerks and other “pen-pushers” as real workers. But it is a mistake and arises from an alternative and inadequate definition of class in terms of social status rather than relationship to the means of production.

But it is clear that, as far a relationship to the means of production is concerned, office workers (including managers) are in precisely the same position as shop floor workers: they are excluded from ownership and control of the means of production and are forced to obtain a living, by selling their mental and physical energies to an employer. This in fact is our definition of working class: all those who are forced to sell their mental and physical energies in order to live. It would have been convenient to use some phrase such as “wage-earning class” in order to make our point of view clear at first sight, but unfortunately not only does a section of the working class call itself the “middle class" but even denies that it is paid wages as workers are and insists on calling them a salary instead. In fact a salary is equally a price for the sale of a person’s mental and physical energies, but this snobbery means that in order to make ourselves absolutely clear who we mean by working class we have to say “those forced to work for a wage or salary” or, less adequately but more simply, “wage and salary earners”. 



The society of today is a capitalist society and the classes that face one another are the capitalist class and the working class. The form of bondage is different from the forms that prevailed formerly, but it is still bondage.
The wealth producers of today are not bound to a lord or master as were the serfs and slaves. They may refuse their services to this or that capitalist. But they cannot escape from the capitalist class. They must deliver their abilities to some member or members of that class. In no other way do they have access to the things needed to preserve life.
And in spite of the often repeated claim in various circles that the classes of today have mutual and harmonious interests, the facts show a struggle between these classes as grim as any that preceded it. From the beginning of the existing form of society down to the present day there has been a never-ending conflict between the capitalists and the workers: on the part of the capitalists to squeeze every possible ounce of energy from the workers at the lowest possible cost; on the part of the workers to check these efforts and to try in turn to gain bearable living and working conditions for themselves.

Wee Matt

Overpopulated world, or not?

Many people have come to see the tragic refugee situation as though it were more a problem for us than for the migrants. We have stopped caring about them. The reality of this on-going crisis is nothing short of a modern-day slave trade, with migrants treated as commodities. It’s as though nothing has changed in the 300 years since desert tribes used the very same routes to bring slaves to north Africa: Nigerian women told they are going to Italy to work as housemaids only to be trafficked into desert brothels with no idea when they might leave, young men cruelly beaten and held captive for months until their families pay a ransom

Three rival governments preside over the failed state of Libya, and the real power lies in the hands of armed militias. Libyans may rely on their own militias for protection, the migrants have nothing and no one to protect them.  Not only are desperate migrants at the mercy of people smugglers but also the authorities themselves – in the main, armed militias with no one to hold them to account and few other sources of income apart from the migrant trade. 

In the Libyan detention centres, migrants are locked up and left to rot. It’s a humanitarian disaster with barely any humanitarian organisations there to help. For tens of thousands of migrants in the country at the moment, they have no means of escape.   EU leaders have signed a deal with Libya. Far from helping people escape, this deal is aimed at keeping them there. The next step is to forcibly returning asylum seekers in Europe to Libyan prisons.

Despite the illusion of diversity we do all have more in common with workers worldwide than with the capitalist class as 95% of the worlds population own little more than their ability to work for a wage or a salary and the 5% capitalist class constitute a parasitic class to whose ends the diversity propaganda serves.. The overpopulation myth threatens to overtake the human nature myth as the chief explanation for the evils of the modern world where hunger, disease, the retarded development of backward countries, social unrest, political instability, urban sprawl, destruction of wildlife, city squalor, crowded mental hospitals, violence, all kinds of pollution and ecological upset, the shortage of housing and the desecration of the countryside are all confidently attributed to the problem of an excess of human beings. The readiness to accept the "overpopulation" argument arises from a lack of understanding of the way capitalism works.

