Marx and Socialism 1

 

In an age where the internet provides us with unlimited access to direct sources, there appear to be no limits to the misunderstanding and distortion of Marx. In books and articles, there is continuous reference to Marx, attacking him from all sides for claims that he never made. How can it be that the ideas of Marx can be so completely misunderstood and distorted? One reason is that Lenin and the Bolsheviks appropriated Marx's theory and tried to convince the world that their practice and theory follow his ideas that instead of the role of a worker being abolished, it is extended to all men. Selectively quoted and out of context parts of Marx serve as the official ideology of the regime. Also, the reformist social democrats, believed they were the enemies of capitalism but for them, socialism is not a society fundamentally different from capitalism, but rather, just a form of capitalism in which the working class has achieved a higher status. iI is, as Engels described it, "the present-day society without its defects."  They genuinely do believe in a better world – but they believe it can be achieved by kinder, gentler capitalism and that profits can be used to promote environmental, anti-poverty, and certain other noble causes. But they don’t dare to ask – or to admit – where these very profits come from: the unpaid labour of the entire working class. The compassionate capitalists believe that applying market principles to philanthropy, charity, and the government will help lift the world out of poverty, cure-all famine and disease. However, they fail to recognise that the exploitation at the core of capitalism is what engenders the very poverty, famine, and disease that their philanthropic and charitable efforts are attempting to relieve. They think that those who are “privileged” to enjoy great wealth should take up the responsibility of sharing a tiny slice of it with poor people – and don’t recognise that the wealth/poverty divide was created by capitalism itself. Marx and Engels explain in the Communist Manifesto: 

"The Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom. They desire the existing state of society, minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat. The bourgeoisie naturally conceives the world in which it is supreme to be the best… [It requires] in reality that the proletariat should remain within the bounds of existing society, but should cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie… It is summed up in the phrase: the bourgeois is a bourgeois—for the benefit of the working class."

There is no greater misrepresentation of Marx than that which is to be found in the thought of the state-capitalists, the reformists, and the avowedly capitalist opponents of socialism alike, all of whom assume that Marx wanted only the economic improvement of the working class and that he wanted to abolish private property so that the worker would own what the capitalist now has. The truth is that for Marx the situation of a worker in a Russian "socialist" factory, a British state-owned factory, or an American factory such as General Motors, would appear essentially the same. Marx's concept of socialism is not a society of regimented, automatized individuals, regardless of whether there is equality of income or not, and regardless of whether they are well fed and well clad. It is not a society in which the individual is subordinated to the state, to the machine, to the bureaucracy. Even if the state as an "abstract capitalist" were the employer, even if "the entire social capital were united in the hands either of a single capitalist or a single capitalist corporation," this would not be socialism. Socialism, for Marx, is a society that serves the needs of man. Socialism for Marx meant neither the mere abolition of poverty nor the abstract idea of fairness which he rejected so scathingly in his Critique of the Gotha Programme. Least of all did Marx see socialism in which “representative” power and authority replaced individual power and authority over men.

It should be clear the popular idea of the nature of historical materialism is erroneous. Marx's "materialistic" or "economic" interpretation of history has nothing whatsoever to do with an alleged "materialistic" or "economic" striving as the most fundamental drive in man. Marx has been criticised for presenting politics, culture, religion, etc. as simple effects of a one-way economic cause.  The popular view assumes that in Marx's opinion the strongest psychological motive in man is to gain money and to have more material comfort; if this is the main force within man, so continues this "interpretation" of historical materialism, the key to the understanding of history is the material desires of men; hence, the key to the explanation of history is man's belly and his greed for material satisfaction. It is the understanding of history based on the fact that men are "the authors and actors of their history." Marx saw that political force cannot produce anything for which there has been no preparation in the social and political process. Hence that force, if at all necessary, can give, so to speak, only the last push to a development that has virtually already taken place, but it can never produce anything truly new. "Force," he said, "is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one."

Marx did not believe that there is no such thing as the nature of man; that man at birth is like a blank sheet of paper, on which the culture writes its text. Nor was Marx ever tempted to assume that "human nature" was identical with that particular expression of human nature prevalent in his own society. For Marx, the aim of socialism was the emancipation of man, and the emancipation of man was the same as his self-realisation and development of the individual personality.

Capitalism has obviously changed in the hundred years since Marx and Engels wrote yet in the basic relations and structures that distinguish capitalism from feudalism and socialism, however, it has changed very little, and these are the main features of capitalism addressed in Marx's theories. The workers' relationship to their labour, products and capitalists are basically unchanged from Marx's day. Workers, for example, may earn more money now than they did in the last century, but so do the capitalists. Consequently, the wealth and income gaps between the two classes are as great or greater than ever.

Marx wrote no “Utopia” of the kind that earlier writers had produced – writings based only on the general idea of a society from which the more obvious evils of the society in which they lived had been removed. But from the general laws of social development Marx was able to outline the features of the new society and the way in which it would develop.

The capitalist class would love for class struggle to just be considered an old-fashioned notion from the past but the class struggle -- the conflict between the capitalists and the workers -- is at the very heart of the capitalist system. The majority of people would love to live in a world free of poverty, unemployment, racism and war. This kind of world is only possible under socialism. Most workers today would readily agree that this is the kind of world they would want for themselves and future generations. But they think it’s a pipedream yet it is the task of the working class to turn this vision into a reality. By learning the lessons of the class struggles that went before us and by applying our power workers develop revolutionary class consciousness. Our socialist perspective in no way means that we do not defend against the immediate attacks today. On the contrary, it is absolutely necessary, and socialists make good fighters for today’s struggle. But in order to fight most effectively, workers also have to understand that there can be no lasting concessions from the capitalist system. To achieve abundance for all, the working class will have to organise and build a genuine socialist revolution.

Communist Christmas (video music satire)

 

The Jesus Myth

 

The following is from an old anarcho-punk newspaper named Profane Existence.

In order to prove that Jesus Christ existed, one must have basic historical facts that can be agreed upon in official records. Though it doesn't necessarily make Jesus a historic figure to assign him a birthplace or a birthday, it's a good start. Unfortunately, neither the bible nor church documents can sustain the claim that Jesus was born on the twenty-fifth of December (a date assigned to most of the saviours of the ancient world, including Adonis, Attis, Pan, Bacchus, Osiris and Dionysus among countless others). Even the Bible cannot agree with itself, in Luke (1.199), Jesus is said to have been born during the time of Quirinus, making his birth a fourteen-year difference from the time of Matthew (1.199).

