A proposed bill in the Ontario legislature would nullify a fifty-five year-old agreement between the unions and EllisDon, a giant construction company. A company spokesperson commented, " If the bill does not resolve the outcome of a recent board decision…it would have a negative impact on EllisDon's ability to remain competitive." In other words, the company wants to hire a 'flexible' workforce that works for much less, has no benefits, and can be let go easily as capital dictates. That the government is pushing this bill is no surprise. John Ayers.
The Glasgow & Edinburgh Branches Blog. Towards a better understanding of the world, in order to change it.
Monday, October 06, 2014
This is your life
Look around you at the world you live in. For some of us our wage slavery can buy us a comfortable, prosperous lifestyle. For others it means being discarded in some soulless housing scheme and for perhaps the rest of us it’s something in between. In recent years the term alienation has come into common use with varying shades of meaning. The term is rich in content and provides insight into human experience at several different levels. Under capitalism the effects of alienation dominate every day life.
Millions of us are under the constant influence of drugs, prescribed or illegal , of alcohol, cigarettes which make life a bit more tolerable. Leisure time is directed by the media; people are bored, anxious and dissatisfied. The speed and stress of life is increasing. Social isolation, family estrangement and individual loneliness are typical of life today. People are filled with inner conflicts and are strangers to one another. Personal ambition, the frustration, the specialisation at work make many into emotional cripples. Intense competition starts in school, carries on into adult living and we accept it as natural. The chase after money ruins the lives of everyone. Men and women today are manipulated. The buying, selling and advertising that dominate our daily lives have seeped into our emotions, and hardened us. Prestige and success are more important than feelings. To survive, you have to become hard skinned and compassion for others is for losers. It's one against all and each of us resentful of everyone else.
What do you do if you’re young, you’ve got no money, and you want some kind of social life that actually involves human to human interaction? You can’t go to pubs, restaurants, clubs or the cinema without money. There are places in this country which are so dull, so devoid of sheltered places to meet, so lifelessly after dark, that many young refugees from the couch potato life of their parents end up hanging around shopping malls. This is not because they have a love of malls. They’re certainly not going to buy anything. The neon light attracts them like moths, because the alternative to hanging around in a brightly lit area is hanging around in a dark one of gloomy shadows.
We have been structured to accept this system. One way of looking at the way capitalism has formed us and we form it in turn, is through a consideration of our psychological defences, a psychological term for the means we use to manage our lives in the face of threats to our stability. We all try to find ways of defending ourselves psychologically. It’s natural and necessary. We couldn’t get through the day if we were constantly overwhelmed by the world. However, a defence can distort our awareness of reality, in this case, of how we are made use of, and so we shape ourselves to the economic circumstances, in order to be able to tolerate them. The first means of defence is ‘projection’. To project can be to imagine that some outside figure or power possesses something that is part of ourselves. We project our capacities into money, we imagine that money holds great powers, although in reality those powers belong to us. Money is endowed with the same sort of status as a god, it seems to be the source of everything; but of course we are, as the people of the world, self-evidently, the source of everything. Nothing comes from money. The analogy is that we could run the world, but we let money ‘run’ it instead. We assume that our wants are limitless and that, if money weren’t an obstacle, we’d just accumulate things endlessly and not know when to stop. Money then can be like an over-indulgent parent, that lets us be completely spoilt, that offers us no limits. Money can give us victory over the social and human limitations that come from considering others. If you’ve got enough money you don’t have to give any thought at all to other people, and in this society that’s just about the highest form of freedom we can imagine. When we are living in a wasteful and reckless way, we say ‘We are prosperous now and this is what we want! Nobody can tell us what to do!’
The centre of decision making is located outside ourselves. If we can’t afford it we can’t have it, and if we can afford it we have to have it. Money starves us or it fattens us up, but either way, it is money that is in control, enabling our labour to be siphoned off and gathered together as profit.
This oppresses us, but it also frees us of responsibility. If we project our power elsewhere then we are excused the work of taking responsibility for it.
The second defence mechanism is that of ‘identification’. To ‘identify’ means we fuse or confuse our identity with that of another. We identify with the famous and powerful. On the small screen and the big screen, celebrities enjoy romance and adventure on our behalf. We watch passively as they compensate for our inability to lead a fulfilling life. Relating more to a character in a soap or a movie star than to our neighbour, we're under the illusion of sharing a real human relationship. Separated from our fellow human beings, an illusory substitute connection is better than no connection, at all.
We prefer to imagine that we are all capitalists. Instead of recognising that the owners of capital might be using us, we imagine ourselves to be in control, and the owners of capital to be our servants. We think we are sophisticated, knowing consumers who know a bargain when we see one, and companies exist to meet our every caprice and whim, rather than the reverse. We, in some way, enjoy shopping ‘til we drop. Isn’t there a seductive joy in being able to feel like the oppressor, like a proxy slave owner with all these poor little shop assistants and shelf stackers catering to our whims? The supermarkets’ own marketing flatter us with their patter describing us as ‘discerning consumers with an eye for price’; which decoded, means that we’re broke and overwhelmed with debt. They say we are ‘leading today’s high pressure, busy lives’ and that means we’re overworked, sweated labour just like in Dickens’ time, but repackaged as living some kind of exciting fast-lane lifestyle. We’re not even consumers, not really. The capitalist is the ultimate consumer. The cost of our labour is the total value of keeping us going, keeping us fed, housed, entertained and all the rest of it, so low prices in the shops means that we are cheaper too. The rich are sophisticated consumers of our labour and they certainly know a bargain when they see one.
