Progress to the Past?

 

A poll for pro-independence campaign group Progress Scotland found 53% support leaving the union compared with 47% against. Almost a third of Scots who voted against independence in 2014 have changed their mind and are either unsure or would vote Yes, according to a new poll.

The nationalism of the SNP has the outward appearance of a progressive movement to some sincere people but who have almost no political understanding. Deceived by the slogans and soundbites, working people will discover that they have been most cruelly misled, have been wasting their time advocating an idea which they will then have to oppose. Our fellow-workers must not fall into this trap; they must not be deceived by the progressive facade of nationalism. They must unite to expose it instead of  wasting their time and energy fostering nationalism (in whatever form), as an answer to their misery and hardships. Nationalism merely provides a camouflage for policies of reformism. Nationalism divides workers so that the workers of one nationality are struggling against the workers of another nationality for a few illusory crumbs the rulers throw out exactly for that purpose. Nationalism pits workers against each other , while their mutual exploiters and oppressors enjoy the Caribbean sun and fun on the ski-runs.

 Any nationalism implies that some people are better than others. It teaches superiority and inferiority. Left nationalists insist that their nationalism has nothing in common with the nationalism of the right and that instead their nationalism is progressive. Nationalism binds the working people to their own exploiters and ruling class. The Socialist Party says that working people’s destiny must not be tied to any capitalist grouping. The working class must  rid itself its class enemy. Class unity must be established between the oppressed and exploited regardless of nationality and race.

 The aspiration for national independence awakens chauvinistic nationalisms, intolerances, xenophobias; the awakening of old national quarrels, of hatred against the “hereditary enemy;” and racism. Foreign scapegoats of the past are again being selected as responsible for all the evils that befalls a nation.

The Socialist Party repudiates nationalism, the ideology that would divide mankind into separate distinct nations, have those nations constituted into sovereign States, whose claim is that the freedom and fulfillment of mankind are to be worked out in terms of ones national identity.  Nationalism is pervasive in the world today, especially in countries that have nothing to offer their people but romantic patriotic platitudes.

Nationalism turns worker against worker but just where does this twisted logic stop?

Should someone from Dundee be allowed to apply for a job in Dunstable if someone living in Dunstable is prepared to do it? If people from start to migrate Northwards for the cheaper housing, should they be driven back to south of Hadrians Wall telling them to go and fight for cheaper housing in the South? When British factories compete with each other to win contracts does this not usually involve bringing down wages and reducing conditions? It is the system of capitalist production that produces unemployment, homelessness, destitution and crumbling facilities and infrastructure in local communities, not workers, be they native or foreign born, indigenous or newcomers.

Nationalists always claims certain characteristics as exclusive to certain peoples.  With what logic may nations make such claims? Nationalism claims that the culture belonging to one nation is distinct from that belonging to any other. This may have been so in the past when even the nation was an abstract concept for the village dweller or towns folk, but the social evolution of mankind is making it less so. Increased means of communication and ease of travel have resulted in no essential difference between any one of the countries of the world. Even language is tending to become universal with English as the lingua franca that Latin once was. More people understand each other today than ever before. Codes of behaviour and ethics have grown to be international. It is only by the most artificial kind of propaganda that nationalism is kept alive.Nationalism is an unmitigated curse. It leads inevitably to chauvinism and to national aggression. It leads to a patriotism and the worship for the particular patch of dirt where a particular individual was born. It leads to racism and bigotry, to national jealousy and petty rivalries. Nationalism cloaks the intrigues and machinations of governments and capitalists.

Working people have everything to gain and nothing to lose by rejecting nationalism. 

Revolution is the Only Way

 By keeping the people in ignorance - by hoodwinking them with the bonds of superstition and prejudice - our lords and masters keep us in ignorance. Ignorance is the source of all our misery. On account of our ignorance we have been oppressed, plundered, ground down and degraded like beasts of burden. It is ignorance that makes us incessantly toil, not for ourselves, but for the profit of others. It is ignorance that makes us go to war and spill our blood and lives to secure to the power and privilege of the few. It is ignorance that prevents us from knowing ourselves and without a clear knowledge of ourselves we must ever remain the tools of others - the slaves of the ruling class. Our lords and masters are doing every thing so that our ignorance continues, in order that they may carry on with their exploitation. Since our lords and masters have very good reasons for keeping us in ignorance, we have even stronger ones for acquiring knowledge. The knowledge we want is a knowledge of ourselves: a knowledge of our own power, of our immense might and our ability to change society. Of all our follies, there is none greater than to expect that others will do for us what we ought to be doing for ourselves.

