A real social revolution

The Earth’s greatest single resource is its people. The world could be a paradise for its inhabitants but it definitely is not a paradise for the majority of people. Who and what is responsible? It is the capitalists and their profit-seeking system. Our planet is ruled for and by capitalists for their own interests. What is wrong with the world is the way society is organised, the “system of society” which prevails. Two main features of this society are it is divided into rich and poor—a tiny handful of rich (1 per cent of the population own more than half the wealth) who need not do any work, and the overwhelming majority who toil their whole lives through and that wars, involving incalculable suffering to the people, are a regular occurrence. Resources are squandered in production of weapons of mass destruction, armies, navies and air forces by the global capitalist players.

It is a system of exploitation. By exploitation we mean living off the labour of other people. There have been previous forms of exploitation. In slave society, the slave-owners lived off the labour of the slaves who were their property. In feudal society, the feudal lords lived off the forced labour of the serfs. In capitalist society the worker is neither a slave nor yet a serf, i.e. forced to do free, unpaid labour for a master. But he or she is exploited just the same, even though the form of this exploitation is not as open and clear as was the case with the slaves and the serfs. The essence of exploitation under capitalism consists in this — that the workers, when set to work with raw materials and machinery, produce far more in values than what is paid out by the capitalists in wages. In short, they produce a surplus which is taken by the capitalists and for which they are not paid. Thus they are robbed of the values they produce. This is the source of capitalist profit. Capitalism holds no future for the humanity other than the destruction of the environment, poverty, disease and war. Capitalism’s not natural and it need not be permanent. But that’s up to you. Human nature does not exist beyond eating sleeping and procreating and socialising. Human behaviour is social. Competition breeds competition, cooperation breeds cooperation. If human nature ruled out cooperation for the greater good, even capitalism could not exist. The human nature argument is a slavish,religious/ ideological reinforcing, nonsense one.

For workers, the problem is capitalism. We produce all the wealth—in fact we run the useful parts of society from top to bottom—but we don't get all the benefits of our production of goods and our running of services and we don't have direct control of the society we run. Our economic function under capitalism is to produce wealth for an exploiting and parasitical class, the capitalist class. Since the 19th Century, these basic facts haven't changed. We had capitalism then and we've got capitalism now. Workers were exploited them we're exploited now. The rich had luxury then and they've got it now. Workers had the problems of housing, making ends meet, and economic insecurity then and we've got the same problems now. This is in spite of the fact that we produce every bit of useful wealth that becomes available and run all the useful services that people need.

Capitalism produced for profit then and it produces for profit now. When there was no prospect of profit then, workers became unemployed. It is exactly the same now. At the turn of the century the privileges of the rich were based on their ownership of the means of production and all natural resources and on their control over workers through the state machine. It is exactly the same now.

We live in a world where solidarity and mutual support has been reduced to charity and volunteering and with a victim’s mentality, blaming one another and deferentially pleading with governments and our employers rather than reacting our exploitation and oppressions with strikes and revolutionary demands. We have lost any sense of our real class power.

We must establish a world where people collectively plan and produce, share and care for one another. It isn't enough just to have a clear understanding of what causes the problems of the working class; we must also have a very clear understanding of how they could be solved. That solution is socialism. This will be a practical and straightforward system of useful work producing useful goods free from the economic constraints of production for profit, without any exchange of any kind and without therefore the use of money.

Production will be humanised in the sense that human beings won't have a price put on either their ability to work or the product of their work. Jobs won't have a price on them, nor will goods, nor will needs. Instead of working for wages people will cooperate, and this will bring work under the control of those who carry it out. It will be the self-determined activity of individuals responding to the needs of the community of which they form a part and who have the responsibility and the real power of decision-making and action. That is the sane system we must establish and it is the only sensible definition of socialism.

When will you all wake up to an obsolete system which has food, clothing, and shelter, indeed everything useful, as commodities for sale on the market with a view to realising a profit for the few while the wealth creators (working class) receive a rationing of access via the waged slavery system?

