Omnia Sunt Communia

The Socialist Party of Great Britain recognises the immense contribution made by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in developing a scientific understanding of capitalism as a distinct and transient society, one which was historically progressive in its time, but which is now outdated and needing to be replaced. This is not to say that we think Marx and Engels were correct on every subject then, still less now. The whole point of a scientific approach to politics and economics is that it is based on facts, evidence and objective testing and reassessment. Marxism itself has been defined as the distillation of all the lessons and understandings gained from working class struggles against capitalism, expressed in a scientific manner. Nonetheless, there is enormous value to be gained from studying the classical works of Marx and Engels. Writing during the earlier phases of capitalism’s development and working to get a handle on the whole phenomenon, their writings provide a clarity and a perspective on capitalism and the need for workers to replace it by socialism, rarely achieved since. In fact, some hold that the development of capitalism has accorded even more closely with their basic analysis than was perhaps the case at the time.

For over 110 years, the Labour Party has hoodwinked the workers, and endlessly led them down the blind alley of reformism, always mindful that its real allegiance was to the master class who own and control society. Make no mistake. A Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn would make no departure from the historical record. Its task would be primarily to try to make capitalism – a system based upon the exploitation of one class by another – work in the interests of the exploited. Labour, under Corbyn, would not really control the economy, it would control him. The historical record shows that if the dictates of capital demanded, the workers would have to be lied to, betrayed and made out to be villains of the piece and a threat to the economic interests of the country. No Labour leader to date has failed to be cast in a mould created by the capitalist class, no matter how noble their intentions. Bloody hilarious how people can see the Labour Party having ever been socialist. Nostalgic workers, who mourn the demise of Clause 4 in the 1990s, would do well to remind themselves of its authors and who they actually were – the Fabian Society – and what they actually thought about the working class. Perhaps the closest we come to a definition of the Fabians is Engels' description of them as 'a clique united only by their fear of the threatening rule of the workers and doing all in their power to avert the danger.' The Labour Party then, as now, was not so much interested in promoting ideas that threatened the hegemony of the capitalist class, but in securing the most votes. Even at its 'hardest Left' the Labour party can provide no solutions to the problems of capitalism. They all stand for a 'nicer' capitalism so are no socialists, but social reformers. Capitalism came into the world oozing blood from every pore and it continues likewise. We had two world wars last century and they are all doing war dances presently. You cannot have a nicer capitalism and there is no such thing for instance as "a fair days pay for a fair days work". Even at its most radical, Labour stands for the retention of capitalism, wage labour. Nationalisation is NOT Common Ownership socialism but state capitalism. Labour's Clause 4 was and is a nonsense. We don't need a means of exchange when 'all' is owned by us 'all', in common with each other as social equals. Removing class ownership and control of wealth production and distribution, means at last, we can have production for use 'and' be social equals, with free access, to the common product. The 'Left-capitalist parties don't tell you that as they want to be guvnors like the Fabians they consider you too stupid to comprehend the ideals of socialism. But it is incumbent upon the workers to make the post-capitalist revolution for and by themselves.

Western capitalism society is not an isolated separated system, from the events people are fleeing from, or the sweat shops of eastern capitalism, or the shanty towns amidst opulence. Global capitalism is interrelated. We workers have more in common with workers elsewhere, than with the global capitalist parasite class. All wealth springs from the workers. Capitalism has solved the production problem and created the knowledgeable workforce capable of running it from top to bottom but it is unable of solving the distribution one. It is obsolete and in the same predicament as feudalism was with warring kingly factions seeking domination over what spoils of war may bring. Employment in capitalism is, ‘only a specific expression of the general prostitution of the labourer.’ Such dehumanisation of those involved will only end when the terms buyer and seller become redundant with the establishment of socialism. We have a world of free access to win.

Marx and Engels, unlike vanguardist 'Lefties', insisted that the task of building and running the post-capitalist society was to be the workers prerogative and they would decide what forms the new society would organise in. They recognised too, that the idea of socialism was older than their own contribution to the critique of capitalism, favourably quoting Thomas Muntzer to this end 'omnia sunt communia', (‘all things held in common'.) Employment in capitalism is, ’only a specific expression of the general prostitution of the labourer.’ Such dehumanisation of those involved will only end when the terms buyer and seller become redundant with the establishment of socialism.

The division of the world’s population into distinct nations seems to be perfectly natural. The idea of nationalism is that "we" all have certain characteristics in common, and "we" should stick together. We are all assumed to belong to a national group but nationality is a product of social processes. The modern state is a product of bourgeois development. All this of course benefits the ruling class. It is usually a sign of desperation and of an incapacity to formulate a coherent argument when our masters resort to playing the nationalist card. It benefits them to see the workers placing meaning and identity in things that are irrelevant and mythical to the truth of class struggle.

Keeping the workers unable to see the true state of affairs in the world works to the ruling class advantage. Class existed before the nation-state. Throughout history one ruling class or another has attempted to impose its view on those they ruled over, manipulating their passions and pretending that its interests and their interests were the same. So, in another of life's ironies, the masses waste their energy fighting amongst themselves, believing their interests and the interests of their rulers are linked. Nationalism has always been one of the biggest poisons for the working class. It has served to divide workers into different nation-states not only literally but ideologically. If the workers were ever to put their misplaced passion for “their” nation into socialism, then it would be the end of the ruling class.

"We're A’ Jock Tamson's Bairns" is a saying in Scotland and the north of England used to mean "we're all the same under the skin". A “bairn” is a child; the A’ is an abbreviation for All. Jock Tamson (John Thompson) is a generic name, equivalent to such names as “John Doe” or “Joe Bloggs” It is a reminder that despite the fact we live in a capitalist society we are all equal.

We should unite to abolish the division of the world into so-called nation-states and to establish a World Cooperative Commonwealth of which we will all be free and equal members - citizens of the world, not subjects of nation-states. The goal of the socialist movement is not to assist in the creation of even more states but to establish a real world community without frontiers where all states as they currently exist will be destroyed. In a socialist society communities, towns and cities will have the opportunity to thrive – and people will no doubt feel an attachment to places that are real and tangible – but the nation states will be consigned to the history books where they belong.

"I have no country to fight for; my country is the Earth, and I am a citizen of the World." - Eugene V. Debs

Democracy – capitalism’s Achilles heel

People don't generally become poor. They are born poor, (in relation to the amount of wealth available) Yes, even in work. They may have better or worse conditions but essentially they are only a few week’s wages or a couple of month’s salary cheques away from the food-bank. The wealthy have generally inherited wealth and can increase their wealth by exploiting the labour power of those who are born poor. With few exceptions if you are born poor you will die poor and if born rich you will die even richer. Poverty is actual and relative to the wealth produced collectively. The rate of exploitation of the waged slave is greater and accelerating. The fact of working people having access to smart-phones, cars, education is used as some indication of social progress, when it is just an indicator of technological progress and workers require access to these in order to present themselves to perform the tasks of selling their mental and physical abilities for a wage or salary, to keep producing surplus-vale for the local, regional and global parasite class who employ them. We are still wage slaves though. Freedom is still to be won.

