Young and Little Hope of a Home

YOUNG Scots will have to wait until they are nearly 30 and earning more than £10,000 over the average wage to get their foot on the property ladder, according to  research.

Figures show that while average Scottish salaries have stayed static at around £23,000 a year in the past 10 years, the typical first-time buyer’s earnings have risen from £28,685 to £33,873 over the same period.

Graeme Brown, director of Shelter Scotland, added: “These statistics once again show Scotland’s broken housing system where young people struggle to get a home.

“At the heart of the problem is demand for homes outstripping supply. To tackle the problem, we need a huge injection of new properties of all tenures – but especially homes for social rent – to reduce inflationary pressures and make a fairer housing system for all.”

Well-off families are using a government scheme that provides tens of thousands of pounds to help people get on to the property ladder.  The Scottish Government has helped out thousands of buyers since it introduced its Help to Buy scheme, but figures produced last year showed that more than one in three of those were from households where earnings were more than £50,000. Dozens of families with six-figure earnings also benefited from state aid for their new home.

Our Socialist Vision

“Instead of the conservative motto, ‘A fair day’s wages for a fair day’s Work,’ we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, ‘Abolition of the wages system.’ "

if you dream of becoming rich and really living the dream, your job isn’t going to get this job done. That’s because when you work at a job you work an hour, and you get paid for that hour. The problem is, it doesn’t matter if you earn $15 an hour or $150 an hour or even a $1000, there are only so many hours in a day. That limits how much money you can make. Fortune 500 CEOs who earn millions of dollars a year get rich, sure, but they’re the exception because they also get paid in stock options. It’s not some vast conspiracy. Companies have a financial obligation to their bottom line and their investors to pay employees the lowest possible salary the market will allow. That’s Business 101. Poor men and women may indeed become rich but not by the simple wages of their labour. They never do become rich except by availing themselves, in some way, of the labour of others. Until the workers get rid of the capitalist system itself, the cause of all the injustices they face, they will constantly have to take up their struggles over and over again.

The Socialist Party tries to educate and unify the working class and show that every conflict between workers and the bosses is part of the general struggle in society between the capitalists and its state on the one hand, and the working class on the other. By starting from the working-class point of view and a scientific conception of society, the Socialist Party educates fellow members of the working class and encourages their conscious participation in political action to overthrow the capitalist system.  It recognises that the peoples of the world have the same interest; to end the barbarous profit system. For many long years the Socialist Party pleaded with fellow-workers to organise and take over the entire means of production and distribution. Books, pamphlets, leaflets, and journals of all kinds were freely circulated, with scanty result. Heedlessly the workers moved along, turning their backs on revolution by their blank indifference to questions of supreme importance.  It is the academics who try to make a few elemental principles of political economy and of sociology so difficult of understanding yet the subjects are easy of understanding. All workers who are satisfied with their wages, the wages system and capitalism would probably get mad as hell if they took a little time off to read more about what is really going on. Do not be frightened at the long words. If we can get a clear conception of the socialist method of production and distribution, then we can use that idea to challenge the present method employed by capitalism and obtain the support and organisation of the workers to put it into practical operation. The industries are already in the hands of the workers, but the strength of the employers lies in the fact that they control and direct the product. Who will pay the wages? No one. Money, the most powerful weapon of the capitalist is discarded. But we must eat to live. Very well, the canning factories, the docks, and warehouses are already in the hands of the workers. The flour mills and bakeries, the dairies and packing houses are controlled by them. The dockers, railwaymen and lorry drivers deliver the food, the shop assistants and canteen workers supply it to the workers and their families. Distribution will not be according to the amount of money a person has but according to his or her need. Here is a system of industrial democracy, the only true democracy, not the choice of choosing Tweedledum or Tweedledee every five years and being controlled by him and his partners for the period between, but the control of one’s own job and environment, the control of one’s own life. The government of people gives way to the administration of things. We are now poor and enslaved not because of lack of reforms made by politicians, but because the employing class owns and control the means of production, without access to which we cannot live. So long as others control the means whereby we live so long shall we be slaves? Only by taking common ownership and democratic control of the means of distribution can the workers be free.

Today we are less preoccupied with the abolition of the wages system than ever, and this fact stamps itself as a hallmark on the enslavement of our socialist movement to snivelling attempts to mollify inhuman social relations whilst preserving them intact. The old cry for a fair day’s pay echoes itself time and again. The Socialist Party recognises the class war between the property-less and the possessing class and it can only be resolved by the complete control over all the great means of production and distribution by the whole people, thus abolishing the State and the wages system, and constituting a co-operative commonwealth or a social-democracy.

Socialism entails the total abolition of money, buying and selling, and the wages system. It means the community must set itself the task of providing rather more than the people can use of all the things that the people need and desire, and of supplying these when and as the people require them. Any system by which the buying and selling system is retained means the employment of vast sections of the population in unproductive work. It leaves the productive work to be done by one portion of the people whilst the other portion is spending its energies in keeping shop, banking, making advertisements and all the various developments of commerce which, in fact, employ more than two-thirds of the people today.