We have grown adapted to the capitalist system that we feel no need to get rid of it because of these defences against knowing just how merciless it really is. How could it be otherwise, when we have created it and lived in it for so long? Yet, paradoxically it is in admitting our servitude that our freedom lies. Our difficulty is in realising that, no matter how seductive the consumer society is, we are still wage slaves, and our lives are lived, as Fromm says, ‘for purposes outside ourselves’. If enough of us were to face up to that seemingly unbearable fact, and start to take back our capacities and set about using them, then that could be the beginning of the end for capitalism. It could also be the beginning of a completely new system, where our common purpose is the fullest development of every single person in the world. Men and women are social individuals, that is to say that we exist in two simultaneous dimensions; we require equality and co-operation as a basis for the development and expression of our social individuality. Equality and co-operation are more than optional potentialities, they are the relationships that mankind requires as a basis for the satisfaction of all human needs. Equality and co-operation are themselves human needs. Socialism will eliminate alienation because its relationships and organisation will be centred on human needs and not on economic forces external to human needs. The whole community will relate on equal terms about the means of production and the earth's resources and co-operate to produce goods, services and amenities solely for use. This will be an association of men and women in conscious control of their own lives, living for themselves with the freedom to decide upon social projects and to organise resources to complete those projects. Socialism places man at the centre of social organisation. Equality, co-operation and democratic participation will bring productive efficiency in response to human needs. But more than that, it will do so in circumstances in which the self-directed individual will live positively, integrating his or her own life with the development of the whole community.
The capitalist house of cards is built on our complicity. We don't think that there's a better way to live. We don't think we have the power to change things. We have a world of pleasures to win, and nothing to lose but boredom. We sleep but we fail to dream. Socialism is a society in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all: one for all and all for one. Another reformulation is to state that the objective of a socialist society will be to produce well rounded human beings, individuals who are ends in themselves and not a means to an end. In order to develop, and be free human beings, we will need to co-operate, since we can only be as free as we are produced to be (or, which is the same thing, as free as we can help each other to be). Another way of saying this, is that a given individual can only be free by helping others to be free. This is the underpinning of the concept of from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.
The person with the best information regarding an individuals capacities is themselves (what might be a comfortable jog for some might be unendurable agony for others, we cannot measure another's pain). That is not to say there isn't a role for democracy in co-ordinating and organising the discussion of needs and abilities, but its role is to facilitate not dictate. This means socialism is an ongoing dialogue between flesh and blood human beings, not abstractions like 'society'.
Sunday, October 05, 2014
Clear Socialist Understanding A Necessity
Once again, we can point out the futility of revolution without clear socialist understanding as the Arab Spring continues to run into problems. The New York Times reports, " It is clear that the region's old status quo, dominated by rulers who fixed elections and quashed dissent, has been fundamentally damaged, if not overthrown, since the outbreak of the Arab Spring uprisings. What is unclear is the replacement model. Most of the uprisings have developed into bitter struggles over the relationship between the military and the government, the role of religion, and what it means to be a citizen, not a subject." Well, actually we could help with that replacement model. John Ayers.
Saturday, October 04, 2014
Quest To End Poverty?
The New York Times critiques a new book about Jeffrey Sachs entitled, "The Idealist – his quest to end poverty". Sachs started 'The Millenium Villages Project" in 2005, imposing interventions on seven sub-Saharan villages in agriculture, health, and education, to show how Africa could 'loosen the grip that extreme poverty had on so many of its people'. He spent $120 million but refused to compare 'his' villages with others outside the program. However, Michael Clemens, a senior fellow at the center for Global Development did, saying, " There is zero evidence that the Millenium Villages Project is meeting its goals". If only he had subscribed to the Socialist Standard or Imagine or Socialist Review, he could have saved himself time and money and the futility! John Ayers.
Friday, October 03, 2014
The Belaboured Labour Party
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It has been shown that the Labour Party in action compromises on every issue, make deals and bargains with their opponents, drop nearly every principle for which they professed to have stood to gain office or to avoid being thrown out of power.
Within the Labour Party we witness demagogues turned into autocrats, reformers who become reactionaries; of left-wingers who transform into right-wingers all by the simple expedient of promising to appoint them to ministerial positions.
The Labour Party’s record of broken pledges, incompetence, petty jealousies, and political intrigue shows that its members and supporters possess notorious short memories. Labour's failure comes from the basic cause that they are a party which has never set out to organise conscious socialists for a new society and its spokespersons have made it their business to mislead the workers.
You cannot be a socialist and have a leader. You cannot be a socialist and be a leader. Socialism means self-emancipation of the working class by the working class. Only when a majority of workers understand and want it will socialism be a practical possibility. It is all a question of consciousness allied with democratic political action.
