God Costs Big Bucks

The Jewish religion considers one day a year to be especially holy. On that day, God decides what is in store for the coming year. 'At most synagogues, to attend services on that holiday, which this year ends Saturday night, one must have paid annual dues or have bought special tickets. The fees also cover tickets for Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, which was last week. While nearly all congregations offer discounts or free tickets based on need, the regular ticket price can prompt sticker shock. To take an extreme example, Temple Emanu-El, on East 65th Street in Manhattan, charges $2,970 for the best seats, which includes annual membership.' (New York Times, 13 September) Yes we have heard that God is a jealous god, but now it seems he is an avaricious one too!

Rich V Poor

Philanthropists ask themselves  “What can be done for the poor?" and recommend food banks and homeless hostels.  Some wealthy celebrity chefs devote time and investigation to diet, to show if a person can live on a few pounds a day to sustain themselves. Others in answering the question, “What can we do for the poor?” reply by saying we will pass reforms to ameliorate their suffering with free healthcare and education so they can have “equality of opportunity.”

This whole business of doing something for the poor is degrading. The real question is, “What can poor do for themselves?” They can do all things required, if they are independent, self-respecting, self-reliant. The poor can organise. they can combine, unify and cooperate. The poor  are in the majority. They have the most votes and in many lands where the ballot is all-powerful, peaceful revolutions can be achieved.

What can the poor do for themselves? They can tell each capitalists that they do not want nor need  not accept their patriarchal guardianship; that they are capable of self-management.  Wage servitude in the capitalist system is the last phase of labour’s slavery. This system, like those that preceded it, must go the way of all things. Society changes ceaselessly.

 The motive of capitalist production is profit and the only issue of “recovery” for the employers is recovery of profits. Such “recovery” will not alter at all the condition of the working class as wage slaves, or change the conditions of the exploited in relation to the exploiters. In fact, the recovery of the profits of the wealthy  can only take place on the basis of the further intensification of exploitation, the further impoverishment of the people, with a higher level of  the unemployed, and the increased immiseration of the working class through so called austerity. The motive of capitalist production is the securing of maximum profits. Production of goods is in fact an incidental aim of capitalism, as is employment. The capitalist organises production for the purposes of increasing profits. When conditions are such that profits can be increased by increasing production, the owners of capital do so, and when conditions are such that profits can only be increased by cutting back production to keep up the price, then that is what the business class does. Thus if it serves to increase profits to increase the numbers of workers in production, then this is done; but if profits can only be increased by intensifying exploitation, getting more or the same amount of work out of fewer workers, then this is done instead. These fundamental features of the capitalist system cannot be eliminated without removing the capitalist system itself.  Capitalists pretends that this crisis is not the result of the capitalist system but merely a result of erroneous policies, financial mistakes of this or that individual, corporation or government.

The richest 20 percent on Earth consume about 76 percent of all goods and services produced every year on Earth, with the bottom 20 percent consuming about 1.5 percent of all goods and services, while a small free of about 26 million humans own and control about 40 percent of Earth’s wealth, living in luxury with almost unlimited options for travel and entertainment, living cheek by jowl among billions of humans mired in poverty, owning almost nothing, doing almost the equivalent of slave labor day in and day out all their lives, yet living in constant fear of being fired from their jobs, who are condemned to poverty by their wages, in most cases within miles of where they were accidentally born, where they grew up with little or no opportunity to learn relevant knowledge about how the world works, in many cases not even having an opportunity to learn how to read or write.

All the capitalist parties, all the parties dedicated to the continuation of the capitalist system of wage slavery, are against the interests of the working class. The reason for the weakness of the trade union leaders traitors is not simply the cowardice and spinelessness of various individuals. but that the poor can never rely on the actual leaders because their entire position depends on the maintenance of the capitalist system. The Socialist Party say the poor can educate themselves. The can read and study until they can see as clearly as others the coming events, and prepare for their arrival. We hold  that the poor must take into their own hands all available means of emancipating themselves and their children from wage slavery. No movement can afford to neglect its educational activities, and that the mischievious results of the false ideas spread by the enemies of the poor can only be combated by the spread of genuine education. It cannot be repeated too often that everything depends upon the poor themselves they make themselves fit by education, organisation, co-operation and self-imposed discipline, to take control of the productive forces and manage industry in the interest of the people and for the benefit of society.

 But as already stated, most of all they can vote for a change so they are no longer poor. The poor can and must fight the attacks on their living standards  but they cannot restrict themselves to addressing only the symptoms. They must prepare for removing the source of the disease, the capitalist system of wage slavery, which is the source of all the problems facing the poor. The socialist revolution is not only a possibility, it is a necessity. 

Common Ownership

Under capitalism the worker is a slave who sells himself for a wage with which to buy his rations, which is the only difference between this system and negro slavery where the master bought the rations and fed the slave himself. The American Civil War was not a war for the emancipation of the blacks but a war for the preservation of the industrial hegemony of the North, a choice between forced labour in the South and wage slavery in the North.

In Athens and Rome there was slavery. The slaves either cultivated the lands of their Greek or Roman master or laboured for his profit in the city workshops. Individuals owned them, disposed of them, forced them to labor, gave them away as presents, sold them or left them to their heirs. And in the same way, when after the collapse of the ancient society and the Roman regime founded on conquest, slavery was amended to serfdom, the serfs, too, bound to the land, were objects of certain private property rights. Under the feudal kings there were royal slaves attached to the royal lands, and church slaves attached to the church lands, but the immense majority of the serfs belonged to lords who were in the end practically great landed proprietors with a personal property right in their possessions. It was the lord who disposed of the labour of the serfs. Agricultural serfs, thinly scattered over the great rural domains, and industrial serfs, bakers, smiths, goldsmiths, spinners and weavers, gathered together in the outbuildings of the castles and all were under the domination of an individual noble; they were included in his property and sold by him with the estate. They were, like the land itself, like the fields, the vine-yards, the cattle, one of the objects upon which the right of private property was exercised.