The Socialist Party has always maintained that socialism will onlybee achieved by a majority of the working class taking conscious, revolutionary action to capture political power and institute common ownership and democratic control of the means of production. Before this step can be taken workers must be equipped with an understanding of what socialism entails. When socialism does eventually come to be established, someone born into this society, the final emancipation of all mankind, would accept common ownership and working for the needs and betterment of all human life (indeed, not working for nothing) as the normal way of life. He or she would look back unbelievably at a system of society, whereby the propertyless majority were exploited and used for their whole lifetime, subjected to wars, hunger and poverty, for the benefit of the propertied few, and wonder how this system lasted for so long. A person born into the capitalist system of society is conditioned from birth to accept this system as normal, until he is educated to the fact that there is an alternative to the capitalist system of society. The alternative being a system of common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth, by and in the interests of the whole community. A class-free society that would end for ever exploitation, war, and poverty. A system of society whereby man would have a free, satisfying, full life. Secure for all time from the ravages of the capitalist system, with an unlimited horizon ahead to work for the betterment of all mankind.

 Capitalism exists today because of a class monopoly of the means of production. This monopoly can only be broken by the combined efforts of the working class and, for this task, the workers need their own political organisation. In the UK, this is the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

Production for use

The fetishism of money is part of the ideology of the market system which claims uncountable victims across the world.  In the pre Colombian societies of South America, in homage to their gods, human sacrifice was widely practised.  For example, this was a cruel and gruesome ritual amongst the Aztec people in what is now Mexico. Many of the sacrificial victims were children and we think of this as barbaric.  Perhaps for this reason we now prefer to keep out of our minds that because of the constraints of the market system, on a world scale we sacrifice many more children’s lives than the Aztecs could ever manage.  We sacrifice them to the god of money, on the altar of the capitalist system.

It is important to refer to production in socialism as being “solely” for use.   This is for the obvious reason that in all societies, be they bread, bricks or bombs, things are produced for a use of one kind or another. But in the market system, commodities are also produced for sale. Goods for sale have a twin identity in that they exist in both an economic and useful form. The same is true of the labour that produces them.  In employment, the wide range of different skills have one thing in common, they have economic value. Labour as a commodity is bought and sold on the labour markets. In the production, distribution and consumption of commodities the ability of consumers to use goods depends upon their ability to first pay for them. This is because the primary motive of capitalist production is profit and the accumulation of capital. In socialism this profit motive would not exist with the result that goods would be produced “solely for use.”

Human society in its development unfolds the secrets of the Universe but at no time has this been so accelerated as in the capitalist mode of production. New discoveries and inventions plus mankind’s experience have a direct bearing on all ideas that are held in society. We are in part of an age when religious ideas, having already undergone changes in the past, are once more moving to a new field. The wide adherence to old dogmas held by the masses has now weakened. Workers should try to come to grips with the material and social causes of the problems that beset and worry them.

The aim of socialism will be to provide for the many and various needs of all the members of the community. The satisfaction of human needs will be the guiding principle. So the aim of planning will be to provide what human beings want. The technical side of production will have to socialism will be to provide for the many and various needs of all the members of the community. The satisfaction of human needs will be the guiding principle. So the aim of planning will be to provide what human beings want. The technical side of production will have to operate always within the framework of human welfare instead of as at present within that of profit.

As the means for producing wealth will belong to the community as a whole, Socialism will be a class-free society. There will be no built-in conflicts of interest between different sections of society. Further socialism will be thoroughly democratic since a society based on the rational co-operation of free men and women can only flourish if its members play an active part in running it. This means that the whole administrative structure for planning will be under democratic control. The planners will not be bureaucrats with the power to order people about but duly-chosen delegates carrying out a necessary function on behalf of the whole community. As all human beings will have free access to the wealth they need the conditions for the corruption of officials by material favours just will not exist. And, of course, the coercive apparatus, so necessary to capitalism, will long ago have been disbanded.

The first task that men and women in socialist society will face in providing for their needs is to decide what and how much they want. This is not difficult. It is a principle of statistics that though you cannot predict the needs and wants of individuals and small groups the more people involved in any survey the more reliable become the figures—as individual peculiarities even each other out. It is just a matter of research and statistics to work out how much, say, bread or shoes or houses will be needed over a given period. In fact, these techniques are already used today by governments, universities and market researchers. And of course, socialist society would lose nothing from planning to produce a little more than strictly it needed as a kind of insurance against disasters or even against faulty statistics. If too much were produced then the result would not be the disaster it would today, with factories closing and men thrown out of work. All that would happen is that stocks would be larger and people would know how to produce less next time. Similarly if too little were produced. So, first, it is a question of using social research and statistical techniques to estimate future needs. Such estimates could he submitted for discussion and approval to the community. Naturally, the figures could be challenged and, if demanded, estimates based on different assumptions worked out in much the same way as now the Government Actuary  will work out the implications of rival pension schemes submitted by management and unions in the state industries.

Once needs have been estimated and figures for various things agreed on the next problem is to decide how they should be produced—that is, where, under what conditions, with what techniques. Working and living conditions will be something that the planners will have to take as given. Minimum standards will have been agreed on previously, by the usual democratic methods, using human welfare and not technical efficiency as the criterion. For instance, from a technical point of view it might be better to set up a power station in some beauty spot. If the community decided that this place should not be spoiled then this would have to be taken into account by the planners. Similarly some production techniques may be ruled out because the community, or even the producers involved, judges them unsafe or unhealthy or degrading. Once the community has decided what working and living conditions it will not tolerate then, respecting these decisions, the planners can begin working out the best technical way to produce the wealth required. This is a complicated task, demanding the use of computing machines, since every branch of industry is dependent, in however indirect a way, on every other. A decision, for instance, to build more electric cars will mean that more steel, rubber and other things will he needed too. But once the basic ratios are known then the requirements of any combination of needs can be worked out. These ratios are governed mainly by technology which changes very slowly. This technique, associated with Wassily Leontief. is called input-output or inter industry analysis and should come into its own in the non-commercial society that Socialism will be.

