Food? ( For Thought )

Brazilian artist Paulo Ito captured the mood at the world cup when he drew a picture of a starving child sitting at a table with nothing on his plate but a soccer ball – kind of puts things in perspective! John Ayers.

Choice? What Choice?

Some supporters of capitalism praise its variety and the multitude of choices it gives its citizens, but George Grayson a professor of the College of William and Mary has a different tale to tell about Carlos Slim Helu the Mexican billionaire and his dominance in that country. 'Someone in Mexico will get up in the morning and eat breakfast in one of his restaurants while reading one of his newspapers. They will then make a phone call on one of his phone networks and buy insurance from him too,' said Mr Grayson.' (Times, 10 July) Helu is worth a staggering $75.4 billion and owns more than 220 companies and many Mexicans will be born in his hospitals, drive on his roads, live in homes built with his cement and smoke his tobacco. The truth is that capitalism is dominated by a handful of dominating billionaires. RD

No More Scotland - But the World

As the world economic crisis continues we can see the burden of the crisis being dumped on the shoulders of the working class. We can see government after government in the capitalist world enacting legislation with similar ends: to make the working class pay for the present crisis of capitalism. Throughout the world popular resistance is rising. The ruling class here and elsewhere are attempting to whip up chauvinism and nationalism. The working class is multi-national, composed of workers of many different nationalities. Their common identity is that they are all exploited by the capitalist class. All workers must strive to forge unity with their fellow workers of all nationalities in the common effort for full democracy and socialism. All sorts of “progressives” have been more and more resorting to the method of dividing the workers by advocating different doctrines designed to weaken the struggle of the working class. One such idea is nationalism, which advocates the division and splitting up of the working class on the specious pretext of protecting the interests of national culture or national independence.

Achieving “independence” under capitalism – private ownership, commodity production, the rule of the market, etc.– will not bring freedom and democracy for the working class. Instead, the working class will continue to be subjected to exploitation and wage slavery. That is why  nationalists of any stripe are charlatans, i.e., they are lying, when they claim that they are the champions of the democratic rights of the workers. They never have been and never will be because that is impossible. There cannot be a “Peoples Republic of Scotland”. Leftists who pick up the national flag has become accepted fare even in the Trotskyist ranks.

 The more wealth the predatory employing class amass, the greater becomes its greed and ambition to absorb and seize new wealth, and the more it intensifies its oppression of the people within its own country. Such domestic oppression will be all the more carried out under the cloak of nationalism. When it is to its own advantage does the ruling class use the slogan of nationalism to arouse the people. Nationalism means exclusiveness and isolation. Any nationalism finally implies that those people are better than all others. Is it not a deplorable mistake for the so-called revolutionary left to consider themselves allied in any way with the class that deceive workers for their own interests?

Class-conscious workers fight hard against every kind of nationalism. What class interest does nationalism serve? Would it aid the class struggle against capitalism or be a diversion from that struggle?  Class-conscious workers cannot rally under the national flag. Nationalism is always the tool of the bourgeoisie, historically. To speak of Scottish nationalism as a progressive force,  is to play the game of a section of the rich. No amount of secession can ever succeed in bringing freedom. The slogan of “independence then socialism” which claims to be progressive and revolutionary in no way constitutes a path towards socialism.

Socialists are internationalists and not nationalists. Even in the countries oppressed by foreign powers the goal of the struggle is not to try to repeat the process of the bourgeois-democratic revolution of nation-building but to develop the process of a socialist revolution.

The Socialist Party recognises these lies and this fakery. The solution cannot be a return to a romantic fictitious past. We must go forward to a really free, really classless society. Democracy can only be realised by a socialist revolution. Nationalism leads directly to a capitalist system  where the vast majority of the population still end up as exploited. The capitalist gangster clans will continue their class warfare over who will get to steal how much of Scotland’s resources. What’s needed is to organise class struggle against our rulers. If all workers joined in class struggle we could make short work of the bosses who accumulate billions off our labour, swearing devotion to the UK or to Scotland while stashing their wealth in off-shore banks and buying shares in foreign land-grabs, the modern equivalent of the Highland Clearances.

 The reality is that the enemy of the Scottish working class is capitalism. The friends of the Scottish workers are the English working class, who are exploited in common with them and live under the same economic system. It will be suicidal for the Scottish to fight in isolation. Hence it follows that it is the task of the Scottish workers is to stay united with their English counterparts

Unlike the deluded left nationalists, the Socialist Party will not tag along with, follow behind, or try to lead the nationalist movement. We will instead resolutely struggle against them by propagating socialism. We must constantly hammer home that the SNP and their ilk are nothing but tools of the ruling class. Deceived, as people will discover in the years to come, that they have been most cruelly misled and have been wasting their time fostering nationalist illusions.  Nationalism is divisive and destructive and ultimately only serves the bosses. Home rule does not eliminate class rule.

