Capitalism: the enemy of the people

The Four Pillars of Capitalism

People are hungry in their hearts for new ideas. They know our present path can’t last. It’s produced a world of want, while a tiny handful have the vast majority of the cash, resources, and our politician’s ears.  A failed past, is offered as the way forward  with too few to remind us we’ve already been there.  Issues and fights we long ago believed we had won have returned with a vengence. Workers are once more struggling to maintain a “livable” wage against company policies of pay-cuts. We fought for pensions now we fight to protect them being increasingy  taken away.  Again, the struggle is for a eight hours day - eight hours work for the unemployed, the part-time temps and casual workers on zero-hour contracts and a eight hours for obliged  to perform unpaid overtime to keep their jobs. The struggle has returned for decent affordable housing for those foreclosed on and unable to pay the rising rents due to the housing crisis. The struggle for workers health and safety is now global when sweatshops supplying High St stores kill workers with fires and collapsing building.  It’s a world-wide race to the bottom regarding hours, wages and safety. The bosses have never done the proper thing on their own without pressure from workers.

The companies and government fought, but haven’t destroyed the unions. For all their flaws  and mistakes workers built  a sustainable movement in unions and  all our lives are worse without effective union struggles. Strikes and picket lines, wildcat walk-outs and factory occupations have been our weapons of choice.

Workers are lectured by activists (particularly Trotskyists) who can’t define or agree on where they want to lead us. To be a socialist is to recognise the urgent need to begin the process of creating a new system, a system that promotes unity and collective action while maintaining individuality and independence; a system that challenges us to think for ourselves and about others; a system that understands the connection between humanity and the eco-system. Workers  must have the power to democratically direct their social labour time. The old merry-go-round offers less and less and revolution becomes more and more obviously the solution.

The essence of capitalism is to turn nature into commodities and commodities into capital. Capitalism is the predatory pursuit of profit and requires humans to dominate humans and humans to dominate Nature. Capitalism is an economic system based on perpetual growth and the relentless exploitation of natural resources. It requires constant consumption. To be capitalist is to ignore reality. By definition, capitalism is unsustainable, cannot be reformed.

Capitalism play lip-service to the theory the competitive individuals of free market theory. Olipolies dominate markets. They patent products, technologies, and processes. They buy up the most profitable sources of supply, control marketing networks, and spend millions on advertising to tie consumers to existing brands. Whenever possible, they introduce technologies that reduce employment. They outsource  work. The fewer people employed, the less paid for labor, the more profits for shareholders, the more money for executive bonuses.

As capital’s share of total income rises, the share going to labor and the needy falls. As most markets decline, capitalists turn to speculation, betting on price changes in real estate, futures or derivatives. Casino capitalism adds nothing to real means of livelihood; winners merely gain at the expense of losers. Financial bubbles are followed by crashes. As more businesses fail, capitalists hold on to what they can by demanding that debtors be punished for the sins of creditors. Austerity leads to further declines in working-class income and markets.

Some capitalists promote war because they believe that military action can give them access to new resources and markets. Others profit from the purchase of drones, missiles, airplanes, fuel, and the provisioning of armed forces. Governments favor capitalists and act as the agencies of militarism.

Because existing profits depend on cheap energy, capitalists refuse to believe that the burning of fossil fuels leads to climate change. Capitalists have convinced themselves that global temperatures will not rise; ice caps will not melt; oceans will not become more acidic; extreme weather events will not become more frequent.  Capitalism increases investments in tar sands and fracking, while cutting investments in solar, wind, tidal, and bio-thermal energy.

To be a capitalist is to prize shareholders over sharing.
To be a capitalist is to value commodities over communities.
To be a capitalist is to look towards the next fiscal quarter.
To be a capitalist is to pretend humans can "control" nature.

More Political Bombast

We should be used by now to politicians making ridiculous claims, but the following takes a bit of beating. It comes from the Liberal Democrat pension minister Steve Webb. 'He makes the claim, which he admits "will shock or offend some" in the introduction to a new book titled, "Liberal Democrats Do God". "The most fundamental reason why Christians should feel at home in the Liberal Democrats is that the character of God, as revealed in the Christian Gospel, would suggest that God must be a liberal," Mr Webb write.' (Sunday Telegraph, 25 August) So be careful, fellow workers where you put your cross on the ballot paper on election day. God has got his eye on you. RD

The Workers Song

The Workers Song

Yeah, this one's for the workers who toil night and day
By hand and by brain to earn your pay
Who for centuries long past for no more than your bread
Have bled for your countries and counted your dead

In the factories and mills, in the shipyards and mines
We've often been told to keep up with the times
For our skills are not needed, they've streamlined the job
And with slide-rule and stop-watch our pride they have robbed

Chorus:
We're the first ones to starve, we're the first ones to die
The first ones in line for that pie-in-the-sky
And we're always the last when the cream is shared out
For the worker is working when the fat cat's about

And when the sky darkens and the prospect is war
Who's given a gun and then pushed to the fore
And expected to die for the land of our birth
Though we've never owned one  handful of earth?

All of these things the worker has done
From tilling the fields to carrying the gun
We've been yoked to the plough since time first began
And always expected to carry the can

Labour Conquers All

There are but only two “nations”. To which nation do you belong? Do you belong to the nation that lives by working, or to the “nation” that lives by working the workers. One ”nation‘s” motto is “Workers of the world, unite.” That means Scots, English, Pole and Romanian, Asian or African or American, black and white and brown. The other “nation” stands for elitism and  inequality.

Bill Gates, Richard Branson, The Queen do not belong to our “nation”, no matter where they are born or where they live; no matter where you were born or where you live. Our country is the world. Those who perform useful labour are our compatriots. The “foreigners” are the class enslaving and grinding down the lives of our brothers and sisters for profits.

 Every plutocrat, every profiteer, every exploiter, every oppressor will tell you that you must be loyal and patriotic to their particular “nation". Are you their ally or is your allegiance to your class, your own “nation”?  Workers must be united and act together. Solidarity must be the watchword.

Political unity and industrial unity will give us the power to conquer capitalism and  emancipate the workers of the world. As individual wage slaves we are helpless and our condition hopeless. As a class, we are the greatest power on Earth. The individual wage slave must recognise the power of class unity and do all to bring it about. That is what is called class consciousness.  Class conscious workers recognise who their “nation” is. They join the union  and the party of their class and gives their time and energy to the work  for the emancipation of their “nation.”  We do battle against the “nation” of the bankers and the bosses who applaud their  own "patriotism" and who glory in  robbery and plunder.  The object of nationalism is the transference of political power from London  to the upper classes of Scotland. The SNP are hostile to the very idea of classes and class-struggle. The Scottish nationalist wants to exploit working-class in the name of “Freedom”, which when realised, will mean the freedom of the native bourgeoisie. The nationalists leaders decry any movement which gives predominance to class-interest over national interest.

The reformists within the nationalist camp promise that independence will  alleviate the sufferings of the Scottish  toiling masses.  As a Marxist party, we know that any efforts made with such an object will be only gilding the chains of slavery. The economic freedom of the producing class can be conquered only through a revolutionary struggle from beginning to end! This fact should be clearly and unequivocally expressed without any ambiguity. Workers should not be taken in the reformist and utopian slogans of the nationalists.

The Socialist Party as the party of the working class makes its appeal to the workers of our  “nation”. It is not begging for votes, nor seeking for votes, nor bargaining for votes for the political spoils office.  But we want all the votes we can get only as a means of advancing  the political power of the working class in the struggle for industrial freedom and as a means of wresting the control of government and of industry from the capitalists. The Socialist Party knows neither sex, colour nor nationality. It knows no foreigners among the oppressed and down-trodden. For us there are no nations, but only workers and comrades, whose mutual sympathies are  perverted by the capitalist class whose interest it is to stir up rivalries and hatreds between the dwellers in different lands. The Socialist Party will only fight to bring about a social organisation superior to the others not only in its political form, but in the mode of production and distribution of wealth. Therefore we will not fight to defend existing countries, nor to create new ones; but we will fight when we need to bring about a socialist society (or to defend it as soon as we have succeeded in establishing it.) A revolutionary working class will neither keep its ancient nationalities nor create new ones because by becoming free it will abolish classes: the world will be its country.

