The fruits of the earth belong to all, the land to no one

Human beings are not machines and we could, if we wanted to, choose to change the way we live completely. Instead of choosing from the limited menu we face today, we could invent new recipes and set the menu ourselves. In the world today the potential exists to satisfy everybody's needs. People would not need to eat sub-standard food, live in unfit housing and have to make do with what they can afford. Everybody would have free access to all the world's goodies. In this type of society, there would be the widest possible choice. People would be free to travel anywhere they fancy. They would be free to choose what work to do and what methods they use to do it. Socialists do not live in the "taken for granted" world. We do not take for granted that there will always be wars, starving millions and homeless people. We recognise that these problems result from the way society is organised at present and they are not inevitable. When the vast majority of the world's people decide that enough is enough, a new society can be built. Socialists are simply people who have a clear understanding of how such a society can be built and the Socialist Party exists to persuade people that a society where the world's resources are used to satisfy human need is sensible — now.

The history of all hitherto existing society", wrote Marx and Engels at the beginning of the 1848 Communist Manifesto, "is the history of class struggle." To which Engels added the qualification, in the English edition of 1888. "all written history”. Certain historians have understood this to mean struggles in which one or other of the contending groups recognises itself as a class and is consciously pursuing its interests. In other words, that class struggle has necessarily to involve an element of class consciousness. The drawback of this view is that class-conscious struggles have by no means been a permanent feature in all written history, thus negating the claim. The Socialist Party, on the other hand, has always understood the class struggle to be a basic feature of any exploiting class society, whether or not those involved are aware of their historical role. The class struggle necessarily goes on whenever there is exploitation of one class by another; whenever, that is, part of what one section of society produces is appropriated by another section. It is the struggle between members of the two classes to maximise or minimise the amount appropriated. The slaves who refuse to work hard and the slave owner who whips them are both engaged in the class struggle, even if neither consider they belong to one of two separate classes in society with antagonistic interests. So is the modern wage or salary earner who demands better working conditions, higher wages or shorter hours, or who resists having to work harder; or, indeed, who turns up late for work or takes days off. The class struggle — resistance to exploitation by the exploited class — is a daily, permanent feature in any class society. We say that class struggle is a permanent feature of any class society—governments continually seek to extract as much profit as they can from the wage and salary working class and workers resist in any ways they can. individually as well as collectively.

 G.E.M de Ste Croix of New College. Oxford, in his The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World (1981) puts it

  “Class (essentially a relationship) is the collective social expression of the fact, of exploitation, the way in which exploitation is embodied in a social structure. By exploitation I mean the appropriation of part of the product of the labour of others: in a commodity-producing society this is the appropriation of what Marx called "surplus value". A class (a particular class) is a group of persons in a community identified by their position in the whole system of social production, defined above all according to their relationship (primarily in terms of degree of ownership or control); to the conditions of production (that is to say. the means and labour of production) and to other classes. . . The individuals constituting a given class may or may not be wholly or partly conscious of their own identity and common interests as a class, and they may or may not feel antagonism towards members of other classes as such.
  It is of the essence of a class society that one or more of the smaller classes in virtue of their control over the conditions of production (most commonly exercised through ownership of the means of production), will be able to exploit — that is. to appropriate a surplus at the expense of — the larger classes and thus constitute an economically and socially (and therefore probably also politically) superior class or classes.”

One of the important pre-requisites for a major political figure is a personality distinctively different from any other politician. Yet all potential leaders must have one thing in common — they must conform to the current interests and values of the ruling class.  Naturally, for capitalists, the successful personality reflects the "instinctive” ambitious drive for competition among individuals. All potential candidates in the personality stakes find it beneficial and essential to project the image of being a captain of industry or the right politician. To be successful, candidates must ensure that the selection process carefully irons out all the unacceptable personality traits and enhances all fashionable characteristics.  Out of the necessity to gain the workers’ overall support and to cater for individual workers’ preferences and phobias, politicians are presented as a particular ideal type. Every election is a confirmation that capitalism, despite its defects and outdated social and productive relationships, only survives because of working class support. What is not widely discussed is the reason for a fundamental contradiction in interests. On the one hand, there is the majority who suffer, as a class, the consequences of poverty, homelessness, unemployment, conflict, and human misery. On the other, there is a minority who profit, as a class, from these social problems. Yet the majority see no contradiction in this state of affairs and, indeed, regularly supply and provide the means for the minority to live in luxury. Clearly, the working class view of the world is distorted, both by them and for them. Before capitalism’s image-makers can fulfil their role, and in order for them to perpetuate the process, certain conditions must prevail. They thrive on plausibility and promises, depending on a degree of gullibility and ignorance, and literally profit from a poverty of knowledge. Without these pre-conditions no image-making industry would be able to mould the working class into passive and docile individuals.  From our present experiences and past circumstances, we know there have been periods when trade has increased and unemployment decreased. Therefore, like night follows day. we know any talk on future periods of prosperity are not only plausible and a promise but a virtual guarantee. But this does not tell us what will be the main consequences of such a state of affairs: firstly, it will be a period of prosperity for capitalists; secondly, it will be followed by a period when trade will decrease and unemployment will increase. Promises need constant renewal. What better attraction to capture a person’s attention than another one dressed up in the image of a leading politician? At a stroke, plausibility is retained and in addition, the human interest angle is provided with a more feasible object against which to register discontent. Political figures, therefore, serve as a distancing mechanism between the system itself and the working class. The non-solution of problems is presented as a fault in the make-up of the personality, whereas in reality social problems demand a social solution. When people suffer a contradiction between their prejudices and their daily experiences, it is experience which is ultimately the stronger force. 

