Nothing will stop an idea which time has come.

All wealth comes from the workers, not from the useless parasite class who derive their wealth from the exploitation of us. 90-99% of the world’s population are wage slaves.  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.

 Socialism has never existed to fail. Many opponents of  socialism are simply restating capitalist propaganda about post-feudal attempts to kick start capitalism. In Russia the absence of a large enough capitalist class meant the state stepped into the breach. Effectively those examples of Leninism were state capitalist developments. Social evolution suggests that no mode of production is cast in stone and the dynamics of change also affects capitalism as a social system.

 Studies of social systems with distinct social relationships related and corresponding to their specific mode of production have identified, for instance, primitive communism, chattel slavery, feudalism, and capitalism. All of these societies changed from one into another due to the contradictions inherent in that society and also due to technological advancement which each society found itself incapable of adapting to. Capitalism reached this point over a century ago. It’s time to move on to socialism.

 Socialism is a post-capitalist society. The idea will seem strange alien at first. Just as capitalism must have seemed strange in feudal times. But nothing will stop an idea which time has come.

 The task of creating the socialist, post-capitalist, production for use, free access, commonly owned world is that of the working class itself. The nation-state also would cease to exist in a democratic socialist world, effectively we would become our own government, with delegatory democracy, locally regionally and globally, over things and resources rather than as presently, representative class government over people.

For sure, there are sincere but misguided Leninists, and many Trotskyists, taking their cue from Lenin, who think that workers need to be led into socialism, as it turns out, they lead them into state-capitalism. Socialism in one country is impossible. It is a global society. It requires a revolutionary transformation in that the immense majority become aware that the present mode of production and distribution is obsolete.

 Chavez was not a socialist but a social reformer of capitalism. During his presidency, he kept open the doors on the flow of Western capital into Venezuela, while introducing a familiar programme of nationalisation and social reform. He did not cease to preside over an exploitative capitalist economy, nor did he cut off economic relationships with the West.

  The degree to which the Venezuelan workers are exploited will continue to depend on fluctuations in the economy, on their own capacity and will to resist the inevitable downward pressure on their incomes, and on government policy. The fact of their exploitation, though, is inevitable. So is their relative poverty, their limited freedom of choice, and the lack of control they have over their lives.

 None of this will change until they and working people everywhere, have ceased to put their faith in governments and charismatic politicians whatever claims and promises they make.

Capitalism's other essential twin concomitant with war is poverty. With ownership and control in the hands of the few, whether individuals, corporations or state, a parasitic class, in direct competition with each other, (leading to wars) allied with production for sale on the market to enrich the minority, with a useful productive waged slave (rationed in access) class, the majority, producing all of the wealth, but, of social necessity, kept in conditions of poverty, relative or absolute.

 It is not a case of intentional 'evil', although undoubtedly there are some evil bastards, but a consequence of competition within and without, the social classes. There are many decent individual capitalists, would wish to reform the system but this cannot occur. Wage slavery is essential for the production of surplus value for the capitalist.

 Capitalism cannot be reformed of wage slavery. If profits were to be eroded by redistribution of them to the worker, the capitalist would be out-competed and go to the wall. Even cooperatives find themselves in this double bind.

Wee Matt

Capitalism cannot be reformed

We are offended by applying the description of 'socialism' to any of the Trotskyite parties, or even to the Labour Party. The Labour party has never been a socialist party.

“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)

It is grossly unjust also to smear people who have joined the Labour Party in this way, some of them might be, a small minority, not significant in respect of numbers and those will be practising 'entry-ism' but can easily be expelled later.

Supporting either the top-down machinations of Leninist control freaks who would only establish a state-capitalist dictatorship over the workers ,or the 'business friendly Labour party, or any parties of the left, right, centre of capitalism, who would govern over the workers, is a deluded choice. Leftist, rightist, centrist, are all manifestations of types of capitalism and that the term 'leftist' is devoid of any particular significance.

Capitalism cannot be reformed despite the well-meaning intentions of decent people in any of those political parties and has to be replaced by a new system of; production for use; democratic delegation, free access; and common ownership of all the means and instruments for creating and distributing wealth run by ourselves. Socialism is a post-capitalist society which will need to be established by the workers of the world, by themselves and for themselves.

Labour's infamous Clause 4 reflected their confused understanding of what socialism is, entails and constitutes. First, it equates common ownership with state ownership. i.e. Nationalisation. State intervention is not socialism. The state exists to help manage the affairs of the ruling class and may indeed intervene in their general interests, nationalising, welfare, to keep the workers fit for future exploitation etc. Secondly it calls for the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange. (our emphasis.) But a real commonly owned society would not require a means of rationing access to commonly owned wealth. It is a free access society.

No, the emancipation of the working class is freedom from waged slavery, common ownership of all the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth, production for use, utilising technological and informational infrastructure to provide self-regulation stock control systems and free access for all within a delegatory democratic administration over resources and not people by the people themselves and not a government.

We have a world to make and win and the organising societal ethos which will percolate through this, which proceeds from the organising tenet, "From each according to their ability to each according to their needs" will provide the social framework which will shape human behaviour, self-determinedly.

Capitalism cannot be reformed. However, well-intentioned politicians may be it is not in their gift to bestow upon us more “humble mortals”.

"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.’ (1879 Marx and Engels)

It is a post-capitalist society and damn all to do with nationalisation or the state-capitalism imposed by the feudal conditions of Russian experience or the state management over people and resources envisaged by the Labour Party.

The whole point of capitalism is to keep a relatively impoverished class of workers toiling away to produce an immense accumulated source of wealth for the parasite capitalist class and banks are just a money changing part of this.

"If money, according to Augier, “comes into the world with a congenital blood-stain on one cheek,” capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt." (Marx)

Dissolve the governments and politicians, elect yourselves into building a socialist world.

Wee Matt

"Doubt everything" – Marx

Socialism cannot be 'given'. It has to be won by a politically conscious majority, who know what it is. The democratic 'ends determine the means' rather than the Leninist/Stalinist justifying of them. All the parties of the right, Left, centre, blue, green, purple, red and tartan are parties of class rule.

