Distorted Values

Bill Clinton is credited with bringing his family back from the edge of bankruptcy. How, by hard work? Not on your nellie. In seven days he gave speeches to corporate executives in Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Austria and the Czech republic and was paid $1.4 million. In fact, since 2001 when he left the White House to January 2013, he has made $104 million for 542 speeches. Lots of talking, maybe, but less of value than a day in the factory and a hundred times more lucrative. Hilary's standard fee is $200,000. Values are distorted in capitalism. (Toronto Star, June 28.) John Ayers.

We still have the dream of socialism

Many on the left lack a vision of a fundamentally different society. Utopia is a whole narrative of profound change in the lives we lead involving our work, leisure, bodies and relationship to nature. Where are the utopian responses to everyday alienation - the lives we would lead if we were free from alienated exploitative labour. Where is the socialist imagination we so desperately require.

Marx's acknowledged at the 1872 Hague Congress that socialism could be voted in, precluding a revolutionary cataclysm. But workers of the world didn't unite but became more divided by nationalism when workers wrapped themselves around their various flags and capitalism developed reformist coping mechanisms such as the welfare state, as a temporary respite. People though are now again more open to socialist ideas.

Socialism is an economic system in which the means of production are commonly owned and controlled co-operatively. As a form of social organisation, socialism is based on co-operative social relations and self-management. Socialist economies are based upon production for use and the direct allocation of economic inputs to satisfy economic demands and human needs (use value); accounting is based on physical quantities of resources, some physical magnitude, or a direct measure of labour-time.

Marx and Engels believed the consciousness of those who earn a wage or salary (the "working class" in the Marxist sense) would be molded by their "conditions" of "wage-slavery", leading to a tendency to seek their freedom or "emancipation" by throwing off the capitalist ownership of society. For Marx and Engels, conditions determine consciousness and ending the role of the capitalist class leads eventually to a classless society in which the state would wither away.

Marx argued that the material productive forces brought into existence by capitalism predicated a cooperative society since production had become a mass social, collective activity of the working class to create commodities but with private ownership (the relations of production or property relations). This conflict between collective effort in large factories and private ownership would bring about a conscious desire in the working class to establish collective ownership commensurate with the collective efforts their daily experience. Socialism cannot exist without a change in consciousness resulting in a new fraternal attitude toward humanity, both at an individual level and on a world scale, with regard to all peoples suffering from oppression. People would not develop by magic, they would develop because they struggle, they transform (in transforming circumstances, people transforms themselves).

Marx said that any truly fair distribution had to take into account people’s differentiated needs. Hence his maxim: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” distorted by the rich say who claim socialists will expropriate everything, your fridge, your car, your home, the clothes off your back, etc. Neither Marx nor any socialist has ever thought of collectivising people’s personal belongings. When we speak of abolishing capitalism, we mean abolishing the private ownership of the basic means of production and the profit-making system it engenders, which permits a few, the capitalistic class, to exploit the many. We mean that the natural resources, and the mines, mills, factories, transport, means of communication, shall be owned in common by all the people. We don’t mean that personal or private property is abolished in those things which are for personal use. What will be abolished is the use of private property to exploit the labor of another. 

What Marx proposed was the idea of giving society back what originally belonged to them, that is, the means of production, but which was unjustly appropriated by an elite. What the capitalist does not understand, or does not want to understand, is that there are only two sources of wealth: nature and human labour, and without human labour, the potential wealth contained in nature can never be transformed into real wealth. Marx pointed out that there is not only real human labour but also past labor, that is, labour incorporated into instruments of labour. The tools, machines, improvements made to land, and, of course, intellectual and scientific discoveries that substantially increased social productivity are a legacy passed down from generation to generation; they are a social heritage — a wealth of the people. The ruling class has convinced us that the capitalists are the owners of this wealth due to their efforts, their creativity, their entrepreneurial capacity, and that because they are the owners of the companies they have the right to appropriate what is produced. Only a socialist society recognises this inheritance as being social, which is why it must be given back to society and used for society, in the interest of society as a whole, and not to serve private interests. These goods, in which the labor of previous generations is incorporated, cannot belong to a specific person, or a special group, but must instead belong to humanity as a whole.

