A Sense Of Priorities

A SENSE OF PRIORITIES                                        

The British government is very cost conscious especially when it comes to things like welfare payments, but when it comes to military expenditure it can become downright lavish. 'The true cost of Britain's military operations since the Cold War could be as high as £72billion. Most of it has been squandered on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan seen as "strategic failures", claims a respected defence think-tank. Toppling Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein helped radicalise young Muslims in the UK, said the Royal United Services Institute.' (Daily Mail, 15 April) The cost of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and sending thousands of troops to Helmand province in Afghanistan in 2006 was around £30billion. RD

Food for thought

In March, the federal government rejected appeals for a national enquiry into murdered and missing aboriginal women that angered the opposition and Canadian native groups. Statistics Canada has shown that aboriginal women are twice as likely to suffer domestic violence than other Canadian women. They accounted for eight per cent of homicide victims in Canada between 2004 and 2010 despite representing only four per cent of the female population. Claudette Dumont-Smith, executive director of the Native Women's Association, said, " There's no new action, just a continuation of what's in place, so what's going to change, really?" Under capitalism, we cannot expect any change from discrimination or oppression because they are part of the system. John Ayers

The EU Elections

SPOIL YOUR BALLOT

The circus is on again and the political acrobats are back on the streets asking for our votes in the elections for the European Parliament, with their worn out political promises. At the end, none of it will make any real difference to working people. The capitalist band-wagon will keep on going, perhaps with a different driver and perhaps with one or two new parts. Between them they are covering up the fact that it is the capitalist system which is the real enemy of the people. All the parties in their own way work to protect the system and the interests of the ruling class.

The EU is essentially a business arrangement, an agreement between different capitalist ruling classes, relating to the way in which they organise their markets. Europe’s capitalists find themselves driven by the scale of business operations to try and integrate their efforts. Only in this way could they develop the resources to enable them to compete with other giants of the modern world economy.  The EU wants a ‘europeanisation’ of capital – but this continually clashes against national state boundaries. The only way out would seem to be to somehow reduce the dependence of firms on the national state by developing some sort of European state.

Modern capitalism is a highly integrated international system. Production is organised across national boundaries, trade and finance operate on a world scale. No single unit of capitalist society can jump outside of this system. Contrary to the UKIP’s dreams, there is no way that Britain can simply put up the shutters and pursue its own economic destiny within its own frontiers. The capitalist ruling class are compelled to think in terms of international cooperation and planning, hence the various economic summits and similar. Indeed, many national states are now too small to function adequately in terms of the needs and pressures of modern capitalism. The EU could be simply summed up as an alliance of ruling classes.

The national state is not our state. It functions to defend the ruling class, and cannot operate in any other way. The harping of the Left such as NO2EU about ‘national sovereignty’ only serves to sustain the illusion that somehow we have an interest in common with those who run the state at present. It intensifies the differences between workers in different countries. And it does so at a time when the growth of globalisation emphasises the need for united international working class action. The arguments of the anti-EU in the labour movement have had no more substance than those of the pro-EU. They have adopted a narrow nationalistic outlook, appealing against the loss of British “sovereignty”.

The advent of the EU in no way meant that nationalism and xenophobia ceased to be an weapon in the hands of the ruling class. The very way in which decisions are arrived at – by continual, and often very bitter haggling between different governments – creates an environment in which nationalistic talk can flourish. National governments can blame unpopular moves on the pressure of the other member states and demand national ‘sacrifices’ in order to resist them. They can claim that they, are being forced by the EU to carry through unpopular measures – even when, in reality they could claim exemptions to the rulings. They can simultaneously blame the Commission or European Parliament for unpopular policies, and divert protest into a nationalistic blind alley. Both Tory and Labour know that the process of integration has already gone too far to be unraveled.

Where more profits can be gained by property swindlers out of speculation, or currency speculation, or investment abroad rather than investment in home industry, naturally the capitalists will always opt for the latter. Even if for the benefit of their individual interests or company they undermine the collective or ‘national’ interests of the capitalist class as a whole. Who is “industry?” Why not say bluntly in class terms that with the capitalists as individuals, and with capitalists controlled nations, they invest where they can get the biggest profits. They are too short sighted to see the results for tomorrow. It is each man, company or country for itself.

 Neither the narrow British nationalism of UKIP nor pseudo-Europeanism of sections of the LibDems is a solution in the interests of the working class. Inside or outside the EU there is no cure. Neither the Eurosceptics nor the Euroenthusiasts offer a way forward but simply highlight the bitter divisions within the ruling class. In or out, the problems facing the worker are very much the same. The remedy to the problem lies in the unity of the workers of the world against the capitalists of the world. The battles the labour movement will have to fight cannot be won within the confines of one country. Never were the perspectives of real internationalism more relevant and more practicable. Side by side we must join battle with our common enemy.  The workers’ movement should not be wasting valuable time now fighting irrelevant  battles on the questions of national sovereignty or  ‘our British way of life’ but should be gathering and coordinating its international forces for the battle for socialism. The struggles of the world’s labour movement demand the maximum cooperation between the different national sections. The workers of Britain have interests in common with the workers in Europe and of all countries. Their interests are opposed to the capitalist class of all countries including Britain.