Once produced the wealth must be got to the places where the people who want it are (strictly speaking, this is still part of the production process). As the means for producing wealth will belong to the community so, as soon as it is produced, will all new wealth. There is no question of trying to sell it since it was not produced for this purpose but to satisfy human needs—and also since of course buying and selling has no place in Socialism. There is just the technical question of getting the stuff to the distribution centres from where people can freely take what they need.

We are not here drawing up any blueprint but merely trying to show that Socialism is technically feasible now. The technical basis for Socialism—a technology capable of providing plenty for all, skilled and adaptable working human beings, the statistical and planning techniques — has long existed. What is lacking is just the desire and will to establish it.

A state of zero growth would be possible in a socialist society. This is not to predict the future, nor to anticipate any policy decisions that would be made in socialism.   The point is to simply set out what would be practical and possible, given all the advantages that a system of cooperation and production directly for needs would be able to work with.  What we can envisage is a strategy of development aimed at zero growth that could be achieved in possibly three stages. A state of zero growth would be a position where communities need only concern themselves with the day to day production of goods for consumption, particularly those such as food which have a limited shelf life. Also necessary would be the running of services and maintenance. In socialism, the achievement of zero growth would mean stable levels of production for stable levels of consumption using production facilities which would be in use for long periods. The projects necessary to get to a state of zero growth would call for both world cooperation and world organisation, particularly in the supply of information, planning and decision-mak-ing.  It follows that when accomplished, not only would production levels fall but the need for information, planning and decision-making would also be reduced.  This anticipates that centres of organisation at the world and regional levels, could give way to more locally organised production   for the work of providing for daily needs, the running of services and maintenance.

What is possible here is a self-regulating society with work activity in balance with daily needs and in balance with the environment. What this could mean is that providing for the necessities of daily life would be more under local con¬trol involving less allocations of social labour. This could create vigorous communities with wide scope for individual development and diversity of expression. Would a sensible society, conscious of its need to limit productive activity and keep it in balance with care of the environment, really want to continually develop new production facilities?  How much of the innovation that goes on represents real gain, and how much of it is part of changes in fashion to do with consumerist values and attempts by corporations and their advertisers to increase sales?  We can surely assume that people in socialism would not go on and on with the increased production of goods and services for the sake of it. This would be a self-imposed treadmill. Would a socialist system really want to follow the example of capitalism where life’s objectives are focussed on the acquisition and consumption of material things?  It will of course be important that needs are satisfied but the concept of needs will no longer be based on the idea that increased happiness comes with increased consumption and possessions.   Such an illusion, expressing the consumerist values of a market system could give way to a responsible, self-determined appraisal of needs which would reflect the enjoyment of more meaningful community relationships. 

 

Dispelling the too many people myth

It seems common sense that more people in the world must mean more resource use, therefore fewer resources to go around for everyone. It is a logic that has led to some highly unsavoury arguments and policy decisions, such as Ike's racist views. By arguing that population growth is the main cause of mass starvation and environmental ruin, we play into the hands of ruling class who wish to blame the victims. One such consequence is that helping the poor not only hurts them but also threatens to drag the well-fed down to their subsistence level. Under this hypothesis, no sharing is permitted, as it will only generalise starvation to the entire population because there is only so much to go around. So do asTrump say. Build the Wall and the fences. Keep the outsiders out and kick the newcomers out.  

But that sounds crass so some resort to a more sophisticated justification - the carrying capacity of the planet. We transform ecosystems to sustain ourselves. This is what we do and have always done. Our planet’s human-carrying capacity emerges from the capabilities of our social systems and our technologies more than from any environmental limits. There is no environmental reason for people to go hungry now or in the future. There is no need to use any more land to sustain humanity — increasing land productivity using existing technologies can boost global supplies and even leave more land for nature — a goal that is both more popular and more possible than ever. The only limits to creating a planet that future generations will be proud of are our imaginations and our social system. Societal collapses due to populations reaching “environmental limits” are not the norm. Existing technologies could sustain current and anticipated human populations while increasingly sparing land for nature.   Human well-being and improved stewardship of the biosphere are limited primarily by the type of social system and its technologies, not by population or environment.  

We have indeed spoken of socialism in terms of abundance and our   green critics claim that human wants are "infinite" interprets this as meaning that socialism will be a society of ever-increasing personal consumption, of people coming to consume more and more food, to take more and more holidays, and to acquire more and more material goods. If humans wants were "infinite" then this would be the result of a society based on free access and geared to meeting human needs, but human wants are socially-determined and limited. Humans can only consume so much food, for instance, and only seek to accumulate more and more material goods in a society of economic insecurity like capitalism. In a society, such as socialism would be, where people could be sure that what they required to satisfy their needs would always be available then we would soon settle down to only taking what we needed and no more. This is all we meant by talking of socialism as a "society of abundance": that enough food, clothing and other material goods can be produced to allow every man, woman and child in society to satisfy their likely material needs. It was not a reference to some orgy of consumption, but simply to the fact that it is technically possible to produce more than enough to satisfy everyone's material needs, thanks, we might add, to technology and mass production.  Meeting everybody's likely material needs will indeed involve in many cases an increase in what people consume.