 A struggle for socialism is a struggle for democracy. Our struggle is to end exploitation – our own as well as everyone else’s. The destruction of capitalism is the collective workers struggle and the mobilising and uniting of the whole class, of workers of all lands, to take up the fight for the historic task of overthrowing capitalist rule and  building socialism is our mission. We cannot unite with those “socialists” who preach reformism and the accomplishment of their goals under capitalism. The Socialist Party position is a declaration of war for the end of the capitalist system and the establishment of the classless, communist society. A global cooperative community can only be built under the watchword, “Workers of the world unite!”

Reading Notes

- In a profit society, a dead soldier may well be worth more than a  live one. In "1493" by Charles C. Mann, he writes on the agrarian revolution taking place in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the desperate need for fertilizer, " At the time, the best known soil additive was bone meal , made by pulverizing bones from slaughter houses. Bushels of bones went to grinding factories in Britain, France, and Germany. Demand ratcheted up, driven by fears of soil depletion. Bone dealers supplied the factories from increasingly untoward sources, including the recent battlefields of Waterloo and Austerlitz.'It is now ascertained beyond doubt, by actual experiment upon an extensive scale, that a dead soldier is a most valuable article of commerce,' remarked the London Observer in 1822." John Ayers.

Crime and Punishment!

The Metro News of May 5 claimed that, "Lawyers sanctioned for criminal like activity by The Law Society of Upper Canada in the last decade have stolen, defrauded, or diverted some $61 million held in trust funds for clients. They treat client trust accounts as personal piggy banks, facilitate multi-million dollar frauds, and drain retirement savings of the elderly. Fewer than one in five were charged criminally and most avoided jail. In one case, a lawyer took $75,000 in part because he wanted a Lexus. Of those sentenced criminally, the punishments were as lenient as house arrest and community service. Of forty-one who were tried, only twelve went to jail. The Law Society of Upper Canada does not, as a rule, report suspected criminal acts by lawyers to the police. Some will argue that there are honest lawyers but, nevertheless, crooked or honest, all exist to uphold the status quo and therefore enable the capitalist class to legally steal from the working class – better a society were there are no lawyers. John Ayers.

A Tipical Screwball Situation

On any day of the year tourists pay up to $100 a day to get into Florida's Theme parks. There, they will be waited on by homeless people who, in the case of Disney World, work for $8.03 per hour. Many live in cheap motels because they can't afford to rent anywhere else. As one mother said, " It's hard just trying to get our feet inside the door with the combined expenses of application fees, security deposits, and the first month's rent needed for a place of their own." Nor does the county have any shelters for the 1,216 households with children. Some motel owners who are strictly small time businessmen are suing the local sheriff to force him to evict guests who have not paid rent and are in violation of the policy of four people to a room. This is another typical screwball situation thrown up by a crazy economic situation that condemns many to a life of poverty. Abolition of that system is what is needed. John Ayers.

So Much For Loyalty

Yet another manufacturer has closed shop in Southern Ontario. The Heinz ketchup plant, in that town for 105 years, is pulling up stakes and leaving the usual mess and betrayed feelings. By the end of June, just 250 workers will be left to continue if they accede to one of the tricks of survival these days, - lower wages, as yet to be determined, and this says nothing about the farmers who supplied the tomatoes. One need not feel betrayed by capitalism because loyalty has never been in its vocabulary if a better chance comes along. John Ayers.

The Not So Great War

New Pamphlet

PUBLIC MEETING

'The Not So Great 1914-18 War' 

8.00pm Wednesday 20^th August 2014


Maryhill Community Central Halls, 
304 Maryhill Road,
 Glasgow G20 7YE

Red Is The Colour Of Our Flag

Very few people believe in the wisdom of any of the ideologists of capitalism any more. The bankers, employers, politicians and economists talk about the state of the economy but none of them know what to do. The fundamental reason why the world recovery is faltering now is because this recession did not provide capitalists with new opportunities for profitable investment. To bolster their profits, employers are making it even more difficult for workers.The failure of the recession to solve capitalists’ problems explains why they are demanding, in every major country, cuts in public spending. Employers are on an offensive to take back what workers have won in previous years. Workers face deteriorating conditions, declining income and diminishing benefits. More and more workers find that one income is insufficient to support their families and many workers now have to hold down two jobs. While people are facing steadily lowering of living conditions, the movement against these conditions is still relatively undeveloped. The unions are largely inactive. There are pockets of resistance but these are not yet strong. The coming months and years will be important for workers to develop a militant movement. Some of the key struggles will be around keeping wages up with the cost of living and maintaining  contracts and job security as well as the the problems of declining membership as a result of years of not organising unorganised workers.