So the day and year aren't known exactly; so what! That doesn't mean anything. Unless one realises that his most intimate friends supposedly wrote the gospels during the lifetimes of his mother and siblings Understanding that Jesus' birth is not verifiable through any written document is essential to know that he wasn't a real person and only a Universal sun myth (consider this: Jesus' death was accompanied by the darkening of the sun, his resurrection happens to be the date of the vernal equinox, and that this date has progressively shifted from the 25th December to the 6th January). (3.272).

What about the events surrounding his birth? Are they real? No, and they can easily be refuted with a little knowledge of world mysticism and language. In the Gospels, the word for stable is Katalemna, but this word’s actual meaning is a temporary shelter or cave (1.32). Among the babies born in a cave is Pan, Mithras, and Zeus (again...there are many more). The birth of Mithras was said to have been witnessed by three shepherds, equivalent to Jesus’ three wise men (1.33). Even the presents offered unto Jesus were those offered to Adonis, whose sacred incense was myrrh.

The town of Bethlehem was the supposed birthplace of this supposed saviour. The name Bethlehem means ‘house of bread’. Adonis was the god of corn and the god of bread. The star that the three wise men had followed to the birth of Jesus was, in Egypt, a yearly omen of the flooding of the Nile. The flooding of the Nile is associated with the ‘world renewing power of Osiris,’ so it is obvious that this star symbolised in the ancient world the ‘coming of the lord’ (1.33).

What of the miraculous virgin birth? It seems that this too is simply an appropriation of mythology. Throughout most of the ancient religions, it is extremely common to have a god impregnate a virgin woman (3.275). From China to Siam and even Mexico to Palestine, all gods chose the method of impregnating virgin women to come into this world. Jesus was born to Mary, Buddha to Maia (as well as Hermes), Agni to Maya, Adonis to Myrrha, Bacchus to Myrrha, and so on (2.301). Most, if not all of these women, ascended to heaven and each was known as ‘Queen of Heaven’.

What about the surrounding situation of this god-man’s death? Well, ‘Good Friday falls not before the spring equinox, but as soon after the spring equinox as the full moon allows, thus making the calculation depend upon the position of the sun in the zodiac and the phases of the moon.’ (3.273). What did that mean? It meant that the festival originally designed to celebrate the Pagan goddess of fertility, Oestera, has become what the Christians now call Easter.

Needless to say, the eggs and rabbits are symbols of fertility and NOT Jesus’ crucifixion.

This calls into question whether or not Jesus was in fact crucified. Cross has a general meaning of stake in the New Testament. Jews used to display the bodies of those they had stoned to death on stakes. In the Acts of the Apostles, Peter says that Jesus was “hung on a tree”, and so does St Paul in his letter to the Galatians. Attis and Adonis were both hung on a tree as well, the latter being known as “He on the tree.”

Before the crucifixion, both Jesus and Dionysus wore purple robes, crowns - the former of thorns, the latter of ivy – and both were given wine to drink. Jesus dies next to two thieves. One goes up to heaven with him and the other goes to hell. Eleusis, as well as Dionysus and Mithras, have on their side two torch-bearers, one pointing the torch upwards and the other pointing the torch downwards (symbolising the ascent to heaven and the descent to hell) (1.51). The story originates with the Greek brothers Castor and Pollux, which on alternate days are given the name “The Sons of Thunder,” which in the gospel of Mark are what Jesus calls James and John.

Aside from this immense amount of evidence showing that Christians merely thieved the ideas from their predecessors, there is much more found in other religions. In fact, there are fifteen crucified saviours, inclusive of Krishna, Odin, Hesus (not Jesus), Quetzalcoatl, Criti, Baili, and Indra (2.352). Therefore, the crucifixion is an appropriation of Pagan symbolism (the cross originally symbolising spirit in the centre of the four elements). Early Christians and Buddhists wore the swastika because it was a good luck sign meaning “it is well” in Sanskrit. As the Church grew in power they wanted to instil a sense of guilt and therefore changed their symbol into a slaughtered lamb, and then a crucified saviour paying for the sins of the world.

The Jesus story cannot even stand up to the criticism of a rational and fairly knowledgeable person, so how can the rest of the beliefs contained within the bible be true? Well, even though the literary works were written down during the time of Jesus’ supposed birth to a century after can fill libraries, it is interesting to know that neither Jesus nor the twelve disciples are mentioned - and Christianity only gets a few paragraphs at the most (1.133). So how is it that Christians can ascertain that there were twelve disciples? Because there have been few god-saviours who did not have twelve apostles or messengers.

Numbers were very important to ancient mythological stories, especially the numbers 12, 7, 3 and 40. For instance, Jacob had twelve sons, there were 12 tribes of Israel, twelve months in the year, 12 gates or pillars of heaven and the Jews were in the wilderness for 40 years. Jesus fasted for 40 days; from the resurrection to the ascension were forty days. Moses was on the mountain with God for 40 days. Noah and Hercules were swallowed by a whale, at exactly the same place – Jappo – and were inside the whale for 3 days, the same number of days between the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus. The feeding of the five thousand – a miracle interestingly also performed by Elisha in 2 Kings 43-44 – happened with 2 fish and five loaves of bread, equalling seven. In Mark 18:17-21 Jesus is trying to make his disciples understand that his stories are meant to be taken as complex allegories involving numbers. Jesus says: ”To you it is given to know the Mysteries of the Kingdom of God. But to the rest of them, it is only given in allegories.” In Luke 8:1, Jesus admits to speaking in riddles and parables yet only the literal world has been spoken for centuries. Perhaps the message has been “misrepresented” by religious authorities on purpose.

Early Church fathers Origen and Clement tried to establish Christianity amongst Pagans by using the argument that it would be absurd to believe in Paganism and not Christianity. Why would it be absurd? Because of the extreme similarities that they themselves acknowledged (3.273). As a result of the likeness between Pagan religions and Christianity, the latter continued to grow. Alterations of biblical documents, the addition of forgeries, and addition of previously held heretical books and the omission of parts of the Bible became a norm in the Church.

