Solidarity

Teachers from across Scotland are due to march in Glasgow later in support of their calls for a 10% pay rise. Marchers will assemble at Kelvingrove Park at 11:00 BST before heading into the city centre.

As well as EIS leaders, the speakers are due to include STUC president Lynn Henderson, NUS president Liam McCabe, Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard, Scottish Greens MSP Ross Greer, SNP MP Chris Stephens and Carole Ford for the Scottish Lib Dems.

The Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) said it expected thousands of teachers to attend the national march and rally in George Square.

EIS president Alison Thornton said: "All indications are that many thousands of teachers, together with other supporters of Scottish education, will be travelling from the length and breadth of Scotland in support of the campaign. Buses to the event from all parts of the country have been filling up as soon as they are available, and we know that many other marchers will make their own way to the demonstration via public transport."

The union has described the offer as "divisive" and has recommended its members reject it in a ballot which opens next week.

EIS general secretary Larry Flanagan said "smoke and mirrors" were being used to pit unpromoted teachers against their promoted colleagues.

He added: "After a decade of deep pay cuts leading to a 24% reduction in take home pay, an offer based on a 3% cost of living increase falls far short of the expectations of our members. EIS general secretary Larry Flanagan said "smoke and mirrors" were being used to pit unpromoted teachers against their promoted colleagues. The conflation of incremental progression, which teachers would always have received anyway, with this pay offer to make it appear more attractive is a shameful tactic drawn straight from the book of bad management."

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-45990336

Who owns Scotland, again?

Memories of the evictions of poor tenant farmers by wealthy landowners during the 18th and 19th centuries remain strong in the Highlands and Isles of Scotland. Thousands of people had to emigrate to avoid starvation in the wake of the Highland clearances and some of the worst abuses have been blamed on the then Duke of Sutherland.

When the residents of Garbh Allt in the Scottish Highlands were offered the chance to buy their land from the wealthy family behind the brutal eviction of their ancestors, many were initially hesitant. But years of underdevelopment under the Sutherland Estate - one of Scotland's biggest landowners - and the prospect of shaping their own future convinced them to take the leap, and in June the land was sold into community ownership.

"People were saying, oh I'm not really sure if we should take it on or not. And I was thinking to myself, my father would be spinning in his grave if we didn't take up this opportunity," said Anne Fraser, head of the Garbh Allt community initiative. "I had to pinch myself the other day to actually remember we're in ownership," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "It gives me great delight when I'm walking along and suddenly think, oh, this belongs to us. It's quite something." Fraser said she did not see the deal as revenge for the clearances, but as a chance for the community to take control in an area that, like many in rural Scotland, has suffered years of underinvestment and depopulation.

 It is among the latest transfers of private land into residents' hands under the Scottish Land Reform Act of 2003, which gave communities first right of refusal when land was put up for sale.

"Scotland is characterised by having a very concentrated pattern of land ownership," said Andy Wightman, a Scottish Green Party member of the Scottish parliament. "Approximately 440 to 450 landowners own half of all the privately-owned rural land. Scotland until 2004 still had a system of feudal land tenure."

http://news.trust.org/item/20181025065833-3dv6p/

Our Aspiration - Socialism

We want to abolish wage labour, but what do we propose to replace it with? The abolition of wage labour can only be conceived as a process of emancipation that will affect every aspect of our lives. It means a total transformation of social relations. The Socialist Party conceives of a society that abolishes exploitation and we expose those proponents of various “socialisms” which is merely the replacement of private property by state property while preserving the foundations of capitalism: wage labour and the commodity. Nothing will belong to anybody anymore. Socialism as we understand it, is above all a human community where there is no property, no State that oppresses, no classes that separates and which confers distinction. Socialism is not a platform of reforms must be led to victory by the number of votes or by violence. The Socialist Party does not aspire to conquer State power and replace the unjust and perverse power of the ruling class with its own power. Our electoral policy is not about raising up some individuals to be ministers or peoples commissars, but of rendering such functions useless.

 The socialist revolution can only be, from its very first steps, the founding act of the democratic and common ownership of the means of production, a community in which no one is excluded and where buying and selling —even money—will be unknown.  The principle of sharing will replace the principle of exchange without taking the form of a State — the rule of some over others. With the abolition of the State, money and the commodity, people will exercise conscious control over their own activity by way of the relations and interactions that they establish among themselves and between them and the rest of nature. 

Socialism will be a society where the most precious gift will reside in human relations; where all human beings will have the chance to enjoy what they do, and possess the time and the space in which to do it  and for which they are themselves will responsible for. Socialism presupposes the free association of men, women, and children, beyond the roles of dependency and reciprocal submission. Likewise, socialism entails the realisation that scarcity or poverty is not the result of a shortage of means, of things or of objects, but that it derives from a social organisation based on the monopoly of a few at the expense of the rest.

In a capitalist society, all goods are produced for sale, for making a profit.  Within socialism, the producers will not exchange their products: nor will the human activity incorporated in these products appear any longer as their value, as if this were a real quantity that they possessed. These goods will no longer be characterised by having a value; they have no price and cannot be exchanged (in accordance with that value, regardless of the standard by which it is measured), nor, for that same reason, can they be sold. They will have no other purpose than the satisfaction of human desires and needs such as they are expressed at any particular moment.