We stand for socialism: a new system in which the people own and control the economy, through the widest democracy. We stand for a socialism which is completely opposed to the exploitation of man by man which now divides the world: capitalism which is an outlived system. Capitalism  is played-out, its constructive aspects long dead. Its life-blood is private profit and oppression, whether avowedly capitalist or whether administered by self-styled “socialists.” We stand for a socialism that is both democratic and revolutionary. Socialism is not the rule of bureaucrats over the people. The new, free society will have as its sole purpose the needs of humankind and in place of the present anarchy, waste and inefficiency, production will be planned. This planning, requires the common ownership. Thanks to the tremendous productive capacity we have created, we will be able to satisfy all the basic needs of everyone. There will be no real shortages that would require some kind of policeman or bureaucrat to supervise who gets what and frustrate the democratic process. For the first time knowledge would be applied entirely for the benefit of mankind. Our wealth is part of humanity’s common heritage and the world’s natural resources would be used with no other thought than for the well-being of mankind.

To choose anything other than socialism is to opt for futility. The Socialist Party are  optimists. It is only the working class that is capable of wiping out all the misery and suffering in this world brought about by centuries of class society. But, while we understand why our future is bright, we are also materialists. We know that the road ahead is tortuous, full of twists and turns. Not all those who wave the red flag or claim to speak for the working class actually do so. Rather than overthrowing the capitalists, they argued that workers should make alliances among the capitalists and their politicians and support one faction against another as a lesser evil. Of course, the workers have made some gains through their struggles. The employers have had to make a considerable number of concessions. But what are these gains, really? To a certain extent, the gains won in struggle served to strengthen the unity and fighting capacity of the workers. But when you consider the wealth that the working people in this country have produced, when you consider the power and potential for abundance of the productive forces that the workers themselves have created, then these reforms are shown up for what they really are. They are nothing but crumbs, scraps left over on the table after the capitalists have had their feast. But today, it is the capitalists who are on the offensive and the working class that is in the position of the defensive. The capitalists following the path for their usual solution to their economic crises  in order to defend their profits. They want to tell people that revolution is impossible, and revolution can’t solve these problems, that the capitalist system is the best thing there is.

In the words of the Internationale, “The earth shall rise on new foundations, we have been naught, we shall be all.” The class that has borne untold sufferings and has nothing to lose but its chains. In the words of Eugene Victor Debs, “ I oppose all wars but one, the revolutionary class war to rid this earth of the evils of capitalism.”

We’re going to raise the red banner of revolution.

World War One and the SPGB

Haiti And International Promises

It's been four years since an earthquake devastated Haiti and still international promises remain unfulfilled. A recent audit found that the US government aid program had delivered only a quarter of the planned number of houses at nearly twice the estimated cost. 105,000 houses were destroyed in the quake that killed more than 200,000. Of the four thousand houses the US Agency for International development planned to build, only 906 were completed by December 2012. Of the 11,000 additional building sites the agency planned to prepare, only 6,220 were in deed done. Although immediate responses are generally good, the reality of cost often slows the process of rebuilding and efficiency. One would expect things to be quite different in a socialist society. John Ayers.

Cutting Corners Even If It Kills People

 Following up to the article on the Lac Megantic rail disaster last year (reported in Imagine, Fall, 2013), the Quebec government has arrested railway workers with criminal negligence. According to Greg Gormick (Toronto Star, May 18), they are charging the wrong parties. Instead, the government of Canada is responsible for decades if failed transportation policies. The railway's competitors, the trucking industry, has had their highways lavishly funded for little investment from the industry. On the railways, individual companies are expected to fund their own highways, the rail system, out of revenues. Light-density lines have been phased out and "On the remaining lines, the physical and human assets are constantly squeezed to wring out profits to maintain the infrastructure and service while keeping investors happy." This encapsulates the main problem of the capitalist system - that of doing anything, even if it kills people, to create a profit. "Under these conditions, should anyone be surprised if some railways – especially smaller, less profitable, short lines – wind up cutting corners to the point of negatively affecting safety?" Short answer – NO, we are not surprised one bit! John Ayers.

Totally Bonkers

There are many aspects of capitalism that show what a crazy society it is, but this news item takes a bit of beating for sheer madness. 'A garage in central London is on the market for an eye-watering half a million pounds but anyone buying it can rest assured that their Range Rover will fit in - just. ...... Measuring almost 9ft wide and 18ft long, if you rip out the cupboards, it also comes with a £280 a year service charge." (Independent, 9 July) Mariana Collett, an associate director of estate agents John D Wood & Co, described the lock-up as "substantial".  "Purely its location alone, moments from Kensington Gardens and Kensington Palace, makes this garage a valuable asset",she said.  Ms Collett may imagine the lock-up is a bit of a bargain as it is situated amidst your fellow billionaires - but £500,000 for a parking site is surely totally nuts. RD

Meet the new boss...same as the old boss

The role of “the party,” “cadre” or “vanguard” plays a large part in contemporary Left discussion. Marxism teaches that the revolution against capitalism and the socialist reconstruction of the old world can be accomplished only through conscious, collective action by the workers themselves. Revolution is not a goal in itself. Revolution is an instrument. The goal is building a socialist classless society, the self-emancipation of the working class, and self-emancipation of all the exploited, by building a classless society without exploitation, without oppression.

