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Editorial: Save the planet, share the Earth
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Pathfinders:
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Letters
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Cooking the Books I: Who, where or what is NAIRU?
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Wood For The Trees: The Scale Of It All
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Material World: India Goes Dry
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No Outsiders: Class Inclusivity
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Mental Health: In a Mad, Mad World
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Africa: Can it help feed us all?
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Capitalism and Climate Change: Cause and effect
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Game of Thrones: Medieval Clichés
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Reflections on the Tolpuddle Festival
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Easy rider: Remembering Peter Fonda
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Cooking the Books II: The Next War
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Proper Gander: Can’t A Cleaner Like Avocados?
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Reviews
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50 Years Ago: Man Ape in Wolfs Clothing?
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Meetings
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Rear View
- Free Lunch
Sunday, September 01, 2019
Socialist Standard No. 1390 September 2019
Saturday, August 31, 2019
Workers have a world to win, not a nation to fight for.
So
the pro-Irish nationalists in Glasgow were met with opposition from
British loyalists.
The Irish Unity march,
led by the James Connolly Republican Flute Band, was met by counter
demonstrators which resulted, according to the police, in "significant
disorder" along Govan Road and the deployment of riot police to
separate the two factions. Once more the toxic politics of nationalism
poisons the atmosphere.
Workers
in Scotland need socialism, not independence. Nationalists do
not want to abolish capitalist exploitation. A sovereign Scotland or
an United Ireland can only serve capitalism. To pretend that the UK
Union is the cause of all the problems is to deliberately fool the
people.
Nationalism is an attempt to rally the working
class behind the cause of the local bosses seeking better profits or
a more secure market. Nationalism does not oppose capitalism.
Nationalists acts in the interests of an aspiring ruling class.
There are no shortcuts to the socialist revolution, and those who
followthe nationalist path set back the revolutionary movement by
chasing fake enemies. Nationalism is predicated on the myth of a
common identity uniting all the citizens of a given country. This has
been cynically and opportunistically promoted by the Scottish and Irish nationalists.
The
Socialist Party wants to abolish the private ownership of the means
of production and expropriate the capitalists. Workers fight each
other instead of attacking the system itself. Nationalism emasculates
the workers. It is used to divide the workers among themselves so
they can ignore their real enemy. Separatism would divide the workers
of Scotland from their fellow-workers in England and Ireland. National divisions
are a hindrance to working-class unity, and national jealousies and
differences are fostered by the capitalists for their own ends.
It
is nationalism that divides the workers so that the workers of one
nationality struggle against the workers of another nationality for a
few illusory crumbs the rulers throw out exactly for that purpose. If
the working class divides its forces, this can only seriously hold
back its victory. But if it remains unified, it will be able to
triumph.
In
the struggle to win the hearts and minds of the working class the
Socialist Party has to contend with sacred beliefs and obstacles such
as nationalism, the loyalty and patriotism felt by many for "their”
country. Nationalism is at the top of the list of political illusions
used to blind capitalism's victims. For the Socialist Party
nationalist movements represent the interests of the capitalist
class but politically they can take on a "right-wing" or a
"left-wing" form. The Scottish nationalists choose to
present themselves as the latter. However, once the native ruling
class has captured and consolidated its power, then nationalism
becomes a conservative force. Workers should reject the nonsense idea
of nationalism and should unite for their common good to abolish
capitalism and work for socialism.
The
Socialist Party opposes all nationalist movements recognising that
the working class has no country. Feelings of loyalty to a
nation-state are purely subjective, having no basis in reality. The
working class in Scotland has more in common with the workers in
other countries than it has with a land-owning laird. We resolutely
oppose the politics of capitalism in which some people support the
British version of nationalism against the Scottish brand of
nationalism. Since we hold that workers own no country, why should we
care which section of the class of thieves owns which national
portion of the world? Workers own no country, so why should we care
which section of the class of thieves owns which national portion of
the world?
