Looking at cooperatives

 For most Scots the local Co-op store was a feature in their daily lives. For someone my age,  remembering your divvy number was a most important act of memory for a working class child. And for the elderly, the Co-op funeral services was perhaps their last call upon it. The Labour Party and the Co-op went together like bread and jam. The Socialist Party, however, understood the economics of cooperatives from a socialist analysis.

Whence does profit come from? Until our opponents can show us any other source of it than unpaid labour somewhere or other, we are bound to regard even co-operatives themselves as exploiters in so far as they have profit to divide among their members. Remember that each co-op claims its product as its own property, little different from the capitalist asserts his rights over his own property.  The aim of the workers is not to make profit out of the unpaid labour of those not within the ranks of their organisation, but to get all the means of production and distribution into the hands of all workers. Co-operation really thoroughly carried out, made at once international, would, of course, be socialism pure and simple.

Many radicals call for the democratising of the economy where policies for our communities and planet take precedence. Many progressives promote cooperatives    for their democratic virtues of their operations or the affordability of their services. They suggest, tacitly or explicitly, that such enterprises contain possibilities for displacing the dominant corporate framework of capitalism and an improvement upon centralised command economy of public ownership.    

The cooperative movement as of 2018 consists of  465 worker co-ops in the United States employing 6,454 workers and generating $505 million in estimated revenue. More than 100 million Americans are members of profitable consumer cooperatives, covering sectors as diverse as banking, electricity, housing, food, and utilities. Altogether, there are currently 29,000 co-ops in the United States representing 130 million member-owners generating $650 billion per year in revenue. There are also in addition various community development corporations, land trusts, and companies with employee stock ownership businesses. Yet it remains relatively insignificant to the far wider economy. Nor is it  surprising that consumer cooperatives generate over 1,000 times that revenue, because consumer cooperatives do not require to extract and share surplus value to build wealth for workers but instead serve to modestly reduce prices for customers.

Nevertheless, cooperative ownership does nothing to eradicate the dangers of hierarchy or exploitation within them. Nor, as long as these enterprises must remain profitable, does changing ownership eliminate the compromises and tensions that attend making those profits. 

 It is difficult to compete with manufacturing corporations and the financial industry. Enterprises organised on a cooperative basis will have to compete with each other for a market for their product just as the capitalists do today. Society is still robbed of surplus value, the only change being in the number of the robbers.

Advancing worker ownership of enterprise, and taking the means of production and distribution out of the hands of capitalists requires a political struggle.

We need a new economy—one that is socially productive, democratic in operation, and equitable in distribution. We need common ownership. The cooperative commonwealth the Socialist Party aspires to is something much more substantial than isolated islands of co-ops within a capitalist ocean.

 

What we want

 One could spend a long time studying the  post-pandemic plans full of good intentions. But one thing would occur to the thoughtful worker as very strange indeed. Very little is said about shortening the work-week. It is easy to understand why capitalists and their backers are against shorter hours. The more hours workers put in for the same pay, the more profits are created for the capitalists. Nevertheless, if organised labour does not take this step, it concedes to the capitalists all the benefits of industrial advancement and improved technology – and to the workers the miseries of unemployment. From labour’s point of view, labour-saving machinery and techniques must be translated into ever shorter working hours for the workers. the profit-grubbing obstructionism by the capitalist class must be ended. Therein lies abundance for all.

The workers on the picket lines in defence of their union rights and working conditions  inevitably see the fruits of their inspiring solidarity slipping out of their hands. That’s capitalism. Compromises made one day are concessions rescinded another day.  Capitalism always vows a life of plenty and prosperity for all but never delivers. With its present productive capacity, we could raise the entire population to a higher and genuinely decent standard of living – to PLENTY FOR ALL. What stands in the way? The capitalist class wolfs the greatest share of the fruits of this productive capacity.