For almost a century Leninist groups, have been trying to build vanguard parties that would “lead” the working class to power. For its part when the working class has moved to challenge capitalism it has steadfastly ignored its would-be leaders. Rather than relying on a 'revolutionary' party they knew it was task of working people, through the organisations they would themselves create, to open the gateway to a new and better society.

The so-called revolutionary left is in crisis. Their organisations are small and without connection with the class many genuinely wish to liberate. This situation appears unlikely to change in the near future. Yet class struggle continues to take place on both a global and a local scale.

Socialism can’t be created by decree or by force by a minority. It can only be implemented by the majority of the people taking over the economy (taking over their workplaces and communities) and reorganising them as they see fit. Without said process and everyday content, socialism has no meaning but empty slogans.

We are against leaders who have the power to compel simply because they are leaders - but quite happy to have people responsible for others if they are a) accountable to them, b) chosen by them, and c) and recallable at any time.

A leader may say “all that our organisation has gained is because of me”. But it is not so. Whenever a movement wins better houses, or cheaper water and electricity, or prevents an eviction, this is not because of leaders. It is because of the strength of our numbers – as the workers and the poor, the great majority of the people of the world. It is not because a leader persuades the government to be nice, but because the actions of our mass movements force the government to give back some of what the bosses have taken from us. It is not because the leader knows how to get houses or electricity, but because a mass movement is united .

Leaders, indeed, will sometimes pretend that they know best and that the movement depends on them. But they can do this only by holding knowledge and power for themselves, keeping them away from the masses. This is why it is important to try to make our organisations as democratic as possible. If we rely on one leader, or a group of leaders for our victories, we are putting ourselves in a vulnerable position because we can easily be betrayed which can have devastating consequences.

The workers and the poor have nothing to gain and everything to lose by relying on leaders and governments. And we have nothing to lose and everything to gain by relying on ourselves, collectively. We are all leaders.

 The Socialist Party is not Leninist, Trotskyist or Maoist, but plain simple revolutionaries. We do not intend to lead the masses towards a free and classless society because we are a part of the masses ourselves and adhere faithfully to the motto of the First International: “The emancipation of the workers is an act of the workers themselves.” If the masses wait for a revolutionary vanguard to lead them to the classless society or the free society, they will neither be free nor classless. There is enough evidence in support of the foregoing statement.

The term “dictatorship of the proletariat” was first employed by Marx in 1875 in a private document, and then popularised in the 1917 Russian Revolution. Many Marxists rightly think it a very unfortunate phrase, because no matter how many lengthy explanations are given concerning its true meaning, it lends itself to the interpretation that socialists stand for dictatorship. But that is not what Marx had in mind at all.

He was talking of the necessity for a victorious labor government during the transition period to resolutely destroy the old privileged positions and suppress all activities aimed at restoring the old order. In this sociological sense, he labelled the regime a “dictatorship”; not to signify minority rule in the manner of Robespierre’s Jacobin dictatorship in the eighteenth century French revolution, or Cromwell’s dictatorship in the seventeenth century English revolution, but only in the sense that it was still class rule.

 Rosa Luxemburg defined the proletarian dictatorship in her essays on the Russian Revolution:
“Socialist democracy is not something which begins only in the promised land after the foundations of socialist economy are created; it does not come as some sort of Christmas present for the worthy people who, in the interim, have loyally supported a handful of socialist dictators. Socialist democracy begins simultaneously with the beginnings of the destruction of class rule and of the construction of socialism. It begins at the very moment of the seizure of power by the socialist party. It is the same thing as the dictatorship of the proletariat. This dictatorship consists in the manner of applying democracy, not in its elimination; in energetic, resolute attacks upon the well-entrenched rights and economic relationships of capitalist society, without which a socialist transformation cannot be accomplished. But this dictatorship must be the work of the class and not of a little leading minority in the name of the class—that is, it must proceed step by step out of the active participation of the masses; it must be under their direct influence, subjected to the control of complete public activity; it must arise out of the growing political training of the mass of the people.”

Lenin assumed power in 1917 within a few years any libertarian content was discarded in Russia and the dictatorship became one not of a class but of a small group, with the Communist Party remaining the only one on the scene and all other parties suppressed and destroyed, and democracy eliminated from the inner councils of this one existing party as well.

 Everyone knows that throughout its history the capitalist class has been represented in most countries by two or more political organizations except in periods of dictatorial suppression. This is explained by the fact that the various subdivisions of the class have different and sometimes even conflicting interests that demand special political consideration and expression. In the United States, for example, some capitalist groups, in highly advanced or favoured industries, are free-traders. In France, Italy and Germany, the capitalists to this very day continue to be represented by anywhere from four to six different political parties, which voice either special group or sectional interests, or different programmatic solutions to meet the needs of the class.