The end of capitalism

The owners of property are ever on the look-out for means of augmenting their possessions. They employ their capital in industrial operations simply for the purpose of deriving from its use profit or interest. So long as they get their profits increased they care little for the conditions under which the work in their factory, in their mine, or on their railway is carried on. They never seek to know whether those working for them are living happy and contented lives. For them the worker is an abstraction—the materialisation of some portion of their capital in exactly the same way as another portion of their capital shows itself as raw material, as auxiliary material, as factory building, or as a finished product. He sees the worker figuring on his periodical balance-sheet as “Wages,” and cares nothing that “Wages” means so many sentient human beings capable of thinking, loving, functioning even as he does.

Why then should he hesitate, when the markets are glutted, when his “wages” have been transformed into more goods than the market can consume, when goods cannot be sold because hungry men and women have not the wherewithal to buy food, when ill-clad children cannot have clothing provided for them because there is too much in the shops, to turn adrift those he no longer wishes to employ because they are no longer profitable?

And the result is invariably that, during periods when the markets are teeming with food and clothing, the workers are sent adrift and cannot purchase the things of which they are so sorely in need.

The only solution to this state of affairs is to abolish capitalism. The whole trend of events is in the direction of collectivist production and the inquirer into things political and economic can see that the capitalist, having ceased to be useful, is using the whole governmental machinery to safeguard the interests of his class. 

The worker must learn that he has to look to himself and his fellows to work out the emancipation of the working-class. Only by combining to capture the political machinery and to use the power thus acquired for the overthrow of capitalism can he hope to obtain, once and for all, a full and complete solution to the unemployed problem.

The capitalist-class are fighting to increase or maintain their powers and privileges; and as these can only be maintained or increased at the expense of the working-class, their greatest concern is to keep the latter in subjection; to prevent them improving their position, except in-so-far as that improvement is necessary to capitalists. On the other hand, the working-class are fighting for the best conditions they can get; to improve those conditions if possible, and to prevent them being adversely affected in any event. And as they cannot improve their position, or for that matter maintain it, except in opposition to and at the expense of, the class above them, they are in necessary conflict with that class. Obviously then, the antagonism of interest existing between these two classes must prevent any intermingling except in conflict.

The victory of the socialist working-class is the only possible ending of this great struggle. This, however, does not mean the subjection of the capitalist class by the workers: it means the abolition of capitalism and the end of classes, for the great many unprivileged cannot secure equality of opportunity without abolishing class privilege, and privilege is based on private property. The triumph of the great working majority thus involves the emancipation of all from class oppression, for the interests of the toiling majority are fundamentally the interests of humankind. The interests of the humanity are bound up with the aspirations of the oppressed working-class in its struggle with capitalist domination.

 Socialism is the ownership of the means of production by society as a whole.

Liberation can seem like a dream. But it is real

Capitalism has infected minds across every section of this society.  Many even think attempting to use this exploitative system is the solution to ending their abuse. Many on the left hold the liberal idea that the political system and institutions working against us are reformable. For sure our needs are many: some need to be fed, need clean water, need health care, need a home or safety, need a community. The list goes on. The work of changing this world is extensive and requires us to not expect overnight results. People who have invested their entire beings into ideas and policies that aren't working are having their dreams and hopes shattered repeatedly.  What's clear is that people need to be more organised. It is crystal clear that a liveable future for humanity is absolutely required.  We live in a world where conflict and division characterise the relations between people and countries. The goal of the Socialist Party is to agitate for world socialism to liberate all of humanity from the chains of exploitation and oppression by the abolition of classes themselves. In this way, the divisions between the city and countryside, and between mental and manual labour will also be abolished, and a society without a State will be created since the State is nothing other than the instrument of the dictatorship of one class over the others. The emancipation of the workers will be accomplished by the workers themselves.  Only an informed working class, informed can create a socialist society. They will achieve it through socialist revolution and replace capitalist commodity production by the socialist organisation of production based on the labour of all the members of society and designed to ensure the complete well-being and full development of each person. The Socialist Party demands the abolition of every form of expropriation and oppression of man by man in social, political and economic life. Men and women shall be free and equal without exception. The principle of all for one and one for all will be the life principle of the coming society. Socialism is a society in which all the members of the community collectively determine their conditions of life and their way of living. In order to do so, they must control, collectively, the use to which machines, factories, raw materials – all the means of production – are put. Unless the means of production are effectively in the hands of the whole society, not as in Britain today where 1 per cent of the population owns 90 per cent, there can be no question of the collective control of the conditions of life.

 Wage-slavery is a fact. They who buy and they who sell in the labor market are alike dehumanised by the inhuman traffic of human beings. Without this commerce in human life, capitalism would crumble and perish. There is but one issue, the overthrow of the capitalist system and the emancipation of the working class from wage-slavery. The political solidarity of the working class means the death of despotism and the birth of freedom.  Socialists did not invent human aspirations for a just, egalitarian and free society; mankind has cherished such dreams for a very long time. What socialists have done is to take these aspirations and shape them into a revolutionary project.  Socialism, for Marx, as for the Socialist Party, is the self-emancipation of the working class, and it is nothing else. There is no socialism without collective, democratic rule by the people who do the work and create the wealth. No leader nor vanguard party can substitute for the working-class struggle for socialism. Future society will be a free societ without rulers and ruled, leaders and led, masters and slaves.