Eventually, fanatics came up with the idea known as Diabolical Mimicry to refute the Pagan claim that they were using their ideas to gain power (1.26). Diabolic Mimicry holds that the devil knew the Jesus story thousands of years before and so had created religions similar to Christianity in order to keep people astray from the one true saviour. Unfortunately, for the masses, Christian dogma had won favour with the Roman politicians and this idea was forced onto the people through heresy hunting (the killing of anyone who held different ideas to the Church) mass slaughters (of Pagan followers, “witches”, and other freethinkers), war and repression (1.244-6). All Pagan books were ordered to be burned. Pope Gregory VII burned the Apollo Library. Emperor Theodosius burned 27,000 ancient scrolls. Ptolemy Philadelphius burned 270,000 ancient documents and after 1233 more than 25,000 were burned (even some in the new world). The tragedy is that most of the works burned had nothing to do with Paganism – they were scientific documents seized by illiterate peasants.

So what is the true legacy of the Church after two thousand years? A Church built upon the ruins of an old Pagan temple that symbolises racism, sexism, homophobia, sexual repression guilt, organised crime and HATE!

Sources:

1. The Jesus Mysteries by Timothy Freke and Peter Ghandi.

2. Deceptions and Myths of the Bible by Loyd M Graham.

3. The Truth About Jesus by M.M Mangasarian, found in You Are being Lied To, edited by Russ Kick

Marxism is Green

 

"In London," Karl Marx wrote "they can find no better use for the excretion of four and a half million human beings than to contaminate the Thames with it at heavy expense"

Marx was scathing of the capitalist economic notion that the air, rivers, seas and soil can be treated as a "free gift of nature" to business."

Today, with climate change threatening life itself, the ecological contradictions of capitalism have reached truly dire proportions. The environmental crisis will undoubtedly play a far larger role in the demise of the system than Marx and Engels realised 150 years ago.

Karl Marx’s analysis of the environment under capitalism shows how saving the planet is inextricably linked to transforming our society. Exploitation, war, hunger and poverty were not problems that could be solved by the market system, he said. Rather, they were inescapable outcomes of the system itself. This is because capitalism is dominated by corporations devoted to profit above all else. According to Marx, capitalism is an economic system profoundly at odds with a sustainable planet. The exploitation of nature is as fundamental to the profit system as the exploitation of working people. Capitalist farming is unsustainable because it inevitably starves the soil of nutrients. It is nothing less than "an art, not only of robbing the labourer but of robbing the soil" Marx also pointed out that "The development of civilisation and industry, in general, has always shown itself so active in the destruction of forests that everything that has been done for their conservation and production is completely insignificant in comparison.

Capitalism has created a metabolic rift between human beings and the Earth. Karl Marx came up with the term “metabolic rift” to explain the crack or rift that capitalism has created between social and natural systems, humans and nature. This rift, he claimed, led to the exploitation of the environment and ecological crisis. Marx argued that we humans are all part of nature and he was also the first one who saw social societies as an organism with a metabolism similar to that of humans. The general idea is that disruptions, or interruptions, in natural cycles and processes creates a metabolic rift between nature and social systems which leads to a buildup of waste and in the end to the degradation of our environment. The growth under capitalism of large-scale agriculture and long-distance trade only intensifies and extends the rift. large-scale industry and large-scale mechanised agriculture work together in this destructive process, with industry and commerce supplying agriculture with the means of exhausting the soil. All of this is an expression of the antagonistic relation between town and country under capitalism. As Engels later put it: “The present poisoning of the air, water and land can only be put an end to by the fusion of town and country” under “one single vast plan.” Despite its potential cost to society in terms of increased labour time, he viewed this fusion as “no more and no less utopian than the abolition of the antithesis between capitalist and wage-workers.”

The market system is incapable of preserving the environment for future generations because it cannot take into account the long-term requirements of people and the planet. The competition between individual enterprises and industries to make a profitable return on their investment tends to exclude rational and sustainable planning. Because capitalism promotes the accumulation of capital on a never-ending and always expanding scale it cannot be sustainable. Engels explained this destructive dynamic: "As individual capitalists are engaged in production and exchange for the sake of the immediate profit, only the nearest, most immediate results must first be taken into account. As long as the individual manufacturer or merchant sells a manufactured or purchased commodity with the usual coveted profit, he is satisfied and does not concern himself with what afterwards becomes of the commodity and its purchasers. The same thing applies to the natural effects of the same actions"

We disrupt the natural ecosystem at our peril, Engels warned:

 "Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each victory nature takes its revenge on us. Each victory, it is true, in the first place brings about the results we expected, but in the second and third places it has quite different, unforeseen effects which only too often cancel out the first." Engels added: "At every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside of nature." On the other hand, "we have the advantage of all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly." That is, we can organise society in step with nature's limits.

This is impossible unless the profit motive is removed from determining production in human society and a system of participatory democracy and rational planning is built in its stead. Rational agriculture, which needs either small independent farmers producing on their own or the action of the associated producers, is impossible under modern capitalist conditions; and existing conditions demand a rational regulation of the metabolic relation between human beings and the earth, pointing beyond capitalist society to socialism and communism. Engels argued that only the working people organised as "associated producers" can "govern the human metabolism with nature in a rational way". This "requires something more than mere knowledge. It requires a complete revolution in our hitherto existing mode of production, and simultaneously a revolution in our whole contemporary social order."

For Marx and Engels, people and nature are not two separate things. Marx wrote that: “Man lives from nature, i.e., nature is his body, and he must maintain a continuing dialogue with it if he is not to die. To say that man’s physical and mental life is linked to nature simply means that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature.” Marx goes so far as to define communism as “the unity of being of man with nature.”

The most basic feature of communism in Marx’s projection is its overcoming of capitalism’s social separation of the producers from necessary conditions of production. This new social union entails a complete decommodification of labour power plus a new set of communal property rights. Communist or “associated” production is planned and carried out by the producers and communities themselves, without the class-based intermediaries of wage labour, market, and state. Marx often motivates and illustrates these basic features in terms of the primary means and end of associated production: free human development.

