Is there any hope?

The world has clearly has moved into unknown territory — a world we fear what may come next. And it makes us anxious. have no idea what the months and years ahead will bring. The future appears vague, hidden beyond the horizon. All the customary signposts have gone missing. In the absence of any clarity, the call to radical hope that from disaster something good can emerge. In the coming years, workers will undoubtedly be confronted by the most difficult challenges that many of us have ever faced. We can expect an assault on everything.  The capitalist class are seeking to make labour power cheaper, decreasing wages by union-busting, outsourcing an off-shoring. Production in capitalism is carried out with the purpose of creating exchange values (commodities to be sold for profit), not use values (things that human beings really need to survive).  Capitalist “democracy” is facing a crisis of legitimacy: fewer and fewer people believe in the ability of government to produce prosperity or promote equal opportunity.  Racism nationalism and xenophobia sexism, homophobia, and all other things that divide the working class has combined to sap working class confidence and has produced demagogues like Marine Le Pen or Donald Trump or Nigel Farage or Viktor Orban. But it also inspires the socialist movement.

A lot of people seem to be talking a lot about socialism these days, but what does it mean?  The myth perpetrated against socialism is that it is a gloomy world devoid of fashion and creativity where citizens wear the same gray clothes, eat the same bland food rations, and are ordered to think the same thoughts. We are told socialism is hostile to the individual in every possible way – to individual thought, expression, choice, freedom, and creativity.  Yet it was Marx and Engels who wrote, “The free and full development of each is the precondition for the free and full development of all.”  Our thinking about a socialist future, what it would be like and how to achieve it, acquires a new urgency.

Social-ism is called what it is because it asks us to recognise the social dimension of our existence so we can see how much we rely on the work others do for us that makes our lives possible. It is recognizing our interdependence. Capitalist culture loves to tell us we are competitive beings and can’t achieve our best without competing against one another. Yet if you were to really pay attention in the world, you would notice that you spend far more time cooperating, collaborating, and depending on others to get things done, to achieve your goals, to meet your needs, to take care of your kids, and so on, than you do compete with others. Socialism must entail the complete socialisation of the economy, not just the redistribution of the product. Workers have to have real, not just notional, control of the means of production and understand that it is in their hands to make or break. It must be seen as the transformation of the entire social formation – to use Marxist terms, both the base (means and relations of production) and the superstructure (social and political system, values etc.). Capitalist culture tends to pit individuals against each other. A socialist society wouldn’t ask us to be who we are not. It would create a social system that accentuated rather than obscured the cooperative or social dimensions of our beings, leaving us to live out our competitive drives in our places of play and sport. Socialism is the modern expression of the age-old quest by humanity for humanity. So long as classes and class exploitation and oppression have existed, a struggle for freedom has been waged.  A revolutionary reorganisation of society to one that is people-centered, democratic, peaceful, and in harmony with nature is necessary if humanity is to survive and flourish. The old ruling class will be overthrown and the working class will hoist the proverbial red flag.

The socialist revolution is not inevitable but a product of a complex and contested process, a transformation orchestrated by real people consciously and creatively shaping their conditions of existence to make their lives more livable, secure, enjoyable, and meaningful.  No one can predict exactly how this process will unfold or what the new society will ultimately look like - there is no blueprint. Majorities make lasting change. People gain a deeper consciousness, including socialist consciousness, in the course of greater participation in the struggle for immediate radical economic, political, and social change. The revolutionary process unleashes the creative energy of millions through a wide variety of forms of mass protest, including mass non-violent action, in the battle for ideas and in the cultural sphere. These forms of action are connected with voting and mobilisation in the election arena, which will be greatly democratised as millions more become engaged. It must result in the election of ordinary working people to office at every level. The world socialist movement must be fully democratic, collaborative and inclusive. It must place the actual needs of people and nature above all else. The climate and ecological crisis is a crisis for humanity. It is also a crisis of capitalism and its inability to address the inevitable havoc of actual climate change and adapt to a fully sustainable model.  Profound and radical changes in our economy and society must begin if the Earth is to avert destruction.  It means transferring all natural resources and the energy production sector to common ownership managed under democratic control. It means a radical reallocation of resources needed to rebuild the planet's infrastructure, retrofitting for conservation and converting to renewables. It means adapting to the inevitable changes wrought by global warming, including extreme weather events, coastal flooding, relocating communities, building massive public works, overcoming drought, and deforestation. The move from production for the creation of commodity values to production for the creation of use values will be central to the socialist effort to create greener ways of doing things, without consumerism but rather with the promise of a life of modest dignity for all. Socialism of the future will have to find ways, technological and other, to produce everything needed by the human race more sustainably, efficiently, and cleanly than under the present capitalist system. That means that scientific socialism will have to be really, really scientific in every sense. Our goal today should be to overthrow capitalism, not to reform or ameliorate anything.

