The World Socialist Movement

As wage and salary earners, the vast majority of us have endless economic problems to worry about -- wages and prices, rents and mortgages, sickness, unemployment, old age. Even more worrisome can seem the large and perhaps overwhelming problems facing us as human beings: war, poverty and the compulsive destruction of our own planet by those who seek to persuade us they can do our thinking for us. There are numerous other problems, like racism or sexism, which distort human judgment and reinforce a system that thrives on human misery. Many people look to leaders to solve these intractable problems, sometimes through union action, more often by demanding social, political and economic reforms.

Come election time, all the parties suddenly grow excited, urgently recommending laws they will introduce if they gain control of the government. But they don't regard it as their business to deal with the basis of any of those problems, where the cause actually lies. Neither Right, Left nor Center has any intention of tackling and dealing with the core of our troubles: the system of employment, known traditionally as wage labor, and the associated use of capital to produce all of the wealth we depend on. This system, we maintain, generates massive artificial scarcities in a society with the technological means to afford us abundance.

We, in the World Socialist Movement, hold that the social system needs to be changed fundamentally: we advocate the abolition of social classes through production based solely on meeting people's needs, democratically administered. This goes much deeper than a mere change in government, but it also assumes widespread understanding of what needs to be done. We are members of the working class, which includes everyone around the world who must sell his or her working abilities to some employer to stay alive, not just people whose collars are blue. We understand capitalism has gone as far as it can go; the time has come to put it behind us and start with a system of society that really works for everyone.

If you agree generally with arousing the rest of the world's workers to an understanding of how easily within our grasp it is to achieve a world of abundance and peace -- and a world we can pass on intact to the coming generations, join us.

Those of us in the World Socialist Movement seek a world without:

Poverty; War; Sexism, racism, nationalism, and other forms of hatred; Environmental devastation; Bosses and politicians telling everyone else what to do

Socialism is for anybody who thinks the world would be a better place if:

Democracy meant more than an election every few years; Freedom meant real freedom, and respect, for everybody; People cooperated to satisfy human needs

Socialism is for anybody who wants real solutions, not repeated failures. The Left, Centre, and Right haven't solved anything that counts - and they can't.

Real solutions may take a while, but that's better than never. Real solutions require rational thought, not hype. Real solutions require people to work for them

We reject the idea that socialism has been tried in countries sometimes referred to as socialist. Look below at our definition of socialism and ask yourself if this in any way describes the state capitalist, police states of modern China and Cuba or the old regimes in Russia and eastern Europe, or the past and present "social-democratic" governments in many countries.

We reject the idea of socialism in one country. National socialism equals non-socialism. The capitalist system is global and so must the system which will replace it.

We reject the idea that people can be led into socialism. Socialism will not be established by good leaders or battling armies, but by thinking men, women and children. There can be no socialism without socialists.

The WSM:

1. claims that socialism will, and must, be a wageless, moneyless, worldwide society of common (not state) ownership and democratic control of the means of wealth production and distribution

2. claims that socialism will be a sharp break with capitalism with no "transition period" or gradual implementation of socialism (although socialism will be a dynamic, changing society once it is established)

3. claims that there can be no state in a socialist society

4. claims that there can be no classes in a socialist society

5. promotes only socialism, and as an immediate goal

6. claims that only the vast majority, acting consciously in its own interests, for itself, by itself, can create socialism

7. opposes any vanguardist approach, minority-led movements, and leadership, as inherently undemocratic (among other negative things)

8. promotes a peaceful democratic revolution, achieved through force of numbers and understanding

9. neither promotes, nor opposes, reforms to capitalism

10. claims that there is one working class, worldwide

11. lays out the fundamentals of what a socialist society must be, but does not presume to tell the future socialist society how to go about its business

12. promotes an historical materialist approach - real understanding

13. claims that religion is a social, not personal, matter and that religion is incompatible with socialist understanding

14. seeks election to facilitate the elimination of capitalism by the vast majority of socialists, not to govern capitalism

15. claims that Leninism is a distortion of Marxian analysis

16. opposes all war and claims that socialism will inherently end war, including the "war" between classes.

17. noted, in 1918, that the Bolshevik Revolution was not socialist. Had earlier, long noted that Russia was not ready for a socialist revolution and was the first to recognize that the former USSR, China, Cuba and other so-called "socialist countries" were not socialist, but instead, state capitalist

18. claims a very accurate, consistent analysis since 1904 when our United Kingdom companion party was formed

World socialism can only be brought about democratically. Socialism means a global system of social organization based on:

Common Ownership: All the productive wealth of the world will belong to all the people of the world. No more transnational corporations or small businesses and therefore nobody will own the world. It will be possessed by all of its inhabitants.

Democratic Control By All: Who will run socialist society? We all will. There will be no more government and governed. People will make decisions freely in their communities, in regions and globally. With the existing means of information technology and mass communication this is all possible.

Production For Use: Instead of producing goods and services for sale and profit, the sole reason for production will be to satisfy needs and desires.

Free Access: A society in which everyone owns everything, decides everything and only produces anything because it is useful will be one in which all will have free access to what is produced. Money will cease to have any function. People will not work for wages or salaries, but to give what they can and take what they need.

The World Socialist Movement  (WSM) consists of ordinary people who have organised themselves democratically with one objective; to bring about a complete change in world society. Although small, we are made up of members in several countries.

Democracy

Everybody in the WSM has equal value and equal power. Real democracy is fundamental to socialists. The revolutionary transformation of society must be brought about by the will of the great majority of the people if it is to succeed. We have no leaders. Every member can take part in making decisions. Our democracy works both locally and party-wide. All our meetings are open to the public.

