Human rights mean the right to be human

The Socialist Party strives for the triumph of the social revolution and argues that advances of human society in economy, science, technology and standards of civic life have already created the material conditions necessary to set up a free society without classes, exploitation and oppression, i.e. a world socialist community. It is useless attempting to confine socialism to its bare economic formula. People insist on knowing what its outlook is on the other aspects of human life.

 Apologists for capitalism claim that respect for individual and civil rights is a hallmark and a lynchpin of their system. The truth is that out of the  billions of people who live under the rule of capital today, only a fraction, and that only in a handful of countries, can be said to enjoy any sort of stipulated and fairly stable individual and civil rights. The lot of the overwhelming majority of people in the capitalist world is a more or less absolute lack of political rights, despotic regimes and organised state terrorism and violence.

But even in the industrialised countries of Western Europe and North America these rights are merely a fraction of rights and liberties that people demand and deserve today. Moreover, the economic subjugation of working people by capital and the direct relation that exists between civil rights, on the one hand, and property, on the other, make these rights devoid of any real or serious meaning. Besides, the experience of people in these countries during times of economic crisis clearly shows that the survival of even these nominal rights directly corresponds to the economic circumstances of the capitalist class, and that they readily come under attack whenever they have got in the way of profitability and accumulation of capital.

Genuine individual and civil liberties can only be realised in a society that is itself free. By eliminating class and economic subjugation, the social revolution will open the way for the most far-reaching freedoms and opportunities for the individual's self-expression in the various domains of life.

In this capitalist society religion will never die out. This is, above all, an age of fear, and fear and superstition are age-long twins. Only the social revolution will destroy religion by abolishing its effective causes. Today gods and capitalists stand together: Tomorrow, gods and capitalists will fall together.

Human equality is a central concept and a basic principle of the free socialist society that must be founded with the abolition of the class exploitative system of capitalism. Socialist equality is a concept much wider than mere equality before the law. Socialists equality is the real equality of all people in economic, social and political domains. Equality not only in political rights but also in the enjoyment of material resources and the products of humanity's collective effort; equality in social status and economic relations; equality not only before the law but in the relations of people with each other. Socialist equality, which is at the same time the necessary condition for the development of people's different abilities and talents and for society's material and intellectual vitality, can only be realised by ending the division of people into classes. Class society by definition cannot be an equal and free society.

As long as capital dominates human society, as long as people have to sell their labour power to the owners of means of production and work for capital in order to make a living, and as long as the system of wage-labour and the buying and selling of human labour power survives, no labour law, no matter how many clauses it contains in favour of workers, will truly free labour. They who buy and they who sell in the labour market are alike de-humanised by the traffic of human beings. The workers' true freedom is the abolition of the wages system and the creation of a society where all contribute, voluntarily and according to their abilities, to the production of necessities of life and the welfare of all, and share in the products of this collective effort according to their needs.

Socialism is the enemy of Nationalism

Socialism is the enemy of Nationalism

Book Review from the December 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nation et lutte de classe by Otto Strasser and Anton Pannekoek (Union generale d'editions, Paris.)

Before the first world war, Austria was a multi-national empire in which the Emperor and his bureaucracy ruled not only over Germans and Hungarians but also over Czechs, Poles, Ukrainians, Croats, Slovenes and others. As a result theoretical discussion of "the national question" became a speciality of Austrian Social Democracy. The problem was particularly acute in Bohemia where Germans and Czechs lived side by side and where a language quarrel raged over schools, jobs in civil service, signs in railway stations, and so on. Even the Social Democratic Party was not immune, the Czech party splitting in 1905 into those who wanted a separate Czechoslovakia and those prepared to work with the German-speaking party within the Austrian Empire.

Orthodox Social Democracy found difficulty in arguing against the Czech separatists since they were too nationalists, regarding the nation not only as a legitimate political form but even as the suitable framework for "socialism". However, within the Social Democratic movement, there were people who insisted on the world-wide nature of socialism and on the incompatibility between nationalism and socialism. They called themselves "intransigent internationalists". Among these were the authors of two pamphlets, first published in 1912, recently translated into French and published together as a single book: Otto Strasser, editor of a local German-language Social Democratic paper in Reichenberg (then in Austrian Bohemia, now in Czechoslovakia and called Liberec) and Anton Pannekoek, a native of the Netherlands then active in the Social Democratic Party in North Germany.