Marx called for an equalitarian society, one where we will live by the principle “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” Facts matter and they make a difference in how we see the world and what we do about it. There is always hope because without it there could be no struggle. Let us resolve to wipe out homelessness, poverty, racism and injustice once and for all! Probably no society has been so deeply alienated as ours from our communities and from nature.

We are here as caretakers and stewards of the planet. We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children. Fostering an understanding that encourages us to recognise our interdependence and our cooperative nature is the key challenge for those working for a socialist society. Our aim to build a sustained movement of the immense majority is a real – not wishful – possibility in the not too distant future. If people power is to grow, it must be in arenas old and new. To act to stop the developing perfect storm of environmental and human disasters it is going to be up to us, the world’s 99 percent. The capitalists are not going to resolve these situations, which arise from the very nature of capitalism itself. Capitalism cannot continue on its present course, and if socialism is not achieved, worse forms of capitalism may replace the present one. 

World Socialism – the reign of humanity

 

In pubs across Scotland you may hear some of the clientele, under the influence several drinks, giving voice to patriotic songs such as "Flower of Scotland” or “Scotland the Brave” but you might "Belong to Glasgow", but Glasgow like every city in Scotland and the world over belongs to the property speculators and the owners of capital. Most of us don’t own a square foot of Scotland. It doesn’t belong to us: we just live here and work for the people who do own it. In or out of the Union, that won’t change.

To talk of Scottish interests is to gloss over, to ignore the basic conflict of interests that inevitably arises from the structure of capitalism. The defenders of capitalism adopt sundry devices to hide this fundamental class-antagonism, and one of the handiest ones has been for years to play on the difference of nationality and seat of government. The defence against this stratagem is, as always. the re-statement of the socialist case that the simple truth is that capitalism will be just the same in an independent Scotland as far as the working class are concerned. What is required is another system of society, not new administrators for the old one.

The Scottish National Party is endeavouring to enlist the support of workers there, on the ground that they can better feed and house Scots better than their fellow-slaves in England, and they propose a whole series of reforms for the special benefit of workers in Scotland, such as increased wages, shorter hours, better housing, and public spending, etc., and with this avowed end in view, calls for the restoration of the Scottish Parliament, which voted for its own extinction.  Scottish workers may well ask themselves whether it is worth their while to go through so much for manifesto promises. The truth is the capitalist class is not primarily concerned with geographical boundaries or the nationality of the people whom they exploit. The Scottish nation, whether independent or united with England, is divided into classes, as is society everywhere. It is this division which accounts for the existence of the evils from which the Scottish workers suffer. English rule did not account for the fact that the clearances of the Scottish Highlands led to the congestion in its industrial slums. The Scottish chieftains themselves turned out their own clansmen in order to make way, first for sheep and later for deer, in order to fill their own pockets. The notorious Duchess of Sutherland, for example, had 15,000 people hunted out in the six years 1814-20 and called in British soldiers to enforce the eviction.

