Delegatory Democracy

We do not need leaders. It is silly to expect politicians to be leaders in the class struggle. Politicians are elected to run capitalism in the interests of the business class 5%. In a representative democracy this is diametrically opposed to the interests of workers 95%.

All the economic clout is with the corporations and landowners, owned by a tiny minority of people, possibly around 5 percent. Owning the means of production allows them to cream off a profit or a surplus for themselves, and they do this by exploiting the rest of us. Their economic power is backed up by political power. The state is there to try and manage the status quo, and protect the interests of those with all the wealth. This doesn’t mean that they have control over the economy, though. Market forces fluctuate between growth and slump regardless of what politicians and corporate strategists want.

This arrangement leads to massive inequalities in wealth, not just within this country, but across the globe. Goods and services only go to those who can afford them, not to those who need them. Those who can’t afford the basics risk falling into a lifestyle of poverty it’s hard to escape from. Living in an unequal world where everything is rationed creates divisions between us, leading to prejudice and discrimination. Even those of us with a reasonable standard of living never have enough real involvement or sense of ownership in where we work and live.

To solve the problems in society, we have to change the way society is structured. This means going from our world where the means to produce and distribute wealth are owned by a minority, to one where those resources and facilities are owned by everyone in common. Then, goods would be produced and services would be run directly for anyone who wants them, without the dictates of the economic market. Industries and services would be run just to satisfy people’s needs and wants.

All this could only be achieved by fundamentally changing the way society is organised, a revolution. The kind of revolution we want is one which involves the vast majority of people across the world. Every country now is part of an integrated global economy and class structure. So, people across the world would have to want to change society. The only legitimate and practical way this could be achieved is by organising equally and democratically. This means voluntary, creative work, with decisions and responsibilities agreed through everyone having an equal say. This would mean a much broader and more inclusive use of democracy than we’re used to today. Different democratic organisations or procedures would apply in different circumstances. This doesn’t mean having leaders or groups with more authority than others.

The Socialist Party detest any kind of Nationalism. The fact is however all capitalist politics including the Scot Nats, are serving the interests of a minority parasite capitalist class. The majority need to get off their knees, get rid of representative politics which only represents the dominant economic interests of the capitalist class and make the democratic revolution with delegatory functions which will harness the productive capacity and technology available in a free access moneyless society to reduce the working day/week, and produce a commonly owned superabundance of wealth with production for use, to satisfy needs, and not for sale to satisfy the profits of a parasite class in our lifetime. Socialism is a classless, elite-free, post-capitalist system, which can only be developed upon an advanced technological society capable of producing a superabundance of goods and services to allow them to be accessed freely according to needs.

A choice of extreme Tory cuts or less extreme Labour cuts. No, it is no choice. Capitalism must go and workers must make it go. A plague on all parties who wish to retain capitalism. Only workers themselves can bring to fruition the post-capitalist revolution of free-access, delegated democracy, production for use, a price-free, wageless, moneyless, society. Business is not 'people friendly'. Real socialism will do away with the business of exploiting workers in return for a wage or salary and channeling profits to the few. Socialism should be hostile to all the parties of capitalism, Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, Purple or whatever flag they drape over their wage-slavery administration exploitative activities. Capitalism cannot be reformed.it comes into the world oozing blood form every pore. Dissolve all government 'over' you and elect yourselves into common ownership and democratic control over all the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth.

"I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I led you in, someone else would lead you out. You must use your heads as well as your hands, and get yourself out of your present condition; as it is now the capitalists use your heads and your hands." Eugene Debs

“Laird bashing...run for the hills and glens..."

Scotland's patchwork of vast estates was created on the misery of crofters and clansmen by an elite, created out of the Clearances. Today half of the privately owned Scottish countryside still belongs to 432 landowners. For the people here, the little slivers where they live are cramped and narrow. You can't build here, that's an estate. You can't build there, that belongs to the laird. It is hard to live here. Wages are a third below the Scottish average, but prices come out a third higher. One landowner in Jura, who happens to be the Prime Minister's stepfather-in-law, has warned the SNP may bring about a “Mugabe-style” land grab.

Rob Gibson MSP, who chairs the Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment committee which is scrutinising the Land Reform Bill, explained “The landowners and their organisations have been hyperactive. I have never heard from so many lords, earls and dukes in my life.”

Scotland’s lairds have retaliated to threats to their fiefdoms by warning they may stop letting out land long term to tenant farmers and substantially reduce the amount of land they would be willing to let out on anything other than a short-term basis. Their warnings were echoed by small landowners, who said the proposal represented a “fundamental breach” of their property rights and may stop them letting out their farms. The proposed law is that it permits tenant farmers with no successors to sell on their secure tenancies. Landowners could only regain control over the land by paying a tenant farmer a sum equivalent of up to 25 per cent of the land’s capital value, whereas any other buyer would only have to pay the market value of the lease.

Buccleuch Estates, owned by the Duke of Buccleuch, Scotland’s largest landowner, was one of many landowners to argue that the represented “the confiscation of a property owner’s interest.”

Moray Estates, which is owned by the Earl of Moray and his family, declared that “you cannot bully or force owners to let property.”

Seafield and Strathspey Estates, which covers 35,000 hectares owned by the Earl of Seafield, said: “It will destroy confidence to let agricultural land in Scotland to the detriment of new entrants, existing tenants and the farming sector generally.

Dunecht Estates, which is owned by Charles Pearson, the younger son of the late Third Viscount Cowdray, said: “It will deliver a crushing blow to confidence to let land going forward and therefore sabotage other proposals in the Bill that are aimed at encouraging letting.”

Kindcardine Estates said: “This measure will be disastrous for the supply of rented land. No landlord will ever trust that a future Scottish Government will not change the rules with retrospective legislation on other types of agricultural tenancy.”

 Removing non-domestic rates exemption from shooting and deer forests should mean the laird of Inverinate, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, is liable for the same rates the caravan site at Morvich has paid for years.

Anti-anti-parliamentarianism

THERE IS POWER IN THE VOTE

All wealth flows form the working class. The capitalist class are a parasitic class which can be dispensed with in a sane post-capitalist society. The business class need the state and live off its benefits. They use the state (tame capitalist politicians) also to buy off discontent with reformism. The workers only wrested some conditions from this arrangement when they had a level of bargaining power during booms. In some instances benefits and pensions were deferred wage settlements. Nation states will be a superfluous anachronism in a free access post-capitalist world. Abolishing the wages and prices system and the markets which ration access to wealth produced by the world workers, while the parasite owning class live in ease and luxury will solve forever the problem which capitalism can't resolve of distribution. Don't settle for the capitalist parasite's reformist crumbs, take over the bakery. You have a world of common ownership and democratic control to win. Capitalisms technological and productive capacity is now capable of producing a superabundance of wealth. Competition with other rival capitalists creates gluts of commodities, but has to destroy or ration access to the producers in order to create scarcity of distribution, to keep us as rationed waged slaves. It thus has outgrown its capacity to distribute resources.