Socialism is a post-capitalist society, where production is for use (not for sale) to satisfy human needs, with free access to the wealth produced which will have no need of banks, insurance, or money, itself. With voluntary labour and real social equality, with no need for elites or government 'over' people, we will be free at last. The last great emancipation will be the emancipation of the wage slaves. The workers themselves self-organise to this end and are the only agency for this change. The principle for the new society is, "From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs"

The Labour Party in the past, as now, was not so much interested in promoting ideas that threatened the hegemony of the capitalist class, but in securing the most votes. Corbyn-style Labour is merely a recipe to run capitalism and an attempt to manage it in a way which is fair and balanced, while still retaining all the features of capitalist exploitation - private, corporate or state ownership of the means and instruments of producing wealth, waged slavery for the wealth producers (workers), and production for profit after sale on the market for the enrichment of the parasite class (capitalists). What is the difference between a Labour (capitalist business friendly government) and a Tory one? Very little. It is reformism doomed to failure, no matter how laudable and sincere the intentions of the reformers, as capitalism cannot be reformed in any lasting way, to ensure 'a fair and balanced outcome' (however you define this) for the majority. It is just left wing capitalism rather than anything to do with socialism. So the so-called intellectual argument is proceeding from a dishonest and willfully blind perspective of trying to damn 'ideas' of that which is not being implemented, (socialism) in order to traduce the idea of socialism, which is a post-capitalist society. Capitalism once revolutionary, is an outmoded social system and has been so since the start of the last century where inequality is an entrenched as is poverty and the elite ownership of resources. What is in the ultimate class interest of all workers, is the abolition of the wages system and the removal of capitalist ownership of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth.

The ruling class don't have to physically own the business they invest in. Capital is dead labour if it isn't used. That is why governments hammer the poor in a downturn when capital is being held back (capital strike) as the markets have slumped, in order to make them (then worker wealth producer) more attractive as an exploitative opportunity for the parasite class to invest in.  Even the public service sectors, for example are a function of the overall system.

First of all the rate of exploitation is greater in the examples of shrinking work-forces and growing profits, (more widgets with fewer workers means as you say unemployment for some) secondly, Capital cannot grow just by laying around, it needs to be re-invested in exploitative opportunities in order for it to expand. For our purposes it matters little whether this is knowingly, in some venture, or managed (the richest don't even have manage their loot, it is workers who do this for them) through investment trusts, or even extracted by the state for investment in infrastructure say (some capitalists will howl others rub their hands), as it results in the exploitation of workers on wages or salaries to produce surplus value over and above their wages (ration)to be sold on the markets with a view of realising a profit. All wealth springs from labour. The conditions where by capital is accumulated but human needs are not met, except for a minority parasite class, are an impediment upon human progress now, as we could have production for use to satisfy human needs, if all the means of producing and distributing wealth were owned and controlled in common by the whole population, without an elite class or its government overseers. Capital is plundered by extraction of surplus value via waged slavery. The original capital was literally plundered by all manner of dastardly derring-do.

Capitalism can't be regulated out of excess, as it is so intensely competitive, there is always an advantage to be sought in circumvention of 'restrictions on trade'. It can never be based on social justice principles for the majority, (the majority are effectively waged slaves) it will have such aspirations (fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work nonsense as exploitation at the point of production is essentially the part of capitalism where surplus value is created for the capitalist), all the more to gain your support, but regulation is for capital and properties advantage alone, as its raison d'être is profit and accumulation. It is workers who presently run and manage capitalism, from top to bottom and it is workers who innovate and invent new methods and techniques. Why, when it is in their interests to produce a superabundance of necessities to satisfy human needs should their creative spark be dimmed? The difference with this in capitalism, as one example ,when technology which could save labour hours is introduced, it is often accompanied by a pitch as to the merits of its introduction 'freeing labour', but in effect it is used to 'increase' the rate of exploitation, but the competition with other capitalists jumping onto the new technological bandwagon, leads eventually to gluts of unsaleable commodities, (capitalism doesn't exist to satisfy human needs, but for profit of a few) lay-offs and more production with labour then languishing upon the dole.

Capitalism requires, actual and relatively, poverty stricken workers to exploit their need for rations by the wages system, in order to profit from their (Capitalists) ownership of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth.

The post-capitalist society not only frees us from the last great slavery (of wage slavery) and ends social classes with elite parasitical relationship to the wealth producing majority, but allows us to begin produce in ecological harmony with the needs of the living planet on which we reside, instead of trashing it with wasteful by-products and war. It has been a feasible proposition since the start of the last century and is even more so now. All that is required is a majority of politically aware workers to utilise the Achilles heel of capitalist democracy to abolish government 'over' us and elect the people.

Scotland Chokes

At least,  2,000 early deaths in Scotland are caused by air pollution in Scotland every year according to a BBC Scotland documentary. The BBC Scotland investigation 'Car Sick' revealed that high levels of traffic-related air pollution are causing a public health crisis in Scotland.

In 2014 a Glasgow street was found to be the most polluted in Scotland, when figures were released showing the 13 streets where toxic Nitrogen Dioxide concentrations exceeded both Scottish and European safety limits. Glasgow's Hope Street and Edinburgh's St John's Road topped the charts for bad air.

Also featured in the BBC1 documentary was the revelation that only 13 of Scotland's 32 local authorities carry out roadside emissions testing. Glasgow City Council was shown to carry out around 3,000 tests a year - but Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen all undertook none at all.

What money?

Around 40% of Scottish adults are not in control of their finances, a new study has found, due to not knowing their current account balance, not feeling their approach to budgeting works or struggling with bills. 37% of people in Scotland do not know their bank balance within £50. It also found less than a third of people in Scotland have financial goals and plans to achieve them.

Lest we forget

Obituary: Andrew Thomson (1997)

Obituary from the December 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is with great sadness that Glasgow branch report the death of Andrew Thomson.

Andrew joined the Party in 1944. He was a vehicle builder in the Springburn railway workshops. Around that time there were five or six Party members working there; indeed at one time they used to hold outdoor public meetings during their lunch break.

Andy was one of those members who are the backbone of any branch. At many branch meetings when an outdoor meeting in Glasgow or Edinburgh was reported and the literature sales seemed high, some member would say by way of explanation, “Oh, aye. The pamphlet sales were good, but that was because Andy was selling them.” His straightforward, open approach to enquirers or even opponents of socialism was disarming and powerful. The socialist movement is built on the decent, reliable and honest virtues of workers like Andy Thomson.

The branch extends its deepest sympathy to his wife Emily, herself a member. Her loss must be heartbreaking. Glasgow branch have had many members with great abilities as speakers, debaters, literature sellers and organisers. It is doubtful if we have ever had a member that inspired such real affection as we all felt towards Andy. He was in many respects one of the best of us and the loss of his cheerful, comradely presence will be felt by all of us who had the privilege to know him as a comrade and a friend.

GLASGOW BRANCH

Et in terra pax hominibus

Some of us tread gently on the earth and others clump with big tackety boots all over it and anything which gets in the way.