The Task

All the necessary conditions of production and communication now exist for establishing a world socialist society. What is lacking is the understanding and will among those men and women who would most benefit from it. The task for socialists is to spread the necessary information as widely and thoroughly as possible. This often involves correcting a great deal of misinformation put out by those who want society to remain as it is, with all its poverty, oppression, and war. We have a thorough analysis of the workings of present society, how it is developing, and what needs to be done to make changes that would be beneficial for the human race. Discussion and debate are essential to the progress of the movement. We welcome them. Everyone is encouraged to put their point of view.

Glasgow's Crime Lords

Despite billions spent over decades in relaunching Glasgow as a modern and sophisticated city of opportunity and leisure, it has never quite managed to shrug off its legacy of 1930s razor gangs. It’s no coincidence that the crime gangs’ main centres of operation are among the UK’s most disadvantaged communities. The districts of Maryhill, Possilpark, Milton, Springburn and Barlanark form a belt of acute deprivation along Glasgow’s northern urban approaches. Their hearts once beat to the steady thrum of heavy industry and employment was plentiful. When a succession of postwar governments dismantled the industries, a void was all that remained in the absence of any long-term or sustainable replacement.  Hbard men offered leadership and a sense of purpose in the absence of anything similar being offered by governments. They offered affluence and status in exchange for unshakeable loyalty and generations of young men whose futures had been snatched away by mass unemployment were attracted by the opportunity to even up the score.

John Carnochan was a detective chief superintendent in Strathclyde police and co-founded the world-renowned Violence Reduction Unit. He has no doubt about the role that poverty and social disintegration plays in young men being attracted to this lifestyle. 

“You can trace a line of inequality through the communities that the crime gangs operate in,” he said. “If you are a young man who knows he has no future in work but everywhere sees evidence of grossly conspicuous consumption, then of course he wants some of that for himself. And if he feels the state has denied him that, he can easily justify helping himself. Especially if he is given a sense of belonging and purpose to a cause he can belong to. These are attributes valued in public life and by governments. It’s time they started to ask themselves why young men in these communities are seeking it in crime. It’s time they got radical about tackling inequality in these communities. It’s about early intervention in very young lives to combat adverse early events.”

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jul/22/glasgow-gangland-feuds-erupt-in-public-killings

Not The Bees Knees

Capitalism's Contradictions

An article by Steve Volk in the science magazine, "Discover " about bees, starts with, "The science and politics of saving America's bees gets messy, and the bees continue to die."

The plight of wild and domestic bees highlights one of capitalism's many contradictions – profit-making is dangerous to the environment and/or humans. Bees pollinate some $30 billion in US crops every year including most fruits and leafy greens. Their contribution to human food and health is, then, considerable. However, they are in a crisis called 'colony collapse disorder' (ccd) and dying at unheard of rates from deadly pathogens. In addition, those bees that do survive are weakened and underperforming. Queen bees, crucial to the colony's survival, struggle to survive even one-third of their normal life span and beekeepers are scrambling constantly to replace them.

Science quickly isolated pesticides, fungicides, and insect growth regulators as the main problem. A particular class of chemicals called neonicotinoid pesticides (neonic for short) that yield billions in revenue for their manufacturers was implicated in the problem. So we have the profit making part harming the environment and humans.

Rachel Carson's 1960s argument is cited as the cause of the problem. That is, as outlined in her famous book, "Silent Spring", pests and weeds quickly develop resistance to these chemicals and thus increasingly toxic and concentrated concoctions are applied in ever greater amounts. In fact, we apply about 2.5 times more chemical pesticides, fungicides and herbicides than when the book was written. In addition the number of regulatory labs has decreased with fewer scientists studying that larger application of chemicals on our foods and the effects. Scientific investigation has shown that the number of chemicals in our environment is so vast that the task of studying their effect and interactions is virtually impossible. One study of comb and wax samples from beehives in twenty-three states found an average of six chemicals and as many as thirty-nine different pesticides present. Scientists discovered that the more the bees were fed neonics, the more they were susceptible to pathogens. A French study confirmed these findings. Neonics, produced by companies like Bayer and Syngenta, spread through the plant, including the nectar, became widely used in the 1990s, used on crops such as cotton, corn, soybeans, and canola. Not surprisingly, manufacturers' research showed no negative effects but bees have been shown by tagging with GPS trackers, to be impaired in foraging capabilities, memory, and navigation systems. Disease and parasites kill the bees but neonics are the underlying common denominator in the problem.

Thus the bee problem follows the usual pattern of the problem. Scientific answer, and denial by those making the profits. The full force of capital is brought to bear when profits are threatened.

 Powerful agro chemical corporations contribute millions in political donations and lobbying and they want to see some results for their investment. They can exert pressure on governments and their departments to obscure the truth and necessary solutions. For example, when Environmental Protection Agency scientists released a study in 2014, showing that neonics provided no significant rise in crop yield, implying that they could be restricted or banned, the US Department of Agriculture rejected these findings. In 2015, scientist Jonathan Lundgren filed a report that his supervisors suspended him in order to prevent his publishing his opinions on the dangers of chemical pesticides. Other scientists complained of their research papers being watered down, retracted studies, and indefinite delays in receiving approval to publish. This, by the way, echoes what had happened in Canada under the Harper administration. Despite denials from the USDA administration, their own Inspector General announced in 2016 that she had received a significant volume of scientific censorship complaints. This chain of events follows a familiar pattern. Scientists, who we charge with doing the research into a problem and coming up with solutions are bullied, ignored, demoted, shamed, and fired to discredit and devalue their work. Think of climate change or tobacco, clean oil and coal production, or any number of other controversies and you will see the pattern. Aside from the relations implied in capital, owner and non-owner, producer and idler, a hierarchy of humans, and so on, profit making usually causes damage to humans and/or the environment. In a sane system, anything harmful would be stopped or modified to eliminate harm.