With the elimination of commodity production, the domination of the product over the producer will also disappear. Mankind will rediscover the connection with what we make. With the disappearance of money, goods will be freely available at no charge. One will not have to have a certain amount of money in order to have the right to obtain anything whatsoever. A socialist society will therefore not be a mere extension of our “consumer”.  society. It will not be an immense supermarket where passive beings only have to help themselves. There will be no devastation of resources without worrying about the future nor will there be a pursuit of a constant stream of useless throwaway junk. The fact that a product has been made by one person or another will not entail the persistence of the principle of property, even of a “ cooperative and decentralised” variety. Productive activity will no longer be bound to the notion of ownership, but to that of individual and collective creativity, to the awareness of satisfying human needs for both individuals and for the community as a whole. With the replacement of exchange by common ownership, goods will no longer have an economic value and will become mere physical objects which human beings can use to satisfy any needs they may have.  Production will not obviate the necessity of undertaking an estimation of the needs and possibilities of the community at any given moment, but they will not be reduced to a common denominator measured according to a universal standard. They will be assessed as physical quantities and only in this respect will measurement have any meaning for human beings. In the past, some socialists (including Marx himself) expounded the idea that the distribution of products could be regulated by the circulation of labour-time vouchers that would correspond to a social average labour time calculated after taking account of deductions devoted to social funds. In fact, the existence of a common standard that measures product and labour is incompatible with the real abolition of wage labour, exchange or value. Furthermore, such a system would require the consideration of certain arbitrary variables in accordance with the difficulty of the job, of its inherent interest thus it would, therefore, relapse into an “economic calculation” that would require a “unit of value” whether expressed in the form of money or, directly, in that of labor time. Socialism, as a society without money, will not, however, need any universal unit of measurement; all calculations will proceed in accordance with the nature of the thing calculated. The appeal of an object will, therefore, be derived from the object itself and not from any value that is more or less arbitrarily assigned to it. Its production, like its use, will be determined in accordance with its meaning for men and nature.

Socialism means the end of the separations that compartmentalise our lives. There will be no antagonism between looking out for oneself and looking out for others. People will associate with each other, brought together by their shared tastes and affinities. This by no means implies that all conflicts will be abolished, but that the irreconcilable opposition between human groups and interests will come to an end. This does not mean that life on earth will be a “paradise”, but that the relations between people will no longer be relations between individuals who are indifferent with regard to each other. Socialism will rehabilitate what is human. In socialism, the elderly will not be warehoused in nursing homes that are merely the last stop before the cemetery. Nor will education be compulsory as a preparation for wage labour and separated from the rest of social life. Socialism will introduce an unprecedented freedom: the freedom to travel over the whole surface of the planet without having to answer to anybody or show any documentation, the freedom to go wherever you want whenever you want and to stay there as long as you want.

The socialist revolution is not a clash between two armies, one of which follows the orders of the privileged and the exploiters while the other serves the working class. It cannot be reduced to a war for the seizure of power and the control over territory. We would play the enemy’s game if we reduce our revolution to a confrontation of force and to safeguard “conquests” construct another state structure. The revolution would then degenerate into a civil war, fatally falling victim to the mere repetition of the mistakes of the past. The confrontation between two armies, the red and the white, will not be the socialist revolution but the transformation of the workers into the army of another vanguard.

The revolution will, in fact, be a social revolution that will completely transform all other relations and that will make men and women the subjects of their own history. It will destroy the State and politics and it is by abolishing commodity relations that it will destroy capitalism. Socialists do not seek to be nourished by the taste for capitalist blood in a spirit of vengeance. The aim of the Socialist Party is to eliminate the material and mental structures of oppression rather than to destroy individuals. Our goal is the emergence of a reconciled community. There exists the possibility (remote as it seems) that our class enemies could undergo a change where they will come to understand the benefits in the realisation of the community without masters or slaves.  If a truly human society is to be created where we can relate to each other as members of a real community instead of as isolated individuals, then the commodity-form must disappear completely. The death of the commodity will be the beginning of a truly human society existing in harmony with the rest of nature.

Adapted and abridged from here

https://libcom.org/library/communism-points-consideration-linsecurite-sociale

Declining NHS

The NHS in Scotland is not financially sustainable and its performance has continued to decline, the public spending watchdog, Audit Scotland, said.

Health boards were "struggling to break even,... relying increasingly on Scottish government loans and one-off savings". and none had met all of the key national targets - with NHS Lothian not meeting any. The report said pressure is building in several areas - including the recruitment and retention of staff, rising drug costs, Brexit and a significant maintenance backlog.

The "declining performance against national standards indicates the stress NHS boards are under"

The Scottish government invested £13.1bn in NHS services last year, but Audit Scotland said when inflation was taken into account there was a 0.2% real terms drop in cash.

Auditor General Caroline Gardner said: "The performance of the NHS continues to decline, while demands on the service from Scotland's ageing population are growing."

