Food Wasted

An article in the Toronto Star, November 28, emphasized the shocking amount of food that is being wasted, "One third of all food produced globally either never makes it to the table or doesn't get eaten". That represents 1.3 billion tonnes of food – the weight ten thousand CN towers-worth and nearly $US1 trillion The energy that goes into the production, harvest, storage, transportation, and packaging of that food – energy that is ultimately wasted – produces more than 3.3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide. Food thrown out from North American homes, European restaurants and Asian food markets is contributing to global climate change. 

However, it hardly makes sense to throw food away while millions are starving, but where does it say that capitalism makes sense. In a society that does make sense, food would be distributed so there would be no starvation and no waste. 

John Ayers

Nobody owns the future

WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE 

Becoming a socialist is an educational experience. It is about discovery and knowledge; and the experience changes people. Once people know and understand the essence of the socialist case—that various historical "epochs" are characterised by different kinds of class relationships (landowners and serfs in feudal societies, capitalists and workers in capitalist societies, etc.); that history is a record of class struggle; and that the economic system is prime, so that nowadays the interests of the capitalist class determine the dominant ideas and values in society—they will use this body of knowledge in analysing and responding to the world around them. Knowledge of the socialist case is like other knowledge, internalised. It affects the way that people think and behave; it changes the very essence of their thoughts and feelings. In a very real way, once people have been persuaded of the essence of the socialist case, they will never be the same again.

The capitalist world does its best, callously and indifferently to break us because we see the world as it is, but we are not content to accept it as it is and instead we see it as it could be. The questions we ask about the destructive conditions of our time has not lost their urgency. We live under the domination of a capitalist economy which functions by feeding off the common wealth of the people and by imposing restrictive and stunting conditions upon them. It will come as no surprise that the only “solution” capitalism knows to its problems will be at the detriment to the interest of the working class. In its relentless pursuit of profits capitalist enterprises have left a trail of human and environmental devastation of staggering proportions. Capitalism has turned us into an alienated and unskilled population forced into a lifestyle of abject poverty, prostitution, alcohol abuse and crime. In other words, they are forced into a life of wage-slavery at its bottom-most level. The Socialist Party holds a vision that global solidarity is the only way to bring about an end to this exploitative global system. We hear the voices of people who are aware that the capitalist system has only one driving force behind it, the profit motive, who bring to the class struggle a sense of communal responsibility to each other and the world around them. The many struggles of our fellow workers serve as a reminder that socialism is about knowing that an alternative to capitalist society is possible and that we can bring it about by understanding the source of our oppression and acting in a spirit of comradeship and solidarity with our fellow workers throughout the world. Is emotion to be rejected as futile and irrational? Not in the least. Emotion is an essential part of human experience: it is thanks to our emotions that we can empathise with others and support one another when we unite to achieve a common goal. It would be foolish, however, to imagine that a simple venting of our emotions will achieve any more than does a more impersonal approach.

One of the most frightening things about the recent recession and pending new one to large numbers of people was the destruction of their belief that “bad times” would never come back. As always, the working class are blamed for everything.

Capitalists do not invest in wealth production to give jobs to workers or to produce goods and services for needy people or to do any favours for anyone but themselves. To urge them to do so, as does the reformist Left, is like asking the Mafia to operate their criminal activities for the welfare of the public. In fact, a capitalist who ignored the aim of accumulating surplus value would soon go broke; this is true whether the role of the capitalist is played by an individual millionaire, a board of directors or the state. It is not part of the socialist ease against capitalism that it is objectionable because it is corrupt. Capitalism without corruption would be just as oppressive. The profit motive is not a liberating factor in production but one that stultifies production. The profit motive sets the limitations on what is possible in production and distribution. Against this end, the real material needs of the community take second place. Man under capitalism provides food, housing, clothing, health services, education, etc., within a tight economic framework conditioned by the prior requirements of profit. It is against this background that the enduring problems of society such as housing shortages, ugly urban environments and the fact that two-thirds of the world’s population do not get enough to eat must be understood.

Capitalism's politics seethes with organisations who trade on working class dissatisfaction with the system. Politics has plenty of people who attract brief attention with their baseless theories, write a book or two, pour out their anguished consciences in compelling speeches. Then reality strikes and the workers who were misled by them are left to still endure capitalism. What we want to change is immense. It’s getting rid of the whole structure. If we don’t use imagination nothing will change. Without change we will destroy the planet. The way things are organised is neither natural nor inevitable, but created by people. People have a wealth of skill, intelligence. creativity and wisdom. We could be devising ways of using and distributing the earth’s vast resources so that no one starves or lives in abject poverty, making socially useful things that people need — a society which is life-affirming in all its aspects.

The Scottish housing crisis

There are over 150,000 households on councils housing waiting lists in Scotland and 27,000 houses are long-term empty.

In 2014/15 there were 35,764 homelessness applications. There are 10,567 households, including 4,896 children, are living in temporary accommodation and 74,000 households are living in overcrowded conditions. 330,000 households now living in privately rented homes.

Shelter Scotland director Graeme Brown writes: “A good home is central to our wellbeing both as individuals and collectively as a nation. From improving our health outcomes to raising educational attainment, reducing reoffending and tackling inequality – all of these depend on whether or not people in Scotland have a decent home.”

Scotland risks creating a "generational gulf" between those with and without homes. Only the construction of at least 12,000 affordable homes every year for the next five could help bridge that gap, according to Shelter Scotland. Graeme Brown, explained: "Scotland's housing crisis risks creating a devastating generational gulf between the housing haves and the have nots. The high cost of housing and the stuttering supply of new affordable homes set against high and rising demand are at the heart of this crisis. Sadly, it is those on the lowest incomes and the most vulnerable people in our society who will bear the brunt of the housing crisis…” 

Back Where We Started

One reason for the above attitude is revealed in The Toronto Star, December 12. (read Pessimistic on this site) The article tells us that precarious work is now so common in the public sector that, in recent years, it has been the most unionized sector in the country. Now, this last bastion of long term jobs with benefits is disappearing. Although the provincial government vowed to tackle job insecurity, 44% of ministry postings in 2014 were for temporary positions. Province-wide, one third of all jobs are insecure. Of the 300 job postings for correctional officers, for example, not one single position was permanent. And so cutting off the workers from access to benefits and pensions. Some of the temporary jobs were for summer students and for workers to cover for things such as maternity leaves but the trend is quite clear – the public sector has taken a leaf from the private sector in reducing costs. 