Capital, however, is a thing and has no conscience or feelings and this necessarily extends to those charged with managing capital. Having people work in dirty and dangerous buildings that collapse in Bangladesh is regrettable but necessary to fulfil the need to realize a profit and expand capital. They are not bad people but they are compelled by fiduciary laws, and the clamour from investors, and competition, to put profit-making above all other concerns. If this sounds entirely mad, you are right, but it happens to be true. Even worse is the fact that profit-making benefits only a tiny minority of humans while the vast majority just let it go on. To remedy this you must learn more about the only alternative, socialism, and if you have read this journal, you have made a star.

Taken from

Organising for socialism

When millions of people feel alienated—politically, economically, psychologically—they are easy prey for spectacles inviting them to displace their feelings about themselves for someone or something else. National hysteria is nationalist hysteria. The nationalist illusion that UK Plc is "our" company and its ruling elite are our compatriots is precisely the way that the vast millions of workers have been kept in line ideologically over the decades of capitalist history-and earlier.  Far better to have the workers marching to the beat of the patriot drum and flag than behind a union brass band and banner. What it all boils down to is this: if you support capitalism, you will end up by backing this or that capitalist state against the others, even when it goes to war, kills innocent men, women, and children, and commits the most barefaced aggression. It is only the Socialist who sees all capitalist states for what they ar and sees that when their own interests demand it they will all kill, execute, and commit aggression however much they have denounced other states doing the same things in the past.

The emancipation of the working class must not be conceived as a simple, single step to be taken either on the political or the industrial field. It is nothing of the kind. On the contrary, it is to be a process, and an elaborate process at that, carried out upon both the political field and the industrial. The process commences on the political field and ends on the economic. The Socialist Party holds that the process of emancipation involves, first of all, the disarming of the master class. This must be the fruit of a political struggle, and therefore renders political organisation necessary at all events up to the time of its achievement.  When the revolutionary working-class organisation has accomplished its political aim, it has not by any means emancipated the working class. It has only, by destroying the State, made it possible for the workers to complete their emancipation. This they must do by taking possession of the means by which alone they can live, and operating them intelligently and collectively so that they may live. This is what we mean when we say that the workers must organise both politically and economically. The emancipation of the working class necessitating organised action upon both the political and the economic plane obviously necessitates both political and economic organisation. The economic organisation as part of the organisation of the working class for the achievement of their emancipation must be admitted by every socialist. That such organisation, since its aim is the organisation of the working class, must be upon class lines, is the simple logical implication of the facts. That such an organisation, since its object is revolutionary, must have a revolutionary basis and be composed of revolutionaries admits of no dispute. But beyond certain general conclusions clearly arising from the given premises, and which no changes that do not first disestablish those premises can alter, the Socialist Party is not called upon to pronounce. The work the Socialist Party is to make adherents to the socialist whole, not to blueprint socialism in detail. We do know before we can have socialism we must have, not merely Socialist Party members but a socialist working class; and before we can have even the socialist economic organisation we must have the socialist material with which to form it. 

The Socialist Party endeavours to guide the progress of society into a more harmonious form, wherein classes shall cease to exist, and class-war have no place. This is the mission of the working class, and by joining the Socialist Party each person can take a part in inaugurating the new human society. This will be a world without armed forces and all that goes with them, without money and all that that entails, without the need for charities. It will be a world in which human interests are the Number One Priority, in which the only motive for human activity will be a human benefit. the position of the Socialist Party has always been, no matter whether it is the economic organisation or the socialist commonwealth that is in question, that all matters of detail most be left to those upon whom the necessity to consider and arrange them is imposed by social development. Social development does not impose this task upon the Socialist Party at the present day. In every walk of life, the broad scheme comes first. No organiser ever proceeds from the particular to the general—from the detail to the whole.

The Socialist Party is clear that the trade union is not the starting point of the political organisation if for no other reason than the fact that the unit of the union is the work-place, while the unit of the political organisation is the geographic locality; and in the second place that the workers’ effort towards their emancipation must be made voluntarily as the result of conviction of “class-consciousness”; certainly not as the result of watering down the position to appeal to a majority, and then using that majority to enforce the financial support of the minority of a type of organisation which has been enabled to build up its membership partly owing to the fact that party feeling in political matters has been rigidly excluded. 

Robbed of their pension

The prosperous countryside of east Dorset is home to Britain’s longest living residents, with the average male at birth expected to survive 82.9 years. Maybe it won’t make too much difference to their financial futures that the government said this week that it would raise the state pension age to 68sooner than planned. They will still be collecting their state pension for nearly 15 years after retiring, picking up around £124,000 assuming the new state pension stays at £159.95 a week. They are certainly getting good value from their national insurance payments when they were working. Along the way they will also enjoy a £3,000 winter fuel bonus and once they reach 75, as they nearly all will, the TV licence is free, saving £147 a year.

Now compare that with the deal for someone born in Glasgow. It has Britain’s worst longevity figures, with the average male expected to live just 72.6 years. The new retirement age of 68 means our typical Glaswegian male will pick up a state pension for only four to five years, pocketing just £38,000 in total. That winter fuel payment, more needed in Glasgow than Dorset, will be more like £800, while on average they cannot expect to ever get the free TV licence.

As the state pension age creeps up and up, with experts saying further rises to 70 are inevitable, workers with poorer longevity prospects – those in manual trades in particular – may legitimately ask why they are expected to pay loads of NI when their prospects for much of a payout are rather limited. 

https://www.theguardian.com/money/blog/2017/jul/22/one-size-fits-all-state-pension-too-simplistic

No Future

Capitalism should be put in a museum.

When socialism is established people will look back on today’s society and wonder how everything was topsy-turvy. This strange social system we live under today completely distorts our way of looking at things and makes double think a necessity. The amount of wealth wrung out of the wage-slaves has increased so greatly and so rapidly that it has enabled the plutocracy to run their lives with a magnificence and greater than ever before. There is no limit to the plausible but futile schemes for reforming Capitalism put forward by professional politicians and well-meaning but badly-informed would-be saviours of the working class, and that nothing but Socialist knowledge will make the workers secure against these political frauds and cranks. 