In his pamphlet L'Ouvrier et la nation (The Worker and the Nation), Strasser takes the various arguments of the nationalists as to why workers should regard themselves as part of a nation with a common interest (such as language, land of birth, national character) and demolishes them one by one. He also attacks those Social Democrats who argued that the best way to beat the nationalists was to meet them on their own ground by showing how the Social Democratic programme was in the "national interest". This (which was in practice the policy of the Social Democratic Party) was, said Strasser, self-defeating and should be opposed.

Pannekoek's pamphlet Lutte de Classe et Nation (Class Struggle and Nation) is more theoretical. He accepts the definition of nation given by Otto Bauer, the Austrian party's leading theoretician, viz. "a human grouping linked by a common destiny and a common character". He sees, however, nations as the product of the era of the rising bourgeoisie; at that time capitalists and workers did indeed have a "common destiny" against the forces of feudalism. But, with the development of capitalism, the class struggle more and more breaks out between capitalists and workers shattering their "common destiny".

For the workers the nation then comes to be replaced by the class as the "common destiny". Becoming class conscious, therefore, involves rejecting nationalism. He describes the "national conflict' in multi-national States such as Austria as merely an aspect of the competition between the capitalists within such states, with the different sections using language and nationalism to try to win mass support for their vested interests. He advocates that workers speaking the same language finding themselves divided between two different states (he gives as an example Ukrainian-speakers who were then to be found in both Austro-Hungary and Russia) should not form a single cross-frontier party, but should join the Social Democratic party of the state in which they happened to live, in order to help the struggle to win political power in that state.

Pannekoek emphasises the world, rather than inter-national, character of socialism:

The socialist mode of production does not develop opposing interests between nations as is the case with the capitalist mode of production. The economic unit is neither the State nor the nation, but the world. This mode of production is much more than a network of national production units linked with each other by an intelligent communications policy and by international conventions as described by Bauer on page 519. It is an organisation of world production as a unit and the common affair of the whole of humanity (Pannekoek's emphasis).

For him, "nations" will only survive in world socialism as groups speaking the same language and even then a single world language may evolve.

For all their criticism of the national policy of the Social Democratic parties, Strasser and Pannekoek were themselves Social Democrats and (at this time) shared many of their illusions, particularly that a socialist party should have a maximum (socialism) and a minimum (social and democratic reforms within capitalism) programme. This mistaken belief that socialists should try to combine the struggle for socialism with a struggle for reforms comes out occasionally in the text of both pamphlets. But this does not detract from the fact that both pamphlets put essentially the socialist case against nationalism.

Adam Buick

Barbering Without A Licence!

The militarization of the police, border guards and other agencies in our society is highlighted in the figures published by the Toronto Star (March 29). In 1980, SWAT teams were deployed three thousand times in the US. Now the figure is 50,000. The Homeland Security disbursed $35 billion in 2002-2011 to police forces for heavy weaponry. And the result of all this force? In a Swat sweep in Florida, thirty-four people were arrested for 'barbering without a licence'. In Keene, New Hampshire, $286,000 was spent for an armoured personal carrier to patrol the Pumpkin Festival and other 'dangerous situations'. It would be hard to make this stuff up, but in capitalism, expect the unexpected, especially from the Great Pumpkin in the sky! John Ayers

A Dangerous Society

Capitalism is a dangerous society. If it doesn't kill you in one of its wars, starve you to death in a world hunger it can get rid of you just by breathing. 'Nearly half of all Americans live in areas with unhealthy levels of air pollution, according to an American Lung Association (ALA) report released Wednesday. Nearly 148 million people live in areas where smog and soot particles make it unhealthy to breathe the air, according to the ALA's annual study on US air quality.' (Guardian 30, April) In Britain the pollution levels cause the deaths of many thousands. 'Ambulance calls for people with breathing problems rose by 14 per cent in London, where pollution levels reached the maximum alert level.' (Times, 26 May) RD

Anti-capitalist to the core

Capitalism is a system based on production for profit, not for human need. This system is driven by the necessity to accumulate profit, which means that capitalists compete with one another, both nationally and internationally. The capitalist class is a ruling class whose ownership and control of the means of production is based on the exploitation of the working class. Thus, a small minority rules society. Competing capitalists produce war, poverty and crisis. The struggle between the classes will produce the overthrow of capitalist society. The working class has the capacity to end exploitation and oppression. Capitalism needs the working class; the working class does not need capitalism. The working class the predominant social class numerically and in terms of potential strength once it has achieved self-confidence and a militancy, plus political co-ordination. Independent working class action can create a society based on production for human need, democratically controlled by the majority, organising at the point of production and in the localities. This would not mean a State takeover of the means of production, but workers’ control of all aspects of society and at all levels, local, regional and world-scale. Such a society does not exist in any country today nor has done in the past.