You
don’t enhance the power of workers in their economic struggles
against the capitalists by taking the same side as those sitting
opposite you at the negotiating table and fraternally regarding them
as your 'fellow citizens'. Yet depressingly large swathes of the Left
have opted for a course of action that effectively submerges and
obliterates working class identity in favour of national identity. We
witnessed the Scottish Socialist Party convenor sit alongside a
hedge-fund manager in the 2014 referendum. And back in history James Connolly took the working class Citizens Army and allied it with those who only a few years earlier it was formed to resist.
The obsession about
Scottish independence is one which socialists meet all the time. We
encounter it from Leftists who divide their time between paying lip
service to the idea of workers of the world uniting and endorsing the
nationalism of the SNP or Sinn Fein. Nationalists have always argued that workers would be better off in their own country, free from British
rule. Socialists regard it as an irrelevance whether local capitalism
is ruled by a Scottish/Irish capitalist state or by a British capitalist
state or the multinational corporations..
For
the worker in there is but one hope. It is to make common
cause with the workers of other countries for the end of all forms
of exploitation: saying to both English and Scottish and Irish capitalists: “A
plague on all your houses."
For
the true battle-cry of the working class is broader, more significant
and more inspiring than mere nationalism, and that rallying cry is:
THE WORLD FOR THE WORKERS!
WORKERS FOR THE WORLD!
Friday, August 30, 2019
The real future of the Earth
Socialism
is a call for sharing and caring, and is a product of love for people
and desire for beauty. Socialism does not seek to rape the planet
and does not worship profits at the expense of people and nature. It
has its basis in social democracy and the nature-based, materialist
outlook
which grew out of a deep reverence for and understanding of the real,
natural, ever-changing, material world.
Socialist
philosophy places mind-feelings-ideas in their physical and
historical context as effects, not as basic causes. Yes, ideas and
feelings can change the world, but people must still have bodies
before their minds and emotions can function. Matter itself can
neither be created nor destroyed, but all matter–in nature, society
and the human mind–changes constantly through tension and
contradiction. All things are interdependent and in a continual
process of coming into being, changing and passing away. The
capitalist system itself was born, matured and will die, because of
its inherently contradictory nature–social
production (by large groups of workers assembled in one plant)on the
one hand, and private,
capitalist ownership and appropriation of profit on the other. The
application of the materialist dialectic to history
is called historical materialism–a revolutionary science of
society. It is the sociology of institutional changes caused by the
interplay and conflict between the developing productive forces and
the kind of world created by this technology.
Historical
materialism teaches that all social life is evolutionary and
revolutionary, and that human beings can learn to understand nature,
production and social relations, and change them in a rational
manner. The kind of economy we live in determines the nature and
level of our laws, government, culture, ideas, feelings and ethics.
The
competitive, class warfare system of capitalist production produces
a destructive, anti-human science and culture.
Socialism is infused with equality, fraternity and liberty.
Historical
materialism promotes the synthesis of ecological balance, social
harmony, personal freedom and material comfort that is mankind's
birthright. A loaf of bread, the work of the farmer, the activity of
a baker or the equipment for baking are not just material objects or
processes. They are nodes in the network of social connections: the
customer’s relationship with the baker, the farmer who produced the
wheat, the engineering worker who made the machinery, and so on. All
these lives are bound together. To be human is to be both social and
at the same time a particular individual, a person. You have a unique
place in the world: you speak a particular language in your own
inimitable manner, you like food or music of a particular sort, and
so on. None of the things which make you exactly who you are exists
except through the entire history of humankind. We can be conscious
of our own humanity only because, and to the extent that, we act
humanly, and that means creating ourselves. We are not some kind of
machine, nor are we passive victims of evolutionary history, governed
by ‘instincts’ which can never be understood or controlled. What
distinguishes humanity from the rest of nature is the conscious,
active
relationship we have with everything else, with each other and with
ourselves. No
human individual is an isolated entity. Each human is – potentially
– a ‘social individual’, and a ‘universal individual’. The
human individual is free, self-created, but only in his or her true,
social being.