The "overpopulation problem" is really a misuse of resources problem. Capitalism, as a system of rationing via the market, is justified in people's minds by a belief in scarcity. "There isn't enough to go round", so we must be restricted in what we are allowed to consume. It has become a cliché to speak of "this overcrowded planet” yet if, for example, the entire world's population were now placed in the United States, the population density in that country would still be little more than that of Holland.

It is not overpopulation is the problem but the private, corporate or state ownership of the means of production and distribution with its competitive ethos and accumulative 5% minority parasitic profit system allied with the coercive state apparatus and war machines to aid , back-up its plundering and wasteful use of nature given raw resources as well as the exploitation of the 95% human resources in pursuit of accumulation of profits.

We are more than capable, with a commonly owned world, of sustaining a superabundance of the necessities of life with production for use and not for sale, allied to free access to them, with democratic control exercised by all through delegation, not government or states allied to a self-regulating equilibrium of virtuous, holistically sustainable and ethical environmental standards. Poverty is caused in the developed world by capitalism, it takes place at the point of production. It is INEVITABLE. The political differences are small between the governing and aspirant governing parties and in the less developed world poverty is caused by the same capitalist exploitation of resources in which tribal and other organised clan, family or ethnic differences are exploited to capital's advantage in power grabs over natural resources and raw materials.


Each new mouth to feed produces a pair of hands to be exploited by the parasite class.
All wealth springs from labour. A democratic, post-capitalist, commonly-owned, production-for-use society can utilise resources and technology to introduce a fully automated luxury communism with free access to the wealth thus socially produced. We can run society ourselves, rid the planet of government over us, war between rival capitalist concerns over, trade routes, raw materials, markets and spheres of geopolitical interests.

 Housing and anything else in capitalism is produced to make a profit from market for a parasite class and not to satisfy human needs. Capitalism is responsible for this , deliberate creation and manipulation of markets in human misery and for driving down wages and reducing availability of essential commodities if profit is not derived form their production, not immigrants. We are quite capable of producing for use to satisfy all human needs and ushering in the post-capitalist future. If ownership and control of production and distribution was in the hands of all and production was for use instead of for profit, with free access,there would not be the same wasteful production in wasteful competition to satisfy markets with duplication of efforts, while human needs go unmet. Capitalism depends on poverty stricken workers selling their ability to work for a minimum ration of what they need to survive and reproduce future wage slaves and these conditions of waged slavery ensure a ready supply of workers to exploit now and in the future.


Wee Matt

What is money

There is no truly independent country in the world, because international capitalism has made sure of this, and our own experience here in Britain, especially since 1964, should have brought it home to us. The past few years should have shown us just how independent Britain is, when foreign "bankers" tell the British government how to spend money, and how it must not spend money, in order to keep the international capitalist class happy. Workers have no country and a post-capitalist, wage-slavery free world to win.

Independence for Scotland therefore is a myth put about by the Scottish National Party, which further confuses the Scottish section of the working class and blinds them from the real struggle – the class struggle. The outcome of the class struggle is the abolition of capitalism and an end to poverty, insecurity and the ever-present threat of war. The SNP is just another capitalist supporting political party, as politically dishonest as Labour and Conservatives and Lib-Dems and Greens or UKIP. Don't follow leaders. Leadership is capitalist principle. How about getting rid of leaders and opting for working towards socialism as capitalism can not be reformed without war (by deed or proxy) and poverty (relative or absolute)?

Don't settle for crumbs take over the bakehouse as we, the 95 percent, produce all of the wealth. Abolish capitalism and its iniquitous wages system.   Marshall Sahlins, perceptively observed:
"The world's most primitive people have few possessions but they are not poor. Poverty is not a certain small amount of goods, nor is it just a relation between means and ends; above all, it is a relation between people. Poverty is a social status. As such, it is the invention of civilization" (Stone Age Economics).