As the Socialist Party said in 1911, workers are bound together by the shared ties of our class position. On the other hand, we have nothing in common with the master class, whose interests are everywhere opposed to our own. Therefore, it is the capitalist class who are the undesirable aliens. They are not part of our “nation” and are the real outsiders.

To be a socialist is to look beyond national boundaries.

Oh my Darling Party Line

Crazy Capitalism

Few visitors to the Socialist Courier blog will need to be told of the great frequency and seriousness of mental and emotional disturbances which afflict large masses of the working population, including not only those who receive psychiatric treatment but also the members of the families living in the same household.

Marxists approach the topic of illness as a whole in society, rather than dividing it along the traditional line between body and soul. It means recognising the unity of the physical and mental sides of a person, and talking about whole ranges of different types of ‘illness’ which may be neither particularly physical nor psychological. This approach would reveals how mental and physical health stems more from the economic demands of the system of production. Mental illness is always a sign that basic human needs are not being satisfied; that there is a lack of love, a lack of reason for being, a lack of justice; that something important is missing and, because of this, pathological trends are developing.

For a long time, the hell of mental illness was regarded as arising primarily from an ‘illness’ at all but seen as caused by “moral weakness” The stigma of mental illness still operates very powerfully, even in these allegedly enlightened days. Mental stress and breakdown, whether psychiatrically treated or not, is one of the most grievous hidden costs of life in this type of society. There is no way of gauging how many thousands of individuals have the lives poisoned or wrecked in the secrecy of their own dwelling, while maintaining an apparently cheerful public ‘front’ outside the home.

The care and treatment of mentally ill persons has undergone a revolution. The Victorian lunatic asylums have disappeared. The concept of the voluntary patient has replaced it. Only those who are so disturbed to be a danger to themselves or others are sectioned and hospitalised compulsory and only the criminal insane are detained in a non-hospital environment.

Some radical commentators have claimed that since life in our society is repressive and exploiting, mental illness is one more form of protest which deserves our sympathy and solidarity. And the psychiatric treatment of mental illness is seen as a part, perhaps an essential part, of the brainwashing, head-fixing, mind-dulling apparatus of modern capitalism. This message is in many respects true but not wholly true and leads to the conclusion that if there is no such thing as mental illness, we can have no use for the idea of mental health. We can therefore make no demands on the system to provide better facilities, material and personnel, for the treatment of the mentally ill,  no need for arguing  for a greatly improved psychiatric service within the NHS or demand more and better mental hospitals and clinics, more and better doctors and nurses. The burden of mental illness is thrown back on to the working class, to be dealt with in the isolated, behind the walls of the home-situation.

The working class and socialist movement must make it clear that society as a whole must accept responsibility for the care of the mentally ill – not on the cheap, by impersonal mass-produced treatment in overcrowded hospitals, but as expertly as we would wish to be treated ourselves.  There is nothing shameful about seeking medical help during a time of emotional distress. Sadly the existing NHS facilities can only discourage and frighten them. We know, (still need to be told), that many mental hospitals are bad, that many psychiatrists are incompetent (and reactionary). The same, of course, applies to hospitals, doctors and nurses dealing with physical medicine, only nobody thinks of using this to attack the very existence of public amenities for treating physical illnesses.

 Erich Fromm wrote “If parents really wish that their children be not only successful but also to be mentally healthy, they must consider as essential those norms and values that lead to mental health and not only those that lead to success.”

Helen Caldecott winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and a world renowned campaigner against nuclear weapons says that our species is “mentally sick… The whole society is sick”. We are in the grip of a death wish. She points out that 1 in 25 people are sociopaths with “no moral conscience” and these are the people who rise to the top; who are in charge.

Sociopaths and psychopaths are characterised by their lack of empathy; the ability to experience the feelings and emotions of others. Guilt and remorse are a foreign to politicians (Blair is a prime example). Those character types are both irresponsible and have an overblown sense of entitlement. Nothing is ever their fault. All these are traits which we can readily recognise among the power elites of our mad world such as in banking, with the expectation of bail-outs at the expense of the poor and vulnerable. More than 10 million people across the US have been evicted from their homes in the last six years, foreclosed on by the banks.

We all know, scum rises to the top. We all know that bosses are like smoking dope - the more you suck the higher you get. Psychologist Robert Hare, a researcher on corporate psychopaths puts the numbers between 3 and 12 percent of managers.

 There are seventeen thousand nuclear weapons in existence; enough to incinerate everyone on the planet many times over as well as destroying most of the other nine million species we share the planet with. Is this sane?  Nevertheless, Obama has recently allotted $537 million to upgrade 180 aging nuclear bombs to make them more accurate! Each bomb can destroy a major city the size of London or New York. Is this sane? Each year, around $45-60 billion worth of arms sales are traded. The 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council (US, Russia, France, United Kingdom and China), together with Germany and Italy, account for around 85% of the arms sold between 2004 and 20115 and most arms sales (something like 75%) are to developing countries. It is justified  by saying if we didn’t do it someone else would. Is this sane?  Global military spending is over $1.7 trillion dollars mostly by  powers purported to be peace-loving and law-abiding. Despite hundreds of years of experience to the contrary, political leaders still behave as though the best way of solving a dispute is invasion. Making war to stop war is like pouring petrol on fires to put them out. Is this sane?

Contamination from a single failure at Chernobyl spread right across Europe. 27 years later at Fukushima three complete meltdowns of reactor cores have been emitting radioactive material for over two years and nobody knows how to stop it. Capitalism is refusing to abandon a technology which can, through a single accident, pollute countries and continents. Is this sane?  Kyoto, the only international binding treaty on emissions cuts, has failed to slow global carbon emissions. The extreme weather of recent years, which has caused countless deaths is believed, by most meteorologists and climate scientists to be an indicator of what is to come from climate change. Excessive increase in global temperature will result in famine, floods, water shortages, large population movements, and land and resource wars. Yet there is a lack of political will to implement policies in governments, their state of denial and lack of urgency encouraged by powerful economic interests. Is this sane?

Capitalism is insane. 

Your Choice - Mending or Ending Capitalism

In America Obamacare, reforms to the health system of that coutry has been called “creeping socialism” by the free-marketeers and the American public has been barraged by propaganda against any form of “socialized medicine”. The problem of medical costs for people in the United States is a severe and often tragic one. In the UK we possess the much acclaimed National Health Service. The NHS is very far from perfect, but it works far better than the health system in the US, where almost all care is bought and sold in the market place. The NHS is the centrepiece of the welfare state. For over 90 percent of the population it provides their only access to health care. It is immensely popular, despite its inadequacies. The well being of workers concerns the ruling class and, for sure,  this is reflected in the priorities of the NHS. Acute medicine for the able bodied of working age is better funded and includes the most prestigious areas of medicine. Those caring for the elderly and the physically and mentally handicapped remain the “Cinderella” services.

The National Health Insurance Scheme started in 1912, it was decided to pay the money to the different health insurance agencies already in existence. Some were cooperative undertakings, some were run by trade unions, and some by insurance companies, so that there arose the anomaly of a national, compulsory insurance scheme being administered through separate, private insurance organizations. The benefits tended to vary. Employed workers were covered by but not their wives, children and other dependents. A sick insured worker had the care of a doctor and free medicine, but none of the ancillary necessities were provided – X-ray, hospitalization, surgery, etc. Low wages and recurring unemployment made even care by a doctor and free medicine a doubtful blessing for the average worker. While the sickness benefit remained fixed by law, some of the wealthier organizations gave additional services, dental care, eyeglasses and so on, while the poorer ones gave only the minimum. There were also local health authorities which were responsible for certain aspects of public health These included clinics, midwifery, maternity and child welfare, water supplies, sewage and refuse disposal, control of epidemics and the provision of domestic help for families unable because of illness to look after themselves. The main difficulty lay in the fact that there were over 400 authorities, many of them too small and too poor to carry out their functions. As a general rule, medical help received by this means was not of a high standard.

In 1942, Sir William Beveridge, a Liberal member of Parliament, proposed a comprehensive health service which would “ensure that for every citizen there is available whatever medical treatment he requires in whatever form he requires it...”
The Labour party steered the necessary legislation through parliament and in November 1946 the National Health Service Act became law and came into effect on July 5, 1948.

The National Health Service is available to every man, woman and child in the country without any qualification. Everyone is free to choose his or her own doctor and the doctor is free to accept or reject a prospective patient.