The Roman slave-owner had his “labour troubles”. The slave uprising led by Spartacus proves that.  The medieval baron, lord over many serfs, also had his “labor troubles”. Wat Tyler’s Rebellion, and the Peasant Wars in Germany, testify how bloody these “labor troubles” became. The Southern U.S. plantation owners, had “labor troubles” also. The Fugitive Slave Act bears proof of this. Today a pick up of any capitalist newspaper will show the existence of modern capitalist and his “labor troubles”. But unlike then when  the slave would revolt to flee from employment and suffered crucifixion, hanging, quartering, mutilating and flogging we have workers who are clubbed and imprisoned for having the audacity to demand work, for a chance to slave.  Before the master sought the slave, now the slave seeks the master.  They stand in line, they beg for work and they scab on their fellow worker by pledging to work more for less. We are told that we are free and the bosses are free. He is free to offer us whatever terms he wishes –and we are free to starve unless we accept his terms. The free boss can lay off the free worker to freely starve in the midst of a land of full warehouses which the worker filled. Who needs the cat-o’-nine-tails to make the workers serve their master. We are fed on adulterated foods, clad in shoddy clothes, poorly housed in slums or sub-urban boxes and becoming ever more vulnerable than ever to chronic illness and disease. And all the time capitalism greedily demands more and more profits, installs more and more technology into the factories which produce goods and profits at a faster and faster rate. More and more workers are thrown on the streets or offered short-time contracts.

There is only one remedy for this slavery of the working class and that remedy is the socialist system of society in which the land and all houses, railways, factories and everything necessary for work shall be owned and operated as common property.  Socialists cannot offer a cure for unemployment under the capitalist system which is endemic and a fundamental component to it. Only by overthrowing the system of capitalism will unemployment be done away with. The society of socialism alone can eliminate the terror of unemployment. Capitalism will be replaced by employment for those who wish and plenty for all. Every capitalistic element will disappear; no man or woman will be able to make use of another person to create dividends for him or herself, or profit, or an income, or rent.  No person will be handed over to the exploitation of another or  the despotism of the nation. To help bring this about all workers should join the Socialist Party and help fight for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of socialism. The master and slave, the lord and serf of past ages, are gone, and the capitalist and wage workers of our day must follow them. The time is not too far off when no one will be able to speak about the preservation of private property without covering themselves with ridicule. Private property will become void and meaningless. When everybody shares in common ownership, no-body is the owner.

For Sale

The late Sir James Cayzer’s Scottish estate is for sale at the price of £29 million, the most valuable ever to come on to the open market.  Within its 5,400 acres, there is a range of property, extensive farmland and woodland, six privately owned lochs and exceptional field sports facilities. The properties include a Scots Baronial castle, Kinpurnie and Thriepley House, set in the midst of an orangery and surrounded by walled Italianate gardens. The estate also has eight luxury holiday homes and a further 18 estate cottages. The location is only a quarter of an hour away from Dundee airport.

The late Sir James inherited a shipping fortune made in India by his great grandfather. He was a friend of the Queen Mother with a fleet of Rolls Royces which he never drove. He had a reputation as a bon viveur and an incredibly generous host, holding annual New Year’s Day lunches at Gleneagles Hotel and decamping to St Petersburg for a season, or Claridges in London, where he maintained a suite.

Reading Notes

Describing the district of Lambeth Marsh, London, in the late nineteenth century, author, Simon Winchester writes in, "The Professor and the Madman", "So it was instead a place of warehouses, tenant shacks, and miserable rows of ill-built houses. There were blacking factories (shoe polish makers, like the one in which young Charles Dickens worked) and soap boilers, small firms of dyers and lime burners, and tanning yards where the leather workers used a substance for darkening skins that was known as "pure" and that was gathered from the streets each night by the filthiest of the local inhabitants -- "pure" being a Victorian term for dog turds... Lambeth was widely regarded as one of the noisiest and sulphurous parts of a capital that had already a grim reputation for din and dirt...A hundred years ago it was positively vile. It was still then low, marshy, and undrained, a swampy gyre of pathways where a sad little stream called the Neckinger seeped into the Thames. *The land was jointly* *owned by the archbishop of Canterbury and the duke of* *Cornwall*...(Surprise, surprise!) John Ayers

Food for thought

A corruption trial in China has revealed a world of privilege for "communist party" officials. Gifts like a $130,000 trip to Africa and a trip to the World Cup were showered on his son, and apparently limitless money given to the wife when requested, so much that it was stuffed into safety deposit boxes. This and other tales of corruption and wealth prove that China is about as far from communism as one can get. John Ayers.

Class Consciousness

 No matter how strong our convictions are about socialism may be, these alone will not win the day. We need to make an argument. And a successful argument must appeal to everyone in general. It must rely on rational claims of a kind they will recognise. We try to win them over through persuasion rather than force or bribery. If people cannot persuade or be persuaded then there can be no shared beliefs or co-ordinated collective action.

 It requires us to understand where other people are coming from.  People have different experiences and possess different information; they have different values and do not always share our criteria of judgment. To persuade them we have to make connections with our audience – with what they might think, feel and be familiar with. This is not about tricking people or fooling them. It is about truly persuading them to share our views on a particular issue – and that means developing a relationship. True persuasion is democratic. In giving people reasons to act with us we recognise that they aren't inferiors who can be compelled but thinking, feeling and speaking beings.

