SOS - Support Our Sea-farers

The RMT union has protested in Aberdeen against what it claimed was "poverty pay" on a Northern Isles cargo vessel.

The union said MV Daroja workers were paid £2.56 per hour on freight routes between Aberdeen and Orkney and Shetland in January.

The RMT said the situation was a "disgrace" and called for action.

Social Democracy Returns

Political democracy is not, or is not just only, a trick whereby the capitalist class gets the working class to endorse their rule. It is a potential instrument that the working class can turn into a weapon to use in ending capitalism and class rule. No-one can be exactly sure which form the revolutionary process will take but the Socialist Party has always held that the potential use of parliament as part of a revolutionary process may prove vital in neutralising the ruling class's hold on state power. For us, this is the most effective way of abolishing the state and ushering in the revolutionary society. The working class cannot enter the class war with one arm tied behind its back. People who come into contact with the Socialist Party and learn that we advocate revolution are often surprised that the revolution we urge is one that can be brought about by parliamentary means. We stand for democratic revolutionary political action and the two futile policies of insurrection and reformism can be avoided by building up a socialist party composed of and supported by convinced socialists only. When a majority of workers are socialist-minded and organised, they can use their votes to elect to Parliament delegates pledged to use political power for the one revolutionary act of dispossessing the capitalist class by converting the means of production and distribution into the property of the whole community. Our argument is that, if socialists are in a minority, any attempt at armed uprising would be suicidal folly. If on the other hand, socialists are in the majority then an armed insurrection is unnecessary as the majority can use the ballot box to send delegates to parliament to take over political control. 

The Socialist Party has always emphasised that a majority must be educated in the essentials of socialist principles and have a party democratically organised to achieve socialism. In our Declaration of Principles, we stress the necessity of capturing the machinery of government including the armed forces. That is the fundamental thing. The method, though important, is second to this.  We have never held that a merely formal majority at the polls will give the workers all the necessary power to establish socialism. Rather, it is the quality of the voters behind the vote that, in the revolutionary struggle, will be decisive.  Our position is that easiest and surest way for a socialist majority to gain control of political power in order to establish socialism is to use the existing electoral machinery to send a majority of mandated socialist delegates to the various parliaments of the world. This is why we advocate using Parliament; not to try to reform capitalism but for the purpose of abolishing capitalism and converting the means of production and distribution into the common property of the whole of society. The working class will also organise itself, at the various places of work, in order to keep production going, but nothing can be accomplished there until the machinery of coercion which is the state has been taken out of the hands of the capitalist class by political action. As the SPGB said in 1915  "The workers must prepare themselves for their emancipation by class-conscious organisation on both the political and the economic fields, the first to gain control of the forces with which the masters maintain their dominance, the second to carry on production in the new order of things".

There are a wide variety of potential scenarios for revolution. We would be fools if we limit ourselves to what is theoretically perfect rather than asking the question "what do we actually need to make a revolution?" and proceeding on that basis. The problem is not getting people to think "socialism is a good idea" but also transforming that into mass social action. We need to be able to act in an imperfect world rather than waiting for a perfect one. Revolution is not merely an announcement of a successful ballot, it is a process, and the process itself will draw our fellow-workers into the struggle. The revolution makes the mass party - the actual date that power can be seen to shift to ourselves is not the beginning, but the beginning of a different phase. The revolution has a snowball effect. The more change is imminent, the faster and bigger it grows and rolls, without conscious direction of leaders, as many vanguardists and social democrats have often found. You cannot stop an idea when its time has come, as it is frequently said. In the event that the capitalist class faced with defeat proceeded to disfranchise the workers and constitutional methods are closed to us and the only course left open is secret organisation and force – so be it. The methods to be adopted must be determined by the circumstances of the time.  The actions of our class enemies against the successes of the socialist movement must determine our own subsequent responses. The Socialist Party position is honest in that we don't know what the characteristics of revolution will look like in detail but we do think we know what it won't look like.  For so long as capitalist political parties and their agents control the law-making bodies, the armed forces, courts and police, the administrative and tax-gathering departments, local councils, etc, all organisations and actions, whether industrial or political, are strictly limited in their scope because whenever the government decides that a vital capitalist interest is seriously threatened it will use all of its powers to protect capitalist property and privilege. The government's ability to take such action depends on the willingness of the workers in government administration, the armed forces, and police, etc to carry out orders. When the socialist movement becomes much stronger among the working class generally it will increasingly influence the outlook and sympathies of workers in the administration, armed forces, etc and the government's freedom of action will be correspondingly lessened.

The State is the form taken by the centre of social administration without which modern industrial society couldn't function. We want the working class to take it over and convert it into an unarmed democratic administration of things. We want to see an end to capitalist class rule not the breakdown of society. The workers en masse don't need to create a different and more democratic decision-making structure from the ground up. What they need to do is to take over and perfect the existing, historically-evolved structures. We don't need to construct socialist society from scratch; this is not the way social evolution works; there will be a degree of continuity between what exists now and what will exist in socialism as there always has been between one system of society and another. We are not utopian system-builders.  You don't abolish the state, getting rid of your control of your society at the point of actually having won the thing, and then play at utopias. You grab it and hang on against anything the global capitalist class might throw at you. During this process, you are transforming the institutions you hold from capitalist into socialist ones.

