Friday, May 26, 2017

Freedom Not Nationhood

From one point of view the prospects for the future don’t look good.  Across the globe, populist nationalists have taken power or threaten to assume power. In addition to our usual activity of putting across the case for socialism, the Socialist Party will have to step up the socialist case against nationalism.  We will be insisting that wage workers in one state have the same basic interest as their counterparts in other states. We are all members of the world working class and have a common interest in working together to establish a world without frontiers in which the resources of the globe will have become the common-owned property of all the people of the world and used for the benefit of all.

Patriotism is an objectionable sentiment since it means the placing of one’s own country, its interests and well-being, above those of the rest of humanity.  A nationalist who wants his or her country great and strong invariably wants to see it so, if need be, at the expense of the welfare and interests of other nations. Patriotism Is the enemy of social justice and socialism.  A community of interests and neighbourly feeling does not exclusively apply to nationality. In ancient times it was the city-state rather than the nation-state which was its boundary. The notion that there is something wrong or disgraceful in going against one’s own country is imbued within us all but, of course, it does not involve any capitalist when it comes to determining where his or her investments should go. 

We live in a world which has the potential to adequately feed, house and provide clean water and decent medical care for every single man, woman and child on Earth. The resources exist to banish material want as a problem for members of the human race. Yet millions throughout the world are malnourished, live in squalor or are actually dying of starvation or starvation-related diseases. What can be done about it? The solution is one world without frontiers and without states, but not a world government presiding over a world capitalist economy. It is world socialism, where the resources of the planet have become the common heritage of all, to be used for the benefit of all Earth’s people. 

Firstly, borders and nations are not the real problem, but are consequences of the real problem, which is private class ownership and control of the means of life under capitalism. National borders will survive so long as national capital finds them indispensable to the needs of capital. Independence won't lead to a single affordable house, a single hospital or a single school being built if it does not make a profit for the capitalist and investor. 

The planet we live on has been arbitrarily divided into some two hundred nation states. This is our planet and we want it back. We can replace oppression with equality, waste of resources with production directly for use, and systemic competition with cooperation for the common good. We can create the world that we want, fashioned by the majority, in the interests of the majority. Socialists have no interest in rearranging national boundaries or in changing the nationality of the capitalist class in certain areas. Workers should just take the pattern of states as they find them and abolish the lot.

We need to abolish the out-moded and old-fashioned division of the world into nation states. Instead we need to cooperate on a world basis to meet our material needs and energy requirements. Only in a socialist society will the community be able to make decisions about energy production which are based on what is safe and in the human interest including our shared environment instead of decisions based on, and limited by, economic considerations. Only in a socialist society, when human beings can relate to each other as fellows and not as units of labour to be exploited or national enemies to be destroyed, will the threats to humanity's continued existence really be removed. The task confronting us is to free ourselves from the depredations of capitalism and create the World Commonwealth of Humanity.

Capitalist competition leads to squabbles over artificially created national boundaries. Nation states waste resources on maintaining armed forces and developing weapons of mass destruction which threaten the existence of the world. Competition between workers, especially in a dwindling job market during capitalism's periodic slumps, leads to poverty, insecurity and xenophobia. A socialist society will release the potential to satisfy human needs which the computer-age has made possible. And because it will not be limited by market forces or the need for secrecy it will be possible to co-operate on a worldwide scale for the first time. 

Capitalism is not forever.

Sham solutions, Shameless capitalism

Left and Right are a part of the same capitalist shithole. Instead the Socialist Party stands dedicated to achieving the following objective:
"The establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community." 

This post-capitalist society of social equals, will not require rationing of access to social wealth, via waged slavery, based upon ability to pay for them, but will proceed from a production for use, free access principle of:
"From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs."

We are addressing the need of a post-capitalist society utilising the existing available and future technology, which capitalism cannot do, as it would implode and lead to war (over-dumping, trade routes and raw materials).

 One run by us all in common, (no governments over people) with free access (no rationing by wage or prices) to the collectively produced super-abundance, that this would produce from a production for use society, and not some state capitalist monstrosity such as existed in post-feudal experiments such as Russia was.

 Because the rate of exploitation is greater, with the intensification and new technology as capitalism’s productive forces have outgrown the production relation, this means capitalism has achieved its limited potential, of creating the possibility for its own obsolescent redundancy and the new post-capitalist society of super-abundance and free access is now more than possible, as it has been since the start of last century.

 We do not need decadent 'Capital' any more as we presently, the world’s working class 95%, run society from top to bottom and are quite capable of running the new post-capitalist era without elites.

 The employer has the upper hand always. Do you not understand what wage slavery means. The choice is work or dole. It is time we stopped expecting politicians to deliver salvation for us and took ownership and control into our collective hands to end the capitalist system, the immense majority being self-led and using democratic means, the end of governments over people and utilisation of this political awareness to have the people themselves administer over things, utilising recallable delegates when necessary.

You have to make a mental leap from considering how things are done today, with standing armies and competing local, regional and global interests allied with anarchic production for sale market allocation for the benefit of 1-5% minority privileged owning groups, with the majority in waged enslaved conditions of rationed access to the wealth they collectively produce, into commonly owned production for use cooperative, global, regional and local, endeavours with free access and the situation is resolved into cooperative allocations and sharing of raw materials as opposed to warring competition.

The material productive forces of society have come into conflict with the existing relations of production. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations have turned into their fetters or, in other words, the productive forces have outgrown the production relation.

But nothing will stop an idea which time has come.

All wealth comes from the world's working class.

The capitalist class, liberals or neo-cons, are an economic parasite class.

That class is easily removable when the workers of the world aspire to a free access, democratically controlled, commonly owned world where production is for the use of everyone to satisfy all human needs, where the organising principle is:
"All for All".