Capitalism is a system where those who have ownership of the factories, the mines, the mills, the land they sit on, the machines, and so forth have everything. It’s a system where those who have no other way to make ends meet except to sell their ability to work to the bosses to enrich the capitalist. When the capitalist finds no further use for a worker, when he finds it unprofitable to continue paying his workers, the wage-slaves are thrown out into the streets as additional statistics on the unemployment figures. Under the capitalist system, democracy is for the rich, justice is for the wealthy, a good education is for the privileged, and medical care is based on your credit rating. 

The Socialist Party firmly states it is revolutionary and stands with the working class, and that the only road out of this hell-hole is socialism, a class-free society. The only solution is to overthrow the existing system by a revolution. This is exactly why the main glue that holds the Socialist Party together is that is an organisation to turn the system right-side up, not just to fight particular problems of capitalism. It recognises that to wipe out this irrational, insane system requires not piecemeal solutions but one major thorough-going solution. 

Other groups claim that if you tried to boldly and openly educate people about socialism, you would scare people away, turn them off. “Wait until people are ready to hear this stuff,” is what they say. When all was said and done, it was like telling a person dying of thirst that he’s not ready for a drink of water–not quite yet anyway. The line of “Wait until people are ready to listen” coincides with the ruling class’ attempts to to keep revolutionary ideas away from the people by any means necessary. No matter how well-intentioned or militant-sounding might be their reason, what the gradualists seek to do is hide their reformist politics behind a smokescreen. Indeed to pay lip-service from time to time to revolution is going to be an ideal disguise.

It is indeed true that we have been preached to about the horrors of socialism, in our education, by the media, through the speeches and writings of lying politicians trying to poison our minds with anti-socialist propaganda? And what has been their purpose in doing this? It is none other than to serve the rich ruling class, the source of all exploitation and oppression. It is the same class of people who try to present their system, where the masses of people catch hell each and every day, as the best of all possible worlds. We are told it is natural for some people to lord it over other people. They tell us the best thing is to look out for Number One (yourself), and to hell with everyone else. After all, they say, that’s just been the way it always has been. Yet studies of societies of the past prove otherwise. Cooperation, collaboration, solidarity, mutual aid has been the qualities which protected people.

Working people are being screwed over in a thousand and one ways by the capitalist system. Are we to fight the capitalists individually or as a united class? The most important thing for people to understand is that the only way to do away with the misery and oppression which capitalism breeds is to build a united and organised movement against the capitalists and for revolution, clearly targeting the capitalist system as the problem, and directly pointing to the solution, socialism.

It is the task of the Socialist Party to take the struggle to biggest fight of all - against the capitalist class for control of this society.

Leidos, the Military and the Scottish Government

 

The world today is in in the grip of a major arms race.  From 2007 to 2017, global arms exports rose 65% from about $119 billion to nearly $195 billion, according to the US State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance.  This arms drive is being caused by a new era of inter-capitalist rivalry, e.g. US-Chinese economic and technological competition, Western hypocrisy that the Moscow gangster state it encouraged is now out of control, and the Arab-Iranian conflict. The Arab and Iranian autocracies are protecting their own rentier economic and political interests by deflecting local popular unrest into a religious proxy war in Yemen.  

All this is fodder for the big arms companies to make profits.  The long economic famine in the arms industry caused by the end of the original Cold War has given place to new international conflicts and new weapons systems.  High tech meets the grim reaper is now the name of the game.  And US high tech is the major beneficiary.  The United States exports four times more arms around the globe than the next nine countries combined.  And that is probably an underestimate given the dual use to which much software can be put.