Communism/socialism is not some secular religious belief, but the next phase of historical development building upon capitalisms technology, with educated workforce, which already runs capitalism from top to bottom (many deluded that they are middle -class),by the way and establishes participative democracy rather than representative elitist democracy over the means and instruments for creating and distributing wealth, rather than governing over people, within a society of common ownership and free access. Socialism before the Leninists murdered the idea and the pseudo-socialist reformists sidetracked-Labourites like Will Self. The post capitalist (communist/socialist /anarchist call it anything) society does away with any elite class ownership and control, with production for use, not for sale and access free without wages or prices rationing access. We need a society of social equals with equal self-determined access to the collective produce first before generalised rule making becomes redundant. The whole point of dispensing with leadership as principle and making the revolution which dispenses with elite ownership of the means of living .We may need to delegate functions as I don't want to spend my time voting on everything.

Until about 1850 Marx did take up a similar position re Germany as Lenin did later re Russia but that after 1850 Marx changed his mind and relied on the working class as a whole developing its own organization and consciousness.

“That the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves,” Marx, The International Workingmen's Association 1864, General Rules, October 1864

Violence is only part of minority i.e. elite, (capitalist, state capitalist) revolutions, Bolshevik, Jacobins etc. It is not necessary now we have the vote.

 “The possessing classes – the landed aristocracy and the bourgeoisie – keep the working people in servitude not by the power of their wealth, by the simple exploitation of labour by capital, but also by the power of the state – by the army, the bureaucracy, the courts. To give up fighting our adversaries in the political field would mean to abandon one of the most powerful weapons, particularly in the sphere of organization and propaganda. Universal suffrage provides us with an excellent means of struggle.” – Engels to Spanish Federal Council of the International Working Men’s Association, London, February 13, 1871.

Revolution, as understood by Britain's oldest Marxist party the S.P.G.B., who incidentally saw the Soviet experiment as state capitalism, even in it's very early days, can come via the ballot box. It is a post-capitalist society where all the means and instruments for creating and distributing wealth are owned in common and controlled democratically by all in conditions of free access with no wage or price restrictions upon access. The Labour Party were never a socialist party although many in it considered themselves as socialists, but set out to reform capitalism while still retaining waged slavery. This essentially ends up where it starts with ownership still in the hands of the oppressive parasite class. The Left wing are still a part of capitalism.

Trying to reform this system is like trying to reform a leech: it thrives on sucking your blood. Some rent controls here, some health and safety there, a few more affordable buildings…like applying a sticking plaster on a cancer. Only the destruction of this rapacious system will yield a solution. No-one should be able to own a portfolio of properties and thereby control the lives of others, while the rents from these latter often pay the mortgages on the rented properties. The other side of the coin is that there are one million empty properties in this country.

If we had a true democracy where people decided local and national issues, we could simply take these empty properties and use them. We could arrange to build where we needed them. We could use all the second homes that the better off have at their disposal and mostly leave empty. A socialist society offers this scope and hopefully it may encourage you to ask some questions about how this current system works and participate in joining our activity as we favour majority democratic action on the grounds that the establishment of a society based on voluntary co-operation and popular participation has to involve such co-operation and participation (i.e. democratic methods) and say that when such a majority comes into being it can use existing political institutions (the ballot box and parliament) to establish a socialist society.

Many anti-parliamentarians are opposed to this, but are not able to offer a viable alternative (the anarcho-communists pose a spontaneous mass popular upsurge, the anarcho-syndicalists a general strike and mass factory occupations—both of which ignore the state and the need to at least neutralise it before trying to change society from capitalism). If they can abandon their prejudice against democratic political action via elections, we invite them to join us in campaigning for a classless, stateless, moneyless society.

All the capitalist political parties campaigns are based on deceit and lies. Governments do not run the economy, the economy runs them. Capitalism cannot be reformed to favour the poor, only the rich can benefit from the continued exploitation of the poor to produce wealth. Poverty is relative as well as actual.in relation to the amount of wealth produced workers rate of exploitation has increased regardless of which party is in government 'over' them.

In boom conditions such as post war it was possible for unions to achieve some gains and for some reforms to be implemented but these are always conditional and the capitalist class can claw back any such when there is a downturn aided and abetted by their pseudo socialist, or fake Leftie reformist politicians.

“The raising of wages excites in the worker the capitalist’s mania to get rich, which he, however, can only satisfy by the sacrifice of his mind and body. The raising of wages presupposes and entails the accumulation of capital, and thus sets the product of labour against the worker as something ever more alien to him….

“An enforced increase of wages (disregarding all other difficulties, including the fact that it would only be by force, too, that such an increase, being an anomaly, could be maintained) would therefore be nothing but better payment for the slave, and would not win either for the worker or for labor their human status and dignity.” – Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

“But just as little as better clothing, food, and treatment, and a larger peculium, do away with the exploitation of the slave, so little do they set aside that of the wage worker. A rise in the price of labour, as a consequence of accumulation of capital, only means, in fact, that the length and weight of the golden chain the wage worker has already forged for himself, allow of a relaxation of the tension of it.” – Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Chapter – XXV

“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

Creating wealth is the preserve of the workers. Business doesn't create wealth. Business creation is a parasitic exploitation, of a poverty relationship to the ownership of the means and instruments of creating wealth by the vast majority in order to accumulate more wealth in the pockets of the minority. It springs from privileged ownership and control of resources by the parasite business class.

No system is forever, not even capitalism.

Capitalism hasn't triumphed over communism. Communism or socialism is a post-capitalist democratic, free-access, commonly owned, price-free, wageless, moneyless (no means of exchange necessary) market-less, (no need to trade when commonly owned) system, which takes the productive capacity of an advanced technological society, using a self-regulating stock control with calculation in kind, with production for use, (houses to be lived in, food to eat), accessed according to needs, which has never yet come into being. It requires the immense majority to be politically aware to opt for it and then run it democratically with no top or bottom privileged or underprivileged layers of authority. The Soviet experiment was a revolution from feudalism into capitalist production (Bourgeois revolution and in the absence of a sufficiently large capitalist class the state and intelligentsia took the bourgeoisie and capitalists place. Nationalism, British, Irish, Scottish or any other is a capitalist diversion from the world's workers primary task which is to end waged slavery, establish a global, democratic, free access, society without privileged elites and gain the world and everything in it and on it for the worlds workers.

Capital depends on us, because if we do not create profit (surplus value) directly or indirectly, then capital cannot exist. We create capital and if capital is in crisis, it is because we are not creating the profit necessary for capital’s existence: that is why they are attacking us with such violence. We do not need Capital, markets, money, wages, prices, once everything is owned in common. They don't invest out of philanthropy, or to create employment opportunities. I have never met a capitalist worried about how many jobs he/she could create. I have met some had sleepless nights trying to figure how many to end and retain profit margins, or reinvest elsewhere for speculative profit gains. The only time workers can get wage increases are when trade picks up and the parasite class throw their money at the boom, to compete against other parasites to accumulate, accumulate, to take profits. There is no such thing as a fair days pay. Idealistic quasi-religious hogwash. Other than that the capitalists can sit out the slump while millions eke out an existence on dole, if they are lucky. The real wealth creators are the workers. Even workers foolish enough to believe they are middle-class, if they 'have' to work for a wage or salary they are working class. The business class are a parasitic encumbrance upon distribution according to needs and the capitalist system an exploitative means of ensuring workers are forever enslaved (via waged slavery) for the purpose of profitable exploitation in the interests of that minority class forever.