 It is not going to happen until a majority recognise their common interests to make it so happen. But this doesn't stop us struggling to deal with the day to day effects of capitalist exploitation. Countries like China didn't get their timings wrong, as they established capitalism with all of its birth pangs, accelerated by their states, in the absence of a capitalist class, to take them out of feudalism. Effectively post-feudal revolutions. A fiction, useful to the capitalist class, the idea of socialism ever existing.

"State capitalism would be a step forward for us." (Lenin)

"What you have is state capitalism." (John Foster Dulles to Nikita Khruschev)

Common ownership is NOT state ownership. There is no government over people in a socialist/communist society.  Rather people themselves administer things (production and distribution etc.) Unfortunately, 'social ownership' was confused with state ownership. A 'meet the new boss' result. Common ownership and social ownership (means the same) has no need for a state as it is a classless society managed by us all in condition of free access to the commonly owned and created wealth.

"From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs." (Both abilities and needs are self-assessed)

We have a World to win.

"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.’ (1879 Marx and Engels)

Capitalist democracy, flawed though it is, can and must still be used as the 'Achilles heel' of capitalism, as long as a sufficient majority are convinced of socialism, i.e. the establishment of a commonly owned society then the capitalist class will be unable to resist. (Peacefully if we can violently only if we must).

Clause 6 in the S.P.G.B.'s Declaration of Principles, (1904) states:

"That as the machinery of government, including the armed forces of the nation, exists only to conserve the monopoly by the capitalist class of the wealth taken from the workers, the working class must organize consciously and politically for the conquest of the powers of government, national and local, in order that this machinery, including these forces, may be converted from an instrument of oppression into the agent of emancipation and the overthrow of privilege, aristocratic and plutocratic."

It would be foolish to expect the capitalist class to voluntarily give up its privileged position in society. Governments exist solely to administer the society as it exists, in the interests of the ruling (capitalist) class, so governments will not end the privilege. Capitalism will continue as long as the working class accepts it. The working class will have to force the capitalist class to give up its position of privilege. Socialism will be the result of workers democratically choosing a new, classless society based on the satisfaction of human needs. And since capitalism is a global system of society, it must be replaced globally. The machinery of government has to be captured in order to prevent guns being fired upon the workers. Direct action as such will consist of workers being self-organised for the event.

No post-capitalist society has ever existed anywhere. Please do not conflate claims of 'socialism', which are really reformist capitalist positions, with the real thing, a commonly owned, democratic, wage-free, a World of free access. It is impossible to have some oasis of socialism inside a global capitalist society. It can only arise out of an advanced capitalism with a majority of educated and politically conscious workers, self-organised to this end. Nothing will stop this when it occurs. People will be caught up in the new post-capitalist Zeitgeist, nothing will stop an idea which time has come. Ultimately, everyone wants a World without war (business by other means) and poverty (absolute and relative). You can't have capitalism without those twin concomitants.

Wee Matt

Caged hamsters

The Left is and always has been a part of capitalism, albeit, in some instances a state-controlled version. Labour in government has sent troops in to break strikes, backed all of the major wars engaged in by the UK this last century (and has initiated a few of them), and has repeatedly attacked working class living standards to ensure the profitability of British industry. The welfare state was a capitalist “success”. It distracted workers with 'cradle to the grave' promises and staved off any social revolution.

There is nothing to suggest that either Corbyn or Smith, despite their radical phrases, would behave any differently in office – all national governments are there to administer their particular section of world capitalism, and as Syriza in Greece found out soon enough, have very little control over the market economy as events unfold. Looking to government is infantile, as governments exist to govern over you in the interests of the dominant economic parasite class in order that you attend to being a dutiful Uncle Tom wage slave ‘Thank you, master’. If you vote for a government over you, you will get governed over. Politicians supply demons. They supply a singular address for evil upon which you can blame everything. Where the economy is a mess, where people’s mortgages are underwater, it is much easier to find one single person or group of people to blame for all their problems than it is to analyse the extremely complex subject of, for instance, mortgage-backed Wall Street securities, which most people can’t understand. So, you blame taxes, or you blame the bankers or you blame individual politicians themselves.

People are like caged hamsters running endlessly on a proverbial spinning wheel. The media go about the business of misinforming, disinforming, and diverting the people from the source of their misery—which is the system itself. In other words, it’s all about controlling the minds of the masses.

“If those in charge of our society—politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television—can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power...” explained Howard Zinn.

Or as Steve Biko said, “The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.”

For power to be lodged in the hands of the people does not mean merely that they are to have the widest possible franchise and equal voting power. It implies that the people are to have control of all social institutions, a say in all social activities, the self-management of social life. Such a condition of affairs presupposes at the very outset the common ownership by the people of all the means of life.

Momentum activists will no doubt argue that Corbyn is a decent man with a track record of opposing wars. But this misses the point about how capitalism entraps those who seek to administer it. And while Corbyn may have opposed the senseless butchery of the Iraq War, he is a man (along with John McDonnell) who has sought to apologise repeatedly for the nationalism and terrorism of organisations like the Provisional IRA and Hamas. Men like these who commemorated IRA terrorists and who refused to condemn some of the most anti-working class atrocities in UK history (such as the Birmingham pub bombings and Enniskillen) are men whose peaceful and socialist credentials deserve to be viewed with quite some scepticism. Workers have no country or nations but the world to win for a commonly owned free access socialist society. Nationalism is a curse on the working class and leads them to the slaughter in the interest of the dominant economic class. When the slaughter ends it is back to the same old wage slavery regardless of the nationality of the employer.

What is of importance now is that people who may identify with wanting to create a genuinely socialist society of common ownership, democratic control and free access to wealth, don’t get suckered in by a radical-sounding, ‘populist’ reform movement that has yet to prove its popularity anywhere beyond the already like-minded. The attempt to reform capitalism by so-called benevolent governments has always been a disaster and there’s nothing to suggest it would be any different next time under either Corbyn or Smith.