But simply handing over means of production to the state represents a mere juridical change in ownership, because the change to state-ownership is limited and the subordination of workers continues. A new management, which may call itself “socialist”, might replace the capitalist management but the alienated status of the workers in the production process remains unchanged. While formally public property, because the state represents society, real appropriation is still not collective. That is why Engels argued, “state ownership of the productive forces is not the solution to the conflict.” Furthermore, Marx argued that it was necessary to end the separation between intellectual and manual labour that transforms workers into one more clog in the machine. Enterprises need to be managed by their workers. But, then we have the argument of the managerial bureaucracy that says: How can we hand over management to the workers! They are not educated in the management of enterprises! Concentrating knowledge in the hands of management is one of the mechanisms that enable capital to exploit workers.

Unless capitalist control of the state is broken, they will use the military and the police to maintain their power. Attempts at building alternative forms of society without challenging the capitalist state are doomed to failure. There would be no wages and no physically coercive state in socialism. Marx nowhere in any of his writings distinguishes between a socialist and a communist stage of history. Marx used the word socialism and communism completely interchangeably in his work. In his later work, Critique of the Gotha Program written at the very end of his life, for instance, Marx speaks of a lower and a higher phase of communism, the first, the lower phase, still bearing the birthmarks of the older society, where the higher phase does not bear those birthmarks. But the notion that socialism and communism are distinct stages in history, was alien to Marxist thought because he was really saying a lower and higher phase of socialism.

 Marx never identified the dictatorship of the proletariat, a stage in which the working class assumes political control over society with socialism, he just never did. He wrote in Critique of the Gotha Program “between capitalist and communist [or socialist] society there lies the period the revolutionary transformation from one into the other. Corresponding to this is the political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship or the proletariat. Now Marx clearly refers to this dictatorship which meant to him NOT the dictatorship of the party on behalf of the workers, but rather the rule over society by the working class as a whole democratically. He explicitly says “this lies between capitalism and socialist or communist society.” The failure to distinguish between the political form of transition, between capitalism and socialism, from socialism itself, is extremely widespread in a lot of discussions on Marx and on contemporary issues, but it has no basis in Marx’s writings.

The Socialist Party strives for a peaceful road to socialism. We will do everything in our power to prevent the use of force and violence in establishing socialism, which we know full well cannot be undertaken here or elsewhere unless it has the support of the majority of the people.  But we cannot, of course, guarantee that the enemies of the people will accept the decision of the people to move to socialism. Socialism, however, is not yet on the order of the day and we campaign to make it so.  

Perverse Effect

Thirty-six hours after the Obama government banned the importation of the AK-47 rifle as part of the sanctions against Russia, gun stores in the states sold out of them. Some customers bought eight to ten rifles at nearly $1000 each, stockpiling them as investment. " The great irony here is that the threat of regulation has the perverse effect of stimulating sales, and not by a little," said Philip Cook, a Duke University gun researcher and the author of, "The Gun Debate That Everyone Needs to Know." Whatever the intentions of the purchasers, two things are clear – the fact that there are so many guns out there regardless of whose hands they are in is indicative of a dysfunctional society, and the need for a society where no guns are needed or even produced. John Ayers.

Marx and The Treasure of Sierra Madre

A Diseased Society

It is typical of capitalism that even the awful scourge of Ebola is overtaken by the money system. Bodies of Ebola victims have been dumped outside a hospital in Sierra Leone by burial workers, who are protesting at the failure of authorities to pay them bonuses for their hazardous work, residents have said. 'Tensions in the eastern town of Kenema reached new heights with the action by members of the burial teams. Local residents said three bodies were abandoned in the hospital doorway, preventing people from entering. There were reports that 15 bodies in total had been left in the street.' (Guardian, 25 November) Healthcare workers have repeatedly gone on strike in Liberia and Sierra Leone over lack of pay, unfulfilled promises to pay them more and their dangerous working conditions. RD

Time For A Change

Around this time of the year charitable organisation like Oxfam and War on Want launch appeals for funds to deal with world hunger. Alarming tales about families trying to exist on the pittance of a couple of dollars a day are widely reported. However In contrast there was  a gathering in a Geneva lakeside hotel of extremely rich individuals attending an auction that lasted for a very exciting 15 minutes.  'A gold pocket watch made by Patek Philippe for a New York banker in the 1930s fetched 23.2m Swiss francs (£15m) at auction on Tuesday, smashing the record for a timepiece it previously set 15 years ago, Sotheby's said. Henry Graves commissioned the famed Swiss watchmaker to produce the world's most complicated watch and surpass one made for James Packard, the American automobile manufacturer.' (Guardian, 11 November) Very modestly, the seller and buyer chose to remain anonymous . RD