  The Socialist Party does not intend to lead fellow-workers towards a class-free society because they are a part of the working class themselves and adhere faithfully to the motto of the First International: The emancipation of the workers is an act of the workers themselves. If people wait for a revolutionary vanguard to lead them to the classless society or the free society, they will neither be free nor classless. The function of the Socialist Party as revolutionaries is to expose capitalism and propound the view that the destruction of capitalism liberates the people and opens the door to the construction of a new society.  The Socialist Party strives for the complete victory of the social revolution of the working class.

Edinburgh's Child Poverty

There are now as many children in poverty as there are pupils at private school in Edinburgh, the estimate came from finance and resources vice convener Marion Donaldson 

Just over 20% of children in Edinburgh live in poverty.

Why socialism - Here's why

The materialist conception of history identifies social classes as the product of a competitive struggle for scarce resources and a social division of labour: the most important beliefs within society are seen as related to this basic struggle, and thus to class. Ideologies or systems of beliefs relate to the arena o! social conflict, for the purposes of groups competing for scarce resources. They don’t come from nowhere and to no purpose.  Marxism, originally a theory of the self-activity of the working class in the industrialized parts of the world, was corrupted into “Marxist”-Leninism and Maoism to become the conservative ideology of a new class society, a body of formalized doctrine designed to justify the existing nature of society and to leave complete freedom of action to its leaders. Socialism is not a tactic for forced economic development under State control but a society in which the working class will have achieved its freedom. Marxists identified the industrial proletariat as the sole agency for achieving socialism (and therefore, socialism was only an appropriate aim in developed countries where the proletariat was a majority), not just because it was poor, but because of its role within the economy, because it sustained and developed the industrial economy by its own efforts, because it was concentrated and organised in the major cultural centres, because it learned discipline and the advantages of interdependence, because by its experience it had the ability to run the economy.  In China the result was a theory, disguised in Marxist terms, very similar to the pre-Marxist Narodnik (or Populist) revolutionaries in Russia such as a belief that the intelligentsia plus peasants could produce a revolution: that revolution could create socialism; that ‘nationalism’ completely encompassed socialism, that the ‘people’ encompassed the proletariat, and that the local national struggle was the key to the progress of mankind; that the country concerned could industrialise without undergoing capitalism; that socialism was a peasant way of life rather than an emancipated developed society.

The Socialist Party’s opposition to the capitalist system by no means springs simply from a recognition of the misery, slavery, and degradation which capitalism entails, though being human and not mere automata of logic, Socialists are naturally strongly influenced by such facts. They know, however, that capitalism has been a necessary and useful stage in the evolution of human society. It is because the system is neither of these today because it can be shown that the functioning of wealth as capital is now a hindrance to economic and therefore to social and intellectual progress, that the Socialist Party regards capitalism as an obsolete and evil institution.

If the Socialist Party holds exploitation and class oppression to be morally wrong, it is because, for the first time in history since the formation of class divisions away in the remote past, the material means are now available wherewith these, together with all their consequences, may be eliminated from human institutions. It is because this latest existing phase of class society, capitalism, is the great obstacle, holding mankind back, so to speak, on the very threshold of a new and splendid era manifesting untold developments in the material, social and mental triumphs of the race, that the Socialist Party holds this system and all the agencies which uphold or tend to perpetuate it, in hatred and abomination. We live in a world that’s facing many destructive and entwined crises including, climate change, poverty, pollution and human rights violations. Our current economic system has created these crises and is perpetuating and exacerbating them. If economics is about the allocation and distribution of resources as many first-year university textbooks claim, then capitalism has failed. We need a new economic system to protect our planet. We require a sustainable economic solution for our communities.  We must ensure meaningful participation in our decision-making process.

Capitalist cant and humbug manifest themselves at every turn. It is the socialist contention that only when we eliminate the profit account can mankind really deal with the human suffering that goes on in the world today. After all, so much of it is down to the economic cost factor, the need for capitalists to produce quicker and therefore cheaper than their competitors, and then to the competition for markets, sources of raw materials and places of strategic importance, that we really can condemn capitalism for murder.  Every bit of misery that capitalism creates will bring into being a reformist organisation, and so we get a fragmentation of the revulsion that human beings feel when they see any form of suffering. This is of benefit only to the capitalist class, because it diffuses the concern over these problems that is in most of our minds, and prevents most workers from seeing that they have an origin.

To the Socialist Party, it all seems so simple: society is divided into two classes, and the motive behind production is exchange with a view to profit for the owning or capitalist class. All things are sacrificed to this “God" of profits: the health and safety of workers, the children of Yemen and South Sudan and the migrants and refugees around the world.

A socialist planet

  Across the world more than one billion people are already members of cooperatives. Cooperatives produce and distribute millions of goods and services every day. It is described as the 'solidarity economy’.

The Socialist Party is familiar with the argument for setting up co-operatives within capitalism as a means of gradually replacing it with socialism. However, we do not think that this is a practical proposition. The major problems of today are world problems and can only be solved by the establishment of a world community, without frontiers, based on common ownership with production solely for use, not profit. Co-operatives might provide a pleasant way of working and living for a few, but they can never be a solution to the problems of wage-workers as a whole. 