What we must do, is make common cause with workers worldwide to remove the capitalist class private, corporate and state, ownership of all the means and instruments for producing wealth, which leads to rationed access (wages and salaries) for the useful working class and privileged access and further accumulation of the spoils for the parasite class (capitalists). This cannot be reformed in any human-centred way. A real social revolution will establish a post-capitalist society of common ownership and democratic control globally, with production for use and not for sale on a market, free access according to needs and the world for the workers.

A Letter from a Glasgow Docker (1947)

From the June 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since 1932, when the Glasgow dockers broke away from the Transport and General Workers’ Union and formed their present organisation, the Scottish T. & G. W. Union, they have opposed the English dockers’ struggles for decasualisation of dock labour. Recruitment to the Glasgow Union has (with one exception) been always based on the hereditary principle and restricted to docker’s sons.

Coincident with the forming of a Ministry of War Transport Dock-Labour Scheme in April, 1941, was the heavy bombardment of the main English ports which resulted in Glasgow becoming the busiest port in Britain. To meet with this situation, the Government transferred hundreds of dockers from London, Liverpool, Hull, etc., to Glasgow and allowed about 1,500 local men who could prove work at the port before September, 1939, to join the scheme. The English dockers (members of the T.G.W. union or “Bevin’s union, as it is dubbed) were treated in a disgusting manner by the Glasgow Union. Glasgow union members had priority for employment which meant that the most unpleasant, irksome and ill-paid jobs were the lot of the English dockers.

The 1,500 Glasgow men were not allowed to join the union and were prevented from joining any union or forming one.

With the end of hostilities, the English dockers were sent to their home ports, most of them with bitter feelings regarding the Glasgow Union.

When the National dock strike took place in October-November, 1945, the 1,500 Glasgow (non-union) dockers were the first in Scotland to join the national movement for 25s. a day, etc.

One outcome of the 1945 strike was the agreement to take joint action in any subsequent disputes, an agreement endorsed by the Glasgow union membership.

In January-May, 1946, the 1,500 Glasgow “non-union’’ men were dismissed without a word of protest from the local union, in fact the dismissals were approved of by the union. 

When the recent strike took place in Glasgow about the “redundancy” of 500 union members, the union coined the slogans “Square deal for the Clyde” and “Scottish cargoes for Glasgow."

Faced with the fact that in July the new, Government-approved, dock-labour scheme commences and its certainty of further redundancies in London, Liverpool and elsewhere, some of the dockers in London (not members of the T.G.W. Union) went on strike for a few days to demonstrate their solidarity with the Glasgow men.

The Glasgow men are now back at work on the agreement that an inquiry be made on the needs of the port of Glasgow.

The results of that inquiry won't be substantially different from the “Fact-finding” committee set up by the Government which recommended the dismissal of 800 men—watered down to 500.

The Glasgow men take a very narrow and insular view of T.U. activity, and are only militant on local, sectional questions.

The larger unions, whilst democratic in formal structure, are still dominated by rank and file apathy which permits the sway of the permanent officials.

The whole dock industrial scene is one of internecine intrigue and struggles between the smaller unions and the T.G.W. Union.

The unofficial “National Port-Workers Defence Committee’’ is, despite its naive trust in the Labour Government, probably the brightest development so far, from a class standpoint.

As certain as anything can be is national dock disputes after July of this year when the Government rationalises the dock industry.

These are, briefly, the facts. The whole dock union organisation throughout Great Britain is in ferment with the approach of entire Ministry of Labour control of the industry and strikes, disputes, and union wrangling will be accentuated.

T. A. Mulheron

Gun Control? No Thanks

We all know that the gun laws in the US are ridiculous and why – so the gun manufacturers can keep on selling their products and make huge profits, and that they command so many lobbyists and so much capital that they can control a government on that question. An editorial in the Toronto Star revealed that gun violence in that country claims a life every sixteen minutes; more Americans die from guns in six months than died from terrorism for the last twenty-five years and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars; more Americans have died from guns since 1968 than on the battlefields of all the wars in American history; American children are fourteen times more likely to die from guns than children in other developed countries. Incredible figures, unbelievable that a few can control the many and continue the slaughter in the name of profit. Just hours before the San Bernadino massacre, a group of doctors went to Capitol Hill to present a petition of more than 2,000 signatures demanding an end to the two- decade funding freeze that has effectively killed public research into gun violence in the US and with it, any legislation that may have followed.