When we use the term "exploitation" it is to refer to the relationship between the small minority who own the means of life and the great majority who produce all of the wealth and live in poverty. We are not out to quarrel about the varying degrees of poverty suffered among ourselves. So long as that is all that workers are doing — arguing about whether a teacher should get more or less than a civil servant or a transport worker — the wealth owners will be laughing all the way to the bank. The wages system is really a form of institutionalised robbery whereby the rich get rich by paying the wealth producers less than the value of what they produce. In return for a price (a wage) the boss buys the labour-power of a worker for say a week. During that week the worker produces or helps to produce goods worth greatly more than they could buy back with their wage. That is the nature of exploitation in capitalism. The price of the labour power of a service worker. like a teacher, is calculated with reference to such factors as how much on average needs to be spent in the training of the worker and roughly what standard of living needs to be enjoyed (or suffered) by that worker in order for him or her to be in the right sort of condition for the demands of the job. Also taken into account is the need for money to be available for workers to rear another healthy generation of geese to lay more golden eggs. But this last factor is progressively being taken account of less as females have entered the workforce more prevalently and two incomes have almost become an expected prerequisite (from the employer's view) for having a family.

Capitalism exerts a constant downward pressure on the living standards of workers as the owning class try to get the best screw from the wealth producers as possible. Capitalism is a worldwide social system which is founded on the fact that a small minority of men and women and governments own and control society's means of life. The social conflict engendered by the antagonistic interests of the wealth producers and the wealth owners means that a police force is needed in the same way as the competition between rival factions of the owning class create wars and the need for the most murderous weapons with which to fight them. These needs are endemic to the social system and you can no more have one without the other than you can have a war without casualties. Socialists are not in the political arena to negotiate with the bosses for a few more crumbs. We want a majority to democratically take over the bakery. 

Democratic Socialism

It is quite obvious that capitalism can never feed everyone, or allow those who can only afford to buy cheap food to eat well. In terms of both adequate nutrition and quality taste, the diet of workers will always be inferior Capitalism is polluting the very soil in which food is grown, and profit can never be compatible with human well-being. Our society currently faces a major food problem. Millions starve and many millions more are malnourished. Each month brings news of a new foodstuff which is harming us so that some capitalist can make a profit. Only by taking into the common possession of humankind the means of producing food—and all other wealth—can we tackle the urgent task of feeding the starving, providing decent food for the ill-fed. and living in harmony with the other animals which inhabit the Earth. In business, there is an axiom “No margin, no mission.” Meaning, you may desire to have other priorities than profit, but “realistically” you must prioritise profit BEFORE anything else if you ever want to be able to prioritise anything else. If you want to be a “green ecology” business, that’s nice, but you must be a “money” business first and foremost. Capitalism proves wholly unsuited for a sustainable planet.

Repeat the following parrot-fashion: all resources are scarce and always will be; human wants are unlimited and so can never be satisfied; without a class of entrepreneurs nothing can be produced. The truth is, of course, that human wants are not "unlimited". "unending" or "insatiable". In practice what we want is relatively limited and quite reasonable. We want decent food, clothes, housing, household goods, travel facilities, healthcare and entertainment. What most people want is no doubt greater than what we are allowed to consume today as a result of the restrictions imposed by the size of our wage packets or salary cheques, but this is not at all the same as saying that our wants are unlimited. The same goes for the claim that resources are scarce. This is just as absurd. Of course, if wants really were unlimited then resources will always be insufficient to satisfy them—by definition. But this tells us nothing about the real world, about whether or not resources are in practice sufficient to satisfy people's actual—and relatively limited— wants. All the studies that have been done regarding people’s food needs have shown that resources are more than enough to meet them. And don’t challenge either the peculiar definition of "scarcity" as meaning what is "limited in supply”. Most of the resources needed to satisfy our wants, except perhaps the air we breathe and the rays of the sun, are limited in supply in an absolute sense, but that's not the same as saying that they are "scarce”, i.e. in short supply. Just the opposite is the case. In relation to people's actual reasonable and limited wants, most resources are not in short supply, but are or could soon be made available in adequate quantities, in fact in more than adequate quantities.

The only way to end the boom-bust cycle is to abolish the capitalist system and replace it with socialism. Instead of the market determining what is produced, the community will decide this as part of caring directly for the needs of all its members. Unemployment, exploitation, profit-making and all, the destructive effects of boom and bust will be impossible. In their place, with production solely for needs, the community will be able to use all its productive resources in line with its policy decisions. This is what socialists mean by democratic control.  Anyone who spends any time observing the erratic workings of capitalism will realise that it almost never lives up to the claims made for it. It is a social system supported by mythology. One myth—that it provides for everyone—is easy to debunk. You only have to look at the Third World or even the poor sections of the West. Another—that its competitive motor always produces the best products—is also easy to debunk. But the biggest myth—that which keeps people voting for political parties to run capitalism—is that it is indeed possible to "run” capitalism. With no steering wheel, no brakes and no happy end in sight, capitalism is nevertheless not short of prospective "drivers" who will do and say anything for a chance to sit up front with the big hat on. Governments of the world govern by the myth of control. They persuade us that they can control market forces, but only until the next crisis, whereupon they blame market forces or foreigners, or both. Evidence for the chaotic nature of capitalism is not scarce. Since the days of Adam Smith in the 18th century, economists have been trying in vain to find the right combination of knobs, levers, sliders, switches, and buttons with which to control the monster reactor of the money and market system. Each would-be government has to claim that it has everything finally figured out. so that you will vote for them. If they admitted that they can’t control capitalism, nobody would bother electing these self-styled "market managers" at all. What the world will look like in 20 or 30 years from now is anyone’s guess, and what the world's economy will look like is also anyone's guess. So the "experts" frankly don’t know. They can’t predict what the market will do. And they can't control it anyway. It is on this basis that they are suggesting a slump-free economy. In short, when nothing is predictable then anything is possible.