So, we are getting back to where we started over one hundred years ago and start the fight for wages and benefits all over again, better, dump the whole wages system and substitute security for all. 

John Ayers.

We Wear the Badge of Socialist with Honour

Critiques of capitalism have been around since the beginning of capitalism yet mainstream society continues to operate as if “there is no alternative” to capitalism, but at the same time, the failures of capitalism are more evident than ever. Capitalism inevitably divides humanity through wars, racism, sexism, and class antagonism. Socialism not as an idealistic panacea but as a sensible process of overcoming humanity’s divisions and building economic and social democracy, where the resources and productive capacity of the world belong to its people, who use them to meet human needs rather than to generate private profits for a few owners. Reforms can never achieve this goal; the system must be overthrown, and that requires revolution. What’s crazier is to believe that capitalism can be saved by the capitalists themselves, like lions agreeing to hunt without claws. Since the poor are getting poorer and endless war is so good for business, war is destined to continue until the day the 99% rise up and crush the entire system of the 1% and create from the bottom up a new form of society. There is a pressing need to eliminate capitalism and replace it with a society of associated free producers oriented to the full development of human potential. It is needed because of capital’s drive to expand without limit threatens the destruction of the natural world. This means that the need to act is immediate. Certainly with the crisis of capitalism and ecological disaster in the not too distant future, the time is coming when to act may be too late.

History has amply demonstrated that the seizure of power by a tiny cabal, whether a political party or a clique of oligarchs, leads to despotism. Governments blindly serving their masters, acquiesce to the looting of state treasuries to bail out corrupt financial houses and banks while ignoring chronic unemployment and underemployment, along with stagnant or declining wages, crippling debt peonage, a collapsing infrastructure, and the millions left destitute and often homeless by deceptive mortgages and foreclosures. If we do not dismantle global capitalism we will descend into the chaos of failed states, mass migrations—which we are already witnessing—and endless war. Populations, especially in the global South, will endure misery and high mortality rates caused by collapsing ecosystems and infrastructures on a scale not seen since perhaps the black plague. There can be no accommodation with global capitalism. We will overthrow this system or be crushed by it. Socialists are unequivocal anti-militarists. They understand that there is no genuine social, political, economic or cultural reform as long as the militarists and their corporatist allies in the war industry continue to loot and pillage the state budget, leaving the poor to go hungry, workingmen and -women in distress, the infrastructure to collapse and social services to be slashed in the name of austerity.

Socialism is, above all, the movement of the working class for their own freedom and power in a full democracy. Karl Marx told exiled German revolutionaries in London in 1850 that the workers needed to form their own party to look out for their own interests:

“Even where there is no prospect whatsoever of them being elected, the workers must put up their own candidates in order to preserve their independence, to count their forces and to bring before the public their own revolutionary attitude and party standpoint. In this connection, they must not allow themselves to be seduced by such arguments as, for example, that by so doing they are splitting the Democratic Party and making it possible for the reactionaries to win. The ultimate intention of all such phrases is to dupe the proletariat. The advance which the proletarian party is bound to make by such independent action is infinitely more important than the disadvantages that might be incurred by the presence of a few reactionaries in the representative body.”

Too many self-styled socialists have abandoned the socialist principle of independent political action. They argue instead that whether or not to support a Democrat or an independent candidate is a question of tactics, not principle. The political independence of the Socialist Party is a major reason why it was viable. Bernie Sanders has now gone into coalition with the billionaire class he professes to oppose and that finances the Democratic Party. Sanders won’t see the billionaire’s money. But he has made it crystal clear that he will support their candidate by promising to support the winner of the Democratic presidential nomination. Eugene Debs said:

“The Republican and Democratic parties, or, to be more exact, the Republican-Democratic party, represent the capitalist class in the class struggle. They are the political wings of the capitalist system and such differences as arise between them relate to spoils and not to principles. With either of those parties in power, one thing is always certain, and that is that the capitalist class is in the saddle and the working class under the saddle.”

 As Debs also explained:

“Where but to the Socialist Party can these progressive people turn? They are now without a party and the only genuine Democratic Party in the field is the Socialist Party, and every true Democrat should thank Wall Street for driving him out of a party that is democratic in name only, and into one that is democratic in fact.”

As a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sanders does a disservice to Debs’ legacy and his commitment to working-class political independence. By entering the Democratic primaries with the promise of supporting Clinton as the lesser evil to the Republicans, Sanders is not helping the working class to organize, speak and act for itself. By trying to get Democratic politicians to say and do what the left wants them to say and do, the left has been engaged in a pathetic and hopeless attempt at political ventriloquism. It is dependent politics, powerless politics.

Frederick Engels told socialists in the U.S. when the labor movement in New York City nominated the non-socialist but progressive reformer Henry George for mayor in 1886:

“The first great step of importance for every country newly entering into the movement is always the organisation of the workers as an independent political party, no matter how, so long as it is a distinct workers’ party. And this step has been taken, far more rapidly than we had a right to hope, and that is the main thing. That the first program of this party is still confused and highly deficient, that it has set up the banner of Henry George, these are inevitable evils but also only transitory ones. The masses must have time and opportunity to develop, and they can only have the opportunity when they have their own movement–no matter in what form, so long as it is only their own movement–in which they are driven further by their own mistakes and learn wisdom by hurting themselves.”

