Riot v Revolution

Socialists have been accused over the years of wanting to overthrow capitalism by force and violence. When we are accused of this, what they are really trying to imply is that socialists want to abolish capitalism with a minority, that we want to force the will of the minority on the majority. The opposite is the truth. We believe we can win a majority of the people to support a change in the system.  Socialism is not the regime of a minority. It cannot, therefore, be imposed by a minority.

 Our whole case rests on the assumption that violence comes, as, indeed, it generally does, from the side of the ruling class. We have no respect for the established order of things, knowing full well its ruthless disregard of human life and its indifference to human suffering and misery. We can sympathise with the crimes of the outlaw, created a criminal by society. But we know that the crimes and violence inflicted upon our class enemies only serve to strengthen them, and that they are not revolutionary but reactionary in their effects. We may excuse, but we cannot advocate violence. Violence can only to be resorted to in self-defence.

When the working class adopt means to the end; we have to make sure that they are means that reflect the end in view, and that they will hasten, not retard its attainment.  Rioting is simply the display of impotent rage. It is the tactics of despair, not a method for revolution. The capitalists’ power rest on the force of its state and  to appeal to force while all the arms are in the hands of  the ruling class is self-destructive.  It may well be that the revolution will not be achieved without violence; but we should be fools to provoke the fighting when we should have to fight at a disadvantage, when all the riot police and military resources are controlled by the master class, and all we have to oppose to them is bricks and broken bottles. In such circumstances, any use of  force, quite obviously, plays into the State’s  hands; every riot and every attack on property, gives them an excellent excuse to indulge in reprisals. We know that nothing would please the ruling class better than to goad socialists into premature “revolutionary” violence so they can suppress us. When a doomed insurrection inevitably fails it will have left the capitalist system intact and armed it with implacable fury. The fear of the ruling class will express itself in a long succession of reactionary years. And the workers will be bound and crushed for a long time. The pages of history recount this bitter lesson.

Workers and socialists have struggled long and hard for universal suffrage - a vote for everyone.  Elections indicate the strength of the different parties. A minority that, having taken part in the elections and having accepted them as a gauge, should then attempt to do violence to the majority, would would be opposed by a majority that, aware of its legitimacy of the ballot would not yield. The socialist’s task is organising for the revolution through the conquest of political power. We are by no means fanatics of democracy. The Parliamentary franchise is not an end in itself, but only a means to an end. We hold no illusions as to the value of the vote. Those votes are but the outward and visible sign of an inward invisible class-consciousness; the expression of a working-class revolutionary organisation. The power of the ballot depends, not upon the process, but upon the person behind the vote.

Great social changes that are called revolutions cannot (or rather can no longer) be accomplished by a minority. A revolutionary minority, no matter how intelligent and determined, is not enough, in to-day’s world to bring about a revolution. The co-operation and adherence of the majority are needed. The socialist revolution will not be accomplished by the action, or the sudden blows of a militant minority, but by the defiant and harmonious will of the immense majority. Whoever depends on physical force to bring about the revolution, and gives up the method of winning over the immense majority to our ideas, will give up at the same time any possibility of transforming the social order.

 Socialism cannot be achieved except by the will of the majority of people. Socialists do not rest content after abolishing capitalism but must continue and build a new type of society where production is administered in an ordered way. A new social system cannot be constructed by a minority. It can only function with the approval of the majority who will create from capitalism the various types of social property, co-operative, and communal. The common good will be its object. For the first time since the beginning of human history, a revolution will have for its aim, not the substitution of one class for another, but the destruction of classes, the inauguration of a universal humanity. In the socialism, the co-ordination and collaboration of effort will not be maintained by the authority of one class over another,but will come as the result of the free association. How, then, can a system based on the voluntary participation of all be instituted against the will, (or even without the will,) of the greater number? Socialism requires to be organised and accepted by almost practically all.

The political terrorist is either a fool or a villain; either carried away by sheer lunacy, or motivated by personal gain. The genuine revolutionary knows that in order to accomplish results or promote principle, there must be unity of action.  Hence,  the true revolutionary accepts the will of the majority. The object of a Socialist Party is socialism. To that end the education and organisation of the working class and their persuasion to Socialist principles is essential. We cannot have socialism without socialists. Therefore, the first duty of a socialist party is propaganda, in order to make socialists. The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working-class themselves. There is no other way. They cannot be emancipated against their will.

To the Socialist Party whose objective is the socialist revolution – the abolition of capitalism and wage slavery parliamentary action is not the only means but in  countries with parliamentary democracy we use it because it is there to use. But in doing so the immediate object in view is to win the people to the ideas of socialism – to make socialists and to organise the working class for the social revolution. That being so, the winning or losing of seats in any legislative chamber is of secondary importance. What is important is to win votes – not merely as votes, but as evidence of the growing strength of the movement. In other words, as has been well said, we count heads instead of breaking them. That is not to say that the winning of seats is of no importance at all. It is important for it enables us to capture control of the machinery of the state to deprive the capitalists of its use and it legitimises the appropriation of the capitalist class. Parliamentarism is simply the most effective and appropriate means to that end at the present time.

Progressing Backwards

The illusion nurtured by supporters of capitalism that workers are constantly improving their financial position is shattered by the IFS.  Wages have fallen more in real terms in the current economic downturn than ever before, according to their recent report. 'On top of rising cost of living, one third of workers who stayed in the same job saw a wage cut or freeze between 2010 and 2011, said the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS). ....... In 2009, the average public sector worker earned about £16.60 per hour, which dropped to about £15.80 in 2011, the IFS said. Meanwhile, hourly pay for private sector workers in 2009 was just over £15.10 and dropped to £13.60 in 2011.' (BBC News, 12 June) RD

Food for thought

Britain, like most countries these days, is up to its eyes in economic woes. Now David Cameron is talking about a "One nation, deficit reduction plan, from a one nation party", and opposition leader, Ed Milibrand, used the phrase 'one nation' forty times in his conference speech last Fall. Even Nick Clegg used it when he told everyone to "Pull together as one nation". The idea is to convince the working class that their interests are identical with those of the capitalist class, whether it is making products for them to sell at a profit in the market place or fighting wars to further the local capitalists' commercial interests, as opposed to the interests of capitalists in other countries. The plain brutal fact is that the working class of any country has more in common with workers ten
thousand miles away than with the capitalists in their own country. One may like certain things about the country one lives in, but it is folly to identify that with the country as a political identity that is a means whereby the few live well at the expense of the many. As for the term 'one nation', the arithmetic is a bit off because there are in fact two nations on this planet – those of the capitalist class and of the working class. The idea should be to abolish all concepts of nation and replace it with 'a world for the workers'. John Ayers

The difference between anarchists and the Socialist Party

“Intelligence enough to conceive, courage enough to will, power enough to compel. If our ideas of a new Society are anything more than a dream, these three qualities must animate the due effective majority of the working-people....” – William Morris

To most people nowadays, anarchism conjures up the image of Molotov cocktail throwing protesters but it is as well to be reminded that anarchism has a tradition in the working-class movement as old as Marxism itself.  Although  the Socialist Party is not anarchist there are many points in where its ideas coincide with the anarchist attitude.

An educated and conscious working class will insist on democracy. And not the narrow, largely fictitious democracy of voting every four years but democracy in all social and cultural activities, in all spheres of communal life from A to Z. Members of the Social Party are agreed as to the general object for which we are striving – the ownership of all the means of production by the community; that community to be organised on the most democratic basis possible. But, beyond this, socialist  are not concerned with the details and intricacies of the organisation of the new society; and it is possible that in the conception of what that organisation will be there may be the widest divergence of views. The point of difference here between the Socialist Party and anarchists is not on form of organisation of the future society, or of the details of such organisation.