The history of Scotland, while differing in detail from that of England, followed the same general course. By their expulsion from the land during the Enclosures, a nation of peasant cultivators was converted into wage-slaves, exploited by a class ready to convert the world into one gigantic market. The forces of competition thus let loose may be held in check to some degree by national legislatures, but no final solution for the havoc they create can be found along such lines. The problem is essentially an international one and must be internationally solved. That, however, calls not for nationalist parties, but for parties in all countries which clearly recognise the common interest of the workers of the world, namely, to achieve their emancipation as a class. When the workers get on the right track of understanding their position they will cease to fret and obsess over comparatively trivial differences in their conditions, whether as between nations or between districts or separate towns. They will recognise that they suffer varying degrees of poverty because at present they exist merely to produce profits for their masters and that it is a matter of comparative indifference to them whether these masters are English or Scots, Germans or Japanese. Their aim will be to abolish masters of every nationality and to organise the production of wealth for their common good.

There are in Scotland the Left Nationalists, many of whom are deserving of the epithet “tartan trots”, who believe that an independent Scotland is a step closer to socialism. They make an appeal to the workers of Scotland for a Scottish Workers' Republic so that they might win you away from the service of the imperialist gang in London. The struggle of the workers of the United Kingdom must be a united one. To appeal to advocate for an independent workers' republic is to arouse and foster the narrow spirit of nationalism, so well used by our masters. Economically the demand is utopian, as the development of capitalism has made countries more and more dependent on each other, both through the specialisation of industry and also by the global institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank controlled by the Great Powers to suppress or control the smaller nations. The history of countries that have gained independence shows that the realisation of "political sovereignty" by a country leaves the workers' conditions untouched and actually worsens them in many cases.  If workers are is to be won over to socialism, it is by getting them to understand the principles of socialism, and not by appealing to them to concentrate on parochial Scottish affairs. Socialism is worldwide. 

The Socialist Party understand only too well the urge to do something now, to make a change. That makes us all the more determined, however, to get the message across, to gather our fellows to clear away the barrier of the wages system, so that we can begin to build a truly human society.

Capitalism has a lot to answer for.

These are undoubtedly scary times but we must not be ruled by fear. The fear-mongering accompanying the narrow nationalism has not gone unnoticed or unchallenged.  These days we are witnessing the ignorance of populist politicians who continue to sow suspicion of “outsiders”. They have persuaded millions of voters that vulnerable men, women, and children fleeing war-torn or famine-ravaged countries for safe-havens are foreign enemies and their biggest threat. The xenophobic hyperbole has persuaded many that refugees pose a major risk. Eager to retain or acquire political office, these shameful charlatans propose bogus remedies such as walls and fences. It’s much easier to scapegoat the weak than offer effective solutions to peoples' social problems that actually do make so many feel anxious and insecure.  Voters who were drawn to politicians with quick-fixes for the festering inequality and putrefying poverty will be sadly disappointed.

Almost everywhere in the world, un or underemployment is growing, the gap between rich and poor is widening, and environmental devastation is worsening. It has become apparent that these many crises which have given rise to right-wing sentiments share a common root cause: a global capitalist system that is devastating the lives of hundreds of millions of people, but also our ecosystems.

In democracies, the “demos,” the people, rule; not social or economic elites.  This was the understanding of philosophers in Athens twenty-five centuries ago. The emergence and dominance of capitalist economic relations has now marginalized the will of the people. The wealthy have more political influence in than others – not because they are endowed with more wisdom and are more persuasive, but it is thanks to their economic and social power.  The rich rule. And governments serve their interests. Bourgeois democracy is a shell game played every few years in the duplicitous hands of the country’s wealthiest citizens. Marx’s notion that bourgeois ideology blinded workers to their exploitation was prophetic, predicting the passive acceptance of the rule of the few over the many. Capitalist rule is not only disenfranchising people worldwide, it is fueling climate change, destroying cultural and biological diversity, and replacing community with consumerism.

Once we understand the systemic nature of our problems, the path towards solving them becomes clear. Bonds of local interdependence are to be strengthened, where a sense of personal and cultural identity begins to flourish, based on the principle of connection and the celebration of diversity as opposed to the fear-mongering and divisiveness in politics and the media.  Capitalism is dominated by the scapegoat mentality. 