The NHS was regarded as a charge on national income in the same way as education and the armed services. It is recognized that it is as necessary to spend money on healthy bodies and minds as it is to provide education for the people. Welfare provision is contradictory. On the one hand it benefits workers but on the other it also reflects capital’s interest in the reproduction of labour power. The state represents capital’s interest in maintaining the conditions for the reproduction of labour power, but this imposes a cost on capital. There is a constant tension between the desire for healthy, well trained workers and the costs of such provision. In 1951 the Labour government, introduced legislation imposing charges on dental treatment. The following year the Conservatives added additional charges to the service. Pricing  has been expanded over the decades by both parties but  nevertheless remains largely a “free” service available to all. The priorities of the NHS have no bearing on what patients can pay – only to what they need.

“The National Health Service is the envy of the world.”  said Enoch Powell, minister for health in 1962.
“The National Health Service is safe with us.” said  Margaret Thatcher, prime minister in 1983.

The attack on the NHS today takes two forms. The first is the outright demand for privatisation of the entire health service and a full return to the market where people who can’t afford medical fees don’t get treated.  The other attack pretends to favour the principles of the NHS but then argues for the gradual erosion of those principles by moving towards a two-tier system, a private insurance model for wealthier patients while leaving the NHS the unprofitable areas of care, for the chronically sick, the mentally handicapped and the like.

The NHS is a very good example of a past reform vigorously opposed by conservative forces such as the doctors lobby, the BMA, at the time. It was very much in the interests of the great mass of the people, and especially of working class people. It was also, from the beginning, something of a compromise, but a compromise more in our favour than otherwise. Despite all its faults the principles the NHS incorporates are socialist ones. There will always be some system of priority and how is the NHS rations is on the basis of need. He or she who needs more, gets priority over him or her who needs less. It is not rationing by the size of a person’s wallet or purse.

With the deepening crisis of capitalism it is now the National Health Service is fighting for its life. “Saving” money is seen as important, however, reducing the profit level of the multinational drug companies is no part of plans. The NHS continue to allow brand name drugs to be prescribed when generic prescriptions would lower costs. While pharmaceutical company profits have risen enormously the original conception of the NHS has been quietly abandoned.

 Attacks on the health service are deeply unpopular. One of the easiest ways of dismantling the NHS is to impose strict budgets and  make the working conditions and pay so unattractive and unrewarding that it literally becomes impossible to staff it. Closing a ward here and a ward there, or shutting this or that local hospital and no-one notices that it is gone until it is too late.

As critics of reformism, the Socialist Party are not, of course, opposed to particular reforms. But it has to be understood that no gain is permanently guaranteed so long as the means of production  remain in the hands of the capitalist minority. The never ending struggle to protect the benefits of the National Heath Service is proof of the pudding. To permanently achieve a decent society we must break the power of the capitalist class.

The SPGB and the Unions

The object of the Socialist Party is to achieve socialism. The purpose of a trade union is to make the best terms for its members with employers.

There are those who hold that the working class are in a constant state of latent revolt, seething to go forward to revolution and these people imagine it is only the timidity or corruption of leaders, or perhaps the defects of organisation that keeps them subdued. The truth is the opposite, of course. The working class may be discontented but they are far from the next step of making a change to their existence. How absurd to suppose that they are in a state of incipient revolt, and would fight, much less go on general strike for, if they will not even vote for their principles! Even more absurd is  to suggest that the indifference of the workers, their apathy and their reluctance to do anything for their emancipation, would all be removed simply by disbanding the existing trade union organisation and forming others with new names. A thing is not changed simply by giving it a new name. Existing trade unions are the outcome of existing economic conditions; they have survived because they have been the fittest to survive, the organisations best adapted to their conditions. These new workers’ organisations  would only have the same material to work with, and nothing but the same conditions to work in. Dual unionism saps the strength of the trade unions.

Syndicalists tell us political action of itself, no matter how revolutionary it may be, can accomplish but little if not backed by real economic power. But we say syndicalist unions by themselves cannot accomplish the “miracle” of overthrowing capitalism and must be assisted by the Socialist Party.

Nevertheless, trade unionism is steadily progressing towards the realisation of that One Big Union industrial organisation. For sure, the progress is slow; and can easily be understood, and excused. But let us not fall into the error, through impatience at the slowness of progress, of casting them aside. Suffice it to say here that the trade union movement is on right lines. The trade unions have their defects, undoubtedly, and it would be wrong to ignore them or not to try to remedy them. Socialists within the unions cannot and must not be servants of the bureaucracy.  and  a socialist party should not interfere in the internal affairs of the trade unions. But socialists working in the same union to can organise themselves together and strive to make of the union more democratic, but we’ll do that as trade unionists.

 It is for socialists to sympathise with and support trade unionists in every struggle in which the class war involves them until they recognise that their work is futile unless its object is emancipation.  The transition from one system to another is by no means a mechanical process. However “inevitable” the change may be, the time necessary to effect it can never be measured. Nor can the amount of human suffering and conflict involved before the change is carried through be estimated. So uncertain is the “inevitability” that there the  possibility of the disintegration of civilisation which cannot be ruled out.

Everything depends upon the development of the socialist ideas in people and the growth of the will-power on the part of the workers for the purpose of socialism. Such changes can come only with the change in ownership of the means of production and that means going beyond the immediate “bread and butter” questions which occupy the continual attention of trade unions. Many “practical” trade unionists criticise  socialism as visionary, unattainable, and without any immediate social value yet within trade unionism there is no change in the wage-slave position of the workers. They fail to perceive that socialism is the only  political force of modern times. Rosa Luxemburg said that “only the working class, by itself actively, can bring about socialism . . .” The primary organisations of the working class, the unions, have re-started the fight. Union members need to take control of their unions to make them into democratic, accountable organisations which will back the activities of the working class and win the struggles.

Quote of the Day

“you are a cash cow for a big label and they want you to make them more money”  KT Tunstall describing when she signed to one of the major record companies. 

Give socialism and peace a chance

NO WAR BUT CLASS WAR

Modern wars as a rule have been caused by the commercial and financial rivalry and intrigues of the capitalist interest in the different countries. Whether they have been waged as wars of aggression or they have been hypocritically represented as wars of “defence,” they always have been made by the ruling classes and fought by the masses.

War is not the cause of the troubles of society. War is an essential part of capitalism. War is a symptom.

The conflicts of capitalism lead to war and the only way to get rid of war is to remove the cause of war. The only possible struggle against war is the struggle for the socialist revolution. No one who upholds capitalism – whether directly, as an open adherent of the capitalists, or indirectly, from an reformist position – can fight against war, because capitalism means war.

 War breed a sinister spirit of unreason, race hatred, and  patriotism. They obscure the struggles of the workers for life, liberty, and social justice. They cut the bonds of solidarity between workers here and in other countries, it destroys their organisations and curtails their civil and political rights and liberties.

In every country workers are oppressed and exploited. They produced enormous wealth and the  capitalist class of each country is forced to look for foreign markets to sell its wealth or to seek th sources of raw material to feed production. The geographical boundaries of modern capitalist country have become too narrow for the industrial and commercial operations of its capitalist class. The efforts of the capitalists of all leading nations are therefore centered upon the domination of the world markets. The acquisition of spheres of commercial and political influence results diplomatic intrigues and the cause of constant clashes between nations. The acute competition between the capitalist powers of the earth, their jealousies and distrusts of one another forces each of them to arm to the teeth.

Socialism will eliminate war because by overthrowing capitalist economy and supplanting capitalism with a socialist system, it will remove the causes of war. In socialism there will no longer exist the basic contradictions that lead to war. Artificial barriers based on national boundaries will be removed. The expansion of the means of production, under the ownership and control of society as a whole, will proceed in accordance with a rational plan adjusted to the needs of the members of society. Thus, under socialism, war will disappear because the causes of war will be done away. Every step on the path to socialism is a blow at war.

There is only one war which is worthy of men and women, that is class war, the social revolution. It is of little use to cry out against war while we tolerate a social system that breeds war. Capitalism makes war inevitable. Capitalist nations not only exploit their workers but ruthlessly invade, plunder, and ravage one another. The profit system is responsible for it all. Abolish that, establish industrial democracy, produce for use, and the incentive to war vanishes. Until then people may talk about “Peace on earth” but it will be a myth.