Real socialists have always been content to leave the Labour Party to the reformists – and the more we think about it, the more they are welcome to it.

Wee Matt

Accumulation equals destruction and annihilation

Unlike both the Hayekians (who say slumps can be avoided by governments adopting a laissez-faire monetary policy) and the Keynesian (who say that appropriate state intervention can end the boom/slump cycle), Marx held that there was no formula for steady growth without booms and slumps. For him these were endemic to capitalism, being, in fact, its “law of motion”. They will keep on recurring as long as capitalism does and there is nothing governments could do to stop this. All credit to Marx for his intellectual honesty as he did insist we critically evaluate it and doubt everything. Hardly any time has passed in historical or economic terms.

For world socialist revolution to occur two interrelated conditions must mature – the subjective condition i.e. the revolutionary will and organization of the working class on a world scale and the objective condition i.e. a comprehensive material maturity of the productive forces for abundance. Until the end of the 19th century, the revolutionary replacement of capitalism was impossible since these necessary conditions were not yet ripe.

However, by the beginning of the 20th century, the situation reversed. Capitalism entered into its era of decadence. Decadence – because, from then onwards, the revolutionary situation (objective condition) remains ready but the revolution has not happened owing to immaturity of working class consciousness and organization (subjective condition).

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 organisation 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 state, 'necessary and logical product of the [given] social conditions', is always in the last analysis 'the executor of the economic necessities of the national situation'. Thus it is always the organizer of society in the interests of the class (exploitative) structure taken as a whole. (Engels)

This remains so, even when governments take the form of dictatorships. This phenomenon—where the capitalist class has been prepared, sometimes even compelled (sections of it, at least) to surrender political control of the government through representative institutions in exchange for the law and order imposed by a strong dictatorship — has been fairly widespread since, from fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and Franco Spain to the dictatorships in Chile and Argentina. The Soviet Union was another example of a post-feudal development of capitalism in the absence of a large enough capitalist class.

Of course, such dictatorships are still governments of capitalism and have to run capitalism in the only way it can be; as a profit-making system and so ultimately in the interests of the capitalist class.

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. There can be no 'freedom' when the immense majority are 'compelled' to waged slavery upon pain of penury.

Wee Matt

Leninism is pseudo-revolutionary drivel

There is a class struggle going on. The national interest is not the same as the workers class interest. The working class have never had a government that cares a damn about them. It is past time they stopped looking for one.

"The workers must organise for their emancipation. They can do this, and only they can do it. I cannot do this for you and I want to be frank enough to say I would not, if I could. For, if I could do it for you somebody else could undo it for you. But, when you do it yourselves, it will be done for ever -and until you do it, you have got to pay the penalty of your ignorance, indifference and neglect." -Eugene Debs

Even Attlee's famous reforming government brought troops out against workers 8 times in the bosses’ interest.

Here is Labour's record for using troops to break strikes. 1945: Dockers. 1946: Smithfield porters. Southampton dockers. 1947: Road transport workers (including Smithfield), dockers, Tower Bridge operators. 1948: Buckingham Palace boiler-room workers, dockers (State of emergency declared under Emergency Powers Act of 1920). 1949: Dockers, Smithfield road haulage drivers, gas maintenance workers. 1966: seamen. 1975: Glasgow refuse collectors. 1977: Air traffic control assistants, firemen. 1978: Naval dockyard workers. During the so-called Winter of Discontent of 1978-9 Merlyn Rees, the then Labour Home Secretary, informed Parliament of the plans made to protect the interests of British capitalism:

The government were ready at any time to call on the assistance of the Services and to proclaim a state of emergency should that have been necessary. The contingency plans were kept constantly under review by ministers. 160 service instructors were trained and 15,000 servicemen were recalled from leave over the New Year period and kept on short notice. Detailed contingency plans had been prepared for requisitioning of tankers and restricting the use of fuel to priority purposes. To put the plans for requisitioning tankers into effect would have required a proclamation of a state of emergency. If necessary parliament would have been recalled. In the event it has not been necessary to put any of these plans into operation. (Hansard, 15 January 1979. col. 1318)

When the Labour government did eventually use the troops during this major industrial dispute it was against . . . the ambulancemen. Ambulance crews were particularly badly paid, with a minimum basic rate of 38.44p per week and the rejection of their claim for a two-thirds increase on 12 January led to their participation in the general local authority workers one-day stoppage on 22 January.  The Labour Party administration of capitalism under Callaghan replied by calling in the troops. In London 50 army vehicles and 85 police were brought into use with the police providing the first line of cover backed up by the volunteer services, and troops only being summoned when these could not cope.

Workers should not just recall the anti-working class actions of past Labour governments but should also understand why. It is the working class who produce the wealth in society and it is the exploitation of their labour-power that has created the vast accumulation of wealth represented by the means of production and distribution. These are not owned by the workers but by the capitalist class and are used to make profits irrespective of workers' unfulfilled needs and wants. This state of affairs is made possible because the capitalist class control the state through Parliament where its various political parties, including the Labour Party, now sit. The Labour Party, throughout its various terms in office, has always supported the interests of Capital against Labour because it is a capitalist party. It has never been, is not and never will be a socialist party.

Trotskyism is just left-wing capitalism in practice (state-capitalism) a top-down rule over the workers by a minority who think workers are too dumb to understand what socialism/communism is, and have to be led by a party into it. It bears no relation to what Marx envisaged but is a Leninist distortion. It is not Marxism. It is Leninist pseudo-revolutionary drivel, justifying a dictatorship over the proletariat. The task of creating the socialist post-capitalist, production-for-use, free-access, commonly-owned world is that of the working class itself. There is no short cut to this. It is time you started to educate yourself then, as to why poverty, absolute or relative and war, (which is business by other means),  are inevitable concomitants of capitalism, how capitalism cannot be reformed

Wee Matt

Public ownership is not common ownership

"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance—that principle is contempt prior to investigation."