Political Duplicity

Politicians like to  make great play about how they will crack down on tax-avoiding companies but in practice they are much less thorough. For instance David Cameron has been getting cosy with executives of both Facebook and Google. 'Cameron appointed former Facebook head Joanna Shields to the Lords. Facebook has not paid any corporation tax in the UK for a second year, Tories are close to Google, which has also been accused of avoiding tax.' (Daily Mail, 26 November) RD

More Severe Cuts

Jeremy Hunt, the Health Minister speaking during a debate in the House of Commons said the NHS is entering a crisis even before the winter sets in. 'Health Secretary says he takes his own children to the Accident & Emergency at weekends because the wait to see a GP takes  too long.' (Daily Telegraph, 25 November) When even the Health Secretary admits to the inadequacy of the NHS it shows how severe the cuts have become. RD

For Common Ownership, For Free Access

A SPGB BANNER

"From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" is commonly attributed to Karl Marx, but "à chacun selon ses besoins, de chacun selon ses facultés" was also written by Louis Blanc (1811-1882) as a rebuttal to Henri de Saint Simon who claimed that each should be rewarded according to how much they work. It is speculated that the phrase was inspired from two lines from the Bible: “All that believed were together, and had all things in common; And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.” (Acts 2:44-45)

The contradiction in capitalist society is between the means of production, which are socialized in this society, and private, not social, accumulation. This inherent contradiction is the basis of society’s division into classes, into the rich and poor. It’s also the source of the crises of capitalism. Marx and Engels’ vision was that socialism would do away with this contradiction by doing away with private appropriation altogether. The idea was that the overthrow of capitalism in favour of a socialist society would improve the lot of the people. Marx and Engels also envisioned the destruction of the arbitrary division between physical and mental labor. Think about it — is sanitation workers’ work any less worthy in promoting public health than the skills a doctor puts in? Is it any less important to society? Yet sanitation workers are devalued in capitalist society and therefore paid less.

Not everyone has the ability to work as much as others do. Moreover, different people have different needs — say, there’s two workers, but one is raising a family while the other is only supporting herself. Paying these workers the same amount isn’t exactly equality, even if they put in the same amount of work.

The focus of the Occupy Wall Street on rising inequality between the wealthy 1% and the 99%, representing the working class was a popular expression of the conditions that Marx and Engels discussed when they described the growing poverty among the masses and the fabulous wealth of the capitalist class

Driven by this constant revolution in the means of production, high-tech, present-day capitalism is characterized more and more by low-wage jobs and a permanent and growing reserve army of the unemployed. But what if the means of production were owned collectively by the workers and run for the purposes of providing for human needs? Then these advances in technology would be a liberating force for humanity. Everyone could be relieved of back-breaking labour and repetitive jobs. Instead of working 40, 50 or 60 hours per week, everyone could work a greatly reduced schedule, with time for leisure, advanced education and cultural activities.

Human beings could put their minds to solving the great challenges facing the global population, not only to raise the standard of living for all, but also to rescue the planet from the environmental degradation that has been imposed by capitalism and the profit system. We could imagine that digging for oil and gas or mining for coal — all the things that are dangerous and toxic to workers and the planet — could be eliminated by the true development of renewable energy sources. These are the kinds of possibilities that Marx and Engels predicted when they described the socialist future.

We also believe that when the capitalist class is eliminated as a class and class distinctions are a thing of the past, when there is no longer a struggle for the existence of the individual, the capitalist culture of racism, of divide and conquer, of promoting divisions by country, nationality, race, gender and sexuality could be eliminated as well. Generalised want promotes divisions, and of course, the capitalists use it to their advantage. When that want is eliminated, it will be all the more clear that we don’t need to fight among ourselves or allow ourselves to be divided into other categories.

Imagine a society where all its members organize production and distribution on a cooperative, democratic basis according not to profit, but solely on the basis of need.  Such a society has no exploiting minority or exploited majority. All property other than personal property is held in common, for the benefit of all. Consequently, there is also no money. If you are hungry, you can eat from the collective store of food. If you want to work, work is always available, and each contributes what he or she can. When you are sick or old or too young, society always takes care of you. All decisions are made collectively, and leadership is chosen rather than imposed. There are no prisons, no standing army, and no state bureaucracy. The threat of social ostracism is sufficient pressure against anyone who threatens the collective or harms another.

Similar societies have already existed in one form or another, in all parts of the world, in what is known as "primitive communism."