Mandating delegates, voting on resolutions and membership ballots are not just trade union practices; they are democratic practices for ensuring that the members of an organisation control that organization and as such key procedures in any organisation genuinely seeking socialism. Socialism can only be a fully democratic society in which everybody will have an equal say in the ways things are run. This means that it can only come about democratically, both in the sense of being the expressed will of the working class and in the sense of the working class being organised democratically — without leaders, but with mandated delegates — to achieve it. In rejecting these procedures what the Left is saying is that the working class should not organise itself democratically, but should instead follow a self-appointed, undemocratically organized elite. This is pure Leninism. 

 If you are prepared to be a follower in a leadership-run organization, join the Left. On the other hand, if you want to organise democratically to get socialism, look no further than the Socialist Party.

Secularism Grows

Weddings staged by Scotland’s leading humanist body have overtaken Church of Scotland ceremonies. 

There were 3,283 ceremonies staged across the country by the Humanist Society Scotland in 2017 compared with 3,166 couples who get married in the Kirk. It marks an ongoing shift away from religion. Roman Catholic weddings in Scotland sunk to 1,182 last year, a new low for the modern era.

The Humanist Society Scotland is now the biggest provider of marriage ceremonies of any belief or religious group, while the Caledonian Humanist Association held 325 last year, in its first year of recorded marriages.

Lynsey Kidd, Director of Services at Humanist Society Scotland said: “These numbers also reflect a wider trend of a decline in religious identity within the Scottish population. While it is important to recognise that faith plays an important part in a significant number of people’s lives, Scotland has become a nation where it is now the norm, not the exception, to have a non-religious Humanist approach to life.”

Lenny Love is a celebrant in Edinburgh with the Caledonian Humanist Association  says “We find that more and more people these days are not so keen on a religious ceremony because it’s actually quite impersonal and humanist wedding ceremony is very personal."

https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/humanist-weddings-overtake-church-of-scotland-ceremonies-1-4777088

Changing the economics

The absence of a vigourous socialist movement today is an indisputable and depressing fact. It has been noted so many times by so many. Dozens of explanations abound. In the meantime, socialists remain ineffective. It is impossible to explain the marginal status of socialists apart from the social reality in which we are situated. A sober analysis of our reality reveals a society that is, by and large, de-fanged and depoliticised. The majority are absorbed in their own job, family, friends and are incredibly unaware, misinformed, or downright uninterested in many aspects of social life.  Every year new coalitions form to plan “mass” demonstrations and rallies. While such activities have some worth, they usually attract only the “faithful” and have become little more than media events. Moreover, such “demonstrations,” have become an almost institutionalized form of protest. Subsequently, with mounting boldness, the world's ruling class is staging a major attack on the workers' movement. Employers are imposing stringent labour “discipline,” defeating trade unions driving tough negotiations. But some of the most dramatic blows of all are being inflicted as a result of investment and disinvestment decisions made by the corporations over which the unions have no control with pro-business legislation being passed by the state such as tax relief that favours business, which cut budgets for public and social services, defeats that result in widespread public disillusionment with the union movement. While workers try to defend themselves with strikes and sacrifice in a thousand ways to defend their standard of living yet we run up against the same situation: the working class has little economic or political clout, and so must constantly retreat or forfeit the fruits of its occasional successful struggles.

The social revolution can only be accomplished by men and women with a clear understanding of the economics of capitalism.  The social revolution depends in the last analysis upon the growth of class-consciousness amongst the working class, that therefore the chief task of a socialist political party is to educate that class consciousness along correct lines. A socialist party must look beyond the immediate situation and be willing to outline a vision of a future society.  The issue is how goods are produced and distributed, who owns the means of production or how work is organised and administered. It questions the very way we spend our lives.  Overcoming scarcity, i.e., meeting people’s elementary material needs for food, clothing, shelter, etc., is obviously necessary but must transcend the growth/profit model of capitalism itself.  The ideas of progress and human freedom must be envisioned as democratic, non-exploitative and egalitarian.

“Human Nature" is the oldest and stubbornest cry against socialism. It is stubborn because the arguer believes he knows things about human beings that make a harmonious society of equals impossible: either too many are perverse, or the whole lot of us have greed and aggression built in. The “human nature” argument is that it would ruin socialism if it were tried. What is being described is human behaviour, which (with estimates of particular kinds of it as “good” or reprehensible) continually changes. Man is a social being whose strongest tendency is to co-operation and order, or we should not be here today. Against examples of the “bad” can be set countless opposite ones. Yet everyday anti-social expressions are a fact in present-day society, and their causes are other social facts. Violent personal behaviour is not “human nature”. It is a reaction forced out by social conditions, and its manner is on the lines of accepted social formulae.