People, by and large, have lost confidence in the ability of the ruling class to maintain a peaceful, secure, orderly and prosperous society. Socialism is not a complicated doctrine. Socialism as a society dedicated to the interests of the people. The means by which society produces its wealth – factories, mines and farms – are transferred from private to common ownership, and exploitation eliminated. Socialism unleashes the creativity of the people, who are capable of tremendous advances when not toiling under a system of exploitation. The basic starting point of the socialist idea is that the working class is a revolutionary class and as such is capable of overthrowing the capitalist system.

All of the usual examples given of socialism/communism are nothing of the sort. They are either attempts to reform capitalism, or post-feudal attempts to introduce capitalist methods, such as Russian China, in the absence of a domestic capitalist class the state stepped in such as it did in Bismarck's Germany. Socialism and communism mean the same thing, common ownership or social ownership of the means and instruments for creating and distributing wealth. The distinction of socialism-communism is a Leninist distortion of what Marx was referring to when capitalism then was in its infancy and could not go straight over to a free access society. There is now no need for a two stage solution since the early part of last century. We can go straight into the post-capitalist society of abundance and plenty for all. Millions already do voluntary work. All the more so when they are freed from the compulsion of wage-slavery and work which will be superfluous and unnecessary inside a post-capitalist society.

Socialism is effectively a post-capitalist, production for use, democratic, free access, money-free society producing a superabundance of the necessities to enable free access i.e. moneyless distribution with democratic control by all and no elites governing over us, we govern resources ourselves, locally regionally and globally, using recallable delegation when required. The organising tenet is: "From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs". Anything else, and you are being sold a capitalist pup with its twin concomitants of war (business by other means) and poverty (absolute or relative).

The solution is not to be found in capitalism where the economic bottom line prevails, despite good intentioned people trying the impossible task of reforming a monstrous system over you by electing reform parties. The Labour Party, throughout its various terms in office, has always supported the interests of capital against labour because it is a capitalist party. It has never been, is not and never will be, a socialist party. They may see themselves a 'socialists' or identify with 'socialism' but they are a part of the problem, as reformers, rather than the solution to capitalism which is a post-capitalist revolution. Public ownership is not common ownership but state ownership and is not even a step towards socialism. Nothing to do with state ownership or corporate or private ownership. Nothing to do with centralised control either. Socialism is a post-capitalist system, which utilises the technological advances of capitalism to produce for use to satisfy all human needs, using self-feeding loopback informational tools for stock measurements and control with direct inputs, at local, regional and global, levels to allow calculation in kind, as opposed to the economic calculation of capitalism, only necessary to satisfy profit taking. We will not need a market in a post-capitalist free access, socialist society.

It is a post-capitalist, production-for-use, prices-free, society without elites and with free equal access to the collective produce. Government ceases to be over the people a part of class society and becomes the democratic administration over resources as part of a classless, elite free society run by us all.

The Socialist Party is Britain's oldest socialist party and second oldest political party and has consistently retained the definition of what socialism is, a revolutionary, post-capitalism, despite its usurpation by capitalist political parties to mean reform. The traditional conceptual models of 'right' and 'left' politics were borrowed from the French bourgeois revolution and are used still by capitalist parties to brand different versions of the same thing.  Socialism/communism is not some left-variant of capitalism. Socialists of our kind are not on the Left. The Socialist Party exists to get rid of the market system and introduce production for use.

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

"yir arse is oot the windae"

The Socialist Party is not a part of the "left."  We are opposed to measures which tinker with and attempt to reform capitalism. The left on the other hand have kept their agenda well hidden, if it has a discernable revolutionary current, it isn't obvious , indeed , even their active supporters appear afraid to engage with any discussion about what socialism *is*. However , it has been a " left " tactic in the past where they are hypocritically asking workers to vote for a parliamentary party to get reforms which you know you can't get, on a road which they don’t support , to socialism ,which is not defined except , that it is recognisable as another state capitalism . The Socialist Party is opposed to such trickery of workers. Simply, the "left" are not socialists and to argue it is then "yir arse is oot the windae", as we say.  Even limited equality cannot be achieved, while retaining the profit motive - It is economically impossible.

 The Socialist on the other hand are quite explicit that socialism is, "the common ownership and democratic control of all the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and on behalf of the whole population ". In other word a free access society. We stand for the original idea of socialism. Untrammelled by statist failures, indeed we predicted all of these failures. The "left" appear to want to administer capitalism. Far from splitting the " left ", we despise the "left " for its political cowardice, (being unable or unwilling to describe socialism to workers and nail their true colours to the socialist mast), of opportunism, (interference in workers struggles and grass roots movements to subvert them to their cause), and for its pretensions, (of assuming to know what socialism is, and presenting itself as a leadership towards it.)

The Socialist Party urges workers to "Abolish the wages system ". We insist that socialism as defined above is an immediate and practical possibility, requiring only a majority of workers who know what it is, who desire it and are willing to organise as equals, without a vanguard of political leaders forming an elite and a cadre of misinformed workers, as their expendable cannon fodder and irrelevant pawns , (our job is to inform , relay , and assist in this ) unlike the Leninist - Trotskyist , and former CP-er Stalinist Left , we don’t , as Lenin said , regard workers, "left to their own devices as being only capable of achieving trade union consciousness."

What exactly is the purpose of the SPGB standing in elections? To put the case for socialism, as no others do this, made by workers seizing control of their own destiny and working for socialism, without the leadership of vanguardist organisations or any other leadership. The Socialist Party does not look for support or supporters, rather we insist that on the contrary workers learn what socialism is, and join us as equals to bring it about. We don’t wish to lead them. They will not need leadership if they make themselves socialist. We don’t lie to workers by pretending, that by voting for reforms, or any other measure they are supporting socialism. We do not intervene in workers struggles, except as workers in struggle. We are stand against *all* the capitalist parties , this inevitably includes the “left” parties as they support a reformed capitalism with them as the new bosses, retaining wage labour capital, government control, and their platforms reflect this. The left ARE the forces of capitalism. Simply put, we are the only revolutionary alternative to capitalism. It is by insisting that left-wing reforms can ameliorate the conditions of workers , and that this equates to a "socialist " response , and who so mistrust the workers, that they can't describe the socialist alternative to them, are indeed the real reactionary element, leaving workers confusedly equating socialism with these tired and out-moded tried and failed remedies of the last century. (The Labour Party, The Communist Party, Social Democrat Parties of all stripes).