"The brotherly sentiments of the Redskins," wrote the Jesuit Charlevoix of the new world Indians he observed, "are doubtless in part ascribable to the fact that the words mine and thine...are all unknown as yet to the savages. The protection they extend to the orphans, the widows and the infirm, the hospitality which they exercise in so admirable a manner, are, in their eyes, but a consequence of the conviction which they hold that all things should be common to all men."

The question, then, is not: Is such a world possible? but: Is it possible again?

The productive prerequisites for such a society certainly exist. The previously undreamed-of material abundance created by capitalism renders hunger, want and even class divisions obsolete. There is enough food produced today to provide enough for every person on the planet. The introduction of ever-more-advanced machinery and technology has raised output to unimagined levels. Workers run things. In this sense, the ruling class today has become entirely parasitic, siphoning wealth but serving no useful social function. Society could do away with the ruling class and suffer no more than when tonsils or an appendix are removed.

Bill Gates once derided open source advocates with the worst epithet a capitalist can muster. These folks, he said, were a "new modern-day sort of communists”. When masses of people work toward a common goal and share their products in common, when they contribute labour without wages and enjoy the fruits free of charge, it's not unreasonable to call that socialism. In the late '90s, activist John Barlow began calling this drift, somewhat tongue in cheek, "dot-communism." Nearly every day another start-up proudly heralds a new way to harness online community action. Digital socialism is socialism without the state, without national borders and designed to heighten individual autonomy and thwart centralization. We have peer-to-peer production, a bounty of free access. The online masses have an incredible willingness to share. The number of personal photos posted on Facebook and MySpace is astronomical, but it's a safe bet that the overwhelming majority of photos taken with a digital camera are shared in some fashion. Then there are status updates, map locations, half-thoughts posted online. Add to this the 6 billion videos served by YouTube each month in the US. The list of sharing organizations is almost endless. When individuals work together toward a large-scale goal, it produces results that emerge at the group level. Phillip Howard, an associate professor in communication at the University of Washington, reported in the weeks just before Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was forced to resign "the total rate of tweets from Egypt  -  and around the world  -  about political change" exponentially grew from "2,300 a day to 230,000 a day." Not only have amateurs shared more than 3 billion photos on Flickr, but they have tagged them with categories, labels, and keywords. The popularity of Creative Commons licensing means that communally, if not outright communistically, your picture is my picture. In a curious way, this exceeds the socialist maxim of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" because it betters what you contribute and delivers more than you need.

Serious contributors to these sites put in far more energy than they could ever get in return, but they keep contributing in part because of the cultural power these instruments wield. A contributor's influence extends way beyond a lone vote, and the community's collective influence can be far out of proportion to the number of contributors. That is the whole point of social institutions—the sum outperforms the parts. Organized collaboration can produce results beyond the achievements of ad hoc cooperation. Just look at any of hundreds of open source software projects, such as the Apache Web server. In these endeavors, finely tuned communal tools generate high-quality products from the coordinated work of thousands or tens of thousands of members. An enthusiast may spend months writing code for a subroutine when the program's full utility is several years away. In fact, the work-reward ratio is so out of kilter from a free-market perspective—the workers do immense amounts of high-market-value work without being paid—that these collaborative efforts make no sense within capitalism. Instead of money, the peer producers who create the stuff gain credit, status, reputation, enjoyment, satisfaction, and experience. Not only is the product free, it can be copied freely and used as the basis for new products. Alternative schemes for managing intellectual property, including Creative Commons and the GNU licenses, were invented to ensure these "frees." Ohloh, a company that tracks the open source industry, lists roughly 250,000 people working on an amazing 275,000 projects. That's almost the size of General Motors' workforce. That is an awful lot of people working for free, even if they're not full-time. Imagine if all the employees of GM weren't paid yet continued to produce automobiles! One study estimates that 60,000 man-years of work have poured into last year's release of Fedora Linux 9.

The number of people who make things for free, share things for free, use things for free, belong to collective software farms, work on projects that require communal decisions, or experience the benefits of decentralized socialism has reached millions and counting. A survey of 2,784 open source developers explored their motivations. The most common was "to learn and develop new skills." The more we benefit from such collaboration, the more open we become to socialist concepts. We underestimate the power of our tools to reshape our minds. Did we really believe we could collaboratively build and inhabit virtual worlds all day, every day, and not have it affect our perspective? The force of online socialism is growing.