In truth, the majority is impoverished. It is impoverished insofar as it has no other option than to sell its working abilities to those who monopolise the means of living and whose conspicuous wealth must irresistibly provide the very yardstick by which that poverty will be starkly exposed. This may not be the poverty of material destitution. But if the measure of a human being consists in the accumulation of material possessions to which he or she may claim the, by that token, we are demeaned. And, ultimately, it is in this devaluation of our human worth—not simply in the fact of material inequality but in the meaning this society attaches to it—that we may glimpse the very essence of this poverty. The basic income is not a solution, but another form of subsistence ration, effectively relative poverty, while wealth surpluses torrent upwards to an economically dominant capitalist parasite class.

Supporters of capitalism, especially the Von Mises school, may not be able to conceive of production without money and prices, but we socialists can. The definitive answer to your the "economic calculation problem" is a (largely) self-regulating system of stock control in which calculations are made in kind rather than in terms of a common unit like money.

And let us address those currency cranks who believe we can create money by a stroke of the keyboard. Surely, the recent banking crisis has exploded the myth about banks being able to create credit, i.e. money to lend out at interest, by a mere stroke of the pen but apparently not.

Financial crises always spark interest in critics of the system. They see the problems of capitalism—like its vulnerability to crises—as primarily financial in origin. The whole point of production under capitalism is not the satisfaction of needs, but the accumulation of money. In other words, it’s impossible to separate the economic world into a good productive side and a bad financial side; the two are inseparable.

The monetary surpluses generated in production—the profits of capitalist businesses—accumulate over time and demand some sort of outlet: bank deposits, bonds, stocks, whatever. It’s going to be that way until we replace capitalism with something radically different. What we need to ask is why people today tend to blame banks rather than capitalism as a whole.

No bank can lend more than it has, either as deposits or what it has itself borrowed. The idea that money is created through fractional reserve banking is more of a metaphor.

No point in the socialist case arouses such controversy as that of the abolition of money and wages. Marx identified money as one of the two main manifestations of human alienation (the other was the state) and looked forward to its abolition in a communist society where human values would apply: where the standard by which something would be considered ‘valuable’ would be human welfare.

Marx also fully endorsed the slogan “Abolition of the Wages System!” a system which he regarded as a form of slavery. Money is just a means of saying ‘This is mine, not yours’.

Money in various limited forms existed for hundreds of years before the advent of capitalism but because it is an indispensable element in the workings of capitalism its general usage expanded universally with the development of that system. For a start, it is the device whereby capitalism separates the worker from the fruits of his or their labour; an indispensable part of the process whereby a minority class of capitalists ration the consumption of the great majority who as workers of one sort or another produce all the real wealth of society.

Marx saw money as having two basic functions: (1) a medium of exchange or circulation, i.e. the means through which articles produced for sale get bought and sold; and (2) a measure of value, i.e. a common unit in which the value of articles produced for sale can be expressed as a price, and is thus a standard by which they can be compared.

Marx also identified two kinds of paper token money: tokens that were convertible on demand into a fixed amount of the money-commodity and tokens which were not. The former created no problem. The latter, however, could create a problem if they were issued in a greater amount than the amount of the money-commodity that would otherwise circulate. In this case, if they circulated alongside gold or silver, the value of the tokens would depreciate, i.e. they would buy less than their face-value. If they were the only currency (as is the case today) this would result in a rise in the general price level, i.e. in a change in the standard of price.

An inconvertible paper currency has to be managed by the government or some state institution such as a central bank which, to avoid depreciation or inflation, has to calculate the correct amount to issue. In Marx’s day the case where the only currency was paper token money was a hypothetical one which he only discussed in passing.

"Paper coin, that forgery
Of the title-deeds which we
Hold to something of the worth
Of the inheritance of earth."
Shelley

Wee Matt

Societies change, nothing stays the same.