Capitalism by its very nature periodically produces booms, slumps, wars and unemployment, and all the other social ills of this day and age. Labour parliamentarians may be credited with the best intentions in the world, but from time to time they find themselves in the unenviable position of having to run capitalism from the government benches. It is then that personalities and party politics count for little, capitalism sweeps them all along leaving a trail of misery and devastation in its wake. Good or bad intentions do not enter into it.
Maybe Labour Leader A is a nicer person - or less of a swine—than Labour Leader B. It is irrelevant. It is possible that one will try hard to do what he or she thinks will be in the interest of “the people”. Good motives do not stand a chance against the limits of historical possibilities.
Capitalism cannot be reformed into a benevolent system. Leaders can be good, bad or indifferent, but they will still do the same thing. They were elected to run capitalism for the capitalist class. That is what they will always do for as long as they are allowed to.
The Socialist Party of Great Britain has never had time for leaders who aim to come into the working class political movement and get socialism on our behalf, especially when such leaders are jumped-up moralists. Opportunist leaders come and go, and while they plot and intrigue and pat themselves on the backs, the followers, on whose backs they have been riding should buck them out of their saddles.
Despite the abundance of technical and natural resources which mankind now has at its disposal, we are told by Labourites that the abolition of exchange relationships and the introduction of production for use is a utopian ideal so the wages system (rationing) must continue. It is a fact that people, by nature, are not lazy, but on the contrary suffer from the results of inactivity. People might prefer not to work for one or two months, but the vast majority would beg to work, even if they were not paid for it.
George Jackson in one of his prison letters from “Soledad Brother” explains: “Consider the people's store, after full automation, the implementation of the theory of economic advantage. You dig, no waste makers, nor harnesses on production. There is no intermediary, no money. The store, it stocks everything that the body or home could possibly use. Why won't the people hoard, how is an operation like that possible, how could the storing place keep its stores if its stock (merchandise) is free? Men hoard against want, need, don't they? Aren't they taught that tomorrow holds terror, pile up a surplus against this terror, be greedy and possessive if you want to succeed n this insecure world? Nuts hidden away for tomorrow's Winter. Change the environment, educate the man, he'll change. The people's store will work as long as people know that it will be there, and have in abundance the things they need and want (really want); when they are positive that the common effort has and will always produce an abundance, they won't bother to take home more than they need. Water is free, do people drink more than they need?”
Jackson realised that the answer wasn't the supposed "radical” calls from the Left for currency reform or the creation of virtual currencies like bitcoin, but to get rid of money altogether, or more precisely, to make money redundant by bringing about the common ownership of resources.
Socialism differs from other phases of social thought in that it stands for the overthrow of modern society based upon class ownership of the necessaries of life and the building up in its stead of a society of wealth producers owning the means of life in common. The Socialist Party fights for the removal of a system of society which works out to the detriment of the many and we declare ourselves in favour of a new system wherein capital and capitalist governments cease to be. We abide by the dictates of the class struggle and we refuse to associate with those who support the capitalist class.
Therefore we cannot ally ourselves with those who claim to be progressive and on the Left, declining to lower the socialist flag to march with the enemies of socialism. The World Socialist movement tramples down national boundaries, recognises the common link between the workers of every land— their poverty and slavery indicts the ruling-class as a robber class, establishes the fact, that poverty need not exist, that slavery can be abolished by the workers themselves, and that the quarrels of the ruling class are of no concern to the working class.
The working class of the world have a common bond that transcends every tie of race or nationality—their urgent need for emancipation. What matters the name of the country of your birth, if you are a slave in that country? What tie is it that links you to the lordly capitalist ? You are chained to his machines, in his factories and workshops, and driven by the whip of hunger to produce wealth for him while you sink deeper into poverty. You are the robbed, he is the robber; you are the slave, he is the master. In every land the dominant class holds sway over the lives of the workers, moving them like pawns over the chess-board.
The capitalist class enlists from the ranks of the workers themselves all the gifted traitors who can fashion themselves into the semblance of respectable labour leaders, entrusting them with the task of educating the workers in the way they should go for the sake of the “national interest" and capitalism.
When the working class understand that society is run not in their interests, but in the interests of the owners of the means of production and distribution for the purpose of producing commodities for sale at a profit; when appreciation of this one fact opens the way to a conscious realisation of the position of the working class in society; when the moment of truth transpires: the working class will not turn to those Labour Party politicians but will elect genuine socialist representatives to Parliament to end capitalism, and establish socialism.
When socialist knowledge illuminates their minds with the promise of freedom and social well-being, their hands will clasp across borders and nations will no longer have meaning or significance. Nationalism and patriotism serves to obscure the class struggle and keep the workers divided.
The Socialist Party cares little whether the capitalist class divides the Earth among themselves by rivers and seas, or by the lines of latitude and longitude. What concerns us is the class ownership, which we work and organise to abolish.
Thursday, October 02, 2014
Socialism is Possible
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We live today in a world of potential abundance. The vast amount of wealth produced throughout the world takes the form of goods and services which are marked, which are intended for sale in order to realise a profit. Repeatedly over the years, statistics from the Food and Agriculture Organisation have demonstrated that world resources could be sufficient to feed the total world population several times over if fully cultivated. But the world market system is such that production must be trimmed to match sales potential. With the removal of this profit barrier, incredible forces of production would be unleashed.
