Profit rules over safety

HSE press release below, fails to mention that both companies are wholly owned subsidiaries of construction giant Laing o'Rourke - a multi-national that has admitted its guilt in blacklisting union safety reps.

 Two companies fined following death of worker at Worksop site
 A manufacturer of large concrete panels and a plant hire company were sentenced following the death of a worker at a factory in Worksop, Nottinghamshire.

 Nottingham Crown Court heard that on 8 July 2014 Richard Reddish, who was employed by Explore Manufacturing Ltd at its site on Explore Way, was working in the finishing area. He was working in a mobile elevating working platform (MEWP) removing the lifting attachments from the top of a concrete panel, which weighed about 11 tonnes and was stored on a transport pallet.

 The accident took place when the panel started to topple, while he was standing in the raised MEWP basket. This first panel struck the MEWP throwing him from the basket. It also caused a number of other concrete panels to topple, one of which fell onto him.

 The transport pallets were supplied by Select Plant Hire Company Ltd who shared responsibility for their maintenance with Explore Manufacturing Ltd. An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) confirmed that the frame used to secure the panel was not properly connected to the pallet, as a locking pin had not been correctly reinserted after the frame had previously been replaced, and there was no system of pre-use checks. The pallets were in a poor condition, with defects including missing support bearers and stabilising legs. Other failures included the storage of large freestanding concrete panels in the finishing area, which should have been secured in storage racks, and a lack of sufficient planning. The investigation also identified concerns with the wider systems for the storage of concrete panels at the site.

 Explore Manufacturing Limited, of Bridge Place, Anchor Boulevard, Admirals Park Crossways, Dartford, Kent DA2 6SN, pleaded guilty to the charge of breaching Section 2 of the Health and Safety At Work Etc Act 1974 in that they failed to ensure so far as reasonably practicable the health, safety and welfare of its employees during the transportation and storage of the pre-cast concrete panels.

 Select Plant Hire Company Limited, of the same address, pleaded guilty to the charge of breaching Section 3 of the Health and Safety at Work Etc Act 1974 in that the company failed to properly maintain the transport pallets in operation at the Explore facility and thereby exposed the Explore employees to risks to their health and safety.

 Explore Manufacturing Limited was fined £2million and ordered to pay costs of £13,922 while Select Plant Hire Company Ltd were fined £1.8million and ordered to pay costs of £13,922.
Speaking after the hearing Stuart Pilkington, HSE Inspector, said “This tragic incident led to the avoidable death of a young man, whose death could easily have been prevented if the companies had acted following previous warnings to identify and manage the risks involved, maintain the equipment, and put a safe system of work in place.”

How can socialism work, and how can it be organized?

The classical description of socialism is a class-free, money-free and state-free society where the means of production and distribution are commonly owned by the global community so human needs are satisfied. This is no different from communism for both terms of reference mean exactly the same.

Nonetheless, its also a term of reference to a theory which traces the process of social evolution from its primitive beginnings to the highly sophisticated and complex means of the creation of wealth. Below is an article I wrote on this subject:

Production

There will be a complete transformation in the calculation of resources, and their production and distribution. In capitalism articles of wealth (commodities) are produced to be bought and sold on markets, at a profit. This trade in commodities generates waste; pollution and externalities; overproduction and underproduction; built-in obsolescence; quantity over quality; crisis and booms; poverty amidst plenty; employment for some and a waste in human potential for most; and obscene wealth for the few.

With no commodity production and trade, there will be no exchange value and prices, just the inputs and outputs of resources and human needs. The decision-making process will aim to ensure there’s sufficient stock control to meet projected needs through calculation in kind.

This decision-making process will also configure: environmental impact assessments; a high standard of quality control and durability; positive recycling - where products will be deliberately designed so to ensure that they last longer and when they are passed their usefulness all their component parts are easily recycled into other useful products; and transportation miles for distribution of human needs so the shortest journey possible is covered. This efficiency of calculation will ensure the energy required for producing needs will be kept to a minimum and promote the production of renewable energy sources.

Decision-making

Here the system will be participatory delegate democracy. In capitalism, political parties represent the sectional interests within the capitalist class with all of them competing for political control of the state and its machinery of government. With no sectional interests to be represented when there is common ownership, there won’t be political parties or a state machinery. Nonetheless, major issues will be thrashed out with decisions being made on what’s the best course of action for gaining a successful outcome.

A bottom-up decision-making process involving voluntary participation cannot be imposed by a hierarchy or a vanguard or the concept becomes meaningless. The basic building block is the community or neighbourhood assembly, face-to-face meetings where citizens meet to discuss and vote on the issues of the day, not that there will need to be a vote on every issue as most of day-to-day work carried out will be routine. These assemblies elect mandated and recallable delegates who then link with other assemblies forming a confederated council, a 'community of communities'. The difference between this form of delegate democracy and our current form of representative democracy is that in a representative democracy power is given wholesale to the representative who then is free to act on their own initiative. In a delegate democracy, the initiative is set by the electing body and the delegate can be recalled at any time should the electing body feel that their mandate is not being met, thus power remains at the base.

Culture

Due to the impact of common ownership on the global community, there’ll be even more of an increase in cultural choices and options than there is under capitalism. Unrestricted to the social conformity of private property relationships, individuals and communities will be able to focus on an ongoing celebration of freedom of expression - leading to an increase in cultural diversity.

Leisure activities are likely to increase in scope and decrease in size. Presently, with package holidays the most affordable way of taking a break from the drudgery and monotony of the production line or the office, they are the most popular form of holiday.

