Illegal Slavery!

A recent report from an Associated Press investigation alleged that four thousand foreign fishermen have been abandoned on remote islands in Indonesia. These are men who were enslaved, forced to work on fishing vessels and then marooned following a government moratorium on illegal fishing operations. The ex-slaves described horrendous working conditions at sea. They were forced to drink unclean water and worked twenty to twenty-two hour shifts with no days off. Almost all said they were kicked, whipped with toxic stingray tails, or otherwise beaten if they complained or tried to rest and were paid little or nothing. This is an atrocity that could only exist under a money/profit system. Some may argue that it is illegal robbery, but there is enough legal robbery going on in this system apart from illegal slavery. John Ayers.

The Solidarity Economy

RECIPROCITY

Socialism is a much abused, frequently distorted and mostly misunderstood word but expressing better than any other the purpose of political and economic progress, the aim of the Revolution. The word implies harmonious relationship. Socialism is the belief that the next important step in progress is a change in man's environment of an economic character that shall include the abolition of every power whereby the possessor of privilege and holder of wealth acquires an anti-social authority to compel tribute. Socialism must be voluntary — not coerced. Socialist seek to abolish the State, and contends that government is tyranny. Those who wish to make the State, the universal employer, the universal landlord and the universal banker are mistaken giving the State control of all the means of producing and distributing wealth and giving to each only according to his or her deeds. These sort of proposal would only set up greater evils than those it proposes to remedy. Socialism is not government control of the economy. Socialists want all property to be held in common and each to receive according to his or her needs. What socialists demand is the emancipation of the individual from all economic bondage. Our political position can be described as cooperative socialism in that we recognise that socialism by its nature can only be cooperative and voluntary.

We are not advocating cooperatives within capitalism. While worker-run enterprises might very well provide a superior form of orthodox business model, in many respects they would still face much the same problems as private capitalists: if the decision-making done in a worker-managed enterprise/cooperative is done by its workers, and there are thousands or hundreds of thousands of such cooperatives making de-centralized decision-making on production (even if this involves a democratic process involving many people in each individual enterprise), then you would have decisions on investment and production made in a decentralised manner that is essentially private. If the economy uses money and has some types of financial assets as a store of value, you have exactly the same problems that exist now. The people involved would still be making decisions under subjective expectations and fundamental uncertainty, and investment would, most probably, be subject to fluctuation. Syndicalist society could so easily evolve into a state-based system not that much different from the most radical forms of state capitalism. Blanqui took a harder line than Marx on the idea of co-ops:

“As far as production societies are concerned, I take them to be the most deadly trap that the proletariat could fall into. It is clear that only a very small number of workers possess the necessary capacity for such enterprises. It is thus the intellectual elite that will take this road. Well, on this road, both failure and success would be equally bad. Failure is ruin and discouragement. Success is worse, it's the division of workers into two classes: on the one side, the great mass, ignorant, abandoned, without support, without hope, in the underworld of wage-working; on the other side, a small intelligent minority, concerned from then on only with its private interests and separated for ever from their unfortunate brothers.”

In Capital, Marx summed up the essence of capitalist relations: “The absolute general law of capitalist accumulation makes an accumulation of misery a necessary condition, corresponding to the accumulation of wealth. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, the torment of labor, slavery, ignorance, brutalization, and moral degradation at the opposite pole, i.e. on the side of the class that produces its own product as capital.”

Pro-capitalists are desperate to divide and rule. In Victorian times the ruling class saw a division between the ‘deserving poor’ and ‘undeserving poor’. Today they still turn us against one another (private against public sector, the old versus the young, employed and unemployed, male and female etc.) through media attacks on benefits claimants, the unemployed, public service employees with pensions, the disabled, and ethnic minorities and migrants. A new vocabulary of denigration (“benefit scroungers”, “strivers against skivers” etc) has been invented.

The stakes in the fight for a survivable and a secure future are enormous. Socialism is the extension and preservation of democracy in all realms of human activity, especially the economic arena. It is a political, social, economic, cultural, and ethical project: a struggle to transform power relations within a society dominated by a tiny minority to benefit the overwhelming majority of working people. Socialism liberates human energy to pursue its creative potential. Socialism cannot emerge from sentiment or wish fulfillment. Socialism emerges because the working class, as it struggles around everyday living comes to recognise socialism as a necessity. History and contemporary reality do not yield a schematic blueprint for socialism. An analysis of experiences in social struggle, combined with a critique of objective circumstances, suggest some possible guiding principles for the transition to a socialist democracy. Socialism’s fundamental building blocks are already present in society. The means of production are fully developed and stagnating under the political domination of finance capital. The work-force, for the most part, is highly skilled at all levels of production and its administration and direction. There is a broadly enfranchised electorate and socialism will largely be gained by the class-conscious working class winning the battle for democracy in society at large. There exists as well kernels of socialist organisation scattered across the landscape in cooperatives, socially organised human services, and widespread mass means of communication to relay supply/demand data management. Our core communities – workplace, occupational organisations, neighbourhood, community centres, schools, cultural and sports groups – should be arenas to reach out to those looking for change. Coalitions of organisations can be established around the common objective. Socialism will be a society in harmony with the natural environment. The nature of global climate change necessitates a high level of planning. We need to redesign communities, introduce healthier foods, and rebuild sustainable agriculture—all on a global scale with high design, but on a human scale with mass participation of communities in diverse localities. We need intelligent growth in quality and wider knowledge with a lighter environmental footprint. Socialism does not simply reproduces the wasteful expansion of capitalism.

The Socialist Movement

Poverty, exploitation, oppression, war and environmental destruction are products of the capitalist system, a system in which a minority ruling class profits from the work of the majority. The alternative is socialism, a society based on people commonly owning and collectively controlling the wealth their labour creates. Although workers create society's wealth, they have no say over its production and distribution. The 1% — the rich capitalist ruling class - are the ones who have the power to make decisions that affect everyone else — the 99%.  This system is geared toward the constant accumulation of profits, no matter what social or environmental costs may be incurred.

Ideas about reforming this system don’t take the history of capitalism into account. The social ills we see today are not a perversion of the system, but the consequences of the logic of the capitalist system, which concentrates wealth and political power in ever-fewer hands. The problems are huge and only society-wide action will resolve them. The answer to this cannot simply be a matter of replacing people at the top. For real, lasting change to take place, political power cannot be wielded in the autocratic way the 1% has used it for so long. A different type of politics is needed, one where the interests of the 99% are at the fore. Political reforms cannot put capitalism to rights. It must be completely replaced.

Only workers themselves can put an end to the capitalist system of exploitation. Socialism is working-class self-emancipation. Given the huge scale of the problems that need addressing — centuries of environmental damage; an economic system that creates  chronic social problems linked to inequality and alienation — a democratically planned approach, using all resources available, will be vital. Some people might call this socialism. Currently the word, ‘socialism’, is mostly taken to mean state involvement in or control over the economy. Many people have quite narrow views about what socialism can and cannot be. But that is not accurate even if a number of text-books offer it as a definitive description. Socialism places satisfying human needs and the needs of the natural world as the primary purpose of society rather than producing profits for the few. Socialism is the idea that each individual should have the means to live a life of dignity, without exception. Socialists think each person should have the means to develop to their full potential. It means a society focused on restoring ecosystems and promoting sustainable human development. It means a society based on ongoing, participatory democracy. It means people-power.

In the 19^th C. William Morris said:

 “Socialism – a condition where there is neither rich nor poor, neither master nor master’s man, neither idle nor overworked, neither brain-sick brainworkers nor heart-sick handworkers – in which all men would be living in equality of conditions, would manage their affairs unwastefully, and with the full consciousness that harm to one would mean harm to all.”

We can go further back into history to the 17^th C. when Gerard Winstanley wrote:

“Every tradesman shall fetch materials… from the public store-houses to work upon without buying and selling; and when particular works are made… the tradesmen shall bring these particular works to particular shops, as it is now the practice, without buying and selling. And every family as they want such things as they cannot make, they shall go to these shops and fetch without money.”