Abundance is a relationship between supply and demand, where the former exceeds the latter. In socialism a buffer of surplus stock for any particular item, whether a consumer or a producer good, can be produced, to allow for future fluctuations in the demand for that item, and to provide an adequate response time for any necessary adjustments. Achieving abundance can be understood as the maintenance of an adequate buffer of stock in the light of extrapolated trends in demand. The relative abundance or scarcity of a good would be indicated by how easy or difficult it was to maintain such an adequate buffer stock in the face of a demand trend (upward, static, downward). It will thus be possible to choose how to combine different factors for production, and whether to use one rather than another, on the basis of their relative abundance/scarcity. By following the rule of using the minimum necessary amounts of the least abundant factors it will be possible to ensure their efficient allocation. Money as a "general unit of cost" would not come into it.
Defenders of the market such as Von Mises and Hayek appear not to understand the system which they represent. But this is not simply a matter of them putting forward fallacious assertions as a matter of ignorance. Their position is based on a crude defence of the privileged interests which do benefit from capitalism. In arguing in favour of these interests, it appears that any nonsense which defies the reality of experience will do. Their more honest position would be that the market system does work, but for those who monopolise the means of living and that therefore economic calculation of the exploitation of labour is indispensable in pursuit of that interest. Defenders of capitalism never seem to ask themselves the practical question about what is the critical factor determining a production initiative in a market system, and moreover, what is the function of a cost/price calculation in relation to that initiative. The answer is obvious from everyday experience. The factor which critically decides the production of commodities is the judgement that enterprises make about whether they can be sold in the market. Obviously, consumers buy in the market what they perceive as being for their needs. But whether or not the transaction takes place is not decided by needs, but by ability to pay. So the realisation of profit in the market determines both the production of goods and also the distribution of goods by various enterprises.
In the market system the motive of production, the organisation of production, and the distribution of goods are inseparable parts of the same economic process: the realisation of profit and the accumulation of capital. There is no choice about this. Commodity production is organised within the constraints of the circulation of capital. This capital can accumulate, maintain its level or become depleted. The economic pressure on capital is that of accumulation, the alternative is bankruptcy. The production and distribution of goods is entirely subordinate to the pressure, on capital to accumulate. Therefore the practical, technical organisation of production is entirely separate from the economic organisation of the accumulation of capital in which cost/ price, value factors play a vital part. The economic signals of the market are not signals to produce useful things. They signal the prospects of profit and capital accumulation. If there is a profit to be made then production will take place; if there is no prospect of profit, then production will not take place. Profit not need is the deciding factor.
What socialism will establish is a practical system of world production operating directly and solely for human needs. Socialism will be concerned solely with the production, distribution and consumption of useful goods and services in response to definite needs. It will integrate social needs with the material means of meeting those needs, that is to say, with active production. Under capitalism what appear to be production decisions are in fact decisions to go for profit in the market. Socialism will make economically-unencumbered production decisions as a direct response to needs. With production for use, then, the starting point will be needs. Socialism will not depend on calculations of labour-time or the conversion of these into costs since production will not be generating exchange-values for the market. Production for use will generate useful goods and services directly for need, and this will require not economic calculation but the communication of quantities of material things throughout production. This will result from the change in productive relationships. The use of labour in a market system begins with an exchange of labour-power for wages, which is an economic exchange between individual workers and invested capital. This will be replaced by direct co-operation between producers to satisfy social needs in the material form of productive activity.
Marx argued that in socialism/ communism (both Marx and Engels used those words interchangeably) money would be abolished. The Communist Manifesto pointed out socialism would dispense with buying and selling itself and hence with the need for money. People will have free and unrestricted access to the products of industry while contributing to the production process on an entirely voluntarist basis. Those confronted with the proposition that goods and services should be freely available for people to take according to their needs often react by claiming that this wouldn't work because, first, nobody would want to work and, second, people would grab more than they needed so that shortages would again develop. There are simple answers to these objections. First, the threat of starvation is not, and certainly should not be, the incentive to work. If some work is so unpleasant that nobody would freely choose to do it then it ought to be done by machines or not at all. Second, people only tend to be greedy and to grab in conditions of scarcity. If food and clothing were freely available in abundant quantities people would soon adjust to taking only what they needed. Erich Fromm, the psychoanalyst and writer, wrote:
“I believe, however, that it can be demonstrated that material incentive is by no means the only incentive for work and effort. First of all there are other incentives : pride, social recognition, pleasure in work itself, etc. Examples of this fact are not lacking. The most obvious one to quote is the work of scientists, artists, etc., whose outstanding achievements were not motivated by the incentive of monetary profit, but by a mixture of various factors : most of all, interest in the work they were doing; also pride in their achievements, or the wish for fame. But obvious as this example may seem, it is not entirely convincing, because it can be said that these outstanding people could make extraordinary efforts precisely because they were extraordinarily gifted, and hence they are no example for the reactions of the average person. This objection does not seem to be valid, however, if we consider the incentives for the activities of people who do not share the outstanding qualities of the great creative persons. What efforts are made in the field of all sports, of many kinds of hobbies, where there are no material of any kind !”