Revolution is the overthrow of previous existing social system and modes with their ruling class. i.e. feudalism to capitalism, capitalism to post-capitalism. The media persist in lying that the Cuban revolt was a social revolution. It was nothing of the kind. Socialism is a post-capitalist system of society. Nothing to do with the state-capitalist, Leninist regime which existed in Cuba, most of the pseudo-'communist' regimes were post-feudal revolutions, attempts to kick-start capitalism and in the absence of sufficient home-grown capitalists, the state stepped into the breach. Socialism is not some top-down management by the state, or a replacement of one dictatorship for another, or reformed Labourite government. Those are certainly doomed to fail, as capitalism cannot be managed or reformed, but they are failures of capitalism and not socialism. Socialism is common ownership, production for use and free access. We use socialism and communism interchangeably, meaning the same thing, as Marx did.

We have been supporting the 5% parasite capitalist class through hell and back with two world wars and Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for our pains and they are picking sides for another go, as capitalism has entered its decadent phase, since the start of the last century never mind this one. We 95% do not freely produce for the free use by all but are enslaved by the wages system (rationed) to produce for sale, for the profit of a minority parasite class 5% of owners.

We have created the technological conditions for superabundance and leisure for the free access future society, but require a conscious political seizure by the immense majority of the ownership of the means of production and distribution. Abolish the wages system and establish a society of superabundance where lawyers and bankers, money, prices, etc. will not exist and no more wars over competing economic parasite interests. It is time you stopped following leaders. Everybody else should know better by now to stop clutching at the will o' the wisp capitalist or state capitalist or reformist straws.

Educate agitate and organise, as we have a cooperative commonwealth world of free access and democratic control by us all, to win. Dissolve the governments over you and their politicians. Elect yourselves for the last great emancipation, that of the wage slaves.

"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, 1879

The choice is socialism or barbarism.

Capitalism progressive purpose is served. It is now in its decadent phase and has been so since the start of last century. It can't resolve the problems of distribution without the twin concomitants of war (arising out of competition between rival capitalists and poverty relative or absolute, (arising out of waged slavery and exploitation at the point of production to produce profits for the parasite owning class).

Humankind has reached the ‘era of social revolution’ but the revolution is yet to begin. Capitalism has gone into its phase of global crisis cycles and anarchy leading to world wars involving capital against capital, fomenting national prejudices and pitting workers against workers to slaughter one another, destroying productive forces on all contending sides and producing misery, poverty, waste, pollution and environment destruction. This is, however, not to say that capital has come to a dead halt. Capital’s nature of exploitation, appropriation, and accumulation of surplus value continues as long as it exists.

Capital develops unevenly through concentration and centralization. And for that matter capital is still going on accumulating globally whereby one capital kills many giving rise to gigantic conglomerates. Accumulation is going through destruction and annihilation. This is reactionary. This is decadence

Productive forces have developed to the stage of both actual and potential abundance for all. But the working class consciousness and organization have remained subdued under the domination of capitalist ideas and interests – constantly and crushingly campaigned by all pervading 'right', 'left', 'centre' chronicles and ideologies.

They comprise all various belligerent factions of capital. Although they use different names and slogans on their banners, they don’t have any scientific alternative to capital’s devastatingly continued reproduction. They are mere reformists of all various hues. We have experienced enough of such things. And enough is enough! They have given capitalism a century-long anachronistic existence. Measures which were once very necessary and useful for maturation of the system have already more or less accomplished their tasks and grown old and outdated.

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. The real revolution takes place with the battle of ideas in the lead up to the post-capitalist society, to ensure the majority is a politically aware one with the consciousness.

Why settle for crumbs when we could have the whole bakery.

We have a world to win

But nothing will stop an idea which time has come.

Wee Matt

The Capitalist Tricksters

The Socialist Party does not see itself as a part of the Left and view Left and Right as being outmoded bourgeois terms reflecting different aspects of managing the capitalist system which it opposes. Corbyn is as much a part of the problem even though he, probably genuinely, wishes to reform it. But his reforms are just not socialism or even 'socialistic'. As Tony Benn once pointed out, “The Labour party has never been a socialist party, although there have always been socialists in it – a bit like Christians in the Church of England.