Wee Matt
FOR A MONEY-FREE WORLD


Thursday, May 25, 2017

We are all foreigners

People living in other countries which are not the land of their birth are grimly accustomed to invectives like "fucking foreigner"; "parasite"; "refugee", etc. and it appears matters have been getting out of hand in recent years. Xenophobia is on the rise. "Patriotic" citizens are quick to assert, nationalistically, that the "aliens" have come to take over their country, their resources, their jobs, their culture, and what have you. It is important to understand that society today is divided into the rich and the poor. Every main political party is owned and controlled by the rich who contribute money to it which is used to canvass the support of the poor masses. Thus a party in power is, in reality, the executive committee of the rich people behind it. Such a party, therefore, rules in the interests of the owners. All its policies are consequently aimed at the welfare of the rich. Now, since there will arise a conflict of interest between the rich owners and their poor followers, the ruling party or government will have to spend huge chunks of the country's money on arms, maintenance of the army, the police, prisons, etc to hold down the masses so that the rich can make their profits without hindrance. In the process basic necessities such as food, shelter, healthcare, education are underfunded. The little that is provided can only be afforded by the rich. The result, undoubtedly, is discontent, alienation, and disobedience among the masses. Clearly, there is a surge in support for populist parties and politicians across Europe and in the USA who peddle nationalism, xenophobia, and racism and pose as champions of the people against the establishment. Widespread disaffection with and mistrust of the mainstream political parties have emerged. It is not too difficult to see why this discontent has come about.

In order to ward off unrest, various tactics are employed by governments. One of them is creating divisions among the suffering masses by, for instance, blaming foreigners and whipping up nationalistic feelings. This diverts attention from misrule and mismanagement. Secondly, and in response to the official lies, the masses who are hungry, sick and illiterate are taken in by the government's ploy. Now, since a hungry man is an angry man and since anger is emotional and overpowers reason, the least provocation can result in misdirected violence vented against vulnerable fellow citizens or be turned loose on the "aliens". This is the real cause of xenophobia - the rich pitting the poor against the poor. Our ruling class has opened a Pandora's Box of nationalist rhetoric around migrants and allowed a space to open up in groups and individuals influenced by fascist and racist ideology. Far-right political violence is becoming increasingly commonplace.

Socialists do not speak of ‘we’ and ‘us’ in relation to so-called nationality in where we happened to have been born. We know that, in every country, there are two classes with opposed interests: the class of those who own and control the means of production and the rest, the vast majority, who do not and, to live, have to sell their mental and physical energies to those who do for a wage. Nationalism is used by our rulers to win support.  The Socialist Party condemns nationalist ideas. They are stumbling-blocks to working-class understanding of socialism.  This above all is why we find such attitudes pernicious and repugnant.  The nationalist seeks only the most crude and superficial explanation of social problems. They need a scapegoat to explain the loss of what they called “national identity”. For the working class national identity has always meant congested decaying slums, insecurity poverty and, very often, the dole-queue. National identity is a cunning political device by means of which the working class, who own no country, are duped to identify with their exploiters, the capitalists, who own virtually everything. However, it is a typical contradiction of capitalism that its private-property relationships produce nationalism, and yet commodity production and the profit motive find nationalism an encumbrance. Like all the other political issues, this one is being debated within the ruling class. For no ruling class is ever completely unanimous.  Capitalism creates conflicts within each ruling class; no two capitalists have interests which are exactly the same. Some members of the capitalist class take advantage of any "foreign" immigration to whip up nationalist feeling The capitalist class is interested in maximising profits. Whether the wealth they accumulate is derived at home or abroad is a matter of indifference to them. What capitalism encourages in one situation, it actively seeks to prevent in another. 

Capitalism in creating a world in its own image also creates a world-wide working class with common interests. This common interest cuts right across questions of colour, language, and place-of-birth. It prompts all workers to understand the world they live in and to take enlightened action to banish the major social problems, by changing society. The whole of humanity and the entire earth are the only limits to society. Capitalism divides because the means of production are owned by a few. Socialism will embrace all mankind because the earth will be owned in common.  We stand together as friends, work colleagues and members of our communities. We stand side-by-side and will not allow a wave of xenophobic nationalism and racism to threaten our lives and well-being.

 What an extraordinary notion it is that so many members of the human race should be forced to remain on that small section of the earth's surface in which they happened to be born. Who gave the world's rulers the right to tell us which bit of land we should live on? Nationalist feelings arise because of the incessant propaganda of the ruling class in each country to persuade the working majority that they are in some way essentially different from and superior to everyone from other countries. The apologists for capitalism who try to foment ill-feeling towards "foreigners" landing here, whether they come to escape persecution, or to obtain slightly higher wages, never attack those many members of the upper class, including many newspaper proprietors and football club owners, who swan about the world as if there were no such thing as borders and visas. But then, in a capitalist society, you can't really expect the rulers and the ruled to be judged by the same standard, can you?


Words are our weapon

THE WORLD SOCIALIST MOVEMENT
Words don’t have the same meaning everywhere, especially when new labels are applied to old theories. Intellectuals liberally sprinkled their writings with Marxist phrases and references to Marx's views, calculated to give the impression to those who do not know the facts that they have something worthwhile to contribute. Many people particularly the young, are not attracted by the establishment political parties nor can they fail to notice the economists' and politicians' inability to grasp the problems of poverty and to deal with them. The economists are in a complete muddle. They produce their theories and explanations for the bewilderment of students, and the ordinary man in the street, who knows nothing of the finer points of theory, sees only that the economists are hopelessly disagreed among themselves even about the elements of their subject; that their explanations and forecasts time and time again have been shown to be false; and that their attempts to advise and guide the politicians have had no obvious effect on the solution of the world's great problems. Academics sneer at Marx and fail to appreciate the charge he and other socialists made against capitalism that because it produces only for sale at a profit and not for human need it prevents the production of sufficient food, clothing and shelter for the needs of humanity. If all the able-bodied population were working, and if all the wasteful forms of activity that are indispensable to capitalism were cut out (e.g., financial operations, armed forces, munitions, bureaucratic activities, etc.), then the production of useful articles could be increased ten-fold. What Marx’s critics do not realise is that these forms of waste really are indispensable to capitalism and cannot be eliminated under capitalism.