Where did capital come from in the first place? From piracy, plunder, slavery, war and conquest. The destruction of other countries mode of production and enforced drug peddling, by gunboat diplomacy. It is now all legitimised as inherited wealth and constitutes dead labour until it is invested for the purpose of more exploitation of a wage-slave class. It may be true that some capitalists go bust, but most escape with a larger proportion of the loot, even as more shut up one business to open another. It is the workers who produced their wealth who face penury. They do not have any 'Right to work'. Capitalists do NOT create wealth. It is the labour of the working class from which all wealth derives. Capital is dead labour, plundered surplus value form the activities of an exploited working class, which is only risked by the capitalist when an opportunity arises to derive a profit from this wealth producing capacity of labour. The workers commodity (labour -power) is a unique commodity, in that it produces a surplus over and above its own reproduction, which is sold on the markets to realise a profit for the parasitic capitalist class. Capitalism cannot have any other purpose than the economic one of making and accumulating profits. It cannot serve any other social purpose and cannot be made to. It is based on a division of society into those who own and control the places where wealth is produced and those who don’t.

The modern working-class have no class below them on whom to foist a fraudulent conception of class interests, and from whom to draw support and assistance in the struggle. All their strength must be of themselves and in them themselves. All their militant might must be based upon the knowledge of their class position and the logical course dictated by that position. Therefore at the very outset it is seen that the need for leaders does not exist. Only those who do not know the way require to be led, and this very fact makes it inevitable that those who are led will be entirely in the hands of those who lead.

The working class can only find emancipation through socialism, which implies the overthrow of the present ruling class and their social system. The only possible human instruments in the prosecution of the struggle for this end are those who understand the working-class position in society, realise that only socialism can lift them from that position, and who desire that the proletariat shall be so lifted. Broadly speaking, only members of the working class will come in this category.

The class-unconscious mobs, therefore, whom the "leaders" place themselves at the head of, can never be effective factors in the struggle for working-class deliverance. It is often said that the leaders are in advance of the led, but in the broader sense this is not true. Lading, after all, must be by consent. So it happens that the "leader" can only lead where he is likely to be followed. Hence, so far is the leader from being in advance of the mob, he is only the reflection of its collective ignorance. We remember Bevan who had what they call the common touch. Who better than a one-time down-trodden miner to justify the anti-working class policies of his party? Bevan who was a member of the Labour government when they were busy breaking strikes and getting involved in the slaughter of workers in Korea and other parts of the world. Bevan, a minister in the government which promoted the great swindle of nationalisation, which made the shareholders more secure than before and left the workers no better off. Yet - and here is the greatest swindle - this was said, by Bevan and others, to be in the name of building socialism. It was not a working example of socialism but managed capitalism. The NHS was supported by the Liberals and Tories as more efficient than giving higher wages to purchase insurance for medical care. Beveridge was a Liberal. It was certainly a bit of a benefit for workers but it was set up as a consequence of the war which preceded to manage any discontent which would have impinged on the boom which follows a war. In effect, it was to be capitalism with nice bits added on and the bad bits lopped off, retaining wage slavery and profit. All capitalist countries are or have the potential to be highly socialised, (even in the emerging capitalist Bismarck's Germany the railways were state run), but this doesn't make them 'socialist' or 'socialistic' but managers, on behalf of exploiters of wage labour, (Workers/wealth producers) in the interest of the dominant class of exploiting parasites, (Owners, Employers, Capitalists.) A left-wing capitalist fantasy masquerading as socialism. Facing the threat of, or actual strikes, Labour governments always took the employers side in such confrontations. While pretend that we can make capitalism fairer? By misleading workers that capitalism can be reformed by a nicer style of government in order to get their support at the ballot box? No capitalist party is worthy of support. Capitalism must be replaced.

The socialist and the true democrat does not place faith in leaders. He knows that the only hope lies in the intelligence and courage and energy of the working class as a class, and all his hope, all his faith, all his trust, rests in the working class. We should be asking why we persist in the delusion that any capitalist political parties have your interests at heart?

Socialism not a 'belief' system, it doesn't have leaders, rulers or a ruling class, or elites, and has no sacrosanct books, Marxists continually dispute scientific points with each other in evaluation of contributions, but only uses all scientific evidence to underscore its case to be made. It does not do mechanistic blueprints or certainties, but places in the sphere of human action upon the material circumstances of the day.

War is not necessarily constrained by good people, (religious or not) or caused by bad ones (religious or not). Modern wars arise out of material conditions of fierce competition with occasions of dispute over power, trade routes, raw materials or geo-political advantage, by different sections of ruling class elites. These elites will justify their behaviour by reference to principle, religion, or cynicism, as war being "business by other means".

Foe and friend, believer and non-believer alike are blessed, before being slaughtered in the interests of these elites, God being the first conscript on all sides, with guardian angels Jingoism and Xenophobia enlisted, for the duration with lies, damn lies and misinformation as scripture. Believers and non-believers can, have done in the past and will do so in the future, stand shoulder to shoulder, with their brother and sisters of this common humanity, in opposition to the monstrosity of war. Far from misrepresenting history this unbeliever wants us all to learn from it.

The Socialist Party seeks to see things develop: a growing worldwide anti-capitalist movement that will eventually end capitalism and replace class ownership by common ownership and democratic control and production for profit by production directly to satisfy people’s needs. Workers need to become aware of possibility of abolishing the wages and prices system altogether. If this doesn’t happen then capitalism will just stagger on from crisis to crisis while social needs and the good of society continue to be neglected. Enough of this though, friend, we will say "peace be upon you" ("et in terra pax hominibus") and know we mean it.

The UCS "Take Over" (1971)

Letters to the Editors from the November 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Sirs,

On reading your August edition of the Socialist Standard, I was shocked and disappointed at the inaccuracies and blatant lies given out under the heading "Revolt on the Clyde”.

In a previous article entitled “Do You Know About Socialism?” you attack the working class of this country for their placid acceptance of the controls and restrictions placed on them by the capitalist system. And yet when a section of the working class make a stand against this system of suppression you immediately condemn them out of hand for being unrealistic.

The author of the derogatory article states, "That workers in a declining industry like shipbuilding have any economic power capable of overcoming the all too real and socially accepted political power of the government is a myth”. This statement shows a gross ignorance of the world shipbuilding situation today. A little investigation would have shown that the true situation is the reverse of that stated. World tonnage for ships launched has been steadily increasing over the past ten years, and there is no evidence to suppose that this increased demand will not continue.

The statement, "Locked in the yards with no work and no money the workers would only be able to hold out for a short while”, again shows a lack of understanding of the situation. Due to tremendous response from all over Britain in the way of donations to the UCS fighting fund and weekly levies imposed by trade unions, the shop stewards should have sufficient capital to re-employ UCS workers as soon as they are made redundant until March 1972. There is also sufficient work in the yards to keep the men fully occupied until then. By this time it is envisaged that the government will have altered its viewpoint on the situation.

It is further implied in the article that UCS in its present form is not viable, and that the cause has been partially lost because "thousands of Clyde shipyard workers did lose their jobs while Benn was Labour Minister”. May I point out that the thousands mentioned were laid off during the creation of UCS as part of a productivity agreement with the unions concerned. Since then the company has increased productivity and improved labour relations no end and can now confidently quote £5.5m. for the 17,000 ton cargo ships which are so much in demand as against Japan’s quote of £5.3m.

The government sponsored Shipbuilding Industry Board says in its report that the shipyards are in better shape than they have been since the war. "They deserve encouragement and support”.

Since the shop stewards took control of the situation at UCS, words such as "occupation" and "workers’ control” have been bandied about, not by the stewards but by irresponsible articles written by authors lacking in either basic socialist morals or common sense. In direct contrast the men in control of the UCS at present have shown themselves to be responsible, realistic and genuinely concerned about the current unemployment situation.