Cooperatives are not 'the kernel of the new society' in the shell of the old, as the old-timer industrial unionists would often describe their strategy. Cooperatives are actually 'the kernel of the old society within the shell of the old', yet another version of 'market exchange'. This is exposed by their 'wanting something better now' within capitalist relations). All we can offer at present is a view of the future because we're nowhere near making 'something better now', and we should concede that to supporters of cooperatives.

For us, world socialism is 'The Cooperative', not a continuation of market competition between a plurality of cooperatives, each concerned only with itself, but a singular world cooperative in which all social production is controlled democratically. That is a democratic commonwealth (not independent production by sections of workers).

Cooperatives wouldn't work as their managers would still have to apply the laws of the market and seek to make profits (if only to just to sustain themselves and survive). In a society where goods are produced to be sold with a view to profit, success can only be measured in terms of sales and profits.

If workers simply want better conditions within capitalism now, then we point them to cooperative ventures and to trade unions but openly say that we wish to build consciously for our future, a building which is critical of what exists (rather than pragmatically uses what exists).

We, in the Socialist Party, have different aims to cooperatives. To establish socialism requires the building of a strong, worldwide movement directed at winning political power, in each country. Winning political power before carrying out the social revolution converting the means of life from class to common property is essential. For class-property is maintained and protected by political power. To try to by-pass the state, thus leaving it in the hands of the enemies of socialism, would have disastrous results.  We say that socialism is possible now, and act on this assumption by devoting our energies to preparing the working class to win political power. So long as the workers have not yet attained political power, the importance of cooperatives for the class struggle will always be very limited.

Capitalism nowadays needs an efficient and enterprising working class running production. Their participation in making decisions has to be tolerated to the extent that it aids the smooth running of industry. It is nonsensical to think in terms of industrial (or political) democracy in isolation from social activity as a whole. Only in a society which the means of life are held in common will democratic control by society over its affairs be achieved. While cooperatives bring some advantages to certain parts of the working class, they also leave the power of capital almost wholly untouched. Every new theory and new movement which claims to alleviate the workers' desperate situation within the confines of capitalism is grasped by the media with the eagerness of a drowning man clutching a straw. This is the case with the widespread resurgence of cooperatives. The exploitation of labor power is disguised behind the slogan “self-help” and “self-management.” Dominated by the business interests, the coop movement becomes a powerful lever of class collaboration.  It cannot substitute for the class struggle.

Protecting Scotland's Environment

Some of Scotland's biggest industrial sites are failing to comply with environmental protection measures.

Petroineos at Grangemouth and BP's Kinneil Terminal were each rated 'poor' along with two sites at Dounreay.

Another 51 fish farming sites are also rated as at risk, poor or very poor.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-43060496

Driven off the field by racism

Hearts are to apologise to Isma Goncalves after the striker claimed that racist abuse had played a big part in his January exit from the club.

He has now told the Edinburgh Evening News that racially motivated taunts "from a minority" were a major factor.

 "I didn't want to leave Hearts at first, but the problem was that my family were no longer coming to the games," Goncalves was quoted as saying. "There were some people making racist comments to me in the stadium and my family did not feel OK about this. It was a minority, but bad things even from a minority can have a big impact. My family should be able to go to the stadium and feel comfortable."

http://www.bbc.com/sport/football/43061734

The  Socialist Party condemns racist ideas. They are stumbling-blocks to working-class understanding of socialism. This above all is why we find such attitudes pernicious and repugnant, Racists are invariably ignorant and irrational. They seek only the most crude and superficial explanation of social problems. They need a whipping-boy, a scapegoat. The blacks to blame for housing squalor or unemployment. If they can find in the blacks a convenient outlet upon whom to vent their frustrations and resentments, they need look no further.  Socialism will embrace all mankind because the earth will be owned in common. Only thus can racism and all its ugly manifestations be finally conquered.

How to change the world

Today the workers as a class are not revolutionary. For them to become so implies a great mental change. We have seen how successfully bourgeois vehicles of thought, such as the media have given the workers a capitalistic outlook. Is it possible and likely that they will ever be able to throw off these baneful influences and come to a realisation that their interests lie in social revolution?

The Socialist Party answers, yes!

The process will doubtless be slow, but there are two powerful agents which further it—economic and social developments and socialist education. The former is the more important, for the Socialist Party knows that masses of men and women have never been moved to effect social changes through mere argument, however logical they may be, unless reinforced by interest, by the sting of outraged feeling. It is experience of the bitter fruits of capitalism that will have the sophistries of capitalist apologists and of imparting to the proletariat a frame of mind conducive to the acceptance of revolutionary ideal The real function of Socialist Party education is to clarify and organise the vague anti-capitalist thoughts already present in the minds of discontented workers, by educating them to the true nature of capitalism and the means of their emancipation, thus giving to the working class an objective which social development demonstrates with ever increasing vividness to be both desirable and possible.

Capitalism is an obsolete system of society; it long ago outlived its usefulness. It fetters production; it distorts production so that hitherto unimaginable horrors like this become realities. The “set of attitudes to profit” is thus the reaction of men to the relations of production in which they find themselves. When men convert the privately owned means of production into the common property of all, classes will disappear. Wealth will be produced simply as products to be distributed according to wants and needs, and not as now as commodities to be exchanged on a market with a view to profit. In a socialist society, with production for human need, machinery would be used properly as its use would be under the democratic control of the community. Socialist production and distribution would mean that technical development would hold no threats to human welfare, as it does now. If the history of human rights proves anything, it is that they cannot be achieved within a property society. The private property system is itself a matter of privilege and therefore a denial of the right of equal standing to the vast majority of the world’s people. Even more, a privileged class will always struggle to keep its privileges—often by force and suppression.