We do not have problem with any individual who has enough capital to start up a business and employ others, it is in their economic or class interests to do so and maximise accumulation, but their motivation is to profit from it and certainly not a philanthropic desire to create work for others. We have yet to meet a business-person who worried about how many jobs they were creating, though we have met many anxious ones worried as consequence of how many they would have to shed but increase or accelerate the rate of exploitation to maintain profit accumulation. Capital (stolen from surplus value created by workers) is not invested to create jobs, but to create profit accumulation. This could just as likely take the form of reducing worker numbers and increasing the rate of exploitation of the remaining workers. The purpose of investment, the driving motivation, is to create profit for the parasite class. All wealth springs from labour. It is inevitable that workers are employed, where else would the wealth come from, but this is a consequence of the workers capacity to create a surplus over and above their subsistence and maintenance (waged ration) and not the motivating factor of deploying capital (stolen surplus value), which is profit from exploitation.

As Robert Tressell put it, the workers are the real philanthropists.

Video version of The Great Money Trick explained here.  

The global economy is in a periodic slump so the fat cats can sit it out until it picks up again. Credit Suisse have produced their Global Wealth Report for 2016. It notes, for instance, that 'the 33 million parasite millionaires comprise less than 1% of the adult population, but own 46% of household wealth.' There's lots more data there.

The report can be downloaded from here

https://www.credit-suisse.com/us/en/about-us/research/research-institute/publications.html

The capitalist baby is a monstrous irreformable creature which requires to be drowned forever before it conducts more war science upon hapless civilians such as at Nagasaki or Hiroshima. I do not share your happy-clappy view of capitalism. It is presently the only show in town to be sure, but this is no reason to abandon the only solution to it, regardless of how our class enemies or erstwhile shamefaced supporters of Leftist variants, bring disrepute to its name or traduce the idea of real communism.

A socialist world will, of course, be what we all make it. Everyone's ideas and efforts will contribute. Everyone will if they choose to, have an equal voice in the democratic decisions that are taken. Perhaps this is one thing about socialist society that most of us today would find strikingly different – the amount of discussion that will take place about what things are to be made and built. There will be no market forces offering a quick profit in plastic handbags or causing a shutdown in shipping. There will be no governments imposing taxes, preparing for germ warfare, tapping telephones or closing hospitals. Road-building, shipping, agriculture, manufacturing, distribution, services, entertainment – these things will be everybody's concern. And these things – not crimes or wars – will be news. The whole pattern of production and distribution will become a conscious social process.

We don’t need to become Super Man.  We are ordinary men and women who aspire to do extraordinary things, a class in itself yet to become a class for itself and then to end classes. I think the 'withering away', Engels referred to was that of government as in the state becoming obsolete, as we captured it initially to avoid its coercive apparatus being used to prevent the revolution, being shorn of this repressive possibility and useful parts retained directed over things, rather than over people. The politicians are powerless to do anything other than attempt to manage us in the interests of the global parasite class. All government is over us.

There are not too many people on the planet just too many poor people, but that can be sorted out with a social revolution to make it a commonly owned world.

Wee Matt

What is Money

Money is merely a means of exchange, in a commonly owned world, where production is for use, no means of exchange would be necessary access could be free and, money would be in the museums of antiquity.

The monetary system has evolved gradually and has been in existence as a system for about 250 years in England and for a much shorter period abroad. We make a distinction between the ancient coinage of Greece, Carthage and Rome, which although used to effect the exchange of commodities was at that period incidental to the main stream of an exchange system which was based on surpluses and barter.

As a general social form, money developed alongside the development of commodity production, and at the point in history when all wealth was produced in the form of commodities money became the universal medium or equivalent through which all exchange transactions were carried out.

