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. 

Yes, we can, If we want to.

If all the owners of capital were to disappear, the world would be exactly the same—you would have the same farms, the same factories—but if all the workers disappeared, then everyone would starve to death. Some hold that capitalism is in a state of collapse, or at least is imminent, and look upon every recession as the harbinger of the collapse. It is of no use waiting for the system to collapse, nor preparing a new economic structure to replace it. It will not go until the workers determine that it shall go, and the pressing service revolutionary organisations can perform is to prepare the workers' minds for the possibility of the immediate establishment of socialism. When the workers understand Socialism they will take the direct and simple steps necessary to give them control of the political machinery of society for the purpose of introducing socialism. Until that time, the only useful action possible is the act of speaking and writing about socialism. It is true the Socialist Party has not succeeded in organising large numbers, but have our critics done any better? We have at least assisted materially in giving a correct understanding of socialism which is by no means insignificant.

Under capitalism, there are no "good times" for the working class, but just so long as the working class does not see through the capitalist "work hard now and wait for reward" fairy story. Capitalism, in the pursuit of profit, is an inhumane society. Capitalism cannot let the people of the world prosper in peace, but socialism will ensure it. Capitalism breeds economic rivalry, hatred and destruction. Only socialism is based on the international community of interests of the working class of all lands. It is the workers who keep capitalism going, for the benefit of the capitalists. It is the time the workers determined, by international socialist action, to refashion human society on a socialist foundation. The productive power and the administrative ability already exist for the making of a new world. Do not delay the decision to use them. The Socialist Party teaches the way to working-class emancipation and the happiness and well-being of humanity. The problem is that people are so used to the existence of capitalism, they’re so used to the idea that you have to work for somebody else, that they don’t see that they can just take it over. The role of the working class under capitalism is to be exploited so that the capitalists can get rich. In parliament, representatives of the robber class run the system and if members of the robbed class want to see the capitalists and their political agents at work we are confined to the "strangers' gallery'  — highly appropriate, seeing as workers are strangers to any real power. There can be no economic or political justice for the workers within the framework of capitalism which cannot be reformed, despite its continually rebranding itself. The Left, seduced by identity politics, largely ignores the primacy of capitalism and the class struggle.  Capitalism, at its core, is about the commodification of human beings and the natural world for exploitation and profit. To increase profit, it constantly seeks to reduce the cost of labour and demolish the regulations and laws that protect the common good.  capitalism by its nature lurches from crisis to crisis. This makes our current predicament similar to past crises. But it unleashes uncontrollable yearnings among an enraged population that threatens capitalism itself. We don’t have conversations about capitalism. How many times can you turn on a mainstream news and expect to hear the system of ‘capitalism’ discussed?  

The Socialist Party takes the view that it is impossible to solve the major problems of modern society in isolation. The social problems from which the working class suffer all have their roots in the very basis of the capitalist system. They can only be solved when the workers rid themselves of the confusion and equip themselves with socialist knowledge.  Instead of focusing on the plight of all of the oppressed, oppressed groups seek representation for their own members within capitalist structures.  We in The Socialist Party aim at building a world community — without frontiers, based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production where things will be produced for use. A world without war, world hunger or racialism. A world that has no need of money and has abolished rent, interest, profits, wages, and prices. A world fit for human beings. We think such a society can be brought into being only when it is technically possible for abundance to be produced (as it is now) and when a majority of the population understands the implications of such a socialist reorganisation, desire it and take the necessary democratic action to establish it. We insist that any attempt to make such a revolutionary change, except by organised democratic political action will never succeed. We are opposed to the efforts of Leninists, Trotskyists, Maoists and other elitist groups which set out to disrupt the democratic process or to seize power following deliberate provocative actions aimed at manipulating workers in the interests of the self-appointed ‘revolutionary' vanguards. Fortunately, although they do not share our revolutionary socialist view, most workers have sufficient political insight to reject the roles intended for them by these would-be leaders.

Season after season we teach socialism: the possession by a community of workers the world over, of the things needful for human existence. The end of production for profit; the abolition of slave-jobs and subsistence wages; the end of commercial rivalry and the struggle for political supremacy on the part of rival groups of bosses; the end of the wholesale slaughter of the workers by the machines they themselves produce; the death of blinding superstition and the birth of rational hope; the end of all things capitalistic and the beginning of a real society; the beginning of production for social use, of co-operation for mutual welfare, of universal brotherhood.