1. What is the Socialist Party’s stance on Britain’s future in the EU?

Whether Britain should stay in or get out of the EU is irrelevant as, in or out, capitalism will continue and so the problems it causes as a system in which profits have to come before people. The answer is not to retreat into an impossible “independent Britain” but to go forward to world society. It is only on a global scale that problems such as climate change, world hunger and war can be tackled.

2. What would be the Socialist Party’s main aims if elected to the European Parliament?

Use it as a platform from which to denounce the way the profit system works against the interest of the vast majority by imposing its logic of “no profit, no production” and “can’t pay, can’t have”. To argue instead for a world community without frontiers based on the planet’s resources being the common heritage of all humanity under democratic control and where the principle “from each according to their ability to each according to their needs” would apply.

3. How can having a Socialist Party/World Socialist Movement MEP benefit people?

They would have a voice expressing their interest in getting rid of the profit system, even though having a genuinely socialist MEP wouldn’t, and, because of the nature of the system, couldn’t, mean much in practical terms.

The “choice” between Labour and Tory is not a choice between socialism and capitalism, both are pro-capitalist. Both are parties indispensible to capitalism. It is not easy for workers to decide not to vote. It is after all a right we fought hard for. But our call is to go to the voting booth and spoil your ballot paper by writing “world socialism" is taking a political stand, a principled stand against the capitalist parties. In Scotland there is no party of the working class standing in these elections so show your political independence and vote for no-one.

Tea Party Nonsense

One of six states with primaries on Tuesday, Georgia seems set to confirm what may be a defining trend of this year's mid-term elections: a resurgence of candidates backed by the Republican establishment at the expense of Tea Party extremists. 'Polling in Georgia shows Paul Broun and Phil Gingrey, Tea Party-backed members of Congress, trailing badly before today's vote. Mr Broun said during his campaign that evolution and the Big Bang theory are merely "lies straight from the pit of hell". (Independent, 20 May) The USA is the most developed capitalist country in the world and as a consequence has the most advanced scientists in the world, but that doesn't stop it having one of the most backward electorates when it comes to science. RD

Poverty And Riches

Inside capitalism millions starve for the lack of a few dollars but we can read about the obscene amounts of wealth accumulated by useless parasites like these. 'Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev has been ordered to pay about £2.7bn to his ex-wife in what could become the biggest divorce settlement in history. In papers delivered on Monday to both parties, a court in Switzerland said Mr Rybolovlev, 47, one of the owners of French soccer club AS Monaco, must pay more than 4bn Swiss francs to Elena Rybolovleva, also 47.' (Independent,20 May) RD

Lingering Feudalism

George Monbiot in another scathing attack on the gentry; this time the Scottish lairded (native and imported) class.

"Legally, feudalism in Scotland ended in 2004. After 15 years of devolution the nation with the rich world's greatest concentration of land ownership remains as inequitable as ever. The culture of deference that afflicts the British countryside is nowhere stronger than in the Highlands. Hardly anyone dares challenge the aristocrats, oligarchs, bankers and sheikhs who own so much of this nation, for fear of consequences real or imagined. The Scottish government makes grand statements about land reform, then kisses the baronial boot. The huge estates remain untaxed and scarcely regulated.  Fifty per cent of the private land in Scotland is in the hands of 432 people – but who are they? Many large estates are registered in the names of made-up companies in the Caribbean. When the Scottish minister Fergus Ewing was challenged on this issue, he claimed that obliging landowners to register their estates in countries that aren't tax havens would risk "a negative effect on investment".

Scotland's deer-stalking estates and grouse moors, though they are not agricultural land, benefit from the outrageous advantages that farmers enjoy. They are exempt from capital gains tax, inheritance tax and business rates. Landowners seek to justify their grip on the UK by rebranding themselves as business owners. The Country Landowners' Association has renamed itself the Country Land and Business Association. So why do they not pay business rates on their land? As Andy Wightman, author of The Poor Had No Lawyers, argues, these tax exemptions inflate the cost of land, making it impossible for communities to buy.

Though the estates pay next to nothing to the exchequer, and though they practise little that resembles farming, they receive millions in farm subsidies. The new basic payments system the Scottish government is introducing could worsen this injustice. Wightman calculates that the ruler of Dubai could receive £439,000 for the estate in Wester Ross he owns; the Duke of Westminster could find himself enriched by £764,000 a year; and the Duke of Roxburgh by £950,000...

...It is astonishing, in the 21st century, that people are still allowed to burn mountainsides – destroying their vegetation, roasting their wildlife, vaporising their carbon, creating a telluric eczema of sepia and grey blotches – for any purpose, let alone blasting highland chickens out of the air. Where the hills aren't burnt for grouse they are grazed to the roots by overstocked deer, maintained at vast densities to give the bankers waddling over the moors in tweed pantaloons a chance of shooting one.

Hanging over the nation is the shadow of Balmoral, whose extreme and destructive management – clearing, burning, overgrazing – overseen by Prince Philip, president emeritus of the World Wide Fund for Nature, is mimicked by the other landowners. Little has changed there since Victoria and Albert adopted an ersatz version of the clothes and customs of the people who had just been cleared from the land. This balmorality is equivalent to Marie Antoinette dressing up as a milkmaid while the people of France starved; but such is Britain's culture of deference that we fail to see it. Today they mix the tartans with the fancy dress of Edwardian squires, harking back to the last time Britain was this unequal....”

