Memories

Letters to the Editors from the February 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Comrades,
It was a pleasure to read your article on “The Politics of Class War”. The subject was dealt with very sympathetically and I hope that any members of the CWF who happen to read it. take up your offer to discuss their views further.

Although the article stated that the CWF attracted the attention of the tabloids down South, I had never heard of them or seen any reference to their organization in the Scottish Press—although, admittedly, I am out of touch with political affairs.

Nonetheless, their viewpoint as stated in your article seemed familiar. About fifty years ago when 1 was active in working class politics, there was a European organization—I think they called themselves “Council Communists" or Spartacists (I can’t recall which)—whose literature was sold by a Glasgow organization the "Workers Open Forum”. The “Open Forum” was just that—an open forum which provided a platform for all shades of working class opinion. Every Sunday evening workers could go to the Open Forum and hear speakers from the SPGB. the SLP, the ILP, the CPGB, the Anarchist Federation, the RCP and the Labour Party. Its committee also organized debates between the various organizations mentioned. Literature from these organizations was sold at all these meetings. As you will appreciate there was little opposition from the “Telly" in those days and the meetings were well attended.

It was at these meetings that I obtained the literature of the Council Communists and, speaking from a somewhat snaky memory, I recollect that their views were similar to the CWF. The exponents of their case that I most remember were Anton Pannekoek, a Dutch astronomer, who dealt with philosophical and scientific matters, and Paul Mattick who dealt with economics. I remember them mostly for their articles in the Western Socialist.

I further recollect that they organized a meeting, either in Paris or Amsterdam, to which the SPGB was invited as an observer. The Executive Committee of that time (some forty or so years ago) declined the invitation. At the time I thought the EC were mistaken in their attitude but I can no longer remember the arguments.

Can it be that the CWF are the modern counterparts of the Council Communists? Whether they are nor not, I hope that your invitation to a dialogue is taken up.
Bob Russell
Glasgow


Reply:
As far as we know there is no direct connexion between the Council Communist group you mention and Class War— Editors.

Let us work towards the cooperative commonwealth

The Labour Party in action has been making state capitalism, not socialism.  It abandoned the class struggle and became a social reform movement, occupied by parliaments and legislation, a movement for government ownership and the extension of the functions of the State generally. The Labour Party struck compromise after compromise, made concession after concession to placate the ruling class and to secure the support of non-socialists. It relegated the fundamentals of socialism to fancy speeches of a faraway future. The Labour Party has become a fetter upon the revolutionary development of the working class.

The Socialist Party is a class party. It frankly admits that as a political organisation is but an expression of class interest. It exists for the sole purpose of representing the producers of wealth, that is to say, the working class. The Socialist Party, with its clear cut and understandable discussion of the class struggle is the political expression of the dispossessed class.  it alone holds out any hope of liberation from the rent, interest, and profit wage-slavery. Representing, as it does, the working and dispossessed class of the state, and having for its program the abolition of the exploitation of the workers through rent, interest, and profit, there can be no compromise between the Socialist Party and the political expression of the owning class of the State. It will be satisfied with nothing less than the common ownership and democratic management of the means and instruments of production and distribution.

 Our fellow-workers may well be at the present time reactionary or apathetic, but if they cannot be won for socialism then socialism itself is impossible. It is for us to do all in our power to win them; to place no obstacles in their way; to sympathise with and support them even in the pettiest struggles in which the class war involves them; until they recognise that their work is futile unless its object is emancipation. The Socialist Party must become and maintain itself as the independent and autonomous representative of revolutionary socialism against all contenders. For this reason may be seen the necessity for rejecting any form of alliance with other parties, nor the acceptance of any reform programme, other than that of revolutionary socialism. 

Our goal is the abolition of poverty by the establishment of a socialist cooperative commonwealth. Socialism is a theory of a system of human society, based on the common ownership of the means of production and the carrying on of the work of production by all for the benefit of all. In other words, socialism means that the land, the railways, the shipping, the mines, the factories, and all such things as are necessary for the production of the necessaries and comforts of life should be common property, just as our public roads, our public parks and our public libraries are public property today, so that all these things should be used by the whole people to produce the goods that the whole of the people require.

Workers when they become socialists do not become different from the rest of the working class. Their change in thought is an evidence of gradual transformation in the working-class movement. They remain of the workers, struggling with them for emancipation. The progress of socialism is governed by the advance of socialist thought among the workers. The Socialist Party of to-day cannot bring socialism. The co-operative commonwealth will be inaugurated by the mass action of the workers. Steadily the workers move along the road to socialism. Circumstances compel them to take that path. Economic laws operate whether they are known or not, but if we understand their operation we can bend them to our purpose and assist society along the course it tends to travel. The Socialist Party must bring this knowledge to our fellow-workers.