 In 1996, the Republican-controlled Congress stripped $2.6 million from the budget of The Centre for Disease Control that was earmarked for gun violence research and instead passed a bill that expressly forbid that agency from doing any research that "may be used to advocate or promote gun control." The result of this law and many others over time can be deduced from the figures for gun deaths per million in other developed countries – Japan, 0.1, Norway, 0.9, England, 0.9, Australia, 1.7, France, 2.0, Germany, 2.1, Canada, 5.6, US, 31.2. Only Mexico and Columbia (121.7 and 446.3 respectively) with their own special drug war problems have higher numbers. 

John Ayers.

Educate, Agitate, Organise.

All the wealth of the capitalist class springs from slavery - wage slavery. Collectively all wealth flows from the labour of the working class. Capitalism cannot function otherwise. We need to abolish it not reform it. Wage slavery in all industries is never coupled with generous terms and conditions. The Socialist Party support unions taking on the employers whenever they do so. This is an essential part of the class struggle but can only ever be defensive of workers interests.

It is past time to do away with capitalism and Capital, buying and selling, money, banks insurance, war, nations, wages or prices and usher in globally, the post-capitalist age of abundance In a world capable of creating a abundance of wealth, landing men on other planets, exploring space and building ever more sophisticated weapons of mass destruction, the problem is of ownership and control of the means and instruments for creating wealth with a rationed (via wage-slavery) distribution of resources. Take power for yourself. Abolish the wages system. Establish common ownership, democratic control, free access socialism.

Wages are a rationing of access to societies gross product.  The people who move wealth around are also wage slaves, some highly rewarded, but most in medium earning brackets and a necessary part of the production process inside a capitalist market system.  It is intense global competition in a shrinking global market which leads to crisis. It is the rate of profit which is fairly consistent, but the means of production requires ever more intense exploitation of hands on production workers and the service sector.

It is capitalism itself which is out of sync with the potential possibilities of its technology.  It is possible to have a superabundance of wealth freely accessible if we get rid of the capitalist class.  Almost all government spending is for the maintenance of the capitalist system. The bulk of wealth torrents upwards and only trickles back down when exploitative opportunities arrive.

You can't just redistribute wealth. Exploitation is built into capitalism. It can't be made fairer. You can’t even gradually reform it, as the market system eventually shakes out and reasserts control, over impediments to producing profit. Market crashes and crises are how this happens. The capitalist class can ride this out for long periods but the workers are disciplined by their poverty with increased rates of exploitation and lack of reserves into the new capitalist order. This is what we are presently witnessing.

The technological advances of capitalist production have to be shorn of their class ownership and a post capitalist order introduced in which all wealth is common wealth. A democratic, global, post-capitalist, free access socialist society is the answer.

Capitalism is obsolete as a method for production and distribution, as it can’t solve the production problem without rationing access to the producer by waged slavery. The distribution criteria of capitalism has production cease, when there is no profit to be earned, so human needs go unmet.

The intensity of competition for shrinking markets causes workers’ wages to be cut or depressed and the rate of exploitation is intensified. Until new products come on and expansion can ensue workers are thrown onto relief or short term work, while the parasite class can sit in ease and luxury on the wealth they steal by the wages system until they can reinvest some of this as capital (dead labour) in emerging opportunities to exploit workers further.

Capitalism is a splintered society; divided not just by sectional ownership of the means of production but by the economic rivalry of independent states striving to exercise authority over given geographical areas.

Conventional political parties endorse the framework of capitalism and compete to win control over the state and to administer the economic system within its boundaries, which necessarily means perpetuating the wages system and the persistent hardship for wage and salary earners.

The policies propounded by these parties are similar because they are manifestations of the same political imperative – a continuation of capitalism – and are distinguishable only to the extent that they propose different organisation methods to administer the same economic system. But while trading one group of careerist politicians for another can never be the answer, changing society’s economic structure is the only answer. It is a delusion if any wage worker thinks they have done better under any of the political parties. All is relative and if you work for a wage or salary, you are in an exploitative relationship with the capitalist class being the exploiter of your capacity to produce wealth from your ability to work.