The Socialist Party has an honourable record since 1904 of never selling socialism short, and insisting it is an immediate and practical goal, requiring no other minimum demand, now that the vote has been won, that it can only be brought into existence by the workers themselves, comprising a majority, who know and understand what socialism is, a free access global society, without nation states. We don’t pander to nationalist sentiments, following slavishly Lenin's silly "Imperialism as the Highest Form of Capitalism" dogma. Our demand is the world for the workers and not for some new state-capitalist entity, or permissible level of wage slavery. In fact, many left-wing platforms to-day are even less radical than the Old Labour ones, where mistakenly they thought they were ushering in a new era, and piously mouthed phrases such as "we are the masters now " and "socialism will come like a thief in the night".

Wee Matt

Clobber the capitalist parasite class bastards

Time for the post-capitalist, production-for-use, commonly-owned, free-access society. Capitalism cannot be reformed. It has to be replaced. It won't come from a party organised in the interests of capital with their plans for the retention of waged slavery. It has to be the work of the people themselves, the conscious act of the vast majority. The Labour Party has never been a socialist party. The new society has to be made by ourselves and we can dissolve all governments 'over' us and elect ourselves to run a commonly owned world.

"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.’ (1879, Marx and Engels)

In 2014-15 the richest fifth of British earners received 45.5% of all UK income, and the richest tenth received 29%. The top 1% received around an eighth (12.7%) of gross income, and the top 0.1% – around 65,000 people – almost a twentieth (5%). Of course, given the recent revelations about offshore tax affairs revealed in the Panama Papers, it’s likely that this admitted income is considerably understated.

Between July 2012 and June 2014, the most wealthy 20% of households accounted for 62% of all private household wealth, whereas the top 20% of earners received 40% of the total disposable income (as adjusted for the size and composition of the household). As with income, much of the wealth of the richest few is likely to be hidden from view. (Doing that by quintiles is distorting in itself, across that 20% the wealth will be unevenly distributed.)

There is a class war going on, whether you like it or not and the dominant economic parasite capitalist class are winning it.

Big Business or Little England? That's the choice in the referendum the Tory Party has organised to try to settle its internal differences. So, to that extent, it is not the concern of the rest of us. The trouble is that, if things go wrong and there's an unexpected vote to Leave, we risk being collateral damage in the temporary economic and financial crisis that would follow. The nostalgic dreams and rosy future promised by the Leave campaign won't happen. On the other hand, leaving wouldn't be as dramatic a change as the Remain side is suggesting -- it can't be as the British capitalist economy is so intertwined with that of the rest of the EU that it can't withdraw from it. So there'd be a deal with Britain ending up something like Norway. The rest of us won't notice the difference.

Both sides are being criticised for exaggerated and unsubstantiated claims, but what do they expect? The protagonists on both sides are professional politicians used to telling lies and making false promises. They are not going to change their spots just because it's a referendum and not an ordinary election.

British workers should take their cue from French workers and join up in the unions to clobber the capitalist parasite class bastards, regardless of the political hue of the respective governments 'over' us, for eroding welfare, working hours and pension age retirement. Governments exist to manage capitalism in the interests of the economic parasite class. It is time to stop begging slavishly for governments 'over' us to ameliorate our waged slavery by reforms and organise collectively to take the whole world and everything in it and on it into the common ownership and democratic control.

The one small favour the EU referendum debate has done for us is to nail once and for all the lie that there is a "national interest" we all share.

Some businesses depend on exports, some depend on imports, some don't depend on either, but resent any regulation or interference in their business. For them, tariff barriers and trade deals are important.  All the business leaders try and convince the rest of us that their interest is our interest that their profits are our jobs. Yet we know that despite years of continued growth (and profitability) our wages are not growing along with their profits. Desperate to persuade us we have a dog in the fight, their hirelings scream about migrants, our fellow workers who move home for work. Yet, study after study shows that migratory workers don't depress wages. It's the bosses who depress wages, and the employers who cause unemployment. A working person in London will always have more in common with a worker from Slovakia or Peru than they ever will have with a British capitalist, or anyone else who wants to divide the world up for profit.

Wee Matt

Educate! Agitate! Organise!

"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

Marx got his socialism from the working class. He provided a scientific critique of capitalism aided by Engels, but so what if his background was originally a bourgeois one. His analysis still stands the test of time. It has led to an advanced capitalist society which is run from top to bottom by the working class. The only thing he got wrong, easily done given capitalism was in its infancy at the time, was the duration of capitalism. The ideological apparatus which served it via education systems, the misrepresentation by political parties utilising working class voting on the promise of reforms. A Citizens Income is being tried out yet it only to be a subsidy for employers who will eventually cut wages.

Capitalism in Britain exists in the context of political democracy, which means that political parties openly supporting capitalism have to be able to command a wide degree of popular support. The Tory Party, which in Britain is the party of Big Business and the rich, cannot just baldly proclaim that it exists to act in the interest of the few before everyone else's. They have to convince people that capitalism is in the general interest. Similarly, the Labour party have to resort to persuasive subterfuge to profess 'socialistic' intentions while actually being a business friendly, capitalism supporting party, to gain the power to govern over workers. Governments don't cause or cure recessions. It is an inevitable part of capitalism. Banks don't cause or cure recessions either. When trade is in a slump they may speculate more (gamble) to keep the pot boiling, in the hope trade picks up, but eventually, it bites them in the ass.