Much can be learned about the aim and method of a political party from a study of its history. A look at the history of the SPGB shows complete adherence to a certain object and declaration of principles. We in the SPGB have been in politics for a very long time and we have more than a nodding acquaintance with the theories of Karl Marx, but we must confess our ignorance when we say that the Marxism referred to by the left-wing is unknown to us.  Long before environmentalism became fashionable, the socialist indictment of capitalism included the waste of the profit system of market production where a small minority own the means of production, that is the land, raw materials, factories, communications etc. Through this ownership, they are able to buy from the majority, the working class, their working ability.

It is ourselves, the members of the working class who run the transport system, who run industry from the gate to the board room, who research, design and make every kind of commodity etc. In other words, it is the men and women of the working class who co-operate to perform all of the work necessary to the running of capitalism. But it is not done on their own behalf. All of this work is geared to the profit of the owning class.
Every kind of product, including food, has sale at a profit as the first motive for its existence. It may be thought that it is because commodities are useful that their sale will realize a profit. The fact is that goods are not produced to fulfill human need, on the contrary needs are stimulated so that the results of enormous productive capacity can be sold. A remarkable feature of modern society is the small number of the population who actually engage in wealth production. The percentage of the population who are really producing is declining daily. The use of improved machinery and more scientific and economical methods has made it possible to produce wealth in superabundance, and with fewer workers than were formerly required. Thus we have seen want forced upon them on account of the very improvements our class has made and their skills have put in motion.

Society does not have to be organised this way. Capitalism is not the natural order of things and it has outlived its usefulness. When an immense majority of working class men and women become aware of their position in capitalism they will join with us in consciously organizing to elect for Socialism. Thus to carry out the legal formality of abolishing private property. Then the means of production will be owned and democratically controlled by the whole, worldwide, community. This vital fact of common ownership and control will mean production at last geared to human needs. The one reason for making any articles and supplying any service will be that they are of use to human beings. Only the best quality need be made and with due regard to the careful use of raw materials.

Capitalism, the private ownership of the means of production, is responsible for the insecurity of subsistence, the poverty, misery, and degradation of the ever-growing majority of our people; but the same economic forces which have produced and now intensify the capitalist system will necessitate the adoption of socialism, the collective ownership of the means of production for the common good and welfare. The present system of social production and private ownership has created two antagonistic classes — i.e., the capitalist class and the propertyless class. Independent political action and the trade union movement are the chief emancipating factors of the working class, the one representing its political, the other its economic wing, and both must cooperate to abolish the capitalist system. While the Socialist Party welcomes every sign of revolt against oppression on the part of the workers, we hold that revolt is useless and dangerous unless based upon a knowledge of the cause of their condition and its remedy. It is necessary to capture political power to install socialism and to do this, workers must organise themselves as a political party having socialism as its sole aim and send elected delegates to Parliament or its equivalent. However, it is important to bear in mind that the objective to obtain a socialist majority in Parliament is totally subordinate to the need for a majority of workers to want and understand socialism. Marx hailed universal suffrage as a “socialistic measure” in England and claimed that “Its inevitable result, here, is the political supremacy of the working class” (The Chartists 1852). Yet many so called “marxists” repudiate the “parliamentary road” to “socialism” even where such a road is open to them. Some of these critics indulge in flagrant hypocrisy in damning Parliament as a “farce” whilst exhorting workers to “vote Labour” or even contesting elections themselves! The Socialist Party have never asserted that Parliament controls capitalism — indeed it is part of our socialist case that capitalism controls Parliaments and dictatorships alike. Parliament does, however, control the state. It would be very wrong to attribute political impotence to Parliament, as many "leftists” confusedly do, on the basis of its inability to solve the problems built into the capitalist economy. The political machinations of capitalist parties which involve attempting to solve these insoluble problems while conveying to a non-socialist electorate the illusion that they can be solved are inevitably farcical. For the Socialist Party, the end and the means are in harmony. If political power relies on mass consent then likewise the methods to capture political power must be socially recognised and that means contesting elections — anything other than this would mean the forcible imposition of the will of a minority on the majority. The creation of alternative structures like workers’ councils, does not constitute a positive rejection by the majority of the rule of the capitalist class through its state machine and leaves state power intact in the hands of a capitalist Parliament. Any attempt to appropriate this state power would constitute a direct threat to the state and would inevitably founder. The attainment of a majority of socialists in Parliament is the only practical way to unambiguously and democratically signal the existence of a mass socialist consciousness which is an absolute prerequisite for what can only be a clean-cut, change-over to a new social system. The formation of a revolutionary party to contest elections with a built-in anti-reformist democratic constitution is the only practical way to clearly demonstrate the extent of socialist consciousness in isolation from reform- mindedness and to unite and coordinate socialists, thereby welding them into a political force to capture the state. The fundamental function of the socialist delegates in Parliament would be the political act of declaring capitalism abolished. Indeed, as delegates (as opposed to representatives) their actions would be wholly subordinate to the active control of the whole working class. For the Socialist Party what matters is not the activity of a few delegates but majority understanding.

In the co-operative commonwealth that socialism will herald in, wage slavery and servitude will disappear. Then only will men and women have a chance to live a full life, unhampered by the cares and anxieties that now distract them. There is plenty of work waiting with fellow slaves to be aroused, and educated in the principles of socialism, and organised for the fight for the emancipation of our class.

The People's Voice

We live in a world controlled by corporate power and the individually wealthy. Today, there are think tanks who get paid to make the cranks sound rational; to justify the illegitimate; and to increase fear, hate, greed, and xenophobia. The world is beset with a series of unprecedented inter-connected crises. The need to establish peace and avert environmental catastrophe are two most pressing issues facing humanity. But then there is the poverty and hunger in a world of plenty, the global refugee crisis. All the consequence of an unjust economic system that lies at the heart all our social ills.