Leidos (located in Virginia) is a “solutions” company.  Give it a problem and Leidos will find, install, and manage the computer hardware and software to solve it. Leidos has four main divisions: military and intelligence, government, health and “advanced solutions”. It has always operated as a close adjunct of the US military-industrial complex. Board members and executives have included Melvin Laird, Nixon’s Secretary of Defense; William Perry, Clinton’s Secretary of Defense; John M. Deutch, Director of the CIA under Clinton; and Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, a senior spook with both the National Security Agency and the CIA, under Gerald Ford.  The current board includes a former Under Secretary of Defense for the US army and a former Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics (i.e. the guy who used to give Leidos contracts). These days, Leidos is owned by Lockheed-Martin, the biggest US defense contractor.  It employs over 30,000 people worldwide.  Last year, Leidos reported sales of $10.2 billion, with a rise in profits of 59%.

Leidos is a leading partner to the U.K. government, the Scottish government as well as having key client partners in transportation and energy. Leidos employs 1,100 people across the U.K. supporting technology and business process transformation programmes for clients such as the Home Office, the Ministry of Defence and Met Police.

In October 2018, the Scottish Government awarded Leidos a £26.9 million, five-year contract to support the Scottish Government’s national Purchase-to-Pay (P2P) Shared Service.  This connects public sector procurement teams with suppliers, managing everything from the initial order through to the final payment. It is used by NHS Boards, central and local government, and universities across Scotland. Leidos provides “data hosting, integration, reporting and deployment services for the system”. In fact, Leidos has been involved in providing tech solutions for the Scottish public sector across a range of activities.  It has worked with the Scottish Government’s insolvency service, Skills Development Scotland and the National Records of Scotland.  Nothing like having a company run by American ex-spooks handling your data.  At least you know its not the Chinese spying on you.

Next December, the Scottish Public Service awards will be presented in the Garden Lobby at Holyrood. The event is sponsored by…er, Leidos. 

In February this year, Labour MSP Rhoda Grant MSP (a list member for the Highlands and Islands and a former Unison official) sponsored another PR event for Leidos in the Garden Lobby.  This involved the Scotland Women in Technology (SWiT) organisation, and ostensibly was about the ethics of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems.  On the surface this looks perfectly innocuous.  But why is a major US contractor which is blood deep in the intelligence world being hosted at Holyrood?

*

Leidos knows a thing or two about AI.  It is the lead contractor in the Pentagon’s multi-billion dollar programme to create an AI system to revolutionise aerial dog-fighting.  Leidos is at the forefront of US plans to weaponize AI.  I’m not picking on Rhoda Grant because she is Labour.  I’m pointing out that no MSP or MP of any party should be hosting PR events for a company that is leading the world to a global conflict run by machine intelligence. Welcome to the world of the Terminator.

The very fact that Leidos is using a women’s organisation like SWiT as a PR cover is obnoxious.  The fact that the Garden Lobby of Scotland’s Parliament is being used to provide political camouflage for a major US defense contractor makes a mockery of that Parliament’s decision to oppose nuclear weapons.  In 2014, the US Air Force hired Leidos to improve America’s nuclear targeting.  Yes folks, we may be opposed to nukes in Scotland, but we failed to notice we are adding to the profits of the very company helping decide who gets nuked in China.

In today’s world anything to do with computers is most likely to involve contractors who are – to be frank – arms contractors. Which means for starters not letting such companies use PR stunts at Holyrood to mask their real activities.  Which means doing a lot more due diligence.

Taken from here

https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2020/10/09/the-new-arms-race-how-scotland-got-into-bed-with-the-terminator/

Hat-tip to Matt

A Quick Fix, Which Is No Fix At All.

Since 2016, when British Columbia declared the opioid epidemic a public health emergency more than 1,500 Canadians have died from opioid overdoses. Nevertheless, since the start of the COVID-19 epidemic, opioid related deaths have increased. Both B.C. and Ontario recently saw the most opioid overdose deaths in a single month. In June there were 175 deaths in B.C. compared to 76; in June 2019 and Ontario had 201 compared to 173 in June 2019.

 According to Ontario's Office of the Chief Coroner, in the first 18 weeks after the COVID state of emergency was declared, 16 of them had a significantly higher number of drug related deaths than this time last year. 

Add to this the fact that every 40 seconds someone in the world commits suicide, it seems very clear that whether one’s death be intentional or not, we live in a very sick society, its symptoms causing people to turn to a quick fix, which is no fix at all - it’s capitalism that needs fixing by its abolition.