Class consciousness is not only something that comes from top to bottom nor is it something that springs forth spontaneously from the grass root. It is simply a reflection of social realities while living in a capitalist society where the exploited and the exploiters are locked in a confrontation. Class consciousness is not some complicated theory that only some three to five exceptional geniuses can comprehend, it is a type of consciousness that grows inside the mind of every person that lives under capitalism.  The great majority at this present time are still under the complete psychological and ideological control of capitalism. The majority of workers strongly believed that their interests can be adequately served within the framework of the capitalist system. They remained discontented but directionless, rebellious but not revolutionary. Most workers do not harbor revolutionary aspirations; they do not make demand a change in the system.

The working class have the legal right to use their majority of ballots in any way they choose. The workers are organised in large industrial plants and could easily become conscious of their power. The more potential political power the oppressed classes possess, the more urgent it is for the ruling class to insure that that potential power is not transformed into actual power. Therefore, it is even more essential for the capitalist class than it was for the ancient slaveowners or medieval nobility to convince the people that the state rules in behalf of all citizens. The slaveowners and nobles persuaded the slaves and serfs that class rule was right; the  bourgeoisie tries to tell the workers there are no classes.

The feudal lords had to surrender their dynastic privileges to the ascending bourgeoisie, better known today as the capitalist class. The owners of all resources and means of wealth form a class of their own; the owners of labour power as their only possession in the market, another. Political, judicial, educational and other institutions are only the mirror of the prevailing system of ownership in the resources and means of production. One class owns and controls the necessaries, the economic resources of the world. That class, for its own protection and perpetuation in power, subjects all other institutions to their prevailing class interests. As more and more corporation executives and millionaires become government officials, their scholarly defenders emphasise ever more insistently the non-capitalist character of the state. Government purports to give favours to no class or showers favours on all.

A vote for the small, then – which has few candidates? Yes. A vote of confidence in it and of confidence in the revolutionary tomorrow. A vote in the form of solidarity with it. A vote in the form of adherence to its principles. The only goal worth striving for is the emancipation of the working class, and  the abolition of class rule

A Strange Kind of Communism

Wang Jianlin is a property magnate who can count the world's largest cinema chain amongst his business interests, in addition to dozens of shopping centres and five-star hotels. ' Now Wang Jianlin can add another accolade befitting his billionaire status -he has been named China's richest man by Forbes. The 58-year-old Sichuan native, whose Dalian Wanda Group conglomerate this summer acquired a 92 per cent stake in the luxury British yacht manufacturer Sunseeker, whose boats have appeared in a number of James Bond films, is worth £8.9bn, the influential publication said.' (Independent, 10 September) How can the Chinese government claim to be a communist country when they have a member of the capitalist class "worth" £8.9 billion? RD

What Independence?

The Left Nationalist Fantasy

“Words and illusions vanish; facts remain.”

The capitalists are good mystifiers: they want to have us believe that their interests as an oppressing class are the interests of all classes. Since the time of Marx, class conscious workers have combated the capitalists’ chauvinist appeals with appeals for the international solidarity of the working class. They have fought the attempts of the bourgeoisie to enlist the workers in their nationalist strivings with appeals for the joint class struggle of the workers of all countries against world capitalism. In The Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels insisted that ‘the working men have no country’. They argued that the nation state was alien to the interests of the proletariat and that in order to advance their interests workers must ‘settle matters’ with the bourgeoisie of each state, that workers must challenge the power of their ‘own’ capitalist class directly.  It implied uncompromising opposition to the local state and its dealings with the rulers of other capitalisms – other members of the ‘band of warring brothers’ that constituted the capitalists at a world level. It also implied workers should organise in mutual solidarity across national borders. This was not a mere abstraction. Marx maintained that workers must free themselves of patriotism and national superiority in their own interests, for without discarding these aspects of bourgeois ideology they would never themselves be free. Marx and Engels maintained this approach throughout their political activities.  It was also the position taken by Luxemburg.

Those of us in the Socialist Party of Great Britain are told that our critique of nationalism is resented by many supposed revolutionaries because they think that our criticism casts aspersions upon their sincerity as revolutionaries. Our duty as socialists does not permit us to spare the feelings of any particular group which directly or indirectly acts contrary to the interests of the working class. At the end of  socialist meetings it was customary  to sing “The Internationale”. It was not Flower of Scotland, Scotland the Brave or Scots Wha Hae. Have those “socialists” forgotten the workers of the world anthem? The patriotic fever of the Scottish referendum is so prevailing that the convener of the Scottish “Socialist" Party shares the table with a capitalist hedge fund manager to determine independence referendum strategy.  Cooperation of the classes implies an abandonment of the class struggle.

The Socialist Party are told that we should accept that nations “exist” (even though we have seen that a common race, implying the same origin and purity of blood is but a fiction) Diseases exist as well. Is it that reason not to try and eliminate them? The real fight is the struggle of the dispossessed against the possessors and it is the only fight that matters. The national prejudices deliberately fostered by the governing class has to be fought by English and Scottish workers united against their common foe. For us, the workers, our weapon is solidarity, it is the awareness that we all form, whatever the language we speak or the colour of our skin, or the land of our birth, one single class exploited by a minority of capitalist parasites who are very much in agreement, despite their national rivalries, to crush us.

Independence and “socialism” is the Scottish nationalists favorite bait for workers. At this moment in time Trotskyists are engaged in a patriotic effort to persuade the working class that Scottish independence would mark a step forward towards its own liberation, a step towards socialism. Nothing could be further from the truth. With the conditions that prevail today in this country, the independence of Scotland  would not mean a step forward towards socialism. In all likelihoods it would be a step backwards.  The people who parade the banner of “independence and socialism” around, to catch the attention of  workers, are perpetuating a number of falsehoods.  The “Left” nationalists would have us believe  the task is to transform bourgeois independence into a socialist independence. In reality, they find themselves in the camp of those promoting division of the working class.