The notion that the Labour Party 'ever' presented an alternative to capitalist politics is a seriously flawed one. Only social ownership (not nationalisation) can tap into the new sources of energy and creativity which can eliminate the alienating nature of work and the desire to do one’s bit for the common good. If the left are going to be "pragmatic" If you are recommending people to vote Labour or Democrat, you doing so in the certain knowledge that a Labour or Democrat government is going to disappoint and that as result of that disappointment workers in the long run are almost certainly going to switch their allegiance back to the right. Given the see saw nature of capitalist politics this is what invariably happens, does it not? Why not then just short circuit the whole lengthy exposition and simply say "Vote Tory!!”, “Vote Republican!!” Because, let’s face it, that is the long term consequence of voting Labour. You are simply preparing the ground for the return of a future Tory government or Republican president in the wake of lesser evil’s inevitable failure. Capitalism itself has provided the prerequisites that are essential for replacing production for profit. People rightly object to the despotic pseudo-socialism which developed in the old Soviet Union. Humanity today faces a stark choice: socialism or barbarism. We need no more proof of the barbarity of capitalism, the parasitical system that exploits humanity and nature alike. Its sole motor is the imperative toward profit and thus the need for constant growth. Capitalism’s need for growth exists on every level, from the individual enterprise to the system as a whole. The insatiable hunger of corporations is facilitated by imperialist expansion in search of ever greater access to natural resources. The capitalist economic system cannot tolerate limits on growth; its constant need to expand will subvert any limits that might be imposed because to do so would require setting limits upon accumulation – an unacceptable option for a system predicated upon the rule: Grow or Die.

It is ironic that in the present situation, peoples’ anti-austerity hopes now lie with the pro-business, Murdoch supported Scottish nationalists with a policy of cutting corporation tax. The Labour party even in its 'best' days was never a socialist party. Why should anyone be surprised, shocked, disgusted or flabbergasted at this point in history? This is capitalism and similar things are happening all around the globe. Capitalism's raison d'etre - screw the majority to the possible maximum in order to accumulate the maximum possible. Without a determined cooperative effort and struggle by the majority of the world's population (the ones being repeatedly screwed) then another century will slip by and our offspring's offspring will be churning out the same mantras about taxing the wealthy and increasing the minimum wage. Forget reforms. Think about it, there really is only the one solution: Abolish the system that makes this possible. Abolish capitalism. Together we can do it. The workers themselves have to do it once they know capitalism cannot be reformed. It is not question of a party winning power 'over' people. United for socialism. State capitalism, nationalisation, was never socialism.

The Labour Party was never socialist. They have always supported capitalism. In all countries, the fight for the social revolution has yet to take place. Every few years groups of professional politicians compete for your vote to win themselves a comfortable position. All of the parties and candidates offer only minor changes to the present system. That is why whichever candidate or party wins there is no significant change to the way things are. Promises are made and broken, targets are set and not reached, statistics are selected and spun. All politicians assume that capitalism is the only game in town, although they may criticise features of its unacceptable face, such as greedy bankers, or the worst of its excesses. They defend a society in which we, the majority of the population, must sell our capacity to work to the tiny handful who own most of the wealth.

They defend a society in which jobs are offered only if there is a profit to be made. Socialists have little concern for the apparent moral consistency (or otherwise) of individuals, be they MPs or not. It’s the system we live under that we are interested in. As defenders of capitalism the right honourable gentlemen and ladies at Westminster have rarely been "right", and are certainly unlikely "honourable" role models. As exemplars of capitalism's principles, however they would appear to embody all the necessary tight-fisted, money-grabbing, elements.

A socialist society, means a society without rich and poor, without owners and workers, without governments and governed, a society without leaders and led. In such a society people would cooperate to use all the world’s natural and industrial resources in their own interests. They would free production from the artificial restraint of profit and establish a system of society in which each person has free access to the benefits of civilisation. Socialist society would consequently mean the end of buying, selling and exchange, an end to borders and frontiers, an end to organised violence and coercion, waste, want and war. Socialism has never been tried anywhere...No, the workers have not the foggiest of what socialism is and support reformist, labourites, Lefties who are erstwhile leaders and new governments 'over' the workers. Socialism will come about when the workers the immense majority, understand what it is, (common ownership is not state ownership, democratic control is not representative democracy, waged slavery is not common ownership, socialism is a free access, revolutionary, post-capitalist society) and work to bring it about without the need of leaders. Nothing can stop socialism when the workers decide to implement it.

A load of hogwash spoken by Labourites, war-mongers and business friendly supporters of capitalism. If we are going to improve things we are going to have to act for ourselves, without professional politicians or leaders of any kind. We are going to have to organise ourselves democratically to bring about a society geared to serving human needs not profits. Production to satisfy people's needs. That's the alternative. But this is only going to be possible if we control production and the only basis on which this can be done is common ownership and democratic control. In a word, socialism. But real socialism, not the elite-run dictatorships that used to exist in Russia and east Europe ― that was state capitalism, not socialism ― nor the various schemes for state control put forward by the old Labour Party. We are talking about a world community without frontiers. Only on this basis can world poverty, hunger and the destruction of the environment be ended.

The socialist alternative to the profit system is:

• common ownership: no individuals or groups of individuals have property rights over the natural and industrial resources needed for production.

• democratic control: everybody has an equal say in the way things are run including work, not just the limited political democracy we have today.

• production for use: goods and services produced directly to meet people's needs, not for sale on a market or for profit.

• free access: all of us have access to what we require to satisfy our needs, not rationed as today by the size of our pay-cheque or state hand-out.

The twilight of global capitalism

It is absurd to pretend that governments can manage the economy. In fact their job is to manage 'us' in the interests of the parasite economic class of exploiters, who pay big bucks to support their elections to this end regardless of which party label they are flying under, hence their insistence upon reassuring the electorate of their 'business friendly ' nature. This ensures that whatever political hue the elected reps are, the electorate, like turkeys voting for Xmas, remain in conditions of waged slavery, subject to the dictates of the capitalist market. If their first duty is to get elected to 'government' then they are not operating in the interests of the workers. They are just another capitalist party, which they are anyway but various supporters and enemies, see them as some kind of 'socialism' light. The Labour Party are not socialists and never were so. Real socialists do not have nor do they need, leaders. It is time for workers to stop supporting 'business friendly' parties of capitalism and envisage how we may usher in the new, global post-capitalist future where we won't need governments 'over' us and can run a commonly owned, free access democracy for ourselves. Capitalism cannot be tamed and must be replaced. Real socialism is a post-capitalist society not some business friendly stitch-up of the workers. If you are convinced, however, that groups or parties promising reforms deserve your support, we would urge you to consider the following points.

The campaign, whether directed at right-wing or left-wing governments, will often only succeed if it can be reconciled with the profit-making needs of the system. In other words, the reform will often be turned to the benefit of the capitalist class at the expense of any working class gain.

Any reform can be reversed and eroded later if a government finds it necessary.

Reforms rarely, if ever, actually solve the problem they were intended to solve.

This was summed up by William Morris over a century ago:

"The palliatives over which many worthy people are busying themselves now are useless because they are but unorganised partial revolts against a vast, wide-spreading, grasping organisation which will, with the unconscious instinct of a plant, meet every attempt at bettering the conditions of the people with an attack on a fresh side."