 If we envision a world where communities work together to ensure that our basic needs are met, then our movement can't operate like secret societies. The Socialist Party has been committed to full transparency since its foundation. Even our Executive Committee meetings are open to the public so they can scrutinise our decision-making process if they wish.

Generation War - A Smokescreen

The popular notion that baby boomers are wealth hoarders who have gained at the long-term expense of the young is unfair and unjustified, according to, Dr Beverley Searle, from the University of Dundee. The academic, who is head of geography and environmental sciences at the university, recently led a three-year study into the transfer of family wealth across generations.

She said the current trend for the inter-generational conflict, which usually pitches retirement-age baby boomers against so-called millennials, who are typically in their twenties and thirties, as a “smokescreen” that obscured greater social inequality and poor decisions by politicians. Dr Searle said that baby boomers, those born between 1945 and 1964, had benefitted from the inception of the welfare state, better housing opportunities, healthcare and lower taxes. However, she added it was policy that had driven the benefits that were now costing those still in work. Dr Searle suggested more funding could have been made available for health and social care if taxes and national insurance paid into the system by the Baby Boomer generation had been reserved. “The government choose not to do this, the government wanted instead to reduce taxes,” she said.

She said: “Baby boomers get blamed for the benefits they have enjoyed, such as better housing opportunities and access to universities, but it was the politicians who took the decisions on how the policies would be funded. The debate around inter-generational conflict is just a political smokescreen. It is diverting away from the politicians that have created these problems and it is unfair and unjustified that baby boomers get the blame. Governments have known about the baby boomers from the 1940s onwards. It is not like they are a surprise. These arguments about the inter-generational conflict are just trying to divert attention away from policy decisions which have been made over the years.” 

Dr Searle said that the value of housing had become a key focus of the debate. 
“Politicians want house values to increase so that people can use the equity, possibly to fund their care in later life. The problem is, it is the people behind them, the young, who are suffering because house prices are so high. There is an assumption that older people are hoarding all the housing wealth but this is not the reality. A quarter of housing wealth is held by those between the ages of 35 to 64-years-old who are also in the top 20 per cent of households in terms of incomes. This idea that baby boomers are being greedy and hanging on to their housing wealth doesn’t pan out in reality."

Dr Searle added that inequality lay “within generations” and not “between generations.”

https://www.scotsman.com/news/attacks-on-greedy-baby-boomers-are-unjustified-says-academic-1-4686858

Old Folk Need Better Housing

Within a generation, almost a third of all Scots will be aged over 60, increasing to almost 1.8 million by 2039. Those aged over 75 will have nearly doubled from 0.43 million to 0.8 million.

Age Scotland, the Scottish Older People’s Assembly, Castle Rock Edinvar, and McCarthy and Stone have joined forces to launch the Older People’s Housing Coalition to put older and disabled people’s housing needs at the centre of the planning system.

The coalition is urging the Scottish Government to make housing for older people and those with disabilities a specific priority in its Planning Bill, with clear national and local targets similar to those for affordable housing. Planning authorities should be obliged to identify appropriate sites close to local shops, GPs, services, and transport links. It is also pushing for “age friendly design” to be incorporated into the planning process, with elements including accessibility, energy efficiency, adaptability, and shared facilities.

Research commissioned by the government found that the next generation of affordable homes will be too small for many disabled people who rely on wheelchairs or other mobility aids as the standards being followed do not allow sufficient floor space for wheelchairs.

Jim Eadie from Age Scotland, a spokesperson for the coalition, said: “Scotland is not building enough housing to meet the needs of its rapidly ageing population. There simply aren’t enough homes where older and disabled people want to live, and this is putting increasing pressure on health and social care budgets. We urgently need to improve the mix of housing across all tenures to rent and buy, so we can meet the diverse needs of Scotland’s older and disabled people.

One People - One World - No Nations

Workers have to make an effort to realise that the culture they have been conditioned to accept as eternal and invulnerable does not hold good for all time and all over the world and that different social circumstances will often result in different customs and conventions. At the moment they prefer not to make the effort; it is easier to reject facts and surrender to prejudice, fears, and the dog-eat-dog competition on the labour market. It is easier to try to keep out anything foreign.

A lot of the reason for these insular prejudices can be found in the fact that many workers, in their little homes, feel they have built themselves a fortress. They will defend it against all comers — and at the moment the enemy they see coming is the migrant. The tragedy is that those little homes are not castles so much as prisons. Capitalism is a massive confidence trick which convinces workers that their chains are ornaments, that their poverty is prosperity, that cheap, cramped houses are objects of pride — because they have had to be worked for. Newcomers to the UK are equally deceived—the limits of their ambitions is to get a visa on their passport into the working class with all its poverty, fears and suspicions, probably to set up their own prejudices and insularity.