In socialism, where the principle of free access underpins the common ownership of the means of living, our options and choices on travel and holidays would be extended and influenced by what positive contribution we can make to the country we are visiting. And with package holidays and mass tourism a thing of the past, it is likely holidays in socialism would not be restricted within a timescale of 10 to 14 days of hectic hedonism, but transformed into a unique opportunity to stay in a particular location for as long as it takes to understand the history and culture of that region. In effect, the transformation in the social relationships from private property ownership to common ownership will radically alter our perception of culture, leisure, and travel.

Human nature

But wouldn’t all this be against human nature? No. Socialists make a distinction between human nature and human behaviour. That people are able to think and act is a fact of biological and social development (human nature), but how they think and act is the result of historically specific social conditions (human behaviour). Human nature changes, if at all, over vast periods of time; human behaviour changes according to changed social conditions. Capitalism being essentially competitive and predatory, produces vicious, competitive ways of thinking and acting. But we humans are able to change our society and adapt our behaviour, and there is no reason why our rational desire for human well-being and happiness should not allow us to establish and run a society based on co-operation.

Needs have a physiological and a historical dimension. Basic physiological needs derive from our human nature (e.g. food, clothing, and shelter), but historically conditioned needs derive from developments in the forces of production. In capitalism, needs are manipulated by the imperative to sell commodities and accumulate capital; basic physiological needs then take the historically conditioned form of ‘needs’ for whatever the capitalists can sell us.

Social evolution suggests that no mode of production is cast in stone and the dynamics of change also affects capitalism as a social system. Studies of social systems with distinct social relationships related and corresponding to their specific mode of production have identified, for instance, primitive communism, chattel slavery, feudalism, and capitalism. All of these societies changed from one into another due to the contradictions inherent in that society and also due to technological advancement which each society found itself incapable of adapting to. Capitalism reached this point over a century ago. It’s time to move on to socialism.

Brian Johnson

The benefits of socialism

In creating a socialist society we have to always remember that we are not beginning from nothing. The Socialist Party has always acknowledged the progressive nature of capitalism's past in developing the means of production and distribution and its vast planning. These are in place just waiting to be re-focused and re-prioritised to serve the needs of people and not just for the accumulation of wealth for the few. There are also the non-state administrative organisations like WHO, FAO, and a host of well-structured and experienced NGOs such as Oxfam that can be adapted to a socialist world. One of the reasons we advocate capturing the state machine is to make use of the non-coercive parts of the state that could perform a constructive purpose inside socialist society once it is stripped of their profit-making ethos, such as the departments of environment, agriculture, health, education and so on.

Even private capitalism itself has developed methods that can be of use to ourselves. Multi-nationals employ a whole variety of statistic gathering and logistic supply and distribution systems to maintain a global inter-connected chain to provide raw materials for the factories and assembly centres and computerised stock-control networks to fill the supermarket shelves with stuff. We will make use of that capitalist knowledge when the workers in these industries and corporations, along with the communities,  gain control over the decision-making in them. One reason why socialism holds an advantage over capitalism is by eliminating the need to tie up vast quantities of resources and labour in its system of monetary/pricing accounting.

The Marxist theorist, Bertell Ollman, has written:
“...There is no overriding need to build an industry from scratch. Advice from a cooperative public, computers and other modern communication technology, and, of course, repeated trial and error and correction of error will permit quick adjustments whenever necessary. Hence, there is little likelihood of making major miscalculations or of suffering much material deprivation when errors are made. I would also expect socialist planning to occur at various levels—nation, region, city, and enterprise as well as world-wide—so that many of the decisions that were taken by central planners in the Soviet Union would be relegated to planners on levels more in keeping with the actions required for the plan to succeed.

 Equally important is the nature of socialist democracy as it affects the economy of this time. For the workers to function as the new ruling class, it is not enough that the government act in their interests. They must also participate in making crucial political decisions, and none are more crucial than choosing the economic planners and establishing the main priorities of the plan. I would expect debates on these matters to be an essential part of politics under socialism, as workers overcome their political alienation by realizing their powers as social and communal beings..."

One of the beneficial effects of free access is that it will thwart any potential bureaucracy (or as Parecon call them, the co-ordinator class) from arising.  Free access to goods and services denies to any group or individuals the political leverage with which to dominate others which have been a feature of all private-property or class based systems through the control of and restrictions to the means of life. This will ensure that a socialist society is run on the basis of democratic consensus.  It is the actual essence of free access to goods and services that it denies to any one particular group the political leverage with which to rule over others. So where will this power come from, if it cannot withhold the means of life or restrict access to society's wealth from those it wishes to subjugate or exploit or take advantage of.

Many socialists have also had a partiality to democracy by lottery (demarchy or sortition)as a means of administration and decision-making. A lottery is valid enough method of decision making for things as important as whether a man or woman should live or die, whether a man or woman should spend their lives locked up behind bars or go free. We entrust the decision to (in Scotland) 15 randomly picked members of the public, not quite picked off the street but close enough, to form a jury. It also helps to ensure no risk of a bureaucracy by committees.

The idea of opinion polls has turned into quite an accurate science in determining attitudes and predicting outcomes and those are based on not quite random selection by lottery but by adding parameters to create a representative sample. I am sure those involved in this profession will devise a whole variety of even more new practical applications for a socialist society that they have not yet begun studying because still having the capitalist society blinkers on. Epidemiological statistical research and returns is not a head count but are used by health workers and host of other statisticians. When workers in these fields have become socialists and they have built workers councils and neighbourhood communes or whatever,  there will be a surge in innovation and implementation.