Beware Of Falling Crucifixes

The Roman Catholic Church is much more fundamental than most other brands of Christianity. believing as it does in present day miracles, exorcism and sainthood. The following event must have left even the most devout among them to scratch their heads in wonderment though. 'A young pilgrim has been crushed to death by a giant crucifix dedicated to Pope John Paul II. The 100ft curved wooden cross collapsed during a ceremony in northern Italy days before the former Pope's canonisation. Marco Gusmini, 21, on a visit with other young Catholics to the Alpine village of Cevo, was killed instantly.' (Daily Mail, 24 April) This is not the first death caused by a falling crucifix in Italy. In 2004 a 72-year-old woman was crushed to death by a 7ft metal crucifix in the southern town of Sant'Onofrio, Calabria. Wow, their god really does like testing their faith! RD

Educate, Agitate and Organise!

The pro-capitalist parties, in spite of all their differences which are more pretend than real, have one common aim – the maintenance of a social system founded on the private ownership of the means of production (factories, natural resources, transport etc.) and the profitable exploitation of working people. Their main aim is to promote the accumulation and concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a privileged minority, and they use the authority of the State to exercise political control over the common people for the specific purpose of furthering their plans in this respect. Technological progress is reaping vast profits for the industrial and financial oligarchy and condemning thousands to permanent unemployment.

The dominant feeling among the working class today is fear. Many see their fate tied to capitalism, and its prospects are clearly not good. Capitalism promises people not amelioration of conditions but austerity, oppression and most likely the destruction of mankind. Every class-conscious worker seek a radical way forward out of the misery and madness of capitalism. Only through the struggle against capitalism, towards its elimination and the establishment of socialism, will the people of the world find the full freedom, equality and democracy for which they aspire. The chaos of capitalist economy and the world market has made the establishment of a socialist society a desirable aim and an immediate necessity.

Several years of austerity have demonstrated the utter inability of the pro-capitalist parties to make good their promises. Yes, prosperity has returned but for the bankers, the mammoth corporations, the stock exchange sharks. The government bail-outs has rescued their investments and restored their profits. But the people continue to suffer. Wages rose a fraction for many workers and actually fallen for even more. Rising living costs has forced up the price of food. The youth leave school condemned to unemployment. The capitalist parties are as rotten and bankrupt as the system they uphold and maintain only by piling additional burdens upon the people. Capitalists are not interested in production to benefit the peoples of the world or even their own people. They are interested only in profits. The word on every politician’s lips is always “change.” Yet little ever does change. Millions of working class people desperate for relief from years economic hardship, hope elections will make a difference. But the capitalist class demand more efforts to make the working class pay for the crisis. The politicians’ promises of change prove to have been so many lies.

Populism seeks to convince workers to unite behind bourgeois politicians instead of undertaking class-based struggles against the capitalists. When class militancy heats up, a sinister populism aims to derail workers’ struggles with appeals to racism and nationalism. Such appeals to workers are essential if the ruling class is to rally part of the working class to its side—against the rest of the working class.

Capitalism’s destruction of the environment threatens the very survival of our species. But the system may not even allow time for that ultimate catastrophe. The current Cold War rivalry sparked off by the Ukraine confrontation brings back the spectre of the Great Powers engulfing the World in war, that once again could lead to nuclear holocaust.

Capitalism has created the class with the potential to overthrow it: the working class. Capitalism has itself laid the basis for transcending the misery to which it condemns humanity. It long ago built up the productive forces—industry, technology and a globalized economy—to the point where the potential exists to produce an abundance of all the things people need. Shortages of housing, food and every other form of want can be easily overcome, but that potential remains trapped by capitalism’s pursuit of profit. A socialist society would seek to produce the needs of all rather than the private profit of an elite class of profiteers. By producing an abundance of necessary goods for all, workers would undermine the very basis for the existence of classes. Necessary work would be divided equally among all. And the introduction of labour-saving technology, instead of creating unemployment as it does under capitalism, would be used to shorten the working week and free workers’ lives for greater leisure. In such ways the basis would be laid for the development of a society free of all forms of exploitation and oppression.

The World Socialist Movement must be democratic—open to all who understand and  commit themselves to its support. It must have an internal party life which not only permits, but consciously encourages the full play and exchange of ideas. Despite the distortions about the Socialist Party’s viewpoint we are confident that developing realities, together with the conscious participation of all who consider themselves socialists, will move the workers forward towards socialism. Only a socialist world can give us peace and plenty as the capitalist world totters on the brink of extinction. It is an essential condition of this assumption of power by workers that it should be sufficiently united, and that it should understand how to make use of the power in its hands. The Socialist Party will not base its political organisation upon dictatorship. Its historical mission, on the contrary, is to carry democracy to completion. Workers cannot afford to wait until the great struggles of the future to begin to prepare themselves politically. The WSM is dedicated to building the beginnings of a revolutionary political party of the working class.