No, the emancipation of the working class is freedom from waged slavery, common ownership of all the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth, production for use, utilising technological and informational infrastructure to provide self-regulation stock control systems and free access for all within a delegatory democratic administration over resources and not people. A post-capitalist society and damn all to do with, nationalisation, or the state capitalism imposed by the feudal conditions of the , Russian experience.

Socialism cannot be given to -down, nor imposed by some putsch. It is then possible for it to be a peaceful one using the Achilles heel of capitalist democracy, in those countries where the ballot box is the norm.

This time, it won’t be a minority-led revolution like all previous ones, but the last great emancipation of the wage-slaves, by themselves and for themselves against the iniquitous minority ownership. Socialism/Communism are interchangeable terms for a post-capitalist society, where the means of production and distribution are owned in common, by us all and not the state. There are NO means of exchange, as it is a free access society and the absence of a leading economic elite, renders the state also, obsolete. Socialism is a majority led, post-capitalist, production for use, commonly owned, free access, society. Socialism can only be built upon the technological advances of capitalism. It has nothing to do with state ownership, dictatorial or otherwise, but is a commonly owned, production for use, free access, a democratic society run by us all. The only way that the working class – can protect themselves from the adverse effects of globalisation is to get together with their counterparts in other countries to replace global capitalism with global socialism where the Earth’s productive resources will have become the common heritage of all humanity.

Sanders’ or Corbyn's ‘socialist’ revolution is not on offer, nor in their power to gift to us. They are offering reform of capitalism, quite a different proposition. The task of making a socialist revolution is in the hands of the immense majority imbued with the knowledge that capitalism cannot be reformed and it needs to be replaced. For workers everywhere, the solution to their problems lies not in choosing a charismatic populist leader, but in collectively organising to get rid of capitalism and establish socialism. Capitalism is not made any nicer by voting for its continuation under a new government over you. Regardless of it being Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, Purple or Tartan. Relegate capitalism to the 'Museum of Antiquity' along with money, nation states, wage slavery and war, by explaining what socialism is, rather than what apologists of capitalism say it is.

"I am not a Labor Leader; I do not want you to follow me or anyone else; if you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of this capitalist wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I led you in, some one else would lead you out. You must use your heads as well as your hands, and get yourself out of your present condition; as it is now the capitalists use your heads and your hands" Eugene Debs

Wee Matt

Workers Can Build a Better World

Why do you wish to be governed over? All government is over us in the interests of the minority capitalist parasite class, regardless of the Left/Right spectrum of the political parties. Why do you need a leader? If you need a leader you are a slave. The Socialist Party, Britain's oldest socialist party, and its second oldest political party, does not have, never has had and never will have, a leader. It is a slavish, sheep-like, and an abdication of one’s personal responsibility to require one:

 “I would not be a Moses to lead you into the Promised Land, because if I could lead you into it, someone else could lead you out of it.”― Eugene V. Debs

"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

The Socialist Party doesn't support either Corbyn or the notions of leadership and has damn all to do with Momentum or the Labour Party. It doesn't matter whether the politician is an honourable person or a shit one. They are only in charge of you, as you have abdicated responsibility by agreeing to be governed over. They are not in charge of economic events. That is left to the anarchy of the market system.

Trying to work out why the ruling class and their paid for and bought media should be so apparently unfairly opposed to Corbyn (when he's only a harmless reformist advocating what Harold Wilson did 60 years ago), we wonder whether the vote in parliament on Trident gives a clue -- they don't want the main opposition party, which has a chance of forming a government, to be unilateralist? It might be a coincidence, but they encouraged the SDP breakaway in 1981 which effectively ruled out a possibly unilateralist Labour Party from getting into government in the likely future. They want nuclear weapons because, in the capitalist world of competing states, "might is right", so this is of vital interest to them.

This charade of democracy doesn't alter the relations of production, doesn't alter waged slavery, doesn't alter the 90-95% producing all the wealth and the 5-10% profiting from this to become stinking rich, with a waged ration for the 90-95%.

All capitalist economies are determined by the realisation of profit … Profit is the raison d’être. As a result, if profits are declining, or by scrapping unprofitable plant or machinery profits will increase, it is quite usual for productive capacity to be scrapped. Profit can ONLY come from the exploitation of the vast majority. The illusion of democratic control over ungovernable economic forces scarcely addresses this point. It doesn't alter outcomes one iota though. The rich will still be rich and the rest of us will still be waged slaves producing all the wealth.

As long as you keep settling for a reformed capitalism, you will get waged slavery, if you are lucky, a food bank if not. A ration or a hand-out. The capitalist parasite class will be laughing all the way to their conspicuous consumption of the wealth you produce, while you go to work.  Capitalism cannot be reformed or tamed to work in the interests of the majority.

A commonly owned and democratically controlled, production for use, shared planet run by ourselves with free access and recallable delegation where administrative tasks require some specialisation does do so. We don't need money in a production for use society.

Capitalist democracy even with reforms, doesn't address the intense competition between rival capitalist blocs, locally, regionally and globally over markets, trade routes and raw materials which ultimately leads to war, either in the global confrontations of the last century, the war science arising from those at Nagasaki, Hiroshima, or the ever ongoing proxy wars. It doesn't address the limited apparent 'normalisation' of acceptance of the only 'choice', as being between two evils, as natural outcomes, nuclear annihilation or conventional annihilation.

A commonly owned and democratically controlled , production for use, shared planet run by ourselves with free access and recallable delegation where administrative tasks require some specialisation does do so. It is past time for a societal upgrade to a post-capitalist system. Cuba, Sweden? Still capitalism with waged slavery for the majority and riches for the minority. The Daily Mail and every other capitalist newspaper, don't even acknowledge what communism is. They think state capitalism is communism. Communism and socialism, essentially mean the same, is a democratic, production for use, post-capitalist society, with common or social ownership (not the state ownership) of all the means of producing and distributing wealth in conditions of free access and democratic control by us all without elites. Government over the people will cease to exist and instead we will have administration, by us, locally regionally and globally, over things and resources with recallable delegation where specialism is necessary.