Capitalism
has produced many things, good and bad, in the course of its
evolution. But the most vital and valuable of all the social forces
it has created is the working class. The capitalist class brought
into existence a vast army of wage workers and set it into motion
for its own purposes, to make and operate the machinery, factories,
and all the other production and transportation facilities from which
employers profits emanate. The exploitation and abuses, inherent and
inescapable in the capitalist organisation of economic life, provoke
the workers time and time again to organise themselves and undertake
militant action to defend their elementary interests. The struggle
between these conflicting social classes is today the dominant and
driving force of world and history. The class conflict is the
motivating force of history. It is the working-class that, if
mobilised, can change the direction of political activism.
Socialism
is the anathema of the ruling class. It has become the powerful tool
of the exploited and oppressed in the struggle to overthrow
capitalism. The real battle line lies between capitalists (of all
colours) and the workers (of all colours). The only alternative to
socialist revolution is a bleak defeatism, to passively accept the
inevitability of eco-catastrophe is not revolution. And nothing can be
more impossible than the goal of nationalist self-survival on a
ruined planet. This is the politics of
despair, pie-in-the-sky.
But scarcity and privation need not be the future. There is a better
way for suffering humanity – to go forward together to establish
the democratic common ownership of the means of producing life’s
necessities. Many environmentalists are not yet ready for this and
blame the conventional scapegoats of overpopulation for problems,
blinded by all-too-commonplace prejudices and mistaken analysis. The
Socialist Party does not retreat into a bunker mentality of
isolationism but will strive to flourish along with a liberated
humanity as a whole.
Thursday, August 29, 2019
Rangers and Sectarianism Again
Rangers are "liaising" with Uefa after being sanctioned for "racist behaviour" during the first leg of their Europa League play-off tie with Legia Warsaw in Poland last Thursday. Rangers have already been ordered to close part of Ibrox for Thursday's second leg after a similar breach in their first-round tie against St Joseph's on 18 July. Rangers have to leave at least 3,000 seats empty and display a banner with "#EqualGame". Rangers could face a euro 50,000 fine and the prospect of playing a tie behind closed doors if there is a further breach.
Manager Steven Gerrard has "pleaded" with Rangers fans to "behave in the right manner."
"Our supporters have been asked repeatedly by the club to refrain from indulging in this, and other forms of unacceptable behaviour," said a statement from the Scottish club. "Sadly, the warnings have fallen on deaf ears..."
Looking forward, not backward.
Capitalism
creates a situation where large masses of the people are
dissatisfied, embittered, emboldened by intolerable hardships.
Capitalism itself prepares the conditions for social evolution. The
overthrow of the the capitalist system, grows out of the
misery brought on by the crisis of capitalism. When
we struggle against capitalism we are doing what is right and just
for the future of humanity. In a class-free
society
there
is nobody to suppress or keep in check. Class distinctions are done
away with and both riches and poverty are being abolished.
Exploitation of man by man is abolished. The rule “let each person
work according to ability; let each person receive from the common
stock of goods according to need” is established.
A
revolution in technology has occurred and is still in process. It is
impossible for this system of private ownership and profit to
function, to supply the needs of the population today. The capitalist
system acts as a brake upon production so that, as the phrase goes,
you have “want in the midst of plenty.” socialism is i a
worldwide economy. Every effort to establish “planned” production
under private capitalism breaks down, since the competition between
rival capitalists, within a nation and capitalist groups in different
nations disrupts such efforts.The expansion of capitalism comes from
the accumulate profits. Profits can only be made by fiercer
exploitation, cutting down the living standards, of the people,
taking away even such concessions as were previously
made.
Capitalism today means environmental destruction, continuous conflicts, possibly leading to the eventual collapse of civilisation. The one road to security, to peace, to freedom, to cultural advancement is the road to socialism. This is your choice – capitalist chaos or world socialism. Socialism is the order of the day throughout the world. Only the working class is capable of saving humanity from barbarism.
For
the reformists they all believe that the capitalist class (usually
referred to simply as "business interests") creates wealth
rather than legally steals it from those who do actually create it —
the working class. They all believe that the free market and
competition offers the most efficient and viable method of producing
wealth ever conceived by humankind, despite the untold misery it has
caused but can't do anything about. They all believe in state
repression of those who try to resist the system or who are denied
access to wealth on the grounds that they are not part of "the
business community", and who commit terrible crimes like joining
trade unions to defend their meagre interests in the market place.