Even American Trotskyist James P. Cannon wrote that in a socialist society money, indeed, even a system for accounting for what was produced and how it was allotted would disappear: "In the socialist society, when there is plenty and abundance for all, what will be the point in keeping account of each one's share, any more than in the distribution of food at a well-supplied family table? You don't keep books as to who eats how many pancakes for breakfast or how many pieces of bread for dinner. Nobody grabs when the table is laden. If you have a guest, you don't seize the first piece of meat for yourself, you pass the plate and ask him to help himself first."

In socialism, society's surplus wealth would be collectively used to enhance the welfare of all rather than that of a small minority. Such a society may seem too utopian. But as Cannon said: "What's absurd is to think that this madhouse is permanent and for all time. The ethic of capitalism is: 'From each whatever you can get out of him--to each whatever he can grab.' The socialist society of universal abundance will be regulated by a different standard. It will 'inscribe on its banners ' abolish the wages system - said Marx - 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.'"

Endemic Distress

The government has cut the NHS so severely that it is now forced to re-fund the service. The NHS in England should be given £2bn more next year, the King's Fund health think tank has said. Extra money for the service are called for after the latest figures showed the deficit growing as performance deteriorates. 'Halfway through the 2014-15 financial year the service's deficit had reached £630m - up from £500m a few months ago. It comes as targets are being breached for A&E, hospital operations and cancer treatment. In a briefing document, the King's Fund said the levels of deficits - revealed in official NHS board papers - were "unprecedented" and showed financial distress had become "endemic".' (BBC News, 26 November) RD

World Hunger

There are many reasons to get rid of capitalism. War, crime, preventable diseases - the list is endless. The greatest plight of all though is probably world hunger. 'We grow enough food right now to feed about 10 billion people, yet according to the UN, nearly 1 billion people suffer from significant malnutrition, in a world of plenty. They are hungry because they are poor, and they are poor because they are (by and large) either small-scale farmers without enough land, credit, extension services, or investment, or they are unemployed workers with income too low to support their families.' (Christian Science Monitor, 23 October) One billion suffering from malnutrition. It must end!   RD

Hospitals In Crisis

Experts said hospitals were "full to bursting," with latest quarterly statistics showing hospitals operating at the highest capacity levels recorded for the time of year. 'NHS leaders said that many hospitals had become so busy that it would take little more than "a gust of wind" to bring some to collapse. Accident & Emergency doctors said many of the problems stemmed from lack  of social care, with too many elderly patients stuck in hospital for lack of   help to get them back home.' (Daily Telegraph, 20 November) Lack of NHS funding could lead to a real medical collapse this winter. RD

This Is A Ceasefire?

The hostilities continue in the Ukraine  despite a so-called ceasefire. 'An average of 13 people have been killed daily in eastern Ukraine since a 5 September ceasefire came into place, the UN human rights office says. In the eight weeks since the truce came into force, the UN says 957 people have been killed, amid continuing violations on both sides. A new report by the office describes a total breakdown of law and order in rebel-held Donetsk and Luhansk.' (BBC News, 20 November)  The catalogue of human misery is horrendous - 4,317 deaths since April, 957 of them since the 5 September ceasefire, and 9,921 people wounded. Capitalism's conflicts always lead to working class suffering. RD

A Poisonous System

Under the shocking headline 'Supermarkets still selling chicken contaminated by deadly bacteria', we learn of the awful risks of disease and death as desperate retailers push for bigger and bigger sales. 'Supermarkets are selling chickens they know to be contaminated with a bacterium  that causes food poisoning and kills more than 100 people a year.' (Times, 19 November) The British Retail Consortium, which represents major retailers, said that its members were not required by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) to withdraw contaminated batches.  Which is very convenient for them but hardly reassuring for potential customers. RD

Economic democracy and freedom

A 19th Century Protest banner

The Earth’s greatest single resource is its people. The world could be a paradise for its inhabitants but it definitely is not a paradise for the majority of people. Who and what is responsible? It is the capitalists and their profit-seeking system. Our planet is ruled for and by capitalists for their own interests. What is wrong with the world is the way society is organised, the “system of society” which prevails. Two  main features of this society are it is divided into rich and poor—a tiny handful of rich (1 per cent of the population own more than half the wealth) who need not do any work, and the overwhelming majority who toil their whole lives through and that wars,  involving incalculable suffering to the people, are a regular occurrence.