Capitalism uses a new and much more efficient method than the slave-masters whip  to make the workers work. That is hunger. We are told that we are free and the bosses are free. He is free to offer us terms of any kind – we are free to starve unless we accept these terms. As we work, we create profits. Only by overthrowing the system of capitalism can we achieve a society where there is plenty for all. Only with world socialism will our lives be longer and richer because only in the socialist society can plenty for all be achieved.  The working class can organise and run things in the interests of all the people; the working class, and the working class alone, can and will open the door to the new socialist society of peace, plenty, freedom and security. In an equitable society, in a reasonable society, in an abundant society, which everyone admits is possible, but which only the socialists have some idea of achieving, a peaceful, abundant society of plenty for all is our goal. All that socialism sets itself to do is to achieve plenty for all, peace, harmony, security, and freedom.

Capitalism is a fetter on production. The bloodsuckers who call themselves “captains of industry” have confessed their bankruptcy. It organises production exclusively with the purpose of providing the owners with the highest possible profit. At one time, in history, this corresponded with the progressive development of the productive machine, its ability to produce limitless quantities of articles for the satisfaction of human wants. But the productive machine has now reached a level where it is impeded by capitalism. It has the capacity to produce plenty for all. The class interest of the employers, the exploiters, denies this plenty to all. Labour is fully capable of operating industry – and operating it in the interest of society! This is no extravagant claim. Labour has the industrial know-how. And its interests are one with society as a whole. Capitalism breeds insecurity and want on one side, and incredible wealth and indulgence on the other. The way to get rid of war, the way to get peace, freedom and plenty for all, is to abolish the capitalist system and the power of the capitalist rulers. The way to get real prosperity and security is to establish the free society of socialism.

ScotRail to be nationalised

 The SNP intends to nationalise Scotland’s railways next year.  The move comes after the Welsh government took the nation’s railway network into the government hands.

Scotland’s transport secretary, Michael Matheson, said: “The current franchising system is no longer fit for purpose.”

Train services had been underwritten by the Scottish government under emergency contracts since last March. Two major franchises in England, LNER and Northern, are already run by the government through its operator of last resort, and the Office for National Statistics said in 2020 that rail services had been in effect nationalised due to the level of Treasury support.

A yet-to-be-published review of Britain’s rail system by Keith Williams, a former British Airways chief executive, has already signalled the end of the traditional franchising system.

The unions are jubilant about the decision.

Kevin Lindsay, Aslef’s organiser in Scotland, said: ‘We welcome the beginning of the end of the failed franchise system here in Scotland. Never again should people’s railway ever be in the hands of the privateers.”

RMT's general secretary, Mick Cash, said: “Public ownership of ScotRail will deliver significant benefits for Scotland’s rail workers, passengers and taxpayers and help enable the creation of an affordable, accessible and sustainable rail network that contributes to Scotland’s decarbonisation targets.”

The TSSA general secretary, Manuel Cortes, said: ““The Covid-19 pandemic made it abundantly clear that our railways are a public service, not a piggy bank for fat cat shareholders. 

The members of the Socialist Party collectively shrug their shoulders and say "So what?"

Another failed commercial enterprise is bailed out by the capitalist state and once again the rail workers have a State department as its employer. The train workers merely change one employer for another; little else is changed. How well did that do in the past? The railways have merely been transferred from private capitalism to State capitalism.

What Socialism Will Look Like

 

There is plenty for all in this world of ours –  plenty of everything that goes to make up a healthy and happy life.  All the wealth of the world is produced by its workers. The capacity to produce more and more  with a less and less  is growing every day. Every improvement in technology, every advance in science, every development in renewable energy, means that all mankind could gain greater wealth and greater leisure at the same time. Yet we do not benefit by this. Everybody knows there’s something very crazy about this capitalist system we live under. Under any rational system of production all of us  could enjoy a standard of comfort and a wholesome, happy, leisurely, yet active life, such as has never been known on the planet. Yet we are told it is utopian and visionary to urge that the workers should turn the machines which they make, the land which they till to the advantage of the whole community. If they are not employed at a profit they are not employed at all; and all the while they see those who work not at all, or very little, living in excessive luxury. The The rock bottom fact is that the capitalist class employ the technicians who have the know-how to end poverty but who are not at the service of humanity being employees are beholden to the profit-motivated capitalist class. Therefore, they pay only lip-service to the “abolishment” of economic and social misery. 