Marx does not see this communal property as conferring a right to overexploit land and other natural conditions in order to serve the production and consumption needs of the associated producers. Instead, he foresees an eclipse of capitalist notions of land ownership by a communal system of user rights and responsibilities:

"From the standpoint of a higher economic form of society, private ownership of the globe by single individuals will appear quite as absurd as private ownership of one man by another. Even a whole society, a nation, or even all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the globe. They are only its possessors, its usufructuaries, and, like boni patres familias, they must hand it down to succeeding generations in an improved condition."

Democracy is Socialism

Many equate socialism with dictatorship, yet, with the coming of the modern industrial state, most of the world’s population has lived under dictatorship. In the world today there are many countries under dictatorships of varying degrees of ruthlessness; that is to say, countries in which the government is not responsible to the electorate, and in which political parties and trade unions are suppressed, or are allowed to exist only as organs of the government itself, and in which freedom of speech and opposition propaganda are denied. The Socialist Party of Great Britain, in conformity with its adherence to democratic principles, is opposed to all dictatorships. The Socialist Party has always insisted on the democratic nature of socialism, and on the value that the widest possible discussion of conflicting political views has for the working class. We do not minimise the importance of democracy for the working class or the socialist movement.

Under a dictatorship, the traditional forms of working-class political and economic organisation are denied the right of legal existence. Freedom of speech, assembly, and the Press is severely curtailed and made to conform to the needs of a single political party that has for the time being secured a monopoly in the administration of the State machine. Under political democracy the workers are allowed to form their own political and industrial organisations and, within limits, freedom of speech, assembly and of the press is permitted, also the possibility of the electorate choosing between contending political parties.

Dictatorship in various forms exists at the present time, basically because of the political immaturity of most of the working class all over the world. Instead of being united by worldwide class consciousness, they are everywhere divided: divided between the nations by the poison of nationalism; divided inside the nations by religious, racial and other superstitions; divided also by the failure of many to appreciate the importance of democracy. Nationalism plays a powerful role in thwarting the growth of class consciousness; by inducing workers in the newly created countries of Africa to accept oppression for the supposed benefits they will later receive when industrial development has been speeded up; by the readiness of the workers in countries holding colonies to condone what is in effect a dictatorship imposed on the colonial peoples.

Dictatorship does not exist in a vacuum: like every other social phenomenon, it is related to and has its origin in, a social background. That background is capitalism which inevitably gives rise to working-class problems, consequent frustration, prejudices and bitterness which can be exploited by the opponents of democracy. With equal inevitability, it also gives rise to problems of a specifically capitalist nature: such as maintaining the profitability of production; securing new and retaining old markets; the necessity of forging 'national unity' when faced with war with rival capitalist groups, and so on. It is precisely in an attempt to solve these problems that the ruling class in certain circumstances has recourse to dictatorship. As long as the workers support capitalism and capitalist policies they will be tempted ultimately to give their support to the policy best calculated to meet the political and economic needs of capitalism, though that policy may be one of dictatorship.

We are said to have democracy in that we have free elections which allow us to choose whatever form of government we wish, unlike countries where a single-party dictatorship exists. Such dictatorships usually allow elections where the people may approve or disapprove of given candidates within the dictatorship but have not the freedom to vote for any other parties or for independent candidates. In other words, the people have imposed on them by force, corruption or the control of information a specific political regime and have not got the necessary democratic machinery to challenge that regime.

We are convinced that democracy cannot be defended by the adoption of the 'lesser evil', that is, a policy of concessions to and compromise with non-fascist parties and elements of capitalism. We do not unite with non-socialist organisations which claim to be defending democracy. Democracy for the working class can only be consolidated and expanded to the extent that the workers adopt the socialist standpoint. To renounce socialism so democracy may be defended means ultimately the rejection of both socialism and democracy. Looking at the vast sums of money involved in our allegedly democratic elections we can hardly claim that they are "free"! In fact, in most of the so-called democratic countries, it could be said that the astronomical costs of challenging political power have been deliberately manipulated in order to ensure that those who cannot attract rich backers will be denied meaningful access to the democratic process. Effectively this means that in the same way as people in dictatorships are denied the right to make real political changes, in Britain and other allegedly democratic societies prohibitive financial restrictions are placed in the way of the working class organising politically to effect real economic change. The idea of fair and free elections would give the ruling class political apoplexy. This does not mean that socialists equate dictatorship and bourgeois democracy. Within the latter, we are free to organise politically and to develop our support to the extent where we can eventually overcome the embargoes and impediments that capitalism’s restricted democratic forms impose on us, whereas in the former any socialist work is necessarily clandestine and can invoke severe penalties.

The democratic state has been forced, against its will, to bring into being methods, institutions, and procedures that have left open the road to power for workers to travel upon when they know what to do and how to do it. In this country the central institution through which power is exercised in Parliament. To merely send working-class nominees there to control it is not sufficient. The purpose must be to accomplish a revolutionary reorganisation of society, a revolution, in its basis, which will put everybody on an equal footing as participants in the production, distribution and consumption of social requirements as well as in the control of society itself. So that all may participate equally, democracy is an essential condition. Free discussion, full and free access to information, means to implement the wishes of the majority which have been arrived at after free discussion, and the means to alter decisions if the wishes of the majority change. Socialist production needs to be organised democratically-a dictatorship organising production for use would not be socialism.

New Democracy?

 

There will be situations when people simply cannot agree and there are no compromises everyone can live with. There is put bluntly no consensus. What happens in these situations, depending on the situation is either A) The suggestion is blocked or B) The group does nothing faced with a situation.

The idea is that if one has not reached a consensus it would be “majority tyranny” to implement a decision over the heads of the disagreeing minority. However, you will see that on the contrary, it is minority tyranny when a minority can block an initiative that is wanted by most of the group. The same is true for the hybrid vote that thinks it is unacceptable for 51% of a group to “dictate” what 49% should do. Therefore the majority must be 2/3 or in some cases even 3/4. Is it democratic for a little bit over 1/3 or 1/4 to be able to block the desired change?

If one uses consensus, anyone who is against a decision can decide to block an initiative. With super-majorities a small minority can put itself in the way of decisions that most of the group want. Put bluntly both make possible minority rule.