It is not that the Socialist Party wishes to impose on the future society a huge bureaucratic system, dominating all the arrangements of social life, crushing all individuality, and reducing every detail of existence to rule and plan. But we do stand for social ownership and social control, as do the anarchists. We are, however, not called upon to lay down  rules for that future society. We shall let that society take care of itself in that respect. It is very interesting, no doubt, to speculate on the future arrangements of society, whether it will be based on workers councils , federations of communes, decisions made by general assemblies or delegated committees but it is not in our power to insist that these arrangements be this or that. Any discussion on this matter must necessarily be of an academic character.The basic difference between the Socialist Party and the anarchists is not in its relation to future society.

The immediate goal of reformists is palliatives. The immediate goal of state capitalist is the re-ordering of private ownership. The  immediate goal of the Socialist Party and anarchists is the social revolution. We both see only one solution: The Revolution.

Food for thought

The Bangladesh garment factory disaster – who's to blame? A New York Times editorial claims the continuing disasters there is an indictment of global clothing brands yet every enterprise on the planet would love to be in a position where wages, safety laws, and collective bargaining (11 units in a population of 150 million people) are virtually non-existent. Surely it must be obvious that the system itself is to blame.

Paraguay is enjoying an economic boom with growth reaching thirteen per cent this year. Not surprisingly, not all the people are included. Thirty per cent of Paraguayans live in poverty just a short walk from the financial centre. One grandmother, 60 years old, interviewed said she worked every day for $4 to look after her four grandchildren. Surely it must be obvious the system itself is wrong. (am I getting repetitive?). John Ayers

Profits or People

During the Irish potato famine of 1845 to 1848, the worst year is known as Black '47, when 400,000 people died of starvation and disease. During that time, vast quantities of food continued to leave the country's shores. 4,000 ships carrying grain and livestock sailed from Ireland to the ports of Bristol, Liverpool and Glasgow in 1847, according to Dr Christine Kinealy, a fellow at the University of Liverpool.

"I know all the difficulties that arise when you begin to interfere with trade," wrote the Irish Lord Lieutenant at the time, Lord Bessborough, who pleaded unsuccessfully for help from the government in London. "But it is difficult to persuade a starving population that one class should be permitted to make 50pc profit by the sale of provisions whilst they are dying for want of these."

In the world today, just as in Black '47, when wagon-loads of food were exported under guard by the army, there is enough capacity to feed everyone that is in need yet 2.3 million children die from malnutrition every year.

Reform Without the Revolution

Within the Left there has arose a number of misconceptions about the Socialist Party of Great Britain, one being that we oppose reforms that can improve the lot of workers. The economic system don’t operate by immutable “laws” like gravity. Economics is not like physics. Human beings work together and make decisions that shape our economic destiny. No worker gives up the struggle for immediate reforms, and for as many reforms as possible.

If the Socialist Party had nothing to offer to the suffering people but the consolatory hope that socialism will bring help at some future time, while the conditions are nearly unbearable now, this consolation would be pretty poor and we would be little better than preachers. Often enough a future state of bliss has been held out to suffering mankind, in which they would be rewarded for all the wants and sufferings and pains of this world, and most people have lost confidence in such empty promises. They demand amelioration: not words, not promises, but action. They do not want to be resigned to “pie in the sky" that may come after death; they demand a change to their unfortunate situation while living on earth. Workers seek a “terrestrial paradise” without having to wait for it in a “something beyond.” In plain terms, workers want jam today. Workers have always had to fight both for improvements in their living standards and for their most basic democratic rights.

But in order to carry on this struggle successfully, the workers must be organised. Singly and isolated they are powerless; if all would unite for the same purpose, they would be a formidable power which nothing could resist. It is for the whole working class to participate in this struggle, since this war is carried on in the interest of all workers. They cannot sit idly back as indifferent spectators surrendering the task to a political party.

The theory of reformism is a very different matter from the actual struggle for reforms. Reformism is a theory that says repeated success in achieving reforms could, over time, completely transform society, peacefully and without the sharp break represented by revolution, into a quite different kind of society. The idea was that capitalist society could grow gradually into a free socialist society. Yet there is nothing intrinsically socialist or even working class about reformism.

Food for thought

Canada will not block the listing of asbestos as a dangerous substance this year at the Rotterdam conference as it has done the last three years.
Good news you say? Yes, but the reason is that the Parti Quebecois government has refused to subsidize the industry making it unprofitable, not because the toxic product has been shipped abroad and handled by workers in the third world with no warning or protection condemning them to an early death. Cynical? You bet! John Ayers

Cause For Celebration?

We can understand workers celebrating joyous occasions like a birthday or a wedding but this commemoration astounds us. 'Britain is to mark the centenary of the First World War with cultural events and an act of reconciliation with Germany on the battlefield. Maria Miller, the culture secretary, will announce the appointment of one of the leaders of the £20m programme tomorrow.' (Sunday Times, 9 June) They are spending £20 million to commemorate a war that  annihilated 16 million lives. Truly capitalism is a sick society. RD

Suicide system

Suicide rates in older men in Northern Ireland have jumped significantly over the past decade. Austerity measures, job losses and mortgage payment difficulties have been blamed for a rise in the number of men aged in their 30s, 40s and 50s taking their own lives, the suicide prevention charity Public Initiative for the Prevention of Suicide and Self-harm (Pips).

"Today it is older men who are attempting to take their own lives. I have no doubt the recession has a major part to play.” Pips founder Philip McTaggart said. 

We need more than the union

Marx highlighted the weak spot of all trade unionism. What every worker must realise is that through trade union struggle we are not fighting the causes which is capitalism but only its symptoms. We are fighting against the effects of the system as Marx points out, and not against the system itself. What trade union struggles really do is to fight to improve the conditions of the working class within the framework of the capitalist system. They do not challenge capitalism itself. What all workers must understand is that their misery is due to exploitation carried on by the capitalist class. Trade unionism merely attempts to lessen this exploitation. It does not fight to end exploitation i.e. to end the capitalist system and replace it by socialism. This is the fatal limitation of trade union struggles.

The Socialist Party does not oppose trade union struggles nor do its members refuse to participate in them. 

As Marx wrote in 1881:

“..it is through the action of Trades Unions that the law of wages is enforced as against the employers, and that the workpeople of any well-organised trade are enabled to obtain, at least approximately, the full value of the working power which they hire to their employer; and that, with the help of State laws, the hours of labour are made at least not to exceed too much that maximum length beyond which the working power is prematurely exhausted. This, however, is the utmost Trades Unions, as at present organised, can hope to obtain...”

So trade unions are vitally essential to organise workers and help them to fight for their day to day demands. As long as the capitalist system exists, employers will always try to take back what they have been forced to concede. They will continually try to step up the exploitation of the working class in order to boost their profits. Until the workers get rid of the capitalist system itself, the cause of all the injustices they face, they will constantly have to take up their struggles over and over again.

Marx’s advice to the workers was:

“Instead of the conservative motto, ‘A fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work,’ they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, ‘Abolition of the wages system’.” (Value, Price and Profit.)

For socialists this is a guide to action, to present the socialist solution, to raise the issue of socialism, to speak and act in terms of socialism and to fight for the socialist transformation of the economic, social and political system. The Socialist Party does not wish to “capture” the trade unions, nor to exploit them for the support of principles in which they do not believe or of men with whom they do not agree. Neither do we suggest that we should “fight” the unions as some Left Communists argue should happen. Nor do we adhere to the idea that we should create rival “socialist” trade union organisations to them as have the old Communist Party and Socialist Labour Party once did. Such efforts proved futile and only further weakened the power of existing unions. The Socialist Party has no interest in opposing, antagonising, or disrupting the trade unions.