The task of the workers remains that of gaining political control for socialism. Socialist society is not being gradually introduced by Labour government; it will start when, and only when, a socialist working class comes to power. That will be the end of an epoch and the beginning of a new one and people will not be in any doubt of what had happened. Socialism cannot be achieved until there is a majority of socialists and they gain control of the machinery of government for the purpose of abolishing capitalism. Until then, notwithstanding all the efforts of reformers to improve the existing system and administer it differently, the evils of class society, based on the exploitation of the workers, will remain to strangle the progress of the human race.

To Marxists recognition of the class struggle means recognising that the interest of the working class is incompatible with the interest of the class that owns the means of production and distribution and that, the class struggle can be abolished only by dispossessing the capitalist class and introducing a social system based on common ownership and democratic control, involving, of course, the abolition of the system of wage-labour and of the production of goods for sale. Under capitalism there are no "good times" for the working class.

Reformists hoped to serve two masters, what they call the policy of serving the interests of all sections of the community. As time goes on and the working class become restive about the non-appearing fruits of reformist promises, people become more and more divorced from the political process. Far from moving towards the goal of socialism which will emancipate workers from capitalist wage-slavery, the struggle has yet to be waged. The only remedy for the evils of capitalism is socialism, and the time for it is now. Capitalism is the removable evil from which the working class have to rid themselves, Therefore all who defend capitalism are the enemies of the working class.

It is the workers who keep capitalism going, for the benefit of the capitalists. It is time the workers determined, by international socialist action, to refashion human society on a socialist foundation. Neither avowedly capitalist governments nor Labour governments can save the world. It is a supreme task for the world working class and unless it is achieved the whole world faces chaos, misery and destruction. The productive power and the administrative ability are present for the making of a new world. Do not delay the decision to use them. The Socialist Party show the way to working class emancipation and the happiness and well-being of humanity.

Groups such as The Zeitgeist Movement are gaining adherents because it deliberately avoids challenging the political parties. Instead of forming a political party with the definite aim of conquering power for the application of its ideas, TZM relies on some sort of persuasion and peaceful penetration into the existing parties. If the Zeitgeist Movement came out in the open as a political party, it would quickly learn that gaining vague sympathy is a very different thing from winning more votes than the opposing parties. The other parties would very quickly turn their attention to smashing or swallowing the movement, according to whether they judged it to be a good vote-catcher or not. But as soon as one party took it up the other parties would turn on it. Leaving aside the soundness of their vision they seem to believe that a proposal has only to be shown to be practicable for it to be adopted. They ignore all questions of the nature and control of political power. Actually we see political power (which is the dominating factor) in the hands of a section of the propertied class. It is useless for TZM or anyone else to come forward with a scheme unless (a) the scheme is attractive to those who wield power, or (b) that the steps are going to be taken by those to whom the scheme is attractive to obtain the power to put it into operation. It is a movement without an organised political basis. One incidental downside arising out of TZM is that, to the extent that it gains, it makes socialist propaganda more difficult. People who fall a victim to TZM quite naturally disregards Socialist propaganda. TZM promises a new millennium of unlimited wealth by the simple device of letting technology have free rein. In comparison socialism looks dull and slow-moving.

A basic difficulty about establishing socialism is that such a social system, involving as it does the disappearance of buying and selling, wages and prices, and the coercive state, could only be operated if the mass of the population understood and wanted it and were ready to accept all the new responsibilities of voluntary co-operation that would rest on them. If the working class as they are at present, most of them attached to capitalism, preoccupied with wages and prices, wage differentials and trade-union demarcation lines, and dependent on management direction and trade-union leadership, were suddenly faced with socialism there would be chaos and no alternative but to return to capitalism.

Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Patriotism - A Message of Misery

Patriotism as a devotion to the interests of the class which rules over us has long been of value to the capitalist class throughout the world.  In the early 1700s Jonathan Swift recommended it in “The Examiner” thus – “the first principle of patriotism is to resent foreigners.” This method, of setting one section of population against another, has been used ultra-successfully all around the world – so successfully that great swathes of people can now rouse themselves, with no apparent external cue, against the newest threat, the most recent immigrant group, asylum seekers, anyone who looks or sounds like they may be from a group that’s not their own. That its workers should be patriotic is vital to each national ruling class and this, fertilised by official lies, is exploited by all governments.  Enemies are required by the state elites. Enemies within and without, social, cultural, economic enemies to keep the population vigilant against all possible threats, to keep them fully occupied, suspicious of each other, divided, protecting the national interest against any wayward individual or group – including themselves. Workers have no country, however, the system arbitrarily divides them according to ruling class rivalries, the workers are united in their poverty.

Workers, here and elsewhere, are soaked with the philosophy of nationalism from childhood, and when their masters summon them to defend their (the masters') ownership in the means of life, and their right to exploit and govern, appealing to them in the name of a common patriotism, their lack of political knowledge renders them—like clay in the potter's hands— pliable and easily moulded, into the designs of their social enemies, the master class. They become the mere pawns in the political game played only between capitalist groups. The poverty they have endured, their years of excessive toil, and all their bitter struggles on the industrial field against the masters are forgotten, when national traditions—the historic camouflage that veils capitalist interests—are spread to snare them. Workers of all lands need to know how to throw off the yoke of capitalism to establish a system in which they will no longer be exploited by the capitalists of any nationality. The World Socialist Movement is their only hope. It is not a change of masters, or a change in the location of rulers, that the workers of Scotland need but the establishment of a system of society where they will democratically control the means of life owned in common. It is in the interest of your masters that you should be divided by national and religious barriers

 All capitalist societies are divided along class lines—capitalist and worker—therefore any talk of "nation" or patriotism is palpable nonsense. Capitalists and workers do not share a common identity nor do they share any interests in common. We are constantly hoodwinked by a repetition from the mouths of politicians, of the old fiction of the alleged community of interest between ourselves and our employers, and that we should be privileged to defend a country we do not own. While the capitalist class dominates and controls all the means of wealth production the creation of nations is not the business of the working class. It matters not whether the Union Jack or the Saltire flies over Edinburgh. The patriotism of the capitalist class is sheer hypocrisy. In the quest for profits all barriers are broken down, and the capitalist’s love of his country withers before a fraction percent on the yield of his capital. It is the business of the capitalists to set one section of the working class against another in order to prevent them perceiving who are their real enemies.