It would be easy to dismiss the fear of “Muslims” – all Muslims everywhere – as casual racism. Of course, racism plays a part in the field left open for the far right to argue that Muslim refugees are unacceptable because “their” culture is incompatible with “our” culture. Yet xenophobia is not always racism and is not always without cause.  Whether we like it or not, mass migration has exacerbated concerns among many European natives that their culture is under threat. For the socialist, neither the word “natives” nor the idea of a “culture” under threat sits easily. Yet they mean something to a large number of Europeans and Americans. Too many accept the view that migrants steal native jobs while also living off welfare and that the evidence predominantly shows that migrants, in general, have a  positive effect on the host economy and that refugee "invasions” may, in fact, actually boost the economy. There is no serious dispute that Europe can benefit from immigration to compensate for its ageing population, in order to have a balanced demography. 

Yet even when people accept the economic arguments – which in the wake of the financial crisis, many do not – this isn’t their primary concern. Discussions move from competition for scarce jobs to the lack of class spaces in schools, the waiting times at hospitals and the shortage of housing. Refugees are collateral damage in the debate over austerity policies and cut-backs in social services by the government.

“We may see people in Dundee starving to death.” - Charity boss

Kim McRae is services manager for One Parent Families (OPF) Dundee support services, an organisation which offers advice for families on a range of issues.

OPF Dundee was part of the Fun and Food programme during the holidays, which provided free activities and lunch to families living in an area of high deprivation. A number of agencies were involved in the initiative, including Cash for Kids and the Northwood Trust This year, OPF Dundee ran sessions in Whitfield, Fintry and St Mary’s during the school break.

Ms McRae said: “In the second week, we had 53 people come to our sessions in Whitfield which was the most I’ve ever seen. It was absolutely unbelievable. It just highlights the awful poverty that some people are clearly living in the city. People can’t afford to feed themselves. If you imagine your children are eligible for free school meals, five days a week and then that suddenly comes to an end. You may have no extra money and you are going to struggle. We had to make referrals to food banks during the sessions too.”

Ms McRae continued : “The foodbanks in Fintry are bursting to capacity. And these aren’t just people struggling on benefits. More and more people are now ‘working poor’ so they have a job and still don’t have a decent standard of living — it’s tragic. We see parents trying their best to survive. But if there’s a case where they don’t have the money, they will feed their kids and go without food themselves if they have to."

She then related, “We had one woman who couldn’t afford to feed herself so she was drinking cups of tea full of sugar so her child didn’t go without food. Another reason that the Fun and Food programme is organised is so it can help people come to a warm building when they are too poor to heat their homes. We see people struggling to buy other essentials like cleaning products or even toilet paper. I’ve seen adults burst into tears with the situation they are in. To see people struggle to provide the basics is very upsetting. The level of poverty we see is deplorable — and that’s just what we see. There will be hidden poverty across the city. People still feel there is a stigma attached to asking for help or going to a foodbank. But if it wasn’t for foodbanks in Dundee, I don’t know what some people would do.

Ms McRae the  concluded, “We may see people in Dundee starving to death.”

Nationalism - From one prison to another

The Socialist Party is not concerned as to whether those who support the SNP and the nationalist movement are sincere or not. We are endeavouring to show Scottish working men and women the plain, bald facts of the position, regardless of whether these facts are palatable or not. We, who are working people, should concern ourselves with the chains that shackle us to the cogs and wheels of capital—that doom us forever to the toil and sweat of wage-slavery. Nationalism is nothing but a change of masters. Whether the government of Westminster or the government in Holyrood rules, whether the flag be the Saltire or the Union Jack, whether the Union ends or continues, you, as a worker, will in no way be any better off. Does our Scottish 'heritage' do anything to help us to overcome our actual working class heritage of poverty, insecurity and social degradation, the real heritage that workers of every nation shares in. Since the Holyrood parliament was established it has been a hunting-ground for ambitious politicians. It has also been the home of ignorant political leaders. The constitutional form of government makes no difference to the workers. Government implies subjects, and under the capitalist system of society the actual governmental machinery, Parliament, councils, and judiciary, etc., are representative of the capitalist class—the necessary machinery for ruling a subject class composed of wage-slaves. The boasted equality pledge of nationalists should be viewed as the fraud it is. For if there existed a real equality there could be no governing class or government, but only administrative assemblies charged with the administration of things in accordance with the wishes of the majority. But capitalism being a system wherein one class governs another, where one class is idle yet wealthy, and the other class producing wealth yet always poor, neither equality nor democracy can exist, the latter only being possible when the former is present.