It’s not even egalitarian. consensus is a strictly verbal process. This means that the well-articulated will be put ahead of the less articulated. Anyone who has spent a certain amount of time in a group utilizing consensus will have noticed that the same people usually talk the most. In contrast with voting, you have no way of knowing what is on everybody’s mind unless you employ a session where everybody gets to speak. It could very well mean “talking until we’re sick of it”, with a large amount of uncertainty regarding what was actually decided.

Decision making is done through consensus is vulnerable to informal hierarchies. If the first five to speak about a theme are all for an initiative that you’re against, how easy is it to raise your hand and object? If the meeting has dragged out and you know putting your hand up and voicing your concern will start a long discussion ould you make yourself heard! How do you see that a member is not raising his or her hand for fear of too many others disagreeing? How do you see that a member will not speak because of fatigue after a long and fruitless meeting? How do you perceive that someone is silent because they are not comfortable with their own abilities of articulation?

The loose form of the organization makes implementing formal checks and balances difficult. The loose organization does not rid a group of hierarchy but masks it. Without mapping out and delineating the process with rules, it’s hard to find the kinks and reflect on the consequences of your organizational structure.

In small groups where everybody knows each other, a newcomer to a group will experience how disorienting the decisions are made without formal rules. The more people there are at a meeting utilizing consensus, the more unmanageable, confusing, and time-consuming the meeting tends to be. It takes a very short time to understand a formalized direct democratic decision-making process employing voting. There were simple rules to follow; they were written down, and one could easily observe if everybody followed them. If one wants to engage new people and grow the structure must be formalized and transparent. A group of activists can’t operate as a clique of friends and expect to attract others.

A group votes over what decisions they want to be implemented. This has the advantage that one quickly knows where everybody is on the issue, either they’re for and vote yes, or against and vote no, or don’t care and refrain from voting. There is no requirement for articulation or much else for that matter. If a decision wins by a very slight majority and is very important, like changing the platform or rules, for example, there can be a formalized rule that in such cases one must open for new discussion before having another, final vote. Anyone can read the rules and participate, and voting takes little time even when there are many presents.

The power structure of capitalism – in which those who control its most important asset, capital, are the ones who control the rest of us – is inherently exploitative and oppressive. But that is not the same as saying that power in itself is inherently bad. Power should be understood as a neutral phenomenon, which exists in any society, whether we like it or not. Democratic power is fundamentally different from state power because the latter is based on the decision-making powers of a minority. Socialists far from removing the problem of power from their field of vision, address the problem of how to give power a concrete institutional emancipatory form.

Recent events certainly demonstrate the usefulness of social media. Protesters are able to make and take their case beyond their borders and tell their story in their own words without having it subject to governmental or media spin. This is something new and very useful that gives activists communicative powers on a level that has never been possible before. But the importance of tools like Facebook and Twitter has been overstated. Social media, by providing a loose network of links that can quickly spread information from friends to friends of friends, and eventually to total strangers, does not supplant or replace many of the most essential elements of any successful social movement. Successful social movements require a well-organised structure and camaraderie based on face-to-face contact and shared experience. Social media is simply a new tool that can spread ideas. Social media can spread information faster and more efficiently than anything that has previously existed and is thus very useful for rapidly spreading the news of injustice or quickly mobilizing large groups of people. What social media does not change, however, is the best way to utilise these mobilized individuals. The relatively weak personal ties established on the Internet simply cannot provide the sense of solidarity of a party.

More Proof that Capitalism is Divisive

Capitalism is a Divisive System

Roughly 80,000 cars are stolen from driveways in Canada every year and always around 3AM. Police and insurance investigators say these thefts are carried out by a web of international car theft rings with ties to the Middle East and terrorism. 

They use what is known as the relay attack. This means they use a hand-held device to send a signal to the key fobs inside the house from which they get the signal, then amplified, to open the car door. 

The cars are shipped to countries in the Middle East and beyond where they sell for two to three times their value. There is a huge profit in this business. It only costs about $10,000 to move a shipping container that can hold two or three vehicles. 

The saddening thing is that it sure isn't the masterminds behind the thefts that are doing the act of stealing, but joe-blow working guys that are stealing from other working guys; more proof that capitalism is a divisive system.

S.P.C. Members.

Workers in both countries are the losers

Canada's trade minister, Mary Ng, said she is disappointed at some of the protectionist measures being pushed by the Biden government, though she isn't discouraged from partnering with Canada's largest trading partner. 

She doesn't like the,'' Buy American'', provisions in Biden's new infrastructure bill, which are making it difficult for non-American companies to bid on lucrative pro[1]jects. Biden is motivated by the interests of the capitalist class in the U.S. as Ng is its counterpart in Canada. 

In such a situation there can only be one loser, the working class in both countries.

S.P.C. Members.

The Class Struggle

 

Marx observed in 1865 that wage levels can only be "settled by the continuous struggle between capital and labour, the capitalist constantly tending to reduce wages to their physical minimum, and to extend the working day to its physical maximum, while the working man constantly presses in the opposite direction."

Hal Draper later remarked, "To engage in class struggle it is not necessary to 'believe in' the class struggle any more than it is necessary to believe in Newton to fall from an aeroplane. There is no evidence that workers like to struggle any more than anyone else; the evidence is that capitalism compels and accustoms them to do so."

Unlike peasants in a capitalist society the proletariat as the most exploited class divorced from the means of production and therefore condemned to live by selling the only commodity they are left with, their bare hands, or their labour-power to the owners of capital. Therefore they are the most revolutionary class. They are located in the most progressive sectors of the economy i.e. large-scale machine production in urban areas and working together in large bodies under one roof. For that reason,  they are the most organised, the most disciplined and therefore the most revolutionary class in capitalist society. And as Karl Marx observed, having lost their property to the capitalists they have nothing to lose in the struggle but their chains. They see for themselves that they toil and live in deplorable conditions and yet they are the creators of the country's wealth which accumulates in the hands of a few rich people.  More than any other class, they are interested in the abolition of private property and exploitation of one person by another and the eventual collective ownership and management of the economy by workers' councils or soviets. This makes them the most revolutionary class once their class consciousness is awakened. Their class interests are irreconcilable with those of capitalism.

