Mick Mcgahey - A working class man (music video)

 

A Needs-Oriented System

 Socialism is a vision of a world shared among us all, a world of common ownership with free movement for all. We live on a planet that is capable of providing all its inhabitants with the food, housing, health care, education and the other amenities of life that they need. But this does not happen. The economic system that exists all over the world today is capitalism where productive resources are owned and controlled by a few rich individuals, corporations states and whose rules of operation are ‘no profit, no production’ and ‘can’t pay, can’t have’. It is this system of production for profits that is the root cause of the world’s problems as it imposes that making profits has to take priority over meeting people’s needs and protecting the planet. It is clear that there can be no national solutions to these problems. The only way-out is global. It’s the world’s natural and industrial resources becoming the common heritage of all humanity so that they can be used to directly meet the needs of the world’s population on the basis of ‘from each according to ability, to each according to need’. Free of ownership by the few and the rule of ‘no profit, no production’, this is the only framework within which problems such as global warning, growing inequality and wars can be tackled for good.

All across the world the capitalist system plunders and pollutes the Earth’s non-renewable mineral and energy sources. All across the world it poisons the sea, the air, the soil, forests, rivers and lakes. All across the world it disturbs natural balances and defies the laws of ecology. Clearly this environmental destruction and waste cannot continue indefinitely, but it need not; it should not and must not. It is quite possible to meet the basic material needs of every man, woman and child on this planet without destroying the natural systems on which we depend and of which we are a part. 

We can adopt:

· Farming methods that preserve and enhance the natural fertility of the soil;

· The systematic recycling of materials obtained from non-renewable mineral sources;

· The reduced use of non-renewable energy sources (such as coal, oil and gas) while increasing the alternative sources based on natural processes that continually renew themselves (such as solar energy, wind power and tidal);

· The employment of industrial processes which avoid the release of toxic chemicals into the biosphere;

· The manufacture of durablegoods made to last and be repairable, not to be thrown away after use or deliberately to break down after a calculated period of time.

What stands in the way? Why isn’t this done? The simple answer is that, under the present economic system, production is not geared to meeting human needs but rather to the accumulation of monetary wealth out of profits. The whole system of production, from the methods employed to the choice of what to produce, is distorted by the imperative drive to pursue economic growth for its own sake and to give priority to seeking profits to fuel this growth without consideration for the longer term factors that ecology teaches are vitally important. The result is an economic system governed by blind economic laws which oblige decision-makers, however selected and whatever their personal views or sentiments, to plunder, pillage and pollute.

Not only are basic needs far from satisfied but much of what is produced is pure waste from this point of view—for example all the resources involved in commerce and finance, the mere buying and selling of things and those poured into armaments. If needs are to be met while at the same time respecting the laws of nature, then this capitalist system must go.

If we are to meet our needs in an ecologically acceptable way we must first be able to control production, to able to consciously regulate our interaction with the rest of nature—and the only basis on which this can be done is the common ownership of the means of production.

By common ownership we don’t mean state property. We mean simply that the Earth and its natural and industrial resources should no longer belong to anyone—not to individuals, not to corporations, not to the state. No person or group should have exclusive controlling rights over their use; instead how they are used and under what conditions should be decided democratically by the community as a whole. Under these conditions the whole concept of legal property rights, whether private or state, over the means of production disappears and is replaced by democratically decided rules and procedures governing their use.

A fully democratic decision-making structure must be an essential feature of the system that is to replace private and state capitalism. The centralised, coercive political state must be dismantled and replaced by a decision-making structure in which everyone is free to participate on an equal basis. It is possible to envisage, the local community being the basic unit of this structure. In this case people would elect a local council to co-ordinate and administer those local affairs that could not be dealt with by a general meeting of the whole community. This council would in its turn send delegates to a regional council for matters concerning a wider area and so on up to a world council responsible for matters that could best be dealt with on a world scale (such as the supply of certain key minerals and fuels, the protection of the biosphere, the mining and farming of the oceans, and space research). Given the replacement of the coercive political state by such a democratic decision-making structure, the network of productive units could then be geared to meeting needs. We deliberately use the word “geared” here because what we envisage is not the organisation of the production and distribution of goods by some central planning authority but the setting up of a mechanism, a system of links between productive units, which would enable the productive network to respond in a flexible way to the demands for goods and services communicated to it.

In the needs-oriented society we are describing here the concept of “profits” would be meaningless while the imperative to “growth” would disappear. Instead, after an initial increase in production needed to provide the whole world’s population with an infrastructure of basic services (such as farms, housing, transport and water supplies) production can be expected to platform off at a level sufficient to provide for current needs and repairing and maintaining the existing stock of means of production. What is envisaged is a society able to sustain a stable relationship with nature in which the needs of its members would be in balance with the capacity of nature to renew itself after supplying them.

In a socialist society all the resources of the earth, including the factories, mines, offices, land and the means of communication and transportation, will belong to everyone, regardless of colour, sex, age, or where one happens to live. All people will have free access to the goods and services which the world is able to produce.