Capitalism seems to have adopted the idea in the sense that they now all use focus groups to determine marketing and such like. There is also consumer research, mostly by telephone but also by visits has grown into an industry and if it didn't have some accuracy I doubt it would exist as much. I certainly can conceive of these being used in socialism as mechanisms for feedback on what we actually make and how much of it we should produce.
Democracy and allocation of resources in socialism need not be constant meetings and continual voting on every issue. Certainly, we will be involved more in civic affairs but these may be combined with festivals and celebrations like the medieval fairs which usually had some economic purpose such as alloting access in the commons or choosing work placements for farm labourers.

Certainly, there may be situations that genuine rationing will have to be imposed by communities, for instance,  a failed harvest which depletes the buffer reserve stocks and causes temporary shortage. These can be tackled by  prioritising indviduals (according to needs by vulnerability), and if there is no call for that criteria, by a simple lottery, or even simpler - first come, first served.  Referendums can easily and quickly be organised by various communities to decide such issues. One  purpose of socialism is to minimise administrative structures and make society self-regulating which involves people self-policing themselves for a want of a better word 

Ultimately critics of free access end up questioning it on the basis of present behaviour of people. Under capitalism, people tend to acquire and hoard goods because possession provides some security. People have a tendency to distrust others because the system is a dog-eat-dog one. In capitalist society there is a tendency for individuals to seek to validate their sense of worth through the accumulation of possessions. In socialism, status based upon the material wealth would be meaningless since everything would be freely available so why take more than you need when you can freely take what you need?  In socialism, the only way in which individuals can command the esteem of others is through their contribution to society, and the more the movement for socialism grows the more will it subvert the prevailing capitalist ethos, in general, and its anachronistic notion of status, in particular. How can the status of conspicuous consumption be used as a reward as it is now for a privileged elite when all have equal free access.

We should not project onto socialism the insatiable consumerism of capitalism. After all, there is a vast advertising industry. Regardless of how modest one's real needs may be or how easily they may be met capitalism has created a "consumer culture" that leads one to want more than one may materially need since - an insatiable desire to enhance his or her status within this hierarchal culture of consumerism.

Socialism does not require us all to become altruists, putting the interests of others above our own. In fact, socialism doesn't require people to be any more altruistic than they are today. We will still be concerned primarily with ourselves, with satisfying our needs, our need to be well considered by others as well as our material and sexual needs. No doubt too, we will want to “possess” personal belongings and to feel secure in our physical occupation of the house we live in, but this will be just that – our home and not a financial asset. Such “selfish” behaviour will still exist in socialism but the acquisitiveness encouraged by capitalism will no longer exist. The coming of socialism will not require great changes in the way we behave, essentially only the accentuation of some of the behaviours which people exhibit today (friendliness, helpfulness, co-operation) at the expense of other more negative ones which capitalism encourages.

The establishment of socialism presupposes the existence of a mass socialist movement and a change in social outlook. It is simply not reasonable to suppose that the desire for socialism on such a large scale, and the conscious understanding of what it entails on the part of all concerned, would not influence the way people behaved in socialism and towards each other. Why would they want to jeopardise the new society they had just helped create? If people cannot change then all speculation about socialism is rather pointless because there simply will not be a socialist revolution without people changing. If too many people once having achieved socialism then decide to not work, then socialism will fall apart. The socialist revolution entails workers acquiring a class consciousness, or participating in political and industrial organisations to expropriate the rich and re-structure production, not just who will do the work but how things are produced and distributed. This will require decision making and interactions with one another. We should be a little reticent to lay down expectations of what sort of procedures will evolve. We can only generalise with broad brush-strokes the picture of what may happen.

As already stated, we are not starting a new society from a blank sheet of paper. Suppose the revolution was tomorrow and we had socialism people will still carry on their duties, business as usual, for the immediate time being, while at the same time adapting and changing their work-places. All those in wasteful socially useless jobs will have to be re-deployed, slotted into other work. No doubt insurance actuaries with their flair for statistics and projections and demographics will orientate themselves to planning and administration. Ex-army will find that they can remain in uniform and be used in natural disaster relief work,  sent to build bridges or whatnot. Use your own imagination on how particular jobs in capitalism will disappear entirely or become transformed into more socially productive jobs in socialism. We are talking millions upon millions of new labour-force now released from retail and commerce to be made available to lessen the hours of work for others.
 Even in this callous heartless capitalist world, people will get together and help each other for mutual benefit. According to the Corporation for National and Community Service, about 64.3 million Americans, or 26.8 percent of the adult population, gave 7.9 billion hours of volunteer service. 94% of the America’s Red Cross are volunteers.

In the UK almost 20 million had performed some sort of voluntary work in the last year. During 2010/11, 39% of adults in England said that they had volunteered formally at least once in the previous 12 months, with 25% volunteering formally at least once a month.

In Australia in 2010, 6.1 million people aged 18 years and more (36% of the Australian population aged 18 years and over) had undertaken some form of voluntary work in the previous 12 months.
That of course probably does not include good neighbours popping in and out of one another’s houses to do some DIY or running errands for others less able or whatever.