The Independence referendum is not about independence. lf the nationalists wins, Scotland will not be independent. The SNP is a capitalist party. It works on behalf of the capitalists. That means the union of Capital, Edinburgh to Brussels to London to Wall St. The nationalist is merely trying to keep more of it “within the family”.

Are we to believe that home-grown national businesses are somehow less exploitative than foreign companies and less subject to the impact of the general capitalist crisis? Capitalist enterprises, inevitably move towards becoming monopolies, regardless of the nationality of their owners. Capitalism created nations, but, in its development, created at the same time the conditions for their disappearance by multiplying all kinds of relationships between nations, within one country or on a world-wide scale. But at the same time as capitalism  creates the objective basis for the fusion of nations, it tries desperately to erect artificial barriers between them, so as to maintain itself as a system of control. Thus, by setting nations one against the other, by inflaming national animosity, the bourgeoisie aims at consolidating national barriers in order to protect its part of the spoils of capitalist exploitation, to attack the class consciousness of workers and to sow strife in their camp. Independence means the creation of national barriers by restrictions so as to consolidate the capitalists class privileges.

 Whatever twists and turns lie down the road in the fight for socialism in Scotland, one thing is certain: the success of that struggle depends on achieving the greatest possible unity of the working class, it is utterly ridiculous to argue that the working class ought to divide itself into two different countries in order to accomplish this unity. It is completely absurd to justify this with the false argument, disproven many times, that the battle for socialism would be easier if it were led by a more nationally “pure” and homogeneous working class. Working class unity is a must right now if effective resistance is to be mounted to the crisis measures imposed by the capitalists. Unity is necessary to stand up against all the attacks on our democratic rights. The working class faces a powerful and aggressive enemy which is solidly united despite certain contradictions within its ranks. The people’s army  are not going to win the class war by dividing themselves according to borders. Those who dress up as “socialists” in order to push nationalism on the working class are the objective allies of the capitalists. Supporting Scottish independence in the name of socialism is a hoax. It is up to the working class to show we will not be duped by political nonsense and deceitful rhetoric. Instead fight for your own cause, for your interests – for socialism.

Karl Marx wrote:
“What then does the German philistine want? He wants to be a bourgeois, an exploiter, inside the country, but he wants also not to be exploited outside the country. He puffs himself up into being the “nation” in relation to foreign countries and says: I do not submit to the laws of competition; that is contrary to my national dignity; as the nation I am a being superior to huckstering.
The nationality of the worker is neither French, nor English, nor German, it is labour, free slavery, self-huckstering. His government is neither French, nor English, nor German, it is capital. His native air is neither French, nor German, nor English, it is factory air. The land belonging to him is neither French, nor English, nor German, it lies a few feet below the ground. Within the country, money is the fatherland of the industrialist. Thus, the German philistine wants the laws of competition, of exchange value, of huckstering, to lose their power. at the frontier barriers of his country! He is willing to recognise the power of bourgeois society only in so far as it is in accord with his interests, the interests of his class! He does not want to fall victim to a power to which he wants to sacrifice others, and to which he sacrifices himself inside his own country! Outside the country he wants to show himself and be treated as a different being from what he is within the country and how he himself behaves within the country! He wants to leave the cause in existence and to abolish one of its effects! We shall prove to him that selling oneself out inside the country has as its necessary consequence selling out outside, that competition, which gives him his power inside the country, cannot prevent him from becoming powerless outside the country; that the state, which he subordinates to bourgeois society inside the country, cannot protect him from the action of bourgeois society outside the country.
However much the individual bourgeois fights against the others, as a class the bourgeois have a common interest, and this community of interest, which is directed against the proletariat inside the country, is directed against the bourgeois of other nations outside the country. This the bourgeois calls his nationality.” -  Draft of an Article on Friedrich List’s book

House Hunting?

Many young workers may be seeking a new house to settle down in, but we can safely imagine the following is way out of their expectations. A London mansion hidden away like a countryside cottage has been put up for sale for a record-breaking £105 million - 640 times the average house price in the UK. Park House has been described as the finest home to come onto the market in the capital in the past 25 years. 'Despite being in South Kensington in the city's centre it sits in more than half an acre of land and is out of sight from  any roads or cars. The home, described as being secluded like a private estate, has six bedrooms, five bathrooms and seven reception rooms, including an incredible 48-foot drawing room.' (Daily Mail, 9th September) Five bathrooms? The owning class of course do a lot more boozing than the workers hence the need for the additional toilet facilities. RD

Unity and the SPGB

Callie, the Socialist Party member

A union of people is greater than the sum of its members. That’s why trade unions succeed in securing decent wages and benefits for workers. A great orator alone doesn’t move mountains. But a crowd of hundreds of thousands united in purpose can make a difference. Businesses use the strength of unity as well. They join together in special interest groups that then have the leverage necessary to get them what they want.

Activists want to create a new left party because those that exist appear inadequate. The Left Unity project has raised many issues that the Socialist Party of Great Britain have faced and answered previously. Our critics accuse us of being out in the political desert and it is argued that if we can get workers’ unity, the strength gained will attract more and more towards our movement. But the Socialist Party is not prepared to join with parties whose aims and methods are contrary to the interests of the working class and a hindrance to the achievement of socialism. The Labour and Trotskyist Parties are parties to which that condemnation applies. It is our experience that any other policy is fatal for a socialist organisation. We would require the Left Unity Party to first state exactly what is its objective. It ought, of course, to be unnecessary to ask such a question of a party which declares its aim to be socialism. Unfortunately, there has been a wide misuse of the word socialism, and it is often applied it to the aim of state capitalism, which leaves intact the division of society into a propertied class and a class of property-less wage-earners.