The Socialist Party stands for the interest of workers all over the world. All who work for a wage or salary, no matter where they live or work or what language they speak or the colour of their skin, have a common interest; in working together to protect living standards while capitalism lasts and, more important, to replace capitalism with socialism. One section of the working class may for a time improve its lot by keeping out other sections. But the Socialist Party is opposed to sectionalism, whether it is by trade, nationality or colour. It hampers effective united action and spreads the pernicious theories of nationalism and racialism. We state frankly: we do not support immigration control even if it would maintain as it is sometimes claimed the living standards of some workers in Britain. Different peoples do have different traditions but it is not true that all “whites” share one common tradition and all “blacks” another. If you are going to argue from different ways of life you must throw overboard arguments based on colour and so-called race, unless you are prepared to argue that a man's skin colour and other physical features determine how he must behave. All human beings are members of the same animal species, homo sapiens. All human beings are capable of learning and of absorbing the culture of the society in which they live. Such differences as exist between the peoples of the world are not the result of different natures, but of living in different environments.  Capitalism gives rise to working class problems and so to working class discontent and, as long as workers are not class conscious, they will remain open to suggestions that this or that conspicuous minority, not capitalism, is the cause of their problems. To give up our uncompromising struggle against capitalism for alliances with groups that openly or by implication support it would be short-sighted. For, in maintaining the system that gives rise to discontent we would be defeating our object—a world without borders, without nationalism, without racialism. Socialism is a system of society based on the common (not state or “public”) ownership and democratic control of the means of living by and in the interests of the whole community. The state, or political power, would be replaced by the administration of things and banks would disappear as the aim of production would be for use, not to sell with a view to profit (even state profit). Socialism must be world-wide for the simple reason that capitalism, the system it will replace, already is. Frontiers and national boundaries are artificial and irrelevant.

For the Socialist Party, the task remains one of expounding socialism.  The Socialist Party has long realised that the growth of the power of the state has meant that the only practicable way for the working class to get political power in the developed capitalist countries is through the vote backed of course by understanding. If one thing emerges clearly from the confusion of the “Left”, it is that until a majority of the world’s workers understand and vote for socialism we are stuck with capitalism and all it implies. It is not universal suffrage and the other democratic institutions that are at fault, but the use to which they are put. As long as workers are not socialist-minded (as they are not at the moment) they will use their votes to elect supporters of capitalism, including social democrat and “communist" reformists, and so in effect will hand over political power to the capitalist class—a power, we might add, which can be used to crush student uprising. Elections are the best gauge there is of popular opinion and, unfortunately, they clearly show that only a handful now want socialism. The task of those who are socialists should thus be clear: not to try to provoke violent clashes with the state in the hope of triggering off a more general uprising, but to carry out an intensive programme of socialist agitation and education. We are not advocating that parliament be used to pass a series of social reform measures which are supposed gradually to transform society. We are as opposed to reformism as to insurrection. Compromise with capitalism can be avoided by a socialist party only seeking support on the basis of a socialist programme. In other words, in having no programme of reforms or “immediate demands" to be achieved within capitalism. For such a programme would attract the support of non-socialists and so lead the party towards compromise and reformism. We suggest that the twin dangers of insurrection and reformism can be avoided by building up a socialist party composed of and supported by convinced socialists only. When a majority of workers are socialist-minded and organised into such a party they can use their votes to elect to parliament and the local authorities delegates pledged to use state power for the one revolutionary act of dispossessing the capitalist class and converting the means of production into the property of the whole community. This is the long-term strategy for the transformation of society suited to the conditions of modern capitalism 

Scottish Housing

Scottish house prices rose at a faster rate than the UK as a whole in the year to December, according to new figures. Official house sales data showed the average Scottish home cost £148,783 in the final month of 2017 - a year-on-year increase of 7.7%. In December, the most expensive area to live in was Edinburgh, where the cost of an average house rose year-on-year by 10%, to £248,000.

Social rented households in Scotland spent an average of 24% of their net income on housing costs between 2013/14 and 2015/16, according to the Social Tenants in Scotland report. This compares to 25% for private renters, 9% for owners with a mortgage and 3% for those who own their home outright. The report found just under a third (32%) of social rented households in Scotland spent more than 30% of their net income on housing costs over the same period, 

The average weekly rent for social housing in Scotland was £74.44 in 2016/17, up 2.1% on the previous year. Housing association rents averaged £80.28 a week, 16% higher than local authority rents of £69.20. An estimated 1.17 million people lived in social rented homes, including housing associations and local authority housing, in 2016. There were 594,458 units of socially rented homes in 2016, a 0.1% drop of 594 from the previous year.

Royal Hypocrisy

 Harry and Meghan continue their PR tour with a visit to Edinburgh where they dropped in at the Social Bite, now a regular stop for celebrities.

Social Bite is famous for its charity and concern for the homeless. When speaking to staff Markle said she wanted to work there because it seemed "fun".