For anyone with the ambition of constructing a truly democratic world beyond borders, the best ideas aren’t likely to come out of global capitalism but rather from the case for world socialism. We’re talking about how to build an alternative world.  People are presently scared about what’s happening around the world today. The planet is currently in chaos. There is a serious impending crisis unfolding. We continue to burn fossil fuels and destroy the air. Due to climate change and conflict,  people are unable to grow their own food and far too poor to buy food when harvests fail. There has never been too little food to go round, for and world food supplies has not been anywhere near complete depletion.  The problem has been one of poverty.  Capitalism continues to squeeze working class people and thus xenophobia rises and keeps people voting for populist politicians who serve the masters of an unequal economy.

Many people are now behind the idea that we need to build something else, something very different but building a sustainable world requires that we understand clearly what we are up against.

The technical solutions to the climate crisis are already well at hand. Renewable energy and alternatives to dirty technologies have emerged in virtually every sector of production. The world produces enough food to feed everyone, and our technology has developed to the point where we can meet our needs with very little work. Imagine workers developing better ways of doing things and sharing the wealth that comes from those developments.

Marx believed that as it became easy to meet our needs through the high level of productivity of the machines we used, the time would be right to get rid of capitalism and move to an economy based on the principle of “from everyone according to their ability, to everyone according to their needs.” It seems clear that we have reached that point to let us live in peace and reap the rewards of our prosperity made possible by the collective knowledge and hard work of mankind. We are now on the brink of a new world where people are able to meet their needs without the exploitation of labour that leads to the enrichment of a few. We can achieve a “sharing economy” where people share what they have with each other and need to use less, and therefore work less, using fewer natural resources. That idea holds much promise, but it cannot fit within the tired old paradigm of profit maximisation. Our aim is the development of a solidarity economy, based on meeting human needs within ecological limits through detaching from consumer culture. We hold a vision of a world where people share what they have without anyone profiting and with no one’s labour being exploited, where we would not rely on money, on wage labour or on capitalists. The exploitative profit system needs to be abandoned. Choose to see others as ourselves, their needs as ours.

In an age where the internet provides us with unlimited access to the direct sources, there appear to be no limits to the misunderstanding and distortion of Marx. In books and articles, there is a continuous reference to Marx, attacking him from all sides for claims that he never made. How can it be that the ideas of Marx can be so completely misunderstood and distorted? One reason is that Lenin and the Bolsheviks appropriated Marx's theory and tried to convince the world that their practice and theory follow his ideas that instead of the role of the worker being abolished, it is extended to all men. Selectively quoted and out of context parts of Marx serve as the official ideology of the regime. Also, the reformist social democrats believed they were the enemies of capitalism but for them, socialism is not a society fundamentally different from capitalism, but rather, just a form of capitalism in which the working class has achieved a higher status. iI is, as Engels described it, "the present-day society without its defects."  They genuinely do believe in a better world – but they believe it can be achieved by a kinder, gentler capitalism and that profits can be used to promote environmental, anti-poverty, and certain other noble causes. But they don’t dare to ask – or to admit – where these very profits come from: the unpaid labor of the entire working class. The compassionate capitalists believe that applying market principles to philanthropy, charity, and the government will help lift the world out of poverty, cure all famine and disease. However, they fail to recognise that the exploitation at the core of capitalism is what engenders the very poverty, famine, and disease that their philanthropic and charitable efforts are attempting to relieve. They think that those who are “privileged” to enjoy great wealth should take up the responsibility of sharing a tiny slice of it with poor people – and don’t recognise that the wealth/poverty divide was created by capitalism itself. Marx and Engels explain in the Communist Manifesto:

 "The Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom. They desire the existing state of society, minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat.The bourgeoisie naturally conceives the world in which it is supreme to be the best… [It requires] in reality that the proletariat should remain within the bounds of existing society, but should cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie… It is summed up in the phrase: the bourgeois is a bourgeois—for the benefit of the working class."
There is no greater misrepresentation of Marx than that which is to be found in the thought of the state-capitalists, the reformists, and the avowedly capitalist opponents of socialism alike, all of whom assume that Marx wanted only the economic improvement of the working class and that he wanted to abolish private property so that the worker would own what the capitalist now has. The truth is that for Marx the situation of a worker in a Russian "socialist" factory, a British state-owned factory, or an American factory such as General Motors, would appear essentially the same. Marx's concept of socialism is not a society of regimented, automatized individuals, regardless of whether there is equality of income or not, and regardless of whether they are well fed and well clad. It is not a society in which the individual is subordinated to the state, to the machine, to the bureaucracy. Even if the state as an "abstract capitalist" were the employer, even if "the entire social capital were united in the hands either of a single capitalist or a single capitalist corporation," this would not be socialism. Socialism, for Marx, is a society which serves the needs of man. Socialism for Marx meant neither the mere abolition of poverty nor the abstract idea of fairness which he rejected so scathingly in his Critique of the Gotha Programme. Least of all did Marx see socialism in which “representative” power and authority replaced individual power and authority over men. 
It should be clear the popular idea of the nature of historical materialism is erroneous. Marx's "materialistic" or "economic" interpretation of history has nothing whatsoever to do with an alleged "materialistic" or "economic" striving as the most fundamental drive in mankind. Marx has been criticised for presenting politics, culture, religion, etc. as simple effects of a one-way economic cause.  The popular view assumes that in Marx's opinion the strongest psychological motive in man is to gain money and to have more material comfort; if this is the main force within man, so continues this "interpretation" of historical materialism, the key to the understanding of history is the material desires of men; hence, the key to the explanation of history is man's belly and his greed for material satisfaction. It is the understanding of history based on the fact that men are "the authors and actors of their history." Marx saw that political force cannot produce anything for which there has been no preparation in the social and political process. Hence that force, if at all necessary, can give, so to speak, only the last push to a development which has virtually already taken place, but it can never produce anything truly new. "Force," he said, "is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one." 
Marx did not believe that there is no such thing as the nature of man; that man at birth is like a blank sheet of paper, on which the culture writes its text. Nor was Marx ever tempted to assume that "human nature" was identical with that particular expression of human nature prevalent in his own society. For Marx the aim of socialism was the emancipation of man, and the emancipation of man was the same as his self-realisation and development of the individual personality. 
Capitalism has obviously changed in the hundred years since Marx and Engels wrote yet in the basic relations and structures which distinguish capitalism from feudalism and socialism, however, it has changed very little, and these are the main features of capitalism addressed in Marx's theories. The workers' relationship to their labour, products and capitalists are basically unchanged from Marx's day. Workers, for example, may earn more money now than they did in the last century, but so do the capitalists. Consequently, the wealth and income gaps between the two classes is as great or greater than ever. 
Marx wrote no “Utopia” of the kind that earlier writers had produced – writings based only on the general idea of a society from which the more obvious evils of the society in which they lived had been removed. But from the general laws of social development Marx was able to outline the features of the new society and the way in which it would develop.
The capitalist class would love for class struggle to just be considered an old-fashioned notion from the past but the class struggle -- the conflict between the capitalists and the workers -- is at the very heart of the capitalist system. The majority of people would love to live in a world free of poverty, unemployment, racism and war. This kind of world is only possible under socialism. Most workers today would readily agree that this is the kind of world they would want for themselves and future generations. But they think it’s a pipedream yet it is the task of the working class to turn this vision into a reality. By learning the lessons of the class struggles that went before us and by applying our power workers develop revolutionary class consciousness. Our socialist perspective in no way means that we do not defend against the immediate attacks today. On the contrary, it is absolutely necessary, and socialists make good fighters for today’s struggle. But in order to fight most effectively, workers also have to understand that there can be no lasting concessions from the capitalist system. To achieve abundance for all, the working class will have to organise and build a genuine socialist revolution.