Socialism would make it possible to increase the production of useful articles in two main ways; by utilising the large numbers of able-bodied people not working at all, and by transferring to useful production all those workers now engaged on operations necessary only to capitalism — war and armament production, the armed services, financial, insurance and similar occupations. Overall it would be possible by these means to increase useful production to something like double the present level simply by revolutionizing the basis of the social system. When the Socialist Party was formed to achieve this social revolution it was opposed by various reformist organizations which offered as an alternative the gradualist doctrine of relying on legislation and trade-union action to make continuing progress towards the abolition of poverty and inequality. As regards the concentration of ownership of accumulated wealth in the hands of the small capitalist minority, all their efforts have achieved practically nothing. They cannot claim that any of the social problems they promised to deal with — housing, unemployment, low wages — has in fact been remedied. At most, it can be said that some of the worst aspects of poverty have been lessened.

Our present society is founded on the exploitation of the propertyless classes by the propertied. This exploitation is such that the propertied (capitalists) buy the labour-power of the propertyless, for the price of the mere costs of existence (wages), and take for themselves, i.e. steal the amount of new values (products) which exceeds this price, whereby wages are made to represent the necessities instead of the earnings of the wage-labourer. If now and then one of the propertyless class become rich, it is not by their own labour, but from opportunities which they have to speculate upon, and absorb the labour-product of others. With the accumulation of individual wealth, the greed and power of the propertied grow. They use all the means for competing among themselves for the robbery of the people. This system is unjust, insane, and murderous. It is, therefore, necessary to totally end it. We must keep the socialist ideal alive and struggle to make it a reality if humankind is to avoid the path to barbarism or collective self-annihilation.

Wheatley - The Red Clydesider, 1924

The Capitalist Housing Bill (1924)

From the July 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Wheatley, the Labour Minister of Health, speaking on his housing Bill in the House of Commons, said :—

   "Labour does not propose to interfere with private enterprise in the building of houses. Labour does not propose to interfere with private enterprise in the manufacturing of building material. Labour only touches private enterprise here at one point, and that is in the investment of private capital in the ownership of these rented houses. But what does Labour do in return for that interference? It says to the man with small capital: "Instead of putting your private capital into a risky investment, lend it to the local authorities at 4½ per cent. Without your having any trouble at all you will get a safe return for your money, with all the security behind it of a municipal investment.” The Labour party’s programme on housing is not a Socialist programme at all.”—(Parliamentary Debates, March 26th, p. 1470.)

They don’t "interfere with private enterprise” except at one point, he says. The point where they interfere is when they borrow money from bankers, etc., promising them a safe return! Such is the "Red” from the Clyde.

Defend Refugees

A statement from Living Rent, the tenants' union active in Glasgow, on Serco's eviction of vulnerable asylum seekers. You can also donate to an emergency appeal for the asylum seekers here.

The situation we are facing in Glasgow today must be seen as a turning point, or we else must turn it into one.

As a Tenants’ Union, we will not allow this brutal attack by SERCO on some of the most vulnerable people in our city to become just another episode in the shameful history of housing in Glasgow. Our position as a union is clear: We are against all evictions; we are against homelessness; we are against the victimisation and intimidation of tenants by those who hold power, wealth and property in their hands.

The Home Office has handed hundreds of millions of pounds of public money to SERCO – a giant multinational, a company who views detention centres, prisons and housing for victims of war and persecution as only some many sides of the same giant charnel house of profit. For years, politicians have seemingly been content for thousands of asylum seekers to be placed in the poorest areas of the city, furthering perceived competition for housing and services among the people who need them most. All while money, investment and contracts have lined the pockets of developers and speculators. This news is not a bolt out of the blue but the culmination of a policy of forced destitution, community abandonment and racism, of a hostile environment which we are not completely immune to in Scotland.

Living Rent Glasgow are clear:

- We call for resistance to all evictions by any and all means necessary, regardless of any attempts to render them legal or otherwise.

- We are calling for absolute opposition to forced destitution and homelessness on our streets.

- We are calling on all landlords, housing associations, councillors, social services or any other body in Scotland not to accommodate SERCO’s mass eviction policy in any way.

- And as a tenants’ union, as a union committed to building neighbourhood power, we are calling for a wholescale programme of community engagement in Glasgow, to challenge the hostile environment created by a racist narrative.

We must win the eyes and ears of our neighbourhoods, the working class people of Glasgow hold the key to defending their neighbours against this practice. Where Glasgow defeated dawn raids in the past and built solidarity that made a real difference, it was through the solidarity of working class communities, through solidarity in action, physical resistance to raids, dawn raid watches on the top of tower blocks at 5am every morning, through education, agitation and action.

We call on everyone to engage, challenge and organise against these evictions.

This must be only the beginning.

Taken from here

https://libcom.org/news/glasgow-tenants-union-statement-serco-evictions-asylum-seekers-31072018

Politics is a battle of ideas.