A brief glance at the situation in our country – a situation comparable to that of a good many other countries – reveals without doubt that the employers are committed to increasing and intensifying the exploitation of their workforce. Economic conditions of recession mean unemployment, the lowering of living conditions and social miseries of all kinds. If we look at the activities of the State, we see an increase in the powers of repression: the police can do anything they want and what was formerly illegal has become legal in regards to the constant surveillance. As for  migrant workers, they are being treated like cattle, imported and exported according to the needs of capitalist production. It is just not a “just society” we live in.

 The capitalist to remain competitive requires to reduce the costs of production and to increase productivity, in other words, to produce as much merchandise with the least possible work and, more important, paying the lowest possible wages. Why does the bosses want to remain competitive? Simply because it wants to develop its markets, accumulate profits and invest them everywhere in the world. Remaining competitive is the desire of all the world’s capitalists. They all want to monopolise international markets as well as to open to investment other regions around the world. But rivalry has its limits. When facing competitive rivals, many capitalists nations generally find no better strategy than to trigger-off a war in order to eliminate  bothersome competitors and thereby expand their own international spheres of influence. Capitalism has only one function and that is to employ and exploit workers for profit.

How do we get out of this vicious circle of crises, wars and more crises and more war? The one and only way is the socialist revolution and it is part of the socialist’s responsibility to clearly indicate the road to revolution. Of course, capitalism produces unemployment. Of course, the only answer to unemployment is employment. Of course security and full employment are not possible under capitalism. Of course, the answer is destroy capitalism and build socialism. Of course, this is only possible with revolution. Nor should workers be diverted by such false slogans as ‘workers management’ meaning also control of unemployment by initiating redundancies if the market demands it. The fight for employment is the fight for dignity and will be learned in the lesson there is no end save the end of capitalism.

The Socialist Party’s aim is to assist in the organisation of the working class in the struggle for power and the transformation of the existing social order. All its activities, its methods and its organisational structure are subordinated to this purpose. The Socialist Party is a democratic political party open to all those who understand and accept its declaration of principles and object.  Our purpose is to rally workers who aspire to socialism not to take office. 

More Religious Nonsense

Two completely unrelated events have recently occurred which a couple of religious leaders have construed as some sort of divine intervention. The Austrian singer Conchita Wurst , who is a drag artist, triumphed at this year's Eurovision with the song Rise Like a Phoenix; and over 50 people were killed by flooding in the Balkans. 'However, Patriarch Amfilohije of Montenegro said he believed the floods, which have forced almost 150,000 people from their homes, were divine punishment for her success. .......  Patriarch Irinej, the spiritual leader of Eastern Orthodox Serbs, also reportedly said that "God is thus washing Serbia of its sins". (Sunday Express, 25 May)) In a world torn by military conflict, poverty and hunger you would think the holy men's deity would be too busy to tune into TV's Eurovision, wouldn't you? RD

More Religious Hypocrisy

The Church of England has admitted it is struggling to sell its investment in Wonga because it could lose up to £9m in a disposal. The admission comes almost a year after the archbishop of Canterbury, pledged to sell the Church's indirect holding in the payday lender, which he said "destroyed" lives. 'The Church, which last summer promised to "compete Wonga out of existence" but was a day later revealed to be an investor, said on Friday that it may not be able to sell its stake for "some considerable time". (Guardian, 23 May) On a Sunday morning the archbishop will wax eloquent about "blessed are the poor" and the old story about a rich man having as much difficulty entering heaven as a camel getting through the eye of a needle, but he wont reveal that the Church Commissioners manage £6.1bn of church assets and they are concerned that an early disposal of Wonga got set them back £9m. RD