What we wish to do is to inspire its members with a consciousness of the reality and magnitude of the class struggle in which, whether they will it or not, they are engaged. The fact is that unions are mass organisations which bring together workers of all political tendencies, including workers who are still under the domination of the prevalent status quo ideology and still have faith in the political parties of the capitalists. Despite this, unions have everything to gain from remaining united. Otherwise their battles will end up in defeat. 

Another name that Marx and Engels often used for a socialist society was “free association of producers”.  Simply describing a world without private property or wages system, however important these might be, misses the point. Marx’s basic conceptions was of universal human emancipation, of a way of living which he called "truly human". Communist society is based on the free association of all individuals who work together to produce the goods necessary for their collective well-being. All will work according to their capacities and their needs will be fully satisfied. Thus, individuals will no longer be governed by the division of labour and the divisions between city and countryside will disappear. The expropriation of the capitalists and the socialisation of the means of production will lead directly to the abolition of society based on class division . The abolition of classes will in turn lead to the withering away of the State, and its extinction, for the State is not, and can never be, anything other than the instrument of dictatorship of one class over others.

Food for thought

An official at the Toronto Zoo said in the recent TV program, "Undercover Boss", that species are dying off at the rate of one thousand a year. Think of the enormity of this and how desperately we need to do something about it.

Yoko Ono recently said that over one million people have been killed by Guns in the US since her husband, John Lennon was shot and killed. Gun control laws may not have an impact, even if an effective law could get past congress, because guns are so easily obtained illegally. Removing the causes of tension and conflict and the end to profiteering on gun sales would work but you need a socialist society for that.

There are nearly six unemployed Canadians for every job vacancy, Statistics Canada reported. Furthermore, 1.2 million people are out of work. Ottawa says it will deal with the problem by focusing on job training. However, Erin Weir, an economist with the United Steel Workers' union, said, "…even if a skills training policy somehow succeeded in filling every current vacancy, more than one million workers would remain unemployed." Another reason to abolish employment and unemployment altogether. John Ayers.

We need the union

You cannot be a union man, 
No matter how you try,
Unless you think in terms of “we”
Instead of terms of “I”

Faced with austerity and wage cuts workers, more than ever, need unions that are prepared to fight to defend living standards. The boss doesn’t give up his profits, interests and dividends or bonuses in a recession.  He only demands that the workers give up their wages so that his profits, interests and dividends will be bigger. This is what is known as everyone sacrificing for the “national interest.” Workers soon learns that if they are by themselves , not in an organisation, they will be utterly helpless victims of capitalist greed. If the employer, especially the more powerful employer in the big industries, is able to deal with each worker separately, he can set almost any wage and working standard he pleases. If each worker offers himself singly on the labor market, he soon finds that other workers, especially when there is a large surplus of unemployed, will “underbid” him in an effort to get the job. To defend themselves from the efforts of the employer to lower wage and working standards, the workers find themselves forced to organize together, to represent themselves to the employers as a group and to bargain collectively. The formation of  unions is therefore the first step naturally taken by the workers to organise themselves as a class.

No one can say with certainty how various sections of the working class in Britain will react to the recession, which is slashing real living standards of those with jobs for the first time for generations, alongside a deep disillusionment with the Labour Party. The possibility of an explosion of anger exists, of which we see flashes of militancy. But political consciousness does not follow as a mechanical process nor does it depend solely on the external circumstances.

 The theory that the workers are not capable of governing themselves is false to the core. Every worker who has participated in trade union life knows that the working class has a tremendous capacity for efficient administration.

In general the employers are much better prepared than the workers in industrial conflicts. The reasons do not lie in any inherent weakness in the working class. Actually the workers are much more powerful than the bosses. The weakness of the workers lies in the failure to recognize the class struggle in its real significance and to prepare the fight accordingly. A union should unite workers instead of divide them; it should be run by workers and not run them; it should fight employers instead of fighting other workers. The most modest victory of the workers in one plant or industry depends upon the organised strength of the workers all over the country, in all the important plants and industries. In other words, the progress of any group of workers depends upon the strength and organisation of their class, upon its ability to combat the capitalists as a class. Those who argue against independent political action by the workers, against a socialist  party, are tied in body and mind to capitalist politics.

The only real answer lies in a world system, a system without classes, an challenge which goes beyond the ‘fair wage’ to challenge the wage system itself. Capital is interested in production for profit, labour in production for use. Capital is based upon a constantly increasing exploitation of labor, in order to maintain its profit; labor constantly resists this exploitation. There is and can be no such thing as a “legitimate profit,” inasmuch as all profit is derived from paying workers less than the value they add to the product. There is and can be no such thing as a “fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work,” inasmuch as wages are the payment for only one part of the day’s work, the other part of which the worker is compelled to contribute to the employer in the form of surplus-value, or profit. Capital always seeks to increase its profits, which can be done only by exploiting labour; labour always seeks to resist exploitation, which can be done only at the expense of profits. Capital always seeks to intensify the exploitation of labour by reducing wages, increasing the work-day, or speeding-up production, or by all three at once; and labour always seeks to raise its wage and working standards. Capital always seeks to increase its profits, which can be done only by exploiting labour; labour always seeks to resist exploitation, which can be done only at the expense of profits. These are fundamental economic facts. Under capitalism, nothing that all the capitalists, or the whole government, or all the union leaders, or all the workers, or a combination of all these, will ever do, can succeed in wiping out these facts.

 Capitalists hammer into the heads of the workers they are entitled to a profit. They hammer into the heads of the workers that capitalism always did exist and always will. Maybe it can and should be improved a little, patched up here and painted up there , but not eliminated. They hammer into the heads of the workers that there always have been people working for wages and there always will and must be such people; that it is so decreed by “human nature”; and that the best to be hoped for is the rule of a “fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work." They work hard at hammering  these ideas into the heads of the people. If these ideas did not prevail, they could not retain their power for a week.

The Killer Society

There are many many reasons to abolish capitalism. War, poverty, racialism and nationalism, to mention but a few, but surely this is the most powerful reason of all. 'Malnutrition is responsible for 45% of the global deaths of children under the age of five, research published in the Lancet medical journal suggests. Poor nutrition leads to the death of about 3.1 million under-fives, annually, it says.' (BBC News, 6 June) Capitalism is a killer - we must get rid of it.RD

Democratic socialism

Socialism will replace the chaotic competition of to-day with the organised co-operation of to-morrow. The overwhelming majority of the population consists of wage-earners, men and women who have no means of earning a livelihood except by the sale of the labour-power in their own bodies to those who possess or control the means of making wealth. The ordinary workers of our day possess little property to speak of, and, more often than not they do not own or control their own tools. On the contrary,  machinery, in one shape or form virtually own and control them, dictating the speed at which they shall work and the amount they shall produce, while control passes out of their hands, as does the product.

True, the modern wage-slave is nominally free and possesses certain  political rights which the chattel slave or feudal serf did not enjoy.  But these freedoms and these rights have not emancipated the wage-slaves from economic servitude to the capitalist class which has succeeded the old land-owning aristocrats or slave-owning patricians. The fact that a certain proportion of the workers receive good wages, in comparison with others who are paid on a lower level of subsistence, makes no difference to the system. Some highly-educated slaves received considerable remuneration from their owners, and even became rich men. What prevents many of the present wage-slaves from understanding how little freedom they really enjoy is the payment of wages in cash. This blinds them to the fact that they receive but a fraction of the value of the wealth they produce in return for the use of their capacity to labour; just as their liberty to change from one employer to another obscures the other truth that they are always, in reality, under duress from the threat of unemployment to the capitalist class as a whole. The Chartists taught generations ago that as long as the payment of wages by one class to another class continued, and production for profit under a competitive system consequently remained the dominant form of employment, it was quite impossible for the propertyless majority to emancipate themselves from the control of the rich. They argued  that the community should own and control all the means and instruments of creating wealth, to be used in the interests of the whole people, and that, so far as possible, this end should be striven for by peaceful methods in order to minimise the chances of reaction.  There is no short cut to the social revolution. The revolts of impatience and insufficient organisation only play into the hands of the ruling class, as all experience has shown. Education and understanding among the people, combined with the general social advance to the stage of economic development  are the indispensable conditions that renders socialism attainable.