It is irrelevant in this connection to point out, as some do, that the formal democracy under capitalism has very restricted meaning and is robbed of its essence by the concentration of power and wealth in the hands of a privileged few who are able to manipulate the political mechanism in their own interests and corrupt the legislators to do their bidding. This is all very interesting and true. But socialists have traditionally insisted that the answer to the corruption and bowdlerization of democracy under capitalism is not to throw out democracy altogether and place their fate in the hands of a few saviors, but to eliminate the social parasitism of capitalism so as to be able to extend, to broaden, to ensure a genuine popular democracy, first for the working people, and eventually for all mankind.

Capitalism Without Austerity?

 The Toronto Globe, May 2, included a photograph of workers demonstrating against austerity in the May Day parade in Paris. They obviously want capitalism without austerity and that is impossible. Governments trying to balance a budget will make cuts in welfare, medicare, education, and other social programs because they are attempting to run capitalism and must save money wherever they can. If the workers must suffer, well, so be it as long as more money is not needed from profit to save the cuts. The only solution is a society without the constraints of profit and money and where people's needs are the priority. John Ayers.

Fracking Nonsense.

A report by the Canadian Council of Canadians on the impact of shale Gas development said, " There is not enough known about the environmental and health impacts of fracking to declare it safe. Key elements of the provinces' regulatory systems are not based on strong science and remain untested." Despite that, the federal government has refused to make amendments to those regulations. Contrary to what people say, you can, then, trust governments. You can trust them to do whatever suits the needs of big business and to hell with the problems. John Ayers.

Wage Slavery or Liberation

The immediate goal of reformists is legislation. The Socialist Party’s immediate goal is the social revolution. We know that most promised reforms will not be realised and that, even if realised, they will only ameliorate the lot of one set of workers at the expense of the others. We also know that gains made may well be later lost. How foolish it is for the workers to ask the capitalists to give them something that they have the power to take. Reforms are either economically unsound or politically impossible. That the workers can get only what they have the power to take. If they have the power to take, and begin to exercise that power, the capitalists will often try to get ahead of them and give, hoping to get credit that they do not deserve and deceive the workers into the belief that the benefits do not come because of their own organized powers but because of kindness in the hearts of the capitalists. All reforms  stop short of overthrowing the capitalist system become co-opted by that system and turned to its advantage (but not necessarily to the advantage of any particular capitalists). We only see one solution: the revolution. We clearly separate ourselves from reformists and believe all interests must be subordinated to the revolution. The Socialist Party above all wants to destroy the cause of all iniquities, all exploitation, all poverty and crime: private property.

We shouldn’t expect a miraculous transformation of human nature: that transformation will take place afterwards by the effects of the new conditions of existence. To suppose them to be instantaneous, contemporaneous with the revolution, means putting the effect before the cause. The revolution we conceive of can only be made by and for the people, without any false representatives. We believe that the new organisation of society from the bottom up and not from top down, by the decrees. The revolution obviously can’t be the work of a party but demands the cooperation of the masses. Without the involvement of the masses we may carry out a coup d’etat, not a revolution. The workers have no need of  leaders: they are quite capable of charging one of their own with a particular task. Workers need to form common aspirations and a community of ideas. Only through this that do workers unite.

The workers must go forward, take possession of their tools, of the means of labor and life without paying tribute and without serving anyone. Workers don’t have to ask permission of anyone to take over factories, workshops and offices and to install themselves there. Wealth will only truly be placed in common when everyone works, when production will have been organised in the common interest. The fundamental principle of the organisation of production is that each person should work, must render him or herself useful unless he or she is sick or frail, too young or too elderly. All men and women should make themselves useful to society through work. it will be up to the workers to organise work and to regulate their reciprocal relations. Force will be nothing about it; voluntary agreement is necessary. It will occur through free association.  People will pass from one job to another, from manual labour to study and artistic recreation. But in working, in studying, in cultivating the fine arts, etc, the goal will always be to make ourselves useful to our comrades. Work is life and also the social bond that unites men and women in society. There must be solidarity in labour in order for society to function properly.

The Socialist Party say that enough is already produced to satisfy all the needs of all people, to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and provide welfare to the millions suffering in poverty. There is an abundance today. The landowner and the capitalist only allow the fields and factories to produce for profits. If no profit the landowner leaves the land fallow, the capitalist closes the factory and the workers go hungry. We possess, even today, sufficient means of production to satisfy all reasonable needs. There will be simple relations of reciprocity and assistance. Experience and agreements will tell the individual and the labour associations what society has need of at a given moment. Everyone instead of thinking of their own interests, will fraternise, practice solidarity on a worldwide scale.

The Socialist Party must do everything possible to widen and generalize the movement and give it a revolutionary character. But above all we must be with the workers and prove the need for the future society. We must demonstrate that socialism isn’t an abstract concept, a scientific dream, or a distant vision, but a vital and living possibility. Socialism is not Utopia that OUGHT to be established but a future system which we inevitably MUST attain.

 Capitalism is tremendously wasteful and destructive system. Profits are the heart of capitalism, markets its circulating system; capitalist enterprise consequently required the transformation of production for use into production for profit and increasingly larger markets.