So Defend! Defend! And Defend at every level of society, and Organise! Organise! And Organise at the grass roots in connected networks. And Unite! Unite! And Unite to rid the World of false political prophets. Not with  bravado and loud-mouthed speeches but with a vision for a better future and a new social system of society 

If You've Got It, Flaunt It

Every year the Sunday Times publishes a Rich List which catalogues the immense wealth enjoyed by the capitalist class in Britain. This year's figures show a gigantic increase in their wealth. 'The wealthiest 1,000 people in Britain today, including 104 billionaires are worth £518.9bn, up 13% from the previous high of £449.65bn last year. Their total wealth has reached one-third of UK GDP - the value of all goods and services we produce.' (Sunday Times, 18 May) It shows the complete arrogance and confidence of these parasites that they make no effort to disguise their obscene wealth but openly boast of their affluence. RD

The impossible is possible

Capitalism offers no hope of ending the reign of poverty. The majority of the population is not engaged in productive work. The greater part of the work-force is employed in buying and selling, its bureaucratic administration and its coercive control. This is the private property system. We wish to replace it by socialism. In socialism the land, the means of production and transport are no longer privately owned but belong to all the people as the joint owners of the Earth and its products. No one can be disinherited; no one can be deprived of the right to a share. Our share will not be measured in so many acres of land, or amount of food in a ration-book, or so many goods, with which to buy, sell, and carry on trade. The share of a member of the socialist commonwealth is the right to the free access to the common treasure-house.

Socialism is denounced by the hired jackals of the capitalist media and by the subsidised hyenas of academia. Socialism has been attacked and incriminated at all times. Invent lies, smear its proponents in every way you can; something will stick and we find those reproaches repeated and echoed even by working men and women.  Our critics say that the socialists intend to divide all property. Everybody who owns anything must give up what he owns; this whole mass has to be divided equally among all the people, and each person may use his part just as he likes. After a while, when some have used up their allotted part and a new disproportion of property has arisen, a new division will be made; and so on. Especially the money and the land are to be divided – this is what some people say concerning socialist sharing. Have you ever seen or heard of a socialist demand such nonsense? No. you have not! Just reflect for a moment on the “fair shares” of the railways. Who should have the rails, or a locomotive, or a carriage? And since everybody would have a right to demand an equal share, all these things would have to be divided up.  Concerning the division of money, a story goes that Baron Rothschild was accosted by two workers who said: “Baron, you are a rich man; we want to divide your wealth with you.” Baron Rothschild took out his purse and answered: “Certainly! We can do that business on the spot. The account is easily made. I own 40 million florins; there are 40 million Germans. Consequently each German has to receive one florin; here is your share” and gave one florin to each of the labourers, who looked quite confused as Rothschild walked off smiling. This teaches that the division of money is but an idle invention.

Whether the means of production—that is to say, the land, mines, factories, machinery, etc.—are owned by a few large  capitalists, who organise corporate monopolies , or whether they be owned by a lot of small capitalists, who are opposed to Big Business, is all the same to the working class. Let the capitalists, large and small, fight this out among themselves. Between them socialists have no choice, no preference. It is simply a question of capitalism or socialism, of despotism or democracy, and they who are not wholly with us are wholly against us. The working class must get rid of the whole brood of masters and exploiters, and put themselves in possession and control of the means of production. It is not to reform the evils of the day but to abolish the social system that produces them that the Socialist Party is organised. It is a question not of reform but of revolution. The capitalist system must be overthrown, class-rule abolished and wage-slavery supplanted by the cooperative industry. This is the revolutionary immediate demand of the World Socialist Movement.

Why does the great body of working men and women still permit itself to be ruled and exploited by the capitalists? Why are they not in a position to drive the minority of exploiters from power? To answer bluntly, because they are an unorganised, undisciplined, often individualistic and ignorant mass. The majority is impotent because it consists of a divided crowd of individuals each one of whom wishes to act according to his own impulse, regard his own interests, and in addition has no understanding of our social system. It lacks organisation and knowledge.

The ruling class, on the contrary, is strong because it possesses both organisation and knowledge. Not only does it have in its service scholars and men of learning; it controls also a strong organisation, the state administration. The army of officials, government underlings, law-givers, judges, representatives, politicians and soldiers works like a gigantic machine which instantly suppresses any attack on the existing order; a machine against which every individual is powerless and by which, if he or she opposes it, is crushed like a troublesome insect. The capitalist control a machine which can easily shatter in a struggle even a great organisation of workers. In this machine each works as a part of the whole: in the working class each man acts for himself or a small group. No wonder that the few, through their superior strength, rule the majority with ease.

The unions always have their limitations; they include only members of a particular occupation or employer.  In politics class stands against class. There the delegates of the workers movement  speak not as representatives of the rail industry or the miners; they do not even represent the wage-workers exclusively, but the whole body of those exploited by capital. Their opponents are not representatives of individual groups of employers, but of the whole owning class; they fight in parliament against bank and finance capital or land-owning capital, just as much as against all exploiters.