 The Socialist Party is unalterably opposed to the system of exploitation and class rule which is upheld and strengthened by military power and national patriotism.The Socialist Party does indeed  take sides in wars, but it’s the side of the workers, against the owning class that exploits them now, as well as against any other  owning class that WANTS to exploit them. It is not people against people, but instead, class against class. The Socialist Party has no sympathies for the ruling class of any country. The only struggle which would justify the workers in taking up arms is the great struggle of the working class of the world to free itself from economic exploitation and political oppression. In support of capitalism, we will not willingly give a single life but in support of the struggle of the workers for freedom we pledge our all. The working class of this country has no quarrel with the working class of any other country. Workers are never consulted and have no part in declaring war.  Our first business is to hate the capitalist system that means the continued robbery of the workers.  Our duty as socialists is to develop a “class patriotism,” refusing to murder one another for a sordid world capitalism. Let the rich go defend their own  property. We wish to  live for socialism.

Something To Look Forward To?

Record numbers of care homes have been issued with official warnings after inspectors found "unacceptable"and illegal failings which left the most vulnerable at risk. More than 900 notices have been issued by the health watchdog in the past year, indicating that institutions could be closed or prosecuted without urgent action to improve standards. 'Inspectors found staff falsifying medical records and failing to investigate claims of abuse, while residents were put at risk from scalding water, and left in filthy and unheated rooms. The figures from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) show that the number of official warnings issued has risen by 43 per cent, from just over 600, in just one year.' (Daily Telegraph, 19 August) RD

The Rise Of Foodbanks

While politicians praise themselves for the wonderful job they are doing the harsh realities of capitalism tell another story. 'The number of people seeking help from foodbanks has risen by 78 per cent over the the past six months, Citizen Advice said.' (Times, 19 August) RD

What is crime? What is law?

 Crime is an inevitable outgrowth of capitalism. The ideology of the cash nexus between man and man are the prime social incentives to crime.

A criminal is literally a person accused and convicted of being harmful to society. But is he really harmful to society than the old gent in the wig who pronounces sentence upon him? A crime is an act forbidden by the law of the land all laws devised by the strongest force in a community, and in the last analysis, made for the protection of the dominant class. This means that law has not been evolved to protect society but rather a tool developed through the class struggle used to protect that class which dominates the State. Within propertied society the law’s most important task is to protect the right of possession; that is why by far the largest class of crimes may be called crimes against property. One of the first rules of capitalist society is that where people offend against the laws of property the solution is to punish them into submission.

 Criminality continues to grow, and the punishments inflicted, though they can neither protect nor indemnify the honest, only succeed in corrupting and degrading. Crime is mounting, bred by the miseries of  capitalism and the great majority of crimes are motivated by inferior economic position, by elementary need. Crime policy has little to do with reducing crime or protecting the public, and much more to do with controlling economically deprived sections of the population, providing an ideological diversion from more serious problems.

There are criminals and there are criminals. Society rests on private property. Go to the county estate owner and listen and you will soon think the poacher is the embodiment of all diabolical vices while the poacher invariably and rightly regards the land-owner as the emissary of the evil one!  In the  past the land was held in common and there is abundant evidence that all early human communities were communistic in character. The man who attempted to retain for himself land or goods, or who fenced off a portion of the common ground was a criminal of the deepest dye.  Nevertheless these criminals have clawed their way to the top and have become the respectable members of modern society. The poacher asserting a right  belonging to a past time is condemned as anti-social! A poacher may be an outside the law but he preserves the mentality of honest people.

The gangsters of the Al Capone type merely expresses the dominant  power, afflicted with the drives of the capitalist but without the sanction of social superiority and acceptance. Anti-social behavior remains anti-social, whether it be called the individual initiative of the millionaire or the racketeering of a mobster. “This American system of ours, call it Americanism, call it capitalism, call it what you will, gives each and every one of us a great opportunity if we only seize it with both hands and make the most of it”  Al Capone has been quoted as saying and elsewhere he said “Capitalism is the legitimate racket of the ruling class” Al Capone

It cannot be denied, of course, that the causes of crime are many and varied. But to lump all possible factors together indiscriminately is to obscure an elementary truth. Broken homes, family tensions, slum areas, gang activities, unemployment and insufficient income, lack of recreational facilities, poor educational methods and opportunities – all these things are indubitably involved in the creation of the criminal.  This is just another way of saying: Capitalism causes crime. For what are all these “complex” factors but aspects of our bourgeois culture? What are they but  illustrations of an outmoded system of private property?

The materialist viewpoint is invaluable because it shows us the interrelation of causes; it makes clear which factors are primary, which derivative; it explains how various elements are intertwined in a dynamic cultural pattern. The Marxist does not insist that all crimes are economic in character (although the evidence indicates that the great majority of crimes are such) ; we do, however, make it plain that the economic structure of society determines the cultural facts which orthodox theorists hold are non-economic in essence. Is the broken home a contributing factor in the origin of crime? Very well, but is not the broken home a manifestation of the conflict of capitalist culture, particularly prevalent in those unprivileged areas where unemployment, etc., inevitably disrupt normal family relations? Are slum clearance and housing projects important? Quite so: but the slum is an inevitable product of capitalist development, and the utopianism of hoping to achieve adequate housing under an outmoded system of private property is evident from what has come out of the none-too-laudable housing schemes. Poor educational opportunities, lack of recreational facilities – what are these but proof-by-example of class oppression? Mere enumeration of possible causes is not enough; what is necessary is a social theory which indicates which factors are basic, which of a reflex or secondary nature. The Marxian analysis, which relates cultural factors to the economic bedrock of society, makes it clear that the social scientists who enumerate multitudinous factors as isolated causes are guilty of the therapeutic error of symptom treatment: they are attempting to cope with factors (education, housing, unemployment, etc.) which are on the periphery of social reality. The primary fact is capitalist class society, organised on the basis of private property and private profit; from this basic economic fact flow the surface evils with which muddled sociologists are preoccupied.

The socialist recognises that in our class society, with the controlling social stratum enabled through its monopoly of the means of production to exploit the non-owning groups in the interests of its own material profit, there exists a fundamental clash of interests, which takes overt form in such phenomena as strikes, revolutions – and criminal acts. All of these expressions of class conflict represent, more or less directly, an attack upon the right of private property by the non-owning, or working class. Individual criminal acts are products of direct economic oppression, or of attitudes and sentiments engendered by class divisions, or of both.  Crime and organised revolt, then, are but two expressions, the former primitive and futile, the latter conscious and purposeful, of the same fundamental class conflict. This conflict grows out of the the competitive principle of private property, exercised in the interests of a minority.  The development o capitalism has produced the widest extremes of wealth and poverty; created enormous slum districts and underprivileged areas; wars in every generation; and formulated a most elaborate system of checks and restraints upon individual and social conduct and all the time while lawlessness and crime have been ever increasing because the sacred interests of private profit is leaving people in a condition of insecurity which sooner or later resolve themselves in revolt, or assert themselves in criminal behavior. More and more repressive laws have been created, more and more agencies of enforcement established. Criminal threats upon property rights must be prevented by the principle of deterrence through fear. Capitalist society  necessitates an ever-increasing degree the policing of the lower class by the agents of the ruling class.

 The socialist movement has the  power to put an end to the system responsible for the deprivation and poverty which give rise to crime in the first place. Socialists seek to abolish the present machinery of so-called justice, with all its painful and inhuman aspects, but we do not want to replace it with either total individual liberty to do as one wishes or the crowd’s summary justice of the lynch-mob. Socialists  are usually blamed for the vagueness  of our proposals to solve the most painful social problem as soon as it comes to dealing with the problem of reconstruction and practical life in the future society. However, it is not up to the Socialist Party to fix the future beforehand, but rather to simply guarantee the conditions of freedom necessary for the social evolution to eventually secure the greatest well-being and the greatest material, spiritual and intellectual development for all. We do not boast that we possess absolute truth, good for all times, universally applicable, or determinable in advance, but that instead, once freedom has been secured, mankind will go forward discovering and acting gradually with the least number of upheavals and with a minimum of friction. Thus our solutions always leave the door open to different and, one hopes, better solutions. In the interest of public safety it is useful that railwaymen, for instance, specialise in their job and doctors for example  entirely devote themselves to their skills. But we need not permit  someone to be a  judge by profession. Everybody should take care of social defence, in the same way in which everybody promptly helps when disaster strikes. If people do not feel sufficiently protected by the public, no doubt they immediately call for the policeman. Therefore, the only way of preventing the policeman from existing is to make him useless by replacing him in those functions that constitute a real protection for the public.