The widespread existence of volunteering shows that people are prepared to work for other reasons than individual economic necessity. Most volunteers under capitalism will be doing so because they want to do something useful and help other people. But even if their motivation was to overcome boredom or to meet and be with other people, that would still be a practical refutation of the view that people are naturally lazy. Of course, as in any form of human society, in socialist society too arrangements will have to be made to provide what its members need to live. That will still be a necessity, but that does not mean that these arrangements cannot be based on people volunteering to work, for all sorts of reasons (pleasure, social recognition, wish to do something useful, social contact, even a sense of duty).
Most of us want to work. What we hate is employment. We want to work for ourselves, our families and friends, our community, not for some thieving parasite of a boss. Socialism could work without economic coercion. We are tethered to a life of working for the boss or living off the dole; of boring routines and consuming (if we are fortunate) bland, second-rate goods and services; of being screwed up by the dehumanising effects of relating to each other so often on the basis of buying and selling. We are only really chained to this social system because of the mentality of wage-slavery. Some people don't like the term "wage slavery". It's not nice to be called a slave. But "wage-slavery" is what we are in, whether we admit it or not, even those plush offices, driving their fancy company cars are only a few months from the breadline if their boss decides to dispense with their services.
The consent of the majority which the minority needs to keep its system going. We must unite to change society. We are not presenting the socialist alternative of a world without wages as a utopian dream for the century after next. This is practical now. Socialism is the sensible next step for humankind to take. We have nothing to lose but our chains.
Wednesday, October 01, 2014
Hayter of the Trots
Book Review from the June 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard
Hayter of the Bourgeoisie, by Teresa Hayter. Sidgwick and Jackson. £1.95.
This book is written by the daughter of the one-time British Ambassador to Moscow, Sir William Hayter. The first few chapters are an account of her personal history (childhood, education, etc.) leading on to her work with the Overseas Development Institute. While with the ODI she visited various parts of the underdeveloped world and saw at first hand the poverty and misery there and which contributed to her growing "politicization".
During her stay in the third world she came to the conclusion that the cause of all this backwardness was the dominance over the economy and the local politicians by the "imperialist" nations (America, Britain, France, etc.) and that the so-called aid programmes were really another form of imperialism in that they bound the third world nations more securely to the economies of the western exploiters.
Thus she came to write a book on the activities in this connection of the World Bank in Latin America. The ODI refused to publish this and it was subsequently published by Penguin as Aid as Imperialism. As a result of all these experiences Hayter jettisoned her liberal fallacies and became a "revolutionary". Alas, all this means is that she has embraced all the old Bolshevik fallacies instead and has joined the Trotskyist IMG (International Marxist Group).
The blurb on the dust jacket tells us that Hayter's current ideas were formed through identifying with the third world. This is nothing new for Trotskyists since, basically, they are trying to fulfill the historic task of the bourgeoisie ( the completion of the capitalist revolution) in those parts of the world where the bourgeoisie are too weak to do it themselves. Hayter and the IMG support all "national liberation" movements on the assumption that national liberation will weaken the imperialist nationals, cause a major economic breakdown, and so precipitate the working class into revolution. Leaving aside the absurdity that a frightened, politically working class will opt for Socialism (more likely to support reaction as in Germany in 1933) we should point that the author has devoted part of this book and all of Aid as Imperialism to showing that exploitation continues in other forms after independence anyway! And even if America loses all influence in, say, Vietnam does she think that the vacuum will remain unfilled by some other imperialist power, perhaps Russia or China? Indeed, when French interests were kicked out of the Far East after the second world war all that happened was that America moved in instead.
When dealing with the Russian revolution Hayter displays either a remarkable capacity for naivety or downright dishonesty. She claims "In Russia Soviet democracy survived longest in the areas where the Bolshevik (later Communist) Party was strong" and mentions Lenin arguing that "workers' councils must be set up everywhere, whether or not there were members of the Communist Party". In fact exactly the opposite happened. The Bolsheviks closed down trade union and peasant bodies which they couldn't control, shot down people who demanded that unpopular Bolshevik-dominated soviets should be subject to recall, and dissolved the democratically elected Constituent Assembly which Lenin had been clamouring for until it failed to produce anything like the anticipated Bolshevik majority.
Trotskyists, Hayter included, are fond of the theory that the revolution only degenerated with the coming of Stalin and that the Communist Party had hitherto practised "democratic centralism"—democracy within the Party (even if nowhere else). Indeed, during the wrangles between Stalin and Trotsky over the throne vacated by Lenin, Trotsky, the dazzling intellectual, complained that Stalin was suppressing his views; but Stalin, the plodder, simply ran rings round Trotsky by pointing out that he had never complained when other opposition groups had been suppressed at the Tenth Party Congress in 1921. Both Lenin and Trotsky turned a blind eye to murders committed by Bolsheviks and to the packing of factory meetings and soviets by Bolsheviks who had no right to be there. And it was Lenin, not Stalin, who introduced the dreaded Cheka which Hayter rightly calls "an abominable abuse of everything that Marxism stands for". The truth is that "degeneration" began straight away since Lenin and the whole Bolshevik theory could allow nothing less than a complete dictatorship overthe proletariat.