What is indubitably understood by the Socialist Party is that to achieve socialism a clear understanding of socialist principles is required with an accompanying determined desire to put them into practice.  Our theory of socialist revolution is that the position of the working class within capitalist society forces it to struggle against capitalist conditions of existence and as the workers gained more experience of the class struggle and the workings of capitalism, the labour movement would become more consciously socialist and democratically organised by the workers themselves and would require no intervention by people outside the working class to bring it. Socialist propaganda and agitation would indeed be necessary but would be carried out by workers themselves whose socialist ideas would have been derived from an interpretation of their class experience of capitalism. The end result would be an independent movement of the socialist-minded and democratically organised working class aimed at winning control of political power in order to abolish capitalism.

The workers' acceptance of capitalist political and social ideas, like their other ideas, is learned from other people--their parents, their schoolteachers, their workmates, the press, television--and so derived from society so it follows therefore that the struggle against capitalist ideology must also be a struggle to spread socialist ideas - a role taken on by the SPGB. Socialist ideas arise when workers begin to reflect on the general position of the working class within capitalist society. They do then have to be communicated to other workers, but not from outside the working class as a whole. They have to be communicated to other workers who, from their own experience and/or from absorbing the past experience of the working class, have come to a socialist understanding. It's not a question of enlightened outsiders bringing socialist ideas to the ignorant workers but of socialist-minded workers spreading socialist ideas amongst their fellow workers. We see socialist consciousness as emerging from a combination of two things - people's experience of capitalism and the problems it inevitably creates but also the activity of socialists in making hearing the case for socialism a part of that experience. The Socialist Party cannot control whether or not workers become socialists. What we can provide, and what we have continuously provided, is a theory of revolution which, if taken up by workers, will prevent incalculable misery to millions.

Always a silver lining for capitalism

 Thanks to a recent stabilisation of the death rate after years of decline Scotmid's 90-year-old funeral business is thriving.

We must not give up our revolutionary optimism

Something is clearly wrong with the world. There is no real sense of community because we are not a community but a class-divided society. We live in a world dominated by capitalism. A tiny minority—the international capitalist class—between them own and control all the major productive resources of society, the land, mines, factories, machinery, transport, media, communications, and the goods and services which these resources are capable of turning out. The task of actually producing this social wealth, however, is carried on by those on the other side of the class divide: the world working class, the vast majority who, because we are excluded from any significant ownership of the productive forces, must work for the capitalists for a wage in order to live. What people get depends on how much money they have. The rich get the best that money can buy while the rest of us have to put up with what we can afford out of our pay packet. The wages system is a form of rationing which limits our access to the wealth we collectively as a class has produced. In the long run, our wages are eaten up in the struggle to make ends meet, which means we have to continually find or stay in employment—or stretch our meagre dole cheques—to try and support ourselves and our families. Is it not time that the workers of the world use their brain boxes and the ballot boxes.

Problems abound.  The air we breathe, the food we eat and the water we drink have all been contaminated or poisoned in one way or another by industry and agribusiness.  Single-issue organisations are engaged in a never-ending battle to try to limit the damage done in one particular field by the profit system. Attempting to deal piecemeal with one of the symptoms while leaving the cause intact—which is what organisations like Stop the War Coalition, Greenpeace, Shelter, Help the Aged, War on Want and the others are engaged in—can never solve the particular problem they have targetted. At best, it can only alleviate it a little, for some of the victims. At worst, it delays the solution by encouraging the illusion that the problem could be solved within the present system. The humanitarian concern of those many NGOs shows that we are not the heartless beings that the “human nature” myth portrays us as. In fact, most of us hate to see our fellow humans suffer. Vast amounts of money are collected by charities. This may convey the illusion that something is being done. In reality, it is a drop in an ocean of unstoppable despair. Capitalism without pitiful poverty is not on the agenda.

The technical means already exist to provide every man, woman, and child on this planet with proper food, clothing, shelter, health-care and education. What stands in the way is the profit system. So let's get rid of it and achieve a world without hunger, poverty, pollution, war, oppression or exploitation—a world of co-operation, peace, and plenty. With modern productive methods, such as automation and information technology, the world now has the potential to provide more than adequately for the material needs of the whole global population and to ensure a satisfying and creative life for us all.  Yet what do we continually see? Vast social inequality and discontent; grinding poverty alongside conspicuous plenty; thousands of our fellow-workers dying daily of starvation with millions more undernourished or in refugee camps; slums and dereliction in the inner cities; the chronic wastage and misuse of resources; the never-ending human cost of the ravages of war; the devastation of communities; the turning of workers into highly efficient killing machines; the ignorance and bigotry of racial hatred and nationalism.

We are asked to donate money. In the Horn of Africa, the famine has become greater than it was in the disastrous mid-80's. 20 million might starve to death, half of them children. So, could we send some money? Money is not the solution. Starving people cannot eat money. Money is a feature of the property system that causes poverty. In Africa, they are starving because money exists. Crops must be produced to be sold for cash. The African farmers are part of the world capitalist system which tosses them crumbs with one hand and sends in the debt collectors to recover the loans from banks with the other. The civil war in South Sudan which makes worse the effects of the famine is about which group of capitalists will control which territory. Poverty and hunger are not natural phenomena. It is the result of a society where a small minority own and control the resources of the Earth and the vast majority must pay to have access to what is not ours. For millions who cannot pay anything at all the consequence is abject destitution and mass deaths. They are killed by the profit system.