The Vatican Under Fire

The present Pope is trying his best to project a new caring image of the papacy to wipe out the previous bad publicity about financial and sexual deviance in the Vatican, but some of the stigma will just not go away. 'The Vatican on Friday faced criticism from a United Nations panel for the second time this year over failures to report priests accused of sexually abusing children to civil authorities or to ensure redress for victims. The panel, which is monitoring the Holy See's compliance with an international treaty prohibiting torture, called on the Vatican "to take effective measures" to monitor the behaviour of individuals under its control and prevent abuse.' (New York Times, 23 May) Maybe the Pope should play to his strengths - and call for a miracle! RD

Warning: Class Warfare Ahead

Humanity has reached a turning point in its history. The dreams of the past have become real possibilities  because the material conditions necessary for achieving them are here now. Socialist society is based on the free association of all individuals who work together to produce the goods necessary for their collective well-being, there will no longer be any no separation between private and common interest. exist. If socialists are to place a practical utopia at everyone's reach it means to create a mass movement, to give it the form of a real collective will of the spontaneous transformation of human relationships.

The economic struggle against the capitalist offensive inevitably raises the question of politics, because in every large-scale struggle the capitalist class mobilises all the forces of the capitalist state against the working class. They have placed on the statute book laws, which prevents the workers in one industry coming to the assistance, with industrial action of the workers of another industry engaged in a trade dispute, though no law has been passed to prevent the employers in one industry from helping the business owners in another industry during such a dispute.

The more the workers unite their forces and commence to struggle against the capitalist offensive, the more the struggle becomes a political struggle, not between the workers and any group of capitalists, but between the workers and the capitalist state representing the capitalist class as a whole. The solution to the basic problems of  people can only come as the result of a transformation of our society. That is, only socialism can provide the context to build a society free from exploitation, racism, oppression and war.  It is through the state apparatus that the  capitalists exercise their dictatorship. The rule of capital cannot be ended without the overthrow of this apparatus. The working,class is basically disunited. There are no united struggles of the entire working class, and the capitalists have been able to split the working class. As a result, struggles are being fought in isolation from the entire working class, but against the entire capitalist class. The unity of the entire working class is absolutely necessary and essential. It is the most urgent responsibility of the class conscious workers to take up the task of uniting the working class against the capitalist class and their system and to to organise the un-organised workers. Solidarity and unity are the very soul of the workers movement.

The capitalist system dominates our lives from birth to death. Its domination is based on the fact that the means of production – the mines, the buildings, the machines, and the vast majority of land – is the private property of the small but powerful capitalist class. Workers do not own the means of production. Therefore workers are forced to sell their labor-power to capitalists in order to survive. The capitalists do not pay us for the amount of work we do. They are only willing to pay us wages for part of the value we produce, only the wages which are absolutely necessary to maintain ourselves and our families. The rest of the value we produce, the surplus value, gets converted into their profits when they sell the products, the goods and services, we produce for them. This process is the exploitation of labour where a portion of our labour becomes their only source of profit!  Our daily experience in production is one of struggle, not peace! Furthermore, our understanding of capitalism shows that the interests of the propertied capitalist class are opposite those of the property-less working class. Greater profits and wealth for them means lower wages and deteriorating living conditions for working people.

Is this robbery? Yes, it is! What’s more, it is legalised theft! It is the law itself that upholds the rights of private property, especially their right to steal part of the value of our labour. It is the law itself which upholds the repressive authority of the bosses over us in our work. And it is the force of the police, the courts, the prisons, and the armed forces that are used against us when we resist. The entire government is a tool of the capitalist class.

The history of capitalism is the history of workers  resistance, at first individually and then collectively in unions. The wages and benefits we enjoy above subsistence are largely the result of militant struggle by the working class. The economic struggle has had to take on the government – police attacks, court injunctions, spies in the unions, government troops. Concessions have been wrenched from the capitalist class – the right to form unions, the right to strike, protective legislation against unfair dismissal or discrimination. But concessions are never permanent. We are seeing them being chipped away. We losing some of what our class has painfully won in the past. The current attacks on unions shows that the capitalist class knows what we know – that the strength of the working class lies in its organized will to fight. Confronting them are the mass organisations of the working class, the unions. But the unions are not united!

The history of capitalism is also a history of the workers’ struggles to abolish capitalism and build socialism. A truly socialist society is one in which  capitalism does not exist. It does not have two classes of people, a lower class composed of people who work for their living, and an upper class of people who live off the work of others, no person exploits another. In a socialism  the only people who live on the work of others, and who have the right to be dependent upon their fellows, are children, people who are too old and frail to support themselves and the sick and the disabled.