Or we can travel even earlier into our history to the 14^th C. to the time John Ball could say:

“When Adam delved and Eve span; Who was then a Gentleman? Ah ye good people, the matters goeth not well to pass in England, nor shall do till everything be common, and that there be no villains nor gentlemen, but that we are all united together, and that the lords be no greater masters than we. What have we deserved, or why should we be thus kept in servage? We be all come from one father and mother, Adam and Eve: whereby can they say or show that they be greater lords than we, saving by that they cause us to win and labour for that they dispend?”

To-day society is fundamentally anti-social. The whole so-called social fabric rests on privilege and power, and is strained in every direction by the inequalities that necessarily result. The welfare of each, instead of contributing to that of all, as it should, detracts from that of all. Wealth is made by the legal privilege to filch from labour’s pockets. Every man who gets rich thereby makes his neighbour poor. The better off one is, the worse off the rest are. Socialism wants to change all this. Socialism says that what’s one man’s meat must no longer be another’s poison. Socialists are the only people entitled to cite the eighth commandment, ‘Thou shalt not steal’ That commandment is a socialist principle, only not as a commandment from God, but as a condition of nature. Socialists do not order; we prophesise and predict. We does not say unto you ‘Thou shalt not steal’ We say when all men and women have free access to the world’s treasury they shalt not steal. Capitalism is doomed to make the lot of the working class more unstable, insecure and miserable. Indeed, the promises made by the supporters of capitalism have not been fulfilled for billions of people around the world. If anything, the opposite is true.

If the working class continue to accept capitalism, then the system will persist until it produces the "common ruin" of all. The socialist revolution is not a given, or something that will be reached inevitably simply through the course of history. Marx and Engels argued, "history does nothing...it ‘wages no battles.’ It is man, real, living man who does all that, who possesses and fights; ‘history’ is not...a person apart, using man as a means to achieve its own aims; history is nothing but the activity of man pursuing his aims." 

 Our conscious aim must be the overthrow of the contradictory crisis-ridden class-system of capitalism and the purposeful establishment of socialism.

Protest Against Capitalism

Protest Austerity - Choose your Path

 Glasgow branch members have agreed to meet at George Square on Saturday, June 20 from 11am onwards, where the STUC demonstrators will be gathering for an anti-austerity protest. The socialist alternative to this anti-austerity protest will be the distribution of 2000 flyers advertising the branch's meeting on Wednesday, June 24. Austerity - How to End It? 7 pm at Maryhill Community Centre, Maryhill Rd 

Capitalism is the accumulation of resources by means of exploitation in the production and sale of commodities for profit. Capitalist exploitation is an unequal exchange wherein capitalists extract income from economic exchanges solely because they hold legal title to productive assets. At all points of exchange in production, capitalists have institutionalized coercive power as employers, bosses, lenders, and landlords. Capital that has extended its influence over these new territories knows its own interests, works together in its common interests even while individual capitals compete and coordinates its goals and its strategies in its common interest. There will always be social inequality, because that increases profits; winners win more because losers lose more. Today, the richest two percent of adults own more than half the world’s wealth, while the richest tenth own 85 percent of the world’s assets. Within this small elite, a fraction embedded in financial capital owns and controls the bulk of the world’s assets and organizes and facilitates further concentration of conglomerates. Historically, warfare has been an instrument of economic conquest. This form of structural violence has led to the death of countless hundreds of millions of people, and the deprivation of thousands of millions of others.

There has been many recent calls for the British left either to “reclaim Labour” or to build a new party (Left Unity or TUSC.) What we see today is a wholesale embrace of anti-working-class reformism, with attempts to create whole new reformist parties to replace the discredited ones. In some cases, the left are already taking the logic of their shift further by endeavouring to openly collaborate with openly capitalist parties such as the SNP. They use the term “socialist” to describe the new coalitions they are forming, in order to camouflage their lists of palliatives, often phrased so broadly as not to offend. Reformism is not a moderate or slow road to socialism but a hindrance and diversion to achieving it.  Socialists need to avoid both nostalgia and amnesia

At present, more than 50% of the British public (working or not) depend on welfare benefits of some kind. That is because Britain is a relatively high unemployment, low waged and low skilled economy. An economy dominated by the principles of the ‘free-market’ but one in which the taxpayer effectively subsidises the employer to order to keep their wage bill low. British politics is influenced by various levels of liberal ideology, notions of the free market, self-interest, self-reliance and self-responsibility. Notions that also seep into the public consciousness to become the ‘norm’ that people regulate their behaviour by, and monitor the behaviour of others. We hear daily from our politicians and our media about the need to end Britain’s ‘something for nothing culture’, about ‘some’ people not being self-responsible enough, and about the need of government to support ‘hard working families’ – policies that encourage the philosophy of ‘hard work’, not erode it. While at the same time subtlety insinuating that both the unemployed and the disabled are social groups who contain certain ‘rogue’ elements that need weeding out - scroungers, spongers and layabouts. As far back as 2007, a national British Social Attitudes survey indicated that the general public believed that at least 35% of all benefit claimants were fraudsters. It is an approach while aimed solely at gathering support amongst the general public for cuts to welfare spending.

The capitalist argument is that a person should work for whatever a prospective employer wants to offer them, no matter how low those wages happen to be. That is the basic philosophy of the ‘free market’, a market place where goods and skills are not only exchanged for money, but where people compete with each other for employment. The actual numbers of unemployed benefit claimants removed from the welfare system by sanctions are reported to be as high as 500,000. Between 2008 and 2013, 76,300 sick or disabled claimants of Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) had their welfare benefits cut or stopped completely. Of course, many of these decisions were overturned as unfair after many months of appeals, and after many months of stress.

Are benefit sanctions here to stay? The simple answer is yes. Labour have publically stated that they are committed to keeping welfare sanctions applied to the unemployed and the disabled in place. However, what the Labour Party is also committed to, is the removal of sanction ‘targets’, something that the present government deny are in operation. But how can a future Labour administration remove something that at present is said not to even exist?

Despite years of global economic crisis and austerity there has been little effective political mobilization in favour of a socialist alternative. It is true that struggles have erupted with large scale protests and movements against austerity but none have posed the comprehensive challenge to capitalism as underlying cause of the effects (inequality and poverty) to which these movements responded. Hierarchical organization, and not capitalism per se, is often identified as the enemy. Suspicion runs high against the very idea of political power as necessary to advancing egalitarian and democratic values. Autonomous withdrawal into local alternative economies, and lifestyle changes are far more attractive to activists than the need for a genuine socialist party and political action. Many radicals have often not identified their goals explicitly with socialism. What some people often do not realise, when they are motivated by immediate threats to access to fundamental life-requirements like health care, is the actual opposition they are offering to the dominant institutions and value system of capitalism. There may be some self-conscious revolutionaries or anti-capitalists in the ranks of protestors, but many may have no explicit interest in politics beyond the immediate struggle. One key to building the case for socialism is to find arguments convincing to those who are concerned to preserve unpaid access to life-goods that what they are essentially defending is the free access socialist alternative to capitalism. Everything that creates well-being is being eroded by capitalism – water and sewage systems for all, roads and open public spaces without cost to use, public libraries with unpriced books and films, free healthcare and disease-prevention, security from unemployment, old age and disability, health and safety laws and environmental regulations, free primary to higher education and accessible family housing. These are the things that workers seek and socialism provides. The good life for human beings does not conform to what capitalism offers.

We know that people threatened by austerity are willing to resist its assaults on their life-conditions and resistance has sometimes delivered victories. Simply exchanging one ruling class for another without transforming collective life and individual life will lead to the same problems being repeated. A different vision must take us beyond the exploitative, alienating, oppressive, and life-destructive practices of capitalism. Revolution cannot be reduced to simple calls for redistribution and defence of public services. It has to be a different road for society.

 The law locks up the man or woman

Who steals the goose from off the common

But lets the greater villain loose

Who steals the common from the goose.