They all believe in the
necessity of a "strong defence
capability” to safeguard the interests of Britain and the British —
a Britain where one person owns more wealth than nineteen of the rest
of us put together on average and where the majority's stake in "the
national interest" is little more than a huge mortgage and a
second-hand car. And they all believe that they — the guides and
beneficent manipulators of our economic and moral interests are
capable of bringing wealth and success to the mass of the population.
They do nothing to offer real hope, real encouragement or a real
sense that things can be different. They merely reinforce the spread
of scepticism and apathy among an already downhearted and dispirited
working class.
The
Socialist Party is a revolutionary Marxian party, whose aim is the
organisation of the working class for the transformation of the
existing social system. All of its activities and methods are
subordinated to this aim and are designed to serve it. A political
organisation that proclaims that it is the party of the working class
will consider its primary task is to go talk to the workers, and will
clarify socialist ideas by explaining the important changes in
society, and the need for the workers to lead themselves in all their
actions, not an outside party substituting themselves for the working
class. The socialist revolution is the first revolution aimed at a
consciously planned overthrow of existing society. That is, it does
not seek to return to a previous era, like the slave, nor does it
seek to merely legalise its political domination of society in a
situation where an economic transfer of power has already taken
place, as had occurred in England in the seventeenth century and in
France in the eighteenth century. Like other revolutions, the working
class revolution grows out of class antagonisms, but the workers’
revolution does not stop at the political seizure of power. It
continues overthrowing all existing human relationships and brings
the whole working class into self-activity. The socialist revolution
can only conclude with the construction of a global class-free
society. Those workers who today already recognise the necessity of
socialism ought to take the next step and join the Socialist Party on
its path towards the revolutionary goal. Our road is indeed not a
smooth one. We are still faced with many hard tests. But in this
great cause we have voluntarily dedicated ourselves. The Socialist
Party does not constitute a huge political force and we are not as
yet a political pressure to be truly reckoned with — but the
Socialist Party offers one thing - the scientific and
logically-arrived at view that is able to account for society as it
is and has a clear, practical vision of how it really could be.
Without us it would indeed be a cynical, cold and miserable outlook
for humanity. With us — and more importantly with you —
organising for genuine change, there could yet be a ray of hope. We
still wait for the real, significant revolt of understanding and
which will sweep away capitalism.
Wednesday, August 28, 2019
We can make the changes
Putrefying
capitalism is
deadlocked.
They
know their system has failed - and they have no answers. The
capitalist
class have no perspective to offer society other than even more of
that which is causing the problems. Possibly the most profound trend
that is now emerging and rapidly advancing is not necessarily the
recent decline in profitability of the wages system of production,
but a decline rather in the confidence of the ruling class to
convince us of the validity of their system. Yet for
its part, the working class has been unable to implement its own
historic solution to the contradictions of capitalist society –
world socialism. How much longer can this malaise continue? Only
as long as we want it to! There is a solution. It is founded firstly
in an understanding of the basis of our insecurity and exploitation,
which is the world system of production
for profit.
That is the Capitalist Mode of Production. We must think and
discuss this fundamental fetter upon humanity constantly in a
spirit of openness, and keep in close touch with what other
people are thinking. And it is to be found in a rejuvenated
working class solidarity which rejects reforms and palliatives in
order to keep us a bit sweeter in the short term. It also resides in
a genuine desire to learn and to educate ourselves about the
potential we have within us.
We need not sell our bodies and mental
capacities to mendacious capitalists. Make no mistake, the wealth of
the ruling capitalist elite is founded upon extracting surplus
value from the labour of workers. We can make the world for the
majority and no longer be slaves to the wages system of production.
Our common endeavour can create a democratic world society in which
production will be based upon need and not elitist profit, we can
abolish money and utilise the resources of the earth for the benefit
of all, no matter how disempowered some of our fellow world citizens
may seem to be today. Rather than acquiesce to the ruling class which
will only see us sink further into the gutter, let us aspire to a new
form of society in which hope trumps desperation and the world
socialist future is the only way forward for all of us.