The Socialist Party has long ago demonstrated the fact that there can be plenty for all, including not merely an adequate standard of living but the beauties of life for all. We have the factories and raw material that can produce a world of plenty. We have the willing hands and brains to do the job. All we have to do is let the one work on the other, and distribute what is produced. Sure, the factories and machines and raw materials are here. Sure, the labour is there to turn them into usable goods. But labour doesn’t own the factories and machines. It has nothing to say about whether they’ll be used and for what. These factories and machines are owned by a small handful of capitalists. And these fat cats won’t let a single wheel turn unless they can make a profit. 

The factories and machines and the supplies are there. We are the brawn and the brains. All we have to do is come together with the factories and machines, without any capitalist class holding us apart. That means WE have to own and control the factories and machines we work on – WE, LABOUR, organised collectively. Abolish the capitalist profit-suckers. Take over our economic world, organise it democratically. Produce to the full, produce to the sky’s the limit as science can provide, produce enough to give plenty for all. And distribute what we produce for the use of the  people. Common ownership of our economic machine – that’s socialism. We should no longer be content with an occasional dime more an hour; we should aim at no less than plenty for all of us. The best is not  good enough  and plenty is not too much. Let us use the plenty and riches of this world to build a new society of peace and equality, of plenty for all, where the children of tomorrow will play in the streets and the fields unaware of the degradations  that now poison our lives.

The Emancipation of the Wage-Slaves

 

What has happened to our politics? Our core principle, the inherently revolutionary capacity of the workers, is being abandoned. We fail to communicate that the development of the productive forces is in  sufficient degree to provide plenty for all the first time in human history.

The wealth and productive facilities of the world could supply the material basis for a new social organisation which would ensure plenty for all in the shortest time. But the capitalist ownership of industry and their monopolist control of governments stands in the way of using these riches and resources for the benefit of the whole of mankind.

The vision of the Socialist Party  is that if the enormous wealthy of society, presently controlled by the few, were controlled by the majority of the people, poverty could be eliminated, an end could be made to the mass murder of war, and mankind could live in peace and plenty. In a revolution, the power and wealth of society change hands. This kind of revolution would be necessary on a world scale. The Socialist Party stands for the abolition of the profit system, workers’ management of industry,, the end of wars growing out of the profit system – peace and plenty for all.

Why do we suffer unemployment, depressions and poverty? Because the economy is capitalist, meaning chaotic and anarchic, based on competition, producing not for public need but for private profit. Capitalism, which was once progressive in its beginnings in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, because it overthrew the feudal method of production, has now become an anachronism, standing in the way of progress and the rational planning of society with aim being the economic security for all, as its minimum requirement.

It is no myth that there is plenty for all.  More food can be raised today than we could, possibly eat. Yet people starve in the midst of plenty and food is dumped when people cannot buy for they may not have the money. When the capitalists realise there is no profit in selling their goods, there are layoffs and slashing of wage’s. Food is left to rot in storage, and hungry people starve in the midst of plenty. Robotics and automation has  increased the productivity of labour. Contrary to the claims of some environmentalists we have the natural resources. Modern science has made comfort and culture and leisure possible for all. Who will deny the great potential for good ? But have the ruling class used them to end poverty, to secure a high standard of living and keep the peace? No, for they have flagrantly and wilfully mismanaged. Corporation profits have increased enormously. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer is always true under capitalism. The capitalist system won’t work, for the very root of capitalism is all wrong.

There is a way out of this chaos. The working people themselves should own and operate the industries cooperatively, through common ownership. This would end production for profit and the waste of competing corporations. There would be planned production for the first time, increasing the output of wealth so that there would be plenty for all.  We have today more workers, more efficiency, more productivity, and more machinery than ever before. We have more of all the means necessary to a high standing of living and shorter working hours. The kind of planned economy we envisage would, for the first time, make possible an end to wars between nations. Because the planned economy would include all countries. The aim of the working class would be to end capitalism and all forms of exploitation everywhere; and everywhere introduce a planned economy. Its aim would be to create a socialist world.

The Socialist Party is dedicated to the cause of  the emancipation of mankind from the horrors and fears and terrors of capitalism and the creation of a new society of fraternity,  of freedom, of prosperity, peace and plenty for all.