War And Its Effects

 On April 25, The Toronto Star published two similar articles concerning the plight of people in flight from violence. One focused on more than 10,000 Burundians who had fled into Rwanda from fear of the violence that would ensue if President Pierre Nkurunziza were elected for a third term. An armed group, CNDD-FDD are armed and threaten to kill anyone who does not support the president. Many remember the war that killed 25,000. In another article, The International Organization for Migration has estimated that the death toll from ships filled with refugees fleeing war and capsizing, could reach 30,000. In Africa, the UN has set up refugee camps. In the EU, money for the emergency has been doubled to help Italy cope with the problem. Both are short term solutions as there is no solution in sight. War, conflict, and refugees are a normal part of our current economic system and won't disappear until the system is replaced. John Ayers.

Climate Change

The mighty Rio Grande meanders 3,000 kilometres from the San Juan mountains to the Gulf of Mexico. It is now reduced to a mere trickle due to an historic drought in California and most of the Southwest. Ironically, as we write this, Texas is suffering through one of its worst floods in history Feast or famine, climate change is beginning to show its effects on our earth. Time to work for a system that will mitigate and cope with the problem! John Ayers.

To Be A Socialist

Some people think that socialism sounds great but will never work in practice. We are so demoralized and dejected by living under capitalism that we have become convinced that nothing as evidently sane and good as socialism could possibly ever really happen - life just isn't like that, so there must be a catch somewhere. The fact is that socialism is not too good to be true and it is a perfectly reasonable and practical way of organising society. Many of us don’t need to be convinced about the failures of capitalism — we’re convinced of that already. What we need is to be convinced of the genuine possibilities of socialism as an alternative. What we need is to have our imaginations and our minds awakened. Our vision of a better world arises from the belief that human malevolence, greed, aggression, competition, etc. are entirely the product of life under capitalism — rather than the other way around.

The defining feature of socialism is common ownership of economic resources. In socialism, there will be no wages. There will be no prices. In socialism, goods are produced for the use of people and NOT for the profits which they bring in to bosses. Labour power is no longer regarded as a commodity to be bought and sold. It is not purchased at all, let alone purchased at the lowest possible price to keep it alive and able to produce more value. People in socialism, will work and produce useful goods. But they will produce these for their mutual needs and for their mutual development. The sufficiency of goods which people and technology can create will be given to men and women to develop their bodies so that their minds can grow rich in the wealth of human knowledge, esthetic appreciation and artistic creation. From day to day, from week to week, and from year to year, the spiral of possible individual activity will widen rather than taper, as human productive and intellectual achievements increase. No longer fettered by the necessity of working not only for their own material maintenance, but for the bosses’ even more material profits, will be freed to live more fully. The time that each must work will be small, yet the goods produced for all to enjoy will be plentiful. Those who even think of “reasonable profit” will be jeered at someone out of the past dark ages. Whoever talks about money will be talking gibberish, for men who have been freed from the capitalist system will also have been freed from wage slavery and prices. In a nutshell, what we mean by ‘socialism’ is a world economy controlled by workers and devoted to the needs of humanity rather than the narrow interests of owners and investors. That is why, instead of the conservative motto, “A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work,” workers must inscribe on their banner the REVOLUTIONARY watchword: “Abolition of the wage system!” Socialism is the ONLY answer!

The fundamental need for each other is too often overlooked. Human beings are social creatures and rely on each other to meet each other’s needs. But our capitalist society encourages competition over cooperation and individualism over collectivism. In this environment, it has become challenging to connect with each other. For example, most of us don’t know our neighbors. Most of us see our friends and family less but work more than ever. Most of us put our children in child care. Who belongs to social or sports clubs anymore? Capitalism has alienated us from our work, ourselves, and each other. Yet, we are more productive now than ever before — at work. We toil and sweat and work our hearts out while the employers keep what we produce. What do we get out in return? A “chance” to eke out an existence as a wage slave. Taking care of our human needs and our loved ones is becoming increasingly difficult to do. When individuals don’t have their emotional needs met, the result is often depression and anxiety and on a societal level, the consequences manifest as social problems such as violence and drug abuse.

 When you think about it, it is common sense that capitalism and humans are incompatible. Capitalism is a heartless system devoid of anything but a thirst for profits. Human beings are emotional creatures with multiple needs, wants and desires – most of which have nothing to do with profits. Sure, some needs can be met with the money that comes from wage-labour but not all. Capitalist greed has produced some of the worst economic inequalities we have ever seen, which makes it even harder to meet even the most basic human needs. Because we’re being forced to work so much for so little, we no longer have the time to meet the needs of each other, our children, and our most needy. Capitalism cultivates, exalts, and rewards those drives which sustains it — competition, greed, hierarchical display, distrust, , etc. — while disempowering other human drives towards cooperation, social bonding, reverence, nurture, etc.  Everyone is afraid. This is no way to live. Living in community instead of isolation creates a better life for us all. We enjoy being together. We want to do things together because we realize it makes things not only easier (since you share burdens and responsibilities and both “good times” and “bad times”) but because it feels better.

Feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, ending inequality and the divisive prejudices of sexism, racism and nationalism, establishing democratic planning of the economy, halting climate change, all this is possible and can move from being a possibility to being a reality. If we are serious about building socialism, it’s going to take a lot more than just dissatisfaction. Achieving a sustainable socialism that permits our planet Earth to rebalance itself will take socializing the means of production and asking the questions — production for what/production of what?

The World Needs Socialism! Socialism Requires Revolution!

The class struggle -- the conflict between the capitalists and the workers -- is at the very heart of the capitalist system. It explains how it works and where it is going. The workers create the wealth and the bosses take the lion’s share. Today capitalism is on a global offensive that is wiping out past gains. As profit margins have fallen in the system as a whole, competition between capitalist firms and nations has become ever more vicious. The “race to the bottom” in which capitalists try to outdo each other in finding the cheapest labour possible is prevalent. The needs of the ruling class to boost profit rates also dictates escalated racist and anti-immigrant attacks across the board -- to keep the working class down through divide-and-conquer methods. In their insatiable quest to maximize profits, the capitalists and their state crush everything that stands in their way; they no longer have the luxury of preserving the democratic veneer they once applied to their system.

Socialism still offers the best hope for humanity.  We aren't idealists who think people can be made perfect.  We simply think a society run by workers themselves, freed from both bosses and bureaucrats, would be far more democratic and liberatory than capitalism ever has been.  We think that a society premised upon the enhancement of life rather than the perpetuation of profit would stand the best chance of putting a halt to the environmental devastation now ravishing the globe. But we can't get there on our own.  A society that strives for basic equality and democratic participation will only come about through the coordinated activity of many people. The emancipation of humanity from capitalism will only come about when workers act in the offices, factories and streets on their own behalf.  It cannot be achieved through any shortcut, though many have been tried.

Socialists are widely condemned as utopian dreamers. But socialist society is not some dreamland. We argue that socialism is the only solution. Only the working class, through socialist revolution, can stop this nightmare. In order to fight most effectively, workers also have to understand that there can be no lasting concessions from the capitalist system. To win security and abundance for all, the working class will have to take matters into our own hands. We must dare to struggle and dare to win!

There can be no bureaucrats in socialism. It will be a social organization of the people by the people. Government over the people is replaced by the administration of things.

Marx and Engels had clarified the concept of socialism in the Communist Manifesto, where they wrote: "In place of the old bourgeois society with its classes and class conflicts there will be an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all." In Capital, a society opposed to the "world of the commodity" is described as "an association of free men, working with the means of production held in common, and expending their many different forms of labour-power in full self-awareness as one single social force." From The Civil War in France,  "if united co-operative societies are to regulate national production upon a common plan, this taking it under their own control, and putting an end to the constant anarchy and periodical convulsions which are the fatality of Capitalist production-what else, gentlemen, would it be but Communism, "possible" Communism?”  One more example comes from an essay Marx wrote in 1871 entitled ‘On the Nationalisation of Land’: "The national concentration of the means of production is the natural base of a society in which a co-operative union of free and equal producers consciously acts in accordance to a rational plan."