"From each according to their abilities to each according to their needs"

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 Rich Lie, the Poor Die

Britain's oldest socialist party (SPGB) has always thrown open their platform to debate with opponents however distasteful their views. Over the decades we have challenged the British Union of Fascists, the National Front and the British National Party on the platform.

The idea that immigrants can only have a negative effect on wages and living standards is a common one. Nigel Harris in ‘The New Untouchables’ quotes research that argues that ‘modern econometrics cannot find a single shred of evidence that immigrants have an adverse impact on the earnings and job opportunities of natives of the United States’. And he gives the example of the Los Angeles economy which expanded in the 1970s, largely as the result of increased demand caused by legal and illegal immigration.

Likewise the increase in immigration in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s did not lead to increased unemployment – rather the massive explosion in unemployment levels in the 1970s and beyond was caused by the boom-bust cycle of the capitalist system itself. Secondly, immigrants and refugees are not a drain on the social security system – in fact, as Harris shows, they contribute far more to the ‘system’ than they receive in return. Whether you look at Caribbean immigrants who came to Britain in the 1960s, few of which drew retirement pensions, or whether you take Mexican migrants to California, where a 1980 study found that less than 5 percent received any assistance from welfare services, and in all sectors, except education, they paid far more than they received – a net balance sheet shows that the ‘host’ nation gains far more than it gives in return.

Furthermore, migration has another very favourable benefit for the ruling class in the ‘host’ country – namely that they don’t have to contribute to the cost of raising and educating the immigrant worker.

It is the system of capitalist production that produces unemployment, homelessness, destitution and crumbling health services, – not workers, be they ’indigenous’ or foreign. The bosses hope to keep the worst-off sections of workers fighting with each other over shrinking pieces of a small pie instead of uniting to fight for a decent life for all.

The rationale of immigration control is that such chauvinist legislation is founded on the nation state and the feverish competition in which that nation state is engaged. It splits and divides workers from their main objectives, and, in the long run, weakens their strength all over the world. It cannot be contemplated by a world socialist. The only possible attitude of progressive workers, is opposition to immigration control. We have to reject all laws that divide the working class into legals and illegals. It is the height of treachery to our class and we would do well to remember that the working class stretches far beyond Britain’s borders. It is blatant racism, and opportunism to opt for a policy of blaming the immigrant for all British workers’ woes, even if this will strike a chord with the basest instincts of many workers.

War and poverty existed before capitalism but the forms they take are different. They were previously as likely to be waged by the ruling class themselves, participating in dynastic conquest and getting arrows in their eye, or rewarded with kingdoms.

The means of eliminating poverty did not exist then, so famine and shortages will have a bearing upon the precarious state of the largely peasant population, but they would have had their own parcels of land or commons, upon which they could subsist. Capitalism was an advance upon this, as it made possible the vast production capacity upon which we can presently draw, but it is stifled within its potential by private, corporate and state ownership of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth, with its market system dictating production for profit for the benefit of the new aristocracy, the capitalist class. This is also further exacerbated by the need for waged-slavery, to keep the wealth being produced by the productive underclass, from whom all wealth springs, they can only gain access to a waged ration of the social product in order to keep them showing up for employment. Therefore exploitation takes place at the point of production. Poverty inevitable as a consequence. This is further exacerbated by the intense competition between rival capitalists over market share, leading to alternating booms and busts of the business cycle. Leads to lay-offs with the capitalist taking the spoils and the worker subsisting upon whatever hand-outs, he has won during the boom times from capitalist government. Thus poverty, absolute and relative, is entrenched within the capitalist system in the enrichment and service of the economic parasite capitalist class, whose watchword is Accumulate, accumulate!.

However, war in capitalism, is 'business by other means', a consequence of capitalist competition, and arises out of competition between rival capitalist entities organised in nations, trade blocs, spheres of geo-political interest in the battle for , raw materials, securing of trade routes and economic and politically dominant privilege to further, all those ends.  The nature of war has changed in this regards. The last two world wars evidence of this decadence of capitalism, with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, by the 'good guys', for the sake of science.

War and poverty are 'essential' features of capitalism. Socialism is a post-capitalist system which has still to be brought into being.

Wee Matt

Crapitalism because capitalism is shit

Once we have got the solidarity act together worldwide, we can get rid of the capitalist system which of which war and poverty, absolute or relative are concomitant and establish a democratic, commonly owned world, with free access to the wealth produced. The majority support capitalism as they know of no alternative and can be persuaded by the illusory promises of reforms and tricked by statist panaceas from the left into confusing state ownership with common ownership. It is nothing of the kind. The best way to get reforms is to advocate revolution. All you need is the majority to be persuaded to this end. “Cuddly” capitalism will be rolling on its back to have its belly tickled, but nothing will stop an idea when its time has come.

Workers not only produce all of the wealth but effectively run capitalism from top to bottom. Far from being termites or ants to be ordered by overlords, private or state, human beings are social beings who do not just live within structured systems but consciously act to change them. A politically aware majority who dispense with private, corporate, or state, ownership of the means and instruments for creating wealth and opt to establish a commonly owned production for use society, will be more than capable of running it democratically, (delegating recallable delegates when specialisation is called for) with free access to the collective produce, without elites or government oversight.

Profit can ONLY come from the exploitation of the vast majority. Poverty absolute and relative is essential for capitalism to function. The capitalist class themselves are subject to market conditions. The illusion of democratic control over ungovernable economic forces scarcely addresses this point. While some plutocrats and oligarchs may indeed be monsters, most of them are merely reacting to the malign anarchy of the impersonal market. You just can't have a nicer capitalism. Capitalism cannot be reformed, as the market reasserts itself once profitability is eroded. We can use the Achilles heel of capitalist democracy to usher in a commonly owned, free access, post-capitalist world. Capitalism is past its useful retirement date since the beginning of last century, hence two world wars and innumerable proxy ones. Capitalism is not forever. No social system is.