The Socialist Party puts forward the revolutionary proposition that everything in and on the Earth should become the common property of the whole world's population, without distinction of race, sex or ability; that society should be run by and in everyone’s interest; and that the production of useful wealth should be directly determined by our common social needs and freely available to all without any market mechanism. It means a society where classes no longer exist because we would all have equal access to and control over the means for satisfying our needs. It means the end of national frontiers and governments, the end of wars and social conflict, and the start of a truly global society of harmony and co-operation with all our rich human diversity. The Socialist Party presents a simple choice: retain capitalism and starvation will remain or build socialism and not a single person need ever starve again.  The Socialist Party continues its work, with our principles as clear as ever. With the wars, the mass hunger, the environmental destruction and the urban decay of the profit system as our backing track, we are still singing the same tune as we always have – End Capitalism Now.

Scotland's asbestos threat

The use of asbestos in Scottish schools has created a health "time bomb", medical and legal experts have claimed. An increasing number of people are coming forward with asbestos-related conditions they claim associated with simply working in affected buildings. Exposure to asbestos dust can cause a deadly cancer called mesothelioma.

Scotland currently has the highest global incidence of the condition, with 175 cases diagnosed in 2014, according to the University of Glasgow.

Laura Blane, a partner with Thompsons Solicitors, said the firm was dealing with about 200 cases of people who have been exposed in hospitals, schools, leisure centres, council headquarters and other public buildings. She said: "It is no exaggeration to say that this is an enormous ticking time bomb and I am seeing increasing numbers of cases..."

Iain Naylor's wife, Sandra, developed mesothelioma which she believed was due to exposure to asbestos dust when she was a pupil at Caldervale High School in Airdrie in the 1970s. She died in 2014 at the age of 52. Sandra didn't work in heavy industries or anything like that.

"I lost my wife because she was a pupil in a school full of asbestos. How could that happen? How many others have been affected?"

Robin Howie, a consultant on asbestos, said hundreds of public buildings could have "significant asbestos content".

"Routine maintenance and general dilapidation of those buildings causes a release of asbestos fibres into the air," he said. "Unless stringent asbestos fibre limits of less than 100 fibres per cubic meter are introduced and enforced in our schools and public buildings then our children will continue to be exposed to an unacceptable level of risk. The threat cannot be overstated."

The current HSE approved level of asbestos fibre is 10,000 fibres per cubic metre.

Quote Of The Month.

 "It's very shameful that people are dying of hunger in 2017. There's just too much wealth in the world and this famine situation could have been easily prevented."

This was from, a Toronto resident, Hassan Ibrahim, commenting on the famine in Somalia, brought on by the on-going drought. Of course, he is perfectly right, but no one will find an answer in present-day society.  The quote was from Toronto Metro News, March 28, 2017

 Steve and John.

The Democracy We Want is Social Democracy

WORLD SOCIALISM NOT GLOBAL CAPITALISM

In Britain we can say what they want and do what they want within very broad limits, and our children can study hard in school and college so they can graduate and join the well-off professional class as doctors, lawyers or engineers, but when it comes to social power most of us have very little if we are not a part of the privileged elite. Who has predominant power in the UK? The short answer is those who have the money - or more specifically, who own income-producing land and businesses - have the power i.e., corporations and banks and they have plenty of help from the managers and experts they hire. How do they rule? Again, the short answer is through open and direct involvement in policy planning, through participation in political campaigns and elections, and through appointments to key decision-making positions in government. Certainly, "democracy" as it currently stands has become an ideology used to give capitalist rule a spurious legitimacy. But it is still sufficient to allow the working class to organise politically and economically and we would argue, to allow a future socialist majority to gain control of political power.

 Domination by the few does not mean complete control. Workers, when we are organised, sometimes have been able to gain concessions on wages, hours, and working conditions. While voting does not necessarily make government responsive to the will of the majority, under certain circumstances the electorate has been able to place restraints on the actions of the wealthy elites or to decide which elites will have the greatest influence on policy.   This is especially a possibility when there are disagreements and disputes within the higher circles of wealth and influence, as there clearly is with Brexit.

How is it possible that the working class could be relatively powerless in a country that prides itself on its long-standing history of voting and elections?  Many people would argue that Britain is a democracy and that we all benefit from living in a democratic society. By this they mean the regular elections to parliament and local councils, the freedom to organise political parties, a press which is not beholden to the government, and the rule of law. If people object to the policies of the government or a particular MP, they can vote them out of office.  Do the trappings of democracy really guarantee a truly democratic way of life? Do they ensure rule by the people? It is true that the vote, together with other hard-won rights such as the rights of assembly, political organisation and free expression, are most important. But can the act of electing a government result in a democratic society?  Under a capitalist system there is a built-in lack of democracy, which cannot be overturned or compensated for by holding elections or permitting protest groups. Our objections are far more basic than any potential constitutional changes to the electoral system. There are at least three reasons, then, why capitalist democracy does not mean that workers are in charge of their own lives. They are too poor to be able to do what they want to do, being limited by the size of their wage packets. They are at the beck and call of their employers in particular and of the capitalist class in general. And they are at the mercy of an economic system that goes its own sweet way without being subject to the control of those who suffer under it.

Our masters were compelled to give us universal suffrage. With the knowledge of our wage-slave position and the courage to organise, these votes can be used as the means to our emancipation. The capitalist class cannot repudiate what they have established. The vote was given to secure their own domination; if they discard it they lose legitimacy and have no sanction to govern.  The vote, thus, proved a gain, a potential "instrument of emancipation" as Marx put it.  The democratic state has been forced, against its will, to bring into being methods, institutions, and procedure which have left open the road to power for workers to travel upon when they know what to do and how to do it. To merely send working-class nominees to Parliament to control it is not sufficient. The purpose must be to accomplish a revolutionary reorganisation of society, a revolution which will put everybody on an equal footing as participants in the production, distribution, and consumption. So that all may participate equally, democracy is an essential condition.