Capitalism is based on wage slavery. The capitalists hire wage workers to produce wealth, give them part of that wealth in the form of wages and keep the rest. We do not sell our labour to the capitalists; we sell our labour power. Labour power is just as different from labour as a machine is different from the work it does. Labour power is the mental and physical capabilities of man which he exercises when he produces wealth.

Terrorism Is Big Business

 Terrorism is big business. The Toronto Star of May 10th. reported that Britain spent $5.9 billion on domestic counter terrorism measures in 2010/11 while the US has spent $1 trillion since 9/11. The chances of dying in a terrorist attack in the States is one in six million. The odds of dying from a wasp, hornet, or bee sting is one in 75,000. As usual, capitalism can't get its priorities right.

 The same issue tells us that Japan is in deep trouble as its population declines and is projected to drop to 50 million by the end of the century compared to its high of 128 million (2008) That would be good news in a world that wants to control population increase, but in capitalism it is the death knoll as the economy is shrinking and to be successful, as we all know, you must keep on growing. John Ayers.

A Crazy Society

Socialists are often accused of being mad because we propose a new society based on common ownership but we feel particularly sane when we read of the following. A very rare 19th Century postage stamp from a former British colony in South America has sold for a record $9.5m (£5.6m) at auction in New York. 'It took only two minutes for the British Guiana one-cent magenta stamp to be sold to an anonymous bidder. It measures just 1in by 1in (2.5cm by 2.5cm), and had not been publicly exhibited since 1986.' (BBC News, 18 June) Children dying for the lack of a couple of dollars whilst some anonymous parasite lavishes millions on a spec of paper. We are the mad ones? RD

The Impossible Dream

The sham “socialist movement” is peopled by a host of competing organisations and many are campaigning for a Yes vote in the referendum. One argument being presented in exemplified in this letter to the Herald. “A revamped, genuinely democratic socialist Labour Party is a distinct possibility once the New Labour chains of London are thrown off, and a resurgence of support rather than continuing decline is more likely in an independent Scotland than in a dysfunctional UK.”  A similar belief is echoed in a Scotsman article by Pat Kelly who is a former president of the STUC and Scottish secretary of the PCS union. “ now feel the only possibility of a change in the Labour party is if there is a vote for independence on 18 September. Once Labour in Scotland is released from the straitjacket of London HQ control then there is the prospect that it will rediscover the moral compass it has lost....A transformed Labour party free of Westminster control could return to being a party representing the needs and aspirations of the people of Scotland and putting into practice its values of equality, solidarity and social justice. It could once again be a party that campaigns fearlessly for the elimination of poverty, progressive taxation, wealth distribution, and the restoration of trade union rights.”

IS THE LABOUR PARTY LESS CAPITALIST THAN THE TORY PARTY?

Successive governments, both Labour and Tory, have been looking for ways to grapple with the problems facing capitalism in Britain. Their attempts have focused on the problem of ’economic strategy’, which is the capitalist euphemism for trying to keep workers’ wages down and profits up. The Labour Party cannot he said to ‘betray’ the working class, for it is not a working class or socialist party in the first place. The Labour Party has not made any error in not introducing socialism, for it wasn’t created to do that in the first place and was never a socialist party from the day of its foundation: it has therefore never ’betrayed’ the working class.  So the Labour Party in the past, so the Labour Party today.  A party’s class nature is determined not by who its members are, or who votes for it, but by its political line, i.e. whose interests it actually serves. It is common knowledge that whenever Labour has been in power it has worked flat out in capitalism’s interests. Just because many workers still vote for the Labour Party does not mean that it is a workers’ party any more than the Liberal Party was at the end of the last century when most working-class electors voted for it. Socialists  do not dissipate their efforts in a flurry of well-intentioned ‘do-gooding’ by creating reformist diversions.

There is an argument that is often used in the support of the ‘betrayal’ theory: namely, that in the ‘good old days’, the Labour Party really was a socialist organisation, but that it has since degenerated. There is a secret force of Labour Party rank and file members whose standpoint is socialist, ready at any time to burst free from the trammels of its leadership, who are unfortunately blocked because of the party’s undemocratic structure. Marxists regard Labour as a bosses’ party, and this standpoint has been amply vindicated.  The slogan – “Vote Labour, without illusions” is to shirk the first responsibility of socialists – to wean the masses away from reformism and win them to revolutionary politics. It is illusory to expect the Labour Party to introduce socialism, and yet fosters the illusion that Labour is more “left-wing” than the Tories. Labour governments have attacked workers’ living standards to shift the burden of the capitalist crises off the shoulders of the capitalist class and onto the backs of the workers. They have passed legislation that has curbed civil and human rights and strengthen the authoritarian nature of the state. Labour has presided over the establishment of a racist immigration controls.

Our Red Myth Past

Of course, the expected retort to the above will be ..."Ahhh, but the Scottish Labour Party was different. We had the experience of Keir Hardie, Red Clydesiders like James Maxton ao an independent Scotland’s Labour Party would radical.” Dream on, comrades.