Marx the anarchist?

The SPGB does have a clear definition of what they would describe socialism to be and it is not to be unexpected that we will not describe those with certain ideas as socialist if it conflicts.

The SPGB point is that we do have something in common with the Kropotkinists and other communist anarchists Alexander Berkman, Murray Bookchin ( although he is now considered by many not to be an anarchist) ie those anarchists that stand for a classless, stateless, moneyless, wageless society based on common ownership, but not with the Proudhon, (or Tucker, Warren) , those who stand for the self-management of a market economy. The problem that aggrieves many members of the SPGB as one article stated is that the anarcho-communists such as pro-Kropotkists seem to feel they have more in common with the Proudhonists than with us when after all we both agree on the ends (albeit differ occasionally on the means to attain the end and as such is of secondary importance at this point of time in history and what matters far more is what we have in common ) !

The SPGB argument is that capitalism (or property/class based societies in general) necessitates a state. Hence to bring about a stateless society which is what is meant by anarchism you need to get rid of capitalism ( and that logically entails getting rid of the need for money and the market as well , very much echoing Engels to Cuno in 1872 “And since the state is the chief evil [for Bakunin], the state above all must be abolished; then capital will go to hell of itself. We, on the contrary, say: Abolish capital, the appropriation of all the means of production by the few, and the state will fall of itself. The difference is an essential one: the abolition of the state is nonsense without a social revolution beforehand; the abolition of capital is the social revolution and involves a change in the whole mode of production.”)

Proudhon was an opponent of government and wanted a society without one. But being in favour of features of capitalism and wanting to retain the money-prices-wages-profit system (what Marx called "commodity production") well , you know in the eyes of the SPGB (and many anarchists ) that would not make him a socialist . He was against ground rent and interest but not against profit. In fact he was a bit of a currency crank with his ideas of credit bank and stood for a society of small-scale producers trading with each other without the interference of the state. His famous catchword "property is theft" was aimed not at small-scale property but essentially at landed property. He defended individual property against common ownership.
Proudhon was also against workers organising it trade unions, was against workers going on strike for higher wages.

Some would call him the first anarcho-capitalist rather than the mutualist that he was and the reformist he could also be accused of being . Proudhon possessed a popular programme which in essence involved a society of artisans. Proudhon was very concerned at the tendency of employers to exploit employees, and thought that if society was made up of artisans then no such exploitation would take place, each worker would own their own means of production, and would sell their products at the market rate, since the market is an unbiased process of checks and counters, this would tend to balance incomes and prices and provide an equitable system of commodity production and sale, but without the massive problems of class division and exploitation. There are people today who still believe this, Marx's efforts to debunk it notwithstanding.

As for definitions, the SPGB has theirs but the definition of "socialist", basically what it generally meant in the 1840s was anyone who wanted to reform society, in whatever way, so as to benefit Labour. That was indeed how it was used them and was, of course, one of the reasons why Marx and Engels called the manifesto they wrote for the Communist League of Germany in 1848 the "Communist Manifesto" and not the "Socialist Manifesto". Basically, it was much too broad a definition that included too many contradictory views I suppose the more appropriate world (then as much as today) would be "social reformers". It is only on that basis that supporters of private property and the market such as Proudhon could be called "socialist".

We should be more demanding on labels we ascribe to people. The very words "socialism" and "communism" are connected with the idea that the means of production should be owned by society as a whole (or socially, hence "socialism") or by the whole community (or communally, hence "communism", ). And it is far better that people who are opposed to it are not called "socialists" or “communists".

The difference between socialists and anarchists is not over the aim of abolishing the State as I have stated earlier but over how to do this. Anarchists say that the first objective of the workers' revolution against capitalism should be to abolish the State. Socialists say that, to abolish the State, the Socialist working class majority must first win control of it and, if necessary, retain it (in a suitably very modified form) but for a very short while just in case any pro-capitalist recalcitrant minority should try to resist the establishment of socialism. Once socialism, as the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production by the whole people, has been established (which the SPGB has always claimed can be done almost immediately ), the State is dismantled, dissolved completely We are not talking years or decades or generations here , but as a continuation of the immediate revolutionary phase of the over throw of capitalism .