Let people remember that among the most hideous crimes are the millions of deaths by slow starvation during the first years of a child life.

Working Class Holidays

.

The travel agencies produce glamorous brochures of wonderful holiday idylls being enjoyed by fortunate workers but Adecco the employment agency have come up with some interesting statistics on the subject. 'A third of office workers do not take all their annual leave, with some feeling guilty about asking for time off, research suggests. Almost one in seven take their full entitlement only because they are required to, according to a a survey of 1,000 workers.' (Times, 19 August) Again this hardly suggests the press notion of work-shy workers. RD

Alienated Lives

Why are Scots sicker than the rest of the UK?

Dr Phil Hanlon and researchers at the Centre for Population Health have compared life, incomes and health outcomes in Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester. They found “deprivation profiles” were almost identical, but premature deaths in Glasgow were 30 per cent higher.

This excess mortality ran across almost all ages, males and females and deprived and non-deprived neighbourhoods. It was not, surprisingly, lung cancer, heart and liver disease were not the factors tipping Glaswegians over the UK average.  It was higher levels of drug and alcohol misuse, suicide and death through violence.

Why are some Glaswegians so prone to self-harming and life-shortening behaviours?

Chief Medical Officer Harry Burns cites the work of Aaron Antonovsky, who maintained that a sense of coherence (SOC) is necessary for adult health. The  medical sociologist defined the SOC as “the extent to which one has a feeling of confidence that the stimuli deriving from one’s internal and external environments are structured, predictable and explicable, that one has the internal resources to meet the demands posed by these stimuli and, finally, that these demands are seen as challenges, worthy of investment and engagement”.

In other words, good health is a mixture of optimism and control that relies on life being comprehensible, manageable and meaningful. Comprehensibility allows people to perceive events as ordered, consistent, and structured. Manageability allows people to feel they can cope. Meaning allows life to make sense, and challenges to seem worthy of commitment.

Socialist Courier would rather phrase it in Marxist terms - Scots are more alienated. So many people are stuck in meaningless lives they can only self-medicate using drugs, booze or food.

Or perhaps as John Lennon puts it  “you can't really function you're so full of fear” and  they “keep you doped with religion sex and tv”

Desperate Workers

 

The biggest accountancy firms have received record numbers of applications for entry-level positions, as university leavers flock to them for work. 'PwC, the largest of the Big Four, said that it had received 22,123 applications this year for about 1,100 positions in its latest annual graduate intake. .... KPMG had nearly 21,000 applications for about 650 graduate jobs ...... EY received 11,600 applications for 700 jobs.' (Times, 15 August) These figures give the lie to the usual glib press jibe about lazy workers. RD

Why Are Called Care Homes?

The National Press have some strange priorities. Headlines and special supplements were devoted to a royal birth whilst the following  event got very little coverage. 'A grandmother died of malnutrition a day after being admitted to hospital from a care home where she had become so emaciated that she was described at an inquest as looking like a skeleton.' (Times, 16 August) The 88 year old weighed just 4st 12 lbs and was dehydrated after her treatment at a care home. After a life time of work this is the fate of many workers, but it will get little attention in the royalty-obsessed newspapers. RD

Martin Irons - Not Forgotten

Socialist Courier continues its occasional series of drawing attention to the forgotten figures of the Scottish labour movement.

Few have heard of the Great Southwest Strike of 1886, the largest and most important clash between management and organized labor in 19th-century Texas history. In Bruceville, 16 miles south of Waco, is a monument to Martin Irons, who was the strike leader. Some historians and contemporaries cast Irons as the epitome of impatient, romantic, and even deluded labor activist.  Irons became a special target of the railroad bosses, the newspapers , particularly the New York Times,  and he also angered Powderly, the head of the union because of his militant and unwavering leadership in the strike.

He was born in Dundee in 1827 and immigrated to the United States at the age of 14.  He was friendless, penniless, alone and  had a clear head and a warm heart. He saw and felt the injustice suffered by his class.

He worked as a machinist for the railroads all over the Southwest. According to Ruth Allen's "The Great Southwest Strike" ( University of Texas, 1942), his politics consisted of anger "at the encroaching domination of corporate business as monopolist and employer, with agrarian insistence upon ownership of the land as the basis of liberty."

Irons, a master workman, joined the Knights of Labor in 1884 and helped form District Assembly 101, composed of workers for Jay Gould's Southwestern railroads. He was later elected chairman of the executive committee of the union assembly. Jay Gould was, to put it gently, a Robber Baron who controlled all the Southwestern railroads through interlocking companies. Jay Gould made himself famous by saying, “I can hire half the working class to kill the other half.”

In 1885, the year before the Great Strike, Gould fired the Knights of Labor shop men of the Wabash line, causing a walkout. The Knights working for other railroads refused to operate any train with Wabash cars and so brought Gould to the bargaining table. It was a great victory for the workers, and the Knights gained members increasing from about 100,000 to over 700,000,  more than 30,000 members in Texas in 1885.


 But Gould was determined to destroy the union.  As Eugene Debs of the Socialist Party of America writes:
 “as chairman of the executive board of the Knights of Labor of the Gould southwest railway system, defied capitalist tyranny, and from that hour he was doomed. All the powers of capitalism combined to crush him, and when at last he succumbed to overwhelming odds, he was hounded from place to place until he was ragged and foot-sore and the pangs of hunger gnawed at his vitals.”

In March 1886, Irons called a strike against Gould's Texas & Pacific Railway over the firing of a foreman in Marshall. The T&P strike soon spread to other railroad lines, as in the '85 strike. The workers uncoupled cars and seized switch junctures. Gould hired scabs and the Pinkertons (another Scot’s connection). The Pinkerton "detective agency" was union-busting force in those days, and also specialized in busting heads.

According to Debs “ Gould did not have gold enough to buy Irons. This was the greatest crime of labor's honest leader. The press united in fiercest denunciation. Every lie that malignity could conceive was circulated. In the popular mind Martin Irons was the blackest-hearted villain that ever went unhung. Pinkerton blood-hounds tracked him night and day.”

Gould also asked for military assistance from the governors of states affected by the strike. Texas Gov. John Ireland sent the state militia and the Texas Rangers to Buttermilk Switch in Fort Worth. This early example of using the Rangers for union-busting is of particular interest to those who remember the Rangers' strike-breaking activities in the Valley during efforts to organize the farmworkers in the 1960s. The ensuing violence turned public opinion against the strikers. Gould refused to negotiate, and the strike failed.

“Failure of the Great Southwest Strike represented the first major defeat sustained by the Knights of Labor and proved to be a fatal blow to their vision of an industrial union that would unite all railroad workers in the Southwest into 'one big union.' Once again, an emerging labor organization was crushed when competing with powerful, determined and well-organized industrialists in command of nationally based corporations," Ruth Allen concludes.

 Irons had served, suffered for and honored his class. But he had lost. His class now turned against him and joined in the execration of the enemy. This pained him more than all else. But he bore even this without a murmur. “He was a despised agitator and shunned of men too mean and sordid to comprehend the lofty motive that inspired him....He endured the taunts and jeers and all the bitter mockery of fate with patient heroism."
Martin Irons was blacklisted and could not hold a regular job. He moved to St. Louis, Little Rock, Ark., and Fort Worth for brief periods, sometimes using an assumed name. Debs describes the life:
“For fourteen long years he fought single-handed the battle against persecution. He tramped far, and among strangers, under an assumed name, sought to earn enough to get bread. But he was tracked like a beast and driven from shelter. For this “poor wanderer of a stormy day” there was no pity. He had stood between his class and their oppressors-he was brave, and would not flinch; he was honest, and he would not sell; this was his crime, and he must die.’

 In 1894, his health was failing; G.B. Harris of Bruceville, a socialist, offered him a home. Allen reports that Irons continued to work for social reform until his death in 1900. Debs says when Irons “spoke of Socialism he seemed transfigured, and all the smouldering fires within his soul blazed from his sunken eyes once more.”

A lot of busted heads and broken lives went into making the eight-hour workday a reality. Think how mad Martin Irons and all those other fighters would be at ho  the corporations are getting away with mandatory overtime and 60-hour work-weeks. The thing about corporations is that they never give anything away out of the goodness of their non-existent hearts. The only social obligation of a corporation is to make money. Workers still have to fight for a decent life.