Who Owns Scotland

“Setting a target for completing the register of land ownership will bring closer the day when there is a definitive answer to the question: 'Who owns Scotland?' ” Dr Alison Elliot Land Reform Review Group
Registers of Scotland has been asked to finish the register in a decade.”
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-27555854

Does it really take 10 years to answer this question. Socialist Courier can quickly answer it right now.

Who owns Scotland? - Not you! 

Food For Thought

The Russian daily newspaper, Izvestia, published a letter written by the late Mikhail Kalishnikov a few months before his death in which he pours out his anguish about his invention, the AK-47 rifle, " The pain in my soul is unbearable. I keep asking myself the same unsolvable question – if my assault rifle took people's lives, it means that I, Mikhail Kalishnikov, son of a farmer and Orthodox Christian, am responsible for people's deaths. The longer I live, the more often that question gets into my brain, the deeper I go in my thoughts and guess about why The Almighty allowed humans to have devilish desires of envy, greed, and aggression." Another example of someone who makes a fortune and isn't happy, but it is humans and the system they are forced to operate in that creates such a situation. A cooperative socialist world would have no need of rifles, envy, greed, or aggression. John Ayers

Doing Anything Will Take A Lot O Money

The UN International Panel on Climate Change has agreed to state in its upcoming report that global warming has inflicted irreversible damage to corral reefs and arctic sea ice and warning of serious climatic effects if we stand still and do nothing. Unfortunately, 'doing' anything will take lots of money that can only come from profits and thus practically nothing will be done until the effects of warming impinge on profits. By then, it may well be too late, not to mention the death and damage done in the meantime. John Ayers

Together Towards Socialism

The right of private property, the right of a few to own and control the means by which all must live, the right of the owners of the means of production to utilise it to exploit the rest of the community in the interest of their personal profit, the right to determine what shall be produced and how, regardless of the misery and wretchedness of those who produce it, the right to exploit, the right to rob, the right to cause crises, the right to compete and the right to cause wars. These so-called rights are the basic cause of capitalist ills.

And the answer? The abolition of the right of private property, and instead the common ownership of the means of production, so that all may enjoy the fruit of their labour, and consume it, thus eliminating economic crises and the crises of military wars. The Socialist Party want to see society changed. We want to see it transformed from a thing of wars and recessions, to a real brotherhood of man; but powerful, wealthy people don’t want it changed, because they have a vested interest in it.

Karl Marx wrote that “philosophers have only interpreted the world differently, but the point is to change it.” The working class will change the capitalist world when they understand it. There can be no doubt about the paramount importance to the workers of political education. For the workers to be conscious of the present situation of their class, how it grew out of the past, and whither it tends in the future, that is what really matters. In this respect, there are some encouraging signs. We do not envisage that the struggle for socialism is a piecemeal process as advocated by the gradualist reformers. Our aim is the unity of the working class movement, and, its political unification into one party based on socialist principles. No small groups of conspirators could bring about the changes we believe are necessary; this will take the power of the great majority of the people organised and determined to make a change.

Capitalism produces its own grave-diggers, the masses of the wage workers and they reach a point where it is no longer possible to live, they see the limitations of the trade union struggle in the persistence of insecurity.  Socialism grows from the conditions of existence in capitalist countries. It grows from the injustices and suffering of masses of the people through poverty, war and repression of the right of the people to strive for a better way of life. It grows because of the contradictions of capitalism itself, which cannot expand and increase its profits without imposing heavier burdens on the working people, dragging them into wars, economic crises.

Marx said “Capitalism brought into being by the laws of historical evolution will be destroyed by the inexorable working of these same laws.”

 Private ownership must go, common ownership must take its place. The day has passed for patching up the capitalist system; it must go. With socialism the state will disappear and the principle will operate of  “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Under a system of ownership and administration by a majority of the people one set of human beings could no longer exploit and cruelly abuse others for personal profit. Socialism is a reorganisation of society on the basis of ownership by the working people of the land, mines, factories, means of transport, as well as the health, educational and cultural services required to fulfill their needs. The Socialist Party maintains that there can be no fundamental change in the living conditions of the people while a minority holds economic power in the natural resources of society and in the right to exploit the majority for individual advantages. The basis of exploitation — the use of men and women for personal profits and power — lie in the capitalist system. Reforms do not remove the villain of the piece from the scene of action. The fundamental basis of a true socialist society must be change from a capitalist system of ownership, exploitation and control to one of ownership, administration and control of the affairs of society by the men and women who produce its wealth. Socialists consider it necessary to provide for material needs in order that men and women may develop their highest mental and spiritual facilities. A plant grows to its most perfect flowering and finest fruit in good soil.