Capitalism exists only because workers allow it to exist. Changing the structure of society, however, is not as simple as changing political allegiance to a party. Capitalism is based firmly on a principle of leadership, where a minority in secret makes decisions and the excluded majority is told what they should do and how they should think. Changing the world’s economic structure by converting the means of production from class ownership to common ownership requires that workers individually understand what they want and actively combine to change their condition. Socialism cannot be delivered by leaders and is achievable only by the concerted action of a politically conscious mass movement without direction or leaders, for only then will the majority become the decision-makers. The task may be daunting but must begin somewhere. Workers would do well to start by considering whether capitalism – under any political party - is really the future they want.

What Ladder?

40% of Scots who are not already on the property ladder do not believe they will ever be able to buy their own house.

However, only 14% said they were "concerned" about the prospect of never being a homeowner, according to a report from Bank of Scotland.

While 40% believed they will never own their home, 26% were more optimistic about being able to buy.

The remaining 26% said they did not know if they will ever own property.

Alienation

A friend on the police force told an SPC member that twenty-five per cent of the people have no feeling towards others, hence the high number of psychopaths around. Even if not statistically correct, it does point to the way capitalism dehumanizes and alienates people from each other. There is only one cure and it won't be found within capitalism. John Ayers

Profit Madness

On November 14, The Weather Station on TV in Toronto said that smog in China was fifty to sixty times above the acceptable levels. This gives a clear indication of just how profit mad the capitalist class is. As long as profit is made, to hell with the health of the people. John Ayers

Climate's Expensive Talks

 Figures on the recent Paris climate talks may tell a story:-

Number of delegates at the summit – 40,000

Number of police officers deployed – 11,000

Budget for the two weeks of talks - $240 millions

Countries represented – 196

Heads of state who will participate – 147

The number of legally binding climate treaties – 0!

Revolution is freedom to think and act

"Civilisation has done little for labour except to modify the forms of its exploitation." Eugene Debs

Politics is too important to be left to politicians. People are right to be discontented and to protest about their situation, but they need to be more discerning and choose the right target. It’s not the Westminster politicians, nor the Brussels bureaucracy, nor the East European migrants who are to blame for their plight. It’s the world-wide capitalist system of production for profit. That’s what they should target. But protesting against it and its effects is not enough. They need to go beyond this and organise politically to bring the whole system to an end and replace it by one in which the resources of the Earth have become the common heritage of all humanity and used to improve the lot of people everywhere.

Revolution is a complete transformation in how we think and act. This acts upon society. Capitalist technological development allied with intense competition between its players has already outstripped its capacity to consume its products, as the requirement for profit for the capitalist class, puts a brake on distribution.

Contrary to what is said the immense technological capacity of capitalism to produce, which can't be utilised under a capitalist market system, as it needs to switch off production ,before human needs can be satisfied and find ever new commodities, to resume the business of making profits, which makes revolution possible. The workers who think they have something to lose are quite simply mistaken. They are living in poverty, relative or actual. The comparison has to be made between the 85 people who own more wealth than the bottom 40% of society and not the modicum of gilding of our waged slave chains. The elites do not bring anything to the production process save capital (dead labour) already creamed off workers surplus value.

Previous revolutions were bloody affairs as they were competing class interests for dominance over subject classes. There won’t be any subject class after the capitalist class are dispossessed of their ownership of the means and instruments of creating and distributing wealth. It is the working class only who create wealth. Not the capitalist/parasite class. Their capital investments are only stolen surplus value (dead labour.) The solution is a revolutionary removal of parasitic/capitalist/elites, either corporate, state or private individual owning and controlling the means and instruments of producing and distributing wealth. Any solutions inside capitalism are illusory, they sow the seeds of the next crisis. Capitalism cannot be reformed to work in the interests of the majority. All wealth flows from the workers who do not just produce wealth in capitalism they also run and manage capitalism from top to bottom, but can only do so in the interests of the owners.