From here and here 

Food for thought

Staying with the environment, and contradicting all the clean, green Tar Sands adverts we are getting on TV, The Toronto Star (July 20) reported that Canadian Natural Resources has been unable to stop an underground oil blowout that has gone on for six weeks at Cold Lake, Alberta. So far, some 26,000 and counting barrels of bitumen and 30,600 kilograms of oily vegetation have been removed. To say nothing of the 'in situ' or underground extraction technology called cyclic steam stimulation that involves injecting thousands of gallons of super hot, high pressure steam into deep underground reservoirs. Obviously, it's a crazy thing to do and is an accident waiting to happen, but it makes money, for some. John Ayers.

Time to liberate humanity

We live in a world rife with misery and oppression. Hunger, poverty, unemployment, racial and sexual discrimination, and many forms of repression, from the restriction of the most basic democratic rights like freedom of speech to hideous barbarism like torture and genocide, are still the lot of the majority of the people of the world. Today the whole world is in the grip of a deep economic crisis of capitalism. The gulf between the rich and the poor, between the powerful and the dispossessed, is widening. Capitalists have only one reason for being – to accumulate more and more capital. We live in a world dominated by capitalism, a system which allows a small minority of capitalists to oppress and exploit the great majority of humankind. It is capitalism that brings about great inequalities in living standards with more poor people now in the world than ever before.

Far from diminishing with the advances in science and technology, the various forms of misery is growing.  It is an astonishing paradox that, in a world where there could be plenty for all, there is increasing  want and hunger.The anarchy of production and the crises under capitalism explains the enormous waste of productive forces and also explains why, alongside this waste, millions of people lack the basic necessities and why even famine strikes in various parts of the world. At the root of all these problems is the exploitation of some people by other people. All of the deprivations and conflicts are brought about by a society divided into oppressors and oppressed, the capitalist class exploiting the working class.

Only a socialist revolution can put an end to the capitalist relations of exploitation and establish a society of abundance. Socialist 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. Individuals will no longer be governed by the division of labour and all conflict between city and countryside and between manual and intellectual work will be eliminated. The emancipation of the workers will be accomplished by the workers themselves. They will achieve it through socialist revolution, which will suppress the private ownership of the means of production in order to establish socialist and collective property and replace capitalist commodity production by the socialist organisation of production

The expropriation of the capitalists and the socialisation of the means of production and distribution will lead directly to the abolition of society divided into classes with opposing interests. The abolition of classes will in turn lead to the withering away of the State, and ultimately to its extinction, for the State is not, and can never be, anything other than the instrument of dictatorship of one class over others. The fundamental interests of workers are the same throughout the world.

Capitalism is poisoning the air we breathe, poisoning the water we drink, and polluting both land and sea. No lasting solution to any of these problems will be found while capitalism is allowed to survive in the world. Today the human species stands at a turning point: either we have the socialist transformation of society or we are eventually destroyed by environmental disaster. The only viable way forward is to achieve socialism, a classless and stateless society on a world scale where people do not oppress and exploit each other and where we live in harmony with our natural environment.

The only way forward is to struggle to bring about this social revolution and begin the struggle to build a socialist society where oppressive and exploitative class divisions and all the evils that go with them are abolished. The working class has it within its power to overthrow capitalist society and pave the way for the liberation of the whole of humankind.

“By peaceful means if possible, by forcible if necessary” is the reply of the Socialist Party of Great Britain to the question “How do we propose attaining our object?” The Socialist Party is the bearer of historic memory. The working class character and the integrity of the Socialist Party are of vital importance. All the votes of the people would do us no good if our party ceased to be a revolutionary socialist  party yielding to the temptation to modify our principles for the sake of swelling our vote. Nor can there be any  possible good from any kind of a political alliance with non-socialist parties. The Socialist Party wants the votes only of those who want socialism.  Join with us in the struggle against capitalism and for revolution. The hour is late. Join us now before it is too late!

Reading Notes

We are all familiar today with the tax evasion antics of the rich, but it is nothing new. In "A brief History of Life in the Middle Ages", Martyn Whittock writes, "Local landowners could remove their lands from royal taxation by setting up a monastic church, administered by a family member. This was clearly not in the spirit of how monasteries should be established and such monasteries were more of a tax loophole than a statement of individual piety." (to put it mildly!)

How far has humanity come in its still primitive stage? The same book states, " In terms of life expectancy, life in early medieval England was comparable with the poorest less economically developed countries (LECDs) of the twenty-first century. In fact, when life expectancy for women dropped to 26 years in Sierra Leone in 2002, following a catastrophic civil war which had brought the country to the lowest point on the world rating of LECDs, it was one year longer than the estimate for women in the early Middle Ages. That same year, the male life expectancy in Burkina Faso was 35.3 years -- about the medieval male average." Obviously, we have a long way to go until we can call ourselves civilized. John Ayers.

Food for thought

Garment factories in Bangladesh are not just killing people by collapsing and bursting into flames. They also dump their toxic wastes into rivers and canals that, naturally, drift downstream and contaminate drinking water for people there. So companies like Walmart, J.C. Penney, and H & M not only benefit from low wages and appalling working conditions, but also by having no cost or responsibility to keep the environment clean by properly disposing of their waste. It must be heaven for the profit takers, just what capitalism ordered! John Ayers.

The Trade Union Question

The workers, who have suffered their disappointments from the traditional parties begin themselves quite naturally to press for other means of political expression: means which they believe to be their own. The trade unions are the simplest and most elementary form of workers’ organisations. From the moment trade unions came into existence the strike has always been their principal weapon. The “right to strike” has always stood in the forefront of trade union experience and behind all negotiations, bargains, and settlements. Indeed, all trade union power rests trade unionists willingness to “withdraw their labour”. It is a “right” which cannot be taken away. It can be legally fettered and intimidation may make it difficult to exercise  but to cease work is the essence of working class combination.

Despite the fall in membership workers have demonstrated a remarkable tenacity in clinging to their trade unions. Whatever may happen to this or that union or any number of unions, the workers do not wish to abandon the union movement but to broaden it, increase its militancy, etc. So long as capitalism endures, organisation of some kind on the job to deal with the boss is indispensable. The reason for this is has to do with the system of capitalist exploitation, workers are compelled, in the process of self-defence to struggle not only against separate capitalists, but against the entire capitalist system as well. During the course of their struggle with capitalism, the unions came into collision with the whole capitalist system and with the capitalist State itself. It is a movement of wage-workers and all its problems are based upon the fact that the members of the unions are wage-workers who, to live, must sell their labour power to the private owners of the means of production. The fundamental purpose of the trade unions is the pursuit of the interests of the wage-workers.

It should be remembered that the trade unions are organisations of workers at work, bound up with the question of the terms of labour, such as wages, hours of labour, conditions of work, terms upon which the work has to be done in thousands of different occupations. These are essentially property questions, expressing themselves in struggles between opposing classes for the products of industry. The more they multiply and become general, the more it gives rise to the demand for the control and ownership of industry by the workers themselves. Ownership and control cannot be separated from each other. They who own industry control it.“He who owns the means whereby I live, owns me” Shakespeare wrote.  Hence the question of the workers’ control of industry and the coming of the classless society based upon community ownership are inseparable questions also.

 The issue of the role of the trade unions in the control of industry, what it should be now and in the future, has been a burning question for many trades unionists. The ideas, demands and movements of workers’ participation, workers’ control, self-management, direct workers’ rule, workers’ democracy have a long-standing tradition and are deeply rooted. The pioneers of  the unions recognised the slave condition of the workers in capitalism and had faith in the worker’s power and capacity to abolish the slavery and build a new society of free men-controlling industry in a classless society.  Industrial unionists and syndicalists gave very definite answers to the question. The syndicalists and industrialists advanced the idea of the workers in a particular industry owning and controlling it from top to bottom. This conception of the future of the unions was the modern counterpart to the “House of Trades” of the Chartist pioneers. An adaptation of the industrial unionist proposals was made by the guild socialists who advocated the social ownership of the means of production, the administration of certain political affairs by a citizens’ parliament and the administration of industry by industrial unions or guilds, organized in an industrial assembly, subordinate to Parliament in regard to general policy. GDH Cole argued for the democratisation of the capitalist state with the unions taking a greater share of responsibility for the running of industry by means of representation on its governing bodies, protecting  wage rates, hours of labour, factory conditions, etc., acting as a brake on the rate of exploitation of the workers. They would be  the custodians of certain forms of social insurance, such as unemployment pay, sick pay, old age pensions. They would have the function of “consultants” with regard to the general development and organisation of the economic life of the country.  Syndicalists and industrial unionists assumed that the unions would not only control industry but also serve as the basis of the whole social administration. Guild socialists realised the weakness of this theory and maintained that the State should continue to represent the people as citizens or consumers.