When it was decided to form the Socialist Party those who made that decision did so against the advice of many others who claimed to know a better way of getting socialism. By joining the Labour Party (known at that time as the Labour Representation Committee) they said genuine socialists should get inside where they would have a wide and receptive audience for socialist propaganda. The view at the time held some merit as it was possible in those days to talk and write about socialism within the ranks of the Labour Party and to argue the socialist case with Labour supporters who were at least familiar with the works of the socialist pioneers. They didn't accept the socialist case but they were aware what that case was. The argued that ocialism was to be seen as a worth-while aim,  but workers being what they were, the only practical policy of a labour party was of making capitalism better through reforms and introducing nationalisation as stepping stones to socialism while teaching socialist principles to raise the level of understanding among the workers.

 We can let the readers judge the success or failure of its reforms and state-ownership but on the issue of those who advocated the unity strategy and membership of  the Labour Party it is reasonable for us to ask where is the socialist influence that was to permeate the ranks of the Labour Party?  Has it raised the level of knowledge in Labour Party? Sure, with  accumulation of experience of political office they know all about winning votes and influencing electors. They know all the intricacies of government and administration. They can can hold their own in the string-pulling and double-talk. It is always full of ingenious schemes for solving capitalism's problems but never on any occasion do they put the socialist alternative to capitalism or show a socialist understanding of the nature of the problems. The socialist case is not heard in Labour Party and if  a person  put it forward he or she would be regarded as a crank or an oddity and not to be taken seriously. Far from being influenced by socialist propaganda, the Labour Party has now forgotten what little it once knew. It no longer even argue against socialism for it does not now know what socialism is. There are perhaps some isolated individual members of the Labour Party who can remember the days when strikers were people to be supported and when jingoistic patriotism was a dirty word. What do they think now of their party, a fully fledged party of capitalism, with taking political opportunism is the one and only object of its miserable life?

We now receive similar words of wisdom from those who desire all those on the left to merge into a future Left Unity Party when it comes into being and it too possesses the quality of an aimless enthusiastic spirit of revolt against the iniquities of capitalism. There exists trap which the advocates of compromise always fall. They promise to solve certain urgent problems by entering into pacts and alliances hoping perhaps to gain strength later on to press forward. They forget that in taking on the administration of capitalism they do not gain strength, but lose it. They at once begin to earn the unpopularity and contempt which always centres on an administration which carries on capitalism. The effort to solve problems inside capitalism creates uncertainty, mistrust, apathy and despair among the workers.

The Socialist Party mission is simple. We have to proceed with our educational propaganda until the working class have understood the fundamental facts of their position—the facts that because they do not own the means by which they live they are mere commodities on the market, never have their capacity to work bought unless the buyers (the owners and employers) can see a profit for themselves in the transaction.

We have to emphasise the fact that no appreciable change is possible in the working-class condition while they remain commodities, and that the only method by which this can be altered  is by the working class taking the means of life out of the hands of those who at present hold them, and are the cause of the trouble. Before this can occur, the workers will have to understand the inevitable opposition of interests between them and the capitalist class who are able to exploit them, so that they will not make the mistake of voting them into power, as they have always done previously.  Representatives of the interests of the owning class dominate political power and  keep the working class in subjection. This is our mission, and we shall conduct it with all the resources we have at hand. It is the task of the Socialist Party by its educational propaganda, to clarify issues so that socialists will stand out us a political party distinct from and antagonistic to every other party to be a power in the land to-day. For the triumph of socialism, national and international organisation is essential, but the organisation must be for socialism and based on socialist principles or such organisation can be nothing to the workers but a delusion and a snare. The new form of society is ready to take shape only consent is lacking. The majority do not want socialism and do not understand it. That being so, it is mere illusion to imagine that working-class unity on a socialist basis is attainable at present. A socialist party cannot yet be more than a minority party.

For unity:-
The objective of common or social ownership, must be clearly understood.
There must be no room for policies of minority action.
There must be no collaboration with capitalist parties. (This would also rule out parties prepared to urge the workers to vote for the Labour Party or nationalist parties.)

 The Left Unity Party may gain its membership partly on the basis of the failures of the Labour Party, but it has also adopted exactly the same erroneous position. The Left Unity Party is committed to a gradualist, reformist strategy: seeking support on the basis of a programme of reforms. The case of the Labour Party is relevant here in that they too originally set out to impose on capitalism something—in their case, social measures in favour of the working class—that was contrary to its nature as a profit-driven system. The Left Unity Party are facing the same choice of strategy as did the first socialists in Britain at the end of the 19th century: to build up support on the basis of the maximum programme of fundamental social change and remain small till people have become convinced of the need for the change in question or to build up support on the basis of reforms within the system and grow faster but at the price of abandoning the maximum programme or relegating it to a vague long-term objective. So much is this the case that we can already anticipate the weak excuses, the shifting of blame and apologies for their inevitable failures to come. There is no need to be Nostradamus in foretelling its future. The widespread rejection of the Labour Party by radically-minded people does provide the basis for the growth of a genuine socialist party on sound principles, but the Left Unity Party does not fill the bill. It has nothing to offer except the failed old policy of state intervention and state control to try to make things better for people. Despite the repeated demonstrations that this reformist policy does not work, the new party wants to have another go, flying in the face of the inescapable conclusion that capitalism just cannot be made to work in the interests of the majority.

At the moment capitalism cannot even sustain the reforms it was able to afford at an earlier period. Since the post-war boom came to and end in the early 1970s, there have been no reforms – no improvements in housing, pensions, health care, social services or state benefits. Quite the reverse. Pre-existing reforms have been whittled away and things have got worse in all these fields. Nor is there any prospect of them getting any better; all the signs are that they will continue to get worse.  Nor can unemployment, poverty in old age, bad housing, inadequate health care, etc, etc, etc be solved within the capitalist system, not even by the most left-wing governments. Certainly, Left Unity says it wants to replace capitalism with a socialist society but this turns out to be, not real socialism, but the state capitalism that nationalisation represents. This is the past. We’ve seen it and it doesn’t work.