Although Hayter criticises the "Great Man" theory of history at Oxford she seems to have swallowed it herself. How else can we explain her claim that the "revolution" in Kenya failed because of the treachery of one man, Jomo Kenyatta? And in France in May 1968, again everything hinges on the leaders . . . if only they had been Trotskyists instead of the traitorous Stalinists. She also has some strange notions about economics although this may be due to her determination to see heaven on Earth in Cuba. She actually claims that money is becoming unimportant there, because, owing to the widespread scarcity, no one can buy much anyway!
All this is bad enough, but when she turns her attention to what life will be like "after the revolution" (which she thinks she will be achieved at the barricades with guns and petrol bombs) then she really goes haywire. She correctly points out that the Left is always reluctant to describe what it means by Communism, so she sets out to redress this need. Apparently society will be run by workers' councils and not by the latter-day Bolsheviks. In case the reader is worried by what happened in Russia she hints that because Britain has "relatively democratic traditions" (which Trots have always said are a sham) then there should be little post-revolutionary violence. But the whole population will have to be armed. Whatever for? To ensure that the capitalists don't stage a comeback! What supermen the left make these capitalists out to be.
Despite the abundance of technical and natural resources which mankind now has at its disposal, we are told that the abolition of exchange relationships and the introduction of production for use is "a remote ideal" so the wages system (rationing) must continue with, in good Leninist tradition, equal wages for all. Perhaps it is just as well that the Left don't try to describe Socialism more often, There's enough confusion on that score already.
Hayter's book is nevertheless a good buy for anyone who wants to have just about every error in the Trotskyist repertoire conveniently placed between two covers.
Vic Vanni
Glasgow Branch
Expectation And The Uninspected.
The New York Times reported "Factory Inspections Fall Short" (Sep 8, 2013) and tell us how a Walmart factory was inspected and approved the goods destined for Xmas sales, except the goods were, unknown to the inspectors, made in another factory (uninspected) and shipped there for the occasion. In February, 2012, just ten months after a Bangladesh factory had been inspected and stamped "Working conditions – no complaints", workers rampaged through the factory demanding better conditions. 'Check the box' fast inspections do nothing to root out and solve problems whatsoever and the companies using the cheap production know it and try their best to hide it - difficult to do when your factory collapses! John Ayers.
Meanwhile. Back On Earth
With India successfully placing a satellite in orbit around Mars local politicians were not long in basking in the glory. Narendra Modi, the prime minister visited the Space Research Organisation and declared that India had a great scientific future. 'While Mr Modi is eager to use the success of the mission to trumpet India's economic and scientific prowess as a rising global power, critics said that the mission was a waste of of money in a nation where 43 per cent of children under the age of 5 are chronically malnourished and 33 per cent of its 1.2 billion people lack access to electricity.' (Times,25 September) RD
Why we need socialism?
In 1907 Keir Hardie the "father of the Labour Party" - and its first champion, justified nationalisation, in accepting as he said "State Socialism," despite all its drawbacks, as an evolutionary stage in social development nevertheless held that it was "a preparation for free Communism in which the rule of life would be, from each according to his capacity to each according to his needs." (From Serfdom to Socialism, ).It was only in 1918 that Labour officially adopted the word socialism to describe its aim. It is true that prior to that date Keir Hardie had stated his aim to be that of working for a socialist society whose character we would not have argued against. But Hardie's views was one amongst many in an organisation primarily concerned with representing trade union interests in parliament. He also mistakenly believed that socialism could be offered up to workers after winning mass support for reform programmes.
Sidney Webb signed the Manifesto of English Socialists which contained this declaration:
“On this point all socialists agree. Our aim, one and all, is to obtain for the whole community complete ownership and control of the means of transport, the means of manufacture, the mines and the land. Thus we look to put an end for ever to the wage-system, to sweep away all distinctions of class, and eventually to establish National and International Communism on a sound basis.”
It is the declared aim of the Labour Party to bring about a more egalitarian capitalism this is not the aim of Socialists, and even if achieved it would not solve the problems of the working class. Capitalism is not more "capitalist" in Germany and France because income inequality is greater than in Britain, nor less "capitalist" in America because, as regards ownership of wealth. Early Labour theorists, such as R. H. Tawney, saw Labour's role as to suppress unearned income, correctly regarded as a tribute levied by property-owners on the rest of society, by gradually taxing it out of existence. As, once again, socialism will indeed be a society in which shareholding will have no place, the higher taxes on unearned income by Labour governments were sometimes presented, wrongly, as a step towards socialism. Now such pretences are dropped. Labour leaders, eager to get their hands on the reins of office, accept capitalism as it has evolved in Britain - a profit-driven market economy providing unearned income for those who own the means of production - and to abandon the attempt to impose on it isolated features of a socialist society. Instead of Labour gradually changing capitalism, the opposite happened. Trying to reform capitalism changed the Labour Party into the out-and-out capitalist party it is today. Elected by a working class that only wanted improvements within capitalism, Labour governments found they had no choice other than to administer capitalism. But capitalism can only function as a profit-making system in which priority has to be given to profits over all other considerations.