In a society of class antagonism, there are basically two socially opposing types of people - the capitalist exploiter and the exploited working person. This polarisation is sharper in advanced capitalist economies where the bourgeoisie regards the working class as an object for the extraction of surplus-value - the source of their profits. The workers are reduced to cogs in the machinery of capitalist production and denied all rights. However, it is important to note that in a capitalist society the workers have actually accomplished a great deal. Due primarily to their efforts, massive productive forces have been built up, which make it possible to create unprecedented material and spiritual wealth for the benefit of all. The first condition, especially in advanced capitalist countries,  for building a society of equals in which the workers themselves become the aim and purpose of production has already been created.

Unions are important because of the centrality of the working class to the larger struggle for socialism. Karl Marx was the first socialist among his contemporaries to recognise this important role of the working-class and therefore trade unions, as the only leading force in the struggle for a socialist revolution. Utopian socialists before Marx had dismissed unions as irrelevant and some of them even opposed strike action. Marx understood the absolute importance at all times of organising this class to unite as a class against their capitalist enemy.

The trade unions are workers' front line of defence against their employers under capitalism. But as vehicles for struggle, they are also crucial to the future self-emancipation of the working class. But there is also a contradiction: unions both negotiate the terms of exploitation of workers under capitalism and also provide the vehicle for the struggle that can prepare the working class for revolution. Capitalism forces workers into competition with each other - native vs. foreign-born, skilled vs. unskilled, and so on-exploiting every opportunity to keep workers divided. Organising into unions, which present the opportunity for the collective struggle against the employers, thereby reducing competition between workers. Marx and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto, "This organisation of the proletarians into a class, and consequently into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier."

In the US the number of strikes fell to their lowest point on record in 2009 and to the second-lowest in 2010. These figures demonstrate the extent to which labour leaders have been unwilling to use labour's most effective weapon, the strike. Decades of concessionary bargaining-at first, claimed to be a temporary phenomenon-have made wage and benefit cuts routine aspects of union negotiations, thereby enabling the deterioration of working-class living standards. Conservative trade-union leaders are de facto agents of the employing class trying to hide behind the mask of trade-union neutrality in order to divert the workers from the path of the class war onto a path of collaboration with the capitalist. Economics and politics are inseparably linked. In practice, trade union neutrality amounts to supporting the bosses.

History has shown that the rate of union membership corresponds to the rise and decline in the level of class struggle. If the current balance of class forces can only be reversed through a revival of class struggle, then the key challenge facing union activists is how to transform their unions into fighting organisations. For Marxists, this necessarily entails, step by step, strengthening the fighting capacity of workers in general, and union workers in particular.

The working class must now conquer capitalism. And history has bestowed the role of conquering capitalist society squarely on the shoulders of the working class - they are the undisputed 'grave-diggers' of capitalism. It is therefore totally inconceivable that this class can be denied the right to intervene in politics to liberate themselves and society at large. Every social and political movement tending in that direction should be aided by the trade unions. Unions must be champions of the entire class and should not form themselves into corporate bodies only of their members, shutting out non-members. It is their duty to help organise those who cannot organise themselves easily and protect the interests of the worst paid trades like agricultural workers.

 Experience bears testimony to the fact that trade union involvement in broader struggles has a salutary or beneficial effect on the working class than being stuck in the narrow and parochial rut. The trade union movement must fight to bring the marginalised into the mainstream, and the weakest into more advantageous positions in society. By their action they must demonstrate that they are not using their organised strength only to guard their interests, but for all the downtrodden.

Today working-class consciousness has to develop to a point where they are in the process of becoming "a class for-itself" i.e. a class consciousness working class which enables them to see their real class enemy as capitalism.

Let's have a revolution

 

What constitutes a socialist revolution? When socialists say that we need a revolution, we are calling for a very big change. But we are not using the word as a sales gimmick. The eradication of capitalism entails a class war. In the sort of world, we want there will be no private or government ownership, no money and no countries. This kind of change indeed deserves the name “revolution.” The Socialist Party hold that the socialist revolution has to be majoritarian and must involve removing the capitalist class’s stranglehold on the machinery of government, thus denying them control over the state’s coercive apparatus and removing their claims to democratic legitimacy. When we use the term “majoritarian” this is not because we are obsessed with counting the number of individual socialists, but to show that we reject minority action to try to establish socialism. A "militant" minority cannot provoke a non-socialist-minded working class into carrying out a socialist revolution. That the socialist revolution (and subsequent operation of socialist society)requires the conscious political understanding and democratic action of the majority of the working class rather than an organisation by political leadership with a set of passive followers.

The Socialist Party does not believe in achieving socialism through coercion or through the violent seizure of power by a revolutionary vanguard. That's no basis upon which to build a fair and democratic society. No, the only way that socialism as we understand it could be set up and run is through the consent and cooperation of an overwhelming majority of the world's population. And the only way we will know once there is such a majority is when it says so via the ballot. It is then, and only then, that we will know that the time is ripe for the socialist revolution. It is then that we can start dismantling the coercive machinery of government and start taking control of the things we need to make society function in our own interests. That the socialist revolution can only be international, creating a worldwide society where production is carried out solely to meet the needs and desires of its inhabitants.

The SPGB argues that it is not enough to have thousands of demonstrators on the streets or even millions of workers occupying the factories. Above all the working class must have a clear understanding of what socialism entails and what methods are effective in overthrowing capitalism. A grasp of socialist principles by the vast majority of the workers is a minimal condition for going forward to socialism. The socialist revolution can only be democratic, in the sense of both being what the majority of people want and of being carried out by democratic methods of organisation and action. No minority revolution can lead to socialism, not even one that destroys the state (our case against certain anarchists). Hence our conclusion that the movement to establish socialism, and the methods it employs, must “prefigure” the democratic nature of socialism. 

Socialism is the ongoing task of the majority; it cannot work top-down; it cannot be imposed and cannot be legislated for by one or more leaders or vanguard movement, however well-intentioned. If populist, charismatic, paternalistic and concentrated in the most subordinate sectors, using anti-elitist discourse and re-distributive methods in a dependent client context with the aim of constructing a base to gain the support of the popular sector – then a socialist revolution it is not. The socialist revolution necessarily involves the active and conscious participation of the great majority of workers, thus excluding the role of leadership.