The first condition for the introduction of a monetary system is when social products become commodities, i.e. articles produced for sale and exchange. It is quite obvious that commodities cannot go to the market on their own. As they are owned by someone or other, he is the person who will take or send them there.

Likewise, there are other owners of commodities carrying out a similar function. Each will recognize the other as a private proprietor — that is, they respect each other’s rights to dispose of the social product to their own immediate advantage. Eventually they embellish their right through a set of legal relations:

"This juridical relation, which thus expresses itself in a contract, whether such contract be part of a developed legal system or not, is a relation between two wills, and is but the reflex of the real economical relation between the two. It is this economical relation that determines the subject matter in each such juridical act." (Marx, Capital Vol. I, p. 96. Kerr ed.)

 Read the chapter on Money on Capital, on how money is transformed into capital. Money by itself is not capital.

 The transformation of Money into Capital

Wealth is torrented upwards to the owners of the means of producing and distributing it. It is created by the wage slaves but rationed out to them in the form of wages and salaries based upon the value of the workers commodity, 'labour power'.

The value of a commodity, even the workers commodity, is dependent upon the amount of 'socially necessary' labour time incorporated within it. (Note value and price are not the same thing.) Exploitation takes place at the point of production. This labour power produces a surplus value for the employer which is realised on the market place. This is so even if the employee is engaged in non-manufacturing, say a service industry as they are a part of supporting the wealth generating sector or a part of its maintainance, say as health workers.

Capitalists are not 'bad’ people, it is not a question of morality, but rather, the necessity of capital to accumulate arises out of its economic class interest, which can only be done so from exploiting the workers disadvantaged economic situation (i.e. non-ownership of the means of production and distribution) for their capacity to produce surplus value, when exploited for waged rations. We are not making a moral argument, but a class one.

Wee Matt

Profit rules

It is profit which rules. Money is just the means of exchange which facilitates accumulation for the parasitic capitalists, rationing out for the wage slave wealth producer, of wealth. Food clothing and housing should be freely available, as all wealth comes from labour and should be produced for use and not for sale but owned in common by all. Time for a post-capitalist society of super-abundance of all the necessities of life rather than capitalist production for sale with access rationed via wages and prices with the profits going to the minority owning 1% capitalist class. Where there is a demand for houses they should be built for use and freely available. The working class built these homes. Why should they not be freely available?  In capitalism, food, clothing, and shelter are not produced for use, but for sale. What a daft use of resources. What an insane social system capitalism is? Much better to abolish capitalism and establish a commonly owned, free access, production for use, society, owned, controlled and democratically run by us all, without elites. As social equals, with equal access, we are all in charge.

Tory versus Labour governments is silly and misses the point entirely, which is that all governments over you are to manage the affairs of the capitalist class to ensure the maximisation of the extraction of profit from the exploitation of the majority. Capitalism cannot be run in any other way. The route of trying to change capitalism or 'reform,' is the one that has been taken by most people who have wanted to improve society. There are examples of some 'success' in such fields as education, housing, child employment, work conditions and social security. However, in this regard we also recognise that such 'successes' have in reality done little more than to keep workers and their families in efficient working order and, while it has taken the edge off the problem, it has rarely managed to remove the problem completely. If you are convinced, however, that groups or parties promising reforms deserve your support, we would urge you to consider the following points. The campaign, whether directed at right-wing or left-wing governments, will often only succeed if it can be reconciled with the profit-making needs of the system. In other words, the reform will often be turned to the benefit of the capitalist class at the expense of any working class gain. Any reform can be reversed and eroded later if a government finds it necessary. Reforms rarely, if ever, actually solve the problem they were intended to solve. This was summed up by William Morris over a century ago:

 "The palliatives over which many worthy people are busying themselves now are useless because they are but unorganised partial revolts against a vast, wide-spreading, grasping organisation which will, with the unconscious instinct of a plant, meet every attempt at bettering the conditions of the people with an attack on a fresh side."