There are critics of socialism who declare that there will be a reluctance by people to do hard, dirty and dangerous work, and will avoid it if they can but who's to say what is dirty? Who's to say what is hard? Number crunching could be hard to one person and manual labour could be hard for another. These are both terms which are left to the interpretation of the individual. And some people even enjoy dangerous work. Why else would people climb mountains or sky-dive etc for leisure time if an element of danger is not enjoyable?   People are prepared to work "hard" if they consider what they are doing is enjoyable or necessary. What work is "dirty" is in the eye of the beholder. And some people consider it an honour to do "dangerous" work (eg lifeboat crews or mountain rescue teams, even soldiers). At the present, those who are employed in hazardous and unhealthy jobs do so because they have to, and are often on the job from 16 to 60, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, with a couple of weeks off a year. Socialists are not suggesting that this pattern will be the normal acceptable practice in socialism.  These type of jobs will not be done by the same people all the time. All able-bodied workers - of both sexes- will take turns at this work on a rotational basis that will be decided by those involved and not by you and i right now. We should not forget that this work will be carried out by socially conscious men and women who appreciate that society now belongs to them and therefore the less pleasant tasks must be performed by them. Don't you ever clean your own toilet in your own house? Or get sweaty and dirty gardening? In a situation where we all own and control the planet, and all that is in it and on it, it unlikely that people will refuse to tackle the dirty and unpleasant jobs. If health and safety is such an issue that people decide that it is too dangerous to expect people to engage in such work - so be it - we will have to do without,  or what is more probable, find an alternative second-best choice which doesn't carry as much risk in obtaining.  What we should not do is force or bribe or morally blackmail such workers.

Socialists do make assumptions but a phrase out of favour and unpopular these days is that our political ideas are based on "scientific socialism", we are scientific socialists. We use certain thinking processes such as inductive reasoning and the materialistic conception of history. We simply do not come up with our ideas independent or outside society. We assume things but it is from precedence. Workers already know how to co-operate and do in fact cooperate. What's lacking at the moment is not the capacity to cooperate but the will to do so to get socialism.

 Rosa Luxemburg wrote:
"...Socialism cannot be realized with lazy, careless, egotistic, thoughtless and shiftless men and women. A Socialist state of society needs people every one of whom is full of enthusiasm and fervor for the general welfare, full of a spirit of self-sacrifice and sympathy for his fellow men, full of courage and tenacity and the willingness to dare even against the greatest odds.

But we need not wait centuries or decades until such a race of human beings shall grow up. The struggle, the Revolution will teach the proletarian masses idealism, has given them mental ripeness, courage and perseverance, clearness of purpose and a self-sacrificing spirit, if it is to lead to victory. While we are enlisting fighters for the revolution, we are creating Socialist workers for the future, workers who can become the basis of a new social state..."

Some Health Facts

Scottish Health Survey revealed Scotland’s well-established habits of smoking, alcohol and poor diet persist, and that has a death toll of its own.

Smoking, the one area which has seen some bold legislation, still claims over 10,000 lives a year. 

There are 22 alcohol-related deaths a week.

Two-thirds of Scots are overweight or obese, contributing to the burden of diabetes, heart disease, cancer and poor mental health.

Airse for elbow

In the regular Scottish idiomatic expression, someone doesn't know "their airse from their elbow" refers to incompetence of the highest order.

Socialists know that governments don't run capitalism. Capitalism runs them.

 But decisions of government which affect perceived stability, can send shock-waves through the system, enough for it to start 'corrections' depending upon and sending signals of economic significance.

 This recent Latest E.U. spring forecast must have politicians sharpening knifes to weild on each other in the Brexit pro and anti lobbies..

Food Facts

800 million people go to bed hungry each night.

That’s 1 in 9 people on a world population estimate of 7.6 billion today.

98% of the world’s hungry live in developing regions, mostly in Asia.

Some 550 million are in Asia and the Pacific, in countries like Indonesia and the Philippines. Another 220 million are in Africa, in arid sub-Saharan countries like Ethiopia, Niger and Mali. The remaining is in Latin America and the Caribbean, in places like Guatemala and Haiti.

75% of the world’s poorest don’t buy their food – they grow it.

Many poverty-stricken families depend on their land and livestock for both food and income, leaving them vulnerable to natural disasters. Drought – as a result of climate change and unpredictable rainfall – is one of the most common causes of food shortages in the world. It causes crop failures, kills entire herds of livestock, and dries up farmland in poor communities that have no other means to survive.

Many hungry people live in countries with food surpluses, not food shortages.

The issue, largely, is that the people who need food the most simply don’t have steady access to it. In the hungriest countries, families struggle to get the food they need because of issues such as lack of infrastructure like roads and storage facilities, frequent war and displacement, natural disaster, climate change, and chronic poverty.

1/3 of the food produced around the world is never consumed.

Much food is wasted in developing countries due to inadequate food production systems. Some of the factors responsible for food losses include inefficient farming techniques, lack of post-harvest storage and management resources, and weak market connections.

60% of the world’s hungry are women and girls.

In many places, male-dominated social structures limit the resources women have to job opportunities, financial services and education, making them more vulnerable to poverty and hunger. This, in turn, impacts their children. A malnourished mother has an increased risk of delivering an underweight baby, which can mean physical and mental stunting right from childbirth.

Empowering female farmers can pull 150 million people out of hunger.

Empowering women is essential to global food security. Almost half of the world’s farmers are women, but they lack the same tools – land rights, financing, training – that their male counterparts have, and their farms are less productive as a result. If women and men had equal agricultural resour­ces, female farmers could increase their productivity enough to help lift millions of people out of hunger.

Every 10 seconds, a child dies from hunger.

Poor nutrition is responsible for nearly half (45%) of all deaths in children under the age of 5 – about 3 million children die each year because their bodies don’t have enough of the basic nutrients they need to function and grow.

Hunger kills more people each year than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined.

Around 9 million people die of hunger and hunger-related diseases every year, more than double the lives taken by AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in 2012.

The world produces enough food for everyone to live a healthy, productive life.

There is now 17% more food available per person than there was 30 years ago. If all the world’s food were evenly distributed, there would be enough for everyone to get 2,700 calories per day – which is more than the minimum 2,100 requirement for proper health. So the challenge is not a lack of food, it’s making food consistently available to everyone who needs it.