These men are fighting for The Right to Work, a right regarded by true socialists to be basic and by the present government to be contrary to the theory of capitalism.

A victory for this right just now will not only be a victory for the Clydeside workers, but a victory for all those who regard socialism as the only true and fair system for this country.

I therefore respectfully suggest that your publication refrains from the type of public sniping and destructive criticism we are accustomed to in the capitalist press and get on with the job of educating the people of this country in preparation for socialism.

You could begin by assigning the author of the article to the organisation of appeals on behalf of the UCS fighting fund and therefore practically assist those who are currently leading the fight for a basic socialist principle, The Right to Work.

F. J. Coyle, London, W.5.

REPLY:

We have never condemned the UCS workers. Quite the reverse. The article in question wished them luck “in using their bargaining strength to get the best of redundancy terms they can”. Which is essentially what the so-called work-in is about. It is not the beginning of a workers’ revolution, nor the expropriation of the capitalists at the point of production but, as Mr. Coyle recognises, simply a trade union tactic of an unusual kind.

We do not doubt that the UCS shop stewards are what Mr. Coyle describes as “responsible” and “realistic”. For all their fiery words, they must know that all they can hope for is some deal, either with the government or with some capitalist like Archibald Kelly, that will save as many jobs as possible. It is to their credit that they do not seem to be interested in leading the Clydeside shipworkers into a head-on clash with the forces of the State, despite the nonsense mouthed by those criticised in our article (and despite some of their own earlier statements made in the heat of the moment). In passing, we would challenge the accuracy of saying that the stewards now “control” the yards seeing that for the time being it is also in the interests of the liquidator that work on the unfinished ships goes on.

The shop stewards must know, too, that any deal is bound to involve some redundancies. We stand by what we said on this, that whatever happens some (more) Clydeside shipworkers are bound to lose their jobs because of the profit situation in British shipbuilding. The UCS workers cannot win in the sense of achieving “no redundancies” and any deal the unions and/or the stewards are likely to get—like the last one when Benn was Minister — cannot avoid some men being declared redundant. To assume otherwise is to assume that capitalism can cease to run on profits. This is not to say the workers should not put up a struggle. They should, if only because the more militant they are the better deal they are likely to get, as past trade union struggles have shown.

How successful will be the particular tactic they have adopted remains to be seen. But it is not something to be condemned out of hand just because it has not been tried before (if it was really an attempt to expropriate the capitalists rather than a mere trade union tactic that would be a different matter; that has been tried before with disastrous results and we would have no hesitation in condemning it). The Socialist Party of Great Britain has always given its general support to the industrial side of the class struggle, which is what the UCS workers are involved in, while leaving the specific tactics to be adopted in this struggle to the workers immediately involved. If after considering the situation carefully the UCS workers have democratically decided on a peaceful, disciplined “work-in” that is up to them. As we said, we wish them luck. Mr. Coyle may also be interested in knowing that members of the Socialist Party through their trade unions have contributed to the UCS fighting fund.

Mr. Coyle charges us with certain inaccuracies but he has misunderstood us. First, the reference to shipbuilding as a declining industry was to shipbuilding in Britain not the world. Incidentally, by “economic power” we meant the trade union strength of the shipbuilding workers rather than the competitive position of the shipbuilding industry. Second, does Mr. Coyle think that from August 1971 to March 1972 is not “a short while”? Third, we specifically stated that we were not going to get involved in “board room disputes”. Whether or not UCS in its present form is viable comes into this category and readers can judge from Mr. Coyle’s enthusiastic comments on UCS’s labour relations and costs where this can lead.

Finally, Mr. Coyle seems to think that Socialism could be established just in “this country”. We do not; we say Socialism can only exist on a world-scale. Mr. Coyle also thinks that the so-called Right to Work is a basic socialist principle. We do not, as we explain elsewhere in this issue.

Editorial Committee (October 10)

Also for further reading see:

UCS Shipyard Occupation - What we said 

Human nature is the daftest argument against socialism

You are entitled to an opinion but if it is a misinformed opinion, even if held by the vast majority, then we do you a disservice by not bringing a correction or different view of it to your attention. Public misinformation often masquerades as common sense the better to spread its falsehood. In his book ‘The Common Good’, Noam Chomsky makes an important observation:

‘The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate’.

‘Human nature’ is the worst thing many can come up with to deny the possibility of socialism. Human nature is the daftest argument anyone can make. Even capitalist exploitation requires slavish co-operation. Mankind’s behaviour is as much more socially and culturally induced than anything. To a certain extent, no doubt, this reflects a healthy scepticism amongst ordinary people towards so revolutionary a new idea. But there is more to the human nature argument than this. Behind it is a clever but false theory touching on the subjects of biology, anthropology, and sociology. Because people are lazy and greedy and aggressive, runs the human nature objection, they could not live in a society where work was voluntary or where there was free access to wealth. If work were voluntary, nobody would do it; if goods were freely available, there would be a free-for-all as people fought each other to grab as much as they could. Let us be clear about what this says: that certain patterns of behaviour are innate and are inherited from generation to generation by all human beings.  What evidence has been brought forward in favour of this view? Only the way people actually behave in present-day and in many previous societies. It is true that people sometimes are lazy or aggressive, but this is not in itself strong enough evidence for concluding that this is because they are born that way. Because, if this were so, all people would exhibit these characteristics at all times in all societies.

Since this is what the human nature argument asserts, it is sufficient to disprove it to produce examples of men behaving in a hard-working or a friendly way. This is easy. At times most human beings will feel lazy; at others they will undertake extremely hard work because they enjoy it. At times they will be aggressive, but at others friendly and helpful to their fellow human beings. The fact is that everyday experience of life today disproves the human nature argument.

So does the evidence of the past. There are travellers’ tales going back to ancient times of human communities based on common property with equal or fair sharing of what little there was to go round. Witnesses have testified to the consistently friendly and co-operative behaviour of the members of these communities. Anthropologists studying present-day survivals of primitive social systems — like the Eskimos, the Bushmen of South West Africa, or the Aborigines of Australia — confirm this. In fact all the evidence amassed on human society and human behaviour suggests no rigid or consistent pattern. Quite the reverse. It points to people being a highly adaptable animal who can survive in and adjust to an immense variety of different circumstances.

So we can list the evidence against the human nature objection to Socialism:

1. That there have been societies based on voluntary work and free co-operation.

2. That some work today, for example the dangerous work of manning lifeboats, is done voluntarily.

3. That there have been societies where there has been free access to some of the necessities of life.

4. That those things, such as water from a public drinking tap, that are more or less freely available today are not grabbed or hoarded.

What is more, there is no evidence from genetics, the branch of biology concerned with heredity, that complicated behaviour patterns like being greedy can be inherited. The mechanism by which certain characteristics are inherited is now fairly well known. The sort of characteristics that are inherited are those governing the physical make-up of people. Since the brain is part of the human body this too is inherited, but ideas and complicated patterns of behaviour are not transmitted along with the brain. Each normal human being will inherit a brain that can be trained to think abstractly just as he inherits hands that can be trained to use tools and make things or a voice that can be trained to speak and sing.