It is natural that from the outset in this sort of society there is no room for the existence of commodities or currency which are categories peculiar to a society founded on private property.

Socialism is thus a society in which private property is abolished so that the means of production become the common property of society. Individual labour power is consciously expended by an "association of free men" as one part of society's labour power; that is a "combination" of "large cooperative production unions" consciously coordinates production and distribution based on a rational single common plan – the cooperative commonwealth. Of course, to realise this society the highest development of production, technology and industry are the necessary preconditions.

The Education Gap

SCHOOL leavers from the most deprived parts of Scotland are half as likely as those from the wealthiest areas to have passed at least one Higher or Advanced Higher.

Less than 40 per cent of those leaving school in the poorest parts of Scotland achieved this, compared to just under 80 per cent in the most affluent places, new figures showed. Almost three-fifths (58.8 per cent) of school leavers in 2013/14 had passed at least one Higher or Advanced Higher when they finished secondary school – up from 55.8 per cent the previous year.

A total of 39 per cent of school leavers in the most deprived areas of Scotland achieved this, compared to 34.9 per cent of 2012/13 leavers. The proportion of youngsters in the most affluent communities passing at least one Higher also rose, going from 77.4 per cent to 79.7 per cent.

EIS teaching union general secretary Larry Flanagan warned that the “attainment gap” had not narrowed enough despite policies such as the extension of free school meals. He said: “Poverty continues to have a negative impact on the education and life chances of too many young people across Scotland, and the attainment gap between Scotland’s most and least deprived pupils continues to be a huge challenge that society must tackle.”

SCOTTISH HOME RULE

From the February 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the favourite futilities of the Clyde group of Labour M.P.s is to advocate Scottish independence. It has never been explained in what way capitalism administered by Scots from Edinburgh will be better for Scotch workers than capitalism administered from London. Mr. Kirkwood has, however, now learned by experience that it may even be worse.

At an Independent Labour Party meeting in Edinburgh he spoke as follows: -

Referring to a deputation to the Secretary of State for Scotland on behalf of the starving children of Dunbartonshire, he said "the officials of the Scottish Office were harder to deal with than those of the English Office."—Manchester Guardian, January 15th.

The simple truth is that capitalism will be just the same as far as the working class are concerned. 

What is required is another system of society, not new administrators for the old one.

Abolish Money!

An article by the Japanese anarchist Denjiro Shusui Kotoku

When bacteria enter a person’s bloodstream, so that person’s health is gradually undermined.

It is the same with money as with bacteria. Since money has unlimited power in the world, the ways of the world are bound to be increasingly debased. Step by step, morality is bound to be ruined and human nature faced with corruption. In the end, society is driven to destruction.

There are people calling for the abolition of prostitution, waxing indignant over the depravity of the gentry, advocating the reform of popular customs urging that morality be improved … and so on. Yet, it seems to me that at times like these, when money is needed even to get hold of a volume dealing with the subject of morality or to gain admission to a half-day course of lectures, all the endless chatter of their sermonising is utterly futile.

Nobody willingly becomes a prostitute. Nobody willingly sells their honour. There is nobody who does not want popular customs to be reformed or who does not want morality to be improved. Yet the reason why things work out differently is simply because of money.

Instead of people putting so much effort into overworking their tongues and wearing out their pens it would be better for them to give priority to demonstrating the omnipotent power of money. If one does not get rid of money, then one cannot destroy the omnipotent power which money exercises in other spheres. To put it another way, unless one abolishes the necessity for money in this world, it is quite impossible to improve the ways of the world or human nature.

Someone who has no money cannot live. This is the way the world is at present. Yet even in today’s corrupt society, no-one could say that this is right and proper. Truly, a person lives by other things than money. Over and above money, there is strength and there is honour. There is right and there is duty. There is bread and there are clothes. Yet nowadays, when money has unlimited power, is there any room for truth in the world? Can what is right be done?

If one fine morning it were put to the test, if money were abolished and the need for it completely eradicated, what a noble place the world would be! How peaceful! How happy!

Bribery, corruption, people selling their principles – all these would completely disappear. Murder, robbery and adultery would be greatly reduced too. There would be no need to call for the abolition of prostitution, nor to advocate the reform of popular customs. All at once it would be just like the Buddhists’ pure land and the Christians’ heaven.

It is natural that there should be any number of rises and falls in history but, if money had not existed in the civilisations of ancient India, Egypt, Greece and Rome, I believe that it would have been possible for them to have lasted several thousand years more.

But in days like these when money has such power, if we utter the words ‘Abolition of Money’, people look at us as though we are mad. Is it madness, though? Are you prepared to say that the modern European socialists who are spreading everywhere throughout the world (sic) are all mad, then? – because the socialists have the abolition of money and the suppression of the private ownership of capital as their ideals.

They take this position because they want to see the individual – and society as a whole – live by other things than money. In other words, they want to replace money by strength and honour, by right and duty. Indeed, truth and righteousness lie in doing just this. So if you agree that truth and righteousness really should be put into practice, then why should you think of socialism as being difficult to realise in actual life? Socialism is far from being an impossibility. Rather it is just that it has not been put into effect up till now.

Why don’t people who want to improve human nature and the ways of the world stop their petty squabbles and put their efforts into achieving socialism? If they did this, it would be the quickest way for them to achieve their objectives. 

The nineteenth century was the age of liberalism but the twentieth century is about to become the age of socialism. All capable people need to wake up to this new trend in the world – and to this alone.

Yorozu Choho (Morning News), 

9 February 1900.

Socialism is not yet a ‘wasm.’

Our cause is our class and socialism. Our class, the working class, has to work for a living in factories and workplaces, the majority of which are owned by a tiny, rich elite. That rich elite takes the profits and pockets them. The rest of us hardly earn enough to get by and then have to go back to work the next week in an endless struggle to get our heads above water. The only force in society that can end this domination are the workers. There is a misconception that the term ‘working class’ is restricted to manual workers. This is incorrect. Socialists has always defined ‘working class’ to include all those who work for a wage, are looking for work or preparing to be workers, like students. By this description, the working class is over 90% of the population.

The class war isn’t some invention. It is simply a reality.  Instead of being organized to provide all members of society with an abundance of food, clothing, and shelter, and the highest attainable freedom and culture, industry is at present disorganized and conducted for the benefit of a parasitic class. A small group of extremely wealthy and powerful people run this society and they are determined to squeeze even more sacrifices out of the majority in order to keep increasing their profits. There is a class war but today but only one side is on the offensive: the rich and powerful 1% against the 99%. All around the world, this 1% has ripped off people and the environment. Austerity is euphemism for class war waged by rich. They’ve launched bloody and protracted wars of terror at huge human cost, for no good reason and with no real ends in sight. The dire consequences of the system are everywhere apparent. The workers are oppressed and deprived of much that makes for physical, mental, and moral well-being. Year by year poverty and industrial accidents and occupational illnesses destroy more lives than all the armies of the world.

All the powers of government, and all our industrial genius, are directed to the end of securing to the relatively small class of capitalist investors the largest amount of profits which can be wrung from the labor of the ever increasing class whose only property is muscle and brain, manual and mental labor-power. To preserve their privilege is the most vital interest of the possessing class, while it is the most vital interest of the working class to resist oppression, improve its position, and struggle to obtain security of life and liberty. hence there exists a conflict of interests, a social war within the nation, which can know neither truce nor compromise. So long as the few control the economic life of the nation, the many must be enslaved, poverty must coexist with riotous luxury, and civil strife prevail.

Class struggle by the working class is the only way to change society fundamentally by building a powerful movement the workers that could run society democratically through committees elected in the workplaces and neighborhoods who would coordinate production and distribution on a local, regional and a worldwide level. A socialist society, with the active involvement and decision-making by the majority, would then be able to make real decisions about all aspects of life. Democratic decisions developing a clear plan would rebuild the economy. A satisfying job, quality health care, housing and education would become a reality for everyone. Adopting new technology and eliminating the profit motive could reduce the work week. That would allow the broadest possible participation in decision-making. Racism, sexism and war, inherent under capitalism, would wither away, since they would no longer serve the interests of a small propertied minority seeking to attain global power while dividing working class resistance.