In considering the question of how realistic it is to expect a socialist revolution, it is important to consider the hidden history of events that most people are unaware of. It was in the Paris Commune of 1871 that French workers actually created organisations of mass control which challenged the old system for a brief space of time. In the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917, workers and peasants developed similar structures of direct workers' control such as the workers councils and factory committees. 

The Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917 eventually destroyed this, and ushered in a system of state capitalism. Similarly, in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the workers set up workers' councils when they took on their so-called "communist" oppressors. During the May of 1968 in France, workplaces and universities were taken over and in many cases run in a way that is of immense inspiration to socialists.

What happened on these occasions? Not socialist revolutions, as some claim. But they were significant in the history of the struggles of our class. They are significant because the sort of people who dismiss the possibility of revolutionary upheavals were dismissing it seconds before these events blew up in their faces. No one is in any position to dismiss the prospect of revolution who has not carefully examined these movements. In none of these cases was a socialist revolution achieved, but in each case there was a fundamental interruption of the ruling order and the appearance of new forms and conceptions of everyday life. To ignore them because of their failure is to miss the point. Individual revolts are bound to fail until they are accompanied by a widespread and growing—and ultimately worldwide—socialist consciousness. Marx's analysis shows that the socialist revolution must be world-wide and cannot be achieved in one country alone. Because capitalism has become a world-wide system the society to replace it must also be world-wide. Class emancipation must mean the "freeing of the whole of society from exploitation, oppression and class struggle . . ."

What we hope these brief examples show is that real change can be brought about by workers. Socialism is not a utopian dream. It is an ever-present undercurrent in working class practice. The task is to make it the main one. That these revolts did not go farther is hardly surprising. What is inspiring is that they went as far as they did. The socialist revolution is not likely to start from some strike over wages spreading to the whole of the working class. Certainly, workers can learn from the experience of industrial struggles against employers that socialism is the only way out and, in this sense, strikes can contribute to a growth of socialist consciousness. But so can the many other experiences of the way capitalism works against the interests of workers (bad housing, poor health care, pollution, wars and the threat of war, etc, etc). 99 percent of the socialist revolution consists of imbuing our class with the confidence and ambition to succeed, and a revulsion of living as wage slaves whether pampered or ill-fed: once we have this our numbers will carry the day. The productive powers have been increased to a vast degree, yet people are still idle, starving, poverty stricken, and homeless, while the machinery of production is misused or neglected. This must change. This will change. 

This, the 21st century, can be the true century of revolution, of true socialist revolution. A socialist revolution, a democratic revolution without leaders, is an urgent necessity.

Our Fight

 Trade unions co-operate in the exploitation of their members by accepting the premise that the international capitalist class has the unquestioned and legally enforceable ‘right’ to exploit the working class. Of vital importance is the mental conceptions of revolutionary change held by workers and without a change in what people think about the prospects for change, there can be no alternative other than a continuance of some form of capitalism. Socialists claim, that there is a way to reconcile our conflict with our masters, and it is to build on our economic and social power and organise collectively and politically to end the dangerous madness of the market system once and for all, rather than trying to beat the capitalists at their own game.  Any gains made in the class struggle for better pay and conditions are still open to being eroded by the inevitable capitalist counter-attack, and without a socialist understanding, the workers will not be able to climb out of the rut of capitalism. So the cycle would continue, with workers making some gains, but then the capitalist class launches a counteroffensive by either attacking the gain itself or attacking from some other direction.

A fundamental Marxian position is that class struggle is the motor that drives change. Built into capitalism is a class struggle between those who own the means of wealth production and those who don't and who are therefore forced by economic necessity to sell their ability to work to those who do. The class war, between the owners of the means of production (the capitalists) and those compelled by the threat of poverty to sell their capacity to work (the workers), is an essential and continual feature of capitalist society. The class struggle is the irrefutable antagonism of interests in present society between the class that owns and profits from the means of production, and the class that creates the wealth but does not possess any means of producing a wealth of their own. Those who yearn for change are aware of some form of injustice or antagonism inherent in present-day society. This class struggle is not just over the price and conditions of sale of the commodity workers are selling. Ultimately, it's about control over the means of production. The strength of the argument is that it puts the power and potential for change back where it belongs and where it in fact really lies: in our own hands. The problem we have to face is that, in the class struggle, the odds are nearly always against us, and that to build a socialist future, we need a mass organisation of people who know what it is they want and are prepared to work to achieve it. As Engels put it, “The period for sudden onslaughts, of revolutions carried out by small conscious minorities at the head of unconscious masses, is past. Where the question involves the complete transformation of the social organisation, there the masses must be consulted, must themselves have already grasped what the struggle is about, and what they stand for.”

Groups pursuing the tactic of trying to reform capitalism by concentrating on adjusting it is a wasted effort, since the entire system is based on a minority exploiting a majority. To expend all energy in demands for a more "friendly" capitalism is not what socialists should aim for, as, even in the event of success, the primary evils of capitalism would still remain i.e. production for profit and extraction of surplus-value. The main effort of socialists should be aiming for socialism itself. Socialists should get involved in industrial struggles but without illusions, in particular, the illusion that they can have a revolutionary outcome. The socialist revolution may start from some strike over wages spreading to the whole of the working class and certainly, workers can learn from the experience of industrial struggles against employers that socialism is the only way out so, in this sense, strikes can contribute to a growth of socialist consciousness. But so can the many other experiences of the way capitalism works against the interests of workers (bad housing, poor health care, pollution, wars, etc).

Which leads to the importance of who controls the state. At the moment, this is in the hands of people favourable to the continuation of capitalism, itself a reflection of the fact that most workers, too, don't see any alternative to capitalism. The state, therefore, upholds legal private property rights. The end of capitalism can only come as a result of a consciously socialist political movement winning control of political power with a view to abolishing all capitalist property rights and ushering in the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production. The preconditions for ending capitalism are a majority socialist consciousness and workers democratically self-organised in a large-scale socialist party. Neither of which, unfortunately, exist. There is no way that an anti-capitalist social order can be constructed without seizing state power, radically transforming it the constitutional and institutional framework that currently supports the private property. To ignore the state is a ridiculous and dangerous idea for any anti-capitalist movement to accept.