It
is a disgraceful indictment of a so-called civilised society. Poverty
can be replaced by plenty, war, hunger and worry can
be supplanted to the past as a rational, state-free, money-free,
co-operative world society becomes the true expression of our
common will. A form of society which has never before existed. And
the Earth will belong to us all. It's our choice. If we vote for
more rulers and the continued ownership of the world by a
handful of people then it doesn't really matter how politicians share
the spoils. But if the workers of the world used the vote to
positively reject false choices we will be further on the road
towards a truly democratic society.
If we vote to make the wealth of the world common property in which we all have an equal say, then we can finally have socialism - on a world scale. We can put an end to minority rule, and we can organise our common affairs in our own interest. Capitalism can be defeated once everyone decides it can be beaten. And then we can set about organising a higher and more human form of society in a completely new way. We can collectively build and create a new and truly democratic world society in which production is for need and not for profit, in which people co-operate rather than compete to produce the necessities of life.
If we vote to make the wealth of the world common property in which we all have an equal say, then we can finally have socialism - on a world scale. We can put an end to minority rule, and we can organise our common affairs in our own interest. Capitalism can be defeated once everyone decides it can be beaten. And then we can set about organising a higher and more human form of society in a completely new way. We can collectively build and create a new and truly democratic world society in which production is for need and not for profit, in which people co-operate rather than compete to produce the necessities of life.
The Socialist Party stands for a world society in which human ingenuity and creativity will be placed at the secular altar of majority Human need and not the pyre of minority Capitalist expropriation. It is not about trying to reform or regulate a social system which has reached its useful objective limits, it is about creating a new world society. We therefore need to keep in touch with what other people who share our thinking that the only viable future for the human race lies – in that post-capitalist society of common ownership of the world. It is impossible to be neutral in this debate.
Come
on - Lets do it!
Monday, August 26, 2019
Our Planet. Our Future
CLIMATE CHANGE v. SYSTEM CHANGE |
• A ban on petrol and diesel-powered cars in all city centres by 2030
• Establishing four green, low-carbon city investment deals
• A £100m fund to decarbonise farming
• Establishing four green, low-carbon city investment deals
• A £100m fund to decarbonise farming
• Regional land use plans to maximise the countryside’s role in cutting CO2 emissions
• A public information campaign to promote climate-friendly, lower meat and dairy diet
• A public information campaign to promote climate-friendly, lower meat and dairy diet
The Socialist Party tries to explain that the
climate change crises are not exceptional aberrations but are an
inevitable consequence of the capitalist system. We say society's prosperity and the planet's well-being can only be guaranteed by world socialism. We perceive a dark future when we witness how national self-interest as in the case of Brasil's Bolsonaro permits the willful burning of the Amazon rainforest and how the America First policies of Trump can dismiss and disregard environmental concerns.
No part of the world is unaffected by climate change. In contrast to the destructive anarchy of capitalist competition which reinforces the divides between countries, classes, and cultures, a cooperative worldwide commonwealth would put an end to the unchecked power and authority exercised by both governments and corporate powers. New techniques of transportation and communication should facilitate a world in which the entire population could be cooperating in the creation of the good society. Of course, nothing of the kind is taking place.
The Socialist Party recognises the urgent need to tackle global warming and climate change but views the proposals presented to the Scottish government by the environmentalists as a mere well-intentioned gesture. It is fiddling while the world burns.
People have to understand the cause of
global warming. Capitalism is the
impersonal process of the accumulation of capital out of the surplus value
produced by the wage-working class and involves competition to transform this
surplus value into money by selling the products in which it is embodied. This
battle is won by those enterprises that can sell their products at the lowest
price due to their employment of more productive methods. This investment in
new productive methods depends on making enough profits (converting enough
surplus value into money). So, capitalism is the pursuit of profits to
accumulate as more capital. Such “growth” is built into it and cannot be
stopped. If ever it was, the whole system would seize up and there would by
massive worldwide economic crises. What is required to stabilise the rise in
temperature is a global political and social revolution to end capitalism and
put “mankind” in full charge of its interaction with the rest of nature
(production). Which can only be done on the basis of the Earth’s natural and
industrial resources becoming the common heritage of all humanity. To this end, the Socialist Party is organised.