A society of human fraternity, equality, freedom and peace, that is socialism. It is the noblest of aims that mankind has ever aspired to. It has reason and truth on its side. It will eliminate all the pettiness, narrowness, conflict that now saps humanity’s potential. All will gain. The first requirement for the workers in all countries of the world is to oppose the capitalist class and their political parties,  taking the political power out of the hands of the capitalist class and into their own hands. The Socialist Party opens up the possibility of galvanizing the entire working people in alliance with the struggles of the workers in other parts of the globe, to eliminate once and for all the recurring problems spawned by capitalism and to eliminate its wars and to usher in a new world of peace and plenty. Despite the campaign of lies and distortions about the socialist viewpoint we are confident that developing realities, will make the Socialist Party take a powerful leap forward on the march to a socialist world. The revolution that is coming will place the working women and men of the world in full command over its vast resources, that will link it to the worldwide struggles of the working class, and lay down the foundations of the new socialist order of peace and freedom.

The Labour Party is reformist when the task is revolutionary—that is, socialist. While capitalism is moving out to slash the many gains already won, imposing new burdens, straight-jacketing organized labour with union-busting laws, cutting down on social legislation, the politicians talk in terms of the amelioration of class conflicts. They project a perspective of merely removing what they present as minor defects in the existing capitalist order of things, of patching capitalism up and making it more tolerable, instead of a perspective of fundamental change. The Labour Party teaches conciliation, peaceful co-existence with capitalism, not class struggle against it. Capitalism promises the people not amelioration of conditions but economic recessions, austerity, oppression and repression. Only through an irreconcilable struggle against capitalism, towards its elimination and the establishment of socialism, will the people of the world find the full freedom, equality and democracy for which they aspire.

New technological progress is now reaping vast profits for the industrial and financial oligarchy yet condemning millions of workers to the prospect of permanent unemployment.  The Socialist Party fights on the terrain of democracy by arguing that we can make our planet more productive, more just, and more sustainable by extending and deepening social democracy. Capitalist production uses human wants for making profit. Human wants are satisfied on the prior condition that this is profitable, within the system of producing commodities for sale on the markets. We need a society which is concerned with the interests of all its members. The alternative to capitalism is a new set of productive relationships—socialism. The alternative to the present world where resources are monopolised by a privileged minority is a world which is held in common and at the free disposal of all humanity. The alternative to commodity production for the market is the production of useful wealth directly for human need. The transfer of the world into the hands of all humanity and its conscious democratic control for the human interest is the political act of socialism. This transformation of productive relationships will remove the economic limitations of capitalist production and enable us to deal in a practical way with social problems. The Socialist Party conclusion is that capitalism can only operate in accordance with its own structure and economic laws and that the way out is to abolish capitalism and establish socialism. It's easy to forget why people are socialists: the vision of a world free from poverty, wars and social hostility, where co-operation, freedom and democracy are the order of the day.  We are transformed by the possibilities of a better, freer, co-operative and caring world.

Socialism is a science of interrelationships. Indeed, because it emphasises the importance of the way living things get their means to survive it is the application of the same approach that Marx's materialist conception
of history takes to human society; it is a materialist conception of the world of living things.

 The view of Marxian socialists since the time of Joseph Dietzgen who expounded it under the name of "dialectical materialism" (not to be confused with the official ideology of the former state-capitalist countries which had the same name) is  to hold that the things we perceive don't exist as separate, independent things but are only parts of an interrelated and interacting universe which alone has an independent existence ("holism", as it is now called) and that everything in the universe is composed of the same "stuff’ or material ("monism”).

Socialist Standard No.1368 August 2018

Due to a security incident, the websites for the World Socialist Movement and the Socialist Party of Great Britain are currently down for extended maintenance. The Socialist Standard published without interuption since 1904, is therefore unable to publish the web version in the usual manner on their website, so this is for  the time being, is a version, using the Socialism or Your Money Back blog to deliver backup pages in real time.

• Editorial: Ruling class split
• Pathfinders
• The Future: Socialism or Barbarism
  
• Cooking the Books 1: Bitcon
• Wood for the Trees; Competition: a race to where?
  
• Material World: Co-operatives no way to socialism
  
• Brexit: Sound & Fury signifying nothing?
• The Trump Circus: Don in Trumpton
• Philanthrocapitalism IV: The Messianic Rich
  
• Cooking the Books 2: Are we exploited twice?
• Angelica Balabanoff: Picaresque Leftist Adventuress
• Proper Gander: Counter Culture
• Reviews:Books Film Exhibition
• 50 Years Ago: Rail Go Slow
  
• Meetings
• Rear View
• Free Lunch

       PDF Version

  We will to be back on our own websites very soon. propagating socialism, we have never stopped, with important historical archival material dating from 1904 to the present day.

The Red Clydesiders Reforms - 1928

The Rt. Hon. Mr. Wheatley Joins The Alliance. (1928)

From the July 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

It has been calculated that of the rich persons who joined the Labour Party recently 50 per cent. were already candidates and the others were signing the book daily at the “Parliamentary Employment Exchange.” ("Daily Herald,” 26/6/28.)

The above is from the speech of the Right Hon. John Wheatley, M.P., Minister of Health in the Labour Government of 1924 and supporter of the Holy Catholic Church.

The new alliance of Cook, Maxton, and Wheatley has a programme described by Mr. Wheatley thus :

   Cook and Maxton declare that the workers should constitutionally seize the present surplus wealth of the idle rich and use it to give a decent standard of life here and now to the working classes.

So the party of rich candidates (the Labour Party) is going to seize—by taxation—some of the surplus and give it to the poor.