The Socialist Party seeks a revolution involving much more than a change of political control. We want a social revolution, a revolution in the basis of society. The key task of the working class is to win the battle of democracy, to capture control of the political machinery of society for the majority so that production could be socialised  then the coercive powers of the state could be dismantled as a consequence of the abolition of class division. The vote is revolutionary when on the basis of class it organises labour against capital. Parliamentary action is revolutionary when on the floor of parliament it raises the call of the discontented; and when it reveals the capitalist system's impotence and powerlessness to satisfy people's needs and wants. The duty of the Socialist Party is to use parliament in order to complete the proletarian education and organisation, and to bring to a conclusion the revolution.  Parliament is to be valued not for the petty reforms obtainable through it, but because through the control of the machinery of government will the socialist majority be in a position to establish socialism.

Socialists recognise parliament as an institution geared to the needs of capitalism, and therefore inappropriate as the vehicle for a fundamental transformation, but yet to regard its connected electoral practices as coinciding, to some extent, with the principles governing that transformation, and to that extent adding the possibility of a peaceful transition. There need be no straight-forward, exclusive and exhaustive choice between constitutionalism and violent seizure of power. Certain elements within existing institutions may be valued, and action taken in conformity with them, while others may not. It does limit violence to the role of counter-violence in the event of resistance when a clear majority for revolutionary change is apparent, rather than seeing the use of violence as itself a primary means of change. Rights to organise politically, express dissension and combine in trade unions, for example, are valuable not only as a defence against capitalism but from a socialist viewpoint are a platform from which socialist understanding can spread, while the right to vote the means by which socialism will be achieved.

At the same time, we must recognise that genuine democracy is more than these freedoms and the right to vote and is meaningless unless it is used to effect change. But today exercising our democratic right to vote for a conventional capitalist political party does not effect this much-needed change. The Socialist Party are not under any illusion about the nature of democracy under capitalism, yet, we challenge the notion that revolution cannot at the same time be democratic and planned, cannot be participative and structured. Where it is available, we take the view that capitalist democracy can and should be used. But not in order to chase the ever diminishing returns of reforming capitalism but as an important instrument available to class-conscious workers for making a genuine and democratic revolution. And in the process of making a revolution the really interesting work can start of course: that of reinventing a democracy fit for society on a human scale. A democracy that is free from the patronage, the power and personality politics and, of course, the profit motive that currently, from London to Washington, Moscow to Beijing, abuses it.

Unity, unity, unity

WORLD SOCIALISM
ONE WORLD ONE PEOPLE

Much political abuse has been levelled against The Socialist Party because of the fact that from its inception it has steadfastly set itself against the advocacy of palliatives or improvements that strengthen the existing system of Society. No other party in this country occupies a similar position. The Socialist Party must pursue the straight and uncompromising course and steer clear of the vote-chasing, office-seeking, and careerist methods of capitalist politics. There is no mystery about the principles, policy or internal organisation of our party; there are no cliques or job-hunters. The party’s methods are too democratic to allow of that. We are a group of working men and women who have laid down a set of principles and a policy that are clear and definite and are carried out by methods that leave no room for the crafty to achieve either privilege or self-importance. All our meetings are open to the public, because we have nothing to hide. We are not “intellectuals”; we just know what we want and are determined to get it. We are neither intolerant nor bitter towards our fellow workers. We know that the mass of those who support the Labour Party, the Left and others, are honest, sincere, and self-sacrificing in their efforts. It is the foundation and policy of the other parties that is wrong, and that allows groups of self-seekers to climb on the backs of their fellows and to twist the enthusiasm of the workers to their own private ends. There are "labour Leaders” who are sincere though misguided, but, in the main, it is the trickster who flourishes in the “labour movement ” and forms close corporations for the sharing of offices and emoluments. We are only intolerant and bitterly opposed to the existing order of society and the shams in which it cloaks its fierce oppression.

The Socialist Party view of life is essentially historical. That is to say, we take the widest possible view of human experience. Old facts and new facts alike provide food for his mind, and having inwardly digested them, he reviews ideas, both new and old, in the light of the knowledge so obtained. In all this, we follow the scientific method. The stage of social life is our laboratory. By abstract analysis we discover the inner forces of that life and, having traced their laws, we comprehend the play; but we are not an inactive spectator merely. We are also one of the players, and understanding is necessary to the effective performance of our part. For the drama of human development has reached a crisis.

There is no fundamental distinction between the workers by “hand" and those by "brain." In fact, all workers have to use both, and because all of them have to sell their working ability, whatever its character, to an employer for a livelihood, all of them belong to that economic category, the working-class. The office staff, technician, and specialists, and many other of the “superior" sections of the workers face the same problems, generally speaking, as the shop-floor workers. All those problems can be traced to one root cause—the private ownership of the means of living. In many cases, the position of the professional workers and clerks is worse than that of their “manual" brethren. When in work, it is a constant struggle to keep up appearances; when out of work, some do not even get the dole. And automation and rationalisation have wrought havoc in their ranks, too. Therefore, the Socialist Party does not select particular sections of the working-class for special mention.

Misunderstanding of the Socialist case is prevalent amongst all grades of workers to-day. Professional workers do not possess some mental kink which will make it impossible for us to convert them. Even in snobbish suburbia cannot withstand for ever the bitter lessons which capitalism is teaching. Socialism stands primarily for the recognition of the fact that the working-class, nine-tenths of the population here, cannot live without getting permission to use the land, the factories, railways, etc., from the capitalists who own them. This means nothing but slavery and exploitation for all working-men and women, no matter what their jobs are. And therefore, we of the Socialist Party ask you, whether you are “suits” or “overalls” to join us? Because the task we have set ourselves is the most vital of all, the task of taking the means of life out of the hands of the minority and securing them for common ownership.