It doesn't have to be this way. The greatest weapons we posses are our class unity, our intelligence, and our ability to question the status quo and to imagine a world fashioned in our own interests. Leaders perceive all of this to be a threat and so will do anything to keep us in a state of oblivion, dejection and dependency. Our apathy is the victory they celebrate each day. Our unwillingness to unite as a globally exploited majority and to confront them on the battlefield of ideas is the subject of their champagne toasts.
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
To Save the World - Socialism
The World Bank recognizes we’re on the track for a 4 degree warmer world—by the end of this century. Kevin Anderson of the UK’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research explains a 4 degrees Celsius warming (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) is ‘incompatible with any reasonable characterization of an organized, equitable and civilized global community’. Why haven’t the peoples of the world mobilised to save the planet? The answer is we have not done the things that are necessary to lower emissions because these things fundamentally conflict with capitalism. The actions that would give us the best chance of averting catastrophe—and would benefit the vast majority—are extremely threatening to an elite minority that has a stranglehold over our economy, our political process, and most of our media outlets. The climate change denialists may be wrong but as Naomi Klein writes “but when it comes to the scope and depth of change required to avert catastrophe, they are right on the money.” To avoid economic collapse capitalism requires unfettered expansion yet what is needed to avoid society’s collapse is a contraction in humanity’s use of resources. Only one of these sets of rules can be changed, and it’s not the laws of nature. No amount of technological “fixes” will do the trick.
People must confront the perverse and dehumanising logic of capitalism. Socialists have long talked of the class war between capitalists and workers , now we must refer to the war between capitalism and our planet. Humanity’s survival requires a new economic system. Trying to protect the existing social system is dishonest and delusional because a way of economics based on the promise of infinite growth cannot be defended. Socialists must build a movement that advocates system change not climate change. Don't expect much help from mainstream environmental groups such as the Nature Conservancy. Don’t places any hope in the “enlightened billionaires” who have expressed interest in environmental protection policies. Could there be anything crazier than expecting rich people to save us by geo-engeering projects.
Naomi Klein points out the obvious lesson: hope lies not with a new climate movement but with a coming together of all the living movements to pursue “the unfinished business of liberation” when awareness and political engagement aren't only for activists but become part of everyday life. She continues that the situation may not look too promising now, but we have to be ready for the “moments when the impossible seems suddenly possible” to be “harnessed not only to denounce the world as it is, and build fleeting pockets of liberated space. It must be the catalyst to actually build the world that will keep us all safe. The stakes are simply too high, and time too short, to settle for anything less.”
No one has magic powers of prediction but put all the bad news together and the apocalyptic downward spiral set in motion by fossil-fueled capitalism may never be reversed in time to save the human race from extinction. Capitalism’s achievement has been to give us the ability and the process of exterminating ourselves and maybe every other living things as well. Throughout the world, people of all countries need to act with urgency to switch to a genuine socialist economy that aims at sustainability rather than endless consumption and growth, an economy based on renewable energy rather than fossil fuels, an economy devoted to life rather than to profits, an ecologically sound economy that functions as a part of the ecosystem with its people interacting in a cooperative way. The question facing us all is whether we stick with the capitalist rat-race and perish as a species, or abandon that rat-race and survive?
Monday, September 29, 2014
TO THE PRINCES OF THE CHURCH. (poem)
TO THE PRINCES OF THE CHURCH.
From the February 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard
You prate of love and murmur of goodwill,F. J. Webb
Turn sanctimonious eyes toward your God,
Write on your walls the text "Thou shalt not kill,"
Point out the path your "Prince of Peace" once trod,
While all the time, with murder in your hearts,
You lie, cajole, and bully that the fools
Who heed your words may play their foolish parts
As slaves of Mammon, as the War-Lord's tools.
On many a field, in many a river bed,
Of Flanders and of Poland and of France,
Your bloody-minded words bear fruit indeed.
Preachers of Death! the thought of maimed and dead
Will nerve us when our hosts of Life advance
To crush for ever your accursed breed
Failing Faith and Hope
Thomas Walkom, writing in The Toronto Star details the failing 'faith and hope' in president Obama – he promised to close Guantanamo and didn't; he promised a short sharp war to defeat the Taliban, never happened; he authorized drone strikes; he permitted the National Security Agency to snoop on American citizens, among others; he promised openness but went after whistle blowers like Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden. As the Socialist Standard said at the time if his election, "Welcome to the New Boss, Same as the Old". John Ayers.