Socialists do not want bloody revolution. Revolution means change. There have been revolutions in the arts, in industry and social relations which have not caused bloodshed. The Socialist Party believe that the new system of social ownership and administration can be introduced by capturing the State machine through parliament to express the will of the people. The Socialist Party view commits us to the possibility of a peaceful transition to socialism. That is, without armed insurrection. We, nevertheless, consider that the class struggle, that is, the struggle against the capitalist class on the industrial field, for supremacy in the political field will intensify,and be marked by great mass struggles, political and industrial. In these struggles, the unity of the working class will be cemented and their political consciousness will be raised to the necessary level for them to understand the need for the transition to socialism. The class struggle exists whether we wish it or not. While capitalism lasts, so too will the inevitable class struggle proceed. The change from capitalism to socialism, from capitalist dictatorship to rule of the social democracy, is a revolution, the most far-reaching revolution in human history. What tactical methods are used, whether by majority vote or if we are obliged to exercise other means, cannot alter that fact.

 The Socialist Party accepts that workers all over the world, no matter what their nationality, have common problems and common bonds, that the rich men who control General Motors, for example, rob both British and American working men and women and that therefore we have common interests with American workers and the workers of other lands against the common enemy. We rejoice when we learn that the workers of other countries have had victories which improve their standard of living or widen their liberties, we sympathise with them in their defeats. It is this spirit of international working class solidarity which will facilitate our triumph.

 Your chance of a happy life for yourself and your children depends on the ability of workers to change the present order of society where everything is subordinated to the greed of a few men for profits. To introduce a system of society where industries are run not for profit but for the good of mankind, a system of society where unemployment will be unknown, where children will be able to secure the maximum education irrespective of the financial position of their parents. In this society, socialism, the wealth of the World will really belong to the people of World and be used for their benefit. Capitalism is a wasteful, irrational system which operates not on the basis of producing what is good for the people, but only what shows the biggest profit. Great inventions are held back because they would affect the profits of the capitalists, while millions of pounds are spent every year to convince people to buy what they don’t want. Once the shackles of private profit-making are removed the World will progress to unheard of production of goods and peoples’ talents, and this will provide plenty of everything for everyone. Mankind’s nature, shaped today by the hard battle to survive will begin to change, human selfishness will disappear. If we want a society that serves all people, we must create a system to ensure that happens.

“Love life,” Tolstoy said. “Life is the only true god.” The inspiration for socialism is love of humanity: love for one’s fellow men and women: a desire to help them to attain a social system which will provide a good life for every man, woman and child. Socialism recognises human welfare as the supreme good. By helping to achieve socialism you will he fighting for your future as well as the future of your family, your co-workers and your neighbours. You will also get great satisfaction out of such activity because every gain made is a gain for thousands, for millions. The engineer, the nurse, the research worker know the thrill of helping others and they will understand how we feel when we see socialism advancing, knowing that every little success brings closer the world socialist system which will benefit all mankind. We would like to share with you the joy of our activity and our accomplishments. We would like you to have the proud title of member of the Socialist Party and the World Socialist Movement.

Nation Health Disservice

The inadequate NHS being badly funded and understaffed is typical of how the owning class treat the working class but even by their standards the following story is appalling. 'A dying man was left for nearly five hours in an ambulance in a hospital car park because NHS staff were too busy, an inquest heard yesterday. Michael Bowen, 58, died of a seizure two hours after being finally admitted into the hospital's strained accident and emergency department. An inquest heard how the Welsh NHS hospital would 'frequently' keep patients in ambulances in the car park because of a shortage of beds.' (Daily Mail, 23 May) Such treatment would of course be unthinkable for members of the owning class who enjoy the best of all possible medical treatment. RD

 

Smash Cash - Abolish Money!