There are two roads open to humanity: one leads through social revolution to socialism, and the other leads to ecological devastation, maybe even human extinction. The way to extinction is clear; we do not have to do anything, as its threat is a growing part of our everyday lives. The way forward towards socialism is not so clear. There's only one road to socialism, and that road is the road of revolution. And not just an ordinary revolution; this revolution will not just replaced the old ruling class with another. It is to abolish the very notion of a ruling class and a ruled class. This revolution will be a democratic revolution created by equals. Socialist society can only come into existence by the abolition of the capitalist class society in which we live, and through the construction of a classless society. The building of socialism can be seen as a series of abolitions.

The abolition of wage slavery, the abolition of the state and of countries and the abolition of private property, as well, through the socialisation of land, workplaces, and natural resources. All private property will become social property belonging to all. This is not the same as nationalisation. The idea that socialism means nationalisation is false. The aim of socialism is the destruction of the state and the act of nationalisation strengthens the state. Nationalization is the basis for state capitalism once considered the highest form of capitalism. Self-management under capitalism however is nothing more than self-exploitation. Capitalism as a mode of production remains perfectly feasible without joint stock companies or sole owners. A capitalist mode of production would be perfectly possible without any personal ownership of capital. One could have an economy in which all production was carried on by impersonal enterprises that were not themselves owned by anybody. Companies do not need to be owned by any individual to function efficiently, as juridical forms for the accumulation of capital. As such, an economy of this sort, would still be capitalist in the sense that commodities, money, and enterprises employing wage labour still existed.

Social ownership means the democratic control over the economy by those who participate in its operation. Thus a particular workplace would not be owned by anyone; not even the workers who work. Decisions on the use of social property would be made democratically by the community at large, as well as in the work-place and by those directly involved. All products produced will be to meet the real human needs for food, shelter, clothing, creativity, etc., and not for profit.

The social revolution is a movement of passionate human beings who want to create a new world, because they wish to live in it. This revolution has to be a self-organised revolution, organised by the oppressed themselves, not a group made up of professional leaders. To paraphrase Eugene Debs, if one leader can lead you into the new world, they could have just as well as brought you into slavery. The oppressed must liberate themselves. The Socialist Party is a group of conscious individuals who theorise, analyse, and exchange information, acting as a communication centre. They would provide information useful to workers in their day-to-day struggles.  They serve the growth of the democratic revolutionary process, but never control it. As ever the liberation of the oppressed must be done by the oppressed themselves! The major task of the groups of revolutionaries is to win the battle for consciousness. This means we must bring about the conditions that would enable the oppressed groups to become conscious of their oppression as unnecessary and then to empower them to struggle against it. Fundamentally, this is a task of education aimed at the individual so that they can begin to see the world as it is; to dispel the illusions of capitalist ideologies from the mind of the exploited. Socialist Party members have been awoken to the realities of their own oppression and therefore see it as their duty to awaken others. Our revolution must be a world revolution, sweeping the planet clean of all the injustices of the past and the present.

Our slogans such as ‘Solidarity Forever’, ‘An Injury to One is An Injury to All’, and the ‘Workers United Can Never Be Defeated’, are not mere morale-building rallying-cries without content. They are real and fully meaningful. It all comes through with full force in the words of the song, Solidarity Forever, which starts off with these words: “When the unions inspiration through the workers’ blood shall run, there can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun,” and ends with the words, “Solidarity forever, for the union makes us strong.” These slogans and these words are just as true today as when literally millions of workers sang this song on the picket lines of America in the great labor strike victories of the 1930s.

Endless destruction and slaughter can be ended only by the victory of the workers. It will be possible to banish war for good from human society only when socialist revolution would become victorious throughout the world. The people can create a different future. The struggle has begun and will intensify. The authentic, subjective individual and collective experience of working people will increasingly bring workers together to claim power in their various fields, whether it’s the factory, mine, school, hospital or university.  The cry of “All power to the people” is not just a slogan; it is an outcome that through organisation can deliver social justice and sustainable peace and it is achievable. History is on the side of the people. The only strategy that can win is the strategy of class struggle. And for that workers need to understand that no solution is possible within the framework of capitalism. Only a revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist class and the reconstitution of society on the foundation of the world socialist society can do that. We need a revolution, not reforms.

“When I say I am opposed to war I mean ruling class war, for the ruling class is the only class that makes war. It matters not to me whether this war be offensive or defensive, or what other lying excuse may be invented for it, I am opposed to it, and I would be shot for treason before I would enter such a war.” Eugene Debs, September 1915

The Future Will Be Socialist Because Without Socialism There Will Be No Future

Billions around the world don’t have access to basic needs like clean drinking water, housing or education. The values socialists hold dear, such as the creation of a free and classless society and an economy that is environmentally sustainable and democratically-controlled by workers and communities, are those which are shared an overwhelming majority of the world’s population. If you want to know the real extremists, look no further than the supporters of global, corporate capitalism, those financial criminals who helped engineer the greatest economic catastrophe since the Great Depression and were bailed out by the governments they had bought, and now seek further tax cuts, more deregulation and have launched attacks on the rights of working people. These are the minority of pie in the sky, out-of-touch political zealots and fanatics. Socialists condemn capitalism because it has failed the vast mass of humanity in the most decisive way. It promises freedom, democracy and prosperity but defaults on all three. Capitalism's driving principle is the struggle between capitalists for commercial supremacy and competitive survival in the jungle of the misnamed "free market". Human needs are met only in so far as they are backed up by purchasing power. Thus, for instance, suppose you need somewhere to live: if you have money you'll get what you can pay for, otherwise you can die on the streets or throw yourself on charity. Socialism, expropriating the capitalist class and putting society's productive forces under social ownership and democratic control, would put a stop to this madness.

With society in firm control of its economic mechanism, the satisfaction of people's needs — for meaningful work, housing, health, care of children and the aged, education, a quality public transport system, an attractive, livable urban environment and so on — would become the goal and the measure of its success. World socialism could, after an appropriate period of transition, give every single person on the planet a comfortable, decent existence — an overall quality of life such as, for instance, the western “middle classes” might enjoy today (but minus the consumerist trappings of conspicuous consumption). Anything less than this will not do. The basis of the division of society into ruling and oppressed classes — under capitalism no less than slavery and feudalism — is material scarcity. Society's small surplus over its elementary needs is appropriated by the ruling class. Only an abundance of goods and services — understood, of course, in a rational sense: we are not talking about gold toilet bowls — will provide the necessary foundation for a classless society.

Does society have the resources to accomplish such a feat? From the standpoint of meeting human needs, capitalism is massively wasteful. It doesn't take any great imagination to see that a fundamental change in the social and economic system would free vast human and material resources which could be devoted to building a better life for all. For a start, there is militarism, consuming hundreds of billions of dollars each year and, directly and indirectly, engaging the energies of scores, if not hundreds, of millions of people worldwide. The end of capitalism would mean the end of the "military-industrial complex" and the unrelenting sacrifice of human happiness on the altar of "defence". Moreover large sectors of the economy have a purely capitalistic function and wouldn't exist in a rational system: buying and selling personnel, advertising, the banking and financial sphere, the insurance industry, real estate and property development), the gambling businesses, are some examples. You, yourself can no doubt add to a list of redundant. The forces of law and order to protect private property, not just the police but  the private security industry and all the jails and prison staff.

Naturally, unemployment is yet another example of the irrationality and waste of the capitalist system. In a society freed from dependence on the profit motive this would not happen. Everyone could be guaranteed meaningful work and the working week could at the same time be drastically reduced for all. The ending of capitalism worldwide would enable society to overhaul its entire economic apparatus. There would be massive changes in what is produced and how it is produced. Once the profit motive is discarded, the reorganisation of the economy along ecologically sustainable lines could for the first time be seriously tackled. Sustainable energy production could be implemented on a truly massive scale. Wouldn’t all this increased production and development to qualitatively raise the standard of living of the mass of the world's population be ecologically sustainable if rationally planned rather than left to the chaos of the capitalist market.