The human nature argument is a ruling-class idea. As long as people believe that Socialism is impossible and that only class and property society is practical the ruling class is safe. Marx pointed out that in a non-revolutionary period the ruling ideas in society are the ideas of the ruling class. The human nature argument is so widespread today because it is a ruling class idea in a pre-revolutionary period.

Socialists are quite clear on who will society the people themselves. No more politicians or ruling elites. Dissolve the governments and elect yourselves.

Capitalism cannot be meaningfully reformed. There is no solution to this dilemma inside the capitalist system. Only genuine common ownership (not to be confused with state-ownership) of all the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth, by and in the interests of the whole community, in conditions of democratic oversight by the whole population, (real social equality) with production for use, as opposed to for markets, with distribution according to self-determined needs, can utilise and harmonise the immense latent productive capacity inherited from capitalism in a way which is harmonious to the needs of all the people and the ecological imperatives of nature in an interconnected globalised world.

This is, of course, a revolutionary transformation into post-capitalist, free access, society which can only be undertaken with the politically conscious intent and participation of the immense majority to abolish waged slavery and elite control and ownership forever.

“…experience demonstrates that there may be a slavery of wages only a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chattel slavery, and that this slavery of wages must go down with the other…” - Frederick Douglass

Everyone deserves a decent warm home

Homeless children spent almost one million days in temporary accommodation last year, housing campaigners have said. Shelter Scotland deputy director Alison Watson branded the figure "staggering" and insisted it is "simply not good enough".

The housing and homeless charity has published new datashowing Scotland's councils provided homeless households with an estimated 3.8 million days of temporary accommodation in 2014-15 There were an average of 10,302 households in Scotland in temporary accommodation - which can be in a bed and breakfast, hostel or local authority property - on any one night. The figures showed a quarter of the households were families with children, with an average of 4373 youngsters in temporary accommodation on any given night. The charity has now raised concerns over "whether the best use is being made of this expensive resource".

A report from Shelter Scotland said: "For thousands of households every year this provision provides an important safety net in times of crisis. However, the average time spent in so-called temporary accommodation is 23 weeks, with one in ten households spending over a year there This suggests that local authorities can struggle to move on households that have a right to settled, permanent accommodation in a timely manner."

The charity wants 12,000 affordable homes to be built each year over the next five years to drive down the need for temporary accommodation.

Revolt on the Clyde (1971)

From the August 1971 issue of the SocialistStandard

We’ll occupy the yards and bring the government down! Only force will get us out! These were the sentiments expressed by the UCS shop steward’s convenor just after the government announced its refusal to help Upper Clyde Shipbuilders out of yet another financial difficulty.

These sentiments are understandable but the fact remains that the occupation of the shipyards — other, perhaps, than for a short while as a token demonstration of anger and protest at the way capitalism works — would be utterly futile. Those who urge the Clyde shipyard workers to believe that they can in this way coerce the government to preserve their jobs are cruelly and foolishly misleading them. That workers, especially in a declining industry like shipbuilding, have any “economic power” capable of overcoming the all too-real and socially accepted political power of the government is a myth.

Locked in the yards with no work and no money, the workers would only be able to hold out for a short while. All the government would have to do would be to sit back and wait for them to surrender. They would not even have to consider using troops. The plain truth is that there is nothing the workers can do to save their jobs. The most they may be able to get is a short postponement or a little more redundancy pay.

No employer is going to pay workers to produce wealth he cannot sell at a profit. Employers are in business to make profits, not to provide jobs. If they do not make profits they are in trouble. Which is precisely what has happened to UCS. Indeed Sir Iain Stewart, who resigned as deputy chairman of UCS only a few months after it was set up in 1968, has expressed the view that it was an ill-advised “no sackings” pledge which has landed the company in trouble:

When the merger came together, the board’s first idea — and Mr. Anthony Hepper was the man who promoted it — was to get a full order book. So off he went round the world and picked up millions of pounds worth of work which in fact was profitless . . . Rather than face up to the redundancy of 5,000 men, Mr. Hepper guaranteed them two years full employment — 5.000 people at £1,200 a year is £6m, in two years it is £12m. If you are going to pay out £12m. and get nothing back from it, you go bankrupt (The Times, 24 June).

Stewart, incidentally, favoured immediate mass sackings so that the workers would be compelled to work harder by the threat of unemployment.

It is not our job to get involved in board room disputes, but if this is true all UCS seems to have done, with the help of bribes from the Labour government was to postpone the mass sackings for a while. Some, like Wedgwood Benn and the Labour Party, want to postpone them a little longer or perhaps to phase them out over a longer period. They do not actually put it this way, of course, but this is the most that nationalisation could achieve. For no government could afford to keep open for any length of time unprofitable shipyards, any more than the Labour government was prepared to postpone for more than a few months the closure of unprofitable coalmines. Besides, thousands of Clyde shipyard workers did lose their jobs while Benn was a Labour Minister.

As workers in unprofitable industry about to lose their jobs, sooner or later, en masse or in dribs and drabs, they are victims of capitalism. They have our sympathy as fellow-workers and we wish them luck in using their bargaining strength to get the best of redundancy terms they can, but it would be dishonest of us to pretend — as do the loud-mouthed advocates of occupation, nationalisation, workers control, etc. — that there is any way out for them under capitalism. The way to fight back is to recognise the essentially defensive and limited nature of industrial action and to join in the political struggle for Socialism, to make all the means of production the common property of the community and to abolish for ever the system of employment for wages.

Adam Buick

If you need leaders you are slavish sheep

The idea of socialism has been around a lot longer than Marx, indeed is older than capitalism, if one takes John Ball's speech - 'When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?' in 1381. An aspiration for social equality which could not be met from the primitive technology of its day...but what an aspiration when Peasants Revolt leaders were being beheaded and put on spikes.

Marx was a radical journalist who wished to see the end of feudal relations and the ushering in of capitalist development and technology. He supported emerging capitalist revolutions for a while. He saw peasants being cruelly treated and driven from land which had long been in common where wood could be gathered for fuel. He was chased into exile by the powers that be when his journalism questioned events such as that one. He learned his socialism from the French working class. As a polymath Marx was a prodigious scholar and teacher. He even gives credit to the Anabatists, who opposed private property and preached that all goods should be held in common. His gibe about the Church of England illustrates this, "...The English established Church, e.g. will more readily pardon an attack on 38 of 39 of its articles than on 1/39 of its income. Nowadays atheism is culpa levis (a relatively slight sin, c.f. mortal sin) as compared to criticism of existing property relations." This is the one he had in mind. (What a learned chap he was)

“XXXVIII. Of Christian men's Goods, which are not common.

The Riches and Goods of Christians are not common, as touching the right, title, and possession of the same, as certain Anabaptists do falsely boast. Notwithstanding, every man ought, of such things as he possesseth, liberally to give alms to the poor, according to his ability.”

All wealth springs from the collective labour of the working class. It should be owned in common. Why settle for crumbs when we can own the bake-house in common? If we abolished the wages system, the governments (slavemasters’ overseers), the private and nominally public ownership by corporations and individuals (The slaveowning class), of the means of producing and distributing wealth, and established equal access in a production for use, market free, free access, commonly owned world, there would be a sufficiency and more, indeed a superabundance probably.