Dr Lewis Morrison, chairman of the British Medical Association (BMA) in Scotland, said the "stark warning" from Audit Scotland "could not be any blunter". But he added this would "come as no surprise to frontline doctors who have faced the consequences of inadequate funding year after year."

RCN Scotland director Theresa Fyffe said the report "underlines what those in the nursing profession have been warning about for a number of years - an unsustainable pressure on staff to deliver more care. This leads to staff burnout and, in some cases, a choice between staying in the profession and their own health."

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-45969866

Stagnating Scotland

Progress on making Scotland a fairer and more equal society has stagnated, according to the Equality and Human Rights Commission. The report highlighted differences in educational attainment, health, work opportunities and living standards among social groups. 

The report said women were less likely to be in work and they continued to earn less than men on average.

It said those women who were in work continued to experience sexual harassment as well as discrimination related to pregnancy.

Meanwhile, disabled people were twice are likely to be unemployed and more likely to live in poverty, according to the review.

It also said differences in school attainment were evident as early as Primary 1, especially for children living in the most deprived areas.

The EHRC's Scotland Commissioner Lesley Sawers said: "Fairness should be at the heart of Scottish society. This review suggests that there is still some way to go... However, the evidence in this review suggests a general stagnation in progress."

The report highlighted differences in educational attainment, health, work opportunities and living standards among social groups.

The report said women were less likely to be in work and they continued to earn less than men on average.

It said those women who were in work continued to experience sexual harassment as well as discrimination related to pregnancy.

Meanwhile, disabled people were twice are likely to be unemployed and more likely to live in poverty, according to the review.

It also said differences in school attainment were evident as early as Primary 1, especially for children living in the most deprived areas.

For a class-free society

The morbidity of capitalism arises from the fact that it is a system based on the exploitation of the many, the propertyless working class, by the capitalist class, the owners of the means for producing wealth. Only a part of the wealth produced by the workers goes to them in the form of wages; the rest is appropriated by the capitalists in the form of surplus value. It is this unpaid labour of the workers—surplus value— produced on a greater and greater scale as the result of their ever-increasing exploitation, that makes possible the continuous expansion of capital. This is the law of capitalist accumulation. Thus small capitals become large ones and in the competition between them weaker units are forced out of existence or absorbed by the stronger ones and wealth tends to concentrate into fewer and fewer hands. 

But competition is not eliminated by the monopolistic tendencies of capitalism; it is merely transferred to a higher and intenser level by the gigantic capital formations of the various “nationals” fighting for domination in a world market. That is why the State, as the regulating authority of the capitalist class must become a more and more active partner in the economic life of the national capitalist economy, and by its exercise of political control seek to unify its various elements into as strong an economic entity as possible in order to compete with other capitalist nations on equal terms. 

The political form which capitalism takes is, then, not a result of the political programmes of its parties, but a consequence of its economic development. It is, then, the rigorous pattern of political uniformity which modern capitalism imposes upon those who seek to administer it that explains why the famous continuity of policy, whether domestic or foreign, between the Tory Party and the Labour Party follows as a matter of course. The main task of alternative governments is, then, to supplement, and extend what the last government began. Capitalism is capitalism, whatever the form. Whether it exists as one-man concerns, joint-stock companies, trusts, cartels or State monopolies (nationalisation) it is still capitalism with the same parasitic nature: Private or class ownership of the means of life and enslavement of the working class. The means of production are socially operated because the laws, methods of management, and the interaction of the various members of society who take part in wealth production, are all adapted to serve the present economic system.
But both the means of production and the products are privately owned. Hence there does not exist the socialisation—or the making into a social system—of the means of production and distribution. This can only exist when social operations are combined with social ownership of both means and results of production. In other words, when socialism is established.

 The object of capitalist production is profit. Marx dealt fairly exhaustively with this fact, and no one yet has demonstrated the alleged error in his reasoning. He also showed that wages, like the prices of other commodities, were an extremely variable factor. Nowhere did he suggest that they could never rise; while he indicated, with exceptional clarity, the part played by machinery in intensifying the exploitation of higher-paid labour-power and reducing the proportion of the workers’ share in the fruits of their labour. 

When we enter the arena of elections, it is not just a matter of another party on the time honoured game of fooling the workers. We do not treat the business as a sport, wishing our opponents good luck and congratulating the one who succeeds in collecting the most votes and a well-paid job. We do not indulge in hypocritical hand-shaking with our opponents or in the “good-luck-and-the-best-man-has-won” bunkum. 

We are in deadly earnest. Our opponents represent our class enemies and there can be no truce in the class struggle. 

We do not even canvass votes as do our opponents. In fact, we urge workers to refrain from voting for us unless they understand our object and are prepared to work with us for its achievement. An election campaign, for us, is a means of spreading our ideas amongst the workers at a time when there exists increased political interest and it is a means of gauging the development of socialist ideas. Further to that, of course, is the fact that, in contesting every possible election we are working towards the achievement of our object. Election campaigns that are successful in bringing more and more workers to an understanding and a desire for socialism are preparing the ground for an increasing number of campaigns in the future. Join with us in the only war worth fighting, in the only struggle worthy of working class effort, the struggle to end the system that deprives the workers of the fruits of their labour, the struggle so that poverty may give place to comfort, privilege to equality, and slavery to freedom.   