Socialism is an economic system in which the means of production are commonly owned and controlled co-operatively, 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.

During the English Civil War of the 1640s, radicals such as the Diggers or “True Levellers,” tried to put communal or communist ideas into practice, calling for every able-bodied person to work and to contribute to the common store of goods, skills, and services. Fearing the spread of such radicalism, the English authorities destroyed their communes and arrested their leading spokesmen. Modern socialism originated from an 18th-century intellectual and working class political movement that criticized the effects of industrialization and private property on society. Utopian socialists such as Robert Owen, tried to found self-sustaining communes by secession from a capitalist society. Henri de Saint Simon, who coined the term socialisme, advocated technocracy and industrial planning. Saint Simon, Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx advocated the creation of a society that allows for the widespread application of modern technology to rationalise economic activity by eliminating the anarchy of capitalist production that results in instability and cyclical crises. Marx and Engels believed the consciousness of those who earn a wage or salary (the "working class" in the broadest 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. They 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. First one realizes one needs an improvement over capitalism, then one casts about for a tool for building it. Marxism is a tool, not an end in itself. It is, however, an essential tool. If a tool is broken one can fix it; if it is incomplete add another; if it is useless for its purpose, forge a new one.

Socialism cannot exist without a change in consciousness resulting in a new fraternal attitude toward humanity. Socialists claim that although the viewpoint of working people is partisan, it is better than that of rich people for understanding reality. This is because working people are positioned by capitalism to see more than rich people do: they can grasp the actions of the rich and their own. Capitalism is an evil that calls for immediate destruction.

Simplified, capitalism as a mode of production is for Marx characterized by: 1) Production of value by wage labor. 2) Ownership and control of the means of production by a non-wage owners and managers who personify capital. 3) Distribution of the resulting products, as commodities, by a market. Marx identifies three elements in capitalism: labor, capital, and markets. Unless joined to labor, capital produces no value; and labor, lacking control of the means of production, cannot make what it needs to live. The imbalance, then, is: control of the means of production by non-workers. Lack such control workers must sell their labor power as a commodity to those who have such control, subjecting themselves to the latters' will during the workday. Those controlling the means of production, seeing that they can make more from workers' labor than it costs them, grant workers the temporary access to the means of production they need to reproduce their labor and themselves. A wage for time? It looks like a fair exchange if we overlook the imbalance. Yet this imbalance is signaled by workers' advance of their labor to capitalists before receiving compensation on payday, rather than the reverse. Once put to work, labor power soon fully compensates the capitalist for its cost to him; but it then keeps on adding value to commodities, unpaid, for the remainder of the workday. Workers may have access to the means of production to make what they need, but on condition that, having done so, they continue working, yielding up without compensation the greatest part of the value their labor produces. Marx's name for this unpaid labour done after workers cover their own labor costs is "surplus labor." Its product, "surplus value," is controlled by capitalists. It is from surplus value that profit and capital itself derives. Workers' own savings will never match the accumulation of capital, which they create, but which the system awards to capitalists, along with huge social power. Individual workers may become capitalists, but the system's imbalance keeps the working class in subservience.

But at the heart of the so-called "free" labour contract is a theft effected under a life-threatening extortion. Coerced into this contract by their need, itself due to their separation from the means of production, workers get paid a mere portion of the value they produce in order to reproduce their labor power, hence their lives. They are paid this portion only if they work unpaid for a larger part of the workday. Should they decline surplus labour they will not be allowed enough access to the means of production to do even the labor needed to live. Trade unions may negotiate compensation only for this latter amount of labor. Surplus value is off limits. Marxists call the ratio of what labor costs capitalists to what it produces for them as surplus value, the rate of exploitation. It is often euphemistically called the rate of productivity. Surplus labor is extracted involuntarily since workers would not willingly hand over control of their earnings to others were they not compelled to do so by their separation from the means of production. This imbalance in capital's reproduction thus allows control of the lion's share of the extorted value to be controlled by the representatives of capital. Under cover of equal exchange, this is an exploitation of humans by other humans that is not made more just by being pervasive and normal in the process of capital accumulation. Chattel slavery was once normal.

It will not do to say capitalists are entitled to profit because of their unique productive contributions. Contributions usually named -- entrepreneurial insight, managerial skill, innovation, risk-taking, etc. -- are not unique to capitalists. Persons with these abilities may extract profit from others' labor only if they also own or control the means of production. Many so endowed who lack such control are excluded from profits. Ownership (or control) not skill is the key. Under capitalism all one needs for full entitlement to luxury is enough ownership of the means of production. Nor is providing capital itself a contribution that merits profits. Phoning one's broker is not a productive activity or contribution. "Providing capital" is indeed widely accepted as a productive contribution, but this assumes such entitlement is just, and provides no proof. Part of the illusion that capital contributes arises from the fact that capital is not physical things (equipment and materials) or money, but rather, as Marx said, "a social relation." He was referring not just to our mystified attribution of agency to an abstraction we've collectively produced, but to the gradations of power that must permeate human communities which defer to such inhuman agency. This hierarchy is geographically displayed in the fine class gradations visible in residential neighborhoods of first world countries. In the end it matters little if capital's representatives lack justification for exercising power in its name. They control it (and it them); they give orders in its behalf; the police and courts back them up in a power structure with capital at the top. That is the way it is.

The Co-op solution?

Take producer cooperatives. These unite capital and labor in a non-antagonistic manner. In a true cooperative the same group of workers both produces value and owns the means of production. A coop's active workforce hires managers and capital (by jointly taking out loans) instead of being hired by them, a major reversal. A broad cooperative movement, by starting cooperatives and buying out existing enterprises, can dismantle capitalism, one firm at a time, in the following three ways:

First, by abolishing capitalist exploitation. Selling one's labor power always means subjecting oneself to another's domination. This might be acceptable were the subservient labor fully paid. Instead, it leads to capital accumulation and profit for managers and owners. By contrast, coops return all value to those who produce it, who then decide how much to pay managers, reinvest, and share as profits. Since the current workforce democratically decides on any work beyond that needed for living costs, such a workforce cannot be said to exploit itself. Second, by abolishing the market in labor. By joining a coop workers pool their labor with equals and do not sell it. This has two effects: it shatters the illusion that capital is active since workers themselves unite the factors of production and profit therefrom; and, more crucially, it stops capital accumulation by non-workers, jamming the mechanism that maintains capitalism's imbalance and feeds finance capital. And thirdly, by blocking capitalism's creation of class divisions within and between nations. This is due to the much smaller income spreads in coops than in capitalist firms. Since class divisions outside of workplaces tend to reflect those inside, cooperativisation will narrow capitalism's class divisions and the resultant unjust distribution of life-chances.

Cooperativisation, then, the theory argues, could displace capitalism. However, if the goal of socialism is a self-determining humanity, then even a fully cooperativised global economy will not be self-determining because of its subjection to market forces. Democratic planning is indeed needed for socialism. Marx entertained cooperativisation as a strategy. He admitted coops demonstrate that workers don't need capitalists in order to run firms. But he believed cooperativisation could not bring socialism so long as capitalists control state power, which they had exercised so brutally in 1848. Marx envisioned a world free of domination both by capital and the state, a world of direct self-determination by "the associated producers" in which states will have "withered away." But to defeat and expropriate capitalists, workers must meanwhile exercise state power in a "dictatorship of the proletariat" (a misnomer in many ways, since Marx envisioned an extension of democracy by democratic means). Forming parties to take power thus became for Marx the priority of the workers' movement.