What the Socialist Party realises clearly is that the interests of fellow workers in other lands are nearer to our own than are those of our employers master in our own country. The bonds which bind worker with worker, irrespective of nationality, are those of class solidarity.  From the capitalist-class of every country the worker is divided by a gulf of class antagonism which can be bridged only by the over-throw of the capitalist-class by the working class as the result of the coming social revolution.

The capitalists are clearly parasites. Are the people to be for ever sacrificed to capital? Surely it is time the workers used their brains in their own interests. The callous brutality, the greed and hypocrisy of the ruling class of all nations could hardly ever be clearer than it is to-day. The workers have only to discard the blinkers of patriotism to see this plainly. The Socialist Party is well attuned to the machinations of the elites of powerful countries as they seek to promote their interests . Though it is no easy task for the uninitiated, we urge our fellow workers to be as vigilant as ever when the fanfare of jingoism and patriotism are sounding.

We can see why the ruling class in the various different capitalist states into which the world is divided find it necessary to rely on workers' identification with 'their' land – it helps them build up popular support for their rule and their foreign policy aimed at protecting their interests abroad. But we can't see why Socialists need to. On the contrary, nationalism is something we need to combat as it is an obstacle to the understanding that the problems faced by workers all over the world cannot be solved within a national framework but only on a world scale, on the basis of a world without frontiers where the resources of the whole planet have become the common heritage of all humanity. 


Comprehending Capitalism

The first point socialist bring to the notice of our fellow-workers is that beneath all the processes of buying and selling, banking and commercial operations, lies the private ownership and control of the physical means of life. Human beings need food, clothing and shelter, recreation and amusements. These things are provided by the application of human labour to the land, raw materials, and the instruments of production and distribution, but the individuals whose labour-power produces the wealth do not own it. All the land and raw materials and all the products are privately owned by individual capitalists or companies or the State. The typical features of capitalist production are the existence on the one hand of a large number of workers who get their living by selling their mental and physical energies for a wage or a salary, and, on the other hand, a relatively small number of capitalist investors who get their living by owning property and employing workers to use that property for the production of wealth. With their wages and salaries the workers can buy part of the wealth produced, and the balance remains in the possession of the capitalists. The workers consume the greater part of their share immediately, by eating food, by wearing out their clothes, and so on, while the capitalists, through the abundance of their wealth, are able to "save" a considerable part of it; that is to say, they take it not in the form of articles for personal consumption, but in the form of factories, machinery, etc., and all the various forms of additions to the existing stock of "means of production and distribution."

What we see is millions of workers, producing and distributing the articles needed to sustain life, and working under the control of the capitalists who own the land, factories, railways, etc. The articles produced can be divided into three classes: (1) Articles needed for the subsistence of the workers (mainly necessities); (2) Articles for the subsistence of the propertied class, both necessities and luxuries; and (3) Articles needed for the repair and extension of existing means of production and distribution (factories, railways, etc.) and the erection of new kinds of means of production and distribution as new needs arise and are satisfied. But the above picture is over-simplified because capitalists and workers are not two closely organised world classes acting as two single units, but are composed of millions of separate individuals and groups acting on their own. If they were two single units, each represented by a responsible authority, we could imagine them planning production and distribution so that only so much of each kind of wealth is produced as is needed, and so that the responsible authority for each class divides the articles among its members as required. Actually the process is carried out with the assistance of the money system. Each capitalist firm produces goods of one or a few kinds (say, boots) and sells them for money. The money is used to pay for the costs of manufacture, raw materials, wages, profits, etc., and the individuals who receive the money spend it to buy goods of various kinds. The final effect arrived at by this money process is at bottom the exchange of commodities. Each individual who owns commodities goes into the market and effects an exchange, giving one kind of goods and receiving another kind or kinds. The worker goes into the market with labour power to sell. He receives wages and uses them to buy bread, clothes, etc. The advantage of the money system over the direct exchange of goods — barter — is that simple barter is faced with the difficulty that the individual who brings boots to the market may not want to receive the articles brought into the market by the man who wants the boots. Money, on the other hand, is the "universal equivalent." He who has money can, if he has sufficient of it, buy any of the thousands of kinds of articles offered for sale. Consequently, the use of money as a medium of exchange is a great advance on systems of barter. But it must not be forgotten that the various substances which have been used as money (in modern times silver or gold) have been able to occupy that position only because they were like every other article in the all-important characteristic that they possessed value, while in addition gold and silver have qualities of durability and scarcity which make them most suitable for use as money.  The values of articles are not accidental or fixed by the free choice of the owners of them. Value is a relationship between the various articles depending upon the amount of labour required in their production. Leaving aside various complicating features we can say that a certain weight of gold has the same value as a certain weight of wheat, or a certain number of razor blades, because the labour required to produce each of these three quantities is the same. We see, then, that the payment of a sum of money by one person to another is, in effect, a way of transferring command over goods from one person to another.

That is a brief outline of the underlying framework of capitalist production.