All capitalist economies are determined by the realisation of profit … Profit is the raison d’être. As a result, if profits are declining, or by scrapping unprofitable plant or machinery profits will increase, it is quite usual for productive capacity to be scrapped. Profit can ONLY come from the exploitation of the vast majority. The illusion of democratic control over ungovernable economic forces scarcely addresses this point. Only a commonly owned, production for use free access society does so. Governments don't bring economic failure or success. It is the trade cycle of capitalism which brings in opportunities for employers to exploit workers of their surplus value. If there is no such opportunity the richest will gamble on the stock exchange or move their capital into lucrative ventures elsewhere. Their golden rule is to accumulate! accumulate!

Governments take credit when things are better and blame opponents when things are bad. They do not manage the economy, they manage expectations and exercise social control over you.

A post-capitalist world, utilising the under-used productive potential of previously existing capitalism, but where food clothing shelter and any other necessities cease to be commodities to be traded, in the interests of a minority parasite class but are for the freely available use of everyone to satisfy human needs in abundance.

The Labour Party which was never a socialist party but existed as a combination of Liberals and trade union reformers, with the purpose of gaining reforms for working people, rather than the overthrow of existing social relations of production. Some, known as “Gradualists”, had the view that capitalism could gradually be reformed into something it was not, providing a convenient stick for unabashed supporters of capitalism to show that Labours misnamed 'socialism' doesn't work when the inevitable crisis of capitalism emerges from the trade cycle of capitalism. As long as you keep settling for a reformed capitalism, you will get waged slavery, if you are lucky, a food bank if not.

Socialism isn't 57 varieties despite politically manipulated appearances. It has a definition i.e. the common ownership and democratic control of all the means and instruments for creating and distributing wealth. Socialism requires the support and active participation of the immense majority, who are politically aware of its implementation being, indeed, a revolutionary break with the capitalist mode of production for sale and introduction of the socialist/communist/post-capitalist mode of production for use. Socialism/Communism/Marxism is a post-capitalist society, where the means of production and distribution are owned in common, by us all and not the state. There are NO means of exchange, as it is a free access society and the absence of a leading economic elite, renders the state also, obsolete

Don't settle for crumbs. We have the world to win. Time for a societal upgrade for the 21st century and beyond.

"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

Remove the masters of death

Capitalism is unpredictable and there is presently the sound of war-drums in the air, in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, the South China Seas and in the Arctic. The world is in an economic slump also.

Socialism/communism, production for use and not for sale, abolition of the wages system, has never been tried to fail. All we have ever have been variants of capitalism. Capitalism cannot be reformed in this way except for brief periods if it proved useful for the ruling class. Capitalism depends on poverty (absolute or relative). How else will we present ourselves for waged slavery exploitation for the surplus value wealth only workers create? The end of the ruling class by the last great emancipation, that of the wage slave and the introduction of production for use, will end the necessity for the war machines.

"The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor." Said Voltaire

War is not some natural event, but a consequence of a social system, where intense competition for raw materials , trade routes or geo-political interests are threatened by other members of a global minority parasite capitalist class. The capitalist social system and its bloodstained ethos of, primarily of individual accumulation of riches for the minority capitalist class, can be replaced by a classless commonly owned society of production for use. One where all human needs are met and access to them is free, where raw materials are shared and not owned, where the world is organised locally, regionally and globally by all its people with no elite vital interests.

The organising tenet of "From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs", will send capitalism's twin horrors of war and poverty to the dustbin of history. There are probably enough buildings in London to house everybody, certainly enough so that nobody need be homeless or live in accommodation without basic amenities. The problem with housing is same with anything else it is a commodity produced for sale on the market with a view of realising a profit. Because housing is produced for profit there is no possibility of a rational approach to housing within capitalism. As Engels pointed out as long ago as 1872:

‘As long as the capitalist mode of production continues to exist, it is folly to hope for an isolated solution of the housing question or of any other social question affecting the fate of the workers. The solution lies in the abolition of the capitalist mode of production and the appropriation of all the means of life and labour by the working class itself’ (The Housing Question).

Immigrants are fellow workers and are equally victims of the housing shortage problem as anyone else, not the cause of it. We workers are not a nation. The nation state is the collective arm of the capitalist class and the referendum had damn all to do with workers but represents a division in the interests of rival capitalist groups. Workers have more in common with fellow workers worldwide than with their local or global capitalist class.

We need a post-capitalist system, which utilises the technological advances of capitalism to produce for use, to satisfy all human needs, using self-feeding loopback informational tools for stock measurements and control with direct inputs, at local, regional and global, levels to allow calculation in kind, as opposed to the economic calculation of capitalism, only necessary to satisfy profit taking. Our business needs to become that of ending business and the ruthless competition which leads to war. The end of the ruling class by the last great emancipation, that of the wage slave and the introduction of production for use, will end the necessity for the war machines. You can't say "Not in my name" when it is civilians, but it's OK for fellow workers in uniform, who have been coerced into fighting their masters' battles are killed. Voting for a capitalist political party is voting for poverty absolute or relative and war by proxy by deed as business by other means as suppliers from the masters of death, the capitalist class as a whole upon whose interests all wars are fought. The 'tax payer' in whose interests all war is fought, for raw materials, markets, spheres of geo-political interests, is not a member of the working class, but of the global parasitic capitalist class. Taxation is a burden upon the capitalist class levied upon their profit. The weapons will always be in the wrong hands while we have capitalism.

Selling to the highest bidder is 'normal' and moral market behaviour in an aggressive competitive capitalist social system. The morality of it is determined by the accumulative economic and/or strategic outcome for the capitalist class engaged upon it. These are all upstanding 'moral' good guys and gals whose governments approved the conducted war science upon civilians of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. It is the social system which requires to be revolutionised into a human centred, commonly owned, production for use, cooperative world. The ethical behaviour and morality which proceeds from this will surely be different to the ones which presently prevail. All we need is a majority who are politically aware of those facts and conscious of the necessity of their shared role with fellow-workers worldwide, in bringing the post-capitalist society into being.

We don't need leaders.

We are not sheep.

Workers have no country

We have a world to win

Wee Matt