We are ruled by so many “industrial complexes”—military, financial, energy, food, pharmaceutical, prison, and so on—that it is almost impossible to stay on top of every way we are getting screwed. The good news is that—either through independent media or our basic common sense—polls show that the majority of people know enough about the Afghanistan and Iraq and Syrian wars, Wall Street bailouts, and other corporate welfare to oppose these corporate policies. The elite’s money—and the influence it buys—is an extremely powerful weapon. So it is understandable that so many people who are defeated and demoralized focus on their lack of money rather than on their lack of morale. However, we must keep in mind that in war, especially in a class war when one’s side lacks financial resources, morale becomes even more crucial. Activists routinely become frustrated when truths about lies, victimization and oppression don’t set people free to take action. We as individuals or a society eat crap for too long, we become psychologically too weak to take action. Other observers of subjugated societies have recognized this phenomenon of subjugation resulting in demoralisation and fatalism, what Bob Marley called “mental slavery.” One should not be ashamed of having previously believed in capitalism lies; and it also helps to forgive and have compassion for those who continue to believe them. The liars we face are often quite good at lying. It helps to have a sense of humor about one’s predicament, to nurture respectful relationships, and to take advantage of a lucky opportunity—often created by the abuser’s arrogance— when it presents itself. Without individual self-respect, people do not believe that they are worthy of power or capable of utilizing power wisely, and they accept as their role being a subject of power. Without collective self-confidence, people do not believe they can succeed in wresting power away from their rulers. There are “democracy battlefields” —in our schools, workplace and elsewhere—where such respect and confidence can be regained every day. No democratic movement succeeds without determination, courage, and solidarity, but modern social scientists routinely ignore such non-quantifiable important variables, and so those trained only in universities and not on the streets can become blind to the most important meanings of human existence. A sign hanging in Albert Einstein’s office stated: “not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” Antonio Gramsci talked about “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.” This means that we should have the courage to look our social problems fully in the face and understand just how huge are the problems that we are up against. And yet, the second part of that means that we need to look for the places where a difference can be made, and put our hearts into those cracks and fissures. 

We need to hold in our hearts the possibility of a better world, not because we have candy-coated the problems or lied about what we can accomplish, but because we know that we do often win and make a difference, and that all the good things we have in the world are the results of those who have had the courage and commitment to have done this work before us.  We never really know until it happens whether or not we are living in that time when historical variables are creating opportunities for seemingly impossible change. Thus, we must prepare ourselves by battling each day in all our activities to regain individual self-respect, collective self-confidence, determination, courage, and solidarity. The way we get past capitalism is by building on the healthy non-capitalist aspects of our world while we also do pitched battle with the capitalist ones that we have a fair chance of winning against. Yes it is true that pro-capitalist forces have a lot of power. But so did slave-holding racists. We give ourselves hope.

The World Cup Comes to Glasgow

The Homeless World Cup will be played in Glasgow for the first time this summer. Edinburgh hosted the event in 2005 and Scotland's men's team won the trophy in 2007 and 2011.

The football tournament for men and women who have no fixed address will run for seven days from 10 July. Entry is free and tickets are not required.

George Square will be transformed into three football pitches with seating for an estimated 100,000 spectators.

A total of 51 countries are expected to take part in the competition, which first took place in Graz, Austria in 2003.

Pessimisic

A new poll by Fusion 2016 claims that young workers today are more pessimistic than those surveyed in 1986 (and they have good reason to be). 29% today, compared to 12% in 1986, felt that the American dream 'is not really alive', while 70% of whites without college degrees said the dream has become harder to achieve. Young Americans of colour showed no change responding to the same question despite the fact that median household income for whites age 25-34 was $58,197 compared to $43,957 for blacks. John Ayers

Environmental Damage

The November 21st issue of The Toronto Star contained three separate articles dealing with environmental damage. The new evidence from the Amazon rainforest, receding sea ice due to global warming forcing polar bears onto land where they may become a danger to humans, and vice versa. Rising sea levels are threatening to put the island of Diamniadio, off the coast of Senegal, under water. Thousand who live on the island aren't merely seeing their way of life threatened but their own safety. There is no hope that the powers in charge will be galvanized into any meaningful action. Profits have to be made quickly for them to survive in business, regardless of the long term impacts. That could well mean the extinction of us all, including the rich. John Ayers

The people can change things

“People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small.They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate.They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.” – Banksy

What can we do that respects every human being on the planet? Ever wondered what it might take to rid the world of conflict and live in peace and happiness? Some politicians and institutions are working feverishly to convince us that real social change is not possible. The goal is to consciously mislead those of us shut out of political and economic power, to make us doubt our ability to challenge those who hold political power, and demobilize us from taking action to change this oppressive, exploitative system.

For so many of us, following the law is considered a moral obligation. Police brutality and criminality is rampant in the US, the courts favor the wealthy, and we can longer even lead our lives privately thanks to the intrusion of state surveillance. And illegal and immoral wars rages all around us, murdering and destroying whole nations and cultures. History teaches us again and again that the law is an instrument of oppression, social control and plunder.

Freedom is about having choice, yet in today’s world, choice has come to mean a selection between limited options. Look no further than the phony parliamentary democracy. Two entrenched political parties are predominate and alternative voices are intentionally silenced by media neglect. Maverick thinkers are kept on a short leash, yanked back into conformity if they venture too far. We’re programmed to believe what the TV declares is true. We are told we are in competition with everyone and everything around us, including our neighbors and even nature. It’s us versus them. The try to deny the truth that life on this planet is infinitely inter-connected and the attempts to separate serves to enslave and isolate us. The State demands our conformity and obedience.

We, the people, can change things. No one’s going to do it for us—no politician, no technological innovation, no international agreement. If we want a different future, we are going to have to make it for ourselves by ourselves. To change everything, it's going to take everything we've got. Who are we? We are everyone, everywhere who cares what happens to everything—each other, humanity, nature, the planet. This year we will make a difference - possibly all the difference. We have to change the system in which we live. We have to be revolutionary. It’s up to us. And to change everything, we’ll have to have everyone we can, doing what we think best, giving everything we got. It is it absurd, isn’t it,  that we, 7 billion of us are living on the same planet, yet have grown further apart from each other. People are being woken up and are realizing how crazy it is to live in such a society.