The Socialist Party argues that if socialists cannot gain the support of a majority of the people in a democracy then will find it even more impossible to obtain such a majority by the use of armed struggle or the general strike. The tactics of force and violence requires even greater sacrifices from workers. Surely it is much easier to persuade a person to vote for socialism than it is to give their life for it. When  force is pitted against force, the power at the disposal of the ruling classes comes much more into play than under democracy.

It would be nonsensical for the Socialist Party to contend that workers are obliged to use democratic methods under all circumstances. Such an obligation we undertake only if our class enemy also  respects the democratic methods. We are not advocates of legality at any price. We know that we cannot always create historical situations to suit our desires, and that our tactics must correspond to different situations. “By peaceful methods if possible, by forcible means if necessary” is the reply of socialists. In circumstances when socialist are compelled to meet violence with violence, we must still seek first and foremast to win the support of the majority. This is the essential prerequisite of victory.

Where democracy does not exist the most urgent task of socialists to establish political freedom. It is not necessary for socialists to foster any illusions about what  democracy has on offer for this purpose. It makes little difference whether or not we choose to regard a representative assembly of the people, elected by universal equal suffrage, and coupled with freedom of the press, speech and organisation, as mere “bourgeois” democracy. The fact is that such institutions is suffice for  the workers to emancipate themselves. The so-called peaceful methods of conducting the class struggle, contesting elections, strikes, demonstrations,and similar methods of bringing pressure to bear stand a better chance of being maintained in any country the more democratic the institutions, and the greater the political and economic insight and the self control of the people.

To be sure, democratic institutions will change their character when society will be organised on a socialist basis. Today they are essential instruments of struggle for the working class. In socialism they will be means of social administration. 

I deserve my millions

Chris Sullivan chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland’s corporate banking division, defended the £3.4 million he collected in 2010 and insisted he worked hard for his money.
“My life is far from easy,’ he says. ‘I worked my way up from being a humble bank clerk. I have worked very hard and with very long hours.”

The Real World

The materialist conception of history (or historical materialism or the economic interpretation of history) has never consisted of the crude view that hunger alone, the eagerness to satisfy the material needs of the stomach, is the driving force of history. But the materialist conception of history certainly arises out of the basic observation that people (as Engels said at Marx’s funeral) “must have food and drink, clothing and shelter, first of all, before they can interest themselves in politics, science, art, religion, and the like.”

The supporters of the materialist conception of history have never been so dogmatic as to declare that economic forces are the only forces that make history. What they have argued is that, among the factors of history, economic forces have the final say.

Those who advocate the materialist conception  of history do not deny the influence of the mind, never ignore the power of ideas, never under-estimate the importance of the mental or spiritual factor in the course of history. On the contrary, when recognising that history is made by human beings, they acknowledge in these human beings the importance of all human attributes, including, therefore, mind, intelligence, consciousness, and ideas. What they objected to was the concept of a purely mental world in the nebulous form of an “absolute idea” or in theological terms, “God”, should be interpreted abstractly as the essential factor of historical evolution. In their view, neither, the idea nor matter was “in the beginning.” However, "God" didn’t create the world and hasn’t been watching over the development of mankind. On the contrary, man created the idea of the gods as a fantasy to compensate for lack of real control over the forces of nature and of society.

The mistake of the philosophers was to separate ideas off from the material circumstances in which they had arisen, and then to see history as simply the history of a succession of different ideas. For the materialists, all life was an inseparable and eternally mobile interweaving and mutual conditioning of force and matter, combined into an integral unity. And the human being who constituted the core of this living whole was for them a social human being, one who had countless interrelations with  fellow human beings. The materialist’s contention is not that ideas do not matter. It is that ideas arise out of people’s material activity, and cannot be detached from that.

 The materialist conception of history showed that the forms of society, social institutions, human behaviour and human ideas, that show themselves in a particular epoch, are dependent upon the economic relations peculiar to that epoch. The materialist conception of history is that view of history which ascribes the driving power of all social change to the economic development of society in production, and exchange, with its creation of classes and the resulting class struggle. In this explanation of history the mode of production and exchange is taken as the basis of all social relations, and therefore private ownership of land and capital being general in historical times, all history is made up of contests between slave and slave-owner, capitalist and feudal-lord, and wage-slave and capitalist. History, then, is a record of class struggles, and these struggles occur over the ownership of the means of production and distribution. This period of class societies could not be ended until it had led to an enormous growth of the productive forces. Until then any attempt at getting rid of class exploitation was bound to fail. “This development of the productive forces is an absolutely necessary practical premise, because without it: privation, want, is merely made general, and with want the struggle for necessities would begin again, and all the old filthy business would be restored ...Empirically, communism is only possible as the act of the dominant peoples “all at once” and simultaneously, which presupposes the universal development of the productive forces and the world intercourse bound up with them.” Marx wrote in Geman Ideology

Primitive peoples worshipped the sun and other physical phenomena because the natural laws behind these things were not yet known. The early sailor and the modern worker are very different in their mental outlook. One was often superstitious; the other is not. That is because the sailor came into contact with Nature under conditions which have not yet been fully understood and controlled. The vastness of the sea, the sudden storms and the great waves and winds, determined his ideas. In the modern world natural forces have been harnessed, and machinery start and stop at the wish of the operator. Modern men and women have grown less superstitious and increasingly secular.

If, as materialism holds, everything in the universe consists of matter in motion, then the human mind must likewise be a material phenomenon.  The mind of the individual does not and cannot exist except as a function of the brain and the body. The operations of the human mind, remembering, dreaming, learning, reasoning, etc., have the same material character as such functions as eating;  swallowing, digestion  and excreting. Many schools of thought make a mystery of the mind, treating it as some supernatural power. Although the activities of the thought process have their special features and peculiar laws they are in themselves no more enigmatic than other kinds of organic behavior. Human beings think as naturally as they work, eat and reproduce themselves. Through the brain and nervous system the mind is connected with the body, through the body with society, and through society with the rest of nature. These interactions of existence provide the mind with the materials and motives for its activities just as they furnish the stomach with the food. Every human mind remains permanently linked to these material foundations. The most extravagant speculations of thought, the wildest dreams, the most refined ideas cannot go beyond the boundaries of material suggestion nor find any sources of material for its productions outside of those given by the material forms and forces which encompass man on all sides. Nature is the mother of all things and all ideas, and to it they eventually return.

Of course, human reflection, intellectual and philosophical speculation are far more complex and highly developed modes of organic functioning than the simpler natural cited above. But to the materialist, to the scientific thinker, there are no impassable barriers. People do not  reason for the pure pleasure of thinking. Men think for practical purposes, in order to act properly and attain their ends. Man’s intellectual capacities; ideas, and philosophies have developed along with and out of man’s relationship with nature. If their thought did not more or less correctly represent objective reality, if it did not help them to function more efficiently, if it did not serve man’s ends and thus satisfy vital needs, mankind would long since have ceased to cultivate their mental powers. These would have withered away or diminished in importance like the appendix.

The materialists view matter as the primary reality, regarding sensation, consciousness, and reasoning as secondary and derivative qualities. Where the materialist states that mind is a product of natural evolution, the idealist asserts or implies that it possesses some sort of supernatural power. The materialist looks upon mental operations as functions and forms of biological behavior. Idealism segregates reason from the rest of human activity and endows it with a unique status and categorically different powers. Thanks to mysterious para-normal powers, idealism declares that the mind has insight into special realms of being, outside the real material world. This can take the belief in talking with the dead or claiming communication with “God” - the mumbo-jumbo of spiritualism and spirituality.