This has to be rearranged by a post-capitalist development where the problem of distribution of wealth can finally be resolved by common ownership and production for use, rather than for sale. A change to post-capitalist society does not necessarily mean the bloodbath which accompanied previous revolution. From the initial capture of the state by the majority to prevent its forces of repression being used against workers. There will be no socialism without socialists and the immense majority world over will have to become socialist – a socialist global collective working class, while conquering political power of the states, dismantling their bureaucratic-military top-down apparatus and democratizing (bottom-up) all useful organs and dispossessing the capitalist class. This done the state withers away from being government 'over people' to becoming an administration 'over things'.

 “Considering:

That the emancipation of the productive class is that of all human beings without distinction of sex or race;

That the producers can be free only insofar as they are in possession of the means of production;

That there are only two forms under which the means of production can belong to them:

The individual form which has never existed generally and which is being more and more eliminated by the process of industry;

The collective form whose material and intellectual elements are being formed by the very development of capitalist society.

Considering

That this collective appropriation can only be the outcome of the revolutionary action of the productive class – or proletariat – organized in a separate political party.

That such organization must be pursued by all the means, which the proletariat has at its disposal, including universal suffrage, thus transformed from the instrument of trickery, which it has been up till now into an instrument of emancipation.”  Marx on Universal Suffrage and Political Self-organisation May 10, 1880

Marx states: “No social order ever perishes before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have developed; and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself” (Preface to A Critique of Political Economy).

Does the current mode of production ─ capitalism ─ act as a fetter upon production? Are the material conditions which currently exist, sufficiently mature to support new, higher relations of production: socialism? We have developed our ability to produce to a level which easily enables us to meet everyone’s needs. But the relations of production-capitalism-disable us. Capitalism cannot accommodate that necessary production. By and large people do not go hungry because there is no food, but because they are, from the unalterable perspective of capitalism, unworthy: they cannot afford to eat. They cannot afford to eat because from capitalism’s perspective there is no reason to employ them and pay them. We have developed the material productive forces to such an extent that fewer and fewer workers can produce more and more of the things we need to live. But still, people cannot get the necessities of life. Marx cannot be faulted in his analysis of why a market economy in the modern world contains the seeds of its own destruction, assuming that the ownership of the means of production remained concentrated in too few hands and workers had only their labor to sell in direct competition with labour-displacing technology or with workers willing to work for lower wages.

For years we have been told that improvements in production should mean reduced working hours. Instead it means that many of us work longer hours for the same pay. Many others are not permitted to work because capital does not require their labour. This is more evidence that our productive ability has outstripped the ability of capitalism to accommodate our ability to produce.

The apologists for capital would have us believe that Karl Marx was wrong about almost everything he said and wrote. But it is clear that “the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production.” Marx was right.

The material conditions for new, higher relations of production have been carried in the womb of capitalism for too long. It is time for a birthing. It is time to release our ability to produce and to solve our problems, by providing the appropriate relations of production: socialism.

Marx views can be summarised:

1. The working class must first, either peacefully or violently, win control of the State.

2. Then they must make it completely democratic, and,

3. Use it to dispossess the capitalists and establish the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production.

4. This done, there would no longer be any need for the State, which consequently would cease to exist in Socialism.

 Marx's views were distorted in two opposing ways.

 First, by some Social Democrats who made him stand for a gradual, peaceful transition to Socialism by means of social reform measures passed by parliament.

Secondly, by Lenin. When Lenin returned to Russia in April 1917 after the overthrow of the Tsar he began to advocate that his party, the Bolsheviks, should aim to seize power in the near future. He knew that they could only do this in a violent uprising. Forced into hiding in August and September he wrote this pamphlet The State and Revolution in which he distorted Marx's views so as to justify in Marxist terms the Bolsheviks' planned insurrection.

Marx and Engels in fact made no distinction between Socialism and Communism; they were terms they used interchangeably to refer to future classless, Stateless society based on social or common ownership. Marx describes British industry as “vampire-like” which “could but live by sucking blood, and children’s blood too”. He also said “Capital is dead labour which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks". In The Condition of the Working Class in England, Engels identifies and blames the “vampire property-holding class” as the source of "all the social troubles". There is no happy ending in capitalism just horrors.