The right way to think about the problems facing humanity is to be realistic. People talk about imaginary futures all the time and we’re constantly being promised amazing things which never materialise. Many people have finally awakened from the "each person for oneself" mad mentality. Things are changing. Sharing, collaborative economy concepts point towards a new direction, a direction of collaborating, of sharing, of helping, of togetherness.

The media tells us that we live in a world of greed, of inequality, poverty and war. We hear how people are becoming increasingly disconnected, that capitalism has undermined community. You don’t get people to change by scaring them. Instead, talk of the alternative in a way that it is so compelling that we eagerly seek change. We need to fight the system, not each other. When the world comes together, the system will fall.

We all know the world has gone wrong. When you realise something’s wrong with the world, the first step is to educate yourself about it and begin to have a grasp on the issue. Start with what’s closest to home and improve your knowledge and understanding of the issues you’re most interested in, and place them in their wider systemic context. Then reach out to others and start building a network where you can collaborate or communicate as a member of a community, sharing your interests and skills. Don’t become despondent if the seeds you sow don’t spring forth immediately. Individuals don’t possess the power to change the entire world. However, imagine a world where each of us did this. Imagine the transformation that could result. The change we want to see in the world, begins with planting the seeds of post-capitalism. We can change the world, but the key to unlock the process is in you and me. It is time for people to wake up and challenge capitalism’s apologists who continue to justify and protect the status quo while using rhetoric of change. People need to stop falling for the scam. The economic system is corrupt to the core. There is an opportunity for radical transformation and we must be ready. The social and labor union movements remain of critical importance. Every government and employer needs to be pushed from below. The key is for a movement to be a mass movement, not a fringe movement.

Very often in protest movements you will hear or read of capitalism but it is often accompanied by adjectives to qualify the word such as “monopoly capitalism”, “neo-liberal capitalism”, “global corporate capitalism”, as if a better form of capitalism is conceivable, as if it could be made ecological, social or humane, and compatible. Such people do not realize that as long as the motive of profit maximization and the principles of private ownership of means of production, selfishness, and competition remain – and these are the most essential elements of capitalism, little will change even if capitalism is transformed into produce sourced from local markets for local markets by worker-owned co-operatives. It would be a fraud to advocate a nicer type of capitalism as a solution to the social ills of the world. Such benevolent reforms cannot be implemented successfully within the framework of capitalism and its form of democracy. 

Tree Species Are In Danger

We are all well aware of the importance of a tropical forest such as the Amazon rain forest has on world climate. Now, according to new research, a disturbingly high number of tree species are in danger of becoming extinct there. Of the fifteen thousand species found there, as many as two thirds are considered rare and 57% are facing extinction. With 'increased governance' that figure could be reduced to 36%. Perhaps with good governance it could be reduced even further. Do not hold your breath waiting for this to happen. The madness of capitalism will continue until we, the workers, say otherwise. John Ayers.

Economists make astrologers look good

There is great confusion over the question of what is socialism. Our aim in the Socialist Party has always been to clarify our meaning. The word was first coined early in the 19th century in regard to the doctrines advocated by the French utopian socialists Charles Fourier and Henri Saint-Simon, and became common in England from about the time of Robert Owen – another Utopian socialist, in the 1830s. Their doctrines suffered from a major shortcoming, in that they were rooted in the economic and social conditions of the times, in the as yet undeveloped nature of the capitalist economy and with this, the lack of development of the working class as an independent political force. Why didn’t Marx and Engels call it the ‘Socialist Manifesto’? Because at the time ‘socialism’ its adherents consisted mainly of the ‘Fourierists’ and ‘Owenites’ and they had already declined into sects with various quack remedies.

Marx’s epic work ‘Capital’, became virtually the ‘bible of the working-class’. ‘Capital’ not only scientifically explained capitalism - on the basis of enormous, painstaking research - as a socio-economic formation still in a state of development. It also gave the workers a clear understanding of the methods by which the capitalists as a class – manufacturers, landowners and commercial capitalists – got from the labour of the workers their large incomes in the form of profit, rent and interest. All were forms of surplus value, having their origin in capitalist production which was based on the special value-creating commodity bought by the capitalists – labour power.

Thus Marx exposed the whole machinery of capitalist exploitation of the working-class. In doing this, he equipped the workers with a scientific understanding of society and of their class role as the chief executants of the transformation of capitalism into socialism. That is, he gave the workers an understanding of their historic mission in society. Engels points out that with the discovery of surplus value and historical materialism, socialism left behind utopias and became a science.

The whole world, operates above all else according to the rules of capitalism. Under capitalism, the basic goal of society becomes the private accumulation of wealth for the elite few. In other words, the major institutions of society value the production of goods and services that are capable of generating a maximum amount of profit. What is best for the common good is obscured by what is considered best for capital accumulation. Instead of viewing workers as equal members of the broader society, the owners and bosses see us as no more than a necessary resource in the field of production. In a word, we’ve become akin to the machines - we’ve become objects of exploitation. Working people (who are by far the vast majority of the population) are seen simply as a necessary resource for corporations and private owners.

Capitalist enterprises have no incentive to work for ordinary people, and instead they do whatever is necessary to enrich the owners of their corporate stock. Billionaires like Donald Trump can use the bankruptcy laws to escape debt but average people can’t get relief from burdensome mortgage or student debt payments. Optimists say 2016 will be better than 2015 which may turn out to be true, but only imperceptibly so.