But to end with the Anarcho-Marxist case, some quotes from Marx about the abolition of the State.

In 1844 Marx wrote that :
"the existence of the state and the existence of slavery are inseparable" - "The King of Prussia and Social Reform"

Again, as Engels wrote in a letter to Bebel in March 1875:
 "Marx's book against Proudhon and later the Communist Manifesto directly declare that with the introduction of the socialist order of society the state will dissolve itself and disappear".

Then, in a circular against the Bakunin prepared for the First International in 1875, Marx wrote: 
"To all socialists anarchy means this: the aim of the proletarian movement--that is to say the abolition of social classes--once achieved, the power of the state, which now serves only to keep the vast majority of producers under the yoke of a small minority of exploiters, will vanish, and the functions of government become purely administrative"

Capitalism - the final frontier

The communist elements of the Star Trek universe is often obscured because the films and TV shows are centered on the military hierarchy of Star Fleet. To the extent that we see glimpses of civilian life, it seems mostly untroubled by hierarchy or compulsion.

In Star Trek the United Federation of Planets is often described as a type of post-capitalist society where there is no money and nobody wants for material things. In the movie Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Captain Kirk says that they don't use money in the future. "Don't tell me: they don't have money in the 23rd Century?""Well, we don't." - Conversation between Dr. Gillian Taylor and Captain James T. Kirk, Star Trek IV

A first season Star Trek: The Next Generation episode called "The Neutral Zone," has Picard getting up on his high horse with a three hundred year old businessman who is revived from suspended animation: The businessman, naturally, wants to get in touch with his agents to find out what has happened to his investments. Picard loftily informs him that such things don't exist anymore. Indeed, poverty and want have been abolished "A lot has changed in the last 300 years. People are no longer obsessed with the acquisition of 'things'. We have eliminated hunger, want, the need for possessions. We've grown out of our infancy."

In the movie Star Trek: First Contact, Captain Picard says that in the future no one is motivated by the desire for material wealth. "The economics of the future is somewhat different. You see, money doesn't exist in the 24th century... The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity."

Jake Sisko in the Deep Space 9 episode "In the Cards", in an exchange with the Ferengi, Nog: Jake: "I'm Human, I don't have any money." Nog: "It's not my fault that your species decided to abandon currency-based economics in favor of some philosophy of self-enhancement." Jake: "Hey, watch it. There's nothing wrong with our philosophy. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity." Nog: "What does that mean?" Jake: "It means we don't need money!"

According to Tom Paris in the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Dark Frontier", a "New World Economy" began to take hold on Earth and throughout the Federation in the late 22nd century, and eventually made money obsolete. He even mentions that in the 24th century, Fort Knox is a museum, apparently to money and capitalism.

Humans have forged a classless, moneyless society free of serious social ills.

The Ferengi were practitioners of a form of capitalism, basing their entire style of trade on the concept of "caveat emptor", or "buyer beware". Ferengi make their money by following rules such as Ferengi Rule of Acquisition 1: "Once you have their money...never give it back." Ferengi Rule of Acquisition 10: Greed is Eternal. Ferengi Rule of Acquisition 27: There is nothing more dangerous than an honest businessman. Ferengi Rule of Acquisition 35: War is good for business. Ferengi Rule of Acquisition 45: Expand or die. Ferengi Rule of Acquisition 202: The justification for profit is profit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_of_Acquisition

There are two major technological advancements featured in the show that explain how such a society could exist: 1) A replicator that creates any object upon demand, which is capable of materialising any object out of thin air, with only the press of a button.without requiring any human labor, and 2) An infinite energy supply that requires scant human attention to maintain. The primary energy sources in Star Trek are warp cores, and the deuterium, antideuterium and dilithium crystals which power them, offering an abundance of energy. Teleporters, powered by warp cores, offer reliable transportation anywhere around the world (and from the world to the moon and other planets). Not only does it allow for the movement of people, it allows from the bulk transportation of goods to their destination.

Given the technical premises of complete automation and free energy, the Star Trek utopia of pure communism becomes a possibility. The replicator technology appears to have made capitalism obsolete. When Jean-Luc Picard wants his tea, he doesn't have to hand over any cash—he just tells the replicator, and the machine makes it so. Riker, Data, Dr. Crusher—they don't have salaries (although they do get vacation time). Nobody ever needs to worry about a bank account, or paying back loans for Star Fleet tuition. Within the Federation, life follows Marx's, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."
If all you want is a drink, you can get free synthahol any time you want it.

Federation citizens don't have "stuff." They have simple, immediate, free access to all the necessities of life. They don't need bank accounts . The only things they actually own are objects of special personal value - Picard's volume of Shakespeare, Worf's battleh, and Riker's trombone. Picard's brother may still run a traditional French vineyard, while Cisco's dad operates a classic New Orleans restaurant. But these operations seem more like lifestyles than professions; there's no sense that either needs the income to get by. And in fact, both businesses are small, family run, almost self-consciously handcrafted products for discerning consumers.

Yet at other times, capitalism seems alive and well in the Star Trek universe. The Enterprise crew-members sometimes spend "credits". The Federation credit does not appear to serve the role of capital as money does in a capitalist economy: production is not based on the accumulation of capital for reinvestment of production; instead production is undertaken to satisfy human needs, and the Federation credit is likely more akin to a Labour voucher - a means for distributing / rationing goods for individual consumption. Alternatively, the credit may serve as a means of quantifying energy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation_credit

Every citizen of the Federation has plenty of food of virtually any type they want, clothes, shelter, recreational and luxury items, and has all their basic material needs easily met. A society based around self-improvement and collectively improving the human race instead of cut-throat competition, and combined with heavy automation, it means labour is essentially free, menial tasks are automated, and goods are made freely available to all citizens due to superabundance.