Capitalism is incapable of satisfying or meeting human needs and must exploit the poverty stricken majority's relationship to the means of production and distribution, by ensuring wage slavery for the majority, to produce a surplus value (The workers commodity labour power produces a surplus over its value, the only commodity which does so) for the continued economic dominance enrichment and benefit of the minority parasite owning class. Capitalism is obsolete and has been so since the beginning of the last century. We need to have a dialogue with fellow workers worldwide, and make our common cause about abolishing the wages system and establishing a post-scarcity world of free access for all. It is a 'Free Access' society. The access will be 'self-determined', according to self-determined needs. There will not be any overlords in a free access society or access privileged above anyone else. In this sense we will all be genuinely social equals with equal access but needs are of course individual. Contributions likewise will be 'self-determined'. Free labour rather than waged. The surgeon will have gone into medicine to administer to the health of society. The sewage worker likewise, will have the same access to the common wealth. There will be no buying or selling so no need of monetary transactions, banks, Insurance sales, advertising, etc. and therefore a freeing up of the general population to render useful service utilising the previous productive capacity from the inefficient rationed economy of capitalism, to efficient allocations and sharing of resources globally instead of warring over them. As all will be held in common there is no need for rationed access, policed restrictions, or armies fighting over minority controls over vital resources. As it is a post capitalist society, it sees the end of social classes proper, in the last great emancipation. The end of governments 'over' people and the genuine democratic administration of resources introduced, (with re-callable delegation where required) with the utilisation of 'calculation in kind' stock controls using information technology to provide automatic stock controls and replenishment signals. There would be no prices, taxes or other rationing when we utilise the productive potential of present day technology, to produce a superabundance of wealth, with free access, instead of rationing it via waged slavery and price mechanisms, turning it off, when markets become glutted as at present. It is past time for a societal upgrade. Capitalism is well past its useful social stage. Politicians can't do it for us. But we can ourselves. It is time to turn ourselves to saving the planet and utilising the productive capacity allied with the latest in technology and informational techniques, algorithmic based decision-making instead of price mechanisms, to satisfy production needs, ensuring everyone without distinction, has free access to all we need, to live a useful and healthy life.

Smarten up and get up off your subservient knees to help create a 'post capitalist' system of society, where everything is owned in common and controlled democratically. Hasten the post-capitalist, free access socialist society, of open borders and healthy and secure places the world over, from which no one has to flee! We can have a class-free, slavery-free world to win, where we really can be, "Free at last".

You will find more on the World Socialist Movement website, or one of the companion parties site such as Britian’s oldest existing socialist party and second oldest political party, an honourable and refreshing exception to the usual run-of-the-mill organisations. 

Trump plays his last card

Donald Trump last week threatened to scrap £700million of investment at Turnberry golf course in Ayrshire and Trump Inter-national Golf Links near Aberdeen if he was banned from Britain after his comment that all Muslims should be banned from America. Trump said any ban would “immediately end these and all future investments we are contemplating in the UK”. Trump told Aberdeenshire planning officials that he would spend £643million and create more than 6000 jobs. Experts estimate he has spent less than £30million. Plans for a second golf course, hundreds of private homes and holiday lodges have yet to materialise.

The threat to scrap £700million of investment in Scotland is another of the tycoon’s fairytales, according to a leading economist. Professor Paul Cheshire accused the tycoon of hugely exaggerating the size and benefits of his stake in Scotland and said promises made by him were falling apart at the seams. The emeritus professor of economic geography at the London School of Economics spoke out after it was revealed Trump’s Aberdeenshire golf course created less than a 10th of the jobs originally forecast by Trump.

He said: “These figures are all fairytales. The idea that you could build an international golf resort well north of Aberdeen and attract the type of high-rollers that would be necessary to make that sustainable didn’t ever strike me as being remotely plausible. Trump is essentially a conjurer with wonderful patter. What he was originally proposing was an enormous twin golf course with a big international standard hotel and a hostel for migrant workers, plus hundreds of private houses. He was pulling the wool over the eyes of these poor people in Aberdeen, who just fell for it hook, line and sinker because they were worried about the end of North Sea oil. He promised them the ‘golf economy’. He claimed it would generate around 7000 jobs – I thought it was more likely to generate a few hundred.”

Prof Cheshire, one of the UK’s most respected economists, warned politicians that Trump could not deliver when detailed plans were submitted in 2011. Prof Cheshire added: “I thought it was such an obvious con that was being played on such a large scale, at the expense of an incredibly important site and local people’s interests. I thought Alex Salmond was a canny fellow but Trump pulled the wool over his eyes.”

Trump first announced he was planning to extend his business in Europe by building the resort at the Menie estate in March 2006. After the plans were originally rejected, then First Minister Alex Salmond met Trump representatives at an Aberdeen hotel and, shortly afterwards, the Scottish Government gave fresh hope to the proposal. They said it was “in the national interest” of Scotland for it to receive consideration through a government-backed inquiry. The public inquiry took place in 2008 and the development was given the green light. But it still had stiff opposition from environmental campaigners and local residents, some of whom Trump tried to force from their homes.

Councillor Martin Ford was chairman of Aberdeenshire Council’s infrastructure services committee when Trump’s planning application was received in 2006. After using his casting vote to go against the plans, he was later sacked from the position. Cllr Ford said: “Mr Trump promised everything under the sun and they were all ludicrous, ridiculous exaggerations which nobody should have believed. He said it was a £1billion investment but it was about £13million in 2011 – including buying the estate. By the end of 2013, it had gone up to about £25million and, since then, he’s built a clubhouse and a few sheds. It’s pretty safe to say he’s spent under £30million. From the point where the plan was first announced, the amount of money and the number of jobs just kept getting bigger. Fewer than 100 jobs is a tiny fraction of what was pledged and promised. It is important to note that Trump has not built a golf resort – he’s built a golf course and clubhouse. He was going to build a 450-bed five-star hotel. He has instead converted Menie House into a small hotel. So you can see the pattern here – £1billion goes down to £30million, 6000 jobs go down to 95 and a 450-bed hotel which has something like six rooms.”

Anthony Baxter who made the documentary ‘You’ve Been Trumped’ said: “The suggestions that the capital expenditure on Trump International was £643million and the course would support more than 6000 jobs are just total pie in the sky. He has already said he is not going to invest any more if the wind farm goes ahead. He is constantly coming up with bullying threats. Politicians need to wake up to reality.”

Trump still has outstanding planning applications with Aberdeenshire Council for further work at the site. These include the development of the MacLeod Course. He has also applied to extend MacLeod House, the resort’s hotel, and has submitted a planning permission in principle application to build 850 homes and 1900 holiday homes. In 2014, he took control of world-renowned golf course Turnberry.

You can't buck the market

"We're gonna take the 4 hour day,

We're gonna surprise the boss some first of May" 

– The I.W.W.