Tuesday, May 23, 2017

Patriotism is a sham

"Patriotism in its simplest, clearest, and most indubitable meaning is nothing but an instrument for the attainment of the government's ambitious and mercenary aims and a renunciation of human dignity, common sense and conscience by the governed and a slavish submission to those who hold-power. That is what is really preached wherever patriotism is championed. Patriotism is slavery." - Tolstoy

Workers have no country and patriotism is a delusion and nationalism is a snare.  Nationalism denies humanity, and instead interposes nation, and denies humanity to other nations.  It also emphasises the idea that the world cannot change, since the nation is an organic whole as it is and is unchangeable. Let's not forget, that nationalism doesn't "just happen" it is the product of a vast process of material production, from mass media, to civic performance.  The material culture of sports helps produce, reproduce and reify nationalist ideas.  International sporting events are perhaps the finest example of nationalism being expressed after war.  With the ruling class, patriotism is the mask of self-interest: with the working class it is the brand of utter ignorance. Let us be internationalists.

Working people have no country of their own. Their land is the property of a master class and the worker rarely owns enough to bury his or her coffin. Patriotism runs counter to the interests of working-people. It is therefore opposed by the Socialist Party who do not offer "policies for Britain" etc, but demand a world community without frontiers.  The aims and ambitions of nationalists and patriots are not identical with the principles and ideals of international socialism, and that there is, in fact, no necessary connection between the two things. Too often in history workers have been urged to concern themselves with the interests of nations - to fight to defend one against the other, or to establish new ones.

Let every Scot face the fact that Scottish nationalism is not socialism and that the achievement of the SNP even up to the highest professed ideals of traditional patriotism, namely, the complete separation of Scotland from Britain, would not “free” Scotland one iota in any sense satisfactory to the world socialist and absolutely demanded by socialist principles. This struggle of Scottish “patriots” to “free” Scotland is therefore from the our point of view an utter chimera. In the name of humanity and of sanity let every international socialist in the United Kingdom have done with the traditional follies and foolishness of nationalism or of unionism. Let us direct all our energies to the emancipating the workers from the chains of wage-slavery. Every professed socialist who lends countenance and encouragement to the deluded Scottish separatists in their vain efforts to gain a sovereign Scotland is guilty either of betraying socialist principles or be ignorant of what socialist principles really are, a knave or a fool.  Associating the concepts of nationalism and socialism has done nothing but to add to the confusion in working-class minds about what socialists really stand for. Scottish nationalism has more than its fair share of leftist confusionists. 

The working class of the world have a common bond that transcends every tie of race or nationality. What matters the name of the country of your birth, if you are a slave in that country? What binds you to the capitalist? You are chained to his machines, in his factories and workshops, and driven by the lash of hunger to produce wealth for him while you sink deeper into poverty. You are the robbed, he is the robber; you are the slave, he is the master. A bond of shame, a tie that is a degradation to every wage-slave and patriotism is the acceptance and approval of this bond.

When hands clasp across national boundaries in solidarity the workers will know that borders and nations have no meaning or significance for them. These two, nationalism and international socialism (and there can be no socialism that is not international) are opposite as the poles, as antagonistic as fire and water. When patriotism and socialism enter the worker's mind, patriotism will be quenched or socialism will evaporate. The socialist patriot is an impossibility. If any is loyal to those in the class that exploits, he or she is a traitor to our own class. The capitalist class will practice nationalism and preach patriotism just so long as it serves to obscure the class struggle and keep the workers divided. When they face an enlightened and united working class, they themselves ignore every boundary in their need to combat the workers. The Socialist Party does not care whether the capitalist class divide the UK among themselves. What concerns us, is the class ownership, which we work and organise to abolish. Nationalism is at the top of the list of political illusions used to blind capitalism's victims. Workers own no country, so why should we care which section of the class of thieves owns which national portion? Workers have a world to win, not nations to fight for.


The Anti-capitalist Campaigners



Capitalism continues to generate recessions, waste and wars. Amid the many crises today people are once again debating the meaning of socialism. The nearest thing to a common understanding of the various “socialisms” is the negative “anti-capitalism” yet more and more parties on the Left spectrum, have virtually dropped the building of socialism from their manifestoes, promising to maintain some sort of version of regulatory capitalism until it makes us wonder in what sense are these parties still “socialist”? One reason why the Socialist Party view reformists with such antipathy is that they made the abolition of that system and the creation of a socialist society more distant and difficult.

The simplest description of a socialist system of production is that, unlike all class societies, there is no ruling class that extracts surplus labour from the producers. The capitalist class profits because they control. As Rosa Luxemburg contended, until a socialist revolution is successful, the most important result of any struggle is the building of working-class self-confidence and self-organisation. If the class must rely on itself, it must be united.

The Socialist Party’s central message was stated in the Rules of the First International, "that the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves." We strive to get fellow-workers to trust in their own power to achieve their own emancipation and that our belief is that there is no task that a worker cannot accomplish. We educate fellow-workers to look inward upon their own class for everything required, to have confidence in the ability of their own class to fill every position in the revolutionary movement. In short, we ask fellow members of the working class to take to heart the full meaning of socialism, a free association of social individuals. The revolutionary movement is the gravedigger of capitalism. It is part of the world movement of the global working class for peace, social democracy and socialism. The emancipation of the working class is the revolutionary act of self-emancipation. The Socialist Party declares that its aim is to develop the class consciousness of the workers through our agitation in the class struggle. The job we envisage for is to bring together social and political analysis that has special relevance to the waging of the class struggle and the deepening of working class consciousness. Our ambition is to achieve socialism alongside the working class as a whole, for the whole of mankind. The central core of the Socialist Party’s politics is the belief in socialism as the self-emancipation of the working class. This involves a rejection of the Leninist vanguards and national liberation anti-imperialists.