Knowing that socialism is the only solution and that it can be brought about only when the electors become socialists, it would be a dishonest political manoeuvre of seeking election on a programme of reforms of capitalism. It is dishonest because those who do it know that the reforms will not solve the problem.  The Socialist Party stands for the policy of independence. Unity is absolutely indispensable before socialism can be achieved, but it must be unity of socialists: on a socialist platform and in a socialist party. Socialist  politics is concerned with a materially realisable future, not with a mythical past, and is actively working towards a more equal and more humane society. A non-exploitative and non-hierarchical society is a practical goal not an ideal, one which necessitates a social order based on the common ownership of natural resources. Workers in solidarity shall overcome.

POLITICS AND HEALTH

Overwhelmed accident and emergency departments have suffered the worst summer in a decade, new figures show. They reveal almost a million patients are waiting more than four hours for treatment, nearly treble from four years ago. 'Over the same period, key A&E departments missed Government targets for about 80 per cent of the time. .....Since last September, Jeremy Hunt's first year as Health Secretary has seen 980,068 patients waiting longer than four hours to be seen in A&E units. Between 2009 and 2010 the figure was 353,617.' (Sun, 8 September) The figures also reveal 172,266 A&E patients were kept on trolleys last year for between four and 12 hours, 47 per cent higher than the previous year, and 219 patients waited more than 12 hours on a trolley, more than double the previous figure. We wonder how our caring MPs would relish 12 hours on a trolley awaiting treatment. RD

Social change not small change

Many devote their lives to battle against frightful odds to right the wrongs of the world but for the most part they are people with little vision —merely ordinary men and women who are pained by horrible injustice and oppression they see. Often commentators will label them the “lunatic fringe” by which they mean who believe in social justice and want to put it into effect. They are for peace, not war; they are not for obedience and subservience to corporations and governments. Sadly, not theirs is the socialist vision of a classless society. They limit their ambitions to reforms and adjustments to the system. These limitations are inherent in a struggle unguided by a vision of a different type of society. The Socialist Party task is to break them off from ideological and political submission to capitalism.

Society is divided into two great classes by the present form of property-holding, and that one of these classes, the wage-earning, the workers, are obliged to work for the other, the capitalist, in order to be able to live.

Socialism is a system of society in which the land, the means of production, and distribution are held in common. Production is for use, as and when required, not for profit, exchange or sale. The organisation of production and distribution is the responsibility of by those who do the work and of the communities they serve working for the general welfare and mutual harmony of all. Socialism is a classless order of society in where everybody shall have leisure and be secured from want. There can be no socialism until the majority of people desire socialism and turn their thoughts and actions towards it. Socialism can never arise and flourish save by the active co-operation of the majority and by their common will. Force may overthrow governments, and set up governments, but even governments cannot long remain, unless they obtain the acquiescence of the governed. Observation of life around us teaches, that where violence has no place in human relations everything is settled in the best possible way, in the best interests of all concerned. But where violence intervenes, injustice, oppression and exploitation invariably triumph. We want to bring about a society in which men and women will consider each other as brothers and sisters and by mutual support will achieve the greatest well-being and freedom as well as physical and intellectual development for all.

 In every discussion on the aims and objects of the World Socialist Movement someone is sure to bring up the objection that difficulties would arise out of the inability of the common people to understand the complexity of the social system they will be called upon to administer, which would result in its failure. This objection seems rather tenuous since the majority of those who at the present day are entrusted with the work of organising and administering the capitalist system are unaware of every development of the system outside of their own particular sphere. Socialist organisation  will preserve the effectiveness gained from capitalism whilst jettisoning the waste capitalist competition entails. It is not at all necessary that everyone, or even a very large number, of those engaged in labour should be able to understand and explain the multifarious processes of production, and that they should all be qualified to follow commodities through all their stages, from  raw material up to the final  finished product. It is only necessary that each worker should perform with due skill his or her own allotted task. The few required to be the co-ordinators organising industry may be left to the work of adjusting and interlocking the parts and even this apparently formidable challenge may be reduced to the routine work of a clerical and statistical staff on computers.

The World Socialist Movement has constantly based itself on class struggle and revolution. The World Socialist Movement has never compromised, it has never been opportunistic, or embraced reformism. Perhaps no movement in the world has had its eyes so clearly on the final goal of abolishing capitalism as it has. We see the state as a tool of bourgeois control and decide that for the worker to make any demands on it at all is a waste of time! We see the government simply as an administrating committee for the capitalist class and think of engaging it in politics as a waste of time! While the capitalist system prevails earning partial improvements is a waste to time! We want nothing from it at all. Our goal is the abolition of capitalism. We understand that without the abolition of capitalism, no amount of reform will bring emancipation.

A LIFETIME OF EXPLOITATION

Britain's pensions crisis was laid bare as official figures showed almost a million over-65s are working or looking for a job. They include 158,000 people over the age of 75. According to the most recent census, the number of residents of England and Wales aged 65 and over rose by nearly a million to 9.2 million between 2001 and 2011. One in 10 of those was employed or job-hunting. The number of those aged between 65 and 74 who were still economically active rose by 413,000 from 8.7 per cent to 16 per cent. 'Michelle Mitchell, of Age UK, said: "People are living longer and are generally in better health, so many are likely to want to carry on working. However, rock-bottom annuity rates combined with low interest rates on savings mean others have no choice but to carry on working because they cannot afford to retire".' (Daily Express, 7 September) Even after working for almost fifty years many workers still cannot afford to retire. RD

No compromise - no concessions

We are poised between capitalism, an old world that doesn’t work, and socialism, a new world struggling to be born.