Work is an essential activity for humans. It is unfree (if you want to live) waged slaved employment in return for a ration of what we collectively produce, which is the killer. There wouldn't be shit sales, advertising, banking, insurance occupations, all to do with the money economy, so work would be able to be shared across a larger force of voluntary labour. The present intensity of production where we work to produce duplicates of commodiities to be thrown away Hours could be reduced and the distinctions between work and play or leisure be so blurred in many cases as to become meaningless. In a society where humans are free to choose both the pace and the length of time they work, not only would the blind pressure to reduce to a minimum the labour-time needed to produce a product no longer exist, but it would become perfectly meaningless to measure the "value" or the "cost" of a product in terms of the labour-time socially necessary to make it. A society based on voluntary work would be free from such considerations. And if productive activity is enjoyable how can it be regarded as a cost? The self-employed and small business owner are just as likely to be subcontracting to capitalist owners. It is in their interest to make common cause with the rest of the world's workers and get rid of capitalism, its markets, wage-slavery, buying and selling and establish a free access society of common ownership and democratic control.

Stuff charity. Solidarity rules. We in the Socialist Party don't 'ask' the general public, governments or philanthropists, to fund anything. We insist you get off your knees, or up of your arses and make the revolution instead of begging the capitalist class and its governments to be nice to you. "Arise like lions from your slumbers". It is 'our' job to solve the problem of poverty. Not governments, they only exist to govern 'over' us and to manage us. They are all subject to its anarchic market fluctuations, war over trade routes, raw materials, resources and geopolitical advantage, boom, bust, stagnation.  Not philanthropists. Despise the conditions in which philanthropy is deemed necessary. Don't think voting for the Labour Party is 'the road to socialism' either, regardless of the leader. Don't follow leaders. Government exists to manage 'us' in the interests of capital regardless of the colour of its politics. Dissolve all governments and elect the people. Despise all nationalism as deluded and anti-working class. Workers have no country. It is 'our' fault, if we support capitalism, from which springs poverty (actual relative in or out of work), homelessness and war. Decent acts of solidarity by individuals, such as these two blokes have displayed, can help alleviate problems and must be welcomed, just as any reform which provides a let up the misery, but the problems will persist and continue ad infinitum, until we take control of our own destiny and establish a commonly owned, free access society. Don't settle for crumbs from the bosses table. The solution is not more 'redistribution' and bigger crumbs, but common ownership by all. Take over the bakery and have free access to all you need and require. A socialist world would make it possible for work to be voluntary and access to the common wealth free. By abolishing the wages system and replacing the production of commodities for sale on the market, with production to satisfy human needs, we begin to rationalise production to that end, rather than the anarchy of market competition in the interests of a few, restore some natural harmony into our work life balance where work could also be play. No more rulers or ruled. We will all be social equals.

Capitalism is the social system which now exists in all countries of the world. Under this system, the means for producing and distributing goods (the land, factories, technology, transport system etc.) are owned by a small minority of people. We refer to this group of people as the capitalist class. The majority of people must sell their ability to work in return for a wage or salary (who we refer to as the working class.)

The working class are paid to produce goods and services which are then sold for a profit. The profit is gained by the capitalist class because they can make more money selling what we have produced than we cost to buy on the labour market. In this sense, the working class are exploited by the capitalist class. The capitalists live off the profits they obtain from exploiting the working class whilst reinvesting some of their profits for the further accumulation of wealth. This is what we mean when we say there are two classes in society. It is a claim based upon simple facts about the society we live in today. This class division is the essential feature of capitalism. It may be popular to talk (usually vaguely) about various other 'classes' existing such as the 'middle class', but it is the two classes defined here that are the key to understanding capitalism. It may not be exactly clear which class some relatively wealthy people are in. But there is no ambiguity about the status of the vast majority of the world's population. Members of the capitalist class certainly know who they are. And most members of the working class know that they need to work for a wage or salary in order to earn a living (or are dependent upon somebody who does, or depend on state benefits.) The small shopkeeper is in-between, his identification may be as a worker, or petty bourgeois with "notions of upperosity" (Sean O' Casey), he doesn't constitute a class for our general purposes, but he is at risk of falling into poverty especially as the big boys move in.

The problem is not austerity... that’s just a turn of the screw. We have always been rationed by the size of our pay cheque and the poor have always been poor. It used to Soup Kitchens; now it's Food Banks. Meanwhile the rich go on getting richer. We can't hope to end poverty and inequality – whether in Britain or throughout the planet – until we get rid of production of wealth for the exclusive profit of a few.

The problem is not Zero-Hours Contracts... It's wage-slavery. Unions should fight for the best deal they can get. But let's not kid ourselves that the system of employment can ever be geared to our needs.

Demonstrations and protest rallies may make us feel like we are 'doing something', but it’s an illusion. The real battle is over ideas: the ideas in the heads of those who do all the work but get little reward. That's why the rich and powerful spend so much time trying to suppress and ridicule any idea of an alternative

The world is rich enough. We can have a world where free access to the planet’s wealth replaces the market and a world where useful work is to be enjoyed rather than endured and suffered, and where no individual can monopolise access to wealth. Armed with knowledge, humanity can finally start to demand the possible.

Profit and Loss Scotland

In the annual listing of Scotland's biggest firms, with turnover above £20m and measured by a formula of turnover, profit and workforce compiled by the Scottish Business Insider magazine profits across the Top 500 were up 34% but if you exclude the Royal Bank of Scotland and the Bank of Scotland total profits fell 17% to £7.9bn, on turnover of £159bn. Of the Top 500, 167 firms saw profits decline, while 298 saw them rise.

Leaving aside the banks, profit per employee - with 571,000 employed across the 498 others - has nearly halved since before the financial crunch, to £12,900.

Some big players in the Scottish economy have no separate Scottish accounting with which to list them. So there's no sign of Diageo, with 40% of the Scotch whisky industry, nor big employers like the supermarkets (except for Tesco Bank, based in Edinburgh), nor big-employing outsourcers such as Capita, Serco and Mitie, no BP or Shell, nor big manufacturers such as BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce.

Some big multi-national corporations do publish figures for Scottish operations, or more often UK operations based in Scotland. And notable among them in this year's listing are the offshore oil and gas explorers and producers. They were among the big fallers, as the sector saw turnover down 12% (in this listing) to £7.4bn. Profits tumbled too. Maersk Oil North Sea (UK), part of the Danish giant, reported a £367m loss, moving it from 26th to 309th position. Dana Petroleum, owned by the South Korean state oil corporation, made a £462m loss, moving it from 20th to 312th position. Petrofac Scotland plunged to a £351m loss, Asco Group lost £308m, Faroe Petroleum reported a £166m pre-tax loss, Taqa Bratani (owned in Abu Dhabi) lost £351m and Ithaca Energy (headquartered in Canada) lost £82m. The oil and gas figures only reflect the start of the oil price downturn, which began gathering pace in autumn of that year.

The top ten companies include five in financial services and five in various forms of energy, it's a reminder how concentrated the economy has become in very few, quite volatile sectors. Something the optimists in the nationalist movement should note.

 http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-35272103

It’s not a question of waiting, but of making it happen.

Money is a mere means of exchange, in a production for sale, private, corporate, or state owned, wage slave rationed access, economy. It will be totally unnecessary in a commonly owned, free access production for use post capitalist society. The franchise was only won through struggle. but liberty has not yet been won if we remain in conditions of waged slavery of the vast majority and privilege for the rest. Capitalism cannot give us freedom to live as social equals, if ownership of the means of production and distribution are held by a minority, private, corporate or state ownership. It is the poor who produce all of the wealth in the first place. The property of the rich is extracted from the surplus value over and above the rationed subsistence (wages) paid to the poor in return for their mental and physical capacities being employed in the creation of this wealth. The workers commodity (labour-power) doesn't receive the full value as other commodities do. State ownership is not common ownership. Nationalisation is not common ownership. The system in the old Soviet Union was state-capitalism. Socialism/communism is truly a post-capitalist, free access, production for use, common ownership society, without buying or selling, money, governments 'over' you, banks, insurance or any of the coercive apparatus of private, corporate or state owned society.