The condition of the working class, despite its traditional persuasion to the contrary, is that of a slave class. Its dependence under existing conditions upon the permission of the capitalist class for its livelihood is a fact. Class economic dependence means class subjection, no matter how much freedom may be apparent on the surface of the lives of those enslaved. It is a law of history that a class subjected must, if it is to win its emancipation, gain power, political power, from those who hold it in subjection, so as to build up a set of social conditions in harmony with its own interest. In other words, a dominant class simply does not run human society to suit the interests of those whom it dominates; to attempt to do so would result in its social suicide. But a ruling class does, because of its desire to retain its supremacy, placate its subject class with measures of “social amelioration." And this is one of the most potent forces for obscuring the basic cause of the class division. What is ambiguously styled as "the inertia of the human mind," when taken to mean the slowness of the human mind to move along lines of social change, is also one of the contributory causes of the persistence of class society. The Socialist Party urges the workers to think below the surface of things and they will find that many of the ideas they have are but based upon the mere appearance of conditions instead of upon their underlying causes.

The Fight for Food

In a society where the privileged few own the means of production and control capital plus the bulk of the surplus value, the chances for anything but a formal superficial political equality are slim. Although the form of government may be democratic, the vested interests of capital will certainly take precedence over all others.  The capitalist system spells deprivation and misery for wide sections of the population, providing fertile soil for revolutionary ideas. 

Marx was firmly convinced of economic crises of growing frequency and severity that would inevitably lead to increasing exploitation and impoverishment of the working class, revealing inexorably the obsolete senselessness of capitalism, and thus they would rise in revolt, having acquired revolutionary consciousness. The subsequent development of the capitalist system demonstrated that Marx was an optimist and his conclusions premature.

Nevertheless, at moments of acute stress, such as economic crisis and having failed to provide other means of subsistence, workers will they turn instinctively against the source of their suffering which may lead to the overthrow of the established machinery of state, paving the way to revolutionary transformation of the social system. Marx only described very generally the socialism/communism, so it is easier to say what future non-capitalist society will not contain. It will not be characterised by commodity production either in the sphere of means of production, labour-power or distribution of consumer goods. The former two mentioned have been quite adequately shown to be part and parcel of capitalism, the latter is an issue in question and will be dealt with later. The point to be made here is that negating all the spheres of commodity-character also means negating money and exchange. In other words, production takes place for the well-being of the whole society, and each person takes from the public stores 'according to their needs’. Buying and selling is eliminated. By abolishing relations based on private ownership, it will enable humanity to pursue the goal to which men and women have always aspired.

 There is nothing more beneficial to the Earth's ecology and human well-being, than a healthy food system. Far-reaching social change requires sustained work on multiple fronts and a lot of it. Changing the system, not perfecting our own life-styles, is the point. We will always get our hands dirty if we live in a society dominated by industrial capitalism and powered by fossil fuels.

 Rather than take on the wage slaves need to curtail their wage slave lifestyles in order to accommodate the ever-expanding maw of global capitalism we need to target the real polluters, aka global capitalism and the war machine that it fuels, rather than go after fellow members of the working class. The driving force of mass environmental destruction is the never ending quest for global capitalist profits and growth. Whether we consider the planned obsolescence of produced goods, the destruction of rain forests for beef production or the swirling plastic garbage in our oceans, they all point back to the detrimental effects of the capitalist profit system. The disparities in wealth, education, and security that global capitalism promotes is the driving force of overpopulation. If you look at a map of the world and identify those areas with the most population growth, they are all characterized by immense poverty, exploitation, and oppression brought on by global capitalism.

In Europe, four million small farms disappeared between 2003 and 2013, a staggering 33% of all farms in the European Union. In contrast, three percent of industrial farms now control 52% of the European Union’s agricultural land.

Millions of small farmers currently produce the majority of the world’s food. They are struggling against the agri-business – the large corporations consolidating control over global food production. The former understand that food sovereignty and small-scale ecological farming can feed the world – with food production fully in the hands of producers and consumers. The latter desire an intensive industrial farming model where control over seeds, chemicals, machinery, distribution and most importantly profits, is held in the hands of corporations. Last month the European Commission approved the merger of Dow Chemicals and DuPont, and Chinese state company ChemChina’s acquisition of Syngenta. Next up is the potential merger of Bayer and Monsanto – a ‘marriage made in hell’. These are some of the biggest agricultural companies ever known, true Goliaths with market power.

Capitalism the darkest of times - Socialism the brightest of times.

There will be no basic change in the structure of society unless people join together and bring it about.

For most of this century workers looking for change have joined, supported or voted for. the Labour Party, entertaining the vague hope that it will be the vehicle for introducing a new kind of social order. Experience has taught most of them that they are wrong in expecting Labour to oppose the profit system. It is hardly surprising that we are living in a cynical age in which most people say “you can’t believe anything coming from a political party" or “whatever we do it will make no difference to how we live”. We are not asking you to believe what we say. We are looking for understanding, not belief. We are asking you to have the courage to realise that your understanding of why society is in its present awful mess and your desire, together with millions of others, to change society from the roots can and will make a difference to how we all live.