In A Socialist Society Democratic Rights Are A Given.

By now most of you are away shrugged it aside and said there is a ”notwithstanding clause”, in the constitution which allows him to ignore the ruling. Reaction has been swift and ferocious. Former Prime Minister of Canada, Jean Chretien, retired Chief Justice of Ontario, Roy McMurtry and former Saskatchewan Premier Roy Romanow condemned Ford’s action in a joint statement issued on September 14. They spelled out that the clause was meant to be invoked in, ”exceptional situations and only as a last resort after careful consideration. 

“Ford’s actions” they added, ”did not meet this criteria; we condemn his actions and call on those in his cabinet and caucus to stand up to him.” Toronto city clerk, Ulli Watkiss has her panties in a twist and has hired an outside lawyer in an attempt to tell Ford to back off. She said a fair election was becoming ”virtually impossible to carry out”.

 In order to print a planned 2.6 million ballots on time, the printers will need to work 14 hours a day for 7 days and that the current schedule does not provide any room for the correction of errors. At the time of writing it is not known how things will play out, but what we do know is that this is just another attack on the democratic procedure.

 In this respect, Ford is no different from Erdogan and Trump. Michael Moore, when wishing to stress the fragility of democracy, said recently that when Hitler became Chancellor, the mainstream newspaper of Germany’s Jewish community told its readers that they shouldn’t worry, Germany was a democracy and they had a constitution. The political stooges of the capitalist class will always attempt to erode if not outright abolish democracy.

We Socialists see it as a useful thing to have around as it is easier to propagate for Socialism than it would be under a dictatorship, but that doesn’t mean we will work to preserve it. Our job is to work for a society where democratic rights are a given and situations like the above will not arise – So why not join us?

For socialism,

 Steve, Mehmet, John &a; contributing members of the SPC

Defend the Strike

Union leaders in Glasgow have been told they face legal action for allegedly organising illegal pickets and wildcat action as a strike by 8,000 mostly female cleaners and care workers in a dispute over equal pay enters its second day.

Lawyers for Glasgow city council wrote to the GMB union to accuse its officials of organising an illegal walkout by 600 street cleaners and refuse workers and of setting up pickets that intimidated people not involved in the dispute. After the refuse collectors and street sweepers refused to work on Tuesday, the council threatened to invoke trade union legislation introduced by a Conservative government in 1992 unless the GMB formally repudiated their unofficial action.

The industrial action spread further on Wednesday morning, when upwards of 50 parking attendants refused to cross picket lines and were sent home.

“We will not be bullied by any employer, much less Glasgow city council,” said Rhea Wolfson, a GMB organiser. “It is shameful an employer like Glasgow has threatened to use Tory anti-trade union legislation against working-class women, and working-class men who have huge sympathy for these women.”

Wolfson denied the walkout by street sweepers, bin collectors and road workers was orchestrated by the GMB, or that the pickets were unlawful. “Individuals have exercised their consciences in choosing to support the action. It hasn’t been encouraged by the GMB,” she said.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/oct/24/schools-remain-closed-glasgow-equal-pay-strike-continues

Solidarity

8,000 members of the GMB and Unison strike for a second day as over equal pay in protest at a "lack of progress" in talks on how to redress years of pay discrimination.

Can the working class change the world? Yes

The Socialist Party exists as a result of the war between the classes —the antagonism of interests between the class of wage-workers and the class of property-owning employers. Its work, at present, lies in its efforts to arouse the workers to a conscious recognition of their wage-slavery. The need for such a party is felt when one realises the amazing lack of class consciousness existing amongst the working-class. To-day, the workers give their support to capitalism because they are saturated, quite unconsciously, in the majority of cases, with the ideas of the ruling class. They oppose socialism because they do not understand it. Not understanding it, they do not desire it. These capitalist ideas amongst workers have to be fought, and their opposition to socialism has to be removed before we can organise effectively for the abolition of the capitalist system. The work of spreading socialist knowledge—and we are the only party that is doing this work—is a big job, and we are in need of many more members to help along this campaign. The larger the organisation, the more widely known can we make our object and principles? We make a special appeal to our fellow-workers and ask “Why not join us now?” We want your support to help us in the fight against working-class political ignorance and apathy, and for the spreading of Socialist knowledge   We want to grow and forge ahead, and as quickly as possible and make our name and activities a mark of fear amongst those anti-working class organisations. Socialism is the only hope for the working class—all else is an illusion. But Socialism will only come when a majority of workers understand it and desire it. Recognise their own interests, and instruct their delegate to pursue it.  Class-consciousness is the first essential. Organisation to help in furthering it is the next. We are that organisation.

Come join us now. The Party welcomes everyone who sincerely believes in the establishment of the socialist commonwealth as the only means of evolving order from the present social chaos. We exist to convert the great mass of workers to the socialist point of view. We are a section of the world socialist movement, and our great mission is to trail the way to economic freedom, our task is to end wage slavery.  We have a clear aim and a political case which is on the right lines.