Whatever of value there is in the vision of an industrial democracy, there is no evidence of the possibility of the working class achieving power in that way.  Industry may be “socialized” by trade union control but production will remain on a capitalist basis. At first sight, it is appears an  attractive idea: Get rid of the owners, work for ourselves and enjoy the full fruits of our labour. The idea of  taking over managerial functions from the employers till the factories fully belonged to the workers seems impelling.

 But it is a trap.

A company has to buy its raw materials on the market, along with every other company. A company has to sell its finished products on the market, along with every other company.  A  company has to invest in new plant and equipment, along with every other company.  To do this, they must make enough surplus value and like any other business it is done by employing less staff or by increasing intensity of work or taking a wage cut.  It means workers attacking their own living standards. Workers control of industry is largely incompatible with a union’s character as a voluntary association of the workers formed primarily to protect and represent their interests.  It  means the participation of workers in their own exploitation. As long as the capitalism has not been abolished workers will be obliged to submit to its requirements.

Workers have to seek other methods and goals.

A Little More Food for thought

Relevant to the recent revelation that the US is spying on its own citizens and the governments of other countries, the New York Times (July 21) reported on two Italian hackers working on the Mediterranean island of Malta. They search for bugs, software flaws that governments pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to learn about and exploit. It allows them to break into the computer systems of their foreign adversaries. Of course, we all know that all countries are at the same game and that the US just got caught with its pants down. What a system that forces everybody to spy on everybody else just to keep up and compete. John Ayers.

Food for thought

Saudi prince, Alwaleed Bin Talal is suing Forbes magazine because in their list of the world's billionaires, his fortune of $20 billion was underestimated by $9.6 billion, according to the prince. Consequently, he should be a few rungs higher on the rich list. How arrogant can they get?
Seems Marx must have been wrong with his crisis theory. In "What' Holding Developing Economies Down" by David Olive (Toronto Star, July 6, 2013) he quotes Ruchir Sharma, head of emerging markets at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, and author of "Breakout Nations", as saying, " Crisis gives birth to reform, which flowers into a boom, which matures into political complacency, which ages into a new crisis". Nothing to do with the capitalist system really
then! John Ayers.

Business for Scotland

Tory supporter, Laurie Clark, the owner and managing director of Paisley-based firm Anglo-Scottish Concrete told Prime Minister David Cameron that he would be backing independence in the referendum.

“The referendum is not a choice between Scottish and British identity. Instead, for me, it is about how best we realise the potential of Scotland, create wealth and jobs, expand the private sector and reform the public sector in the interests of the nation as a whole... We could and should be attracting much more substantial business, investment and jobs with fiscal solutions and broader public policy tailored to the distinctive Scottish economic environment.”

As the Socialist Courier frequently asserts the issue of an independent Scotland is one for the capitalist class to decide upon the division of their spoils. Some will favour it and some will oppose the idea but at the root, as Clark infers - it will all be about who gets the profits - and that certainly won’t be the members of the Scottish working class.

World Revolution

“The whole world has tended to become one community similar to that which exists in a single country. A few weeks ago men were buying and selling. lending and borrowing, contracting and planning, with little attention to national boundaries, when suddenly the whole co-operative system was disrupted.” Standard Oil describing the effect of World War One

  In modern industry, raw material is taken from the Earth, pass through factories, where it is manufactured into articles of sale, and then distributed to markets by various ways of transport. The whole system of  transaction is made possible and facilitated by means of money and credit—by banks and banking. Without the constant co-operation of millions of workers employed in these various sub-divisions there can be no industry in the modern sense. The objective conditions for socialism are apparent everywhere. Cooperative mass organisation of labour within industry, collective corporate enterprise and its far-flung interests, separation of ownership and management and the collective performance of managerial functions by hired employees. We can see this exemplified  by the supermarket chain stores in distribution. An abundance exists which makes possible and necessary the collective or socialist distribution of goods, a socialisation of consumption to correspond with the socialization of production. Capitalism rejects this possibility and necessity because it means its own abolition.

Industry is integrated in socialism, managed as a whole, not as scattered parts disregarding and clashing with one another. Considerations of private interest or profit interfere neither with production nor consumption. Rational planning of industry is possible, with the exclusive aim of meeting community needs. The abundance of industry is released on an immensely enlarged scale. As this means the abolition of capitalism there is a clash of the old and the new, a struggle of classes, a struggle for power between the classes representing the old and the new.

The struggle for power aims to get control of the state or to retain control. Like all states, the capitalist state is an organ of class rule and suppression, under capitalist control, enmeshed in all the class-economic and exploiting relations of the existing order. Capitalism creates an ideology to disguise and justify its predatory character: it is a necessary device of class domination. The dominant capitalist interests use all means, of an increasingly forcible nature as the struggle sharpens, to retain control of the state for a twofold purpose: to suppress the proletariat and its allies in the struggle for power, and to augment the economic activity of the state. Although their ideal is that government is best which governs least capitalists constantly enlarges the scope and use of state power. More and more state action was required by the complex relations and problems arising out of capitalist expansion. Governments “protect” the home market and newly developing industries,  enterprises call for state intervention in the form of financial subsidies or actual government ownership for various reasons: their unprofitable character, lack of private capital, as a source of government revenue, in the interests of the economy as a whole, or simply for reasons of political expediency. The state “regulates” the relations of capitalism. State capitalism is used to  encourage and permit more rapid economic development.

The term state capitalism was originally used to designate only the government ownership of economic enterprises. But its meaning is now much wider to include all forms of government intervention in economic activity to aid capitalism to overcome the contradictions and antagonisms in industry, particularly in the United States. The intervention is always within the relations of capitalist property and exploitation, of the subjection of labour to capital. All forms of state capitalism are animated by the necessity and use of the collective action of the state to “strengthen” capitalism as much as it can and “compensate” for the effects of  the anarchy of production as much as is possible. State capitalism has been greeted by many on the Left  and the reformists as the progressive unfoldment of a new social order. In reality, the result has been the deepening entrenchment of capitalism.

Pressure from workers has forced the adoption of reforms and minor concessions of social legislation to “placate” this labour opposition. The usual justification for reform from the Left lies in the fact that they make it easier for the workers to organise themselves and enlighten themselves about the real meaning of capitalism and the part that they are forced to play under it, and shows the thinking worker how futile it is to dream of reforming capitalism. They furnish, besides that, a rallying ground for those workers who cannot see beyond their own nose, and perhaps would not understand socialism, but do feel the need for a shorter working day.

The risk, however, arises when reformists try to persuade the workers as well as themselves that socialism only means the sum of a number of such petty acts and restrictions; that in other words, welfare measures are socialism. By that approach “socialism” gets the credit for legislation which are in all but name means for defending capitalism against socialism and all the disadvantages which arise from that fact are written down to the discredit of socialism. The dominant class interests use a bastardised “socialism” to prevent the coming of socialism and to stabilise capitalism

No doubt reform changes will always produce a certain reaction such as disillusionment but that may be less if there are some real advantages than if the whole measure is an elaborate swindle. The main point, however, is whether the experience of decades of social reform activities has not been to show that it would be simpler and better to concentrate our efforts on the abolition of capitalism than on any attempts to reform it. That is not to say that we need reject capitalist reforms but we ought to regard them as what they are, as attempts to prolong capitalism. The less enthusiasm we show ourselves about them, the more keen will the capitalist may well champion them.

Our business as socialist is to show how inadequate all such reforms are as solutions to remove the evils from which the workers suffer. But above all there is a need for us to make clear that only with the abolition of production for profit, and the competition between the capitalists for sources of profitable investment which is an inevitable result of the capitalist system, can we get rid of the social problems of capitalism such as poverty, crime and war.