How that is going to affect the exploiting nature of Capitalism Mr. Wheatley doesn’t explain. It sounds as revolutionary as Lloyd George’s Insurance Act or Gladstone’s Death Duties. What this triple alliance want is pathetically put by Wheatley—“You should hit Capitalism oftener and harder.” How hard and how often, Mr. Wheatley? To stand for the overthrow of Capitalism, not often but all the time is not their way. And it would not sound as well as Mr. Wheatley’s patriotic reformism as made plain in his evidence in his libel action.

Adolph Kohn

Some economic history

The Socialist Party talks about class because this is the basic feature of present-day society. The productive resources of society are owned and controlled by a minority class and are run for their benefit. We can’t see how any person can deny that we are living in a class society and that this is the all-important social fact that those of us seeking social change must take into account. In fact, that the immense majority are excluded from the ownership and control of productive resources means that there is a group in society that has a material interest in ending this state of affairs by establishing a society of common ownership and democratic control, it means that socialism is not some ideal society to which all people of goodwill are somehow to be converted. It provides it with a basis in social reality, with a group of people—the overwhelming majority, it so happens—who have an interest in establishing it as the practical solution to the problems they face.

Capitalist society is rushing headlong towards barbarism. So long as the mad struggle for profit in this private property economy exists, and it must exist as long as capitalism exists, war, hunger, and environmental destruction is forever the prospect of life. Chaos and misery are forever the rewards of the overwhelming majority of the peoples of all countries. The destruction of the world is a grim reality unless the social order of capitalism is abolished and replaced by socialism, the society of all the people for all the people.

While all the capitalists are incapable and unwilling to produce in the interests of the common good of the people, while production is organised solely in the interests of profit, invention in the interests of society as a whole remains stagnant. New technology which could lighten the lives of the people and produce enough to have plenty for all, is impossible in an economy where the main aim of those who own the industries, mines, transportation, and utilities is production for profit.

Capitalism had not always existed. Capitalist production grew out of individual production of feudal times. The typical feudal form of production was production for local consumption: food, clothing and other articles were produced by the serfs for themselves and for their feudal lords. With the development of a surplus – that is,, more articles than the particular group needed – the surplus was sold in exchange for articles brought in from other countries or from other parts of the country. But the main part of production was still for consumption by the producing group and the lord who had feudal rights over it. It was only when the feudal units began to break up that this form of production gradually gave way to production for profit, which is the essential mark of capitalism. Production for profit required two things: someone with enough resources to buy means of production (looms, spinning-machines and so on); and, secondly, people who had no means of production themselves, no resources by using which they could live. In other words, there had to be “capitalists,” who owned means of production, and workers whose only chance of getting a livelihood was to work the machines owned by the capitalists.

The workers produced things, not directly for themselves or for the personal use of their new “lord,” the capitalist, but for the capitalist to sell for money. Things made in this way are called “commodities” – that is, articles produced for sale on the market. The worker received wages, the employer received profit.

Tools and instruments of production, of one kind or another, have also existed from time immemorial. But only with the rise of modern capitalism, which is only a few hundred years old, have money and the means of production been converted into what they never were before, namely, capital. More accurately, it is only under modern capitalism that capital becomes dominant, that it pervades and controls and actuates all economic life.

Under slavery and feudalism, the nobility and the landlords owned human chattels or the land and mercilessly exploited the slaves and serfs. But what these slaves and serfs produced beyond the needs of their own wretched existence, was consumed by their overlords. What did they produce? Food, clothing, castles and palaces, and other objects of personal use and consumption. Little or nothing was produced for exchange. There was an accumulation of great personal fortunes, but no accumulation of commodities to speak of. The means of production were simple and primitive, like the hand-plow and the spinning wheel, and their primary purpose was to satisfy the needs of the ruling classes. In addition, there were numerous free producers who owned their own land or their own shops and tools. They were small independent producers.

Modern capitalism arose only with the development of machinery, with the great expansion of production which this made possible, with the expropriation of the independent producers, and the concentration of the means of production in the hands of a few. The means of production became capital when they became the private property of a capitalist minority and were employed for the exploitation of the modern wage-worker.

The peculiarity of capital, which distinguishes it from mere money and mere tools and mere raw materials and mere labor power, is this: All these become capital when they are used for the purpose of accumulating more capital. This is the difference between capitalism and all societies that went before it. The difference is so important that it cannot be over-emphasised.

When the overwhelming majority—the working class, as we define it—take conscious democratic political action to do this, classes can then be abolished and a genuine community with a common social interest created. Production will be switched from production for sale on a market with a view to profit to production to satisfy people’s needs. Money—as a means of exchange, a means to buy things produced for sale— will become redundant and disappear. The existence of money and the existence of socialism are incompatible since the existence of money implies the existence both of exchange and of private property whereas socialism, as a society of common ownership and production for use, implies the non-existence of both and so also of the need for money. Under capitalism, money is very useful, indeed indispensable. Without it capitalism could not function; to try to abolish it would lead to chaos and economic breakdown. So we don’t stand for the abolition of money now under capitalism. What we stand for is the establishment of the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources; this will allow production to be geared directly to meeting people’s needs, so making money unnecessary. A society dominated by money is one of the effects of capitalism, not its cause as you seem to imply. The only way to end the nefarious effects of money that you correctly identify is to establish socialism, where human values can flourish instead of the commercial and financial values that distort and debase our lives today. 