The victory of socialism is desirable because only socialism can put an end to the exploitation of man by man and of women by men. Because only socialism can put an end to the struggle for the re-division of the world, for national possessions, which takes place between the different continents, nations and races. Only socialism can put an end to war and poverty and the innumerable injustices which are an everyday feature of our lives. Socialism by suppressing the cause of these rivalries and antagonism – the monopoly of the means of production – forms a new society based on the principles of human solidarity and reciprocity, and economic soundness. It will put an end to all waste and all unproductive work. It will abolish antagonism of interests and reduce authority to a minimum, making it function not in the interests of a class but in the interests of society as a whole. Socialism consists of a rationalisation of production, of all our activities and our very lives themselves. And that, not in the interests of some, but for the benefit of all. Socialism is then from every point of view desirable.

 Socialism is possible now. It is possible because it corresponds to the interests of all; because it satisfies the goodwill the desire of well being, and the common interest of the producing class which forms the immense majority in all countries. Socialism is possible because men and women are more and more brought into close co-operation in pooling their efforts. All sorts of associations and organisations, political, intellectual and moral, are accustoming people to regulate their work and their lives. Socialism is possible because the forces of production, thanks to machinery and technological advances, have reached an unheard levels of development. They only need to be put in action for the benefit of everyone in order that all members of society may be assured of complete well-being. Socialism everyday becomes more possible through the social education of the working-class, organised as it is in political parties, trade unions, and co-operatives. The same phenomenon of concentration, of organisation on collective basis, is to be observed in other spheres, social, political, intellectual, and moral. Rational organisation becomes more urgent as a consciousness of solidarity develops among the producers who can take over control of mass production; everything stands ready by their own very nature to be placed in the hands of the workers who produce them.

It is a mistake to maintain that human nature does not change. Everything changes in Nature and in life. Everything is in a process of transformation. Movement is the universal law of everything that exists. That is the conclusion all science of our era comes to. Everything evolves. Everything changes. Human history is a record of perpetual transformation.

Chattel slavery was replaced by the semi-slavery of serfdom which gave way to the servitude of wage-slavery. This is the last form of slavery because socialism which will bring to an end the exploitation of man by man and slavery in all its forms. It is however quite conceivable to exist under one regime and not believe in the possibility of another, perhaps due to a favoured privileged  position, or for others because they do not know or do not think there is an an alternative.  Before the fall of the Bastille everybody believed that the French monarchy would last forever. Before the 1917 Revolution in Russia no one believed that the Czarist regime would fall. There is no reason whatsoever to despair of human progress. What appears to us impossible today is done tomorrow. Today’s dream is tomorrow’s reality.

Work for Socialism

Radicals  have been known to summarise the demands of reformists as “longer chains, bigger cages.” If you start by asking for crumbs, at best you’ll get small crumbs. Given the immensity of problems the world faces, including declining living standards, surely we deserve much more.

Economists, intellectuals and trade union leaders were once united in the belief that a shorter working day was fast approaching. The machines would shoulder more and more of the toil, they believed, leaving lots of time off for workers. A three- or four-day week would be ample to procure the necessities of life. The increase in leisure would be spent pursuing healthy recreations.

This was the view of John Maynard Keynes, who wrote in 1930 that by 2030 all economic problems would have been solved and the only issue left to deal with would be how to enjoy doing nothing without having a nervous breakdown. He was an opponent of the work ethic. “We have been trained too long to strive and not to enjoy,” he wrote in “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren”, predicting that in 100 years’ time, “We shall honour those who can teach us how to pluck the hour and the day virtuously and well, the delightful people who are capable of taking direct enjoyment in things, the lilies of the field who toil not, neither do they spin.”

Bertrand Russell shared this disdain for striving and argued for the four-hour day. Oscar Wilde had also predicted that the machine would be the saviour of man and would lead everyone to enjoy the life. His contemporary, Walt Whitman, wrote of the ideal he called “higher progress”, in other words the liberation of human beings from wage slavery. The second United States president, John Adams, forecast that his grandchildren would have the time to study “painting, poetry, music, architecture” and the other liberal arts, in short, that everyday life would be organised to allow the “pursuit of happiness”.

Things didn’t quite turn out like that. In the hands of a capitalist élite, supported by governments in most cases, the machine became an instrument for the creation of huge profits for a few, while the majority toiled long hours. Trades unions forgot about shorter hours and quality of life and instead concentrated on wages and conditions.  Long-hours culture has become the norm.

 The Jimmy Reid Foundation, named after the late trade union activist released a report titled “Time for Life”, recommending that Scotland reduce the working week. Work should be more evenly spread out, says the report.

The New Economics Foundation (NEF), also campaigns for a shorter workweek. In 2013 it published a pamphlet called Time on Our Side: Why We All Need a Shorter Working Week. The authors say that the UK has the longest working hours of any European country. They also claim that productivity does not suffer when the working week is shortened because work is carried out more efficiently (the three-day week in the 1970s, for example, led to a drop of only 6 per cent in productivity.)  In 2012, the NEF published a charming pamphlet also calling for a shorter working week. National Gardening Leave: Why Britain Would Be Better Off if We All Spent Less Time at the Office.

The city council at Gothenburg, Sweden’s second-largest city, has announced that it is to begin a year-long 30-hour week trial for city workers. “We hope to get the staff members taking fewer sick days and feeling better mentally and physically after they’ve worked shorter days,” said Mats Pilhem, the deputy mayor.