The profit motive of capitalism is a major cause of the problems we face in today's society: ever increasing inequality, poverty, alienation, crime, homelessness, environmental degradation—the list could go on and on. There are countless ways in which the working class (and indeed the capitalist class) suffer as a result of the profit system. Unless we organise for an alternative, the profit system will continue on its blind, unswerving path

Socialism has never existed anywhere in the world, as it is a post-capitalist society utilising the technology and productive apparatus of the modern age and transforming it into a commonly owned production for use society for all with free access, rather than a production for sale society for the enrichment of the few with rationed access via wages and prices. It is a world without a means or a need for an exchange economy.  All previous revolutions were minority led revolutions on behalf of new emerging ruling 5-10% classes. The post-capitalist society is the work of the immense majority 90-95% on behalf of themselves, with its aim the great emancipation of the wage slaves and true social equality arising from democratic control by us all over resources, the means of production and distribution being owned by us all in common and run by us all. A democratic, locally, regionally globally, administration of resources rather than governments over people as presently.

Profit can only come from exploitation of workers for their surplus value and even if this went back to workers, it would scarcely resolve the basic problem of capitalist production even of basic commodities requiring to be at a profit and not for the satisfaction of human needs. With intense competition from other capitalist enterprise chasing the same market production would cease, even as needs still remain unmet, on a 'can't pay can't have' principle and workers laid off. Capital has already plundered wealth from the exploitation of the working class. Welfare is a good deal for the capitalist parasite class. It provides the myth of 'homes built for heroes' after a war, staves off social discontent with promises of 'cradle to grave' provision, reduces the wage burden of the parasite class when boom times arrive they would have to make provision for insurance to workers organised in unions and in slumps maintains a reserve army of labour to be exploited as wage slaves when the good times roll and production picks up..

Capitalism cannot be reformed by Sanders or anyone else. Capitalism cannot be reformed to work in the interests of the wage worker. Capitalism will continue with its poverty, homelessness, and hunger for many Americans and Europeans. It’s not a different president, or government, that is needed but a new economic system.

Instead of blaming immigrants, get up off your knees and get rid of capitalism and its governments. The problem with pro-capitalist commentators is that, they believe their own bogeymen and misconceptions of what socialism is and continue to spread confusion in order to bolster an ideological narrative in which various manifestations of the capitalist systems of government, such as reformism, state capitalism, and regulation are equated with 'socialism' and not seen as failures of capitalism in that it is capitalism which is inimical to reform in any substantial way. Socialism is a world which does not need money, or any other means of exchange as it is, a commonly owned, production for use, free access, post-capitalist social system.

"Rise like Lions after slumber

In unvanquishable number,

Shake your chains to earth like dew

Which in sleep had fallen on you-

Ye are many - they are few."

Shelley.

Wee Matt

The alienation of workers

There exists an anti-working class prejudice peddled with no evidence other than anecdote and encouraged by the capitalist class since Victorian times that divides workers into 'deserving' and 'undeserving' categories. The real scroungers are the parasitic capitalist class.

The capitalist class does not produce any wealth, they steal it from the surplus value, created by wage-enslaved labour. Their capital when they invest is 'dead labour' already plundered. They are collectively economic parasites as a social class, in a system designed for their continued dominance. The working class is collectively the only useful class as they produce all wealth. Many of those workers presently unemployed or in poor health already worked and in many cases, their health is a consequence of their previous occupations. Things cannot be allowed to improve for the poor, how else will they submit into waged slavery and how else will profit be derived for the parasite capitalist class?

Those who are unemployed, they constitute a 'reserve' which will always exist, it keeps wages lower, also as the capitalist class may need them in any economic upturn, although they will not give the Right to Work'. It is a better deal for the capitalist class to pay unemployment benefit and welfare in general than to provide enough wages for the workers to afford insurance or to face a social revolution.