The Socialist Party is against all forms of capitalism whether private, state or self-managed. In its place we want a classless, stateless and moneyless society based on solidarity, co-operation and the principle ‘from each according to ability, to each according to need’ - a truly libertarian  society. Socialism has got nothing to do with state control of the economy, nor for that matter with workers owning their own factories and exchanging products with other workers. Socialism is the abolition of all forms of the state, exchange (buying and selling) and property - including "collective property". In short it is a moneyless. classless, stateless world community.

In socialism the community is expected to distribute and allocate its social product – the members of the community are expected to produce for the common pool and to consume from the common pool, without exchanging their produce among themselves. There is no room for selling and buying or seller and buyer. The existence of money does not fit into the picture of a socialist society. In a communist society all the world’s resources will be for the free and common use of everybody to satisfy their needs - like air today. This is incompatable with the existence of any form of money because for things to be bought, sold or bartered, they have to belong to one part of society alone (individual, company, workers collective, state, etc.), this presuppose non-owners being denied free access. As the Left Communists Amadeo Bordiga asked "for how is property to be defined if not by the exclusion of the other from the use and enjoyment of the object of property?". So even if the bosses were kicked out and workplaces run along collective lines, the continued existence of exchange would act as a barrier to satisfying human needs. It is not a question of transferring property titles but of the simple disappearance of property. There will be no exceptions to this rule. Buildings and land will no longer belong to anyone, or if you like, they will belong to everybody. The very idea of property will rapidly be considered absurd. Anti-capitalism is not workers managing the economy in place of capitalists  but the abolition of ourselves as a class. Non-owning bosses taking the place of owning ones is no more anti-capitalist than a management buy-out. The role of the personification of capital persists, in the firm bought out by its management. This is because capitalism is a mode of production not a mode of management. Therefore anti-capitalism has to go beyond opposition to those who manage it to opposition to the social relations as such as the abolition of wage labour.

Socialism has nothing to do with the former USSR or present-day Cuba or North Korea. These are capitalist societies with only one capitalist – the state. Socialism is where our activity – and its products – no longer take the form of things to be bought and sold. Where activity is not done to earn a wage or turn a profit, but to meet human needs. As there will be no division between owners (state or private) and workers with the means of production held in common, decisions can be made democratically among equals. As production is not for goods to be sold on the market, there are no market forces to pit different groups of workers against each other or compel economising on environmental impacts. We will work only as long as we decide is necessary to produce the things we need at an intensity we are happy and healthy with, not how long the boss demands of us according to the norms of the labour market.

Many people think that socialism sounds like a good idea but doubt it would work in practice. The principle concern most people hold as to whether a socialist society could exist without the implicit threat of destitution, enforced by the wage system, is that people would work and produce. However, there is ample evidence demonstrating that we do not need the threat of destitution or starvation hanging over us in order to engage in productive activity. For most of human history, we have not had money or wage labour, however necessary tasks still got done. In hunter-gatherer societies, for example, which were overwhelmingly peaceful and egalitarian there was no distinction between work and play.

Even today, huge amounts of necessary work is done for free. In the UK, for example, people carry out unpaid care work or carry out voluntary work at least once a month. Almost every useful type of work you can think of is also done by some people for free, not as "work" for wages, demonstrating that they are not strictly necessary. Growing food, looking after children, playing music, fixing cars, sweeping, talking to people about their problems, caring for the sick, computer programming, making clothes, designing products… the list is endless. Phenomena like the free software and open source movement, too, demonstrate how collective organisation for a socially useful goal can be superior to production for profit. And that people don't need wages to be motivated to produce. Studies show that money is not an effective motivator for good performance at complex tasks. People having the freedom and control to do what they want how they want, and having a constructive, socially useful reason for doing so is the best motivator.

Socialism is not  a future ideal, it is the living embodiment of our present day struggle. In socialism goods will be freely available and free of charge. The organisation of society to its very foundations will be without money. ‘Needs’ as in ‘from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs’ are self determined, encompassing everything from the physiological to the psychological to the social, and everyone has an equal right to have their needs met.

And without the profit motive, any technological advancement which makes a work process more efficient, instead of just laying workers off and making those remaining work harder like happens at present, we can all just work a little less and have more free time.

Once more, the point is that money is only useful in a society still dominated by private property and commodity production. If everything was held in common what would be the point in money? Money is only necessary as long as trade is necessary, in socialism there will be no need to trade as everything will be under collective ownership.