Those who criticise leaders, but continue to believe in the need for leadership, usually fasten upon the personal defects of the man they condemn. What the workers want, according to these critics, is better leaders, leaders who can be trusted. Our case is that the working-class movement will never succeed until the workers put all of their trust in themselves, with a full recognition that the responsibility for success or failure must rest on their own shoulders, and cannot without grave danger be placed on those of leaders.

Trade unions are useful and necessary within capitalism, but can they abolish the wages system which of necessity involves the exploitation and poverty of the workers. Obviously, no! To do so requires the acquisition for society of the means of wealth production, and this, in turn, can only be done when the majority of the workers become socialist and decide to obtain control of the machinery of government for the express purpose of depriving the present propertied class of all their property privileges. A minority of workers cannot by either political or economic action stand up against the forces of the State. A majority can obtain control of those forces through control of Parliament. Economic organisation can aid, but it cannot substitute political organisation. Trade unions, both from the point of view of progress to socialism and in the day-to-day struggle will gain, not lose, by severing their connection with the Labour Party. In fact, while their members are politically divided, as at present, the trade unions would gain in cohesion and effectiveness by concentration on trade-union objects, leaving politics alone until the organised working class is ready to use Parliament for socialist instead of reformist purposes.

 The workers can solve their problems only by gaining control of Parliament for THE EXPRESS PURPOSE OF INTRODUCING SOCIALISM. A party which seeks to gain political control for any other purpose must therefore be anti-socialist and anti-working class. The Labour Party seeks to gain control for a variety of reforms, including such capitalist schemes as nationalisation. Some reforms may in themselves be good, most are indifferent and some, like nationalisation, are for the working class wholly bad. But whether good, bad, or indifferent, they are not socialism, and do not, and cannot, aid in hastening socialism. Socialism presupposes a socialist working class. The propagation of reforms does not make socialists. First, it makes reformers and then drives them through disillusion to despair. The Labour Party has not socialist aims. Its guiding belief is in its ability to administer capitalism better than the capitalists themselves. This may be true, but it is not socialism.

 As we are Marxists who can see in capitalist nationalist movements nothing but capitalist nationalism. We urge workers everywhere to oppose their own capitalist class from the outset and build up their own independent organisations.  The Irish workers have gained nothing by helping the republican movement. There are yet hardly the beginnings of a genuine working-class movement in Ireland. The war for independence has only embittered the relations between the Irish workers, and workers outside, by stressing racial and religious divisions, and by strengthening the illusion of a common bond between the classes in the Irish Republic. Workers  will fight and die in any cause but their own. It can be said in their defence that they are too inexperienced to know that it is unsafe to trust to the gratitude of governing classes, when gratitude conflicts with class interests. A slave-owning class will be kind, but it will not free its slaves.

Socialists want a society based on common ownership and co-operation and where human needs come first. Socialism will be a society without money. People will work as a social duty, All work is voluntary (‘from each according to their ability’) so wages are unnecessary and cash no longer needed to acquire goods (‘to each according to need.’) Socialism is a system without the market where prices will not exist and where everyone has equal rights to have their needs met with equal access to goods and services. It is a society where all have equal control over decision-making. Socialist society will certainly, for planning how much to produce, need a rough figure for what people are likely to consume over a given period, but this only needs to be measured globally for any district – as, for instance, by a computerised system of stock control or by sample polling – not at the level of each and every individual. Certainly, particularly in the very early days of socialism and perhaps later after some unexpected natural disaster, there could be shortages of some things that might necessitate recourse to some system of rationing for those things. But this would only be exceptional and temporary, the normal situation being free access to goods and services according to self-determined needs.   

Observations of a Canadian Socialist

In August an SPC’er took a trip across Canada to Vancouver. Here are a few of his observations.

In Finns Slough, just outside the Richmond, B.C. city limits people are living in shacks, like third- world squalor. On Gastown Vancouver, it is worse; there are no shacks, they live and sleep on the street, victims of a system that uses people and spits them out when they are no longer productive.

At the intersection of Abbot and Hastings, there are on opposite sides apartments for millionaires and those for the almost destitute, highlighting capitalism’s glaring contradictions between wealth and poverty. Near the coast, there is, under construction, a building which looks about 2 square miles in area. It will be to receive goods coming in from that great capitalist power, so-called communist China. 

I stayed at a very nice and small hotel the Delta Inn which is in Delta, B.C. and is close to a network of main roads and highways. Because of its accessibility, it will soon be torn down and a casino will be built. The almighty buck rules. Sydney on Vancouver Island is a very nice small coastal town, buts it’s not so nice at night when the tides out. The ocean floor is covered with garbage which is dumped there by ocean liners. The local folk are not amused.

Racist attitudes are common among Vancouverites. They feel bitter about Asian immigrants buying property there and call it, "The Asian Invasion”. Another way capitalism divides worker against worker. 

While traveling across Canada I noticed how similar the cities looked. Didn’t the authors of the Communist Manifesto, say something to the effect that capitalism seeks to make the world in its own image? The joke being that critics of Socialism have said it would create uniformity.

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

Possibility of change (1998)

Book Review from the June 1998 issue of the SocialistStandard

The Doctrine of DNA by R.C. Lewontin. Penguin Books, £5.99.