Everything else has been tried. We have seen attempts to reform the profit system so that poverty is abolished; all such efforts have failed, no matter how sincerely they were advocated or how energetically they were fought for. We have seen the myth that socialism has been established when all that was really in existence was state-run capitalism; that failed. We have seen dangerous and destructive experiments with dictators, fundamentalist religion and the like; all have resulted in pain and suffering for countless millions. No wonder people are cynical about political change. Capitalism has been run in every way possible. Its defenders have run out of ideas and are resurrecting old failed policies. It seems that everything has been tried. For capitalism, it has. 

We are supposed to be living in a democracy. But we aren’t. Or rather, we are living only in a very partial democracy. This is because the democratic features existing decision-making institutions and arrangements have are undermined and distorted by the class structure of present-day society. According to democratic theory, everybody should have an equal say in making decisions. This is not just in the sense of votes being of equal value but also in the sense of having an equal opportunity to express and present views should we want to do so. This equality, which is a basic condition for the functioning of a true democracy, does not exist under capitalism where some people have more money—and therefore more chance to put over their views—than the rest.

Capitalism is a divisive society, distorting the human need for community into the senseless hatreds of nationalism. It is a class-divided society and workers would do well to recognise that bus drivers in Glasgow have more in common with their counterparts in Chicago or Calcutta than they have with the Duke of Argyll or the Duchess of Sutherland. The variety of language, dress, music, diet, or other cultural differences would be enjoyed in a socialist society. They would be the subject of admiration, wonder, and delight. We will learn to dance the Saraband of Northern Spain, appreciate the wood-carving skills of the Balinese, and grow to love the shifting syncopations of African music-makers. Diversity of cultures would be a superb celebration of the ingenuity and inventiveness of humankind, not the subject of ridicule and hatred as it is today in capitalism.

Through a complex combination of coercion and ideological control, a tiny minority are able to live off the backs of the immense useful majority in society. From their ownership of the means of production (factories, offices, transport systems, etc.) they are able to gain political and legislative control, not to mention their power over education and the mass media. This tiny minority are the capitalist class—the ruling élite in society.

Nominally, this group of parasites rules by consent. They are legitimised in the eyes of the useful majority they exploit who not only vote to continue their own exploitation but, at times, are the most passionate defenders of it. For the socialist, this apparent contradiction is no surprise as the capitalist class has almost complete control over the dissemination of ideas. They have political, moral and cultural legitimacy—most people cannot conceive of a world where production takes place solely to satisfy human needs and where money, war, and poverty are things of the past.

You may be saying to yourself as you read this that such a world will never come into existence—why bother when the capitalists have got it all sewn up?

The answer is that the capitalists have not got it all sewn up, nor can they. The daily experience of class exploitation means that the indoctrination process is contradicted by the reality of living under capitalism. The existence of the Socialist Party is the testimony to the fact that workers can see capitalism for what it is and organise for its replacement. Put simply, capitalism has within itself the seeds of its own destruction.

There is one party in Britain which stands for socialism. Don’t judge us by our claims, but on the record of what we have said and done throughout our history. Never once have we swerved from the simple objective of organising politically and democratically to end capitalism and establish socialism. We are the only party worthy of their principled support. Our intention is to build on that and make clear to our fellow workers, be they young or old, black or white, blue-collar or white-collar, women or men. that there is one party for socialists to throw their energies into the Socialist Party. We will continue as best we can on our limited resources to put forward the case for socialism (we can only currently afford to put up a handful of candidates in elections). As a society based on common ownership of productive resources, socialism will be a classless society where there will be no privileged individuals and groups. Which is the only basis on which the principles of democratic decision-making can be fully applied? There is a ray of hope. That hope is the triumph of socialism. Free from the shackles of the market we could start to end so many of the problems which we take for granted, such as starvation and mass hunger in the midst of food stockpiles and environmental devastation.

Fact of the Day

The income of the richest people in Scotland has almost doubled over five years.

Analysis of HM Revenue & Customs data for those earning more than £150,000 a year shows that total income has grown from £3.7 billion in 2010/11 to £6.2 billion in 2014/15.

http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/scotland-s-richest-see-income-nearly-double-in-five-years-1-4421297

May's June General Election

VOTE THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Theresa May has chosen to call a general election for the 8^th of June, hoping that a victory for her will lead to an increased legitimacy for her negotiations to exit the EU. The Socialist Party welcomes every opportunity to place its case for socialism before our fellow-workers.

Many have noticed that whoever gets elected, nothing much really changes. It has been borne out by hard and painful experience that for the most starry-eyed of us that the politicians we have voted for are not only unable to make good on promises but have actually carried out unwelcomed and unwanted policies.  Why should we believe that it would be any different with Theresa May's campaign pledges? 

Do the trappings of democracy really guarantee a truly democratic way of life? Do they ensure rule by the people? The Socialist Party answers "No!" and says that real democracy involves far more. It is true that the vote, together with other hard-won rights such as the rights of assembly, political organisation and freedom of speech, are most important. At the same time we must recognise that genuine democracy is more than these freedoms and the right to vote. Democracy implies much more than the simple right to periodically choose between representative of political parties. We are not under any illusion about the nature of democracy inside capitalism. To govern is to direct, control and to rule with authority. Operating as the state this is what governments do. But to say that democracy is merely the act of electing a government to rule over us cannot be correct because democracy should include all people in deciding how we live and what we do as a community. Democracy means the absence of privilege, making our decisions from a position of equality. Democracy means that we should live in a completely open society with unrestricted access to the information relevant to social issues. It means that we should have the powers to act on our decisions, because without such powers decisions are useless. 