Capitalist government is deliberately organised and maintained for robbery and oppression. Capitalism everywhere tends to reduce the workers to a minimum standard of subsistence, and steadily encroaches on their paltry rights and liberties. It is a false idea of the nationalists that the Scottish workers must struggle for national independence before they can tackle the problem of poverty. The working class everywhere is under one capitalist government or another. The continuance of the private property system remains the core belief of the nationalist movement, and so long as private property remains the miseries that necessarily flow therefrom will remain also and continue to afflict the workers under a “free” Scotland. To split territories, set up new governments, or to re-establish old ones will not help them nor even simplify the problem. Their only hope lies in the speedy establishment of socialism. They must join hands with the workers of the world, and make common cause against the ruling class. They must make ready for the last war—the war of classes, in which classes must be abolished and a real equality established on the basis of common ownership and democratic control of all the means of life.

Capitalism forces us accept our role of a propertyless, docile class. That enforcement cannot be accomplished by the police or authoritarian dictatorships. It is achieved by controlling our ideas, by manipulating how we think. By promoting among us, the working class who own nothing but our ability to work, the belief that we share ownership in a country or 'nation'; that patriotism somehow serves our interest or that religious superstition will earn us a good life in an afterworld if we meekly acquiesce to the miseries of being a wage-slave. Those who promote hatred and division among us, those who preach nationalism or patriotism, are playing the game according to the rules of capitalism.

Workers have no country and we have learned to understand that we have made a giant stride forward in acquiring class consciousness. The countries we live in, together with the machinery of production and distribution by which we live, are the property of the ruling class. The Socialist Party, therefore, urges the workers of Scotland to unite with workers elsewhere to set up a worldwide socialist cooperative commonwealth where the peoples of the world will join together to produce for their needs. This will be a society without frontiers, without nations, and without States. This is the real alternative to nationalist panaceas. From the point of view of the Scots workers, he or she would remain the wage-slave being bought and sold creating surplus value for the privileged. Post-independence a Scot might well consider him or herself as having achieved emancipation.but it will all be moonshine. The Socialist Party possesses no interest in nationalist movements. The Socialist Party strives for the elimination of countries and its replacement by a nation-less world devoid of frontiers, caste systems, and religious barriers. If nationalism was a recognised disease, its terrible toll of human life would excite the demand for a cure.

 SNP leaders blame the dreadful social conditions in Scotland on British rule when in fact these conditions are part and parcel of the capitalist system of society all over the world. To end them, calls not for a national revolution, but rather for the organising of the working- class all over the world in a social revolution. There is no essential difference between the capitalists of England and Scotland. Both are characterised by the same greed, the same ambition, the same hypocrisy, and corruption.  Would the working class be worse or better off under the UK or a sovereign Scotland? Would there be anything to choose between the two? Surely, in both an independent Scotland or the United Kingdom, the workers' standard of living would be much the same. So would the slums, the unemployment and the other problems of capitalist society. The Scottish Nationalists bait their ambitious schemes with fake promises of prosperity for the working class. And world socialism would still remain the only solution to these problems. It is time to turn a deaf ear to the empty promises of nationalism and look forward with hopeful eyes to the day when Scotland shall be a land where its wealth is owned and controlled by its workers—and a harmonious member of a world cooperative commonwealth. 

‘I am not a nigger—I am a man.’