The old world is one of concentrated economic power that hoards wealth; that creates corrupted and hierarchical governments to serve and further concentrate wealth through exploitation of people and the planet. The capitalist market  has colluded with government. They are hand in a glove and work together as partners to expand the market's power over all aspects of our lives. The state provides a useful fig leaf of legitimacy and due process for the market's agenda.

The working class in society holds a special position. It has no property. It is a propertyless class—dependent upon the class which owns property—the land, the factories, mills, mines, transport. But the land cannot give forth its fullness unless workers plough and sow and reap. The earth cannot deliver its mineral wealth unless workers dig it. Factories, mills, mines, railways, etc., cannot work unless workers are employed to make them serve their purpose in the transformation of nature’s wealth into social wealth. It is this fact which compels the owners of the means of producing wealth to employ labour. They need that labour or their ownership ceases to be of value. That is why the withdrawal of labour by the workers can be so powerful a weapon when used on a large scale.

People are experiencing the ravages of this global economy in which the market reigns supreme and everything is a profit center, no matter the human and environmental costs. People are searching for alternative ways of structuring the economy and society that are empowering and more sustainable. Part of this work includes understanding and building the common ownership which is the opposite of the predatory market economy.

Socialism stands for social or community property. Capitalism stands for private/state property. Socialism is a society without classes. Capitalism is divided into classes—the class owning property and the propertyless working class.

 Common ownership cannot exist without a participatory structure; it cannot exist without human involvement. Therefore, it is a fundamental step toward real democracy. Socialism is not about looking back to an idealised past; it is looking forward to a vision of an economy of new values, people building community and working together to solve common problems; to a time when all people have access to the information shared on the internet and the fruits of their labour.

The Socialist Party seeks to contribute to the creation of better lives for all of us.  Our platform does not contain a single immediate demand. In fact, the whole spirit of the party is well expressed by the motto: "No Compromise, No Political Trading." The Socialist Party practices a  less dramatic method of political democracy to those who advocate general strikes and barricades in the streets. For democracy means progress when the majority wishes it, and it will wish it only when it understands. That means education for the socialist system.  You cannot force socialism into existence by paralysing society. 

NOT SO COOL

When workers use new up-to-date technology they imagine they are being ultra cool and extremely modern, but they are supporting work practices that would put Victorian sweatshops to shame. The new cheaper iPhone that Apple will unveil to a global audience is being produced under illegal and abusive conditions in Chinese factories owned by one of America's largest manufacturing businesses, investigators have claimed. 'Workers are asked to stand for 12-hour shifts with just two 30-minute breaks, six days a week, the non-profit organisation China Labor Watch has claimed. Staff are allegedly working without adequate  protective equipment, at risk from chemicals, noise and lasers, for an average of 69 hours a week.' (Guardian, 5 September) RD

CRIME AND CAPITALISM

According to TV dramas the police are depicted as extremely successful at solving all sorts of crimes, but it turns out they don't even investigate most of them. 'The head of one of Britain's largest police forces admitted yesterday that his officers did not investigate 60 per cent of reported crimes. Sir Peter Fahy, the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police, said that his force was only able to to "actively pursue" 40 per cent of cases due to priorities and funding.' (Times, 5 September) It is also reported that the Metropolitan Police, Britain's biggest police force, are just as bad. Almost 50 per cent of crimes are being "screened out" because they are deemed too difficult to solve. Why don't they call in Hercules Poirot or Miss Marples? RD

Planning for Socialism

Capitalism has become an obsolete system that ought to be got rid off. A relatively small minority recognise this and are consciously anti-capitalist, but most continue trying to satisfy their needs within the system rather than by overthrowing it. It is natural that the question of what is the alternative to capitalism should be raised. It is frequently said that there can be no blueprints for the future because the people themselves will decide how to build the new society as they are building it. Too many talk about “revolution” in the abstract, and fail to put any flesh on to the bones of it. And when they do,  people are rightly cynical about the “policies” and “programs” whether “revolutionary” or not. Once bitten, twice shy.

If the revolutionaries do not form a political party that aims to take power from the capitalist regime then the old regime must continue. It will not just disappear in a burst of anarchistic enthusiasm. If the revolutionary party does not propose alternatives that are more desirable and effective than those capitalism, then why should anyone support a revolution? So we need to go beyond denouncing the existing system and start offering constructive options for workers to choose from, even though any such proposals are bound to be more generalisations at this early stage.

Socialism” would NOT have wage labour,  NOR commodity exchange through money. It would be quite possible to abolish these social relations left over from capitalism all at once. Wage- slavery will be eliminated by abolishing the social institutions of wage-slavery themselves, not by regulatory reforms and prohibitions against maltreatment of workers. It is a social revolution as profound as abolishing the ownership of slaves by slave owners.

 Critics of socialism point to the drab, boring existence of the old Eastern European bloc where everything was subject to central planning, everything subjugated to the state-owned enterprises. Socialism does not imply the restricted range of products available in those economically backward so-called socialist countries any more than it implies the lower standard of living, longer working hours or lower cultural levels common in those countries as compared with advanced Western countries. However socialist advocate society planning its production and distribution but are not advocates of THE PLAN.  We seek to co-ordinate the requirements for labour of different occupations and skills in each industry and locality and in each establishment. Far from discouraging new technology, to save jobs, we would facilitate its speediest implementation, to provide leisure. When production is geared to social needs rather than profits, it is quite feasible to cope with increased labour productivity by simply reducing the hours of work which can then become a voluntary activity.

 No matter how much state ownership and “planning” there may be in a market economy, if production and investment decisions are at all regulated by “the market”, they must be subject to market movements. Simply directing state owned enterprises to adhere to a central plan could not work while they were still basically oriented towards a market economy. If the products have to be sold on a market, and there is no market to sell more of that product, then its no good having the government telling a state owned firm to hire more workers. Those workers might just as well be paid unemployment benefits direct - their services are not required.