800 million people go to bed hungry each night.

That’s 1 in 9 people on a world population estimate of 7.6 billion today.

98% of the world’s hungry live in developing regions, mostly in Asia.

Some 550 million are in Asia and the Pacific, in countries like Indonesia and the Philippines. Another 220 million are in Africa, in arid sub-Saharan countries like Ethiopia, Niger and Mali. The remaining is in Latin America and the Caribbean, in places like Guatemala and Haiti.

75% of the world’s poorest don’t buy their food – they grow it.

Many poverty-stricken families depend on their land and livestock for both food and income, leaving them vulnerable to natural disasters. Drought – as a result of climate change and unpredictable rainfall – is one of the most common causes of food shortages in the world. It causes crop failures, kills entire herds of livestock, and dries up farmland in poor communities that have no other means to survive.

Surprisingly, many hungry people live in countries with food surpluses, not food shortages.

The issue, largely, is that the people who need food the most simply don’t have steady access to it. In the hungriest countries, families struggle to get the food they need because of issues such as lack of infrastructure like roads and storage facilities, frequent war and displacement, natural disaster, climate change, and chronic poverty.

1/3 of the food produced around the world is never consumed.

Much food is wasted in developing countries due to inadequate food production systems. Some of the factors responsible for food losses include inefficient farming techniques, lack of post-harvest storage and management resources, and weak market connections.

60% of the world’s hungry are women and girls.

In many places, male-dominated social structures limit the resources women have to job opportunities, financial services and education, making them more vulnerable to poverty and hunger. This, in turn, impacts their children. A malnourished mother has an increased risk of delivering an underweight baby, which can mean physical and mental stunting right from childbirth.

Empowering female farmers can pull 150 million people out of hunger.

Empowering women is essential to global food security. Almost half of the world’s farmers are women, but they lack the same tools – land rights, financing, training – that their male counterparts have, and their farms are less productive as a result. If women and men had equal agricultural resour­ces, female farmers could increase their productivity enough to help lift millions of people out of hunger.

Every 10 seconds, a child dies from hunger.

Poor nutrition is responsible for nearly half (45%) of all deaths in children under the age of 5 – about 3 million children die each year because their bodies don’t have enough of the basic nutrients they need to function and grow.

Hunger kills more people each year than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined.

Around 9 million people die of hunger and hunger-related diseases every year, more than double the lives taken by AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in 2012.

The world produces enough food for everyone to live a healthy, productive life.

There is now 17% more food available per person than there was 30 years ago. If all the world’s food were evenly distributed, there would be enough for everyone to get 2,700 calories per day – which is more than the minimum 2,100 requirement for proper health. So the challenge is not a lack of food, it’s making food consistently available to everyone who needs it.

Industrial food and farming systems are “making people sick” according to research published by the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems.

Say No To Nationalism

Nationalism is a malignant disease that appeals to our most primitive and basic instincts. It divides people and therefore has no place in modern and developed society. We have to point out to nationalists that "freedom" and "sovereignty" i.e independence, is not the solution to their problem. We want all countries to be free from capitalism and are not in favour of encouraging the illusions fostered by parts of the propertied class. The Socialist Party and the World Socialist Movement are not enthusiastic about smaller nations forming their own states. All over the globe, nationalism is on the march and the battle cry is either “Independence” or "Defend the motherland", separatists or unionists, demanding that political power be turned over to them and this, they say, would allow them to set about the problems of poverty, unemployment and housing shortages which they say have ignored . Offering this as the main reason for their nationalism, they attract a lot of support and sympathy. What many people forget is that this newly won political power will be used to administer capitalism—with all the problems which already faced them.  Saner people should be more worried about the necessities of life: putting food on the table, a roof over their head, and other such mundane—and ultimately far more important—considerations, than the constitutional status of the place they happen to live in.

“Independence" is a word used to stir up emotions but the current economic system doesn’t play favourites based on national, ethnic, or cultural sovereignty. Capital investment and migration is based upon the likelihood of making better profits, not upon which of the largely irrelevant politicians form the government. Nationalist- ' quasi-racist' - issues are not the issues that will solve the problems that working class people face every day. The working class will never be served by nationalism. Sovereignty is a capitalist business, the factional feuding of the self-same class to win and control regions for profit, for the benefit of their local capitalists,  politicians, media chiefs and other self-serving functionaries.

The search for markets, sources of raw materials, cheap labour power and most profitable locations for business gave rise to "globalisation", no matter what nationality, religion or language for capital is not a personal but a social force. Independence solves none of the problems resulting from exploitation.  Nation-states governments remain wedded to the same set of priorities and subject to the same constraints as any other capitalist government. Poverty in the midst of a potential for plenty remains a running sore, massive disparities of wealth continue to exist and environmental degradation continues virtually unabated.

Socialists do not ask people to demand their "right of self-determination". Instead we urge them to forget the crumbs from the dishes of their masters’, but instead, organise under the slogan "One World—One People". The obstacle only lies in our minds. The only way out is to establish Socialism, which will organise the world so that everyone, whatever their sex or colour of skin, has free access to the world's wealth and stands equal to the rest of humanity. Independence cannot solve working-class problems, only the establishment of socialism will do that. 

The world's working class doesn’t need a change in politicians. Independence simply means the exchange of one set of exploiters for another. We need an end to class division. The joys of becoming an independent country are, by and large, illusory for the mass of the people and not worth the effort and sacrifice so often involved in achieving it. The message of socialism is a universal one. It reaches across the artificial borders built by men and it is for the ears of all workers. The real issue is capitalism or socialism. That is the lesson for workers to learn all over the world.