 The Independent Labour Party in 1922 returned several MPs, among them James Maxton, David Kirkwood, John Wheatley and John McGovern whose ghosts still haunt the Scottish left-wing. They were sent to Westminster in a wave of left-wing enthusiasm. However, they were dominated by ideas of the reform of capitalism rather than by the determination to destroy capitalism. The I.L.P. may have used the language of radicals but instead of calling workers to revolutionary action, it appealed to the good sense and kindness of the ruling class. Lacking as it did any real position of principle, the ILP could accommodate practically any demand. Socialism was, of course, variously interpreted, but to most it meant state control and planning in varying proportions with import and export boards, investment committees, public corporations and the rest. The I.L.P. M.P.s. rarely missed an opportunity to try and “reason” with the capitalists, showing them the “folly” of their ways. Maxton and McGovern and their friends were wasting their time. The ruling class understood the position better than they did.

David Kirkwood, explained:
“We were going to do big things. The people believed that. We believed that. At our onslaught, the grinding poverty which existed in the midst of plenty was to be wiped out. We were going to scare away the grim spectre of unemployment ... Alas, that we were able to do so little!”

When the first Labour government came into office, out of 193 Labour MPs 132 were members of the ILP. Twenty-six of them were in the government and six of them, including the Prime Minister MacDonald, were in the cabinet. In 1929 out of 288 Labour MPs over 200 were members of the ILP. Again it was very strongly represented in the government and cabinet including, as before, MacDonald as Prime Minister. The ILP could congratulate itself on building up the mass party Keir Hardie and Maxton wanted. But what of the next stage, getting the Labour Party to accept socialism as its object?  If the ILP was to win over the the workers to socialism, who was to win over the ILP membership and its leaders to socialism?  The ILP has now vanished and Maxton almost forgotten. Having devoted all his political life in the service of the ILP James Maxton's efforts achieved nothing for socialism.

For many years, left-wingers have painted a picture of Glasgow and Red Clydeside as a revolution that almost was. Willie Gallacher later claimed that they should have marched to the Maryhill barracks and tried to persuade the troops stationed there to come out on the protesters' side. "We had forgotten we were revolutionary leaders of the working class. Revolt was seething everywhere, especially in the army. We had within our hands the possibility of giving actual expression and leadership to it, but it never entered our heads to do so. We were carrying on a strike when we ought to have been making a revolution." This piece of imaginative hindsight has led to the left-wing to argue that the unrest during WWI and the immediate post-war period was a prelude to the establishment of a workers' republic. Memoirs written decades after the 1914-1919 period and the government's hysteria paint a picture of Clydeside which was far more revolutionary in hindsight than it ever was in reality. Glasgow was not Petrograd and it never could have been. In 1983 Iain McLean's "The Legend of the Red Clydeside" asserted that Red Clydeside was neither a revolution nor "a class movement; it was an interest-group movement" - Engineers defending their skilled status and their pay differentials.

The Left parties began to decline from 1920. By early 1922, the Socialist Labour Party was a near-dead party. By 1924 it had 100 members or less, and its journal, The Socialist, ceased to be printed due to a lack of subscribers. In the 1919 Glasgow Trades Council annual report, of the 74,951 members of the Glasgow Trades Union Congress, 71,860 were in non-socialist unions. Of the remaining 3,091 members, 2,568 were affiliated with the I.L.P., while 523 were affiliated with the B.S.P. The explicitly socialist unions or branches of such unions numbered a mere 31 out of 255 in the Trades Council. The following year  would see a relative decline in socialists as the membership of unions in general increased to 84,465 while those in openly socialist unions increased only to 3,134.

 The history of Scottish labour movement is often marred by religious bigotry but racism too  also existed. Emanuel – Manny – Shinwell gained fame as a union firebrand, a national hero remembered for his fight for workers' rights. Stirling University historian Dr Jacqueline Jenkinson, in her book "Black 1919", accuses Shinwell of encouraging Glasgow seamen to launch a series of attacks on black sailors. Jenkinson reveals how Shinwell's British Seafarers Union banned black members and how labour histories of the period  fail to mention this Glasgow race-riot.
Jenkinson said: "There has been a reluctance to accept that many of the Red Clydesiders promoted actions that were discriminatory and unfair to the black sailors. Manny Shinwell was one of those who campaigned to stop black sailors getting work. His radical seamen's union, the British Seafarers Union, openly banned black members. It was felt they were keeping Scots out of jobs when they returned from service in the First World War, and lowering wages. Shinwell gave what some consider inflammatory speeches in which he condemned the employment of black sailors in the merchant fleet."
Her view is supported by Professor Elaine McFarland, a specialist in modern Scottish history at Glasgow Caledonian University, who said: "Red Clydeside does have this dark, racist underbelly, and there has been a reluctance to expose it. It may be due to the political leanings of some historians, but there has been a sentimental view of those who took part in Red Clydeside."