The Socialist Party does not regard political democracy in itself as sufficient to emancipate humanity. But we do recognise that it provides by far the best conditions for the development of the socialist movement. The realisation that genuine democracy cannot exist in capitalist society does not alter the fact that the elbow room already secured by past struggles can be turned against our masters. The right to vote, for instance, can become a powerful instrument to end our servitude and to achieve genuine democracy and freedom.

The vote is revolutionary when on the basis of class it organises labour against capital. Parliamentary action is revolutionary when on the floor of parliament it raises the call of the discontented; and when it reveals the capitalist system's impotence and powerlessness to satisfy the workers wants. The duty of the Socialist Party is to use parliament in order to complete and to bring to a conclusion the revolution. Parliament, is to be valued not for the petty piecemeal reforms obtainable through it, but because through the control of the machinery of government the socialist majority will be in a position to establish socialism. Where it is available to workers we take the viewpoint that capitalist democracy can and should be used.

In our Declaration of Principles we stress the necessity of capturing the machinery of government including the armed forces. That is the fundamental thing. The method, though important, is second to this but, nevertheless, winning control of the state through the ballot-box is central to the Socialist Party. The ballot box is a tactic. The working class being the key political class, whoever wins its support, wins the day, hence why the different factions of the capitalists vie for working class votes.

The Socialist Party has never held that a merely formal majority at the polls will give the workers power to achieve socialism. We have always emphasised that such a majority must be educated in the essentials of socialist principles. The Socialist Party does not propose to form a government and so does not call for people to "vote us into office". Socialist candidates stand as recallable mandated delegates at elections to act as little more than messenger boys and girls sent to formally take over and dismantle the State. not as leaders or would-be government ministers. 

The first step towards taking over the means of production, therefore, must be to take over control of the state, and the easiest way to do this is via elections. But elections are merely a technique, a method. The most important precondition to taking political control out of the hands of the owning class is that the useful majority are no longer prepared to be ruled and exploited by a minority; they must withdraw their consent to capitalism and class rule - they must want and understand a socialist society of common ownership and democratic control.

We need to organise politically, into a political party, a socialist party. We don't suffer from delusions of grandeur so we don't necessary claim that we are that party. What we are talking about is not a small educational and propagandist group such as ourselves, but a mass party that has yet to emerge. It is such a party that will take political control via the ballot box, but since it will in effect be the useful majority organised democratically and politically for socialism it is the useful majority, not the party as such as something separate from that majority, that carries out the socialist transformation of society. They will neutralise the state and its repressive forces and as stated there is no question of forming a government , and then proceed to take over the means of production for which they will also have organised themselves at their places of work. This done, the repressive state is disbanded and its remaining administrative and service features, reorganised on a democratic basis, are merged with the organisations which the useful majority will have formed to take over and run production, to form the democratic administrative structure of the state-free society of common ownership that socialism will be.

UBI - Pie in the Sky

Old fallacies that were debunked years ago are resurrected and presented as new and profound truths. It is fascinating to watch left-wing media because whatever their disagreements, the one thing that is never open for discussion is the questioning of capitalism itself. One being circulated around as the panacea for poverty and all the accompanying social ills is the Universal Basic Income (UBI) or Citizen's Wage. According to some “visionaries” robots will soon take everyone’s job, and a universal basic income will become necessary. A UBI is an unconditional pay packet for everyone in the country. It replaces all existing benefits and is granted to people no matter their job, wealth or circumstance. It will not make you rich, but provide you with the means to survive. Such schemes were first suggested as far back as the 1930s and the ILP but actually goes as far back as the Speenhamland system in the Middle Ages. The first Muslim caliph, Abu Bakr (573-634 CE), who introduced a guaranteed minimum standard of income, granting each man, woman, and child ten dirhams annually; this was later increased to twenty dirhams. Thomas Paine advocated a citizen's dividend to all US citizens as compensation for "loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property" (Agrarian Justice, 1795). While Napoleon Bonaparte echoed Paine's sentiments and commented that 'man is entitled by birthright to a share of the Earth's produce sufficient to fill the needs of his existence'. Nevertheless, no country has actually implemented such a system nationally.

Recently some of those technocrat “philanthropists” from Silicon Valley are especially eager to extol the results of an UBI pilot project in Kenya. The project provides a guaranteed poverty-ending income for those who receive it. In 40 poor, remote villages, 6,000 adults are now receiving 75 cents (yes, cents) per day – or $22 per month for 12 years.  In poor developing countries, an UBI can mitigate expensive aid programs that fail to address the targeted population’s needs, and that are often undermined by corrupt regimes. But The Kenya UBI relies on M-Pesa, a for-profit mobile banking system that was built with the support of foreign aid, private companies, and the government – not well-meaning philanthropists. Even if an UBI succeeds in Kenya it is not a capitalist-friendly solution for the United States: it would be prohibitively expensive and it is doubtful it would not solve the problems that it is meant to address.

On the right UBI in some shape or form has now a solid base amongst its neo-liberal advocates (such as Hayek) who hope to use it to abolish the provision of any state provision of social services and just give every citizen a small equal cash handout instead. It is clear why the UBI concept is most popular on the libertarian right - a means to dismantle the Welfare State. UBI proposals are disingenuous distractions from such immediate problems as persistent poverty, especially for children and racial and ethnic minorities; stagnant real (inflation-adjusted) wages and incomes for most households; expanding income inequality; declining social mobility; inequalities in educational opportunities; and the income volatility that comes with erratic employment. In the US, where the official poverty line for an adult in 2016 was $12,700 per year. Each year, a $10,000 basic income for every American adult would cost more than $3 trillion, consuming more than three-quarters of the annual federal budget. This would require historically high taxes, and yet we rarely hear wealthy UBI advocates calling for their taxes to be raised. They are more likely to advocate cutting existing social-welfare spending, such as Social Security and other programs that benefit the bottom two-fifths of the population, including children.