In the early 20th century, workers across the world campaigned for the eight-hour day. In the US Kellogg’s introduced a six-hour day on 1 December 1930 which lasted till 1985. The State of Utah introduced a four-day workweek in 2008.

The Socialist Party pursues a vision of a society ruled by use value rather than exchange value, a society beyond money, the market and prices, an actively democratic society of producer-citizens, a society that overcomes the dualism of leaders and the led. Parliamentary action is at times useful, but in proportion as it also makes for economic emancipation of the workers. Socialist men and women in Parliament can only do effective work there in proportion to economic and social organisation of the majority outside. The politicians of today attaches so much importance to ‘getting elected’ that their chief concern has become that of getting votes, thereby neglecting what used to be the main endeavour, the education of the worker. The purpose of socialism is to educate and organise the worker to the extent that he or she will see and feel the necessity for the fullest share of economic freedom.

The Socialist Party declines to prescribe the arrangements and institutions of the future society. This would actually constrain free movement and deny human agency. It is the reality of shaping their own practice by the proletariat, on the basis of actual relations and an actual class struggle which matters, not any abstract model of revolutionary organisation or future society. What matters is class movement. What we can – and do - is to provide a clear set of principles to orient action and organisation. Thus we  argue for proletarian self-emancipation, workers control of the production process, rational organisation and democratic planning for the common good, distribution according to need. The Socialist Party does not wish to direct the workers movement: it wants the workers  movement to relearn to direct itself.

Figures Don't Lie

Recent figures released by various bodies have amply illustrated the vast differences in ownership in Britain. 'Oxfam recently reported that five billionaire families controlled the same wealth as 20% of the population. Britain's richest 1% have accumulated as much wealth as the poorest 55% of the population put together, according to the latest official analysis of who owns the nation's £9.5tn of property, pensions and financial assets.' (Guardian 15 May)That last figure about the richest 1% came from the Office of National Statistics. Such statistics give the lie to the politicians claim that "we are all in this together." RD

What is Socialism?

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is an organisation of convinced socialists who put forward the case that socialism can come only through the conscious and determined action of the working-class movement in this and other countries. More and more workers are questioning the whole capitalist set-up, and seeing more clearly that we have a common enemy–the ruling class of the bloodsucking rich, who live off the wealth we produce. Too many times the working class have been deceived that the abolition of the capitalist system can be postponed until tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow.

Socialism is the name given to that form of society where there is no such thing as a propertyless class, but in which the whole community own the means of production, the land, factories, mills, mines, transport and all the means whereby wealth is created and distributed to the community. Socialism stands for social or common property. Capitalism stands for private property. Socialism is a society without classes. Capitalism is divided into classes—the class owning property and the propertyless working class. The goal of Socialism is the classless society.  It is only by the abolition of the reign of capitalism and the establishment of socialism that humanity can come into the fulness of its heritage. Socialism alone can give its true meaning to the whole idea of human justice. We maintain that the means of production and wealth accumulated by humanity should be at the disposal of all.  According to us, every man and woman has a right to the means of development which society has created. Socialism is not an academic or utopian conception. To fight for socialism is consciously to struggle for the overthrow of capitalism and the State.

Socialism

·         The planet earth and its resources are the common heritage of all humankind

·         society is capable of producing an abundance of all the things we need so we need not be restricted by the  size of our wages

·         Capitalism has brought us to the threshold of a permanent golden age for our species, where the individual needs of each and every one of us can be met by existing technology

·         We  have at our disposal the potential to live truly fulfilling lives according to our inclinations.

·         For the working class, in the present age of potential plenty, rationing by the money system is an outdated way of distributing goods.

·         In an age when we could produce for use without anyone going short, producing for sale and profit is an obstacle to the real satisfaction of human needs and desires.

·         Socialism would mean the earth and its resources owned in common by the entire global community.

·         With the natural and technical resources of the world held in common and controlled democratically, the sole object of production would be to meet human needs

·         Democracy in socialism will mean everybody having the right to participate in deciding what is produced and how global resources will be used.

·         Productive activity will be chosen and undertaken voluntary  by human being with a view to producing the things they need in order to live and enjoy life, without any concern for capital investment, profit, wages, stock market or share holders.

·         There will be no class of wage workers to produce profits for the minority

·         Everybody would have free access to the goods and services

·         Socialism will mean an end to buying, selling and money.

The world and its resources should not be owned and controlled by a tiny minority; they are the common heritage of all humankind

Cricket And Corruption

Anti-corruption forces are assessing evidence of widespread fixing obtained from the former New Zealand Test batsman Lou Vincent, including allegations relating to matches in the English domestic Twenty20 Cup and Pro40 competitions. 'Vincent, 35, who revealed in December he would co-operate with detectives and confessed to an International Cricket Council tribunal investigating fixing in Bangladesh earlier this year that he had been approached by an illegal bookmaker, has provided the names of players he claims were involved in spot-fixing and allegations over which matches were targeted, according to a report in the Daily Telegraph.' (Guardian, 15 May) Capitalism corrupts everything it touches even the once thought of sacrosanct game of cricket. RD

The Profit Motive

The insanity of capitalism with its profits before people motivation is everywhere apparent. Millions spent on armaments while people die from lack of basic medical treatment, immense wealth accumulated by a tiny minority of parasites while millions die from lack of clean water and food, but the following news item probably sums up the madness best. 'In a wide-ranging interview with the India-based Economic Times, Cargill CEO David MacLennan talks about how the globe-spanning agribusiness giant managed to turn the 2008 economic crisis into a "record year of profits" a remarkable performance, given that that year's food-price spikes pushed 115 million people into hunger, as the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization estimated.' (Mother Jones, 2 April) RD

Time for social revolution

Capitalism is an exchange economy in which most wealth, from ordinary consumer goods to vast industrial plants and other producer goods, takes the form of commodities, or items of wealth that have been produced with a view to sale on a market.