The necessity for political action is taken for granted. Whenever the power of the governing class asserts itself, then the workers must fight. The State is the political expression of the dominant class, and since that dominant class uses the machinery of the State—law, justice, coercion—to maintain its own privileges and to impose its will upon the toiling masses, the workers contest their claims by political action. The reason why some socialists participate in the every-day struggle in the industrial field, and yet decline to take a part in political action, is that they regard industrial action as more important than political. That belief is without justification.

Let us hasten to usher in the era of peace and plenty. Wage-slavery will then be but a horrible memory.

Peace between the peoples! War against the exploiters!

A Global Warning.

Anyone who does not think this planet is in a terrible mess must live on another one. In the White House we have a wacko who rules through chaos. Then there is poor little BoJo in number Ten Clowning Street wrestling with the Brexit mess which is one of the silliest situations any section of the capitalist class has ever got themselves into; riots in the streets of Chile; in the U.S. four of the largest drug companies have reached a settlement of $260 million to avoid a trial in which they would be accused of fuelling the opioid crisis; global warming continues, which will eventually cause global freezing by the diversion of ocean currents owing to the melting of the polar ice caps. What has been done to decrease it is a case of too little too late: when industrial giants like the U.S., India and China continue polluting, and the factories that make batteries for electric cars are themselves polluting. Turkey invaded Syria; Iran is making nuclear weapons threatening to wipe Israel off the map, and we can be sure Israel will retaliate likewise. 

Toronto, which used to be called, "There is no wealth but life." ''Toronto the good,'' is now rampant with gang wars for control of the drug trade. 

A guy who works as an accountant for a pension fund told me the world’s pension plans are underfunded by 300 trillion dollars U.S.; imagine if the world’s economy went belly up. 

I'm sure most of you who read this can add more to this tale of woe and yet it could all be changed very easily and very quickly - I can do no better than quote novelist, Alice Walker: ''The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.'' You have it so use it.

Canadian Comrade.

We Must Abolish Capitalism

The climate emergency is a pressing issue for many people. Some say civilisation may not survive the climate crisis. Many project coastal cities sinking into the oceans, widespread drought, desertification and deforestation, devastating storms and flooding, pollution on land air and sea, diseases spreading, decreasing soil fertility and failing crop harvests and the large scale migration of climate refugees. It is often described as a climate Armageddon, a global catastrophe.

Capitalism is the root cause of most of the environmental problems we face, and is also the biggest obstacle in implementing real solutions. But few recognise the culpability of capitalism, and if they do, their remedies are little more than passing legislation to regulate the capitalist system such as the proposed New Green Deal or encouraging ineffective life-style changes. What is required is transformational changes, a mass mobilization of peoples for an entirely new society based upon a fundamentally different economic system. The defenders of the environment have to organize worldwide politically for socialism which is the an antidote to much of the despair and despondency that prevails in many people’s response to the global warming threat.

Working people have the potential power to wrest control of production away from the capitalist class. In fact, working people is the only force capable of saving humanity from capitalism and building an economy which is sustainable and in harmony with the environment. The vast majority have the ability to make collective solutions for environmental problems and exercise common ownership and democratic control of resources. Socialists do not focus on individual behaviour but concentrate on universal actions. The politicians would like nothing better than to delay system change by claiming that we need behavioural change, instead. Socialism is a vital and necessary precondition for the survival of civilisation.

While the economic class struggle between labour and capital has previously been the norm for the acquisition of socialist consciousness, our fight for the environment may be a new path towards socialism, a new way of understanding our need to establish a cooperative commonwealth. Perhaps, climate change will be the tipping point for social change.

Adapted from here
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/11/14/to-confront-climate-change-humanity-needs-socialism/

The Scottish Drug Problem

Scotland saw more drug-related deaths than any other European Union country in 2018, after a 27 per cent increase in a single year brought the total to its highest level since records began 23 years ago.

The National Records of Scotland statistics show 1,187 people died taking drugs last year, bringing the death rate to triple that of England and Wales, and making it higher even than the US, which is in the grip of an opioid crisis.

The majority of deaths involved more than one substance, with heroin and other opiates a factor in 86 per cent of fatalities and “street” benzodiazepines like etizolam, which have flooded the market in recent years, seen in 57 per cent of recorded deaths.

“Scotland’s record drug deaths are an avoidable tragedy, and the failure of politicians in Westminster and Holyrood to act is simply shameful,” said James Nicholls, CEO of drug reform charity Transform. “This crisis is a consequence of policies they support, and continue to impose, despite deaths increasing year after year. Bereaved families may wonder why the UK drugs minister won’t visit Scotland to better understand why their loved ones died, or appear before Scottish MPs to justify her government’s failed approach.”