There is a passage in Capital Vol III, in which Marx distinguishes between a “realm of necessity” and a “realm of freedom.” In the realm of necessity we must “wrestle with Nature to satisfy [our] wants, to maintain and reproduce life”, by means of physical labor in production. This realm of necessity, Marx says, exists “in all social formations and under all possible modes of production”, presumably including socialism. What distinguishes socialism, then, is that production is rationally planned and democratically organized, rather than operating at the whim of the capitalist or the market. For Marx, however, this level of society was not the true objective of the revolution, but merely a precondition for “that development of human energy which is an end in itself, the true realm of freedom, which, however, can blossom forth only with this realm of necessity as its basis.”

In the “Critique of the Gotha Program,” he writes that: "In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly – only then then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!"

Socialists are portrayed as hopelessly utopian impossiblists. What kind of society could be so productive that humans are entirely liberated from having to perform some kind of involuntary labour? It’s not that all work would cease, in the sense that we would all just sit around in dissipation and torpor. For as Marx puts it, “labor has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want.” Whatever activities and projects we undertook, we would participate in them because we found them inherently fulfilling, not because we needed a wage or owed our monthly hours to the cooperative.

Yet we have the promise of widespread automation is that it could enact just such a liberation. Recent technological developments have taken place not just in the production of commodities, but in the generation of the energy needed to operate the automatic factories and 3-D printers of the future. Hence one possible post-scarcity future combines labor-saving technology with an alternative to the current energy regime, which is ultimately limited by both the physical scarcity and ecological destructiveness of fossil fuels. If cheap energy and automation are combined with methods of efficiently fabricating or recycling raw materials, then we have truly left behind ‘the economy’ as a social mechanism for managing scarcity. What lies over that horizon?

The demise of wage labour may seem like a faraway dream today. But once upon a time – before the labour movement retreated from the demand from shorter hours, and before the stagnation and reversal of the long trend toward reduced work weeks – people actually worried about what we would do after being liberated from work. In an essay on “Economic possibilities for our grandchildren”, John Maynard Keynes predicted that within a few generations, “man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem – how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well.” And in a recently published discussion from 1956, Max Horkheimer begins by casually remarking to Theodor Adorno that “nowadays we have enough by way of productive forces; it is obvious that we could supply the entire world with goods and could then attempt to abolish work as a necessity for human beings.”
Socialism, to boldly go where no-one has gone before.

adapted from http://jacobinmag.com/winter-2012/four-futures/

Too much oil? (1986)

Too much oil? (1986)

From the October 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many ports on the east coast of Scotland have recently had the strange sight of rows of oil rigs moored along the shore. This does not reflect any great new oil discovery, but the current slump in the world market. The "over-production" of oil, resulting in a fall in price to under ten dollars a barrel, meant that many of the fields in the high-cost North Sea have become "uneconomic" and has virtually ruled out any new explorations.

The bright future that North Sea oil was supposed to bring to Scotland's economy has not arrived and few Scottish Nationalist politicians now bother to bring out that empty phrase. "It's Scotland's Oil".

The effects of the slump in the oil industry are continuing to be felt. Many workers who believed that the industry offered security and high wages are having to get used to replacing their wages with thirty pounds a week on the burroo. The benefits that their high wages enabled them to enjoy are becoming the burdens of mortgage and HP repayments.

Those still employed in the industry are feeling the effects as well. In an effort to retain profit margins, wages are often the first targets of any employer, and these have been reduced, often sharply. Previously, wages have been paid for the whole of the "two weeks on. two weeks off " period commonly worked on the rigs but now many are being paid only for the time actually spent off-shore. Expenses that the workers received are being cut back; many are having to buy their own meals.

The unions are unable to do much about these cuts. They are not strong in the higher paid, higher skilled parts of the industry and the workers where they are organised have not much muscle anyway. In any recession, however, the union s position is always weak.

The service and supply industries are also feeling the pinch. Two of the four refabrication yards in the Moray Firth are facing closure. as the reduced amount of work makes them surplus to requirements. This area already has high unemployment. In Aberdeen, there are other industries and employers but the small towns of the Moray Firth have no such hope.

Oil-rig construction in Scotland has been dead for some time and the current slump has only emphasised this. Even if things do pick up it is estimated that the North Sea is about at its peak production and will soon start to decline. Anyway the "surplus" rigs can be brought back into production. The boat yards on the east coast which hopefully viewed the oil industry as an alternative to the decline in shipbuilding, have a grim future.

The OPEC conference at the start of August may offer the industry some respite. It surprisingly agreed to restrict production to beneath the current world demand, in an attempt to force up the price and clear the current glut. It succeeded in the first aim anyway, as the price shot up by four dollars a barrel when the news broke.

Whether the agreement will last remains to be seen. The market for oil remains very depressed and the underlying cause, the world recession, shows no sign of ending. The temptations to bust the cartel are very strong. Many of the oil-producing countries are desperate for revenue and have been hit hard by the slump. Britain, which is not an OPEC member, is continuing to produce at full capacity; OPEC has been annoyed by this and by British oil interests benefiting from its cartel. Some of its members may not restrain production for long.

The unusual factor in the OPEC deal was how the agreement was reached. The main stumbling block had been Iraq, who claimed that it should get special dispensation as it needed the revenue to wage war on Iran. Ominously, at the conference, Iran itself agreed to this saying that it would pursue "other means" to cut back Iraq's production levels. How many more lives this will cost remains to be seen. This war has already cost the lives of hundreds of thousands. The price of oil is sometimes very high.

In a sane society, oil with all its benefits would be used as it could be, solely to satisfy human needs. Such terms as "price", "profit levels" and "uneconomic production" would become meaningless. It is not the price of oil that really determines whether it can be extracted but the cooperative effort of human labour, using all its skill and techniques, which allows such inhospitable places as the North Sea to produce an item of such great benefit.

Ian Ratcliffe