Questioning the future of capitalism ought to be at the forefront of the current debate. Socialist ideas have to be communicated to other workers, but not from outside the working class as a whole. They have to be communicated by other workers who, from their own experience and/or from absorbing the past experience of the working class, have come to a socialist understanding. It is not a question of enlightened outsiders bringing socialist ideas to the benighted workers but of socialist-minded workers spreading socialist ideas amongst their fellow workers.  Our mission is to show clearly both how we are robbed and exploited by the system ruled by capital and how we can untap the wealth of our collective productive power by taking control of the means of production directly. Socialists recognise the necessity of workers' solidarity in the class struggle against the capitalist class and rejoice in every victory for the workers to assert their economic power. Both raising and defending workers' wages affects the amount of time and resources at the disposal of workers for control of their own lives. Romantic notions of class struggle – of battles on the barricades – concentrate on the exceptional forms, rather than the dull reality of the class struggle of everyday life. Workers do have to engage with the issues of pay and work conditions and pensions, but the main issue is the overthrow of capitalism, not picking away at it and then having our gains eroded sooner or later. In thinking of the class war as an actual war, the drive for a socialist understanding in the working class and the creation of a socialist society should be the main front, demanding the most effort, while everyday issues of pay and conditions and defending the gains that have been made would be a secondary front. We should never lose track of the actual aim of the socialist movement, the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement by a democratic association of peoples.

Socialist Administration

 There is a danger that plans produced today describing a socialist society will only bear the hallmark of the author’s own preference rather than how future socialists will democratically organise themselves. While it is of interest to speculate on a future socialist we are not obliged to produce detailed models to show how socialism will work, how it will solve the problems bequeathed by capitalism and the democratic administrative structure to ensure the rapid development of the forces of production once they are released from the constraints currently imposed by commodity production and exchange for profit.

A popular view is that it will involve centralisation, taking as its model the United Nations, a world central administration which will plan everything, everywhere and carry it out irrespective of the views of local people throughout the world. Socialists see this as both impractical and undemocratic.

There are also questions about the relationship between the community and individual industries. The view of the Socialist Party is that the community democratically decides what to produce not self-controlled industries as proposed by syndicalism. This does not mean that workers within these industries will not have a democratic say in how production takes place; the quality of the environment and health and safety, but it does not mean that they will have the sole say of what and how is produced and for whom. There will be disagreements and these will have to be dealt with democratically. The experts will also disagree as they often do now under capitalism such as over the choice of energy, e.g. nuclear power, coal, oil, gas, electricity, tidal, wind power and solar energy and decisions will have to be made committing labour and resources, but it will be for the community to democratically decide on the basis of transparent information, facts and reasonable argument, not the experts. The Socialist Party long ago rejected the technocrat view of administration.

 In a socialist society, the community will have to take major decisions about the allocation of labour and finite resources. While production will be much greater than it is now, labour and resources will not be unlimited. There are many people whole would like a return to manned moon missions. The cost of voluntary labour, much of it specialists, and the material resources required would be enormous, and if allocated to that project, it would mean that labour and resources cannot be allocated to other industries that other people favour. The community will have to democratically decide between them.

The advocates of centralisation say that as there will be one world community sharing a common interest, the decision-making about what shall be produced and where and how it shall be produced will be made by a world central administrative organisation, and they will carry it out. They will make the decisions and what they decide will apply all the way down to local levels. This appears unnecessary, undesirable and impracticable.

There is first the factor of size and complexity. As organisations become larger – larger in the number of people covered and larger geographically - their ability to handle centrally all the problems that arise decreases and because they are more remote from local needs their decisions and actions are more likely to be wrong.

We see in the multi-nationals, formed by amalgamations and takeovers, the experience led to the need to give greater autonomy to functional and geographical divisions. Rigid, top-down planning and direction was dismantled and given greater autonomy to their local boards.

But as regards socialist administration of things there is a more important criterion. People will not want their local issues to be settled by the dictates of some world administrative organisation. Such a bureaucracy would result in the destruction of many of local institutions and imitative. It seems likely, therefore, that socialist administration will not be decision making by a central world organisation, with people regionally and locally falling into line. Instead, people at a regional and local level will just get on with the task of ensuring production and distribution meets human needs in what form it takes where they live.

So what use would a world organisation of production and distribution have in a future socialist society?

There are four areas where a world administration would have a useful role; first, a clearing-house of information about production, transport and communications all over the world; second, a repository of expert technical information; third, that it would arrange co-ordination between surplus products in some areas and deficiencies in other areas; and fourth, they would extend some of the functions already existing at a world level, like health, energy, food and agricultural organisations and so on.

As an example, we can turn to the example of the Universal Postal Union. At present they handle three kinds of processes; financial, technical and organisational. The financial question will disappear, i.e. what the different organisations pay each other. Postal authorities in each country meet together and draw up conveyances which, when agreed, they all separately carry out. What the U.P.U does not do is to carry on the postal services themselves. They have no hand in it. But there is now and will continue to be an agreement of all the postal services about weights and sizes of what they send abroad. There is agreement about safety – exclusion of dangerous articles, and so on. There is agreement about forms of addresses, postal codes and evidence of parcels causing difficulties for workers on sorting work.

Chasing inflation.

Jerry Dias, the head of Canada's largest private-sector union, Unifor, which has a membership of 315,000, says the era of a 2 per cent rise is over, in view of runaway inflation.

 Most workers are bound to three-to-five-year contracts and, therefore, have no recourse to higher prices. 

Their bargaining teams have no idea how to handle the surging inflation. 

Dias said,'' Workers expect that their wages are at least going to pick up with the rate of inflation''. 

The WSM has always said the most unions can accomplish is to improve life for their members within capitalism, a system we seek to abolish.

S.P.C. Members

Promises, Promises!

In 2009, the developers Cadillac Fairview (CF), built an open-air shopping centre in Don Mills, Ontario. They also built condo towers that the local residents had opposed at the Ontario Municipal Board. 

However, CF promised the residents that if they dropped their opposition to the two condo towers, they would build a community centre. This would have a swimming pool, a fitness area, meeting rooms, gym and an indoor walking track. 

Twelve years have gone by, the promise has not been kept, but should anyone be surprised?

S.P.C. Members.