The Socialist Party swam against the current by rebutting reformism and left reformist illusions that capitalism could be transformed by the action of various social groups such as technocrats without the conquest of power by the working class. It involved, repudiating the widespread belief that capitalism can permanently solved its inherent tendency to crisis and the associated idea that capitalism will collapse without the agency of socialist revolution. Capitalism continues with its ups and downs. These ideas were unpopular amongst broad circles of the left. They were widely regarded as ‘dogmatic’ and ‘sectarian’.  Countless reformists have come and gone, believing that within the framework of the capitalist system, of commodity production and of exploitation they could achieve a better society. It is a hard and difficult job struggling for real socialism and not piecemeal palliatives. It may the efforts of several generations. But for anybody to whom the word “solidarity” remains meaningful, it is worth all the effort. The endeavour of total human emancipation, the endeavor to build a socialist society on a worldwide basis, is in our hearts. The Socialist Party represents the continuation of the essence of Marx's thought: the self-emancipation of the working class as its fundamental guiding principle to establish a new society built on the "association of free and equal producers."

Lothian Socialist Discussion (24 May)

Wednesday, May 24, 

  • 17 West Montgomery Place,
     Edinburgh EH7 5HA


Monday, May 22, 2017

Refugees need more help

FOR WORLD SOCIALISM
MSPs looking at the problems facing asylum seekers in Scotland have said "destitution" is built into the process. The equalities and human rights committee said that, too often, vulnerable people fell victim to homelessness, ill health and misery.
The committee investigated asylum and destitution, where people are left without adequate accommodation or the ability to meet essential living needs. Committee convener, the SNP's Christina McKelvie, said the evidence they heard pointed to "huge gaps" in the asylum system which suffered from a "serious lack of compassion and humanity".
The British Red Cross in Scotland told the committee the number of destitute refugees and asylum seekers it had helped in Glasgow had more than doubled from 326 in 2014 to 820 in 2016.

End nationalism

SUPPORT FOR THE SOCIALIST PARTY
IS SUPPORT FOR WORLD SOCIALISM
Before the rise of class society, and even until comparatively modern times before communications and transport broke down geographical barriers, the workers did have an interest in the country of their birth. But now that we have all become wage earners, the basis of patriotism has gone. Still the sentiment persists and the master class who control the forces and services of the State are able to identify their own private interests with the patriotism of the class which has now no stake in the country. 

With the weakening power of religion to keep the workers docile and obedient, the cult of nationalism and patriotism is being exploited to the full for the furtherance of the damnable policy of the slave-holding class: to divide and rule. Like religion, patriotism has its vestments, its ceremonies, its sacred emblems, its sacred hymns and inspired music; all of which are called in aid of the class interests of our masters. Patriotic nationalism is nothing more or less than a convenient and potent instrument of domination. Patriotism is the handmaiden of class rule. The nation they call “ours” is the result of a conquest over original inhabitants, and over ourselves, by successive ruling classes.  We possess no country.  Patriotism is a fraudulent thing. The “country” is that of the owning class alone. Patriotism is not love of your country. Patriotism is love for someone else’s country. You see, the UK and its resources are owned by a few corporations and a handful of families - it is their country and not ours.

What is the fatherland and our motherland ? Our fathers and mothers came from many different parts of the world. Rather humankind are my brethren, the world is my country. Despite the shameless attempts by the robber class, the great impulse to human solidarity is by no means dead.  In the class struggle of the workers against the employers and exploiters, of the socially useful against the socially pernicious, in this struggle for the liberation of humanity from wage-slavery, the great principle of human solidarity will come to full fruition. That is our hope and aspiration. For us, all nationalism is destructive of human values, simply pitting one section of the working class against another with the sole aim of furthering the capitalist cause. The people of the world are worth more than that, much more. They are part of a world society which collectively could choose to work for peace, justice and prosperity for all in our time, putting aside the divisive issues of capitalism and recognising at last that with socialism unity is strength.

Patriotism festers politics like a weeping sore. It does not represent progressive ideas Enormous damage has been done, throughout the world, by the notion that one country and its people are superior to the others. A truly progressive policy – socialism – recognises the essential unity of the human race and the urgent need to celebrate it by building society on that basis. Socialism would be worldwide, with no nation states, no borders, and the common ownership of the whole Earth by the whole of humanity.  No one would be an immigrant or emigrant in a socialist world without states and therefore without boundaries. It’s like saying a person born and raised in Hampshire or Surrey who then moves to Berkshire is an immigrant.  Socialists dont prescribe where people, let alone “masses” of people,  should live or move to in a socialist world.  It’s entirely up to them as free individuals in a free society

The nation state did not materalise out of thin air.  Still less did it always exist as some kind of  looming background presence or potentiality way back in the mists of time as nationalist mythology would have it.  Rather, it  was an almost deliberately crafted invention (see Benedict Anderson's book, "Imagined Communities") the outcome of a complex process of structural and spatial reorganisation coinciding the emergence of capitalism. In Europe in 1500. for instance,  there were approximately 500 more or less autonomous  political units - an intricate patchwork ranging from Italian city states to numerous principalities  and duchies. France was not the natural expression of a pre-existing French nation. At the revolution in 1789, half its residents did not speak French. In 1860, when Italy unified, only 2.5 per cent of residents regularly spoke standard Italian. Its leaders spoke French to each other. One famously said that, having created Italy, they now had to create Italians.

Patriotism is not supportable with fact and reason but by deception and prejudice. That is why it is so quickly inflates into racism, prejudice and discrimination. One of the strongest holds the capitalists have over the minds of the workers is the workers' ready acceptance of the dogmas of patriotism. 

The problem that belief in a nation has grown stronger and has become more of an obstacle for achieving socialism. People have adopted a belief that nations, even continents in respect to European "civilisation". As for us, the Socialist Party, we have discarded the flag and disowned the so many deeds of butchery committed in our name. All over the world, in every capitalist state, there are masses of people who depend for their living on the sale of their labour power. Internationally, these people have a common interest which is opposed to that of their ruling classes.  This has been true for as long as there has been a society of two classes - for as long as capitalism has existed. In wars, for example, the workers who were fighting and killing each other were doing so in ignorance of their international common interests. Instead of firing at each other, they should be extending the hand of fraternal greeting and unity. The unity of socialism will unleash, for the first time in history, the full powers of the human race. Socialism will be established by a people who have seen through the divisive cynicism of patriotism. 