The Glasgow Effect

Possilpark is less than two miles from the affluent, fashionable area around the University of Glasgow, yet this neighbourhood has the worst life expectancy rates in the UK, and perhaps in western Europe. The Glasgow Centre for Population Health calculated that between the years 2008 and 2012 an average man in Ruchill and Possilpark – a neighbourhood of 10,700 people, would die aged just 66 – barely old enough to collect his state pension.

The latest data for 2014 shows men in the wider Scottish parliamentary constituency that is home to Possilpark – Glasgow Maryhill and Springburn – will die aged 72 on average, five years younger than across Scotland; for women life expectancy is 77, against a Scottish figure of 81. Other British cities have identical levels of poverty, yet their citizens live longer. Glasgow’s figures are a significant factor in Scotland’s poor overall life expectancy rates: Scots still die earlier than in any other west European country, at 79 against 81 in England and Wales, or 82 in Spain, Sweden and Italy. Once about average, Scottish life expectancy has been bottom of the European pack for the last 30 years.

Advances in modern healthcare, new and refurbished housing, and slow changes to lifestyle have improved life expectancy. While they may live longer than before they do so in poor health, with complex, chronic illnesses. Clinicians call it premature multi-morbidity: patients who may be life-long smokers living with obesity, lung disease or ailing hearts. “Our patients have multiple chronic diseases about 15 to 20 years earlier than in affluent areas. They are living longer in poorer health,” says Dr Lynsay Crawford, a GP at Balmore medical practice. “They’re living longer but not in good health, lots of them. They’ve had their triple bypasses which has kept them alive, but then we have them in their 70s with heart and lung disease, and heart failure. I think that health has improved, but not in the way we would see in wealthier areas,” added her practice partner, Dr Allison Reid.

Dr Crawford’s, Balmore surgery is a leading member in the Deep End, a network of the 100 practices with Scotland’s most deprived catchment areas that campaigns for higher spending and targeted policies. Balmore’s patients live with the third worst deprivation levels of all GP surgeries in Scotland. Four in 10 of Balmore’s 3,511 patients have chronic diseases. While rates are slowly improving, nearly 34% of patients smoke, against a Scottish average of 19.7% and double the UK’s 15.9%; it has 151 patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, double the Scottish average; and almost 200 patients with coronary heart disease, at 5.7% against the Scottish rate of 4.2%. The clinic has made significant progress on high blood pressure rates. They have fallen to 13.6%, while Scotland’s average has risen steadily, and is now higher than Balmore’s. Still, 231 Balmore patients have diabetes, 6.7% versus 4.9% for Scotland; and 296 have asthma, a third more than the Scotland-wide rate. More than 300 have a history of depression, nearly 50% higher than the Scottish average. 

There are subtle differences in the strategies pursued by Crawford and Reid compared with GPs in more affluent and less troubled communities. At Balmore, a doctor’s dire ultimatums to quit smoking, or to cut down on fatty, sugary foods, will simply fail. Patients will stop turning up. The GPs believe their authority rests very heavily on trust, carefully calibrated negotiation and a lack of judgment about a patient’s lifestyle and history. Getting someone to cut down their smoking or change their diet is by coaxing, negotiation. There is a strong sense that smoking is a rare pleasure in a difficult world; beating addiction is harder with great routine stress in daily life. They have alcoholics with multiple illnesses directly linked to their alcohol abuse, poor diet and damp homes. Those men will often quite candidly describe how heavily they drank the night before. They still need and deserve treatment, respect rather than censure, says Crawford. “I have several patients who are significant alcoholics and know that they’re going to die from that. But they come to you because I don’t make judgments, and they don’t lie to me about how much they’re drinking.” 

African Hothouse (1966)

African Hothouse (1966)

From the January 1966 issue of the SocialistStandard

In 1957 Ghana became the first of many Colonies to achieve independence within the Commonwealth. Much has been said and written about these new Nations in the intervening period and those who were loudest in their support and praise have usually seen their hopes drowned in a welter of dictatorship and suppression.