Willie Gallacher joined with Shinwell in the tactic to import the old demand that black and Chinese crews should be expelled from British ships, parroting the mis-conception that it is the  immigrant who is responsible for wage cuts and unemployment. This incitement led to a race riot on the eve of the 40 hour a week strike that led to five dead and which swiftly spread from the Clyde to other British ports.  It is an example of how one element of the working class can be made the scapegoat, by those supposedly protecting the interests of all workers, in order to secure a better deal for their members, at the expense of the minority.

 Keir Hardie, canonised as a labour saint, could declare: “It would be much better for Scotland if those [Scottish emigrants] were compelled to remain there [in Scotland] and let the foreigners be kept out. Dr. Johnson said God made Scotland for Scotchmen, and I would keep it so.” According to Hardie, the Lithuanians migrant workers in the mining industry had “filthy habits”, they lived off “garlic and oil”, and they were carriers of “the Black Death”.

The story of Red Clydeside is one of disappointment in that the "revolutionary" movement was not truly revolutionary and was ultimately unsuccessful. Red Clydeside was far more pragmatic, from a trade union perspective, and not to mention more patriotic, than the left-wing rhetoric asserts.

No historical review of Scotland’s supposed radical past can omit the damaging influence of religion. Thomas Johnston, a leading labour personality of the times, was particularly dismayed by the religious sectarianism that existed. No sympathiser with Orangemen, he nevertheless tried to convince them without too much success that their Protestant heritage could find expression through the Left. In 1919 the Orange Order attempted to establish the strikebreaking "Patriotic Workers League" In 1923 the '"Orange and Protestant Political Party" defeated the sitting Communist MP in Motherwell and Wishaw to win its one and only seat. In the Depression years specifically anti-Catholic parties - the Scottish Protestant League in Glasgow and Protestant Action in Edinburgh - took up to a third of the votes in local council elections. Ratcliffe of the SPL had previously been a member of the "British Fascists", along with Billy Fullerton of the Bridgeton Billy Boys. Fullerton was also a thug who was awarded a medal for strike-breaking in the 1926 General Strike. Ratcliffe became an anti-Semite and follower of Hitler in 1939, but by then his support was waning. Edinburgh's John Cormack of Protestant Action lacked such fascist connections, and even led physical opposition to Oswald Mosley on his visit to Edinburgh in 1934. The Blackshirts sympathy for a united Ireland and Mussolini's associations with the Vatican were too much for them to take. But Cormack's own violent incursions into Catholic neighbourhoods and combination of electoral intervention with control of the streets suggest at least an outline of a Protestant variety of fascism. Cormack remained a councilor in Leith for twenty years. Orangeism had long been a crucial element to working-class Toryism.The Orange Order leadership's Conservative politics can be stressed but it can also be contended that the Order's appeal to the working class was to a large extent based on issues such as education and jobs  and  the perceived Irish Catholic immigration, issues which did not break down neatly into party political terms.

Religious divisions in European politics are not unusual, but the Catholic church's support in Scotland for the traditional Left is. The Catholic church hierarchy had previously always reserved strong opposition for its socialist opponents, and raised money for Franco in Glasgow Churches in the 1930s. They remained arch-enemies of those on the Left, organising against them both at elections and within the unions. But they could not prevent their followers from recognising a basic class interest and voting Labour, once the Irish question was effectively removed from Scottish politics in the early part of the 20th century.

John Wheatley formed the Catholic Socialist Society in 1906 and suffered the hostility of local priests who on one occasion incited a mob of several hundred to burn an effigy of him in front of his house. Glasgow of that era was solidly Liberal due to the Liberal Party's support for Home Rule and it was the shift of activists towards the labour movement that led to a re-positioning of politics and religion. Until 1914 the main outlet for political activists within the Catholic community had been the United Irish League. The UIL expertly marshalled the Catholic vote to the ends of Irish nationalism. Historian Bill Knox comments in his Industrial Nation that Irish Catholics might disobey their priests and the UIL and vote Labour; however, it was a rare occasion, and was never repeated in local elections. Many Irish Catholics in Scotland were afraid that labour politics, dominated as they were by men of Protestant backgrounds might lead to secular education. The STUC in 1913 had voted for such secularism in all state-aided schools. Knox refers to the anti-Irishness of the likes of ILP hero Keir Hardie who described the typical Irish immigrant coal-miner as having "a big shovel, a strong back and a weak brain" and to Bruce Glasier who declared upon the death of Protestant Truth Society's, John Kensit, "I esteem him as martyr... I feel a honest sympathy with his anti-Romanist crusade" et history changes. The 1918 Education Act, which brought Catholic schools within the state system in Scotland and guaranteeing their religious character, although provoking opposition, expressed in the cry of "No Rome on the Rates" was a transformative moment for the Catholic Church and Labour Party relationship. Although the Labour party had no responsibility for the Act, its general willingness to support denominational schooling encouraged an identification of Labour and Catholic.

When the story of Scotland’s radicalism is scrutiniesed, it is no more and no less left-wing than large swathes of England. There is no guarantee that an independent Scotland would produce a socialist Scotland.