1) If we do have
a chance of survival, it is contingent on the establishment of world socialism.
If capitalism continues indefinitely, then sooner or later we are doomed.
2) The sooner we
establish socialism the better. But better late than never.
3) The climatic and environmental threat to
human survival will come to occupy central place among the concerns that
inspire people to work for socialism, overshadowing all else.
GOVERNMENT ACTION
FALSE HOPE DESPERATE DREAMS
|
Our Struggle is for Socialism
Socialism
is the direct opposite of the capitalist system. It is no more
possible to have "a little bit of socialism" within a world
based on minority class monopoly of the means of wealth production
and distribution than it would be to be a little bit pregnant. A
"little bit” amounts to a programme to reform capitalism and
these efforts have repeatedly come to very little except cosmetic
superficial changes. Such hopes are illusory. Progressive liberal
left-wingers if elected to run capitalism cannot but bow to the needs
of profitability. If the only feasible road to socialism is through
reforms, and if, after seven decades, capitalism is still here, where
is the evidence that the road is anything but a dead-end? The
naive plans to reform capitalism through cooperatives are merely to
decentralise and democratise capitalist exploitation. There
will be no wage labour-capital relationship in socialist society. It
would be ludicrous to envisage world socialism as a command economy
run by a bureaucracy on a central plan. Clearly, common ownership
will require a democracy organised by the majority, where decisions
about society by its citizens are made on the basis of full
information and consultation.
You
are the men and women who run society from top to bottom; who belong
to class which produces wealth but does not posses it. We address you
for two reasons:
Firstly,
because it is only by spreading ideas to the majority that we will
ever achieve real social change – leaders can’t do it for us; and
Secondly,
because socialists know that only when workers raise their political
sights will they achieve a society capable of satisfying human needs.
The
struggle against the exploiters is part of the class conflict endemic
to capitalism. As socialists, we recognise that the task before all
workers is not to win this or that skirmish or gain a few concessions
which the capitalist class can well afford; our objective in the
class war is to win it. Capitalism is a worldwide social order and
workers of all lands have a common interest in joining together
against the common foe. The ownership of the land and the means of
production and distribution gives the capitalists their power. The
only way to break that power is to force them to relinquish their
hold upon the means by which all the people live. The capitalist
class are irreconcilable enemies, not only will we have to fight
them as such always but we will have to end their existence
absolutely, before we can all enjoy of the full fruit of our labour.
What
is a job, fellow workers, but wage slavery? Fighting to be exploited
– to be dependent on a wage at the end of the week – having to
sell your labour-power to the highest parasitical bidder. Is that
really the most that we can ask for? As Marxists, we fight not for
jobs but for emancipation from a system which turns useful work into
wage slavery. There will never be fair capitalism. There will still
be a class-divided society, with the wealth-producing majority living
in an economically inferior condition. The fact is that there is a
bigger battle to be won.
The
Socialist Party does not put forward any already devised blueprints,
but will leave it to the workers who establish socialism to make the
plans. We agree that most plans can be made locally but, under
capitalism, workers’ initiatives are constantly inhibited by the
fetters of the profit system. We have a policy which is to abolish
capitalism and establish a world free of class division,
exploitation, property relationships, poverty, war and wage slavery.
Those aims are urgent and we are not going to be deterred in
struggling resolutely for them by those who tell us we should unite
with the opportunists on the Left who only seek to eradicate the
“nasty little bits” of capitalism and leave the rest of it
intact. The Socialist Party appeals to our fellow-workers join the
party which defines socialism with clarity, fights for the new system
with enthusiasm and remains uncompromisingly hostile to the
apologists for capitalism. Work with us for the capture of the
political machinery as the necessary preliminary to the capture of
all the machinery of wealth production.
There
are no answers short of social revolution will do if the problems of
the working class are to be abolished from the face of the earth.