Of interest here is, the output per worker in the advanced economies rose more than three times as fast as the rise in real wages, which were close to stagnation. The workers in the advanced industrialised countries were not being undercut by workers in the 'Third World'. They were being robbed even more by their employers in the advanced countries.

Time for an end to wage slavery. The last great emancipation is that of the working class. Time for a societal upgrade to an elite free, democratic, post-capitalist, production for use, free access society, owned and run by us all as part of truly equal humans.

Government bail-outs are nothing to do with 'socialism'.  Government bail-outs are state-capitalist measures in the interests of the capitalist class as a whole, even especially when they are pitched as and seem to be, helping workers. For workers, there is always a sting, whether to dampen wage demands (family allowances) or fob off social discontent (welfare state). They are ultimately a good deal for the capitalist parasite class and can be clawed back if profit erosion occurs.

Socialism does not exist and has never existed. Any top-down direction in capitalism is state capitalism. Socialism is a post-capitalist society.

The alienation of workers is not caused by what form representative capitalist democracy takes, government over the peoples of the world is not done in the interests of the majority, they just have to agree to be governed over and elect Tweedle Dee or Dum, but in the interests of the capitalist class. In capitalism, political parties represent the sectional interests within the capitalist class with all of them competing for political control of the state and its machinery of government.

The contradictions of life under capitalism have engendered deep-rooted feelings of frustration. The wealth pouring from the factories and the farms has not assured many of prosperity nor offered security about the future prospects. Instead, of an expected welcome release from burdensome toil, the prospects of automation and robots have become a source of anxiety, producing the threat of chronic unemployment and the spectre of a new recession to follow, rather than the promise of peace and plenty. No wonder people feel alienated.

The most pressing need facing humanity is to progress from the anarchy of capitalism to a post-capitalist society. The price to pay for delaying this task will be more poverty, increasing hunger, mounting disease, and continuing wars. To these has now been added the climate change and global warming which could make all the higher forms of life extinct.

Government only exists to run the affairs of the capitalist parasite class, however, they are organised, in state capitalist dictatorships in the absence of a domestic capitalist class, or otherwise. No government can do any more than govern over us in the interest of extracting profit from the exploitation of waged workers, for the benefit of a minority capitalist class.

The working class always vote against their class interest when they support any of the political parties of capitalism, whether allegedly Labour, or unashamedly Tory and misguided Leftist Leninism/ -state Trotskyism. (nationalisation = capitalism). Capitalism cannot be reformed in the interests of the working class. There is no benefit in the working class changing their support from one set of politicians to another. Capitalism is not like some benign country estate and it cannot be organised as if it were. It cannot put human welfare in the forefront of its concerns. It cannot be controlled by any leader or expert. It must produce problems like poverty, sickness, and war. Workers who are seduced into thinking that things would be different under a government of less abrasive personalities are deluding themselves. Western democracy is a choice between the same outcomes, government over you and social control of you for the benefit of the rich.

If you have to work for a wage or a salary in order to live, then you are a member of the working class.

1. The capitalist class owns and controls the means of production and distribution.

2. The working class neither owns nor controls the means of production and distribution.

3. As a result, the working class lives by producing wealth for the capitalist class.

The working class currently and slavishly, accepts the necessity of its dependence upon the capitalist class for permission to work for it, to get wages from it, and to buy means of consumption from it in order to live. The working class rationally resigns itself to continuous exploitation under capitalism as a tamed dog rationally continues serving its master to survive off its master’s scraps.

Tax is a burden upon the capitalist class. Your wage is the bottom line. If the nominal tax figure in your salary or wage check was abolished, your wage would be reduced by the same amount.

Taxation is a way of adjusting the bottom line so workers without dependents do not get the same wage (ration) as those with dependents. The other way is in work so called benefits wage subsidies for employers.

Incoming fellow workers are not stealing jobs. The enemy is the employer class.

“The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor.” ― Voltaire

Wee Matt