The median wage is 4 percent below what it was in 2000, adjusted for inflation. The median wage of young people, even those with college degrees, is also dropping, adjusted for inflation. That means a continued slowdown in the rate of family formation—more young people living at home and deferring marriage and children – and less demand for goods and services. At the same time, the labor participation rate—the percentage of Americans of working age who have jobs—remains near a 40-year low. Workers have lost power that came from joining together in unions.

Our labour is used not as a means to uplift society as a whole, but as a tool to make a select few very rich. On the job, we are often compelled to work under the near dictatorship of the boss. Even when we work for ourselves, we are still dictated to by the wealthy that hire us, the corporations who subcontract us, as well as the ebb and flow of the capitalist economy. In short, we are compelled to engage in work in order to create a massive overall profit that we will never see, and if we don’t like it, and we speak up, we face the likelihood of being fired. The schools teach us that this is democracy. For forty to sixty hours a week we live under a dictatorship in our workplaces, and this is acceptable? We struggle to get by on the sweat of our labour.

The bottom line is that we, as the majority, are standing at a crossroads at which we can choose the path of capitalism, or, the road towards direct democracy, local control, and the social advancement of the common good. We can choose a way that will allow our children and grandchildren to experience the independence, democracy, self-sufficiency, and natural beauty that are the gifts handed down from our common ancestors. Envision a system whereby all major decisions are made through local town or neighbourhood meetings. The future establishment of direct democracy will, in a large part, rely on the extension of the power of town meetings.

Scotland welcomes migrants but...

At Glasgow University’s Wolfson Medical School 30 doctors –mainly from Iraq, Syria, Iran and Sri Lanka – who were being offered the chance to fulfil their medical calling and participate in the New Refugee Doctors Project. By granting membership to the new refugee doctors, the BMA is giving them immediate access to training and journals and support for their statutory clinical exams and assessments. As well as support for sitting stringent English language tests, these men and women will have unpaid work placements in local GP practices and mentoring support from practising doctors in Scotland. This template is that it can be modified and moulded for teachers, engineers, scientists and programmers among future and existing refugees and asylum-seekers.

The arrival of asylum-seekers, many with valuable and highly specialised skills, provides an opportunity for Scotland.  Instead the UK Home Office will decree from 1 April, non-EU nationals who have been resident in the UK for five years or more and who don’t earn at least 35k per annum will be deported. 

This is how socialism will be (4/4)

We have to acknowledge that even amongst people who call themselves socialists, there is a wide variety of understandings and misunderstandings about the real meaning of the term ‘socialism.’ In the old days socialism was simply what we called the society of the free and equal men and women and was defined as the rule of the people. This still rings true.

The confusion of terminology can be illustrated by those who called state-ownership in the old Soviet Union “socialism”. Was this what Marx and Engels meant when they talked about socialism? The authentic socialist movement, as it was conceived by its founders and as it has developed over the past century, cannot be improved on the classic statement of the Communist Manifesto, which said:

“All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority.”

The authors of the Communist Manifesto linked socialism and democracy together as end and means. The “self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority” cannot be anything else but democratic, if we understand by “democracy” the rule of the people, the majority. The claim—that the task of reconstructing society on a socialist basis can be farmed out to politicians and intellectuals, while the workers remain without vote or voice in the process—is just as foreign to the thoughts of Marx and Engels as the reformist idea that socialism can be handed down to the workers by degrees by the capitalists who exploit them.

This principle is reiterated by Marx and Engels when they declared that “the emancipation of the working class is the task of the workers themselves”. That is the language of Marx and Engels—“the task of the workers themselves”. That was just another way of saying—as they said explicitly many times—that the socialist re-organisation of society requires a workers’ revolution. Such a revolution is unthinkable without the active participation of the majority of the working class, which is itself the big majority of the population. Nothing could be more democratic than that. “The first step”, said the Communist Manifesto, “in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy.”

That is the way Marx and Engels formulated the first aim of the revolution—to make the workers the ruling class, to establish democracy, which, in their view, is the same thing. From this precise formulation it is clear that Marx and Engels did not consider the limited, formal democracy under capitalism, which screens the exploitation and the rule of the great majority by the few, as real democracy. In order to have real democracy, the workers must become the “ruling class”. Only the revolution that replaces the class rule of the capitalists by the class rule of the workers can really establish democracy, not in fiction, but in fact. So said Marx and Engels.

They never taught that the simple nationalisation of the forces of production signified the establishment of socialism. That’s not stated by Marx and Engels anywhere. Still less did they sanctioned, the idea that socialism would create a government bureaucracy without freedom and without equality. Marx and Engels defined socialism as a classless society—with abundance, freedom and equality for all; a society in which there would be no state, not even a democratic ‘workers’ state,’ to say nothing of a state in the monstrous form of a bureaucratic dictatorship of a privileged minority controlled by its ruthless secret police and gulags. Marx and Engels saw the state as an instrument of class rule, for which there will be no need and no place in the classless socialist society. Forecasting the socialist future, the Communist Manifesto said: “In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association.” N.B.: “an association”, not a state—“an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all”.

The Socialist Party makes it clear that we stand for democracy as the only road to socialism. Without freedom of association and organisation, without the right to form groups and parties of different tendencies, there is and can be no real democracy anywhere. Capitalism is a system of minority rule, and the principal beneficiaries of capitalist democracy are the small minority of exploiting capitalists; scarcely less so than the slave-owners of ancient times were the actual rulers and the real beneficiaries of the Athenian democracy. But even so, with all that, a little democracy is better than none. We socialists have never denied that. We have all the more reason to value every democratic provision for the protection of human rights and human dignity; to fight for more democracy, not less. We recognise that the demand for human rights and democratic guarantees, now and in the future, is in itself progressive. The socialist task is not to deny democracy, but to expand it and make it more complete. That is the true socialist tradition. The Marxists, throughout the century-long history of our movement, have always valued and defended bourgeois democratic rights, restricted as they were; and have utilised them for the education and organisation of the workers in the struggle to establish full democracy by abolishing the capitalist rule altogether. The right of trade union organisation is a precious, democratic right, but it was not “given” to the workers. It took a mighty labour struggle to establish in reality the right of union organisation in mass-production industry. Yet workers have neither voice nor vote in the management of the industry which they have created, nor in regulating the speed of the assembly line which consumes their lives. Full control of production in auto and steel and everywhere is still the exclusive prerogative of “management”, that is, of the absentee owners, who contribute nothing to the production. What’s democratic about that? The claim that we have an almost perfect democracy doesn’t stand up against the fact that the workers have no democratic rights in industry at all, as far as regulating production is concerned; that these rights are exclusively reserved for the parasitic owners, who never see the inside of a factory.