Poverty is relative as well as absolute:

“A house may be large or small; as long as the surrounding houses are equally small it satisfies all social demands for a dwelling. But let a palace arise beside the little house, and it shrinks from a little house to a hut. The little house shows now that its owner has only very slight or no demand to make; and however high it may shoot up in the course of civilization, if the neighbouring palace grows to an equal or even greater extent, the occupant of the relatively small house will feel more and more uncomfortable, dissatisfied and cramped within its four walls…A noticeable increase in wages presupposes a rapid growth of productive capital. The rapid growth of productive capital brings about an equally rapid growth of wealth, luxury, social wants, social enjoyments. Thus, although the enjoyments of the workers have risen, the social satisfaction that they give has fallen in comparison with the increased enjoyments of the capitalist, which are inaccessible to the worker, in comparison with the state of development of society in general. Our desires and pleasures spring from society; we measure them, therefore, by society and not by objects which serve for their satisfaction. Because they are of a social nature, they are of a relative nature…In general, wages are determined not only by the amount of commodities for which I can exchange them. They embody various relations.” – Marx, Wage Labour and Capital

Where scarcity does not exist, therefore acquisitive impulses would not be engendered in the same way as in scarcity and rationed access society such as capitalism. As production would not be turned off and people made redundant, before human needs can be satisfied, as presently in capitalism, where production is for sale to satisfy the profits of a few percentage of the population, an economic parasite capitalist class. Access would be self-determined. You don't take more air than you need, so why would you take more food, clothing, shelter, etc than you need? According to the ideological defenders of capitalism, people are motivated to work only by monetary compensation or by the threat of starvation. The undeniable fact that millions of hours of voluntary work are engaged in by people all the time. People are motivated to do socially useful work by reasons other than money and so could be relied on to do this too in a socialist society.

The Tories aren't the bad guys. It is capitalism and the Labour Party supports this equally as much and always has done, even to using troops during strikes. A Labour government like all capitalist governments is rules you. The banking system doesn't enslave people, but capitalism does, by waged slavery. Banks are merely a function of a market system of private, corporate and state ownership of the means of production and distribution, which has production for profit for the enrichment of a minority capitalist parasitic class, as opposed to a, post-capitalist, commonly owned, free access system which would have production for use in the interests of all and have no need of money, banks, insurance, markets, governments, police, armies navies and war machines. Capitalism can't be r managed in the interests of the working class, by Left, or Right, or Centrist, variants of its governments. No government can lift people out of poverty. Poverty (absolute, actual and relative) is essential to keep workers desperate for waged slavery.

You just can't have a 'nicer' capitalism. Unemployment is inevitably associated with of capitalist competition over markets, trade routes and spheres of interests. You can't have even the 'Right to Work'. There is always, even in boom times a reserve army of unemployed, to drive down wages. (If necessary they will inject inflation into the economy). Unemployment is currently 5.5 percent or 1,860,000 people. If their "equilibrium rate" of unemployment is 4% rather than 5% this would still mean 1,352,000 "need be unemployed". The government don't want these people to find jobs as it would strengthen workers' bargaining position over wages, but that doesn't stop them harassing them with useless and petty form-filling, reporting to the so-called "job centre" just for the sake of it, calling them scroungers and now saying they are mentally defective. Government is 'over' you not 'for' you. Governments do not exist to ensure 'fair do's' but to manage social expectations with the minimum of dissent, commensurate with the needs of capitalism in the interests of profit. Worker participation amounts to self-managing workers self-exploitation for the maximum of profit for the capitalist class. Exploitation takes place at the point of production. Because society is structured around the ownership of productive resources by a tiny minority and the compulsion of the majority to work, in order to live, to create profit for that minority, society cannot be reformed to abolish exploitation or the periodic economic crises that result from it. All the power to hire and fire is held by the employing class. It is past time to abolish the wages and prices system. Capitalists, regardless if they are home-grown vultures or overseas vultures, move in and out of countries based on profit maximisation, not to save or create jobs. The capitalist class don't wake up at night wondering how they can save or create jobs of people, but how they might make a profit, by leeching surplus value off their potential workforce.

“Instead of the conservative motto, ‘A fair day's wage for a fair day's work!’ they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, ‘Abolition of the wages system!’”- Karl Marx Value, Price and Profit

Society could not function without the social aspect of sociability despite aggression and competitive behaviour being rewarded. People are no more naturally violent than naturally cooperative. They have to be 'trained' to kill in war situations.

"What these studies have taught the military is that in order to get soldiers to shoot to kill, to actively participate in violence, the soldiers must be sufficiently desensitized to the act of killing. In other words, they have to learn not to feel -- and not to feel responsible -- for their actions. They must be taught to override their own conscience. Yet these studies also demonstrate that even in the face of immediate danger, in situations of extreme violence, most people are averse to killing. In other words, as Marshall concludes, "the vast majority of combatants throughout history, at the moment of truth when they could and should kill the enemy, have found themselves to be 'conscientious objectors' "  Dave Grossman, On Killing

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists possesses an eloquent piece on a world without money, a condensed explanation of surplus value and redundancy in everyday language. In socialism, we  won't be returning to barter. We will be taking over all the array of technological expertise and information of capitalism, which will enable production of surpluses and no switching off of capacity until needs are met, as opposed to artificial (rationed by price) demand as presently. The idea is that free access will be deliverable with voluntary labour. The interesting thing is how capitalism can tease us with the potential for its own demise, democracy the Achilles heel for liberation and recently Paul Mason's book, ‘Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future’ at least shone a focus upon some possibilities. We may likely die without seeing socialism, but we will be happy that we have been one of those consistent in keeping the original idea of what socialism is, and is not, alive. Making socialism is a task the world’s working class have to do for themselves.

Socialism depends on people recognising our mutual interdependence. There is, in other words, a sense of moral obligation that goes with the territory. Socialism will permit a far greater degree of technological adaptation without the constraints of the profit system. Intrinsically backbreaking or unpleasant work can be automated. Conversely some work may be deliberately made more labour intensive and craft based.  Even under capitalism today most work is unpaid or unremunerated - the household economy, the volunteer sector and so on. So it is not as if this is something we are unaccustomed to. Volunteers moreover tend to be the most highly motivated as studies have confirmed; they don't require so called external incentives. We will get rid of an awful lot of crappy and pointless jobs that serve as a disincentive to work. Since we would be free to do any job we chose to what this means in effect is that for any particular job there would be a massive back-up supply of labour to cover it consisting of most people in society. In capitalism this cannot happen since labour mobility is severely restricted since if you have a job you cannot just choose to abandon it for the sake of another more urgent job from the standpoint of society. With these two core characteristics of a socialist society - free access to goods and services plus volunteer labour - there can be no political leverage that anyone or any group could exercise over anyone else. The material basis of class power would have completely dissolved. What we would be left with is simply human beings being free to express their fundamentally social and cooperative nature.

We have a world to win.