Capitalism is strikingly adept at erecting barriers among its people. It divides them into nations, income groups, races — all of them inspired by false notions of economic and social interests. It is a desperately inadequate society, in which for millions of people the highest achievements is to close themselves up into the confines of a little home and a little job and a little family. These confines are self-productive; they encourage the neuroses and prejudices which fear a different skin colour, and which insist that I shall keep in my small corner while you must keep in yours.

The Socialist Party stands for social equality, for all human beings having equal access to wealth and being of equal worth. In socialism when the means of life are social property, men and women will play their part in producing society’s wealth as best they can and, no matter what their contribution, take from that wealth what they need. In socialism, it is not a question of individuals working on their own, but of people co-operating to produce wealth. So how can one man’s contribution be measured? The Socialist Party says that this society can, and should, be changed. The means for producing wealth should belong to the whole community since this is the only arrangement that will allow them to be used to satisfy human needs. Production solely for use (without buying and selling) is only possible, given modern technology, on the basis of this common ownership and democratic control. Modern technology can provide the plenty for all that will allow mankind to organise the production and distribution of wealth on the principle of: from each according to ability, to each according to need. The Socialist Party is not preaching brotherly love as the solution to social problems. We advocate a change in the basis of society, a social revolution. One of the distinguishing features of homo sapiens is the ability to think abstractly, to plan actions without reference to his immediate circumstances. Insofar as mankind has instincts these are merely biological needs like food, drink, and sex. But this tells us nothing about how these needs are met. That is a question of social organisation. But since human biology has hardly changed in millions of years while human society has, it is no good trying to explain society and social change by biology. Human nature (whatever it might be) is no barrier to socialism. Indeed socialism is, in the present circumstances, the only rational way to run society. For, with common ownership and production for use, man is in charge of his social environment and not, as under capitalism, at the mercy of economic forces.

What's the incentive to work in socialism? Work is merely the expenditure of energy. For human beings, it is both a biological and a social necessity. Human beings must somehow use up the energy that eating food generates, and if no wealth is produced society will die out. So the real question is: How is work organised? Under what conditions is it done? Under capitalism, most work is employment, done in the service of other human beings. It is done under discipline, rather than as free co-operation. It is often dull, even dangerous and degrading. And, as a class society always “respects” those on top (who don't have to work), there is a stigma attached to working. It is a sign of social inferiority to have to work. Socialists say that work can, and should, be made pleasant. Indeed, one of our strongest points against capitalism is that it forces most people to do boring work. But men and women can only control their working environment when they also control the means and instruments of work.

The shortcomings of capitalism are widely felt but little understood. To many, capitalism is competition and private enterprise. Their answer is to restrain competition through government intervention. Capitalism is based on the monopoly of the means of production by a minority. Buying and selling and the commercial jungle result from this. Workers suffer insecurity under capitalism. It is impossible to conceive of capitalism without war. The private ownership of the means of production divides the world into antagonistic classes, competing firms, rival nations and international power blocs. It is this competitive nature of capitalism which causes its wars, which are as much a part of the system as the governments, the money and the treaties which the pacifists are prepared to accept. Modern war is fought to settle the squabbles of capitalism’s master class; it does not involve the interests of the ordinary people except that it brings them nothing but suffering. Capitalism divides them into nations. The problem is not one of rich and poor nations but of rich and poor social classes. The solution to the worldwide poverty problem is the establishment of a world community in which production is geared solely to meeting human needs. 

Our answer is to replace minority ownership by the common ownership of the means of production by society as a whole. Then there would be no basis for commerce or competition as there would really be a common social interest. 

Echoes From Our Past

 

John Keracher was friend to life long World Socialist Party of the United States' member, RAB. Both thinkers

shared knowledge on a wide variety of subjects, including monist materialism, theology, and, of course,

economics. Easily accessible and to the point for any reader, Keracher's writings have always been useful additions

to any Socialist's library.

 

From 1935, Keracher's Producers and Parasites:

 

The Individual Worker and the Boss

Some individual workers get ahead by allowing themselves to be used as tools against the others. The

individual worker, however, who becomes militant and goes to the boss with his demands, if he is able to

reach the boss at all, usually gets turned down and sometimes gets fired from the job altogether. When the

workers go individually to the employer, hat in hand, they are met with the sharp interrogation "What do

you want?" A tongue-lashing is often their reward for their individual efforts. It is more often the other

way about when the workers bargain collectively.