Although states have intervened in capitalism ever since it came into existence, in so far as the aim was merely to interfere with the operation of world market forces, their intervention was only at the level of the division, not the production, of surplus value. However, over the past 100 or so years, there has been a definite trend in capitalism for states to go beyond merely trying to distort the world market, and to involve themselves in the actual production of wealth by establishing and operating state enterprises.

If state capitalism is not socialism, what is? In other words, if state ownership and government management of production does not amount to the abolition of capitalism but only to a change in the institutional framework within which it operates, what would be the essential features of a society in which capitalism had been abolished?

The feature of the present political situation is that the workers and exploited are beginning to take their determined steps in independent political action. The workers are being driven to this course by the ever-growing oppression of the employers and the increased use of the government powers against them in their struggles. The producers are being united in their fight against the common oppressor. This uprising of the workers is of tremendous significance in the development of the class struggle. This movement is an instinctive, elementary expression of their awakening class consciousness. It is not an artificial creation but on the contrary it is the natural, healthy reaction of the workers to the pressure of their condition.

 What can we learn from history about building an anti-capitalist coalition? With well over a hundred years of experience produces a  number of valuable lessons for our consideration. There have been no lack of attempts to assemble an alliance of forces strong enough to defeat the capitalists and the corporations.  The historic record is littered with the wreckage of the political parties patched together to do that job. None of them succeeded. Once more we are encouraged to organise a coalition and  the formation of a new third party movement opposed to the old parties. Not a particularly new initiative although they may seem so to inexperienced people unacquainted with left-wing politics.

The history of the traditional “Left” has been marked by oscillations between the alternatives of reforming the Labour Party  or challenging the two-party system with a “progressive” third party coalition but rarely on an anti-capitalist programme. Both trends confine themselves to the aim of reforming capitalism, not replacing it with a socialised  economy. Each election the Left has gyrated from one of these positions to the other backing the Labour Party candidates as the lesser evil or creating a Left alternative.

 Reformers offer a compromise, and forget that they will have to compromise that compromise.  Capitalism has produced a vast number of social sores and it is very tempting for the capitalist politician to deal with each of them separately and by itself. The more, however, we go on trying to remove theses evils by palliative remedies, the more does it become clear that they can only be abolished by the abolition of capitalism itself. Capitalists are not long before they have discovered means to compensate themselves, and the people enjoys the privilege of having won a meaningless principle.

Some on the left-wing argue the justification for ameliorative measures 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 show 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 great danger, however, arises when activists  try to persuade the workers as well as themselves that socialism only means the sum of a number of such regulations and legislations is also socialism. By that means socialists gets the credit for measures which are in all but the name measures for defending capitalism against socialism and all the disadvantages which arise from these acts are ascribed to and discredit socialism.  Has it not been repeatedly shown that it would be simpler and better to concentrate our efforts on the abolition of capitalist control of industry than on any attempts to reform it – that is not to say that we need reject any attempts from the capitalist side to reform capitalism, but we ought to regard them as what they are, as attempts to prolong the death agony of capitalism. The more cool we show ourselves about supporting reforms, the more keen will their capitalist champions become in promoting them. Our business should then be to show how inadequate all such reforms must be to remove the evils from which the workers were suffering. Above all is the need to demonstrate in our tactics 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 danger of poverty, want and war.

Workers overlook the fact that it is their will, the collective will of their class for which they are fighting. When we talk about the inevitability of socialism we assume that the workers will continue to struggle for their rights. Were they, on the other hand, to accept the word in a fatalist sense, and think that they could passively and tamely sit back and wait till socialism came to them, they would soon lose all the rights that they have now and become mere slaves.  It  has often been said that socialism can only come when the possibilities of capitalist production have been exhausted, but chief among these possibilities is the willingness of the workers to allow themselves to be exploited. Were the workers, both politically and economically, so class conscious and so organised as to make their exploitation impossible then capitalism would have reached the end of its tether. That is what we understand by social revolution, and our ideal – that of human cooperation – is revolutionary, because it is only to be realised by the social revolution.