Kids without a home

The scale of Scotland’s homelessness crisis has been described as “damning” after figures showed the equivalent of 38 children a day were left without somewhere permanent to live last year. Analysis by the charity Shelter Scotland revealed 14,075 children were in households assessed as being homeless in 2017-18 – the equivalent of six or seven pupils for every school.

On one day in March, 6,615 children were living in temporary accommodation – the fourth consecutive year in which the figure has risen, the charity said. It described the scale of child homelessness as “shocking”, and said not having a permanent place to live can have “drastic” effects on young people.

Alison Watson, deputy director of Shelter Scotland, said the “acute shortage of housing” lies at the heart of the problem. She said: “The sheer scale of homelessness among children in Scotland is damning on our society. “For the equivalent of a class and a half of schoolchildren to be made homeless every day just isn’t right. “The fact families with children then have to endure the limbo of temporary accommodation longer than other homeless households just compounds their misery. This has got to stop.”

Further analysis showed that 51 per cent of people who have experienced homelessness had no evidence of health conditions relating to drugs, alcohol or mental health – information the charity said could help dispel “the myth that homelessness is largely a substance abuse issue”.

https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/damning-report-reveals-38-children-made-homeless-in-scotland-each-day-1-4775565

Socialism and the Socialist Party

The modern nation is exclusively a product of capitalism. Nations began to emerge with the growth of trade and formed the framework for the production and distribution of commodities on a capitalist basis. The left-nationalists propose to achieve independence and socialism simultaneously. However, fewer and fewer people still believe that Scottish independence is a step forward in the struggle for socialism. Independence is not the interests of the working class. Workers must unite with the only class whose interests lie unreservedly in eliminating capitalism – the international working class across the world. Class consciousness and national chauvinism do not mix. Socialism, which means the replacement of the present social order by one based upon free and democratic access to the means of living, has been identified with theories of nationalisation, the welfare state and the command economy of state-capitalism. Our political foes have thus been able to attach to the term socialism unfavourable words like bureaucracy, officialdom, red tape. Propaganda and word magic have combined to convert the coinage of political terms into a debased and worthless currency.  Now as always, the Socialist Party carry on their work of explaining and clarifying. They must especially denounce the falsity and the hypocrisy of all the nationalist groups. Socialist transformation is not possible without a continuous battle against those who misdirect the working class.

All the politicians will tell you that they have the answers. But their answers fail to solve the problems which face society. After decades of politicians' clever answers, the society we live in is still in a mess, with mass poverty, social insecurity, and environmental destruction getting worse, not better. Politicians tell us that they're running things for our benefit, but capitalism can only be run in the interest of the small minority who own and control the means of producing and distributing goods and services. Capitalism can only be run by treating the working-class as second-class citizens. The Socialist Party says that there is a real alternative. The establishment of world socialism remains the only secure future for humanity. We are not blaming people for capitalism. The system and not individuals within it is responsible for what is happening. This system is part of a long, historical process; the socialist argument is that it is now time to move on to a new social system which will be in line with the productive potentialities of our modern world. Some philanthropic capitalists do indulge in gestures of benevolence towards the class which they legally rob. So what? The essential point is that the capitalist's power and affluence are based on exploiting the working class. Within capitalism, the capitalist cannot act as anything but an exploiter and the worker cannot act as anything but a wage slave.

The capitalist market not only encourages but guarantees inequality and exploitation. Capitalist societies are by definition class societies, and those deprived of the basic necessities of life are more than simply the “less fortunate.” They are the victims of a materially unequal society in which the ownership of wealth, and the social and political power that comes with it, remains heavily concentrated. To the socialist, then, there is no distinction between the “deserving” or “undeserving” poor, just a deprived class of people whose needs have yet to be met. 

Under capitalist production, the toiler is, indeed, just a piece of machinery, necessary to the progress of trade and commerce, and we have been taught to believe that such is all we are fitted to be.

Today we live to work, and the proposal of the Socialist Party—undoubtedly a revolutionary one—to reverse the sequence, to produce wealth in order to live, seems to be beyond the comprehension of our fellow wage-slaves who cannot get away from the notions connected with capitalist methods of production and exchange, hence the information that under a socialist system no wages would be paid comes to him as a shock. This, then, is our job. To explain to thoughtful and involved individuals that only socialism will liberate mankind's ability to produce a world of abundance.

Socialism is not a fantasy any more than any other untried idea is a fantasy.  Socialism has to be brought about by workers. A slave who has become conscious of his or her slavery, and who has risen to the height of fighting for emancipation, has half-ceased to be a slave. The class-conscious worker of to-day fights for a better life for him or herself, here on earth, rallying fellow-workers to the present-day struggle for a better life here upon earth. Socialism is an idea which implies certain political principles and one of these is an unshakeable refusal to compromise with the enemies of the working class—with any political party, whatever it calls itself, which stands for capitalism. When a worker goes into a voting booth and, where there is no socialist candidate, writes socialism across the paper we are doing several things. We are saying that he hates capitalism, is declaring for a social revolution to replace it. We are standing up as the enemy of all the capitalist parties. Under capitalism, there are many kinds of working-class organisations: trade unions, political parties, tenants associations, friendly societies and so on—formed for a variety of different purposes. A working-class organisation can only be considered revolutionary when it consciously aims to replace capitalism. Our principles are based on the logic of our socialist theory; on the knowledge that human society has developed to the point where the potential exists to provide for the material needs of every human being on the planet; on the assumption that, faced with the ultimate reality of capitalism’s failure to solve the ghastly problems that it creates, human beings will take into their common ownership the means of life; that common ownership, and the abolition of all the wasteful activities that capitalism makes necessary, will permit society to function on the basis of free labour in the production of goods and services and free access to the fruits of that production. That is the socialist proposition, the root of our socialist principles and the Socialist Party does not seek power for itself to enthrone those principles. We seek to promote and spread a knowledge of socialism and whether the majority that ultimately takes the required political action to bring about socialism uses the Socialist Party or some other political vehicle to take power from the political agents of capitalism and establish Socialism is of no consequence to us. 