It's A Mad, Mad World

 

Many opponents of the the world socialist movement think we are are a little mad. A world based on production for use? No profits? No Money? Crazy! But what of present day society? 'A racing pigeon named Bolt officially became the most expensive pigeon in the world earlier this week when a Chinese businessman bought him at auction for $400,000.' (Business Insider, 22 May) We  live in a society wherein millions of people try to exist on less than $2 a day and yet a member of the capitalist class can spend $400,000 on a pigeon. Who are the mad people? RD

The housing problem

Comfortable decent housing is probably the one basic need which, were it properly satisfied, contributes to good emotional and mental health. The fact remains that such a happy situation only applies to the small to the small minority of the population who have the means to buy beautiful homes. The vast majority suffer a housing problem of one sort of another, whether it be living in inner-city slums or soulless council schemes or being plagued by the fears and insecurities caused by trying to pay the rent or pay off a mortgage. Housing is one problem of capitalism which has been a constant source of difficulty and part and parcel of working class life. Few members of our class escape some aspect of housing trouble.

We read that fewer homes are being built leaving thousands of  people frozen out of the property market. Last year fewer than 15,000 homes were built. It is predicted the number of under-35s renting from private landlords will overtake those with a mortgage by 2014. By 2020, it is estimated more than 50% of Scottish young people will live in private rented homes. It is estimated 465,000 new homes are needed in Scotland by 2035 to meet demand. However, the build rates highlighted today point to a potential shortfall in the region of 140,000. Fewer homes are being built now than in the depths of the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The first fallacy to dismiss is the belief that “housing shortage” is the beginning and end of the problem. This is not the source of the problem nor the full story. The facts tell us the industry suffers many problems which have been related to one thing; the contradictions and conflicts of the system of capitalism. If the lack of houses are a product of the inability of the building industry to supply to us the housing we want, then this is because the building industries are clearly responding instead to the realities of capitalism and not to the needs and demands of people.

When socialism is established the people in a local area will make decisions affecting that area specifically, the people in a certain region will make decisions for that region and everyone will make global decisions. When socialism is established it will have two important projects concerning housing. One will be to find homes for all those who have none. It would have to be decided, how many, what type or style, what materials they will be made from and how much of each is required. Obviously, with this will go the many and various decisions concerning town planning, roads, recreational facilities, shopping centres (though we may not call it shopping then). This will entail vast changes from top to bottom in every part of society. Nowhere will this be apparent more than over how we group in communities. Cities as we know them to day will probably no longer exist as people won’t want or need to be condensed in a particular area. Whenever there is a need for a new type of house, a town or a building for the use of the community, architects will submit plans and models which can be voted on by the community as a whole in a given area. Though there may be competition between the various architects and planners, it will be from the premise of who can best beautify the locality. One can be certain that there will be new types of dwellings. Along with the disappearance of cities as we know them will also go the high-rises, those up-turned shoe-boxes where people are crammed in like sardines, to be replaced with buildings where people can at least live like humans.

What's so scientific about socialism?

As a doctrine socialism has passed through two main phases - the utopian and the scientific. What is scientific socialism? Under that name we understand the communist teaching which began to take shape at the beginning of the forties out of utopian socialism. Despite the criticism of capitalist society, the predecessors of Marxism did not understand how  society could provide the forces which could overthrow it. These attempts bear the same relation to modern scientific socialism that astrology or alchemy do to astronomy and chemistry. They resorted to devising schemes and communities but Marx and Engels showed how the development of the powers of production under capitalism would result in the formation of a strong working class and the realization by them intellectually and emotionally of their exploitation and need for a new society the foundations of socialism would come to be created.

Marx was in favour of capturing political power. This was his distinction from utopian socialists that represented socialism before him. It was also suggested the fall of the Paris Commune had to do with the lack of political power. Workers using a party to capture political power doesn't imply statism, hierarchical organisation, a new ruling-class, workers serving the party (rather than the other way round), party loyalty or anything. Marx and Engels showed at the same time the victory of the wage slaves was not going to fall mechanically into their lap when a certain stage of historic development had been reached, but that the workers must prepare themselves for this victory by fighting day-to-day against the capitalist in all spheres of social life, class against class. Marx did not create the working class movement. Nor did he create class consciousness. Rather, he created the theoretical (scientific) expression of them. Marxism is the scientific theory of the revolutionary movement which aims to overthrow the capitalist system and establish a new socialist order in its stead. Marxism provides a scientific theoretical analysis of the laws of motion and the internal contradictions of the capitalist mode of production.

Scientific socialists apply the inductive method, that is inference of general laws from particular instances, reasoning and  proceeding from particular facts to a general conclusion. They stick to facts. They use the  inductive method to draws their mental conclusion from concrete facts.They live in the real world and not in the spiritual regions of idealism or within the realms of academia. The fundamental proposition of inductive scientific socialism may be thus formulated: there is no eternal principle or an a priori idea of the divine, just and free; there is no revelation or a chosen people, but there are material factors which govern human society. The materialist conception of history is scientific induction and not idle speculation.

Socialism is a movement based upon the historic evolution of the past and the economic conditions of the present. It is not, therefore, something that has been hatched in the brain of a poet or in the imagination of some philosopher. It is true that many in the past sought to outline ideal social systems wherein all the inhabitants would be happy and free from poverty. The distinction between those early idealists and modern socialism is the difference between utopianism and science. Scientific socialism builds upon reality. It looks upon society as ever-changing, and it is able to explain why society has changed in the past and why it must change in the future. The reason why socialism is able to explain the past and the present and to foreshadow the future is because it establishes itself upon the facts of history and the truths of economic science.

The whole practical question of socialism may be summed up in the following three points: 1) Has the working class arrived at a clear conception of its existence as a class by itself? 2) Has it strength enough to engage in a struggle against the other classes? 3) Is it about to overthrow, together with the organisation of capitalism, the entire system of traditional thought.  

Profits Before Schoolkids

'In March the National Rifle Association coordinated a demonstration against new gun legislation in Connecticut, the state where 26 children and staff were gunned down at an elementary school in December. Before boarding buses headed for the state capital, gun owners met up at a parking lot in nearby East Hatford - a parking lot owned by sporting goods store Cabela's.'     (Forbes, 22 May) The location was no accident--they were guests of the owners. With 40 stores and a strong Internet and mail catalogue business, Cabela's sells everything from fishing rods to wool slippers. But guns are the real money-maker, and while fears of future gun restrictions have spurred sales for the entire industry, no company has benefited quite like Cabela's.   Shares have increased by 95% in the last year and are up more than 70% already in 2013. The company's two biggest shareholders, founders Richard and James Cabela, have seen the value of their combined 25% stake jump to $1.2 billion from $750 million at the start of 2013. With profits like that the lives of school kids mean nothing to the owning class. RD

Labour Cant

Labour Party members invariably assert (and it is a view endorsed by the left-wing) that if they were not in power the workers would be worse off. This theory of the “lesser of two evils” has always been the trump card in the hands of the Labour Party politician, but is it true that the British workers would have been worse off? The Labour Party makes out that it is saving the working class but what it actually attempts to do is to save capitalism. If any voter continues to hold a view that the Labour Party is a vehicle to achieve socialism then the ignorance being demonstrated is more than those who take a lesser-evils view, or those who take the view of a plague on all your houses. They have deceived themselves.


Millions will vote for the Labour Party, cynically encouraged by those on the Left. It is the nature of the faith, yet sadly the faith is not in the socialist intentions of the Labour Party. How many workers after these years of Labour’s “ socialism” have any idea of what real socialism is? But they choose the lesser of two evils, and sometimes the difference between the two evils is so small in their minds of the voters that they will choose because of the face or some irrelevant personal aspect of the party leader. It is this perception of politics being a choice between two evils, according to the rules of the game that we must constantly attack. The only way we can do this is by offering an alternative – so that they don’t need to play the game of voting for the lesser evil and don’t need to be forced into a false and hypocritical “choice”.