The profit motive of capitalism is a major cause of the problems we face in today's society: ever increasing inequality, poverty, alienation, crime, homelessness, environmental degradation—the list could go on and on. There are countless ways in which the working class (and indeed the capitalist class) suffer as a result of the profit system. Unless we organise for a revolutionary alternative, the profit system will continue on its blind, unswerving path. The problem is that workers are willing to give their power away to representative governments when in reality they only can represent the interests of the capitalist class and govern 'over' you. The world has the productive capacity to provide a high standard of living for all, to provide security and comfort for all, to create safe workplaces and clean industries. The only thing keeping us from reaching these goals is that the workers don't own and control that productive capacity; it is owned and controlled by a few who use it solely to profit themselves. The Labour Party, since its foundation were as dangerous to the capitalist system as a pantomime lion to its audience. To project a change of a 'governing' party as a potential 'alternative', is capital's great electoral trick.

It stands alongside the "Great Money Trick" and waged slavery, clothed in the ideological rhetoric of Freedom and Liberty, which consists of freedom to plunder surplus value from the wage worker and liberty to globalise this plunder at the point of a gun if necessary. Rather than contemplate a change of government 'over' you, consideration needs to be given to a change of the economic and political system in order to establish a post-capitalist, common ownership with a delegated democracy, which requires administration being the preserve of the majority in conditions of free access to the collective produce of this majority and the elimination of privileged ownership and control mechanisms.

We don't need leaders. We need to stop being so slavish and establish the post-capitalist society.  What we saw in 2008 was the enactment of a welfare state for the rich, a kind of state socialism for the financial elites that Marx predicted. But with this comes an increased and volatile cycle of boom and bust, bringing the system closer to disintegration and collapse. We have undergone two major stock market crashes and the implosion of real estate prices in just the first decade of the 21st century. The corporations that own the media have worked overtime to sell to a bewildered public the fiction that we are enjoying a recovery. Employment figures, through a variety of gimmicks, including erasing those who are unemployed for over a year from unemployment rolls, are a lie, as is nearly every other financial indicator pumped out for public consumption. We live, rather, in the twilight stages of global capitalism, which may be surprisingly more resilient than we expect, but which is ultimately terminal. Marx knew that once the market mechanism became the sole determining factor for the fate of the nation-state, as well as the natural world, both would be demolished. No one knows when this will happen. But that it will happen, perhaps within our lifetime, seems certain.

“The old is dying, the new struggles to be born, and in the interregnum there are many morbid symptoms,” Antonio Gramsci wrote.

What comes next is up to us. There has to be a sea-change in workers political consciousness so they begin to consider electing themselves to administer a post-capitalist society. The idle the world comprises of the top 1%. The poorest worker produces more wealth than any of the capitalist parasites who own and control the means of living. The capitalist class bring nothing to the table other than already stolen surplus value which they have extracted from the exploitative wages slavery system. It is a collective working class problem and requires a collective working class solution which removes ownership and control of the means and instruments of producing and distributing wealth from the parasite 1% capitalist class and making them common with free access and democratic control by all. If we want real social change we need to get rid of this slavish attitude get some yourself and make the revolution instead of looking to business friendly leaders, with or without backbone, making undeliverable promises of reform. Let us haste the day for a move onto a commonly owned, free-access, post-capitalist delegated democracy over the means and instruments for creating and distributing wealth rather than over the people.

Workers already run capitalism from top to bottom. They are managers, scientists, government workers and so on. They are more than capable of understanding and running the new society in common in everyone’s interest. They are also subjected to a heavy schooling process and national interest propaganda from cradle to the grave with vested interests controlling media and so on. They are rightly suspicious of any grand superimposition of planned economies such as the disastrous Soviet state capitalist experiments. The success of capitalist propaganda to mislabel those as indications of 'socialist' failure, has to be reckoned with, along with the incapacity of the pseudo socialists left to educate 'themselves' out of the same narrative, in order to participate in 'real' revolutionary propaganda activities alongside fellow workers, rather than engaging in trickery of workers to gain support for so called 'Left' governance OVER them. The alternatives presented within politics are little more than tinkering with the re-imposition of status quo options and are never articulated outwith those boxes of understanding.

"While theologians are disputing the existence of a hell elsewhere, we are on the way to realising it here: and if capitalism is to endure, whatever may become of men when they die, they will come into hell when they are born." – William Morris

Capitalism Charged and Found Guilty

All wealth comes from labour. Labour receives a ration back for subsistence and the rest goes to the parasite capitalist class, who only bring capital (stolen wealth, dead labour) to the table, when it is deemed profitable to exploit the worker again and so the cycle continues. Capitalism can't be reformed to work in any other way and must be replaced by the post- capitalist society.  Socialists don't expect any political party to do it for them, but rather the task of bringing in socialism, i.e. a free access society without buying and selling, wage slavery and with production for use, is the mission of the workers themselves.

It will be for us to take ownership and control of the wealth of the world into our own hands. We could, together, use the wealth of the world to meet our mutual needs and grant the true independence of being able to control our work and our lives in free and voluntary association of equals. As this is the emancipation of labour from the fetters of wage slavery with production for use, production doesn't stop until needs are met, as profit is not a consideration and with free access to the social product, there is no further need for any means of exchange and money, (a part of the market system) ceases to be needed. With common ownership of all the means and instruments of producing and distributing wealth we see the end of vested interests and elite classes competing and warring over them. A true class less society is the result.

All capitalist politicians are fakirs, selling panaceas until the next crisis to keep the wage slaves supporting their rule 'over' the workers. It doesn't matter if they are allegedly labour, with friendly pro-worker sound-bites or avowedly conservative in nice or nasty party mode. Capitalism cannot be reformed, exploitation takes place at the point of production of workers rationed by wages to access of the social product, so it is no good blaming the politicians for pretending it can be. Capitalism is about the immense production of commodities. Workers themselves are turned into sellers of commodities, via their labour power.

This drives profit. The whole reason for capitalism. Advanced economies have to continue to create new goods, whether useful or not, it doesn't matter if they are consumed or end up in landfills, in order to accumulate even more wealth in the hands of the 5% parasite class.

Capitalism has to be replaced by a free access production for use. Any reforms which threaten the status quo will be destroyed or reincorporated into the main infrastructure in profit-friendly relational functions. Exploitation in capitalism is at the point of production where wage slavery exists. It is from human labour applied to natural resources that all wealth proceeds. It is human labour which adds value to this natural wealth, as it is transformed into commodities for sale on the market.

You have to end the capitalist market system and establish free access and abolish waged slavery, so we can have production for use within a sane allocation of resources, which ends the overproduction for sale, in the pursuit of profits in booms and the slump/glut switching off of production, before needs are met, in the interest of profit, necessitating the creating of new commodities, in pursuit of profit, to take up the slack of lost production and profit earning capacities in the global capitalist economy.

Capitalist market and banking and money systems, is anarchy, wasteful and unnecessary. The working class are the source of all wealth. The money system is a part of the market system. This can’t be reformed and has to be replaced with a post-capitalist commonly owned free access social system without buying and selling, where production is for use for the satisfaction of the human needs of a single human species in harmony with nature and the planet's shared resources, rather than for the rationed sale on a market for the enrichment of a few percent of a global parasite class. The market leads to intense economic, political and global competition, war, squandering of resources, misuse of technology to destroy oppositional resources, a conflict of human interests for the pursuit of elitist gain, with wealth being produced in conditions of waged slavery for the majority, essentially to keep the slave presenting themselves for further exploitation, on pain of poverty, actual or relative, to satisfy the need for accumulation of profit for the few. Absolutely insane use of resources. The full charge sheet against the world exchange economy with regard to the way it forces people to use the world's resources can now be drawn up. It reads:

(1) That, although there has been a long-term expansion of productive capacity and oil output, this has been only a fraction as fast and as extensive and as safe as technology has made possible.