Certain conditions must be fulfilled before the idea of Socialism can arise. Of paramount importance is a highly developed industrial society in which the propertyless mass of wage-slaves is increasingly forced into the consciousness that its interests are in conflict with those of the owning class. Some workers, hearing us say this, consider the backward areas throughout the world. They see those millions of primitives whose way of life has never changed in a thousand years and feel that all this renders Socialism, if not impossible, something for the distant future.

Is it really so hopeless? We think not. Therefore, a progress report is required to see whether things are as unchanging and permanent as they seem to be. A comprehensive survey of all the new States is beyond the space at our disposal and a skimped attempt would simply defeat our purpose. So we shall look at one country only, and the question now arises—which one? Ghana, with its 400 years of western influence, would be the easiest choice, but we are looking for something less obvious This presents itself in —the Federation of Nigeria.

Here, the barriers to Socialism seem insurmountable. The most densely populated African National—55 million according to hotly disputed Government figures—it was, if anything, even more backward than Ghana in the days of Empire and generally had little contact with the West until recent years.

In the more developed South (East and West Regions combined) the inhabitants are distinct from those of the Moslem-dominated North. The Southern City has many modern features, with the motor vehicle a common sight. The North, in contrast, is from the world of Arabian Nights with its Minarets and feudal Emirs. A Nation where, instead of one people sharing the same life, speech and background, there are over 250 different tribal groups with no common language and with vastly assorted stages of development.

As late as 1920, the Governor of the day, Sir Hugh Clifford, ridiculed the idea ‘That this collection of self-contained and mutually independent Native States separated from one another by distance, history and tradition, political, social and religious barriers, were capable of being welded into a single homogeneous Nation”. This was the picture up to Independence.

Independence was the culmination of half a century of demanding freedom from the shackles of Colonialism. The driving force was the urbanised African who had come to work in Lagos, the big trading centre. By 1896 he was protesting that most of his taxes were going towards improving European residential areas. Down the years he found himself debarred from real advancement because of his native origin and he resented serving under white men whom he considered his inferior. Strict segregation, plus the fact that everything luxurious was for Europeans only, heightened the desire to be rid of the British. The absence of a reactionary settler class—it really was the white man’s grave—prepared the ground for the inevitable. After the war the rising tide of Nationalism engulfed Nigeria just as it did almost everywhere and degrees of Self-Government were demanded and won until, in October 1960, British Rule came to an end.

In 1947, outside of textiles and palm-oil, only one factory existed in the whole of Nigeria. Between then and 1960 there was a dramatic increase in unbanisation, with an estimated half-million wage and salary earners. But the vast majority were, and to a lesser degree still are, subsistence Farmers. Some of them worked part of the year in the Towns or Mines, but living off the land was the main way of life. Unlike today, there was nothing else for it

In his increasing contact with the modern world it becomes clear to the native that there is more to life than the Village can offer. He may hear that the earnings for a few hours work in Town bring a return the equal of many hours of back-breaking toil in the fields. This, or the desire for education, among other reasons, send him into the City to begin the process of losing his backward past—that of “de-tribalisation”.

It starts the moment he parts from the controls of the Tribe and the ties of the Village. He must adapt himself to the new conditions in order to survive, and the changes are great. He walks on different ground and keeps different hours. The tools he uses have changed and with them his idea of himself. The traditional life of the Village with its protections and comforts are no longer his; instead, he is in a jungle where those things do not exist. New associations must be sought and these usually present themselves at work and are seldom from his particular background. Thus, new interests are created and when problems arise they may not be treated as personal or Tribal in nature but as social issues which demand new thinking. More, these new associates have different Gods from his own—or no God at all—so his acceptance of conventional superstition is challenged. To sum up, there is enormous pressure for re-examination of his beliefs, standards, values and aspirations. At the same time, the contradiction of a wage-worker’s life and the spectacle of immense wealth displayed in Stores, etc., leads to the development of the idea of crime. No longer can the Village expatriate simply pick up anything he wishes to make use of. Those things are now privately owned and must be paid for. He is living in a money economy.