The working class needs only one party - a socialist party. The capitalists  require more than one party, because of their need to compete with each other. Different sectors and factions of capitalism seek to advance their own interests by competing both through and within these parties. Each party tries to mislead and cover up their sectional and vested interests with talk about “representing the people.” Their task is to fool the people with their lies and sound-bites. Because no matter what they say, no matter what they promise, no matter what the election manifesto states, they will try to carry out the capitalists’ agenda. Capitalists rarely take public office themselves. Instead, they prefer to rule indirectly, through trusted representatives. One of the most important ways they get leverage over the politicians is through campaign financing and contributions. He who pays the piper calls the tune. However, it would be a mistake to say that the wealthy class control “everything.” They do not control every politician, but nor do they need to. The main part of government they need to control is the leadership where the real power lies and they then can use it to influence the rest of government.

Adopting lesser-of-two-evils tactics spells disaster. Lesser-of-two-evil tactics inevitably lead to getting swallowed up and not to any expanded opportunity to speak for ourselves in the electoral arena. The problem is, there is always going to be a lesser evil among the pro-capitalist parties.

A New World From the Old

The Socialist Party is not proposing the abolition of money alone, nor suggesting a return to barter. In fact, the abolition of money alone, would solve no problems and undoubtedly create many. But what we propose is that the whole system of money and exchange, buying and selling, profit-making and wage-earning be entirely abolished and that instead the community as a whole should organise and administer the productions of goods for use only, and the free distribution of these goods to all members of the community according to each person’s needs.

Since money would not exist and wealth could not and would not be measured in terms of money, no person could say that he or she owned a share of such-and -such value in the people’s means of production. In fact all the world’s means of production such as land, factories, mines, machines, etc, would belong to the whole of the people of the world who would co-operate in using them.

The main features of socialism are really quite simple and its principles can be briefly summed by the following:-
Firstly, the new social system must be world-wide. It must be global with the world regarded as one country and humanity as one people.

Secondly, all the people will co-operate to produce and distribute all the goods and services which are needed by mankind, each person contributing willingly and freely, taking part in the way he or she feels they can do best.

Thirdly, all goods and services will be produced for use only, and having been produced, will be distributed, free, directly to the people so that each persons needs are fully satisfied.

Fourthly, all the land, the factories and their machines, the mines and mills and the roads, railwaysthat connect them, everything which humanity needs to produce the means of life, will belong to the whole people. Everybody will be the owner and so no-body will be the owner.

This new social system could start tomorrow once the majority of people have learnt what it means and what is required, and having taken the necessary action to bring it about. Everyone would carry on with their usual work as normal for the time being, except for all those whose occupations being of an unnecessary nature to the new system, who will be rendered superfluous: for example, bank staff, sales-people and accountants etc. These people would, in time, be slotted into productive occupations for which they considered themselves suitable. Insurance actuaries can put their skills to statistical analysis, for instance. People most fitted for as certain task will do it because he or she wants to and not through bureaucratic compulsion or the coercion of necessity.

There would be need for an immediate increase in the volume of production of many kinds of goods to relieve those people who were suffering from the effects of the old system and to supply the needs of those who were in the process of transferring themselves from obsolete to useful occupations. For example, it would be necessary to produce construction materials to the slum-dwellers who lack decent housing and sanitation. For the first time, the conditions would exist for turning into reality the beautiful plans for housing people in real homes instead of the ghettoes or soul-less cities which the present social system has created . These plans exist today - on paper - and will remain so as long as it is necessary to have a financial allocation to the proposals. Released from the necessity of money being apportioned, architects, builders, designers, artists, engineers, and scientists would get together to build towns, homes and work-places which would be a joy to live and work in, a job at which even today they have dreamed about doing. The agricultural parts of the world freed from the restraints of the present “money-based system” would pour out the abundance of nutritious foodstuffs to feed the hungry peoples of the world which does not happen nowadays when food is wasted, dumped and destroyed because they cannot be sold at a profit.

How long this period would last depend on the size and mess left by the obsolete system of ours. However, it shouldn’t take very long since we have seen how quickly backward countries can be developed by modern industrial methods and how a country can recover from a natural disaster or a man-made ones such as the ravages of war. It should not, therefore, take very long for to turn out enough goods to make the whole of humanity comfortable as far as the fundamental necessities of life are concerned. Once we have rid ourselves of the worst of the old order, production would then be adjusted so that enough is produced to satisfy fully the normal needs of everyone, making due provision by storage and stock-piling of reserves for the possible any natural calamities such as floods or drought.
Having produced all that is necessary, all that is now required is to distribute it to the people so that each person’s needs are fully satisfied. In the case of perishable goods it would merely be a matter of transport from factory or farm direct to the local distributing centres, and in the case of other goods to large regional, county or city warehouses. From there it is but a step to the local distributing stores which would stock the whole range of necessary goods - a kind of show-room or warehouse - and from which goods could be available for home-delivery or for collection. The daily, weekly, and monthly and annual needs of any given number of people in a district are easily calculated. Think of the ease it was to have milk delivered to your door-step, once upon a time, so it should not be very difficult to find out what stocks the local stores would require especially in these days of internet shopping and on-line ordering.

We won’t have borders and frontiers in socialism. Goods will be “distributed” not “exchanged”, neither “exported” nor “imported” but instead the whole world’s goods will be pooled together into one to be drawn upon when required. When we say that production will be planned, it is not the intention to create some huge bureaucratic organisation imposing such a plan as in the one-time command economy of the old USSR. The overriding rule will be “fitness for purpose”, and it will be solely that the individual or the community will be concerned with.

This would not be necessary as the process would be very simple. The average requirements of a person are known: say X kilos of this, Y kilos of that; multiply by the number of people in that locality concerned, and you have on an average the total amount necessary to be “shipped” to that place for local distribution. This is what is currently done but in a difficult and complicated way. The grain importer know almost exactly how much wheat they can distribute to flour mills and import accordingly. Why should things be so different in socialism?

The function of similar planning controls took place in war-time as rationing of supplies was required due to the possibility, or the actual existence of a shortage. These controls in socialism will have no need to concern itself with scarcity. Rather the reverse. Its function will be to organise production so that there is no excessive surplus and that distribution so that the demands of the people are satisfied.

Production will be planned but be planned for plenty. The food control in each region will arrange for the satisfaction of the needs of that region and will plan for distribution of its own products in excess of its needs to other regions. There will no doubt be need of a central world organisation - probably a statistical body - to control the whole output of the world, nevertheless we can foresee few difficulties in that direction since we already explained how distribution would proceed from place of production to distribution depot, and from there to local depots.

Goods not required frequently or regularly would be obtained at large warehouse outlets stores These will be placed at points in the various localities according to the needs and convenience of the local population. At these stores people will do their “shopping” without money, much as they do today with ; but of course with this difference. Whereas they would be able to obtain all their requirements without money, most people nowadays are unable to do so because their purchases are limited by the amount of money they get as wages. It is not very different technically from nowadays. Its shows quite clearly we are not planning a Utopia. We are taking the people of today and the world of today and simply changing the methods of working, the organisation - for use instead of for money-making.

The Wasteful Society

Capitalism is a destructive society. Just how destructive can be gauged by this report. 'The Pentagon has asked Congress for nearly $80 billion to cover the cost of the war in Afghanistan in 2014. The request for £79.4 billion in fiscal year 2014 is slightly lower than the war funding of $87.2 billion for the current fiscal year, Pentagon press secretary George Little told reporters.' (The Australian, 21 May) The human effort and resources measured in capitalism by  billions of dollars is wasted in wars. Think what that human effort could achieve inside socialism. RD

Free speech for who?