Some Consolation

At one time Britain was the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world but these days are long gone. There is one economic category though where Britain still leads the world. 'The number of billionaires living in the UK has risen to more than 100 for the first time, according to the 2014 Sunday Times Rich List. There are now 104 billionaires based in the UK with a combined wealth of more than £301bn, the list says. That means the UK has more billionaires per head of population than any other country.' (BBC News, 11 May) This must be a wonderful boost to Britain's unemployed and homeless! RD

A Real Night Out

Newspapers and TV are fond of depicting the working class as dissolute spend-thrift boozers with stories of bottle-strewn  street battles in city centres, but a worker's night out is nothing compared to the antics of the owning class. 'How much can two Russian millionaires spend during a three-hour drinking spree in a Mayfair bar? The answer, according to one recent frenzy of bibulous willy-waving was £130,000, a figure that included 96 bottles of Dom Perignon, 30 magnums of Cristal, two magnums of Belvedere and, rather mundanely, several dozen cans of Red Bull.' (Sunday Times, 11 May) A £130,000 bar bill? Now that is a night out! RD

Towards Socialism

The capitalist class possess few in number yet the largest amount of wealth. Both the  Conservative and Labour Parties represent them.Political leaders are ready to make all kinds of wonderful promises for a beautiful future time when they shall be the government. But for the workers in their present troubles they have no help or guidance what to do. Capitalist politicians have often proclaimed a new world which would lead to a new Heaven on Earth. But the only road to salvation for the workers is the path of revolution.  Capitalism can only maintain itself by driving down the workers, by harder and harder exploitation. Longer hours, lower wages and more misery.  It is the same struggle of all the workers all over the world.  To demonstrate our strength and our unity we must stand together. No worker must stand against a worker to the advantage of the capitalists. Working people who try to find a way clear through the hardships of present-day conditions are faced with a hard task.

 The worker lives by selling the use of his body—the employer lives by buying that use. It lies in the nature of things that the buyer should on instinct struggle to buy cheap and the seller to sell dear. Hence it was a foregone conclusion that the history of the relations between employer and employee—between “capital” and “labour”—should be one of conflict between these two, a constant battle over the price of the commodity labour-power—over wages, hours, and working conditions. The working class is thus a commodity slave class, serving as a source of profit to the capitalists.

The capitalist text-book will tell us that when the worker wants more money, the boss refuses, the worker throws up his job and seeks another. There are still some who are foolish to still   believe that the relation between worker and boss is one of equality because if the worker doesn’t like his job he can resign and look for another. Even in the days when jobs were easy to find the “equality” existed mostly in the imagination.

The capitalists, not only own or control the chief means whereby we work and live, but, in fact, control the whole governing machine. They pull the strings. And they use their power to make themselves richer and richer—at our expense. They hire workers to make profit out of their labour; their capitalist production is for profit, not for use: and to get more profit they slash wages, carry through speed-up and worsen conditions. This mad race for profit ends in a crisis; and then they try to get out of the crisis—and we pay the price. Poverty, insecurity and now hunger are making inroads in the homes of millions: low wages, long hours, to the point of physical exhaustion, is the lot of the workers if they are “lucky”“ enough to even have a job. The result is increases in the number of industrial accidents or occupational illnesses, more sickness and a higher death-rate amongst the working-class . This is Britain to-day for working men, women and their families. But British workers are not blind to the fact that the British capitalist class is just as ruthless and savage as any other capitalist class. Workers are facing the fact that all capitalism has nothing to offer and that they nor their families have any hope or future under capitalism.

There is no need for a single worker to be overworked or in dread of losing his job; no reason why an unemployed worker should lack the necessaries of life. All over the world millions of workers are year by year coming to realise these facts and to see that nothing except the existence of capitalism prevents them building up for themselves a decent and secure world. Everywhere the workers are becoming less and less willing to put up with an entirely unnecessary state of semi-starvation. They are showing themselves more and more determined to insist upon their right to food, clothing and shelter for themselves and their families. But to get this, capitalism must be overthrow. How can the workers end Capitalism? Without breaking the power of the capitalists it is impossible to get rid of capitalism or to build socialism. It is a question of votes and of political power. The answer is revolution.  The workers have the power to overthrow capitalism. It is the capitalists who are powerless.  It is the workers who are strong from the very moment that they unite, organise and resist.

Socialism - a system of society in which production would be controlled and directed by the workers in the interest of the workers - is a conceivable alternative to the existing system. Apart from tolerating this existing system in the hope that by patching and mending, wangling and contriving it can later on be made somehow it will become less and less unbearable—apart from this option, socialism is the only alternative before people. The co-operative commonwealth that has been the aim of generations of working-class in this country will attain its full meaning and realisation only with the ending of capitalist rule. It will mean that the capitalists will be deprived of their ownership and control of the factories, mines, transport. All these means of production which they have used and misused only to make profits for the bosses and poverty for the workers will be taken from them and will end production for profit and instead will carry on production for use. The needs of all will be met, and new needs and pleasures now denied to the working class will be created and satisfied by a socialist organisation and extension of production.

True only a tiny minority of workers call themselves socialists. It matters little how people describe themselves. More important is that they do the things that they should and must do, or suffer defeat and hardship from refusing to take that course. The essential thing is the direction in which things are moving.  

The Gap Widens

The legal dispute over a divorce settlement between  Silvio Belusconi and his second wife shows the enormous gap between the millions who are trying to survive on $2 a day and the obscene wealth of the owning class.'Her demand for a one-off payment of 540 million euros (£440 million) caused talks to break down. Belusconi, who is worth an estimated 6.5 billion euros, is said to be willing to offer her 200 million euros.' (Times, 10 May) RD