In the past some would use “industrial democracy” as the definition of socialism, the extension of democracy to our places of work, the democratic control of industry by the workers themselves, with private ownership eliminated. This socialist demand for real democracy was taken for granted for a time when the socialist movement was still young and uncorrupted. We seldom hear anything like that today. The defence of “democracy” always turns out in practice to be a defence of “democratic” capitalism.  

And always, in time of crisis, politicians who talk about democracy excuse and defend all kinds of violations of even this limited bourgeois democracy. They are far more tolerant of lapses from the formal rules of democracy by the capitalists than by the workers. They demand that the class struggle of the workers against their exploiters be conducted by the formal rules laid down by the legislation enacted by their employers. They say it has to be strictly “democratic” all the way. When the capitalists cuts corners around their own professed democratic principles, the media have a habit of looking the other way, revealing its class bias.

Capitalism does not survive as a social system by its own strength, but by its influence within the workers’ movement, reflected and expressed by the votes the pro-capitalist parties receive. So the fight for workers’ democracy is inseparable from the fight for socialism, and is the condition for its victory. Workers’ democracy is the only road to socialism. 

This is how socialism will be (3/4)

Opponents of the Socialist Party say that we are dreamers. They tell us that because of human nature our fellow workers are innately greedy, selfish and evil and cannot change. Our reply. Is that this very same human nature argument was advanced against those who wished to abolish slavery and its cruelty and exploitation. Aristotle and Plato, defended slavery with the “human nature” argument. Slavery has been abolished. It is a big mistake to maintain that human nature does not change. Everything changes in Nature and in life. Everything is in a process of transformation. Movement is the universal law of everything that exists. That is the conclusion all science of our era comes: to the science of celestial bodies (astronomy), the natural and biological sciences, social and historical science, all. Everything evolves. Everything is constantly being modified. Everything changes. It is impossible to bathe twice in the same stream for water flows. We never meet the same man twice because during the interval he has grown older, his constitution and his character changed; he is no longer the same. The human species also has evolved. Even the planets themselves, the sun, the moon, the stars have not always been what they are today. If everything changes, is subject to transformation and modification, how is it possible to believe for a moment that the present system of property will always remain the same? That would be, indeed, contrary to nature. Today’s dream is tomorrow’s reality.

It has also been said that if men do not have the spur of hunger and want and of the desire to make profit they will become lazy. To argue thus is to forget the necessity for clothing, feeding and sheltering oneself. He or she who does not work neither shall eat. It is to forget too, that idleness is not the characteristic of a man in his sane senses. Laziness is a social malady, an outcome of our system, which is in itself a stimulant to laziness. It assures all riches, all the pleasures of life – in theory – to those who work the least possible, to the idle rich, to the social parasites. Laziness develops from the intolerable conditions of forced and excessive labour in unhealthy and infected factories. How can a person work with enthusiasm when he or she knows that his or her work will go to the enrichment of others? When the producers know that the products of their work will belong to them they will throw overboard the old repugnance which forced labour engenders in them. Work well regulated and apportioned will become attractive. It will become a joy and a pleasure, and this is because work is necessary for the physical and mental well-being of man. Modern science itself establishes the vital necessity for work.

In capitalist society the world is divided into states with opposed interests. The world is split up, lined with frontiers and barriers. At each moment storms are brewing. Nowhere is there security. If there is talk of peace there is also preparation for war. There is only one way to avoid new slaughter – a world revolution which will replace the struggle between nations by international co-operation. Socialism preaches solidarity among the producers and its slogan is “Workers of the world, Unite!” Humanity must choose between the capitalist system which leads to destruction and the reciprocity through the worldwide socialisation of the forces of production. Socialism will make of the earth one country single and indivisible.

Human history is also a record of perpetual change. Slavery was replaced by semi-slavery – serfdom which gave way to wage-slavery, the last form of slavery. The wage system will give way to socialism which will bring to an end the exploitation of man by man and slavery in all its forms. Everything in our lives has changed. And yet some seek to maintain a society in its old barbaric state of struggle and poverty. There is no reason whatsoever to despair of human progress. What appears to us impossible today is done tomorrow. Only a socialist society by putting the land, and technology at the service of all who work in the fields and in the factories, will guarantee real liberty to all. The state-machine will disappear together with the parasitic class whose privileges it safeguards. The producing members of society, will be free to spend their time at leisure. All the natural wealth freed from the control of the property owners, all the inexhaustible riches of science and human art will be at their disposal. Freedom will then cease to be a slogan and will become a reality, an everyday fact the property of all.

‘Murdered by the Tories'

Family of a mentally ill man who killed himself after his benefits were mistakenly halted have blamed the Tories for his suicide. Paul Donnachie was found dead at his home after an error saw his payments stop and he owed more than £3,000 in unpaid rent. The Glasgow man, who suffered from "severe" mental health issues, had been declared fit to work after he failed to attend a work capability assessment in June.

Upon realising their mistake, the council sent Mr Donnachie a letter telling him his benefits would be reinstated. But by the time it arrived it was too late - it was found unopened in his flat along with his body. It’s thought he had been dead for two months. The council letter informed him he had to reply within 14 days to have his housing benefit reinstated. Because he failed to do that, his arrears continued to build. His body was found when the council came to evict him. After his death, the authorities continue to hound him. One letter demanded £3002.72 that he owed in council tax arrears. They only discovered he was dead when they came to evict him.