It is a system of exploitation. By exploitation we mean living off the labour of other people. There have been previous forms of exploitation. In slave society, the slave-owners lived off the labour of the slaves who were their property. In feudal society, the feudal lords lived off the forced labour of the serfs. In capitalist society the worker is neither a slave nor yet a serf, i.e. forced to do free, unpaid labour for a master. But he or she is exploited just the same, even though the form of this exploitation is not so open and clear as was the case with the slaves and the serfs. The essence of exploitation under capitalism consists in this — that the workers, when set to work with raw materials and machinery, produce far more in values than what is paid out by the capitalists in wages. In short, they produce a surplus which is taken by the capitalists and for which they are not paid. Thus they are robbed of the values they produce. This is the source of capitalist profit. It is on this surplus, produced by the workers, that the capitalist lives in riches and luxury. Capitalism is a system in which the means for producing the wealth (the land, the mines, factories, the machines, etc.) are in private hands. A tiny handful of people own these “means of production” as they are called. But they do not work them. The immense majority of the people own nothing (in the sense that they can live on what they own) but their power to work. Capitalism is a system in which the means for producing wealth are owned by a few who live by exploiting the workers, i.e. by robbing them of the values they produce over and above the value of their wages.

As we have seen, capitalism is a system in which there are different classes—exploiters and exploited, rich and poor. The interests of these two classes are clearly opposed. The exploiters try to increase the exploitation of the workers as much as possible in order to increase their profits. The exploited try to limit this exploitation, and to get back as much of the wealth as possible of which they have been robbed. This is one aspect of the class struggle which arises inevitably out of the whole character of capitalism as a class system based on exploitation. The working class has to fight both immediate and long-term struggles. The immediate struggles are those that are fought out on different aspects of the struggle within the existing capitalist order. These struggles can be victorious without a fundamental change of social system. Such struggles are those for wages or in defence of living standards by trade unions. But for a lasting solution of all these problems, it is necessary to end capitalism altogether and to replace it by a new system of society in which the working people rule.

The ending of the exploitation, the cruelty and injustice caused by class society in its various forms, has long been the dream of men. It found in the writings of men like John Ball, Robert Owen, the early English Chartists and the pioneers of the labour movement. But capitalism by itself does not “evolve” into Socialism. It has to be transformed into Socialism by the conscious action and struggle of men and women. The age-long dream of the thinkers and the fighters of the past can only be transformed into reality when the working class take political and economic power from the capitalist class and, having succeeded in this, sets about building a socialist society.

What will such a socialist society look like? The means of production—the factories, mines, land, banks and transport—are taken away from the capitalists. They are transformed into social property which means that they belong to and are worked by the whole of the people, that the fruits of production likewise become social property, used to advance the standard of life of the peoples. No longer can some men (the capitalists) by virtue of the fact that they own the means of production, live off (exploit) the labour of others (the working class). No longer are the workers compelled to sell their labour power to the capitalists in order to live. The workers are no longer property-less proletarians. They now own the means of production in common and work them in their own interests and in the interests of society. It is the only system in which the old definition of democracy as “government of the people, by the people, for the people” becomes a reality. Capitalist democracy is government of the people by the capitalists in the interests of the capitalists. Socialism cannot be imposed on the people from above. It develops from below. The state apparatus which serves capitalism will be transformed into one which serves the interests of the people. The people will play the decisive part in the running of their communities.

Most people, even some capitalists, believe in a fair distribution of wealth, but you have probably noticed that capitalists and workers understand fairness very differently. This is not surprising to Marxists because they use class analysis as their basic method for understanding society. On the basis of that method Marxists recognize that what people mean by fairness has a lot to do with their class position in society and the degree to which they are influenced by the class-based theories, intellectual fashions, and prejudices that dominate the societies in which they live. For example, slave owners in societies with slavery-based economies often try to justify the status quo by claiming that slave laborers are incapable of personal autonomy and self-government and therefore slavery is fair and beneficial both to slaves and society as a whole. Likewise, capitalists promote ideas about the absolute necessity of private property, the profit motive, and wage labor for building a modern civilization, ideas which in their minds justify the existence of the capitalist class, capitalist domination of the working class, and a lopsided distribution of wealth that creates a fabulously rich minority and an impoverished working-class majority.

Karl Marx in 1875, in a letter that is known today as the Critique of the Gotha Program formulated a famous principle about how wealth would be produced and distributed – “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

The first part of the principle—from each according to their ability—means that all members of society will have the right and the actual opportunity to develop their talents and abilities to the utmost and to use their talents to produce goods and services for the benefit of society. In other words, everyone will have an education that allows them to realize their highest potential and a job in which they will have the opportunity to give their best efforts back to society. There will be no uneducated or poorly educated people, no unemployment, and no one will be forced by economic necessity to work in fields unsuited to their abilities. The second part of the principle—to each according to their needs—explains what citizens will receive from society in return for their labor, and that will be nothing less than complete satisfaction of their material and cultural needs.