Every socialist should read this book. In less than 130 pages one of the co-authors of the excellent Not in Our Genes brilliantly argues against the sociobiologists’ claim that all human existence is controlled by our DNA.

His book, subtitled “Biology & Ideology”, is a collection of radio lectures he gave on CBS. The language is simple and straightforward and demands no specialised knowledge of genetics.

He is devastating when dealing with the role of science in the modern world:

“Science uses commodities and is part of the process of commodity production. Science uses money. People earn their living by science, and as a consequence the dominant social and economic forces in society determine to a large extent what science does and how it does it.”

He shows that despite its limited medical application a great deal of money is being spent on the Human Genome Project. This programme makes great philosophical and social claims that he, as one of the world’s leading geneticists, shows are nonsense. He further claims that the programme is lining the pockets of companies. “No prominent molecular biologist of my acquaintance is without a financial stake in the biotechnology business.”

He is scathing in his attack on claims that there are genes that shape aggression, xenophobia, sexism, and racism. His last chapter “Science as Social Action” is an excellent summation of the pointless “nature or nurture” debate because he takes a thoroughly dialectical view, one that could not be bettered.

Richard Donnelly

Glasgow Branch

Letting capitalism off the hook.

In a 2018 report the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation suggests that “If the rate of population growth slows down, there will be more resources to invest in each African’s health, education and opportunity for all.” 

 A common misconception today is that there are too many people on this planet and that we need to do something about it. The Socialist Party has always insisted that capitalism and not overpopulation is what causes poverty. It is in the parts of Britain which have a low population density which has the lowest living standards in the UK.  Thinly populated Canada boasts one of the world's largest economies. Likewise, Singapore which accommodates millions of people within 50 sq. miles is similarly one of the richest economies in the world. Poverty and population are not linked in any way whatsoever. Capitalism, not people, causes poverty.

Nor is  ‘overpopulation’ the root cause of climate change. It is not people who are are the problem, but society. Not human beings per se, but the way our social life is organised: capitalism. We should be condemning capitalism, not women and the number of children they bear. 

Socialism will very likely improve people's life expectancy, leading to population increases, but rising living standards lead to lower birthrates and longer-term population stability. Once we are living in socialism, the release of human creativity to solve the problem of a finite planet and potential ever-expanding population will provide many strategies that we can't even begin to imagine. New technologies of food production and medicine will be able to do more and more to remove the 'problem' in the first place. The priority is the re-organisation of society and with that in place, any necessity to have a strategy to cope with 'too many people' is actually very distant.  There is no real problem in a socialist society that has its resources rationally planned. Nor is it side-stepping the issue by stating the problem exists only for capitalist society and would not occur in socialism.

The standard non-socialist explanation for world hunger is that there are too many people. In other words, that not enough food can be produced to feed the world's present population. This is just not true. Enough food (in terms of calories and proteins) is already being produced which, if evenly divided, could eliminate hunger and starvation tomorrow. In short, the problem is one of distribution or, rather, of maldistribution. World food production can also be increased well above its present level. Under capitalism, production is for sale on a market. Only those who can pay have their needs met, those who can't pay don't have theirs met. If you've got no money, or not enough money, you're not part of the market, and production ignores you.

The total land area of the planet is about 12 billion hectares, but only 1.3 billion hectares can currently be used as arable land. Even with a population of 10 billion, this would mean 0.13 hectares per person or something over a third of an acre. If farmed by means of intensive horticulture a plot this size could feed dozens. The average yield in England is about eight tonnes of wheat per hectare per year, enough to feed a couple of dozen people; so the 0.13 hectare per person available once global population settles down would be plenty to feed three or four. The conclusion of such calculations is inescapable: even without genetically-modified crops, the Earth can produce more than enough to feed likely future populations.

No doubt, it will be argued that food is not a finite resource but in regards to those the excessive consumption of both renewal and non-renewable resources and the release of waste that nature can’t absorb that currently go on are not just accidental but an inevitable result of capitalism’s very nature. Endless “growth” – and the growing consumption of nature- given materials this involves – is built in to capitalism. However, this is not the growth of useful things as such but rather the growth of money-values.

Socialism is about eventually creating what some call a "steady-state economy" or "zero-growth". A situation where human needs are in balance with the resources needed to satisfy them. Such a society would already have decided on the most appropriate way to allocate resources to meet the needs of its members. This having been done, it would only need to go on repeating this continuously from production period to production period. Production would not be ever-increasing but would be stabilised at the level required to satisfy needs. All that would be produced would be products for consumption and the products needed to replace and repair the raw materials and instruments of production used up in producing these consumer goods. The point about such a situation is that there will no longer be any imperative need to develop productivity. In a stable society such as socialism, needs would most likely change relatively slowly. What it means is that we should construct permanent, durable means of production which you don’t constantly innovate. We would use these to produce durable equipment and machinery and durable consumer goods designed to last for a long time, designed for minimum maintenance and made from materials which if necessary can be re-cycled. In this way we would get a minimum loss of materials; once they’ve been extracted and processed they can be used over and over again. It also means that once you’ve achieved satisfactory levels of consumer goods, you don’t insist on producing more and more. Total social production could even be reduced. This will be the opposite of to-day. Society would move into a stable mode, a rhythm of daily production in line with daily needs with no significant growth which would reconcile two great needs, the need to live in material well being whilst looking after the planet.