Many on the Left feel that all problems of control should be resolved by “decentralisation of authority” to permit more room there is for local level units to determine their own affairs. It, however, does not mean that the every problem can be mysteriously avoided by “decentralisation”. Some anarcho-syndicalists seem to imagine that if everybody democratically discusses everything, production units will be able to exchange their products to supply each other’s needs, and to supply consumer goods for the workers, with no more than ’co-ordination” by higher level councils of delegates from the lower level establishments. Actually things are not so simple, and any attempt to realise that vision would only mean preserving market relations between independent enterprises, still not working to a common social plan. The concept of the right to vote at the work-place can not in itself transform bourgeois social relations into co-operative ones. Modern  industry in capitalism  has always been based on capitalist production for profit, and nobody actually has much experience in how to run it any other way. Indeed many people allegedly on the “Left” seem to be unable to conceive of it being run any other way, and dream of somehow going back to a smaller scale of production, for it to be “more human”. On the contrary, it was precisely small scale production that was suitable for capitalism, while the development of huge transnational corporations with a single management for entire sectors of the world economy, proves that the socialisation of production makes private ownership an anachronism. The only experience we have of labour for the common good has been in a few community not-for-profit projects and some co-operatives. Everything else is based on people working for wages under the supervision of bosses to produce commodities for sale on the market. Often voluntary community projects also end up adopting a boss system too, or remain hopelessly inefficient and get entangled in factional disputes that can not be resolved without a clear chain of authority, and in effect, “ownership”. Then they go under and reinforce the idea that capitalist production is the only system that can really work.
The mentality that equates “popular”, “democratic” and “co-operative” with “local” or “community” projects is a  mentality that accepts the necessity of a  ruling class to manage the affairs of society as a whole. We do not just want to create some free space within which slaves can manage some of their own affairs. We want to overthrow the slave owners and abolish slavery altogether. The question of centralisation and decentralisation of enterprise management, is quite separate from the question of abolishing commodity production.

Planning decisions will have to be taken by somebody, whether they are called the workers council, Industrial Union or the factory committee. The communist solution is to dissolve the antagonism between separate enterprises so that each is directly aiming to meet social needs as best it can, rather than responding in its own separate interests, to an external compulsion to do so. Having a factory management (the workers themselves), who are dedicated to meeting social needs, would solve it completely, since they would interpret planning directives from a social viewpoint rather than a narrow one.

How do you decide whether to build a steel mill, or a hospital, or a  power station? Not just by democratically consulting steel workers, or hospital patients, or construction workers, or delegates from all three and others concerned. There must be some definite economic criteria for decision making. It is no good just saying we will build socially useful things like schools and hospitals instead of profitable things like steel mills or power stations. You need steel to build schools and hospitals, and you need electric power to run them. At present the only criterion according to which goods and services are produced and investments are made to produce them, is market profitability. Some public services superficially have different criteria, but the “cost-benefit analysis” they use includes interest on capital as part of the costs, and measures benefit by what would be paid for the service if it was marketable. Government funds can only be invested if the overall social rate of return is sufficient to allow payment of interest on borrowings directly, or by taxes raised from sections of the economy that have benefited indirectly. Despite loud squeals from the “private sector”, no government projects are based on expropriation. It all has to pay for itself on the market, and return interest on the funds borrowed from the private sector. It is a specific function of the capitalist (or state official) to allocate investments. It does this rather blindly, and with colossal waste, but it does do it and whatever is wasted, is often a loss to the particular capitalists concerned, as well as to society as a whole. The capitalist parasites are not even very good at keeping track of their own wealth, as is shown by the various multi-million dollar frauds that have been coming to light. In fact even their investment function is carried out for them by accountants, advisers, brokers etc who receive a share of the spoils, but are not the actual owners of the capital they invest.

Workers and the communities they live in and serve, will communicate with others similar bodies and determine what needs to be done, what tasks requires accomplished and what should receive the priority. Human need rather than capitalist greed. It is not utopian, much of the technology and information exists now, they simply have to be deployed for the common good instead of individual gain. 

Food for thought reforms one and two

The futility of reform - This week marks the fiftieth anniversary of Martin Luther King's famous "Dream" speech. It has been described as a defining moment in American civil history. But Americans are still debating how much of the dream has taken hold -- not bloody much!
Modern economic realty has got in the way. Long-time labour activist and author, Stanley Aronowitz, who helped to make the march a
reality, comments (Toronto Star, 24/08/2013), "On a scale of 1 to 10, Americans as a whole have gone from one in 1963 to minus three in terms of economic well being, and African Americans today are now at minus-five." We need a lot more than stirring speeches, maybe a class consciousness would help?

The futility of reform II -- Layoffs in Japan have always been taboo. Workers got jobs for life in return for fierce company loyalty and hard work that produced the Japanese economic miracle after WWII. Now Sony are forcing the issue by putting those who refuse early retirement in a special room with nothing to do hoping that the workers in question will be so bored they will be glad to go. This is part of a general movement by companies and supported by
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to end the 'privilege' of a job for life. A stagnant economy for years has prompted the capitalist class to go after this particular perk and to get a more 'flexible' (read poorly paid, no benefits and no security) work force. Easy come, easy go for reforms -- time to ditch them and the system where workers must beg for decent treatment and standards! John Ayers.

THE BED AND BREAKFAST FARCE

When on the prowl for votes one of the politicians' favourite dodges is to put great importance on the value of families and to portray themselves as stout champions of the family.  In practice however it is a different story. 'The number of families without accommodation being put up by local councils in B&Bs has risen to its highest in 10 years. New government figures show that 2,090 families with children were living in a B&B at the end of June. That is the highest figure since September 2003, and an 8% increase on the same month last year. ........ The figures also show that one in three families have been living in a B&B for more than six weeks, the statutory maximum.' (BBC News, 5 September) RD