 Socialists may sometimes talk about the inevitability of socialism but there is for socialists a great danger to forget the requirement for enthusiasm for the great social and economic transformation of society. Many overlook the fact that it is the collective workers’ will which  forms the essential element in that development of socialism. We also assume that the workers will continue to engage in the daily class struggle . Were they to accept the coming of socialism  in a fatalist sense, and think that they could sit down tamely and wait till socialism came to them, they would soon lose all the rights that they have gained and become mere slaves.

The reformism of capitalism must fail. But that does not make socialism inevitable. Capitalism does not “grow into” socialism, it merely determines the necessary historical conditions, which provide the  working class with the opportunity for creative action. State capitalism is not the transition to socialism but a reaction against it and  becomes a type of corporate capitalism. There is no “final" crisis of capitalism , unless the workers makes it so. For capitalism can always find a “way out” from a recession, even if it is by stumbling about blindly for the exit.

When class-conscious  workers, both politically and economically, have become so well organised as to make their exploitation impossible, then capitalism will have reached the end of its life. That is what we understand by social revolution, and our ideal – that of human brother- and sisterhood – is revolutionary, because it is only to be realised by the social revolution.

Who Owns the North Pole Part 62

With help from the French energy company Total and the China National Petroleum Corporation, Russian capitalists celebrate global warming by building $20 Billion natural gas plant in  the Arctic.

Gas produced from the Yamal LNG plant would be shipped to Asia along northern sea lanes that only began opening up four years ago as warmer ocean temperatures thawed and thinned the ice sheets. Global warming may be causing worrisome environmental  damage, but for oil and gas industrialists such changes can mean new-found profits.

http://www.allgov.com/news/us-and-the-world/russians-capitalists-celebrate-global-warming-by-building-20-billion-natural-gas-plant-in-arctic-130726?news=850682

This "wonderful" world - Or a new one?

The basic problem of capitalism is the source of all its weakness is found in the fact that this system does not carry on production for the benefit of society as a whole but for the profit of a relatively small owning or controlling class. The industries by which society must live are owned by private individuals or by the government who ruthlessly exploit the masses who work in these industries. Under capitalism production is regulated not by the needs of the majority  but by whether or not the capitalist or ruling class can make a profit by such production; commodities are not produced primarily for use, but for profit. Even the limited progress that capitalism has accomplished for humanity has been achieved at the cost of incredible misery, poverty and slaughter of the working class.

 Conflict and disruptive struggles between individual capitalists and between rival capitalist States are systematic. There exists a  division of capitalist society into classes of exploiters and producers, with resultant class struggle between them.  Capitalist production is anarchic. Capitalism can live only by a rapid extension of its market. The innumerable individual capitalists and companies, compete and ruthlessly exploit the toiling working class, produce whatever they think they can sell. The development of the capitalist system has not been even and steady, but by a series of jerks. The zigzag graph made by the cyclical crises  is quite familiar. First, the upward trend, a period of industrial expansion, with rising prices and wages, an era of good employment, “prosperity” and optimism, gradually developing into a boom, with its characteristic orgies of feverish production, stock speculation, etc.; secondly, the downward trend, with the gradual surfeit of the market from excess production, slowing down of industry, wage-cuts, fall of prices, mass unemployment, financial “panics” and general economic crisis; and thirdly, the trough of the crisis, in which the productive forces are diminished and the choking surplus of commodities, in the low state of production, are consumed or wasted in various ways and the markets thus cleared for a fresh race between the swiftly expanding productive forces and the more slowly developing capitalist market. The current recession  showed how whole sections of the capitalist economy can fall into paralysis, and this paralysis spreads.

The cyclical crisis also greatly sharpens the major social contradiction of capitalism, the ever-active antagonism between the working class and the capitalist class. In economic crises the capitalists always seek to shift the economic burden onto the workers through wage-cuts, etc., and this still further stokes the class struggle. Hence, the capitalist cyclical crises have been especially periods of great strikes fiercely fought, growing class consciousness of the workers.  A basic indication to-day of the general crisis of capitalism is the increasing revolutionary upsurge throughout the world.  It varies in intensity from intensified protest movements to increased strike actions to actual struggles for power. Workers, faced by intolerable conditions, are exhibiting the characteristic signs of radicalisation. Workers everywhere are beginning  to penetrate the lies of capitalism.

Capitalism has created the objective conditions for socialism. But it can go no further.  Capitalism has provided its own executioners and grave diggers, the working class. Socialism is no longer is it simply the aspiration of an oppressed working class. Now it is a living, growing reality. Socialism abolishes the chaos and anarchy of capitalist production and social organization; it does away with the dog-eat-dog competition of capitalist industry, breeder of industrial crises and war. It sets up instead a planned system of economy in harmony with the global character of modern industry and social relationships. Instead of a hodge-podge of competing enterprises, socialism will create a great, inter-linked and co-ordinated modern industrial-agricultural machine; instead of a profit-making apparatus to fatten a few while millions starve, it socialism will building its industries for the benefit of the producers. In  socialism there is no exploitation. There will be no ruling, owning class, no class to get a rake-off from the worker’s production.The main task of all capitalist governments is the suppression and exploitation of the people.

The capitalists, as is their wont, seek to justify their destructive type of competition by asserting that it is rooted firmly in human nature. Such appeals to “human nature,” however, must be taken cautiously. By that method of reasoning it would be quite easy to conclude that the rich capitalist who heartlessly casts workers out of the factory penniless and gives no thought as to their future has quite a different “human nature” than of the Amazon hunter who, with his high sense of tribal solidarity, before eating his kill, calls loudly in the four directions in case perchance there may be another hungry hunter nearby. Changed social conditions develop different “human natures.”

 Socialism will be use machinery and technology  on the broadest scale possible to produce the necessities of life in the industries, transport systems and communication services. Socialist society will also know how to develop the creative and  artistic impulses of the people which are presently checked by poverty and slavery, hamstrung by the profit-making motive, where the masses and poisoned by anti-social codes of morals and ethics. Every free community will involve the maximum cultivation of the intellectual and artistic powers of all. The imprint of individuality and originality will be upon everything. Socialism frees humanity from the stultifying effects of the present struggle for existence and opens up before it new horizons of joys and tasks.

The socialist revolution is the most profound of all revolutions in history. It initiates changes more rapid and far-reaching than any in the whole experience of mankind. The hundreds of millions of workers, striking off their age-old chains of slavery, will construct a society of liberty and prosperity and intelligence. Socialism will inaugurate a new era for the human race, the building of a new world. The overthrow of capitalism and the development of socialism will bring about the immediate or eventual solution of many great social problems. Some of these originate in capitalism, and others have plagued humanity for scores of centuries -  war, religion, superstition, prostitution, famine, disease, crime, poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, race and national chauvinism, the suppression of woman, and every form of slavery and exploitation of one class by another.  Capitalism, with its wars, wage slavery, slums, crooked doctors, etc., undermines the health of the race and destroys its physique. Socialism with its healthy dwellings and working conditions, its nutritious and plentiful food,  will offer well-being to all.

Socialists have and must always interest themselves in the nature of the capitalist state. They must fight to have it democratised even from the point of view of capitalist democracy. But in that struggle we must be constantly be teaching the workers that not capitalist democracy and not the capitalist state will bring us socialism but workers themselves.

We take it for granted that socialism cannot be introduced by a change of the constitution and the enactment of one law after another. We take it for granted that the state is an instrument to serve and protect the interests of the capitalist class. The police, the military, the courts and all the powers lodged in government departments and ministries are all freely at the service of the ruling class. Behind the Parliamentary majority there must stand the organised workers – there must be mass struggles and participation to secure the necessary transformation of the State machine. This is the dictatorship of the proletariat, the whole class exercising political power, realising new forms of organisation.  It is the class struggle in its most intense form that will decide what class will have power and whether a socialist world will be created.

Capitalism, based upon human exploitation, stands as the great barrier to social progress. There will come day in the not so far distant future when our children, immersed in this new life, will look back with horror upon capitalism and be aghast by just how long we tolerated it for.

The True Story of American History

This Is Progress?

Many  have the notion that we live in a society that despite its flaws is somehow or other progressing but recent developments must make them wonder. The Government have a van driving around London in areas where large numbers of ethnic minorities live which feature the message 'In the UK illegally? Go home or face arrest'. We have an UKIP MEP referring to 'bongo bongo land'. What kind of progress is this? The ideas of nationalism and racism are obnoxious to socialists and hopefully to more workers RD