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
Fantasy And Reality
From time to time the world's media turns its attention to such issues as climate change and the environment. We have such attention at present. 'World leaders including US President Barack Obama are holding a summit on climate change at the United Nations. The aim at the New York meeting is to galvanise member states to sign up to a comprehensive new global climate agreement at talks in Paris next year. "Climate change is the defining issue of our time. Now is the time for action," UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said ahead of the summit.' (BBC News, 23 September) After millions of words are spoken and pious resolutions are passed we can confidently predict the outcome will be the same as in the past - nothing! As long as the profit motive is the driving force of capitalism the environment is of little concern. RD
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
Billionaires And Poverty
Millions of workers throughout the world struggle to survive but it is not all doom and gloom in capitalism - some people are doing exceptional well. 'The population of dollar billionaires across the globe has increased by a net 155 to 2,325 in the past 12 months, according to the latest census....' (Times, 18 September) The Singapore-based Wealth-X, a consultancy that tracks the number of the extremely rich has come up with the following figures for billionaires. US 571, China 190, UK 130, Germany 123 and Russia 114. RD
Monday, September 22, 2014
Sunday, September 21, 2014
Blast from the Past
BRUTAL ATTACK ON A SPEAKER.
From the August 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard
We learn from the "One Big Union Bulletin" (Winnipeg) that repeated brutal attacks have been made by Communists in that city on speakers of the newly re-formed Socialist Party of Canada.
We have recently experienced similar tactics in Glasgow, not, be it noted, from Communists, but—or so it is believed—from certain religious fanatics.
On Monday, June 29th, after a meeting at Clydebank our speaker, A. Shaw, was attacked by four individuals, one of whom finally knocked him unconscious with a piece of lead pipe. Comrade Shaw was badly shaken up by the assault, and it was some days before he fully recovered.
The gratifying feature is that listeners, whatever their political or religious views, do not usually sympathise with such methods, and further very successful meetings have been held at Clydebank.
We do not often have cause to complain of attempts to interfere with our meetings. Except at times of high feeling, such as the war years, when outdoor socialist meetings were often made impossible by the joint efforts of the authorities and the patriots, we find audiences ready to give us a hearing. Our great advantage over the other political parties is that we allow our opponents to state their case on our platform. Audiences, knowing this to be our practice, are less willing to tolerate obstructive methods from our opponents. If other political parties extended the same liberty to opponents they would have less trouble than they sometimes get.
There are, of course, exceptional cases. Those who deliberately set out to smash up meetings or to attack socialist speakers can contrive to seize opportunities for so doing. As explained by Mr. Harry Pollitt in the "Daily Worker" (29th January, 1930); it is the deliberate policy of the Communist Party to smash up its opponents meetings by force. If that policy has not been attended by any success the explanation can be no doubt be found in the smallness of the Communist Party membership, which makes it a very risky proceeding for the would-be smashers.
The Call (poem)
From the December 1918 issue of the Socialist Standard
Come from the slum and the hovel,
From the depth of your dumb despair;
From the hell where you writhe and grovel
Crushed by the woes you bear;
There are joys that are yours for the taking,
There are hopes of a height unknown,
A harvest of life in the making
From the sorrows the past has sown.
Come from the dust of the battle,
Where your blood, like a river, runs,
Where helpless as driven cattle
You feed the insatiable guns.
You fight when your masters bid you,
Now fight that yourselves be free,
In the last great fight that shall rid you
Of your age-long slavery.
There's a murmur of many voices
That shall roll like thunder at last;
The shout of a world that rejoices
In a harvest ripening fast.
For the slaves their shackles are breaking
With wonder and ecstasy;
There is life, new life, in the making
In a new-won world made free.
F.J. Webb
Saturday, September 20, 2014
Understanding Socialism
The Socialist Party aims at achieving a parliamentary majority. The working class of this country will not attempt to reach socialism in any other way, unless events proves to them that this approach has been closed down. At the bottom of this strategy is the expectation by our fellow workers for a bloodless revolution. Surely therefore the first job of a socialist movement must be to capture the state machinery so to disarm the capitalist class to thwart any attempt obstruct the introduction of socialism. It is a socialist pre-condition that the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class although this is not necessarily is confined to voting for socialism. In tandem with political action will be industrial organisation.
The Socialist Party has no need for Marxist theoreticians, great, clever scholars. We are not required to be the mentors of the working class – only of it. They alone will resolve the question of their own freedom. They alone are the revolutionary force. The task of our party, which is of the working class and in it, is to accelerate that movement. We are disappointed by our inadequacies, our lack of impact that is so necessary today.
Our task is to remember the history and heritage which out of class relationships and struggle is ours. We have the duty to say: there is no easy road, there is no gradual road. Nor does the Socialist Party accept the view that crises necessarily brings revolution prefer to put it the other way: revolution prevents catastrophes. We do not share the view that, in some automatic way, out of chaos comes progress.
Bankrupt capitalism has out-lasted its time. It has inflicted untold evil on the world and it must go. That is the job of our Party. It is your job too, all of you, wherever you are, to struggle for the emancipation of the working class.
The prolonged survival of capitalism, with all its dire consequences, is due to the influence of the reformist current in the labour movement, falsely calling itself “socialist.” It is the bitter fruit of opportunist class collaboration. We of the Socialist Party have nothing to do with these brands of so-called “socialism” or “communism.” and explain that socialism will not fall from the skies. Neither will it be gained by any appeals to the good will and compassion of the capitalist exploiters. It is by the class struggle and the experience and education arising from it that the socialist society will be realised. There is no other way. And every attempt to find another way, by supporting the capitalists, by conciliating them, by collaborating with them, in peace or in war, has led not toward the socialist goal but to defeat and disaster for the workers.
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