 

When the representatives of the workers enter the inner office of the capitalist they are not met with "What

do you want?" The employers understand the power of organisation; that is why they fight the unions so

hard. That is why they hire stool pigeons and struggle to obtain or maintain the open shop.

When the representatives of the workers approach, the capitalists, aware of the thousands standing behind

the leaders in the unions, use different tactics. Their attitude is "well, what can I do for you?" "Have a

cigar." "Sit down, let's talk it over."

 

Negotiate – temporise – arbitrate – compromise; these are the weapons the capitalists are obliged to resort

to. They know that the workers have one thing they can not take away from them. That is their numbers.

Organisation is the greatest weapon that the workers have at their disposal. All that the workers have ever

gained has been through the power of organisation.

 

For socialism, Steve, Mehmet, John & contributing members of the SPC.

The Socialist Party is Marxist

We are a Marxist party, that is, we accept the materialist conception of history, the labour theory of value and theory of the class struggle. Our object is socialism: a worldwide society where production will be solely for use, not sale or profit; where the means of life will be commonly owned and democratically controlled; where classes will have been abolished and all human beings are social equals. Production and distribution will be organised on the principle: from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. There will be no buying and selling, no money, wages, profits or banks. All will have free access to what they need to live and enjoy life. As all will have the same common social interests there will be no need for a public power of coercion. The state, armed forces, and weapons of destruction will disappear. This is Socialism.

Present-day society, capitalism, is a class society. The means of production belong not to society as a whole, but only to a section of it, the capitalists. The rest of us have to work for them to live. There are thus two classes in society —capitalists and workers. The working class is not confined to factory workers but includes all who have to sell their mental and physical energies to live; clerks, civil servants, technicians, and managers as well. Built into capitalism is a conflict between these two classes—the class struggle. This struggle over the division of wealth (which is produced by the working class alone) goes on all the time. You are familiar with its forms: strikes, trade unions, employers associations, wage freezes. This means that the working class is an exploited class.  By this, we do not mean that workers are treated brutally by bullying employers or that foremen walk about with whips. We just mean that although the workers produce all wealth, the best go to the capitalists who live off rent, interest, and profit. How workers live is rationed by the size of their wage packet.  Generally, this is not more than enough to keep a man and his family in efficient working order. Despite a world capable of providing plenty for all, workers have to put up with the cheap and second-rate in food, clothes, houses, entertainment, health and so on. We say this is how it must be under capitalism. These social problems are built into capitalism and will not go till the means of production cease to be the monopoly of a privileged class and become the common property of the whole community. Capitalism cannot be made to work in the interests of all. It can work only one way, as a profit-making system in the interest of those who live off profits.

Class division cuts across all the others. If the entire working class had precisely the same skin colour in a capitalist system, they would still suffer from the same problems: poverty, unemployment, wage slavery, discrimination, poor housing, inferior education, and conscription. These problems are generated by the system of wage labour and the sale of commodities for profit. Though in some countries they may fall more heavily on a particular ethnic group, they cannot be solved for any part of the working class until they are solved for the working class as a whole.

The working class must capture political power and, by using the state machinery, strip the capitalist class of their property. The means are already to hand in the vote and the ballot box. Elections are about who shall control the state. At present because people do not want socialism or think it will not work they send to parliament and the local council members pledged to keep capitalism going. When they want Socialism, then they will elect socialists. This is an important principle: there can be no socialism without a socialist majority. The only people who can change society from capitalism to socialism are you, the working class. Nobody, no leaders no MP’s, can do it for you. If you want Socialism, it is something you must get for yourselves. When we contest elections we do so on a socialist programme and nothing else. This is not because we are opposed to social reforms, but because we are opposed to a policy of reformism. Trying to reform capitalism is pointless. Capitalism cannot be made to work in the interests of the whole community. It is a class system that runs on profits and so any government that tries to improve social conditions at the expense of profits, within the framework of capitalism, is bound to fail. The economic forces of capitalism will, in the end, dictate priorities to the government, 

 Class consciousness takes a long time to develop. One of the signs of its development is a wholesale rejection on the part of workers that a treadmill is their only possible alternative in life.  We advise workers to recognise that capitalism cannot work for them, whether run by Labour, Tories or Nationalists and to withdraw their support from capitalist parties and join and support a genuinely socialist party dedicated to replacing capitalism with socialism.