Which city has the wealthiest?

Glasgow is the wealthiest city in Scotland, according to analysis of the fortunes of the 100 richest individuals and families from north of the border.
The city has produced 16 millionaires from the 2017 Sunday Times Scottish Rich List. Their combined wealth is just under £4.5bn – 13.7 per cent of the £32.7bn accumulated by the top 100.
The figures put Glasgow ahead of Edinburgh, which has 17 millionaires worth a total of £3.9bn, and Aberdeen with 16 millionaires with a combined wealth of £3.6bn.
The Glasgow Rich List is headed by John Shaw, who left the city to build a £1.15bn pharmaceuticals fortune in Bangalore with his Indian wife, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw.
The richest person from Edinburgh is property investor Jim Mellon, worth £920m, and now based in the Isle of Man. Author JK Rowling is number two on Edinburgh’s list, with a fortune of £650m.
Aberdeen’s richest is billionaire Sir Ian Wood, worth £1.6bn, who made his money in the North Sea oil industry.
Meanwhile, Moray has produced seven fortunes worth almost £5.4bn – 16.5 per cent of the wealth of the top 100.
Much of the money is centred on Speyside where the Grant Gordon family – who head the rich list in Scotland with £2.37bn – have two of their whisky distilleries.
The richest in Perthshire and Tayside account for 14.1 per cent (£4.6bn) of the rich list wealth. The Dundee-based Thomson publishing family are among the richest in Scotland having accumulated £1.285bn.
To say "Glasgow is the wealthiest city in Scotland," is mistaken. Their wealth doesn't reflect the wealth or otherwise of the city itself. Glasgow is one of the few cities that has so many run-down poor areas so close to the city centre. Apart from the west end of Glasgow if you leave the city-centre going north, south or east you very quickly come to the less prosperous areas without going very far from the centre of town. Glasgow has been badly served over the years and when we consider its rich successful industrial history that contributed so much wealth to the country it seems particularly sad.

Our Socialist Vision


One of the snags of presenting a vision of socialism as a solution to our numerous crises is that it's hard to know where to begin. The gap between where we are now with capitalism and where we'd like to be with socialism appears enormous and therefore we wonder how it might be accomplished. Charles Eisenstein once said “There is a vast territory between what we’re trying to leave behind, and where we want to go – and we don’t have any maps for that territory”.

Capitalists do not direct their capital, but in fact are themselves directed by and enslaved by capital, as Marx pointed out. Capital spontaneously flows wherever the most profit can be made. There is no society-wide overall planning under capitalism, nor can a capitalist economy as a whole be a planned economy. The interests of the capitalists are individual interests. Capitalists all fight for their own immediate interests, the interests of a particular company or sector. By their very nature, that is their sole consideration. They come into antagonistic conflict with other capitalists, other sectors and other industries. So long as the prevailing ideology supports it and the State apparatus is in the hands of the owners and so long its system maintains a reasonable hold, then the owning class are in control. Their system of exploitation is safe. Socialism challenges the whole prevailing ideology and socialist aim to capture of the State machine. The very experience of workers of their exploitation educates them. They ultimately require and acquire socialist ideas.

Socialism is the free association of completely free men and women, where no separation between private and common interest exist. The predictions of socialists with regard to future society cannot be exact because the great complexity of social phenomena does not permit, in our present time, of their being completely observed in all details, but only in their main features, and for that reason the picture of the new system also can only be drawn in its main outlines; but these are the most important considerations for the people of the present day. Socialism, however, can’t be built on the ruins of the existing society by a revolt of starving beggars in rags.

A British worker, employed in a nationalised industry is a ‘wage-earner’ in the Marxian sense of the word, and still ‘exploited’, he is only a wage-slave. Yet extraordinary enough in the former Soviet Union his opposite number earns less, works longer hours, has much less variety of goods on which to spend his money, has trade unions which exist only to squeeze more and more work out of him, is tied to his particular factory, and had the prospect of being sent to a forced labour camp if he protests against his lot; yet here presented the most advanced, emancipated and free worker in the world. Somehow when the amount of unpaid labour which is ‘surplus value’ goes to the British state, the same amount of unpaid labour is not ‘surplus value’ when the Russian state is on the receiving end. Who was kidding who? As Engels pointed out in his Anti-Duhring “State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution...neither the conversion into joint-stock companies nor into state property deprives the productive forces of their character as capital... The workers remain wage-earners, proletarians. The capitalist relationship is not abolished; it is rather pushed to an extreme.” The state is the owner of the conditions of production (‘the general capitalist’) and the direct producers are wage-earners, that therefore the relations between them are still the relations between capital and labour, between employer and employee. All the characteristics of the capitalistic system of exploitation are to be found in the Russian system of relationship between the state, owner of the means of production, and the direct producer, the worker. The state pays the labour it employs with wages, and ‘wages... by their very nature always imply the performance of a certain quantity of unpaid labour on the part of the labourer’ (Capital, Volume 1, Chapter 25/1), that is ‘surplus value’.

The Leninist platform contained nothing that was incompatible with capitalism. It allowed exploitation itself and class opposition to remain in place, and suppressed political rights, enslaved its workers to the yoke of militarism and the senseless waste of its labour power.

This is a general picture of the social process of change to socialism. While capitalism exists, it is suffice for socialism to establish the possibility of the emancipation of the working-class and to work towards that emancipation. There is no necessity to work out and settle every detail of the organization of the future socialist society. Let us not have the presumption to lay down rules for those who are to come after us, and let us be content with our present task. The whole goal of the Socialist Party consists in educating their fellow-workers, in explaining to assist them become conscious of their condition, their task and their responsibility, of organising them in readiness for the day when the political power shall fall into their hands. To win for socialism the greatest possible number of supporters, that is the task to which the Socialist Party must dedicate their efforts and energies. The Socialist Party is the only party which pursues these aims in a practical fashion. What is the use of talking of anything but socialism. We must talk of revolution and our aim should be to overthrow the capitalist system, not to modify it.