Marx also said something very interesting about the implications of a fair distribution of wealth in a socialist society. He said that the principle “to each according to their needs” actually entails that inside socialism any given individual will have the right to receive a quantity of goods and services that is unequal rather than equal to the quantity received by others. This will sound counterintuitive, or even wrong to many, because most of us have been taught to believe that equal rights are the highest form of fairness, but Marx shows that this is not the case with regard to the distribution of wealth. 

Imagine two women living in socialism. One woman is a bus driver with five children and the other is a bus driver with one child. Let’s ask ourselves a question: According to the principle “to each according to their needs” which woman should have the right to receive more goods and services (food, housing, clothing, medical and childcare services, etc.) in compensation for her labor?  You might be tempted to answer that both women should receive the same quantity because both are bus drivers, and it’s only fair that everyone be treated equally. That would be the correct answer if this society was being run on the principle “to each according to their work,” which would mean that all bus drivers would receive the same reward. But that is not what Marx had in mind for socialism. The problem is that if each woman were treated equally, the driver with one child would receive more relative to her needs than the driver with five children—the former would be objectively richer and the latter poorer. This shows that an equal distribution of wealth can actually result in a highly undesirable kind of inequality—a division between rich and poor. This happens because principles such as “to each according to their work” or “equal pay for equal work” fail to take individual needs into account.

The principle “to each according to their needs” overcomes this defect by treating individuals differently, but in a positive way that considers and meets their differing needs, rather than a negative way that ignores individual needs. In a socialist society the unique needs of every individual would be respected. Thus the answer is that the woman with five children should receive more because her needs are greater.

The principle holds true even if we compare our bus driver with her five children to a neurosurgeon with five children. Shouldn’t a neurosurgeon be entitled to more than a mere bus driver? Not at all, since it won’t matter what kind of work you do. What will matter is that you contribute to the best of your ability. In return, society will meet your needs. If the needs of an individual who happens to be a bus driver are greater than those of a neurosurgeon, then the bus driver will receive more. But the needs of both will be completely and ungrudgingly fulfilled. Who would have a problem with that except for people who want more than they need? And there’s a name for that condition; it’s called greed.

This should lay to rest the common misconception that socialism means everyone will be treated exactly the same, as in the oppressive uniformity of the anthill or the barracks. Socialism actually means the opposite: out of respect for the individual, everyone will be treated differently, but in a way that satisfies the individual’s needs. The right to an unequal share in the consumption of goods and services actually results in a higher form of equality—all people will be equal in the sense that the needs of all will be met. The capitalist principle of “fairness,” is “From each according to the capitalists’ needs, to each according to the capitalists’ greed.” But for the Socialist Party “From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs” is our inspiration and destination.

The Clydesiders - Book Review

Book Review from the January 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Clydesiders by R. K. Middlemas 

In the general election of 1922 twenty Independent Labour Party members were elected from Glasgow and the West of Scotland alone. As a vast, hymn-singing crowd saw the new MPs onto the London train one of them, Emmanuel Shinwell, was aware that "they had a frightening faith is us . . . we had been elected because it was believed we could perform miracles and miracles were needed to relieve the tragedy of Clydeside in 1922." (Conflict Without Malice by E. Shinwell) The miracles, of course, failed to come. Capitalism proved more than a match for the reforms of the Independent Labour Party. Mr. Middlemas traces the gradual decline of that organisation.

The cover announces his book as "an important contribution to contemporary political history." This claim would not be so wide of the mark if he had got a few more of his facts right. Take, for example, his confusion of the founding of the Socialist Party of Gt. Britain with that the British Socialist Party on page 32:

The impossibilists', the hard core of followers of the American Daniel De Leon broke off in Scotland in 1903 to form the extremist Socialist Labour Party (SLP), and two years later in London to form the British Socialist Party.

Let us make it clear that our founder members were opposed to the confused industrial-unionism if De Leon and that the date of formation was 1904, not 1905 as he suggests. He is plainly mixing up the SPGB with the so-called 'British Socialist Party' (BSP), the inaugural meeting of which was held on 30th September, 1911—with Hyndman in the chair. (See H. M. Hyndman and British Socialism by C. Tsuzuki and the Socialist Standard, November 1912). The BSP held negotiations with sections of the SLP and of the ILP, and others, in 1920-21 and it was this reformist cocktail which eventually became the 'Communist' Party.