What protection has he? The same as anyone else; he joins a Trade Union. Here again the story is one of a mushrooming under the conditions of emergent Capitalism. Pre-war, only Clerks and Administrative workers in Nigeria were organised. There was little compulsion to work for wages and jobs were only taken to supplement agricultural income while the depression reduced demand for labour in both Government and private sectors.

In 1940 only five Unions existed, claiming 3,500 members between them. By 1956 they numbered almost 200 with 170,000 members. Progress, if swift, was erratic with many Unions vanishing as quickly as they came. There were reasons for this.

(1) Poor communications between Branches separated by great distances.
(2) The small scale of industry—some Unions had only 50 members!
(3) Seasonal nature of many jobs.
(4) Large labour surplus.

Today, although still split by factional squabbles, the Movement continues to grow. In July 1964, a major strike involving a million workers took place over wage-rates and lasted two weeks despite everything the Government could throw at it. Threats to dismiss all strikers were ignored and with the country at a virtual standstill the Government was forced to accede to many of the strikers’ demands.

This growth in trade union strength has occurred in the face of Tribal loyalties and animosities. Does this mean Tribalism is a spent force? Far from it. In fact it has staged something of a come-back in recent times. Before I960, when Nationalist aspirations were rampant, differences of Tribe and Region were submerged in the unity of aim—independence. Nowadays, the political leaders, jockeying for position and power, are having to invoke all the old antagonisms—although the dangers of this are obvious and recognised. Also, as the demand for the more skilled type of labour—administration, education, etc.—slackens off, then those who have not yet landed a good position must exert pressure wherever they can.

In the long run the past will lose out to the demands of the new social order. Those who have spent much of their lives with the Tribe will remain under its influence to some extent, but the generations who know only City life and who receive a uniform education will have little interest in the ancient ties.

In any case, Tribalism is not confined to primitive peoples. It is present, although in modified form, throughout modern society and can be seen among Scots, Irish, Jews, etc. These groups who consider themselves different because of Nationality or Religion will still unite with outsiders for political or economic reasons.

And capitalist education is in Nigeria forging ahead. The Ashby Commission, set up at the time of independence to map-out the necessary rate of expansion, recognised that lack of skilled manpower was the biggest obstacle to development, and put forward “massive, expensive, and unconventional” recommendations which included four new Universities by 1980. Today, that target has been beaten. Four million children are already receiving Primary schooling and the plan is for an additional half million each year.

Everywhere the story is one of rapid “Westernisation''. The Lagos Sunday Times (19/9/65) provides the following sample. “The sleek Mercedes Benz saloon glides out of the corner. At the same time, august lady at the Bus stop flips out a miniature looking glass from the dazzling' bag slung over one arm and after applying another layer of lipstick. smoothens down her skirl. With a screech of brakes the car stops and a not-too-young face smiles at the lady . .. Want a lift madam , . . and so begins yet another etc., etc. . . " The article goes on to deplore faithless women in WIGS who leave “whimpering infants” and ‘‘good husbands" to indulge in affairs. True, this is more a picture of upper-crust life but the trend is unmistakably away from the old values and standards.

Ultimately, the greatest factor in the development of Nigeria's working-class is that it is part of a world economic system, the effects of which it cannot escape. The catastrophic fall in prices on the world market of its chief export. Cocoa, has meant a large and increasing balance of payments deficit. The result has been to cut imports drastically of manufactured goods from those countries mainly responsible for the adverse trade balance, such as Japan. Thus, favourable conditions are created for the expansion of home-grown industry and one Company exulted in a full-page ad. in the Daily Times (21/9/65), “With the recent decision of the Federal Government to restrict the 'importation of imitation jewellery from Hong-Kong and Japan, our factory has taken positive action to increase its capital investment by ordering more machinery, resulting in increased production capacity to cope with this restriction”.

The political upheavals which have been part of the Nigerian scene lately have brought forth suggestions that the Federation may be in the process of breaking-up into several smaller units. Even if this should happen the developments outlined above will continue to a greater or lesser degree, but the conclusion must be the same. That the part of Africa now known as Nigeria is advancing towards the image held out to it by the older, established Nations—that of an industrialised, class-divided. Capitalist society.

Vic Vanni

Glasgow Br. 

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.