S.P.C. Members.

Under crapitalism, the rich always do well

 

Tobias Lutke, Worth US$3 billion in March Now Worth US$8.5 billion. 

One thing about the plague is that in Canada, and probably elsewhere, the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer. According to Jim Stanford, a Vancouver based economist and director of The Center for Future Work: ''If you are a high income earner, even in the private sector, hardly any of them have lost work. So this recession is going to dramatically and directly exacerbate wealth inequality, there is no doubt about that.''

 A typical example is Canadian billionaire, Tobias Lutke, CEO of Ottawa based e-commerce company, Shopify Inc. This ''worthy'' beneficiary has seen his personal worth rise from US$3 billion in March to US$8.5 billion today. Lutke's company has flourished through the pandemic because so many people wouldn't go to stores. 

So there it is folks, whatever the situation might be under crapitalism, the rich will always do well and the poor won’t.

S.P.C. Members.

The dawn of socialism is rising

 

Under wage-slavery the workers are the property of their  master just as much as a chattel slave. Under capitalism the worker is free. No legal pressure compels anyone to sell their labour power. We can take a job where we likes and when we likes, or remain idle if it pleases us. Only the commodity market, to which we must live under, compels us to sell ourselves on the labour market. If we are unable to we are doomed to poverty and hunger. With little hope of a decent future, the millions have become migrants . The capitalists will use force and violence to control them. The construction of police states has been facilitated by the hysteria against “foreigners” is being fanned worldwide.

This is a crucial time for the working-class movement and a time at which it is necessary to make a sober assessment of the present situation and perspectives. It is the time when workers must express their solidarity with the struggles of their fellow-workers all over the world, and re-pledge themselves to the fight to end of the exploitation of man by man. The future of civilisation depends upon these great objectives being reached. We live in a world dominated by capitalism, a system which allows a small minority of capitalists to oppress and exploit the great majority of humankind. It is capitalism that brings about great inequalities in living standards with more poor people now in the world than ever before, starts murderous wars to steal the resources of weaker countries and causes the growing devastation of our natural environment. Either we get rid of this outmoded system or it will devastate humanity.

 The hour is late and urgent action is necessary. Join with us in the struggle against capitalism and for revolution. Our  cause today is a vision of humanity crossing into a new world, free of exploitation, ignorance and strife,  a vision of human freedom, peace and fraternity. Our foremost task is to agitate for our vision of a world free forever from want, from race and national hatred, from sexual oppression and from human exploitation. Our vision is one of peace and social harmony. The technological level of the means of production makes realising this cause.  We no longer have to work long hours or rely upon the meagre state- welfare payment just to eke out a miserable existence for our families. The new technology makes a world of material abundance available to all. Today, with artificial intelligence and robotics production takes place with a minimum of human labour or no human labour at all through automation. The capitalists have reaped unprecedented profits from these changes. It is now time for the people to benefit.  Our ideas are generalisations from the past and from the present; we use them as weapons to create the future cooperative commonwealth. The next stage in human evolution must be socialism. The Socialist Party must win the war for the hearts and minds of our fellow-citizens and arm it with the understanding that the only thing standing between them and the wealth being generated by the new technology is a tiny, vampire-like class of billionaires. The decisive struggles to assure humanity of its socialist future, to abolish war and misery, are approaching. It is up to you to transform moribund capitalism into a society for the prosperity for all, ending forever all misery, dictatorship and war.  Our cause is to urge fellow-workers toward the new world that is now possible.

For many long years the Socialist Party pleaded with the workers to organise and take over the entire means of production and distribution. Books, pamphlets, leaflets and periodicals of all kinds were freely circulated, with scant success. The workers rebuffed revolution with their blank indifference. Now, they are aroused with a vengeance. The onus is on the Socialist Party to translate economic theories long expounded into a practical method of producing and distributing the wealth in such a way as to end for ever the exploitation of the many by the privileged few. World socialism is possible but getting there is the challenge, and to do so we  need to be able, as a movement, to voice our views in the most open, democratic ways we can find.

The Socialist Party brings the cause of human freedom, of peace and prosperity. They are few; we are many.