OWNERSHIP AND POLITICAL POWER.

From the June 1926 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have received an Edinburgh journal called "The Proletariat," the organ of the British Section of the [International] Socialist Labour Party. This is a body which has "existed" since 1912 and broke away from the now defunct Socialist Labour Party. Why they call themselves the British Section it is hard to judge, because the other Socialist Labour Party (in America) repudiate them.

"The State of the S.P.G.B." is the title of an article purporting to deal with us. The state of this British Section of the S.L.P. may be judged from their criticism which we quote:—

"To show far misconception dominates the S.P.G.B., Engels, in the closing chapters of Origin of the Family points out that the State derives all its substance via taxation from the economic factors. These dominate the State which includes the Army and Navy. In a word, condition them in the fullest meaning of the term. And, further, the capitalist class to-day, who are the economic masters of all wealth, mark you, the civil power, subject that military thing to their requirements, increase or decrease it as the case demands. The owners of the economic wealth factors are masters of the situation. The S.P.G.B. position that 'dispossession necessitates disarmament,' suggest that it is the armed force that dominates the situation, and consequently, from the Marxian position, must be ruled out."

Can criticism be more idiotic?

Ownership depends upon power to maintain possession, therefore the capitalists depend upon their control of political power, which gives control of the armed forces. As Marx says in the Communist Manifesto, the first step in the emancipation of the working class is the winning of political supremacy.

Engels, in his "Retrospect," points out the all-importance of political action for the purpose of wresting control from the hands of the employing class.

The recent general strike completely justifies our position that those who control the armed forces dominate the situation. Hence a capitalist victory.

Our critics quote from the January, 1925, issue of the "Socialist Standard" on disarmament. Let us give the full statement from that issue:

"Ownership to-day consists not in occupation but in mere legal title, meaningless, unless recognised and upheld by the forces of State. The overthrow of the capitalist ownership, therefore, and the establishment of common ownership, involves the capture of the State by the working-class. Dispossession necessitates disarmament. The organisation of the working-class must, therefore be a political organisation i.e., a Socialist Party."

Like all other species of Anarchists the so-called S.L.P. of Edinburgh offer no alternative to political action.

Adolph Kohn

You can't kill a revolution

"You can kill a revolutionary but you can't kill revolution...you can jail a liberator but you can't jail liberation." - Fred Hampton (1948-69), Black Panther

Why is the socialist movement so small and so clearly wanting in numbers and influence? This is a crucial question. One answer, of course was that for many people for a long time, the old Soviet Union model regarded nationalised property and the 5–Year State Plans, under the control of the “vanguard” Party, as socialism,(or at least stepping stones) to socialism. The words ‘socialism’ and ‘socialist’ are odious to many people chiefly on account of principles and practices of political parties prominent in the history in certain countries with whom we have no sympathy at all with. Why then do we continue to use these terms, which must confuse us with them in popular opinion? Would it not be good policy to drop these terms, and to substitute others less obnoxious to popular prejudice? Nothing would be finally gained by such a policy. "Speak the truth and shame the Devil" is a good maxim. The truth is, we really are socialists; we support the socialist idea and we strive for the day socialism is accepted by mankind. We remain convinced its day is coming; and it is not an aim that for honest men and women to be ashamed of. As to justice from the critics and opposition, no revolutionary ever received it.  Reformers only betray their cause in the end when they resort to a timid, evasive policy. No matter how determined and principled, the few socialists are, they are drowned out by the power and pervasiveness of the dominant ruling class and their control of information by a manipulated media and biased education system. Socialist websites on  the internet may have opened a window to reaching mass audiences but (even if one is successful in locating them) cannot substitute for the indispensable work of organisational outreach, of people making direct contact with others, of physical face-to-face debate and discussion, and of well-orchestrated, highly visible mass action.

Socialism in its essence is a society in which all people work cooperatively as equals for the common good of all. In recent times people who hold this principle have been describing this principle as democratic socialism, to distinguish the principle from authoritarian and undemocratic states which have wrongly described themselves as socialist in character. This label is used to distinguish democratic socialists from people who improperly call themselves socialist and do not support the values of both equality and democracy. Certain societies have sometimes disguised themselves by using the term socialism. "National socialism" advocates a one-party dictatorial society. "Communism" has frequently been used by political parties advocating and implementing a one-party society with very limited democratic practices. However, a truly communal society would be very democratic.

Capitalism describes a state of society which accepts and encourages private ownership of the means of production. Capitalism exalts the selfish individual. In capitalism regulation of self-interest is discouraged as a hindrance to the operation of the market. At the moment, production in every enterprise is conducted by individual capitalists on their own initiative. What -- and in which way -- is to be produced, where, when and how the produced goods are to be sold is determined by the industrialist. The workers do not see to all this, they are just living machines who have to carry out their work. In a socialist economy this must be completely different! The private employer will disappear. Then no longer production is aimed towards the enrichment of one individual, but of delivering to the public at large the means of satisfying all its needs. Socialism is that social system under which the necessaries of production are owned, controlled and administered by the people, for the people, and under which, accordingly, the cause of political and economic despotism having been abolished, class rule is at an end. That is socialism; nothing short of that.

In socialism no person can exploit any other person. Natural resources will not be wasted. Changes in society should be made by freely and openly. Thus, socialism ought to be achieved democratically through the ballot box. Socialism is the radical idea that people should live and work cooperatively in a democratic society. A socialist society will provide for each individual's basic needs for food, clothing, shelter, transportation, and health. Above all, it will have to take the control of industry and of all branches of production out of the hands of mutually competing individuals, and instead institute a system in which all these branches of production are operated by society as a whole -- that is, for the common account, according to a common plan, and with the participation of all members of society. It will, in other words, abolish competition and replace it with association. In a socialist society, the employer with his stick and carrot ceases to exist. The workers are free and equal human beings, who work for their own well-being and benefit.

We are living in times of unprecedented possibility and also in a period that threatens humanity’s very existence, dominated by a ruling class hell-bent on the unfettered extraction of natural resources. In response, all around the world, people are in search of genuine solutions. The nature of this historical moment makes fundamental change possible, though not inevitable. We aim to rekindle a radical and grounded world socialist movement capable of confronting the challenges and opportunities of today, based on popular participation in politics seeking to establish democratically-planned production for use that is in balance with the planet’s sustainable regenerative capacity. While we are informed by the lessons and struggles of those who have come before us, we live in unique conditions, and our struggles must be rooted in a sober assessment of our specific time, place, and conditions. The Socialist Party does not seek to replace or control the work of existing campaigns. We believe that social movements should be independent and authentic. We reject the vanguardism and the associated ‘entryist’ practices of operating within organizations, trying to control them; creating front groups; or being opportunist and leeching off social activism. Our contribution which we believe is both possible and necessary is maintaining the focus upon our goal – socialism and encouraging strategies to achieve that aim. The Socialist Party hopes to build a new type of workers’ movement with a transformative and liberatory vision that connects all the grassroots struggles to win freedom for all people and safe-guard the planet.

"We got to face some facts. That the masses are poor, that the masses belong to what you call the lower class, and when I talk about the masses, I'm talking about the white masses, I'm talking about the black masses, and the brown masses, and the yellow masses, too. We've got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water. We say you don't fight racism with racism. We're gonna fight racism with solidarity. We say you don't fight capitalism with no black capitalism; you fight capitalism with socialism.”- Fred Hampton

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.