The Futility of I.S. (1974)

Pamphlet Review from the March 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

The policies of the “International Socialists” have been set forth in a pamphlet, The Struggle for Workers' Power by Roger Rosewell. The pamphlet appears to be intended for the information of members of I.S., as well as for the general public.

The Labour Party, I.S. recognise Labour to be a non-Socialist party, and indeed provide ample evidence to show it. But they nevertheless support the election of a Labour government — in order to point to the anti-working-class nature of its policies. Those dim workers, you see, have to be led through this experience. This is itself a non-Socialist standpoint: since all previous Labour governments have shown that their function is to administer capitalism in the interests of the capitalist class, it is a waste of time encouraging workers to vote Labour only to shout “betrayal” when the results of doing so become apparent.

The “Workers’ State”. This chapter makes a Socialist squirm. In little over two pages, Rosewell manages to pack in all the Leftist garbage on this topic. The “Workers’ State” is to be completely democratic. However, capitalist parties and newspapers are to be banned, and former capitalists and their supporters are to be disenfranchised.

Now, at present, the majority of workers support capitalism in one form or another, and presumably, after the I.S. “revolution” many will continue to do so. What will the “Workers’ State” do with them? Perhaps, following their masters Lenin and Trotsky, such workers as opposing the new régime will be thrown into forced-labour camps.

A “Workers’ Militia” is to be formed for the protection of the new State and all workers are to be given part-time military training (in other words, conscription). Will workers carry rifles on their backs as they travel to and from work? The Workers’ Militia will defend the “right” to work (why not the right to leisure?) and the “right” to strike. Rosewell has already told us that under the new régime the means of production will be owned by the working class, so against whom would strikes be directed? We can only wonder, as no answer is forthcoming in the pamphlet.

All remaining British Colonies are to be declared free. “Free” is used without any explanation as to what is meant by it. Free from British imperialism, but in the clutches of, e.g., Russian or Chinese imperialism? Most likely, because Rosewell naively states that British capitalism’s overseas property will be handed over to the native workers.

The Communist Party. We are told that the CP was at one time a revolutionary organization, but sadly this is no longer the case. What is meant by this is that the CP advocated the violent overthrow of the Establishment (to be replaced by State capitalism on the Russian model, though Rosewell does not say this). Nowadays the CP advocates a peaceful road to "Socialism” (again State capitalism): I.S. claims that this is a departure from Marxism and that Socialism can be established only after a violent revolution. For I.S. to claim that Marx never thought Socialism could be established by peaceful means is either very ignorant or very dishonest. Speaking to the Congress of the First International at The Hague in 1872, Marx expressed the view that in countries such as Britain and the USA where democracy had been established, the Socialist revolution could do without violence.

Reformism. This statement of policy boldly claims that I.S. is for “Revolution, Not Reformism” — then proceeds to advocate reforms: the repeal of the Industrial Relations Act, the repeal of the Housing Finance Act, reform of the education system with more money to be spent on education and the abolition of private schools, exams and corporal punishment. It even demands an end to the teaching of ruling-class ideas. How naive can you get? Do I.S. seriously expect the ruling class to subsidize subversion of themselves?

I.S. participates in “the Fight against the Fascist Menace”. Readers of the pamphlet should have been in Edinburgh on 15th October last when I.S. (with others) broke up a debate at the University Union because they objected to the presence of the National Front. They are opposed to free speech for their opponents; apparently, it is permissible for the Left to use “fascist” methods (breaking-up meetings) against fascism.

Socialism. The pamphlet’s summing-up says: “Mankind is faced with the alternatives of Socialism or barbarism. Only the Socialist revolution can change this.” We would certainly agree with that, but The Struggle for Workers’ Power does not point the way towards the new society. Claiming to be a Socialist pamphlet, it does not even hint at the nature of Socialism — a world-wide classless society, with an end to all markets and with production to satisfy human needs.

R. Battersby

Glasgow Branch Meeting

Give us a visit to discuss how to promote and organise a system of production for use and not for profit, a society of common ownership and democratic control without the state, leaders, nations, war or money. Capitalism turns our planet and its peoples into a resource to be exploited. The Socialist Party argues that the world can only be managed responsibly if society as a whole is managed co-operatively and in everyone’s interests. If our industries and services were owned and run in common, then we would be able to produce what we need and want in the most rational and sustainable way.

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  Wednesday, October 18,

  
  

  
  

  7:00 to 9:00 PM

• Maryhill Community Central Halls

  304 Maryhill Road

  Glasgow G20 7YE 

  

  

  
  

  
  

Servitude or Socialism?

The working class to-day is a slave class. They can only live by selling their labour power—working abilities—to a master class, who, by their ownership of the means of life, keep the workers in their enslaved condition. The Socialist Party proposal is to change the social basis of society from private ownership to a system to satisfy the economic needs of the community which are owned and controlled by the whole of the people. Socialism will provide all people with the full amenities of modern life. Present-day society does not provide for all now simply because the way it produces things is geared not to make available what people need but to create profitably. In a future socialist society, ownership and control of the means of production will be in the hands of the community as a whole. This will enable production to be directed in the interest of all on the basis of what we need. With modern methods of consumer research and information gathering, logistics and stock-control, already in use by many of the global corporations, the means by which the needs of society can be determined are already available.