 

The objective of the Socialist Party is to free white brown and black workers from wage-slavery and to end the evils of capitalism. The root cause of modern racial prejudice is the capitalist system, a society of competition and struggle: struggle between worker and worker. For the working-class, it is a society which breeds division and strife. Capitalism is a system of competition rather than co-operation.  The Socialist Party is angry and indignant about the sorts of lives we are forced to endure, about bad housing. unemployment, old people dying of cold in winter, and all the other depressing features of poverty — but we don't place the blame on other workers — whites, or blacks, because that only hurts ourselves. It suits the capitalist class that the anger is directed away from them, and divertd from the real cause of the problems. What really worries the ruling class is when members of the working class get together, when they organise an efficient democratic political movement with the single aim of throwing them out, and they fear when that movement seems to start to attract support. So long as racism among different groups, is providing each race with a scapegoat to blame and averting any approach to the real problem, the ruling class can enjoy the benefits of working-class disunity.

Race and immigration serve a double purpose for capitalism. First, they can be used as straight-forward vote winners for the politicians. By trading on the prejudices that capitalism and its politicians have themselves instilled into the working class the politician hopes to suck in the votes of irrationality. Second, the race issue has at least one important function — it provides a "easy answer" to the difficulties of capitalism and so turns attention away from the problem. The result is that instead of the real issue, Socialism or capitalism, confronting the electorate at election time, the issue of race is thrown up. While the workers are busy blaming each other for their problems (the whites blame the blacks, the blacks the pakistanis, the hindus, the muslims etc, etc.) instead of seeking the real causes, capitalism continues in safety.

Any attempt to rationalize racist attitudes, or to surround them with an aura of scientific justification, is ludicrous. All human beings are genetically similar, and what variations there are exist within every group and in no way lend support to ideas of innate superiority or inferiority.  All humans belong to one species: we have the same blood, and we can interbreed to produce offspring. Those who have tried to divide the species into races, based on inherited physical features, have disagreed about how many races there are. But their scientific investigations have shown that there are no “pure” races. 

The Socialist Party condemns racist ideas. We find such attitudes pernicious and repugnant, Racists are invariably ignorant and irrational. They seek only the most crude and superficial explanation of social problems. They need a whipping-boy, a scapegoat. The Jew to blame for money grabbing and financial swindling. The black man to blame for housing squalor or unemployment. If they can find in the immigrant a convenient outlet upon whom to vent their frustrations and resentments, they need look no further. The way to defeat racism is not to fight the white supremacists on the streets, as some on the Left would like us to do. You cannot clear up confused ideas by fighting confused people. The lies of racism must be constantly exposed. Old ideas must be challenged by new realities. The only way to get rid of racism is to get rid of the out-dated social system which keeps producing it. 

The Socialist Party call on all men and women of the working class, whether they are black, white, brown or yellow, whether they are employed or unemployed, old or young, to join us in a growing political movement to end this violent, poverty-stricken way of organising society. It is ours for the taking as soon as we make up our minds to act all together. Workers of every colour and country can unite to establish a society where production will be for the needs of all, not for the profit of a few. Racism divides the working class; socialism will unite the human race. The Socialist Party advocates a world where the whole of humanity is united about social relationships of equality and co-operation. The identity of the socialist is not with any national grouping, brand of religion, any alleged ‘race’ or ethnic culture. The Socialist Party has gone beyond the shallow allegiances that misdirect the attitudes of those who are still burdened by nationalism, religion or racism. The Socialist Party has no hesitation in taking a stand. We condemn racism. To us it is repugnant. We are opposed to any attitude that discourages the unity of the working class. Even so, our disgust is extended by an understanding of the problem. Disgust without knowledge is impotent. The racists are not inherently evil people. They are men and women who are moved by fear, insecurity, frustration and ignorance, all of which are attitudes conditioned by social forces. They possess a history of struggle and insecurity. They are on the defensive, they are anxious to protect jobs, a standard of living, a standard of housing, that they feel has been hard won. Now they feel hard done by. Mere condemnation will not help them. Workers who don't understand why capitalism condemns them to impoverished lives are all too ready to blame their problems onto other workers, from other towns or from other countries or of other "races". 

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.