Mr Donnachie's sister Eleanor told the Daily Record: “The Government murdered him. They are driving ordinary people to suicide. Paul suffered severe mental health problems. He failed to attend a work capability assessment on June 30 last year and was later told his Employment and Support Allowance was being stopped." Eleanor, from Coatbridge, Lanarkshire, said: “Something needs to be done. “The Conservative Government aren’t living in the real world and have no idea how people live. They don’t care about working-class people and the vulnerable.

Paul Donnachie’s disability benefit was ended in June 2015 after he missed four work capability assessments by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) who insisted he was capable of working and said the benefits cut would be backdated to June 3. The DWP subsequently contacted Glasgow City Council, who stopped Mr Donnachie's housing and council tax benefits. Again, the cut was backdated, so he was already in arrears with his rent and council tax. Mr Donnachie didn’t know where to turn after his benefits were stopped. In September, as he struggled to cope with no income, he applied to Glasgow City Council for a Scottish Welfare Crisis Grant to pay for gas, electricity and food. But his application was rejected and he was advised that if he wanted to eat, he should go to a food bank.

In November, a study from Oxford and Liverpool universities linked the DWP’s hated “fit for work” assessments to 590 suicides in England alone.

This is how socialism will be (2/4)

Many believe socialism to be unattainable yet the world about us is falling to pieces. The need for revolution is being realised more and more. Who are the one class that no society can do without? Those who work. Capitalist society cannot exist without the working-class. It is the working-class which sets in motion its formidable technical and mechanical apparatus. The working-class, by seeing after the functioning of large-scale production, by work in huge factories and stores, brings into existence organised work on a collective basis. And this collective work ought to show more clearly the exploitation of the individual. Modern production is mass production. But without doubt, profit therefrom is individual; that is to say, the riches collectively produced are appropriated by individual capitalists. As soon as workers becomes conscious of this fact, of this permanent scandal of capitalist society, they will begin to revolt against a state of things which ensures for the capitalist class the lion’s share and will demand its rightful due. Capitalism is maintained by class power and will only be displaced by other class power. Society in order to live must produce. In order to produce, use is made of the means of production which everyone knows; the land, the mines and machines. These means of production turn into means of domination when they are not at the disposal of society as a whole but are the private property of one class. In this manner, the great landowners through possession of the first instrument of labour – which is the land – were in a position to exploit first the slaves and later on the serfs, The landlord said: “The land belongs to me and you will be my slave and work for me on my land,” The peasant thus comes under the sway of the landowner. Each class which owns the means of production seeks to obtain political power, control of the State and the armed forces in order to safeguard its exclusive property, and maintain its monopoly of ownership.

Socialism is rule by the working people. They will decide how socialism is to work and the task of socialists therefore is to help guide the transfer of political power from capitalists to working people. Socialism means for the first time people taking charge of their own destiny. Humanity has so far been incapable of taking charge because of the class divisions that make it impossible to take decisions for the development of mankind as a whole. The result has been what we see today. Present-day society, based on a mistaken and blind individualism, reaches the very highest pinnacle of absurdity. At the top, we have a small class of owners who have in their possession all the means of happiness but who are incapable of making use of it because they are condemned to live apart from the working people which hates them. They pass their lives fearful of their privileges, fighting all forward-looking progressive movements which threaten their reign. They are more and more obliged to live as it were in a fortress, or gated communities as the real estate agents describe them. Being condemned on account of their riches to a life of idleness which is repugnant to human nature, the majority of them enjoy neither physical nor moral health. On the other hand we have the immense majority of the producing class, the workers condemned to routine work which undermines their health – work without any distraction and with the concomitant of numerous accidents and illness. Enforced idleness is the lot of the working-class on the onset of each periodic economic crisis. Disease and illness, products of poverty, decimates the toilers. Alcoholism and drug addiction through which they seek forgetfulness of their miserable lives, poisons them and helps to bring about their physical and moral degeneration. The life of the worker is twice as short as that of the rich. On the one hand, badly spent and unhappy lives among the upper classes, and on the other, no possibility of leading a normal life among the oppressed toilers. Here indeed is the true picture of society based on an internecine conflict between different classes. It is not the producing class, the creators of life, who rule but the parasites who dominate and oppress it.

Modern technology has created all the conditions for well-being and even luxury. If applied rationally our society would become a heaven on earth but through the absurd profit system in which we live, we find ourselves in a veritable hell. Mankind, instead of co-operating in the building harmonious planet, finds itself occupied in a war of each against all. The result is a useless social waste.

The victory of socialism is desirable because only socialism can put an end to the exploitation of man by man and of women by men. Because only socialism can put an end to the struggle for the re-division of the world, for national possessions, which takes place between the different continents, nations and races. Only socialism can put an end to war and poverty and the innumerable injustices which are an everyday feature of our lives. Socialism by suppressing the cause of these rivalries and antagonism – the monopoly of the means of production – forms a new society based on the principles of human solidarity and reciprocity, and economic soundness. It will put an end to all waste and all unproductive work. It will abolish antagonism of interests and reduce authority to a minimum, making it function not in the interests of a class but in the interests of society as a whole. Socialism consists of a rationalisation of production, of all our activities and our very lives themselves. And that, not in the interests of some, but for the benefit of all. Socialism is possible now. It is possible because it corresponds to the interests of all; because it satisfies the goodwill, the well-being and the common interest of the immense majority. Socialism is possible because the forces of production, thanks to machinery and robotics, have reached an unheard of scale of development. They only need to be put in action for the benefit of everyone in order that all members of society may be assured of complete well-being. Socialism is possible because men and women are more and more brought into close co-operation in pooling their efforts. All sorts of associations and organisations, political and intellectual are accustoming mankind to regulate work and life. Socialism everyday becomes more possible through the social education of the working-class, organised as it is in political parties, trade unions, and co-operatives. Rational organisation of production becomes more urgent as a consciousness of solidarity develops among the producers. The immense army of organised producers can take over control of mass production; everything stands ready by their own very nature to be placed in the hands of the workers who produce them.