Yet the homeless sleeping rough in Windsor could be fined up to £100 under proposed measures to reduce the visibility of homelessness in the borough ahead of the royal wedding. Windsor and Maidenhead Council wants to ban people from begging and from leaving their belongings, including their bedding, “unattended” on the street TO reduce rough sleepers by 50 per cent by the end of March, ahead of the royal wedding at Windsor Castle on 19 May.

Windsor council leader Simon Dudley demanded police use legal powers to clear the area of those sleeping rough, claiming homeless people chose to sleep on the streets. The homeless will be issued with a Community Protection Notice requiring them to attend council services or face a fine of up to £100. The fine will be cut to £50 for early payment, but offenders could face a summary conviction and a £1,000 fine if they do not pay. The council said the measures were needed to tackle what it called “aggressive or proactive begging” such as begging near a cash machine or in a manner “reasonably perceived to be intimidating or aggressive”.

Murphy James, from the Windsor Homeless Project, was sceptical of the plans or how the council proposed to fine someone “who quite evidently, has no money”. He told the BBC: “Criminalise real criminals, not those that are forced into a situation by circumstance and left to survive. That is quite simply inhumane.”

Abolish the wages system

Money, and the means by which the rich procure it is the most potent force in the world today. The lack of money means death and suffering for countless millions and it imposes degradation and harsh living on most of the world's population. It is hard to imagine a single problem that will not yield to the power of money. In present-day. capitalist society food, clothes, accommodation and all the other goods and services which people need are articles of commerce which are bought and sold. Money, as an object which can be exchanged for any other object, is a sort of claim on wealth that everybody must strive to obtain if they are to survive in a competitive. commercial society.  Apart from stealing and charity. there are only two ways of obtaining money under capitalism. One is to be the owner or part-owner of some business; the other is to sell your ability to work to one of these businesses for a wage or salary. The vast majority of people fall into the second category since the ownership and control of the means and instruments for producing the things people need are concentrated in the hands of a relative handful, five per cent or less, of the population.

Profits accrue to the members of the monopolising class, not as a result of any work they may or may not have performed but purely by virtue of the monopoly they exert over the means of production. Since this does not alter the fact that work on nature-given materials is the only source of wealth, the wealth which profits entitle their recipients to claim can also only be wealth created by those who do the actual work of production — the wage and salary earning class. In other words, the newly-created wealth of society, although exclusively produced by the working class, is divided into the wages and salaries paid to those who created it and the profits the owners receive from the sale of this wealth.

Profits are a non-work income arising out of the fact that the producing class in society are denied the full product of what they collectively produce. They are a sort of tribute levied by the class which monopolises the means of production on those who do the actual work of producing wealth, as a condition for allowing them to use the means of production to ensure the material survival of society. The plain fact is that, as long as capitalism lasts, we are not going to receive more than what we need to keep ourselves in working order and our jobs are going to depend on the profitability or otherwise of the industries in which we work. Neither trade union action nor reformist political action can alter this basic fact of capitalist economic life. Capitalism just cannot be reformed by Labour governments, nor pressurised by militant trade union action, into working other than as a profit-making system in the interest of the profit-taking class.

Our aim in the Socialist Party is to obtain for the whole community complete ownership and control of the means of transport, the means of manufacture, the mines, and the land. Thus we look to put an end forever to the wages system, to sweep away all distinctions of class, and to establish world socialism on a sound basis.

Frederick Engels in 1881 wrote of the workers’ day-to-day struggle for higher wages: “It is a vicious circle from which there is no issue. The working class remains what our Chartist forefathers were not afraid to call it, a class of wages slaves. Is this to be the final result of all this labour, self-sacrifice and suffering? Is this to remain forever the highest aim of British workmen? Or is the working class of this country, at last, to attempt breaking through this vicious circle, and to find an issue out of it in a movement for the ABOLITION OF THE WAGES SYSTEM ALTOGETHER?” (Engels' capitals.) Notice that this passage nor the one from Marx were related to a misty, distant future. It was addressed urgently and directly to the workers.

 Marx pointed out that capitalism was the only system in which the vast majority of wealth took the form of commodities — articles and services produced primarily for exchange rather than for use. He saw the abolition of capitalism as the abolition of commodity production, and thus the end of money, which only exists to facilitate commodity exchange. (The other form of commodity exchange is barter: socialism will have neither barter nor buying and selling). Marxists claim that capitalism has developed science, technology, and automation to such a degree that everything we need could be provided free of charge. The catch is that capitalism itself causes an artificial and unnecessary scarcity because it is so wasteful and destructive. Things are made for profit instead of for people’s use and enjoyment. Capitalism is, among other things, a system for rationing out scarcity. But we have reached a stage where the system for rationing scarcity itself keeps the scarcity in existence. Everywhere the forces of production are straining at the leash to flood the world with abundance — but everywhere the wages-profits system restricts, wastes and destroys, prevents this potential from being realised.

There could easily be more than enough to go round. There is no need for scarcity. There is thus no need for a money system of allocation. Some folk, forgetting about the threat of nuclear war and imagining that we have all the time in the world, say: “True, we have the potential for abundance, but let’s delay establishing socialism until we have actual abundance.” But capitalism, which long ago created the potential, will never actually deliver the goods. The history of the last hundred years has proved time and time again: reformist programmes do not lead the working class to socialism. They obscure the issue. What is needed is a clear case, uncluttered and uncompromised, for the abolition of wages.