Many Left proponents assume that if the government gives everybody, working or not, a regular income this is going to have no effect on wage levels? They seem to be assuming that this would be in addition to income from work whereas what is likely to happen is that it would exert a huge downward pressure on wages and that over time real wages would on average fall by the amount of the "basic" income. In other words, that it would be essentially a subsidy to employers. It would be "basic" in the sense of being a mimimum income that employers would top up to the level people needed to be able to reproduce and maintain their particular working skill. Don't they understand how their much-vaunted law of supply and demand works?

These radical supporters of a Universal Basic Income want to end capitalism while presupposing its continued existence. If people are free from any compulsion to work for a capitalist company, this would destroy the capitalist mode of production. This, after all, relies on the workers to produce the products which are turned into profits. It also relies on the exclusion of workers from these products so that they can become profits. However, at the same time, the same supporters also ask the same capitalist firms to produce the profits to pay for freedom from them in the form of a Universal Basic Income. They want both: the continued existence — for now — of the capitalist mode of production where the reproduction of each and everyone is subjugated to profit and the end of this subjugation by providing everyone with what they need. They want companies to make profits, which relies on and produces the poverty of workers, while at the same time ending mass poverty. They want to maintain the exclusion from social wealth through the institution of private property and end this exclusion by giving everyone enough money.

The Challenge for Socialists

The world is in terrible shape. The politicians can’t do anything about it. The economists haven’t helped. All of the people who have dedicated their time or donated to worthy causes haven’t really made much of a difference. The problems even seem to be getting worse, not better. Many people seem to think that there are shortcuts that will solve the problems one by one. Over the last hundred years, the short-cuts have failed to eliminate a single major problem. Poverty, war, starvation, and more remain. Wouldn’t it be better to work for a long-term solution that will succeed, rather than taking short-cuts that don’t? Besides, if everyone working for the short-cuts went to work on a real solution, the long-term would get a lot closer a lot faster. The short-cut approach only allows the problems to get worse. We don’t have time for any more short-cuts. We need a solution. Socialism is the real solution and has never been tried.

The fact is the profit system can never be reformed so as to work in the interest of the majority of the population. It can only work as a profit system, by giving priority to making profits over all other considerations. Workers are thrown out of jobs because they cannot be exploited for profit. Society does not provide for all now simply because its economy (the way it produces things) is geared not to producing what people need but to producing profitably what they can afford.

What we need is a peaceful, democratic social revolution to replace the profit system.  Then we can produce to meet our needs, not for profits. And society can accomplish its true aim: serving the welfare of its members by ensuring that we have no worries over satisfying our material needs. In a socialist society ownership and control of the means of production will be in the hands of the community as a whole. This will enable production to be directed in the interest of all on the basis of what we need. With modern methods of demand research, stock control, statistics, and electronic computing, the means by which the needs of society can be determined are already available. The first step to gaining that control is to work for a world of common ownership, democratic control, co-operation and production directly for the needs of all people. These are the only means by which we can end the economic nightmare of capitalism.  You will never be free until the Earth is free, and the Earth will never be free while it is held in private hands. Capitalism makes us trespassers in a world that should belong to us all in common, let’s organise to take it back. Achieving this new society democratically requires the majority of people to express their desire for it. The immense task is telling the majority of people about it. That’s why we need a socialist party, to campaign for socialism and nothing but.

The reformers, including the politicians of the left with their endless schemes to sanitise the present system, have told us for over a hundred wasted years that all we need to do is elect them to parliament and a decent future for ourselves and our children will be possible? Do not believe those who tell you that there is any worthwhile future under capitalism. The capitalist system means production for sale with a view to profit. No profit, then to hell with needs. The role of the vast majority of us under capitalism is to make profits for the rich and privileged few. We are the raw material of their success. Our poverty is the basis for their luxury. Socialists say that the world should belong to all of us. Only when it does will all of us benefit from the rich abundance of the earth’s resources. For too long we have lived cramped existences so that a minority can live life to the full. We have sacrificed our lives to the profit system and now they ask us to sacrifice the future of our children.

We have only have one life: this one. There is no after-life, nor does reincarnation exist. This life is the only life we have, and the only way we humans can improve it is by our own collective action. No Messiah or other Saviour is going to come and lead us to a better life. We are on our own. The things we need to live and enjoy life are produced today only if there’s a financial profit in it for the private firms, state concerns and rich individuals who own and control the world's productive resources. It is this that causes the economic and military rivalry and the neglect of human needs we see all around us. And these will go on as long as sectional (private or nation-state) ownership and production for profit continue. The collective human action that is needed to improve human life on Earth is democratic action to make the resources of the world the common heritage of all humanity. It is only on this basis that we humans can freely direct production towards the satisfaction of our needs and so ensure that every man. woman and child on this planet have adequate access to food, clothes, housing and all the other things needed to live an enjoyable life.

The situation is not hopeless (unless you expect others to fix everything for you.) The solution has four parts and you are a major component of all four.

• Understand that the problems cannot be solved one by one, they are interconnected. Attempts to solve one problem usually come at the expense of other, equally severe, problems. For example, more money for day care means less money for rape crisis. More money to fight poverty means less money to counter racism. Less money for war means fewer jobs and lower wages.
• Recognise that the underlying interconnecting cause is the profit system.
• Educate others.
• Eliminate the cause. Once the cause is gone, solving the remaining problems will be relatively easy.