Our solution appears 'utopian' and not practical and so the aspiration is abandoned in favour of short-term remedies that prove to be no cure.  Socialism is a society without money, barter or trade, with the awareness that Humanity is One family and where technology, science and spirituality is used to its fullest to develop and manage the planet’s resources to provide abundance for everyone in the most sustainable way. That is a big leap to make because this idea of an abundant, peaceful, sustainable and cooperative world may well seem impossible yet it isn't. It is a feasible future.


Sunday, May 21, 2017

Remember Our Past, Organise Our Future

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

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

The abolition of capitalism and the transformation to a socialist society is the only solution to Scotland's many problems. The capitalist class say that socialism is impossible because it is in their class interests to say so. No party of capitalism can solve the problems faced by the wage and salary working class and so none of them are worth voting for. Scotland's independence is just not possible within the context of globalised capitalism. Certainly, formal sovereignty, is possible, where it would have the full power to make decisions without reference to any “mother parliament”. But there’s a difference between the mere legal power to do something and what can be done in practice. In practice all states, when exercising their sovereign power to make decisions, have to take into account the economic reality that there exists a single world market economy on which they are dependent. A state can exercise some degree of influence on how the world market operates in relation to it - it erect tariff walls, subsidise exports, devalue its currency - but this depends on its economic clout. The interest of the working class in all countries is to reject all nationalism, to reject in fact the very idea of “foreigner”, and to recognise that they have a common interest with people in other countries in the same economic situation of being obliged to sell their mental and physical energies in order to get a living.  The liberation for Scottish workers can only come about by overthrowing capitalism itself. If this is not done, no amount of separatism can ever succeed in bringing freedom. Instead of tragically wasting time fostering nationalism, workers should be struggling for a socialist society without national borders. All the fuss abour Scottish separatism is an irrelevance. It will not give the people of Sotland more control over their own affairs. The only change that will do that is a change in the whole social system, replacing competitive production for profit and minority ownership by co-operative production. Neither an independent sovereign Scotland or United Kingdom can achieve this. It is only feasible in a money-free, frontier-free society which, for those with vision, is the next stage in human social evolution.  Scotland can achieve, along with the workers of all countries, the victory which will end for all time the exploitation of man-by-man. The history of the future will tell of the final assault and triumph of humanity over slavery and humiliation and the world will be the inheritance of the people as a whole.

Independence from England will not cure the poverty and insecurity of the Scottish workers, because they will still be the wages labour and capital relationship. There is no truly independent country in the world, because international capitalism has made sure of this. The SNP tell us that independence from England and the control of our own purse strings will cure all our problems. What they do not seem to realise is that the problems they are going to try to solve are an integral part of the capitalist system. The SNP demand for its constitutional “right" to control the economy, completely ignores the fact that this is purely a paper right. The capitalist economy works according to certain economic laws which no government or legislative body can over-ride. So the argument about sovereignty is not really about what the constitution may or may not say. It's about the effective power that a capitalist state can exercise within the capitalist economy. Capitalism has always existed within a framework of competing states, none of which is strong enough to impose its will on all the others. States, as weapons in the hands of rival groups of capitalists, intervene to further the interests of the capitalists that control them. They do this by using state power to set up protected markets, raw materials sources, trade routes and investment outlets. In normal times their weapons are tariffs, taxes, quotas, export rebates and other economic measures. When they judge that their vital interest is at stake their weapons are . . . weapons. They go to war.

Workers have nothing to gain from the redrawing of the boundaries, but some Scottish entrepreneurs and bureaucrats certainly do have a chance of making good if only they can persuade the electorate to back them. Can't we see that the only people who would gain anything from Scottish independence would be local politicians who would become big fish in a small pond?  There can be no relief for the oppressed Scotsman in changing an English robber for an Scottish one. The person of the robber does not matter—it is the fact of the robbery that spells misery. National divisions are a hindrance to working-class unity and action, and national jealousies and differences are fostered by the capitalists for their own ends. The Scottish capitalist is in no wise more merciful than the English exploiter. The Scottish capitalist competes with the English capitalist because the latter stands in the way of a more thorough exploitation of the Scot workers by Scottish capital. Let the thieves fight their own battles! For the worker in Scotland there is but one hope. It is to join the Scottish branches of the Socialist Party and to make common cause with the socialist workers of all countries for the end of all forms of exploitation; saying to both English and native capitalists: "A plague on both your houses". For the true battle-cry of the working class in broader, more significant and more inspiring than mere nationalism, and that rally cry is: THE WORLD FOR THE WORKERS!

What, in all honesty, do nationalists got to gain with the “independence” they so dearly yearn after. It means being trapped within borders - artificial constructs, no, prisons - inside of the bigger prison of capitalism. We always have a choice: we can continue to place our power as a class into the hands of leaders who use it to pursue the interests of a capitalist elite, or, we can take responsibility for it collectively and use it to further the interests of all humanity. Socialism is a form of globalisation – a globalisation of human community that abolishes capital against the sort of globalisation that is subservient to the transnational corporations.  Members of the Socialist Party do not aspire to Scottish independence but to the emancipation of all humanity through the establishment of world socialism. It is not “English rule” that is responsible for the problems faced by workers in Scotland, but capitalism. Socialist society will mean the liberation of all mankind. As socialists, we don't take sides in any inter-capitalist argument. We don't support one section of the capitalist class or the other.  Let the capitalist class and their parties and supporters settle the matter for themselves. In the meantime we continue to campaign for the establishment of a world society without frontiers where the resources of the Earth are the common heritage of humanity. 

The voice of the Socialist Party in Scotland is a small but a constant one. All parties are in opposition to it but it persists. It will continue to expose those who, under the guise of liberators, continue to mislead the working class.