Competitive Consequences

The Toronto Star revealed in an article about the Pope urging the EU to boost aid in Italy's migrant crisis, that since the start of 2014, almost 200,000 people have been rescued at sea. For those who do make it to Europe safely, there is not much joy waiting for them. They routinely face destitution, violence and racism. One group trekking into Europe on a 'safe' trail along railway lines were hit by a night train killing fourteen people in Macedonia. All this is another direct consequence of a competitive and divided world. John Ayers

Co-operative Commonwealth not Corporate Capitalism

A socialist revolution first must take place in the heads of the workers, then will follow the conquest of political power, the overthrow of the capitalist system and the establishment of socialism. Certain characteristics distinguish the socialist revolution from all previous revolutions. For the first time has a social revolution become possible and necessary in the interests of the great bulk of the population, the working class. The lack of socialists is all that stands in the way of socialism. The revolution cannot be rammed down the throats of the workers against their understanding or desire. In the name of building up a socialist movement among the masses, some have emasculated and compromised socialist principles.

 The only factor in all the material conditions of today that I can see standing in the way of socialism is the political ignorance of the workers. Socialism is possible, necessary and practical today the moment the great majority become conscious of their interests. The notion that the workers are dumb is plain hogwash but often confused, especially by the “friends” of socialism, speaking in the name of socialism.

The lure and fascinations of protest demonstrations and making demands is very attractive. It indicates how deep-rooted discontent with capitalism really is, and it demonstrates the latent strength of socialism once the masses wake up to the need for changing the system instead of adjusting to it. The bond that makes us as one and inspires us is the recognition that capitalism can no longer be reformed or administered in the interest of the working class or of society, and the understanding that conditions are now ripe for socialism, which is the solution for society’s problems. All that is lacking is a socialist majority. This says it all! This is the essence of our principles. The socialist movement is not only heart, but is a combination of heart and head. Socialism is not the result of blind faith, followers, or, by the same token, vanguards and leaders. Nothing is more repugnant to socialism than clever strategy and conspiratorial tactics.

Socialism is not possible without socialists. What makes socialist work stirring and inspiring is not that there are short cuts, but that there is nothing else worth a tinker’s damn. The seeming failures, the disappointments and discouragements, the slow growth, only indicate that socialist work is not an easy task. There is no short cut to socialism, short of socialist determination. Our latent strength lies in the fact that science, truth, and above all, necessity, is on the side of the scientific, revolutionary socialist movement.

But the alternative facing us is either socialism or chaos.

All over the world, wastelands or arable lands or resource-rich lands, where resource-poor populations live in tenuous relationships with the environment, are grabbed by the state and corporate giants for the accumulation of capital. We live in a world where conflicts erupt over natural resources. We don’t look to a different government to solve problems, nor make ‘demands’ on government like left groups. We were committed to working without leaders in a non-hierarchical way. Our goals are conceived in terms of achieving a socialist transformation of our global society along democratic and emancipatory lines.

The steady state economy is a genuine alternative to a capitalist economy and it is feasible. Capitalist economics is an erratic process of booms and slumps, and an unpleasant process of competition, where those who win necessarily do so at the expense of those who lose. The socialist vision of a steady-state economy is where goods and services are provided locally as much as possible and at a sustainable level. This would have the positive side-effect of prioritizing the well-being of the planet and all its people over the profit-making of the few who dominate the present economy. Capitalist growth cannot be stopped, or even slowed and the market is driving us toward ecological collapse.

For many people socialism is an economic concept synonymous with government ownership of the means of production and centralized planning of economic activity. Capitalism is leading humanity to disaster. This profit-driven system is using natural resources at a faster rate than they are being replenished. Our atmosphere, land and water are being filled with poisons that are choking the lifeblood out of the planet and its peoples. Socialists aim to raise the living standards of the poorest workers in the world. That does not mean rampant growth that pays no attention to environmental and other considerations. Nor is it is true that people would always clamour for more. We want a decent, stimulating life for ourselves and the generations after us. Consumption would tend to stabilise once a certain level had been reached.

 The same is true for population growth. It is poverty which promotes large families to overcome high infant mortality rates.  Reducing growth can only be accomplished by the transformation of capitalism, which is based on private property, to a democratic, socialist system based on common ownership. From the local to regional and global levels, democratic and accountable bodies would discuss and plan production. Advanced production techniques and aspects of planning already employed by multi-national corporations, market research and internet communication would all help develop a modern socialist society. Production would respond to the needs of society and resources would be allocated accordingly. Sustainable development would be a top priority.

Socialist society can only exist globally. Just as capitalist society is global. Workers will not be tricked into the fight for socialism. Certainly the propaganda of Socialism must start from the simplest daily needs of life of men, women and children, and the failure of capitalism to meet those needs. But at the same time it must be shown that no short cut can find the way out, no magic panaceas of pretended reforms, money-control or other trickeries, but only the conquest of the means of production by the working class, and, therefore, as the necessary condition of this, the overthrow of capitalist class power and conquest of power by the working class; and it must be shown that this class struggle will involve heavy fighting and sacrifice, demanding the strongest discipline and solidarity of the working class.

The clamor is always money, money, and more money but money won’t fill our stomachs.

No Answer In Capitalism

In late March and early April plenty of press coverage was devoted to The Canadian Bar Association's opposition to the proposed Federal bill C-51 that they felt would curtail civil liberties. The group represents 36,000 lawyers and paralegals, and they argue that the law, that would transform the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) into an agency that would disrupt terrorist plots, would also disrupt legitimate activity including environmental and aboriginal protests and intimidate democratic expression. They fear that CSIS would search private citizens' computers and mobile devices without warrants. This has already happened in the US where, under the guise of fighting terrorism, many private individuals have had their civic freedoms trampled on. Once again, there is no answer in capitalism to this on going problem, but a society without terrorism and governments as we know them, with a democratic administration of society wouldn't have such a situation. John Ayers.

Open Borders or Closed Minds

Capitalism's 'use-by' date is way overdue. We can enjoy a much higher standard of living because we're far more productive than ever before. When we argue for the abolition of private property, what we are referring to is the common ownership of the means of production (all the stuff such as machinery and raw materials) so that people have a better means to generate wealth, and thus diminish inequality. Socialists have no desire to take the clothes off your back, commandeer your car or squat in your house.

More people cross borders today than ever before. Historians, archaeologists, biologists, and the tales that people tell all point to the fact that around the world human beings have always moved and that they have done so for reasons not dissimilar to the reasons people move today. To be human is to be mobile.  For us, to be alive is to move.  We are not plants, rooted to a single place from which we grow and expand in more or less constrained or restricted ways.  Our defining capacity as a species to creatively and purposefully transform our surroundings and productively and consciously modify our circumstances -- our existential vocation for labor, if you will -- is inseparable from our fundamental freedom of movement.  This likewise means that our inherently social character as a species is also contingent upon our mobility.  Hence, the freedom of movement of the human species is an absolutely basic and non-negotiable aspect of our most general mode of life.  This is not merely a philosophical predilection or a theoretical conceit, much less a dogmatic political position -- it is an indisputable and immutable objective fact.  To be human and alive, under any semblance of natural or normal or healthy circumstances, is to be mobile. Hence, our freedom of movement as a species has ultimately manifested itself as a freedom to move around the entire globe, (and even beyond). The free movement of people around the world therefore would not be utopian; it is already a proven fact. What is utopian is the statist delusion of border policing. The development of capitalism creates the conditions for the solidarity and contact between workers to overcome the national boundaries established by capital. 

Borders are one of the great contradictions in the era of capitalist globalisation. The world has become a much smaller place because of advances in technology and transportation, global production chains and the lightning-fast movement of capital around the planet. In this regard, the globalized economy is borderless to those with billions of dollars or euros or yen to invest. But borders are still there to keep the vast majority of us apart. While borders are permeable to some privileged people, they are impermeable to most others. Migrants who cross national borders without permission are often criminalised and de-humanised, frequently lose their social, economic and political rights and, as a consequence, experience disproportionate exploitation and abuse. Capitalism has always needed workers to migrate across borders. For example, tens of thousands of Irish workers were central to England's Industrial Revolution. Once in England, the Irish got the worst-paid jobs, lived in slums and were caricatured as slothful drunks. Borders are designed to control workers in the interest of capitalist accumulation. The most successful way to defeat low pay and conditions is to unite and organise against exploitative employers. The demand for undocumented migrant workers is greater as long as employers can get a higher return on investment through the exploitation of a cheap labour force. If migrant workers are allowed to flow freely between borders, with the same rights as indigenous workers, they would be entitled to the same pay and conditions. As a result, we could strengthen our organisations and unions, united in our struggle for just and fair conditions in employment and education. It is easier for employers to undercut wages if they have access to a cheap labour force, but equipped with the same rights as the indigenous workforce, a migrant worker would no longer be susceptible to exploitation because of their status. In Istanbul, employers are already taking advantage of an educated Syrian working class, to provide high standards of service in hospitality during the tourist season, whilst paying them less than indigenous workers.