There can be no common interests between those who own the offices, the factories, mines, shops, and land, with the workers who do all of the producing. One class does all the work, produces all, suffers all the hardships necessary to accomplish the task. The other class owns, but does not know, nor cares to know, how to produce wealth, yet persists by rights that it labels “legal” to live off what it does not produce. While our class performs no function in production but lives in plenty Our class works long hours under bad conditions established by and suited to the needs of masters of industry. We receive low wages, so that there may be high dividends and profits for the investors. For it must be borne in mind longer hours and low wages mean greater profits for the capitalists. The world needs socialism.  Even the most liberal vision is too conservative to resolve these contradictions. Capitalist technology has produced unprecedented wealth, yet threatens the very air and water, and embitters people. Helping people to adjust to capitalism, rather than engaging against it, has been the historic accomplishment of the Left, and it remains its primary goal 

It's up to workers alone to make a better world for ourselves. We can't wait for it to change of its own accord because it will never do that. Capitalism may well be sick but it will not, however, disappear on a given day, or in a given month or year. Its demise can only take place as a his­toric process by a class-conscious majority.

Religious and nationalist dogma is only blinding people to the realities of the intolerable present-day world system of society. But once you've begun to look at them in a historical context then you'll be able to begin looking at everything else in the same way. And you'll begin to question why the world is in such a state. You'll begin to question why there is so much misery and suffering and starvation when there is plenty of everything for everybody; why the majority of the world's population have to slave away all their lives at jobs they detest while a small minority live in splendour and luxury without having to work at all.  it's no use going to churches, chapels or mosques or even to Conservative or Labour politicians. There's only one real solution: a system of society based on common ownership of the means of living and democratically controlled by and in the interests of the whole world-wide community. A class-free, money-free world-wide system of society where poverty will give way to comfort, privilege to equality, and slavery to freedom. Ours is a “participatory” socialism.

The struggle to change society from capitalism to socialism has nothing to do with barricades in the streets or organizing general strikes. It has to be a political one. The powers of government include and in the last analysis rest on armed force to maintain capitalism in each country. The only logical strategy to abolish capitalism is, therefore, for the working class — not leaders or an élite - but the socialist working class itself through its mandated delegates — to take control of those powers; so that the protection of capitalism has gone, and no-one can prevent the establishment of socialism.

In those circumstances, hypotheses about opposition by army officers etc. are not only improbable but define themselves out of existence. If a military-minded group seeks power, it must do so as a political party. For that, it requires the assent of the ruled-to-be, which is obtainable only in the absence of Socialist understanding. Even under capitalism, forcible rule without that assent does not work as the ruling class needs. An example is Northern Ireland, where the fact that military occupation achieved nothing is testified to by the search on all sides for “a political solution”, i.e. a régime acceptable to the population: which is what we were saying. What is much more likely than military resistance to the rapid growth of socialist consciousness is that the ruling class will offer sops and reforms galore to try to buy it off.

Socialism is the hope for industrial freedom. The Socialist Party is attempting to build a world socialist movement and endeavours to ensure some level of inspiration. But that doesn’t mean providing all the answers, it doesn’t mean detailing the blueprints of a utopia. It does mean that we’re laying out an idea about how change can happen and the difference that it actually can make. It is about offering our fellow-workers aspiration and a new ambition to think a lot bigger than they’ve been thinking for decades now.

Transport Poverty

More than one million people in Scotland live in areas at risk of "transport poverty", it has been claimed. The figure was calculated by Sustrans Scotland, which promotes walking and cycling. It claimed the lack of affordable transport pushes some households into car ownership which they cannot afford.

An analysis of official figures by Sustrans Scotland found problem areas with relatively low incomes, high car availability and low access to essential services by public transport. The organisation said car ownership can put pressure on households with lower incomes.

Its director John Lauder said: "We need a planning system that puts necessary services where people live. People should be able to access shops, schools, healthcare and some places of work within a short distance without the need for a car."

The Poverty Alliance has backed the call for more affordable transport to be made widely available. "Too many people living on low incomes have inadequate access to public transport, and other forms of transport sometimes seem out of reach," said its director Peter Kelly.

Who will pick the berries?

Scotland’s fruit industry has been one of the great farming success stories. Polytunnel technology has turned a six week season into a six or nine month picking season. But if Brexit results in restrictions on the movement of labour, many farm owners and workers are asking: “Who will pick the berries?”

The 100 acre Wester Hardmuir farm near Nairn grows strawberries, raspberries and a range of other fruit and vegetables in forty-four polytunnels. It has a half a dozen full-time employees – some Scottish, some from Eastern Europe. Each picking season, from May to September, they bring in around twenty students from Poland, Lithuania and Slovakia to pick the crop of ten million berries, which is sold through a farm shop and through a wholesaler.

Castleton Farm near Laurencekirk grows fruit on an industrial scale. Castleton has built a small village to house the six hundred workers who come from across Eastern Europe to pick berries for up to nine months of the year.

With Scotland’s soft fruit industry seeing a 10-20 per cent shortage of seasonal workers coming from the EU this year, NFU Scotland’s horticulture committee chairman and soft fruit farmer James Porter said that fewer workers were being attracted from EU member states due to the UK’s poorer exchange rates and growing affluence in other parts of the Continent. Stating that the situation was likely to get worse ”year on year”. “For a major soft fruit area like Angus, the importance of seasonal workers cannot be underestimated,” he said. “There are only 1,400 long-term unemployed in Angus, yet Angus Soft Fruits – the group that I supply with soft fruit – needs a seasonal workforce of 4,000 to pick crops.” Adding that there would hardly be a punnet of Scottish strawberries or a head of broccoli on supermarket shelves which hadn’t been picked by non-UK workers, he said there had to be a mechanism to allow access to workers in place by next year – and to ensure workers would still be able to come to Scotland post-Brexit, in spring 2019. Seasonal workers – who were generally fit, young and healthy and made little calls on the health services – contributed about £160 million in national insurance payments.