The Council Cuts

Scotland faces the prospect of waves of industrial unrest, 'poverty wages', neighbourhood deterioration and rising rates of mental health problems as cuts to council budgets start to bite, it has been claimed. The decision by the country's 32 local authorities to reluctantly accept the Scottish Government's financial package for the year ahead has sparked warnings that the coming weeks will see the human cost of the biggest cash blow to councils in a generation unfold. Councils face a £1billion black hole in the next 12 months, with a £500million cut from Government and the same again in spending pressures.

One major union said the upshot will see many low-paid workers "pushed from stable home environments to foodbanks", adding that neighbourhoods in urban areas would witness a notable deterioration in quality of life as authorities make cutbacks to refuse collection, roads maintenance and parks upkeep.  The trade union Unison said that in South Lanarkshire around a dozen facilities for people with learning disabilities or the elderly will shut, up to 200 posts for people working with children with support issues or providing support to teachers will be axed and the number of social workers and social work assistants reduced. Argyll and Bute sets its budget today and if the proposals are accepted, Unison claims hundreds of council jobs will go including 20 per cent of their clerical assistants, classroom assistants, janitors and all 10 of the high school librarians.

 Benny Rankin, the GMB union's organiser in Glasgow, said: "Many of our members will lose around £1,000 in changes to their terms and conditions. That's enough to push you from a stable family environment to poverty wages and foodbanks. Back courts in many places are already in a state. Changes here will make that much worse with overflowing bins and industrial action taking us back to the 1970s."

National GMB organiser Alex McLuckie added: "You're talking up to half of all support staff in schools going in some areas. That's people working with children with disabilities, while home care becomes a pit stop for staff. "We've calculated around 9000 job losses. Nothing we're seeing is alerting that."

Meanwhile, the group which represents care providers for adults with disabilities and for older people through to those with homeless and addiction issues, said there was unprecedented anxiety amongst its 200,000-plus service users and 45,000 staff. The Coalition of Care and Support Providers in Scotland (CCPS) said the Government's requirement councils top up salaries for care sector staff meant they would simply spend less on those who need the services. CCPS director Annie Gunner Logan said: "There are only so many ways disabled people needing a shower can 'do things differently'."

Ian Hood, of the Learning Disability Alliance, said many people requiring social care, particularly younger people with "unfolding needs", would no longer meet eligibility criteria as councils cut back. He added: "We're already seeing people's care cut from 16 hours to three, leaving them stranded at home. Other services are no longer considered essential, like employment services for disabled adults. This keeps the cycle of poverty going and with the closure of day centres means increased mental health issues for many people and their carers."

Scotland - the Tax Haven

A legal loophole that has made Scotland a soft-touch for international money-launderers and tax evaders, according to critics. The legislation governing SLPs date from 1907. The English and Scottish Law Commissions recommended reform as far back as 2003 but no action has been taken by successive UK governments since. 

Scottish limited partnerships (SLPs), The Herald revealed, are being marketed across Eastern Europe as tax avoidance vehicles. They are promoted across Eastern Europe as "Scottish zero-per-cent-tax companies" in the "Scottish offshore zone". This is because - unlike English partnerships - the Scottish firms do not have to provide financial reports or register for tax if it conducts its business overseas. Such firms - often registered in unglamorous housing schemes - were used as part of an alleged elaborate scam to loot $1bn from Moldovan banks.

The number of SLPs has more than doubled since 2009 on the back of a booming Scottish cottage industry creating them for foreign investors, especially from the eastern and south-eastern edges of the European Union. Capital flight, legal or illegal, is a huge issue in the former Soviet Union. Nearly $60bn left Russia alone in 2015. And that was a huge improvement from from than $150bn in 2014.

SLPs are now part of a range of offshore products that law enforcement experts say can be exploited to funnel money out of some of Europe's poorest nations. A classic scheme sees an SLP set up with two shareholders or "members" which are themselves companies based in Panama and the British Virgin Islands, where corporation tax is zero per cent. The resulting SLP carries the kudos of a "British" company and can open a bank account elsewhere, such as Cyprus or Latvia, but has no need to register for UK tax or provide full financial accounts in Scotland. Such a firm can then be used to move money from east to west without attracting the attention of officialdom.

One typical Russian-language advertisement for SLPs offers partnerships, complete with "nominal" or front-man shareholders and a Scottish legal address, for just 2000 Euros. The whole process takes just seven weeks. Another firm, with addresses in England, Cyprus and Russia says it can provide an off-the-shelf "ready-made" SLP in half an hour. The advert says SLPs are an "ideal solution for any investor who wants to work with a company registered in the European Union but at the same time exploit a tax-free instrument".

"Suffragette" - Film Review

The recent movie, "Suffragette" is well worth seeing but buyer beware. Though Meryl Streep is in it, she only appears as Mrs. Pankhurst for about three minutes in which she makes a speech that inspires the main character. This is a young laundress who becomes active in the movement. The strong point of the movie is that so many fictionalized versions of female suffrage struggles have shown them from a rich person's point of view. This main character is from the working class. It also focuses on the plight women where regarding custody battles. Legally, men had the final say in any decisions affecting the children. In the final analysis, the movie falls down by making it seem that political equality between the sexes is the main event but, in capitalism, there is no equality between the sexes or within the sexes. 

John Ayers.

Blarney

Tongue in cheek award for December – Spanish company, Grifolos, a world leader in blood-plasma products, announced it was moving its $100 million distribution centre and treasury department from where all payments are made, to Dublin. The Irish government has just announced a new business-friendly corporate tax category. Grifolo insists it is not 'tax engineering' but has moved to Dublin to take advantage of the skilled work force there. Those who believe that, please raise your hands. John Ayers.