On scarcity, it's the same. We deny there will be a problem. Well, not the degree that's being claimed by critics.

First, we have to define what scarcity is. Orthodox economics argue it is limited supply - versus- boundless demand. Our wants are essentially “infinite” and the resources to meet them, limited, claim the economists. They claim that without the guidance of prices socialism would sink into inefficiency. According to the argument, scarcity is an unavoidable fact of life. And that's what the text-books describe economics as - the allocation of scarce resources.

However, outside the class-room and in the real world, abundance is not a situation where an infinite amount of every good could be produced. Similarly, scarcity is not the situation which exists in the absence of this impossible total or sheer abundance. Abundance is a situation where productive resources are sufficient to produce enough wealth to satisfy human needs, while scarcity is a situation where productive resources are insufficient for this purpose. Abundance is a relationship between supply and demand, where the former exceeds the latter. Achieving abundance can be understood as the maintenance of an adequate buffer of stock in light of possible future demand. The relative abundance or scarcity of a good would be indicated by how easy or difficult it was to maintain such an adequate buffer stock in the face of a demand trend (upward, static, or downward). It will thus be possible to choose how to combine different factors for production, and whether to use one rather than another, on the basis of their relative abundance/scarcity.

How do we tell when something is becoming scarce? We use the tools and systems that capitalism bequeathed us, which will be suitably modified and adapted and transformed for the new conditions. There are stock or inventory control systems and logistics. The key to good stock management is the stock turnover rate – how rapidly stock is removed from the shelves – and the point at which it may need to be re-ordered. So its a matter of simply monitoring the shelves. The maintenance of surplus stocks would provide a buffer against unforeseen fluctuations in demand. In a particular situation of actual physical shortage we can use substitution and by what's described as the law of the minimum - you economise most on those factors of production that are relatively scarcest.

In essence, overpopulation is not a problem. Poverty is. 

Systematic Mental Health Problems

More than 5,800 Canadian children and youth have died by suicide during the past 13 years, some as young as 8, according to data compiled by the Ryerson School of Journalism in Toronto.

Since 2007 emergency department mental health visits for patients aged 5 to 24 have increased by 66 per-cent. One in 12 was given mood/anxiety or antipsychotic medication. Hospitalizations due to intentional self-harm increased by 102 per-cent for girls aged 10 to 17 between 2009 and 2014, which was 4 times higher than boys.

 Nobody seems to know what’s causing this, though bullying is a definite factor, which has increased through social media — in other words through one click of the button.

 As for prevention, Kimberly Moran, the head of Children’s Mental Health Ontario said, ”There needs to be counselling and therapy for moderate mental health issues as well as specialized mental health services for those who may be suicidal and require 24/7 intensive treatment”, which may be alright as far as it goes but doesn’t go nearly far enough.

 An economic system which doesn’t cause people to have severe mental health problems would be a better answer.

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

Price Barriers On Humanity

Numbers released in August by the various transit commissions across Canada, state that since 2007 there have been 1,235 track level deaths on railway corridors in Canada. 

Experts say these numbers would not be so bad if transit agencies installed platform-edge barriers which are a series of sliding doors barring access to the tracks. They open once the train has stopped. 

The head of the Amalgamated Transit Union of Canada, Paul Thorp said,” Such barriers should be in place nationwide. Any transit agency that is not putting in these barriers due to financial costs needs to stop putting a price on humanity”. 

Under capitalism money counts, people don’t.

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

We need a socialist party

The Socialist Party is the political expression of the interests of the workers. The Socialist Party seeks to organise the working class for independent action on the political field for the revolutionary aim of putting an end to exploitation and class rule. Such political action is absolutely necessary to the emancipation of the working class, and the establishment of genuine liberty for all. To accomplish this aim of the Socialist Party is to bring about the common ownership and democratic control of all the necessary means of production — to eliminate profit, rent, and interest, to change our class-riven society into a society of equals, in which the interest of one will be the interest of all.

The economic basis of present-day society is the private ownership and control of socially necessary means of production, and the exploitation of the workers, who operate these means of production for the profit of those who own them. The interests of these two classes are diametrically opposed. It is the interest of the capitalist class to maintain the present system and to obtain for themselves the largest possible share of the product of labor. It is the interest of the working class to improve their conditions of life and get the largest possible share of their own product so long as the present system prevails and to end this system as quickly as they can. In so far as the members of the opposing classes become conscious of these facts, each strives to advance its own interests as against the other. It is this active conflict of interest which we describe as the class struggle or the class war. The capitalists control the powers of the state and use them to secure and entrench its position. Without such control of the state, its position of economic power would be untenable. The workers must wrest the control of the government from the hands of the masters and use its powers in the building of the new social system, the cooperative commonwealth.