The struggle is for a new society

A great number of workers remained indifferent to socialism and many are opposed to it. In regard to socialism and its aim many workers believe that it consists of nonsensical attempts toward the destruction of every thing that is good about civilisation. Reformist generally accept, without discussion, that the State represent society as a whole; that its parliamentary institutions provided the means for popular opinion to express itself.

However, the path to socialism is not through nationalisation by the State ownership or some government-controlled quango board, but through a fundamental change in class relations. Those who demand the nationalisation or municipalisation of certain services, do not trouble themselves at all about the lot of the workers engaged in them. The offices and workshops of the State and municipality are prisons quite as bad as private workshops, if not worse. State employees, like workers in private employment, strike and engage in a struggle with the exploiters.

 Nor is the road to socialism through the co-operative movement that is presents by its advocates as a form of as nascent socialism. Our ideal co-operative would be and shall be a society in which neither the production nor the distribution of products will give rise to profits or exploitation. At the present time co-operatives are obliged by the capitalist milieu, to go in for capitalism themselves. The antagonism between seller and buyer, which it is the role of co-operation to abolish, is still in existence. It does not even prepare the elements of the new society. Everything is already in place for the social transformation of production and consumption.  The co-operatives are not the means, but the aim of the workers movement, the cooperative commonwealth as some call socialism.

It is a new society that we are working to realise. Socialists impress on the workers the fact that they are a class, but that they ought to be society. Any social revolution must necessarily be international. will have neither to keep its ancient nationalities nor to constitute new ones, because by becoming free the world will be its fatherland/motherland.

The idea of socialism is not the work of any single individual, who, perhaps out of hatred for the existing State, the present social order, and the wealthier classes, propagate the ideas of social revolution and by their power of oratory sway the masses over to their side. If that were true, nothing would be easier than to oppose the socialist movement by the very same persuasion of speeches.

Of all political parties the Socialist Party are the most open and frank about our aims and objectives, and we are the most transparent in the way we organise ourselves. Other parties have chosen inappropriate names in order to deceive people, to get votes under false pretences. They have the same attitude towards political manifestos. They make promises during elections which they have no intention of carrying out. The Socialist Party does not stoop to using cheap election tricks to get votes. It states frankly to the people what it considers should be done. We ask says:- “What is blocking the way to economic and social progress?” And we answer:- “ The system of profit-making, the ownership and control of industry by a few investors and bankers for their own gain and not for the benefit of the people. The solution for the ills of present day society is the common ownership of the industries and production for the common good, instead of profits for the few.”

Some believe that the people are unintelligent who can’t think for themselves, who will never move against the injustices that beset them daily, and that the fate of the people rests in the hands of a small number of the most intelligent or most courageous and active who will take action themselves without waiting for the common herd. According to such people it is “individual heroes” who make history and not ordinary men and women.

We are opposed to such ideas. We recognise, of course, that great men have played a big part in making the history of the world, and there have been and are great men in the workers movement, but their ideas have only been effective when the people have been convinced that these ideas are correct, are beneficial for them. So all our efforts are directed towards getting the great majority of the people to right their own wrongs, to take action themselves in their own interests and we have trust in the ability of the people to do this. We fight, and have always fought against those who have a contempt for the people and who take “short cuts” either by acts of individual violence or sabotage or holding our false promises which we know from bitter experience do not advance the peoples’ interests but hold them back.

 Despite our critics claims, we are not “arm-chair philosophers” who settle themselves back with our books of Marxist theory and wait for the people to “wake up”. We encourage working men and women to fight for higher wages, shorter working hours, decent housing and so on. We do this because we know that unless the workers are organised and active they will make no improvements in their standard of living, in fact, what they have gained in the past will be taken from them. We also do this because we know that it is often in these struggles for the smaller things that people will gain the necessary experience and confidence to fight for socialism. Socialism will not come of its own accord. Socialism does not thrive on poverty and misery. It must be fought for. Marx in “Wages, Price and Profit” wrote:

“... the general tendency of capitalistic production is not to raise, but to sink the average standard of wages, or to push the value of labor more or less to its minimum limit. Such being the tendency of things in this system, is this, to say that the working class ought to renounce their resistance against the encroachments of capital, and abandon their attempts at making the best of the occasional chances for their temporary improvement? If they did, they would be degraded to one level mass of broken-down wretches past salvation... By cowardly giving way in their everyday conflict with capital, they would. certainly disqualify themselves for the initiating of any larger movement”.

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.