Marx observed that the ideas of an age are the ideas of its ruling class. In to-day’s contemporary society, we are saturated by vast quantities of words and images conveyed by the mass media. Workers must always remember that the mainstream media (whatever its hue) is an instrument motivated by ideas and interests that are contrary to their interests. Everything that is published or broadcasted is influenced by one idea: that of serving the dominant class and of combating the working class. The ugly truth is this: that the media is owned by the capitalist class to support its pitiless work but the customers and subscribers are those they attack, members of the working class. Most media are obliged to address a working class audience, because that is the largest. Unless they reach this audience they will fail as businesses. To gain profits a newspaper or TV channel must get readers by the million. The media, by their nature, spread certain ideas and . and being such an important asset for making profits, must of necessity defend modern capitalism. This means, in short, that the press must spread those ideas which are opposed to the labour movement. We see here the explanation why capitalist news denounce labour activists and conversely, why they praise those who plead for an industrial truce and who advocate that the interests of capital and labour are identical. The capitalist media must defend the propertied interests for the simple reason that the capitalist mass media is, itself, one of the greatest of the modern propertied interests.

However, they have to present the capitalists’ view of the world in a form that will be palatable to people whose entire life is spent in conditions of exploitation and oppression that are the direct result of capitalism. This is quite a trick, but the media have had more than a century of practice.

Millions buy newspapers, millions watch cable and satellite TV contributing to the power of the rich to determine public opinion. It rarely enters the heads of many workers that what is presented as news and current affairs is artfully cooked up to steer the workers views so they reflect and replicate the media’s own politics. When you read your morning paper or watch the nightly news are you being offered facts or propaganda? Who furnishes the information for your thoughts about life? Regardless of indignant denials the press and TV were complicit and are accomplices with the government in the manufacture of misinformation.

Every day workers can see the fruits of this manipulation that the simplest of facts are presented in a way that favours the ruling class and damns the working class. Has a strike broken out? The workers are always wrong, they are being unreasonable in their demands. Is there a protest? The demonstrators are always wrong, they are always extremists. The government passes a law? It’s always for the best of intentions even if it’s not. And if there’s an electoral, political or administrative struggle? The best candidates are always those of the ruling parties. Facts are falsified in order to mislead, delude or maintain in ignorance the public. The gullibility of workers to the mass media appears limitless. We fall for the same lies and deceptions over and over again.

The media can adopt a wide range of positions, while remaining entirely within the framework of capitalism. Sometimes newspapers or TV channels are directly linked to particular groups of capitalists, and so to the political party they are held to favour, and carry material directly promoting their view of the situation. Explaining why capitalist media has different positions in a bourgeois democracy isn’t difficult – the capitalist class is not united. The media reflect these differences and promote the interests of one group or another. Socialists would expect to find a diversity of views among the capitalist media, not uniformity. But despite being the property of particular capitalists , the content of the media addresses issues that are matters of concern for capitalism in general. The news agenda and op-eds are framed in terms of the needs of society as a whole. It is necessary to remember that a free press is only “free” to a propertied class which has the economic wealth to subsidise and maintain their voice.
The labour movement has stumbled and fallen and risen again; been seized by courts, slandered and libeled by the media to be disowned by public opinion, deceived by politicians, threatened with brimstone and fire by priests, repudiated by renegades, preyed upon by opportunists, infested by spies, deserted by cowards, betrayed by traitors, bled by leeches, and sold out by officials, but, notwithstanding all this, it is today the most vital defence the worker has ever known and its mission is the emancipation of the workers of the world from the thraldom of wages. The most vital thing about the World Socialist Movement is its educational propaganda - its power to shed light and to develop the workers’ capacity for thinking, to teach them their economic class interests, to imbue them with a revolutionary spirit. Workers need a a media as formidable as our class enemy’s to act as a fearless and uncompromising advocate. The State currently control the TV and radio through legislation but it is for every member of the working class to buy and read the printed journals and visit the websites of the socialist movement. The expense and exertion of supporting the socialist media is but a trifle.

Food Facts to Chew Upon

About one-third of all food produced globally, worth around 1 trillion U.S. dollars, gets lost or wasted in food production and consumption systems.


The average German food wastage amounts to 15 kg food per year while British wastage 9 times higher than the Germany. 30 per cent of the UK’s vegetable crop wasted occurs on the corporate end because the food does not meet aesthetic standards, e.g. size and color. Japan wasted about 20 million tons of food annually which is equivalent to 30 percent of the country’s production. Americans contribution to food waste was at about 28.25 million tons per annum.
In developing countries, most food loss or wasted occurs during production stage due to poor infrastructure, low levels of technology, and low investment in food production systems. At the consumption stage, the food wastage amount is almost zero. Bangladesh contributes insignificant share to the global home and it mostly occurs during food production stage due to poor technology and infrastructure. It is pointed that during pre and post- harvesting processes almost 12 percent rice and 15 percent wheat are wasted. It is further reported that 3 percent of rice is wasted due to unconventional seed conservation practices. The wasted rate of perishable items like vegetables and fruits are alarmingly high is nearly 40 percent.

Marx your X

All the momentous strikes have proved that the government is under the control of the business class and that its army of official are subservient to their capitalist masters. The police, the courts and all the powers lodged in class government are all freely at the service of the employers, especially in suppressing discontent among their employees and keeping them safely in subjugation. On the political battlefield there is only worker versus capitalist. The workers have never yet developed, or made use, of their political power. They have played the game of their masters for the benefit of their masters. It is not to reform the evils of the day but to abolish the social system that produces them that the Socialist Party is organised. It is the party not of reform but of revolution, knowing that the capitalist system has had its day and that a new society, based upon a new system of production, must replace the one we now have.


Although as a political party committed to using elections to capture political power the Socialist Party surprisingly does not regard vote-getting as of supreme importance. We do not present a programme of attractive promises as a lure for votes. We seek only an actual vote for socialism and our manifestoes do not flatter the electorate but simply endeavours to convince them of the case for socialism. We make it clear that the Socialist Party wants the votes only of those who want socialism and disparages vote-seeking for the sake of votes and we hold in contempt those political opportunists seeking election for the sake of office or personal advancement. The Socialist Party stands squarely upon its principles. The Socialist party buys no votes with false pledges.
The ballot expresses the people’s will. The ballot means that the worker is no longer dumb, that at last has a voice, that it may be heard and if used in unison must be heeded. The appeal of the Socialist Party is to the exploited class, the workers in all trades and professions, from the most menial to the highest skill, to rally together and put an end to the last of the barbarous class struggles by conquering the capitalist government, taking possession of the means of production and making them the common property of all, abolishing wage-slavery and establishing the co-operative commonwealth. As individauls we are helpless, but united we represent an irresistible power.

The first step in this direction is to stop supporting the capitalist parties. The Conservatives and the Labour Party are alike, differing only in being committed to different sets of capitalist interests. They have the same principles, are equally corrupt and are one in their subservience to capital and their hostility to the working class. There is no longer even the pretense of difference between them. They are substantially the same in what they stand for. They are opposed to each other on no question of principle but purely in a contest for spoils of office. They are literally bought, paid for and owned, body and soul. What difference can it make to the millions of workers whether the Tories or the Labourites prevail. How can any intelligent, self-respecting worker give his or her support to either of these corrupt capitalist parties? The worker who votes for the Tories or Labour does worse than throw away a vote. He or she is a deserter of their class and will reap what they have sown. They carry the badge of ignorance, servility and shame. Those workers who vote into power our class enemies are morally responsible for the crimes these parties inflict upon their fellow-workers and sooner or later they too will have to pay for the consequences of the ignorance of their votes.