 Struggle after struggle develops of the workers against capitalism for the needs of life. The Labour Party and the trade unions offer no answer. For if capitalism itself is the cause of our miseries, no policy of patching up capitalism can avail. Policy after policy is desperately tried by capitalism and thrown aside in failure. There is no future on the basis of capitalism. Unless we overthrow capitalism, perhaps only the destruction of the planet await us. The battle between the workers’ needs and capitalism grows ever fiercer. It can only end in social revolution. Capitalism has no solution. Only the working-class, only socialism can bring the solution. Only Socialism can cut through the bonds of capitalist property rights and organise production to meet human needs. Once capitalism is overthrown, then and only then can production be organised in common for all, and every increase in production bring increasing abundance and leisure for all. This is the aim of the Socialist Party. Only the organised working-class can fight and destroy the power of the capitalist class, can drive the capitalists from possession, can organise social production. 

The first necessity is the working-class conquest of political power. Without power, no change. But what do we mean by “power”? Do we mean simply a change of government? No. What is in question is not simply a change of government on top, but a change of class power; since our purpose, is not simply to carry through one or two legislative measures, but to change the whole class-nature of existing society. The capitalists own the means of production; the rest of us live at their mercy, depend on them for the means of life, we are in literal fact wage-slaves in their daily lives. The change from a Conservative Government to a Labour Government does not affect this one iota. What is needed is a change in class power. The capitalists and their propagandists try to frighten the workers from revolution by holding before them the spectre that revolution means “starvation,” that the workers depend on capitalism for their existence. The contrary is the truth. That the workers can by the method of social revolution rapidly reconstruct and extend production and win prosperity for all.

Socialism - a future for all life on Earth.

Poverty is a violence inflicted by capitalism upon the working class. It brings, as we all know, economic distress, malnutrition, sexism and family disruption, racial divide, national chauvinism and above all demoralisation. Capitalism has only one function and that is to employ and exploit workers for profit.  To exact the greatest amount of profit from workers more and more is the worker made the appendage of the machine and the machines become more costly as the employers vie with each other and their foreign counterparts for a greater share of the markets which depends on production costs being competitive. Thus productivity levels and new technology has become something to be almost worshipped. Technology is, in fact, the creation of the working class. It derives from the skill and the labour of workers whether they be employed in tool-room, drawing office, laboratory, computer departments, or production lines. But the employing class owns it and appropriates the benefits for itself. The manner in which this technology is used in the form of ever more sophisticated machines and plant, the competition to be ahead in the never-ending struggle for markets and hence profit has led to what goes along with increased technology, the growth of giant companies brought about by takeovers and mergers which concentrate capital in fewer hands and put more and more machinery behind fewer and fewer workers. When the term “automation” was coined the social theorists of the capitalist system pontificated about the problems confronting the workers in the greater use of leisure time. In fact the problem has been quite different.

Parliament is an instrument of capitalist class rule. This holds true regardless of the incumbent in Downing Street. To say otherwise is a denial of all historical fact. Whichever party is set to treat the ill they use the same medicine, only varying to some degree the manner of administering it. Were their motives of the highest, and they are not, it would make no difference.  They have no faith in the working class to solve their own problems. 

There will be no future for any of us, socialist or otherwise if global warming is permitted to drastically change the climate. The planet may well not survive environmental collapse before socialism can be established and begin to counter-act its effects. Capitalism cannot save the planet because it sees its natural resources only as commodities to make profits.  But it is not a foregone conclusion that socialism will not be achieved before all the tipping points arrive. Undoing climate change means undoing the commodification of Earth. Capitalism is not a system designed for meeting the needs of human beings. Capitalism is a system that serves capital, and nothing else, certainly not humanity's.  It is possible to meet all the needs of humanity and still allow for the needs of nature, as well. Capitalism cannot do it because it must continuously expand its markets to create new needs for people, in order to extract profit from them. We can protect the planet while maintaining our electricity, medicine, learning, and leisure. Calls to abandon civilisation entirely are doomed to failure.  Those who seek solutions in anti-human and usually racist calls for population control are denying that resources are available for all sections of the population. A socialist society has the capacity to create a  future for all life on Earth. 

Most people used to expect that life in capitalism would inevitably get better: incomes would grow, jobs are more secure and safety at work improve, yet the opposite is happening. Those expectations simply didn’t take into account capitalism’s built-in drive for profit and the competition it brings in its wake. It is the Socialist Party's argument that working-class problems can only be solved by abolishing capitalism, and capitalism can only be abolished after a majority of the population have been won over to want it abolished.  Capitalism masquerading as socialism is a fruit which the workers will find less enticing in future. We seize the opportunity to show that capitalism’s contradictions can only disappear in socialism. Chaos and capitalism go together because of the anarchy of the market mechanism.  At the moment the capitalist economy is in a period of profound disequilibrium and most of the indicators show that it will get worse before it gets better. There is still too much capital seeking not enough profit, leading to unsustainable and potentially catastrophic flights into speculation in the stock and currency markets. The stock markets are in particular danger with another crash a definite possibility, which would see masses of unprofitable capital go to the wall and huge liquidation of existing debts, the primary conditions in fact for a sustainable recovery. The immediate prospects for wage earners pinning their hopes on a recovery don't look good. It would be far better for them to work for the complete abolition of booms and slumps, together with their cause — capitalism.