Our task will be completed with the achievement of socialism; politics will disappear as government over people gives way to a straightforward democratic administration of social production and distribution. Capitalism cannot be made to function in the interests of the great majority of people, the working class, who are the real wealth producers. However long it takes for that truth to percolate the consciousness of the working class, for that period we will suffer the social problems that have been the identification marks of capitalism since its inception. Conversely, until that consciousness begins to take root, the Socialist Party will retain its principles and seek its purpose in the dissemination of those principles.

The Object of the Socialist Party

The more seeds sowed now, the greater will be the harvest of conscious working class support for socialism. It is not within our power to give details of how socialist society will arrange its daily affairs. However, we can show the broad scope of possibilities for human development when production is for use and people, without exception, have free access to what they require from what is socially produced. Socialism is not just about providing basic needs it is essentially a “whole life” concept.

Capitalism requires perpetual economic growth in order to avoid economic crises. More specifically, in order to stave off mass unemployment and economic misery, capitalism requires increasing commodity production, escalating resource extraction, increasing trash and toxic dumping, and ever-increasing energy production. Capitalism, by its very nature, must expand unendingly and it has already surpassed the limits of sustainable growth.  Capitalism is not only incapable of responding adequately to the environmental crisis, it is the very cause of the crisis and can only make matters worse. It is not enough just to oppose capitalism. We also need to create something better: an alternative system of human relations – socialism. It is not only desirable, it is imperative. It is essential that environmental activists begin to focus on ending the economic system of capitalism itself. The survival of life on this planet depends on it. The only way to rationally reorganise the economy sustainably is to collectively and democratically own, control and plan the world’s industrial productive forces. All manner of useless, wasteful and polluting industries must be eliminated while developing and expanding others. Achieving climate change goals agreed in Paris is unlikely to be achieved under the capitalist market economy.

Revolution alone is the hope of the toiling masses, and not reform. For reformism —whether political or social —does not affect the cause of the workers’ troubles. Change the entire conditions of social life and labour by the capture of the political machine by an educated and organised working class, and use it to abolish wage-slavery forever, and to establish society upon a basis of common ownership in the means and instruments of production and distribution. Thus only can, then only will, the ills and anxieties of the wealth producers cease.

It is true that the word "socialism" has become distorted this century to mean state capitalism even for most of those who consider themselves socialists, the word still does convey, better than for instance "moneyless society" which suggests a mere economic change, what we stand for: a society where productive resources are commonly, (i.e. socially,) owned and where people cooperate. i.e. act socially, to produce what is needed. After all, we say that humans are social animals, and what better name for a society where humans can develop their social potential to the full than "socialism". We certainly do not believe in "pre-determinacy": that all we have to do is sit around and wait for socialism to come. Capitalism certainly paves the way for socialism, but people make history and it is people who will have to make the transformation from capitalism to socialism. What socialists can— and must—do is accelerate this. Our general political activities consist in propagating the idea of socialism. This involves publishing leaflets, pamphlets and a monthly magazine, holding meetings, debating with other groups, contesting elections, and campaigning via the internet and the World Wide Web, all with the aim, at the moment, of spreading a knowledge of what socialism is and of inciting a desire for it. Later, when a majority have come to want socialism, the aim will be to dislodge from power, through democratic political action, the supporters of class privilege and the profit system. The answer we give as to what a socialist minority should do is that socialists should seek to “agitate, educate and organise" workers for socialism. This is based on the assumption that not only can workers understand socialism but that a majority of them must before socialism can be established. It follows from this that seeking to be a leadership cannot advance the cause of socialism, only the spread of socialist knowledge can. It also follows that socialists should organise themselves, not as an elite general staff, but as an open democratic party, so prefiguring the mass socialist party they expect to emerge and indeed so prefiguring the inevitably democratic nature of a socialist society.

Rally to the ranks of the Socialist Party, for it has one Object—Socialism; one method—Revolution. Is the idea of a world-wide revolution realistic? Why not? After all, capitalism is already a world-wide system, in fact, it is now more than ever a single world system. Even theorists of capitalism are beginning to recognise this with their talk of "globalisation". They are right. What it means is that if global capitalism is to be replaced it can only be replaced globally, by another global system, world socialism. As all socialists know, the only people who can alter the society in such a way as to remove the causes of poverty, not merely to lessen it, but to remove it once and for all, and with this the cause of war in the world, are the workers. They will do this as quickly as they understand the basis of the system of the society in which they live. It is therefore incumbent upon Socialists to spread this understanding, and anything short of this is a waste of time, which soon leads to a waste of lives, by malnutrition, and sooner or later, by war or global warming.