(2) That, although in the long run the existing capacity has been more or less fully used, this has been broken by regular periods of under-use.

(3) That, in agriculture and in industries faced with declining markets, there has been deliberate destruction of productive capacity and regular destruction of wealth.

(4) That millions and millions of human beings who could have contributed to producing useful things have been prevented from working at all.

(5) That millions and millions more human beings have been allowed to work but only to engage in wasteful exchange and coercive activities.

(6) That the existing productive capacity has been used to produce considerable amounts of waste.

These are all serious charges and all of them are proved. They point to the need for the world's people to recover control over the productive system by abolishing the exchange economy altogether and replace it by a society that will allow them to plan the production of wealth in their own interests and to allocate the products for their own individual and collective use. Expecting capitalism to reform is the equivalent of a death wish. It is an impossible dream whereas socialism/communism post capitalism, where the world’s workers, 95% who not only produce all wealth, but run the system of wage slavery from top to bottom in the service of the exploiting class, are more than capable of running a self-regulating sane system of common ownership with equal free access afforded to all without elites.

We need a revolution in peoples thinking to end this waste. It is then a simple case of a majority taking into common ownership, (not state ownership, or private or corporate ownership) all the means and instruments for creating and distributing wealth by and in the interests of the whole human family. At a stroke, without the parasitical elites, all the competition which drives war and wasteful use of technology will be ended and we can make common cause with our human family and the eco husbandry of the planet's resources will be the normative state of affairs. That is the function of capitalist politicians, to get our assent to be 'governed' over in the interests of business. Experience should have shown us this, a long time ago and capitalism and its anarchic market system and waged slavery continues from boom to slump to boom again. We have some responsibility for wanting to believe impossible things, that governments can make any difference to the boom, slump or market cycle.

We are not presenting the socialist alternative of a world without wages as a utopian dream for the century after next. This is practical now. Socialism is the sensible next step for humankind to take. We have nothing to lose but our chains. You and others are responsible for the established order. You and others can withdraw support from politicians of capitalism left, right, centre. You along with the vast majority can govern yourselves without any elites. You can do away with the production of commodities including yourself as a commodity (labour-power) for sale on the market. Politicians of all hues and colours have a conceited delusion that they can adjust capitalism and fine tune it to deliver outcomes beneficial for most of society. You should stop expecting governments to level up the playing fields in society (impossible). Reforming capitalism (impossible). Managing the economy (impossible). Capitalism thrives on inequality of access, to keep the real wealth producers (the working class), working to produce surplus value, for the parasite class of capitalist, who do not need to work as they can pay to have their interests managed for them, with the best money can buy, legal systems ,governments and anything else to protect their dominant interests. Around 5% of the world’s population live a life of ease and luxury on the backs of the rest of us. Capitalism can't be reformed and must be replaced.

It is up to us workers worldwide to withdraw our assent to be governed 'over' in the interests, of a tiny minority parasite class 5% and withdraw our acceptance of waged slavery to establish a sane post -capitalist social system. The consent of the majority which the minority needs to keep its system going. We must unite to change society. You and others the 95% can stop crawling on your hands and knees to capitalism and refuse their crumbs in return for the common ownership of the planet. It is well past time for the workers of the world to grow up and stand on their own two feet. It is long past time the working class said a plague on all capitalist politicians. Away with those lick-spittle, two-faced, slave-driver representatives of the rapacious, blood-soaked capitalist system, despoilers of the planet, impoverishers of the many.

Rise like Lions after slumber

In unvanquishable number—

Shake your chains to earth like dew

Which in sleep had fallen on you—

Ye are many—they are few.

Shelley

The mis-sold versions of socialism

The Socialist Party of Great Britain stands dedicated to achieving the following objective: "The establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community." This post-capitalist society of social equals, will not require rationing of access to social wealth, via waged slavery, based upon ability to pay for them, but will proceed from a production for use, free access principle of: "From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs."

The World’s marvelous machinery, its complex technology are not for the welfare of the many nor the social good of the masses. It exists for the exploitation of the worker and the enrichment of the capitalist class. It is an organised system where the machine is merely the means through which the social relation of owner and wage-slave is maintained. All innovation, inventions, scientific achievements of knowledge are made subservient to this. The state is just a servant of commerce. The only people who have the power to use the laws to their benefit are those who control the means of production and profit from them. A mere change of personnel in this political field, Tory, Labour, Lib-Dem, Green, or Tartan, it makes no difference. The wage system remains. The exploitation continues. And it will carry on, until the workers take control of the land, the mines, the factories and the means of production, and abolish the wage system. We are wage-workers, wage-slaves, and we bear the signs of this system on our backs like a cross. The abolition of the wage system is the expressed goal, to which we must cling with conviction.  Capital is basically accumulated dirty blood money, surplus value, extracted from waged-slaves, in return for their subsistence in relation to a rationed access to the wealth, which workers have already produced collectively. Any government, however well-meaning some of its political whores are in Edinburgh, London or Karachi, is elected to police this state of affairs. Tweedledum becomes Tweedledee. It is all an irrelevance. Political scum rise to the top of the political pond which is a festering cesspit in the service of a parasitical system of society which exploits the many for the enrichment of the few. 'Believing' in any politician is a religious act.

 "Freedom consists in converting the state from an organ superimposed upon society into one completely subordinate to it" - Engels

The Scottish Socialist Party are Trotskyists who think workers are too stupid to understand what socialism is, "the abolition of the wages system", they foolishly believe that socialism can come about in one country in a top-down model with enlightened masters guiding the masses.

The Green Party foolishly think that capitalism, a rapacious bloody system of intense exploitation of labour, can be made more equal and 'nicer', while in government would heed the needs of industry as much as any other party.

The SNP are pretending to be 'Leftier than thou', to Labour, not hard to do these days, when capitalism has been through a massive upheaval and ALL governments heeding their masters voice cut to the bone, wages, condition, welfare in order to ensure profitable opportunities to encourage the parasite class to invest some of the wealth they have stolen from the workers, in surplus value.

It is a conceited deception, that workers will have any say in the running of Scotland. A separate parliament in Scotland would be a capitalist parliament. It would not provide Scottish workers with any greater control over their own lives. Scotland would remain an integral part of international capitalism. An Edinburgh sovereign parliament will leave the workers in exactly the same position as before. The liberation for Scottish workers can only come about by overthrowing capitalism itself. If this is not done, no amount of separatism can ever succeed in bringing freedom. Instead of tragically wasting time fostering nationalism, workers should be struggling for a socialist society without national borders. Workers in the main are lucky if they own a square foot of the country in which they reside. Most of us don’t own a single square inch of Scotland. It doesn’t belong to us: we just live here and work for the people who do own it. In or out of the Union, that won’t change. In Scotland, society is run in the interests of those who own the wealth. They argue among each other over billions of barrels of oil, GDP rates, profits and exports, because where the borders lie matters to them. Every border is an opportunity to wring cash out of other property owners. Scotland will remain dependent upon their whims and interests whatever the outcome. They’ll try to sway us one way or another with crumbs (or the promises of crumbs) but we’ll only get what they feel they can spare to protect their privilege and wealth. We will remain dependent upon their investments, making a profit for them before we can get our needs and interests met. The only way to stop this dependency would be for us to take ownership and control of the wealth of the world into our own hands. We could, together, use the wealth of the world to meet our mutual needs and gain the true independence of being able to control our work and our lives in a free and voluntary association of equals. Join The Socialist Party to fight for an independent world.