When workers unite for fair pay and conditions, it strengthens the position of all workers.

There are no such matters as ‘national interests’ only the interests of different classes. Borders are never natural, never a product of nature. They are political. Capitalism views workers both as units of production and as a market. Socialism, on the other hand sees us all as human beings. A world without borders, without states, would clearly require a global revolution. Abolition of immigration controls and the opening of present borders even within one country such as the UK would also require a revolution.  The long-standing socialist slogan ‘Workers of the world unite’ means what it says. It does not mean ‘Only workers with the correct immigration status unite.’ Immigration controls are inherently racist as they are premised on the grossest of all nationalisms – the claim that one group of people has a franchise on a particular piece of the world. All immigration controls however they are defined and to whoever they ‘allow’ free movement, inevitably result in the restriction of movement for others. This is why they must be opposed in principle. Every struggle against deportation is at its very basics a denial of the state to determine who can cross borders.

A huge number of the world’s population are on the move and are voting with their feet for no controls. Across the world, national states, especially in the so-called “rich world,” are imposing ever more restrictive immigration policies. Such state efforts are being enacted at precisely the time when migration has become an increasingly important part of people’s strategies for survival. These may be a new livelihood or escape from untenable, even murderous, situations, such as persecution and war, as well as the opportunity to experience new people, places, and situations.

Throughout the world those designated as ‘illegal’ – the unwanted, the undocumented – are literally scaling fences in assertion of their right of freedom of movement. More restrictions will never stop migration--the economic imperative for workers struggling to feed themselves and their families will force them to cross borders, no matter what the risks. But the restrictions can make this much more dangerous and oppressive, by forcing the most vulnerable people in society into relying on smugglers and human traffickers, not to mention the exploitative businesses where they end up working. There can be no question of socialists supporting anything that would make it impossible for Polish, Romanian or any other workers to migrate to and remain in the UK. Nor can we ignore the deployment of security forces, the use of courts and detention centres to enforce immigration policies.

The idea that the acceptance of foreign workers would threaten native workers' jobs is one dimensional. Of course, it can't be denied that even in times of non-recession, the low wages of foreign workers appear to Japanese workers as competitors. However, the position which opposes the acceptance of low wage foreign workers based on the idea that they steal jobs and cause the worsening of working conditions, dazzles the eyes with apparent interests, but cannot understand the essence of things, and spreads xenophobia and divisions among the workers. Capital introduces all sorts of discrimination among the workers: main company and subcontractors, temporary and part time workers, etc. Capital uses "disposable" part time and temporary workers as a control valve for business fluctuations. When the business climate worsens, the first ones to get the sack are these low level workers, and those working for small subcontracting companies. It is the rule of capital that makes the workers' lives unstable. This instability will not end if the rule of capital continues, regardless of whether or not foreign workers are prevented entry.

The same thing is true for the problem of increased crime or the creation of slums or increased competition for social security and welfare. The greatest responsibility for the occurrence of these problems lies with the discriminative low wages and horrible working conditions capital imposes, and is not the fault of foreign workers. The results of research by the French researcher Gaspard clearly show the groundlessness of bourgeois "public opinion" which scapegoats foreign workers by saying that they are a hotbed of crime. According to her research, French people are the ones who commit the vast majority of serious social crimes, whereas the overwhelming number of crimes by foreign workers are petty crimes which come from unavoidable poverty related to their terrible treatment by capital. ("The France of Foreigners"). The xenophobic position deflects attention away from the rule of capital as if the responsibility lies with the foreign workers, is a reactionary stance which propagates prejudice against foreign workers.

Those on the left who call for "orderly” admittance understand that these conditions of establishing presuppose a return to the home country. This position is essentially the same as the capitalist’s  which denies foreign workers the right to permanent stay, and attempts to "use" foreign workers for the convenience of capital, and avoid social problems from the permanent residence of foreign workers. They want to thoroughly squeeze these foreign workers and then send them back to their home country. In other words, they aim to introduce freely disposable "labor power". The left nationalist standpoint is the same as that of the ruling class. This regulated immigration policy reflects the interests of medium and small capital which is suffering from a labour shortage.

One of the things Lenin did get right was when he explained:

"Capitalism creates the particular form of national migration. Countries in which industry is rapidly developing introduce more machinery, drive other countries out of the market, and attract wage workers from foreign countries through their above average wages.

 In this way hundreds of thousands of workers move far away from their hometowns. Against their will they are drawn into the orbit of advanced capitalism. They are drawn out of their remote villages to become participants in the movement of world history, and come face to face with a powerfully united, international industrial class.

 Certainly, only extreme poverty causes people to abandon their homeland, and capitalism exploits migrant workers in a completely shameless way. But only reactionaries can shut their eyes to the progressive meaning of the modern national migration. Emancipation from the heavy pressure of capital cannot occur apart from the increasing development of capitalism, and the class struggles based on this development.

 The bourgeoisie tries to incite the workers of one nation against the workers of another nation, and cause splits between them. Class conscious workers understand that it is inevitable and progressive to knock down all of the capitalist walls between nations, and work in order to help the organization and enlightenment of comrades from other countries." ("Capitalism and the Migration of Workers")

Workers must recognise the progressive meaning of the movement of workers, and strive for solidarity with the workers of other countries from an internationalist standpoint.

The government spreads the anti-migrant ideas that the admission of "unskilled workers" would widen discriminatory consciousness, and lead to the breakdown of the social order. But the evidence is that it is the government and capital who are inciting discrimination and prejudice against foreign workers, with fears that the entrance of unskilled foreign workers will enlarge the slums and increase crime.

Workers support the freedom of foreign workers' employment. The illegal conditions of the employment of foreign workers means that capital can impose horrendous working conditions, brokers are active and in-between exploitation takes place. Of course, as long as the rule of capital continues this would not end even with the legal employment. But the legality of employment would at least ease these conditions somewhat. Furthermore, workers must oppose all discrimination, and demand equality for foreign workers and their rights as workers. Only supporting the legality of employment, is no different from the bourgeois desire for cheap labour. For foreign workers to defend their own lives, they must secure their rights as workers. Workers as workers must oppose discrimination by capital against foreign workers, and struggle in solidarity to support their rights and lives.

However, the international solidarity of workers is not merely limited to supporting the demands for their rights. Above all, workers must develop the class struggle against the system of capital, and overthrow this system. What must be sought is the overthrow of the rule of capital  and the realisation of socialism established on the power of the workers.

THE EARTH FLAG

Our solidarity recognises no borders. We must do everything we can to support the right of workers to live and work where they so wish. Socialists want world where borders have become a relic of the past. The world that the Socialist Party envision is one in which national boundaries no longer exist, in which you can move from one country to another with the same ease in which we can move from Newcastle to Newquay, a world without passports or visas or immigration quotas. True globalisation in the human sense, in which we recognise that the world is one and that human beings everywhere are the same. It would be a world in which the boundaries of race and religion and nation would not become causes for antagonism. Even though there would still be cultural differences and still be language differences, there would not be causes for violent action of one against the other. In a world like that you could not make war because it is your family. It would be a world in which the riches of the planet would be according to human need. True community can only be established with the abolition of classes and the state. If we are to fight world capitalism, then we cannot resort to nationalism. The only way forward for working people is the struggle for class solidarity and world socialism.  Class unity is about solidarity, which recognises no borders. The workers' cause and the Revolution knows no borders.