Society should be run for the wealth producers, but under capitalism
that can never happen. One thing our fellow-workers can be sure of:
when employer and employee are in open conflict, the Socialist Party
takes the side of the robbed against the robbers. For it is only
through the conscious solidarity of workers, that the system of
legalised robbery will be compelled to make way for the reign of
united humanity.
Sunday, August 25, 2019
A SOCIALIST WORLD
The
Socialist Party openly declare our aims, our perspective, and our
attitude. We have come together to work for socialism. Everything we
do is a step towards socialism. Today all roads should lead to
socialism.
The
world today is a place of bewildering contradictions. The greatest
industrial and agricultural power in history cannot feed, house and
provide a decent life for billions of people who toil away just to
survive, while billionaires squander fortunes. Poverty and economic
insecurity exist alongside extravagance. Our world suffers horrible
degradation and exploitation. Why is there such an agonising gap
between what is and what could be, between the promises and the
potential. The stark reality and our despair cries out for the
welfare of humanity. The capitalist system under which we live is
responsible. Its exploitation, violence, racism and war stifles our
lives. The rich have one basic goal in life: to make more and more
profits, and they accomplish this by dominating economics, politics,
and culture. Capitalism thrives on the private or State control of
society’s wealth and production. It is an irrational and unjust
system. But need not have to be this way.
We
can change our lives and society. We can end exploitation and
injustice, by overthrowing the capitalists. We can replace capitalism
with a rational and humane system – socialism. Socialism where
social wealth is controlled by society and for the benefit of
society; where the common good, not profits, is the chief concern;
where working people run society. It is time to bury the miseries of
capitalism and we are its grave-diggers. The socialist revolution has
not only become a possibility, it is now a necessity. There is no
other choice today but for the working people to organise to struggle
and, one day, win socialism. By fundamentally changing the social
system socialism will qualitatively improve the lives of the working
people. The people’s movement is stained with the blood of martyrs
as the creativity and toil of workers tried to improve their position
in society, and those struggles can never be fully extinguished
while injustices remain. The people demand
a society without exploitation and discrimination. People protest
against pollution and environmental destruction; the grave dangers of
nuclear war.
Every
person is faced with the choice of either enduring the suffering
brutalisation of capitalism; or joining with others who are
dissatisfied and know that a better society is possible. Women and
men, young and old, and people of all lands are realising we must
unite to survive, to be able to work, eat and live as decent human
beings. If working people, and not the capitalist class controlled
the great resources of our society, we could improve all our lives.
We guarantee a healthy quality of life for all. We could have a
society which basis is equality built on a foundation established for
complete emancipation. We could live in a society that is not
preparing constantly for war and self-extinction.
These
are the hopes of the Socialist Party. These are the aspirations that
encourage us forward. Much has changed since our organisation saw the
light of day one thing is still the same: There are classes and
exploitation of the working people is continuing. As long as there
are class-differences there will be need for a revolutionary
socialist party. The party’s aim is socialism where all oppression
and exploitation of man, all class-differences are vanished. Our
party therefore will fight with peaceful means for the interests of
the working people. In its struggle for a new society, the Socialist
Party seeks to attain its objectives by peaceful and orderly means.
The Socialist Party asks all workers who agree with us, to contact us
and join in the party’s work. We must carry on the class struggle
against capitalism, until we are in control as workers of all
political and industrial power.
Saturday, August 24, 2019
Quarter of employed struggling
A survey for Citizens Advice Scotland (CAS) found the number of workers finding it hard financially has risen since 2017.
Of employed adults in Scotland polled, it found 24% were either finding it difficult or very difficult to live on their present income.
6% said they were very comfortable.
The charity said the latest figures highlight a "continuing squeeze" on incomes from the rising cost of living, stagnant wages and cuts to social security.
Of employed adults in Scotland polled, it found 24% were either finding it difficult or very difficult to live on their present income.
6% said they were very comfortable.
The charity said the latest figures highlight a "continuing squeeze" on incomes from the rising cost of living, stagnant wages and cuts to social security.
CAS chief executive Derek Mitchell said: "These figures highlight the strain that people are under in Scotland and reflect what our advisers see every day. Many people who are in work are finding it hard to pay their bills and put food on the table..."
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-49452682
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