What difference does any of that make to a worker if independent or part of the UK where in both the government recipe is for running capitalism which were business friendly and retained wage slavery. Workers need to get rid of capitalism and the need for weapons, Trident or otherwise, vanishes in a free access society shorn of competition between rival parasites capitalists organised in nation states and global power blocs. Workers have no country and have nothing to lose but their chains, if they make common cause with workers worldwide. Time for workers of the world to get off their knees to the capitalist class and take over to establish a classless society of free access socialism without capitalist, bureaucratic or government elites? The whole planet is owned by a parasitic class of exploiters. It is irrelevant which set of politicians, police workers in the nation states in which they reside. As long as workers have the franchise, they can use it as capitalism's Achilles heel to remove those leeches from their backs and to take all wealth into common ownership. As workers our interests lie and are in common with fellow workers all over the world.

We are not speaking of the mis-sold versions of socialism such as the state-capitalist ones of the Soviet era or the mixed command nationalisation type of the reformist Left. We speak of a society such as the world has never seen. We are speaking of a free access society, post -capitalist, wageless, moneyless world, where each of us can freely play a full part in running and organising it, locally, regionally, globally, without politicians but with recallable delegates, when we need to take wider decisions. Without private ownership of the means and instruments for creating and distributing wealth, then we can have no vested interests attempting to control or direct affairs (such as Big Pharma, Arms trade, Agribusiness, as a few examples.)

If resources, indeed all wealth, is owned in common then we can proceed to sane allocations of that wealth rather than engage in wasteful, destructive, war and competition over it for national, corporate, or individual vested advantage.

Real socialism/communism is an idea which time has not yet come, but requires the politically conscious assent of the majority, realising the potential of an integrated, self-regulating system of production for use, with free access and voluntary production, to come into being.

The revolution can't be brought about top-down by a bunch of leaders of the Leninist type or by some technocratic or bureaucratic direction.

“Because the condition of the workers of all countries is the same, because their interests are the same, their enemies the same, they must also fight together, they must oppose the brotherhood of the bourgeoisie of all nations with a brotherhood of the workers of all nations.”- Engels, 1847.

“If they speak consciously and openly to the working class, then they summarise their philanthropy in the following words: It is better to be exploited by one’s fellow-countrymen than by foreigners.” - Marx, 1848

Scots?

People from ethnic minority backgrounds in Scotland are still being held back by workplace discrimination, according to a report by a committee of MSPs, the Equal Opportunities Committee following a six-month investigation. The report said ethnic minorities largely performed better academically than white Scots. But they were more likely to be unemployed or in low-paid work, and were under-represented in senior management roles. It found that there were "significant barriers facing people from ethnic minorities in gaining employment and developing a career". This was despite 40 years of legislation and equality policies.

War may be hell for some but it is heaven for others.

Military marching, patriotic parades, martial music - they are mostly intended to give the impression that it’s ‘your’ country, that you should be proud of it, that your leaders are there to protect you, that the division into rich and poor is pre-ordained (perhaps by some god or other) and there’s nothing you can do about it.

You may well, indeed, take pride in the place you live – its landscape, architecture, people, etc, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But in terms of possession, ownership and control, it’s the rich elite, the few percent in any country, who collectively own the world’s land and resources (including what you think of as your country), and they would naturally prefer people to hold the view that this is an immutable state of affairs, all the more to hold on to their power, backed up by governments and armies. It’s utter tosh. They only keep their power (and send millions of us to die in wars to help them do so) because the majority allow them to, and continue to let themselves be duped by militaristic displays and patriotic twaddle.

Sir Richard Evans, Regius Professor of History and President of Wolfson College Cambridge has raised the question of “How can you possibly claim that Britain was fighting for democracy and liberal values when the main ally was Tsarist Russia? That was a despotism that put Germany in the shade and sponsored pogroms in 1903-6.” He also pointed out that unlike Germany where male suffrage was universal – 40 per cent of those British troops fighting in the war did not have the vote until 1918.

An English officer, R.J. Fairhead, saw the evil of war, but not in the soldiers. They just had to fight. He strongly attacked the political structure in Europe and looked above the taught national stereotypes. His learned hatred for the Germans was converted to a general hate for the whole situation and the system which made a war like this possible.

“Politicians do not listen to those whom they claim to represent and the failure to take notice of the fragile peace declared for that brief period led to the anti-government revolution throughout Europe.”

Lieutenant A.P. Sinkinson described similar experiences:

“As I walked slowly back to our own trenches I thought of Mr. Asquith’s sentence about not sheathing the sword until the enemy be finally crushed. It is all very well for Englishmen living comfortable at home to talk in flowing periods, but when you are out here you begin to realize that sustained hatred impossible.”

Sinkinson saw that Germans were not worse people than himself. Only the people at home, far away from the cruelties, the brutalities, from death and from the war’s real grimace, could keep their hatred.

That the opinion toward the enemies had changed after the Christmas truce is emphasized by Westminster Rifle Man Percy. The new experiences he had with the Germans whom he met made him rethink everything he had heard about them. He wrote that:

“They [Germans] where really magnificent in the whole thing [Christmas Truce] and jolly good sorts. I now have a different opinion of the German. Both sides have now started firing, and are deadly enemies again. Strange it all seems, doesn’t it?” Obviously Percy recognized how surreal the situation was. He started to rethink his attitude toward the Germans but he did not think about stopping fighting them.

After having met the enemy between the trenches, many soldiers started thinking about all they had read and heard about them. For many, the former hatred was vanished. They now recognized the soldiers from the other side of the trenches as human as themselves. They were not mercenaries, no inhuman monsters eager for war, just humans. The stereotypes they know from the time before the war and before they met their enemies did not fit after meeting their enemies. Not all Germans acted like it was described in the newspaper and were not as arrogant as the German Kaiser.

On the other hand not all the English soldiers were mercenaries fighting for material well-being. These soldiers started to reflect their own experiences and started to compare their experiences with what they knew before about their enemies. The conclusion they made was that their prefabricated picture and the experiences they gained did not fit together. It was hard for the soldiers, faced with the reality of the war, to maintain the black and white propaganda picture.

Workers have NO country. Abolish the wages system and share the world in common with your fellow workers. We really need to consider how to get rid of capitalism, if we want to get rid of arms dealers, nuclear weapons and war, which is concomitant upon capitalism along with poverty and waged slavery. In a world of a potential superabundance of wealth, it is rationed out to the producers and resources are fought over to be squandered by states in the interest of their dominant capitalist interests.

Currently there is now a North Pole war-dance going on for resources under the sea as well as in the South China Seas where old protagonists are eyeing each other up once again.

'In America trillions of dollars go to military and homeland security companies. Perpetual war represents perpetual profits for business and government interests. According to Morgan Keegan, a wealth management and capital firm, investment in homeland security companies is expected to yield a 12 percent annual growth through 2013 - a high return when compared to other parts of the depressed US economy. Former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff pushed the purchase of the heavily criticised (and little tested) full-body scanners used in airports. People were unaware that the manufacturer of the machine is a client of the Chertoff Group, his highly profitable security consulting agency. The US "black budget" of secret intelligence programmes alone was estimated at $52.6bn for 2013. That is only the secret programmes, not the much larger intelligence and counterintelligence budgets. America has now have 16 spy agencies that employ 107,035 employees. This is separate from the over one million people employed by the military and national security law enforcement agencies.