Justice to workers means the end of capital. The old parties intend nothing of the kind. Workers must unite and vote together as a class in support of the Socialist Party, the party that represents them as a class, and when they do this the State will pass into their hands and capitalism will be no more; private/state ownership will give way to social ownership, and production for profit to production for use; the wages-system will disappear, and with it the ignorance and poverty. misery and crime that wage-slavery breeds. The Socialist Party is the tangible expression of the socialist movement, and is based upon the class struggle in whic all workers of all countries, regardless of race, nationality or sex, are called upon to unite against the capitalist class, their common exploiter and oppressor. It knows of no foreign-born among the oppressed and down-trodden. We are not asking you to give your votes to our party but only that you read its platform, study its program, and satisfy yourselves as to what its principles are, what it stands for, and what it expects to accomplish. Education and knowledge are the powers that confer the only means of achieving a decided and permanent victory for the people. We desire the support of those who recognise the Socialist Party as their party and come to it of their own free will. It is first and last the party of the workers, proclaiming their interests, their aspirations.

The Socialist Party will not unite with any other party that does not stand for the democratic overthrow of capitalism and if it were ever to compromise and make such a concession, it will have ceased to be a socialist party. We are not here to play the filthy game of capitalist politics. the Socialist Party condemns the capitalist system. In the name of freedom it condemns wage-slavery. In the name of modern technology it condemns scarcity and poverty. In the name of peace it condemns war. In the name of humanity it condemns the murder of little children. In the name of enlightenment it condemns ignorance and superstition. The battles of the workers, wherever and however fought, are always and everywhere the battles of the Socialist Party. The education, organisation and co-operation of the workers is the conscious aim and the self-imposed task of the Socialist Party. There is no party leader or bureaucracy within the Socialist Party boss and there never can be unless the party deserts its principles and ceases to be a socialist party. Each member has not only an equal voice but is urged to take an active part in all the party’s administration. Each local branch is an educational centre. The party relies wholly upon the power of education, knowledge, and mutual understanding.

The working class will eventually see through the politics of the corporations and their representatives dripping with corruption. They will protest, ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! THERE MUST BE A CHANGE!

Capitalism Versus Socialism

We are often told by supporters of capitalism that it is the most efficient way to run society, but how does that square with the following statistics? 'Eurostat, the European Union's statistics office, said today that unemployment levels across the 17 countries which use the currency hit a record high in April - 19.38 million. If levels continue to rise at the same pace, unemployment in the currency bloc, which has a combined population of 330 million, will break 20 million by the end of the year.' (Daily Express, 1 June) Inside a socialist society those 20 million people could be producing wealth, so which is the most productive - capitalism or socialism? RD

A Declaration of Class War

Socialists are always accused of trying to set class against class. We plead guilty but we actually only point out what already exists. We are engaged today in a class war; and why? For the simple reason that in the the capitalist system in which we live, society has been is mainly divided into two economic classes—a small class of capitalists who own the means of producing wealth and a great mass of workers who own nothing and are compelled to seek employment in the services of the owners. Between these two classes there is an irrepressible economic conflict. The capitalist is the economic master and the political ruler in capitalist society. But we also want to get rid of the class struggle. We’re going to do it by getting rid of the profit system which exists only because there is a class of squeezers and a class of the squeezed.


All government is class government; and that the industrialist and aristocratic thieves hold the reins of political power. The employers know that class exist and they themselves are sufficiently class-conscious to engage in the class- struggle. It is the class struggle of the workers that is to be decried. No political party can serve two masters. No political party can serve the class which owns the wealth and also the one which produces the wealth but does not own it. No political party can serve both the robbers and the robbed at the same time. The Socialist Party is thus solely the political party of the working class. No part of its mission is to reach re-conciliation the capitalist class. We are organised to fight that class.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is in fundamental opposition to all other parties. It proclaims that the building of socialism, the re-organisation of the economic life of the whole world, is impossible, unless the working class overthrows the capitalist class and becomes the ruling class. The Socialist Party therefore is the enemy of capitalists and capitalist parties. The political power of the capitalist class is exercised through the parliamentary institutions, through its class control of the armed forces, the police force, the law courts, the media and education centres. Having conquered the capitalists and with political power in the hands of the workers, the way to socialism is clear to proceed to socialise the economic life, and, for the first time in history give the working class, i.e., the great majority of the population, control over their daily lives and power to build the future as they themselves deem fit.

Many workers imagine that they must have a leader to look to as a guide to follow. Workers have been brought up with that belief and have been taught that they are dependent upon their betters and that without a leader decisions cannot be made and directions cannot be followed, so, therefore, they instinctively look for a leader. We have depended too much on leaders and not enough on ourselves. The Socialist Party doesn’t want you to follow it but rather acquire self-reliance. As long as you can be led by an individual you will be betrayed by an individual. That does not mean that all leaders are dishonest or corrupt but many of them are deluded themselves, a case of the blind leading the blind. The most dangerous leader is not the corrupt leader, but the honest, ignorant leader. That type of leader is just as dangerous as the one who deliberately sells you out. There are leaders whose good intentions are the paving stones to hell. Daniel DeLeon’s classic phrase, to describe them was “the labor lieutenants of the capitalist class.”

 Far from even fomenting class war too many leaders have been almost too anxious to secure permanent peace between the wage-earners and their employers and forget that under existing conditions the capitalists always have the whip hand. They preach that there is no basic conflict of interests between the bosses and the workers, between the capitalist system and the interests of the working class. Reformers claim that a “promised land” can be brought about only if the capitalists and the working class are “reasonable”, if only we all “work together in the national interests”. With such slogans they paper over the class nature of the system. They cover up the inevitability of class conflict. They are for class collaboration, not class struggle.

The class war is our war and our only war. We have no interest in championing any wars for ruling class conquest and plunder. In all these wars the workers are slaughtered while their masters get fat on the spoils of conquest. The time has come for the workers to cease fighting the battles of their bosses and to fight their own; to cease being slaughtered like cattle for the profit of the ruling class and to line up in the class struggle regardless of race or nationality for the overthrow of class rule and for the emancipation of their class and humanity.

“Your King and Country Need You,
Ye hardy sons of toil.
But will your King and Country need you
When they’re sharing out the spoil?”

Beware of rebels who laugh, dance and sing.

"The Song of the Low Classes'

We plough and sow—we're so very, very low
That we delve in the dirty clay,
Till we bless the plain—with the golden grain,
And the vale with the fragrant hay.
Our place we know—we're so very low.
'Tis down at the landlord's feet:
We're not too low—the bread to grow,
But too low the bread to eat.
Down, down we go—we're so very, very low,
To the hell of the deep sunk mines,
But we gather the proudest gems that glow
Where the crown of a despot shines.
And whenever he lacks,—upon our backs
Fresh loads he deigns to lay:
We're far too low to vote the tax,
But not too low to pay.
We're low—we're low—mere rabble, we know,
But at our plastic power
The mould at the lordlings" feet will grow
Into palace and church and tower—-
Then prostrate fall—in the rich man's hall,
And cringe at the rich man's door:
We're not too low to build the wall,
But too low to tread the floor.
We're low—we're low—we're very, very low,
Yet from our fingers glide
The silken flow—and the robes that glow
Round the limbs of the sons of pride.
And what we get—and what we give—
We know, and we know our share:
We're not too low the cloth to weave,
But too low the cloth to wear.
We're low—we're low—we're very, very low,
And yet when the trumpets ring,
The thrust of a poor man's arm will go
Through the heart of the proudest king.
We're low—we're low—our place we know
We're only the rank and file,
We're not too low to kill the foe,
But too low to touch the spoil,
ERNEST JONES
Chartist, 1819-1869.

Sentenced in 1848 to two years imprisonment.
“An amalgamation of classes is impossible...these two portions of the community must be separated distinctly, dividedly and openly, from each other, CLASS AGAINST CLASS. All other mode of procedure is mere moonshine.” - Notes to the People, 1850

Other poetry of his here