Only 40 per cent of people with a drug problem are currently in treatment in Scotland, due in part to waiting times of up to six months and a focus on abstinence rather than harm reduction.

The figures raised “serious concerns” about Scotland’s response to opioid addiction, suggesting that 50 per cent of people in treatment were being prescribed methadone doses lower than the World Health Organisation’s minimum recommendation. “If people are not getting the substitute medication dose they require then it is no wonder they ‘top up’ with street drugs and get involved in polydrug use,” he said. 

“Some people misrepresent the evidence by claiming that methadone is causing these deaths,” said Zoe Carre, policy researcher at Release, a national drugs charity offering legal advice and support. “This is wrong, not least because prescribing methadone as an opioid substitute is one of the most evidence-based ways of preventing premature death. “This also ignores the fact that most of these deaths involved one or more opioids, such as heroin/morphine or methadone, which suggests that some people are being let down by drug treatment, for example if they are not being prescribed optimal doses of methadone.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/scotland-drug-deaths-highest-eu-heroin-cocaine-a9006811.html

What the Socialist Party wants

The Socialist Party intends to replace the present capitalist system by socialism, understood broadly as a system where there will be common ownership of the means of production and distribution. We envisage socialism as a society where material wealth will be in the hands of those who produce it, where the exploitation of man by man will be ended, where production will be used not for private profit, where a new relationship of fraternity will develop between peoples based on equality and independence, where individual men and women will find totally new possibilities to develop their skills and talents. We see both the need and the possibility to win the overwhelming majority of the population for the fight against capitalism and for socialism.

As we head towards another general election we are faced with the decision whether or not to cast a vote. Most people in Britain are fairly strongly attached to the idea that it is some sort of public duty to turn out and support one or another party even if they are not very enthusiastic about any of the promises on offer. Socialism is achieved by the growth of ideas, never by obtaining a fictitious vote. We should seek only to register the actual vote of socialism, no more and no less. In our election campaign we state our principles clearly, speak the truth honestly, seeking neither to flatter nor to offend, but only to convince those who should be with us and win them to our cause through an understanding of the socialist case.

Our Parliamentary Road

Why do socialists insist on the need to capture parliament? Parliament is the seat of political power through which control of the state apparatus is exercised. Although external influences are exerted upon parliament from big business, unions’ pressure groups and the like, in order to be effective such influence has to be channelled via parliament and realised in the form of legislation.

The basic function of the state, controlled by parliament, is to protect the interests of the capitalist class. The state arose out of the early divisions of society into classes and developed with the development of class conflicts. In this way, class rule through state power originated from class ownership. But private property is a social concept or relationship, the general acceptance of which cannot be separated from the general support given to those who exercise power in the interest of the owning class. The state, through which class rule is exercised will not ‘wither away’ as long as the class basis of society exists and conversely the class basis of society will not disappear as long as the state exists to prop it up.

Those who reject political action must explain how a revolutionary transformation can be brought about which would result in a class-free money-free system of common ownership and free access.

Two possible methods have been suggested: 

1. The creation of a completely self-sufficient cooperative parallel society. 

2. The anarcho-syndicalist proposal adopted by the founding conference of the Industrial Workers of the World in 1905 that workers should “take and hold that which they produce by their labour through an economic organization of the working class”.

“Workers co-operatives” are essentially no different from any other capitalist enterprise competing for the market and therefore subject to its laws; to compete effectively, workers in co-operatives may have to cut their own living standards or sack their fellow workers. 

The second option of direct action is equally futile. To begin with the proposal that workers should “seize and hold” the factories and “lock out” the owners implies the fatuous belief that capitalists participate in production, or need to. It is the workers, including the “salaried” managers, who run the entire economy from top to bottom.

But supposing workers “successfully” took over a factory — what then? If they recommenced production, they would have to submit to the rules of the game, to seek to gain legal status to operate on a proper financial basis, to buy and sell. Workers in a nail factory cannot live on a diet of nails.

The parliamentary road does not imply that people hand over their power to others every few years. Parliament is the institution to which the working class shall send their delegates with the purpose of declaring capitalism abolished and to validate this revolutionary act. There has to be some means to effect the necessary transfer of power from the capitalist to the working class, a means which clearly and democratically indicates the will of the socialist majority. The parliamentary road is the answer. It will be within our party, not parliament that the “self-activity” and “self organisation” of the working class will be realised.

The Socialist Party. has always contended that the workers, before they can impose their will upon the capitalist class, must get control of the capitalist state-machine by the only means possible, securing a majority of the electorate.