In the first 10 days of the Libyan war alone, the Obama administration spent roughly $550m. That figure includes about $340m for munitions - mostly cruise missiles that must be replaced.

There is only one way to prevent war and if it breaks out to end it, namely, by the overthrow of capitalism, the real root from which war springs. The solution rests in the power of the working class. If world capitalism has no solution for its problems excepting new and more horrible slaughter, it is time this insane system were ended. The fight for socialism is the fight for peace. Destruction and carnage can be ended, not by the victory of one or other of the combatants which would merely lay the basis for new wars and is not in the interests of the workers of any country, but by the victory of the workers over capitalism.

Some 50,000 non-combatants are estimated to have died as British and American planes bombarded France in preparation for the invasion of Europe. 20,000 French civilians were killed in the two-and-a-half months from D-Day, 3,000 of them during the actual landings. On July 9, 1944, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, the top British general in the D-Day offensive, ordered 450 aircraft to begin a devastating bombing campaign on German positions in France as the Allies advanced. Henri Amouroux, a French academic, calculated that about 20,000 people died in Calvados alone as towns and some cities, including Lisieux and Le Havre, were all but wiped out. In his book on the landings, Antony Beevor, the British historian, condemned the air raids as "stupid, counter-productive and above all very close to a war crime". In fact, during the whole war, US and British armed forces killed many more French civilians than did the German army and airforce. You don't hear much about that but, then, the victors get the right to write "history".

"Think of the hundreds of tons of bombs destroying entire cities and wiping out families. But the suffering of civilians was for many years masked by the over-riding image - that of the French welcoming the liberators with open arms" Christopher Prime, Historian

Cpl LF Roker of the Highland Light Infantry is quoted in a book about the civilian impact of the campaign, ‘Liberation, The Bitter Road to Freedom,’ by William Hitchcock.

"It was rather a shock to find we were not welcomed ecstatically as liberators by the local people, as we were told we should be... They saw us as bringers of destruction and pain," Roker wrote in his diary.

Another soldier, Ivor Astley of the 43rd Wessex Infantry, described the locals as "sullen and silent... If we expected a welcome, we certainly failed to find it."

Hitchcock raises another issue that rarely features in euphoric folk-memories of liberation: Allied looting, and worse. "The theft and looting of Normandy households and farmsteads by liberating soldiers began on June 6 and never stopped during the entire summer," he writes.

One woman - from the town of Colombieres - is quoted as saying that "the enthusiasm for the liberators is diminishing. They are looting... everything, and going into houses everywhere on the pretext of looking for Germans."

The evidence shows that sexual violence against women in liberated France was common. According to American historian J Robert Lilly, there were around 3,500 rapes by American servicemen in France between June 1944 and the end of the war.

Apologists of capitalism would claim the Second World War was a just war. Regardless of the stated intentions, of the apparent excuse for beginning a war, the only reason ever is the pursuit of the interest of the capitalist class, which they will enforce without reserve upon the working class. Hoping that war can be carried out in a gentlemanly way, that it can be carried out without inflicting suffering on the working class is pie in the sky.

It is not our land but their land

Half of Scotland’s privately-owned land is held by 432 owners, with 16 of that number owning 10 per cent of the country, according to research by Andy Wightman.

Today, more than 500,000 acres of land is classed as being community-owned - but this amounts to just 2.5 per cent of the country. The half-million mark was crossed in 2015 when crofters in Lewis secured a 28,000 acre estate covering 11 townships after 13 years of campaigning.

The Forestry Commission Scotland own nearly 1.6 million acres which is 9% of the land area.

The charade of capitalism

Workers don't have a country. The nation is run in the collective interests of the ruling class. Most of us don’t own a single square inch of Scotland. It doesn’t belong to us: we just live here and work for the people who do own it. In or out of the United Kingdom, in and out of the EU, that won’t change. In Scotland, society is run in the interests of those who own the wealth. They argue among each other over billions of barrels of oil, GDP rates, profits and exports, because where the borders lie matters to them. Every border is an opportunity to wring cash out of other property owners. Scotland will remain dependent upon their whims and interests whatever the state of sovereignty. They’ll try to sway us one way or another with crumbs (or the promises of crumbs) but we’ll only get what they feel they can spare to protect their privilege and wealth.

We will remain dependent upon their investments making a profit for them before we can get our needs and interests seen to. The only way to stop this dependency would be for us to take ownership and control of the wealth of the world into our own hands. We could, together, use the wealth of the world to meet our mutual needs and grant the true independence of being able to control our work and our lives in free and voluntary association of equals.

There is no such thing as a, "fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay".  Exploitation takes place at the point of production or you would not be hired. The Labour Party has ever served the interest of the ruling class, even to the extent of supporting war on their behalf .The welfare state would have happened anyway, no matter who was elected. The Labour Party doesn't have socialist roots.  Its aim was always to reform capitalism. Any party which intends to run capitalism with its, waged labour, buying and selling, money system, production for sale on a market, is by definition a capitalist party. Equally notions of employment full or otherwise are nothing to do with socialism. Capitalism can't be reformed and shorn of its rapacious tendencies. It has to be replaced by a new post capitalist social revolution. We fail to see why you should continue to elect people to police 'us' on behalf of the parasitic capitalist class, but require to police 'them', on behalf of the slavish electorate.

You only need to develop a political awareness which dispenses with government over us, replacing the capitalist system with a self-regulated and self-correcting, democratic, global, free access society of common ownership, which requires no police, as it ensures all wealth is commonly produced ,owned and accessed freely without wages, prices, or minority ownership intervening in the free access to it. Remove privileged accumulation of wealth and its political class. Abolish the market and its wages system, establish real socialism.

The biggest charade is the notion that politicians or political parties can left, right, centre, statist, free-market, mixed-market, can make anything other than a marginal difference in running capitalism. Capitalism can't be run in any way which interferes with the exploitative boom-slump cycle of the market system and conditions of wage-slavery for the vast majority. Capitalism cannot solve the problem of distribution, through its market mechanisms, wages or prices, as it must choke off production, as its markets become saturated reducing profit but, always before human needs can be satisfied. All political parties are business friendly in this sense.

The Labour Party in office claimed the benefit for establishing the welfare state. They started clawing back some measures very quickly and putting up prescription charges. Workers are not better off in relative terms. Any changes in welfare system for example increase profits derived from labour. The rate of exploitation is greater. If you are born poor you will die poor with few exceptions.

Nationalisation was in the interests of the capitalist class. State capitalist measures such as that, does nothing about wage slavery or the rate of exploitation. They didn't dispossess the mine owners or railway owners, they compensated them and in many cases paid them with high salary seats on the boards of trade and management which run the industries. Any safety reforms arose out of union action.
Attlee's socialist ‘movement’ must have taken place on the porcelain seat in the lavatory.

Capitalism has to be replaced, through the conscious and informed action of the majority, with a new post - capitalist society, harnessing all of the productive capacity of this one and more, freeing up human resources intrinsic to capitalism, but unnecessary in a new post-capitalist one, banks, money, insurance, armies, navies, war production, and by harnessing all of the infrastructure and techno-structure.

We, the world’s workers, whether waged, salaried, white or blue-collared, can create a world of superabundance, which has free access, without wages and prices, to produce of our collective endeavours, within a global, regional and local democratic participatory framework, by all the world’s people and an organising "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.”