Despite the unfortunate mistakes, there are some interesting passages in this book. One of these, on page 276, gives a classic example of policy reversal by the Communists. In October 1932 the CP and ILP were co-operating and they organised the first Hunger March. Yet, only a year before, a Communist Party manifesto had referred to "the struggle against the ILP which is an inseparable part of British social fascism." Elsewhere we find that Shinwell gained his 'socialist' education by reading "the German Socialist Bernstein" and that Maxton, with unconscious schizophrenia, claimed to recognise the class struggle and the labour theory of value—but not the materialist conception of history!

Mr. Middlemas has little to say about the present little group, all that remains of the once powerful ILP. He merely reflects that "like the old-time SDF and the contemporary 'Impossibilists', the ILP was on the inverted road of splinter groups for whom it is more important to decide the details of the socialist millenium than the present methods of achieving it." But it is quite wrong to imply that the ILP sacrificed numbers for the sake of socialist understanding. They have been strongly influenced by anarchist ideas and, now that the great days of Maxton, Brockway and Wheatley have gone, feel that "parliamentary action . . . has many limitations, and its members cannot adequately represent the interests of the working class." Their demands include the extension of the "comprehensive system of education and abolition of the Grammar School system: and the introduction of "differential rent schemes", although "only a socialist society will be able to bring down the rents"! Finally, they have pledged themselves "to fight within the capitalist system" so that "commodity production (can) be organised for the benefit of the community." Could confusion go any further.

From the start the ILP followed an opportunist line and sneered at the 'impossibilists' in the Socialist Party of Gt. Britain. Never having Socialist principles, it could at least boast of a fair body of working class support. Now that that is gone, there is nothing left. It should be a lesson to all those who preach reformism.

John Crump

Dirty Tricks

During his five-decade-long leadership of the FBI bureau the Director J. Edgar Hoover was virtually unassailable. Presidents could come and go but Hoover still retained his supreme position. It is only now that some of the dirty tricks and double-dealing that kept him in power have come to light. One of Hoover's targets was the civil rights leader Martin Luther King whom the FBI had originally started monitoring because of suspected ties to the US Communist Party but after King began criticising the government for failing to enforce civil rights in the American South and his participation in the 1963 March on Washington the range of the FBI's surveillance spread. 'Now revealed are brazen threats to smear King by making details of his numerous extramarital affairs public and hints at an audiotape that may have accompanied the letter.' (BBC News, 20 November) Who knows what other surveillance and threats may have been used in the past or indeed in the present. RD

Wage Workers, Beware

Government officials  like to boast of an economic recovery, but the pathetic level of wages gives the lie to that notion. 'The wage rise, in the 12 months to April, was the smallest growth in 17 years and puts the average weekly salary full-time workers at £518, official figures show. Annual increases averaged around 1.4 per cent a year between 2009 and 2014, but this latest rise - the lowest since 1997 - is only 0.1 per cent, said the Office for National Statistics.' (Daily Express, 19 November)  The depth of decline highlights just how tentative any recent recovery remains, with the bottom 10th of full-time staff earning less than £288 a week, compared with £1,240 for the top 10 per cent. RD

Wellfare And Food Banks

A study commissioned by the Church of England, the Trussel Trust food bank network, Oxfam and Child Poverty Action Group contradicts the governments insistence that there is no connection between the increasing use of food banks and welfare cuts. 'At least half of all food bank users are referred because they are waiting for benefits to be paid, because they have had benefits stopped for alleged breaches of jobcentre rules or because they have been hit by the bedroom tax or the removal of working tax credits, it finds.' (Guardian, 19 November)  The study is the most extensive research of its kind yet carried out in the UK and makes the government look foolish. RD

Religion As A Business

It is traditional for religious leaders in the West to at least claim to reject the material things of the world and embrace only the spiritual values but that is not the case for many in the East. Some of the gurus in India are also successful entrepreneurs and run massive business empires, selling traditional medicines, health products, yoga classes and spiritual therapies. 'They run schools, colleges and hospitals. Some of the gurus, according to Dr Vishvanathan, can make India's best-known companies "sound like management amateurs". A guru from Punjab, Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, who heads a popular religious sect, even performs at rock concerts and acts in films.' (BBC News, 19 November) RD