Losing access to European workers would have a “disastrous and cataclysmic” impact on the industry. A report produced for the industry showed that with up to 95 per cent of pickers coming from European countries – mainly Bulgaria, Poland, and Romania – any move to deprive the industry of its workforce would force berry prices to rise by more than 50 per cent and threaten many fruit farms with closure.

One of Scotland’s leading growers, Lochy Porter, stated that there was no doubt that if the UK government put barriers in the way of the 12,000 migrant labour force working in the industry it would do considerable harm to farms across the region and explained “Scotland has a thriving berry industry, growing some of the best berries in the world. Without migrant support, the Scottish berry industry would collapse and consumers would no longer find Scottish berries on their supermarket shelves.”.

From Private Property to Common Ownership

The purpose of capitalism is the realisation of profit (surplus value) and the first step towards this end is the purchase of the necessary means of production. Thus beginning with money (capital), the employers buy factories, machinery and raw materials plus the energy (labour-power) of working men and women and the net return on this outlay is an increased sum of money, sufficient not only to repeat the process but enough for further expansion of production. From the unpaid labour of the workers, there is money to be reinvested in the productive process, either as an addition to the existing capital or as capital seeking fresh fields of exploitation, leading to an inevitable accumulation of capital seeking surplus-value.

All money set aside as industrial capital can be divided into two parts, that spent on the inert means of production we can call “constant” capital, while that for buying labour-power, which preserves and furnishes additional value is “variable” capital. Now if the function of labour-power is to labour, then the call for labour by the employing-class will depend on the market demand for commodities, while the market will, in turn, be gained by those owners that have succeeded in reducing the labour in their commodities to the lower level.

Labour-time is, therefore, the capitalist’s devil which claims as its victims those that are hindmost, driving them to centralise or amalgamate their capital and concentrate it in labour-saving machinery and mass production—to invest in constant capital rather than variable capital.

This results in large capital devouring its smaller rivals, while the social outcome is such that the means of production call for a progressively smaller number of workers to operate it, making it impossible for capitalism to find work for the total employable population, hence an industrial reserve army is in constant being, ever threatening the wage level of those in jobs.

Spurred on by the needs of the market and the greed for surplus-value, capital accumulation in the past was built up by driving labour-power below its value by excessive hours, piecework and low wages, but wiser methods hold sway to-day in production-drives advocated by the workers’ own “union leaders” coupled with the plea that the workers have a "share” in their job.

Yet not all capital invested in the capitalist economy is productive of value or surplus-value. To begin with, the industrialists—whose workers directly produce value and thereby surplus-value—must part with some of the surplus to others whose capital forms an integral part in the capitalist production. The middlemen, bankers and others, though not in productive industry, nevertheless share in the surplus according to the size of their capital and receive, over a period, an average rate of increment, enforced by competition: for capital flows out of those spheres where the rate is low to where it is higher. At this point, it might be asked: “How do those capitals whose workers produce no surplus-value, exploit their workers?”

The finance-capitalists whose service to capital is to centralise all the available loanable money for the use of the whole capitalist class, reap the difference between the depositors’ rate and the interest charge for borrowers. The work entailed being done by their employees, who merely receive the cost of subsistence or salary consistent with this type of work. The outlay in wages and equipment compared with the charge for the bank services give these capitalists their share in surplus-value. Again, the merchants and advertisers who market the products, effect this much more economically than could the many independent industrialists, thus saving them labour-time and capital. The wage costs' for their workers’ abilities and commercial knowledge, set against that part of surplus-value which the industrialists leave them to realise in the selling price, give the merchants their profits.

The landowners, hereditary possessors of the earth’s surface, lend no like "service” to capitalist production, hence the historic enmity of the capitalist class against this landed class, often of aristocrats from a bygone age. An eventual compromise is always concluded with this "charge on industry,” even though land as land has no value and will only yield rent out of the surplus values of farmers and industrialists. Landowners in this way take their share of the spoils through the undertakings on their land whether these activities be mining, building or agriculture. They accumulate wealth, brought about, by others activities. Their land offered as a commodity is bought and sold for a sum that is equal to an investment whose interest would equal the rent.

To sum up, surplus value is the totality of unpaid labour wrung from the workers' in the productive process. while its distribution to the capitalists as rent, interest, and profit takes place in the circulatory process.

Nationalisation does not touch the foundations of capitalism, and the capitalists themselves accept the need in their own interests to control big monopolies. Certain monopolised industries subject to the greed of private companies become instruments for the exploitation of other sections of the capitalist class, and so powerful that the abandonment of certain industries to private exploitation destabilises the whole system

In our Declaration of Principles there are three clauses of special relevance and these are the object, the clause affirming that there is an antagonism of interests between the working class and the Capitalist class, and the clause that lays down the need for the working class to organise consciously and politically for the conquest of the powers of government.

Nor do we want “workers’ ownership," which means syndicalism or cooperatives which remains sectional ownership but ownership by the whole community.

Our object is socialism, defined as 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 interests of the whole community. Our definition is not a mere insistence on a formula. We work for socialism and oppose capitalism—including nationalisation or state capitalism—because only socialism will solve the problem facing the working class. Many miscall state-ownership "socialism” or describe it as a useful stepping stone on the way to socialism. We do not want state capitalism and therefore have no interest in associating with those who do. The fact that they call it “socialism” only makes their activities more dangerous to the workers. It is an essential part of Socialist Party propaganda to convince the workers that the advocates of “something less than socialism” misuse the term and advocates of capitalism. It is the task of the Socialist Party to demonstrate that their activities are against the interests of the workers; that they are enemies of socialism and of the working class.