To do this we, the world’s workers, must dispossess the global capitalist class, whether private individuals, bureaucratic, governmental, or corporate, of their ownership of the means of production and distribution and take them into common ownership. Politicians are irrelevant. Les get rid of capitalism and its politicians for good.

Socialism is a free access society which doesn't need reformist political parties to bring it into being. It only needs a working class conscious of itself and in itself aware, that it is its class interests to overthrow private and state ownership of the means and instruments of creating and distributing wealth and willing to engage with fellow workers worldwide, to replace them with common ownership and democratic control globally in conditions of free access without wage slavery or prices or markets.

Workers have no country. The world for the workers.

Lording it over us

89-year-old hereditary peer and Kent landowner, the fifth Baron of Northbourne whose son, Sebastian James, featured in the Bullingdon Club society’s 1987 photo, alongside David Cameron and Boris Johnson contributed to the House of Lords debate where he voted in favour of the Government's attempts to redefine the way child poverty is measured said some families "ought" to try harder to earn money and added some families preferred a lifestyle dependent on state support.

Two-thirds of children in poverty have at least one parent in work.

Abolishing Wage Slavery

The Slavery Abolition Act 1833  was when Parliament abolished slavery throughout the British Empire (with the exceptions "of the Territories in the Possession of the East India Company," the "Island of Ceylon," and "the Island of Saint Helena"; which were eliminated in 1843). The Act was repealed in 1998 as part of a wider rationalisation of English statute law, but later anti-slavery legislation remains in force. Contrast with the future ‘Abolishing the Wages Slavery System, An Act of Revolution’ the task of workers worldwide and will require no government, crowned or elected state heads approval. Contrast the "parliamentarianism" of the reformists, which involves sending representatives to Parliament to run capitalism, with the socialist policy in which a socialist majority mandates recallable delegates in order to dismantle the state machine, from a position of control.  Contrast the circus of capitalism society with a post-capitalist, socialist one.

Production will be for use and not for sale on the market. Distribution will be according to need and not by means of buying and selling. Work will be voluntary and not imposed on workers by means of a coercive wages system. A human community will exist and social divisions based on class, nationality, sex or race will have disappeared. You will need to 'make' it happen. A plague on all the politics of capitalism. The governments of the world may well introduce a thousand reforms, but we would still continue to live in a world ravaged by starvation, war, homelessness, unemployment, poverty and every other social ill. We would still live in a two class society, with our real needs subordinated to the wishes of a minority. Why campaign for crumbs when the whole bakery is there to be taken? No matter how well-intentioned the politicians are, or how colourful their promises, they are bound to fail because they do not control the system – it controls them.

Workers produce all wealth. A tiny percentage exploit the fact of workers necessity to labour in return for a ration of the wealth, while the minority parasite class own and control the means and instruments for producing the wealth. It is capitalism with its anarchic market system which cannot satisfy human needs as production is turned off if profit isn’t realised thus producing the distribution problem which ensures inequality of access, ad infinitum. There will not be any states national, imperial or otherwise with overlords or entrenched interests in a post- capitalist socialist society so there will be no political classes or privileged overseers. This is a global phenomenon. Workers run this exploitative system from top to bottom. In effect there are only two social classes, 10% capitalist and 90% workers, whether better off workers or poorly paid workers. They are still dependent on a wage or salary check to access what they collectively produce. They are still only a few pay slips short of a food bank while the parasite class live in ease and luxury. The solution to this is not a redistribution of wealth via tax or other measures. This only perpetuates the system of exploitation. It is the political dispossession of ownership of the means and instruments for producing wealth from the capitalists and its transfer to the world’s population and the ownership in common with fellow workers worldwide.

Economist Thomas Piketty joins a host of deluded people who think that capitalism can be reformed in ways which benefit the majority. This nicer capitalism can't exist, never will exist and can never be in the interests of the real wealth producers. That isn't the movers and shakers, the big boys and girls in the city, or the manufacturers, but is the world’s working class. It is not clear how Piketty defines capitalism. He seems to mean what the French call capitalisme sauvage, or unregulated, wildcat capitalism. If so, then his claim to have shown that ‘capitalism simply cannot work’ is reduced to the lesser claim that unregulated capitalism cannot work. This is a powerful refutation of the free marketers, but is still suggesting that capitalism can be reformed ‘to work’. The similarity between Piketty’s view and that of Marx on how capitalism works to make the rich richer is obvious but there is a difference. Piketty is more concerned with the distribution of the income from capital while Marx was concerned with the accumulation of capital itself irrespective of who owns it (whether individuals, corporations or the state) or who benefits personally from it.

Piketty claims that the data his research uncovered ‘contradicted nearly all of the theories [of inequality] including in Marx and Ricardo.’ He doesn’t say what he thinks Marx’s theory was, but elsewhere he has made it clear that he is criticising the theory of the long-run tendency for the rate of profit to fall (a position held, in different forms, by both Marx and Ricardo). He doesn’t think that there is any such tendency. And of course, unlike Piketty, Marx never advocated trying to stop or reverse capital accumulation and/or the rich getting richer through legislation or government action. The distribution of property income amongst the rich can be changed, but that would make no difference to those whose income is derived from working.

Exploitation of wage slaves takes place at the point of production. Employment is not a route out of poverty, rather employment for wages or salaries is the source of wealth for the few and poverty whether real, actual, or relative for the many.

The global working class collectively produce all the wealth in society and has access to it collectively rationed by the wages and prices market profit system. The profit system can't help doing this. It's the only way it can work. Which is why it must go. One thing is certain. The Tories, LibDems and Labour—and now UKIP—have nothing to offer. They all support the profit system and are only squabbling over which of them should have a go at running it.

What's the alternative?

If we are going to improve things we are going to have to act for ourselves, without professional politicians or leaders of any kind. We are going to have to organise ourselves democratically to bring about a society geared to serving human needs not profits. Production to satisfy people's needs. That's the alternative. But this is only going to be possible if we control production and the only basis on which this can be done is common ownership and democratic control. In a word, socialism. We are talking about a world community without frontiers. Only on this basis can world poverty, hunger and the destruction of the environment be ended.

The socialist alternative to the profit system is:

1. Common ownership: no individuals or groups of individuals have property rights over the natural and industrial resources needed for production.

2. Democratic control: everybody has an equal say in the way things are run including work, not just the limited political democracy we have today.

3. Production for use: goods and services produced directly to meet people's needs, not for sale on a market or for profit.

4. Free access: all of us have access to what we require to satisfy our needs, not rationed as today by the size of our wage packet or State handout.

There has been an alternative since 1904 when the Socialist Party of Great Britain was formed. Their objective ,"The establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community. They have consistently advocated this post capitalist solution which consists of creating a new world organised democratically, globally, regionally, locally by ourselves without elected political leaders based upon the organising tenet of, "From each according to their ability to each according to their needs"

Common ownership means that society as a whole owns the means and instruments for distributing wealth. It also implies the democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth, for if everyone owns, then everyone must have equal right to control the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth.

Common ownership is not state ownership. State ownership is merely the ownership by the capitalist class as a whole, instead of by individual capitalists, and the government then runs the state enterprises to serve the capitalist class. In the self-proclaimed "communist" states the state enterprises served those who control the party/state apparatus. The working class did not own or control. It produced for a privileged minority.