There is power in a union (music)

 

A World to Gain

 

It is in the interest of all workers whatever their colour, nationality, or sex to recognise that the root of their problems lies in capitalism itself. The problems cannot be cured without its abolition. All workers must unite to bring to an end a system that sentences them to a lifetime of poverty, insecurity, conflict and hardship. Then, world-wide, all will work together, co-operating in producing everything that humanity requires to satisfy its needs. All mankind will live in harmony. National frontiers will be superseded, workers of different states will realise their identical economic interests as producers.

Competition under capitalism leads to false ideas about the burden of newcomers to native-born workers, who claim first pick on ‘our’ hospitals, ‘our’ housing, ‘our’ social security benefits. In fact, bad housing, hospital waiting lists, low pay and bad working conditions are universal problems. They are a consequence of the essential poverty of all people who depend on being employed in order to live. There was never a time when life was easy. Migrants did not create the problems. They arrive here with the false hope of escaping the same misery in their home countries, but find when they arrive here they have to share it and take the blame for it.

Since its inception, capitalism has drawn workers from poorer parts of the country and from abroad to more developed regions in order to satisfy its labour needs. And, as Marx said, capitalists require to also build up an industrial reserve army for the bosses to maintain their dominance in the job market and to control wage levels. All those people migrating are simply obeying the imperative that they must try to find a place to work. No amount of restrictions will change that fact.

The resentment against migrants is a class matter and such prejudice is inflamed by the many sections of the ruling class. Capitalism has sometimes been against immigration restrictions by promoting the free movement and availability of wage labour. But, at the same time, the capitalist social system is a fertile breeding ground for anti-foreigner policies. This may seem like a contradiction, but that is how it is, for capitalism is riddled with contradictions and inconsistencies. It cannot be a system of human harmony - division and conflict are in its very nature. Capitalism is a ‘dog eat dog’ world and will remain so until it is abolished.

The solution to the immigration crisis lies not with building fences, but with creating the conditions that do not necessitate people leaving their homes, their family, their friends and neighbours. The reality is that the solution is socialism. In the meantime, instead of undermining the ability of migrant workers to cross borders in search of work, migrants need to be unionised, uniting migrant workers alongside local workers in a collective struggle to maintain and improve upon wages and conditions. As long as workers are viewing migrants as the cause of their problems, they leave themselves divided and distracted.

The concern of working people over wages, unemployment, welfare and public services is totally legitimate. However, placing the blame on migrants does not address the causes of these problems or bring improvements to the situation. The problem is the capitalist system itself. The path to beginning to solve these problems is workers’ unity across ethnic, religious and national lines. It is vital that the trade unions make the recruitment of migrant labour a top priority.

 No worker, solely by birthright, has a guarantee to a secure, decent life under capitalism. It is wishful, utopian thinking to believe otherwise.

The Socialist Party stands for a system of society based upon the principle of each individual having access to what they need, as a pre-condition of social activity. That is, securing for each human being the food, healthcare and housing they need, as well as the cultural and social goods of life, should be the first priority of any sane society. Of course, each person getting what they need means that different people will get different things. People are, of course, born with different needs, so it is not a question of everybody getting the same. What the Socialist Party proposes is a different world. Wherein everyone could have more than enough of the things they require, so they need no longer fear to lose it; where meeting and exploring our different needs becomes a past-time and an end in itself; where without conflicts of power and dominance – because we co-operate voluntarily and democratically – there is no limitation set on, nor distortion of, our endeavour to understand what it means to be a part of the human race. In short, socialism will allow us to be treated as unique individuals. Only where we can equally and freely participate in the community can our own personality become harmoniously enriched. That is why in answer to this antagonism-ridden, people-divided, class-divided, nation-divided society, we proclaim the alternative, socialism, one world, one people.

Salt of the Earth (video)

 A Hollywood blacklisted film from the 1950s that contains a contemporary relevance to unions, strikes and the role of women. 

Our Socialist Stand

  "It is necessary to suffer to achieve wisdom" 

While class consciousness often shows up in some form or other in the class struggle, the class struggle, in the main, is singularly lacking in class consciousness. Socialists cannot but draw attention to and participate in the class struggle until such time as capitalism is defeated

The working class, in fact, is not only all-important but, with education and organisation on class-conscious lines, will ultimately be all-powerful. The workers, as a class, know not yet their own colossal might. Alone producing all the wealth of the world, the very fabric of society is maintained by their active energies of mind and hands. A section of them strike, and the withholding of their labour frequently disorganises industry. Many sections strike concurrently, the wheels of production cease to revolve, and a serious crisis is precipitated. Labour has not yet learnt its strength.

As time goes on, the class struggle itself, in which the workers are involved, inflicts suffering through the inevitable evils of capitalism — pitiful wages and chronic poverty. At the mercy of their exploiters and profiteers, they frantically turn this way and that to cope with the evils of capitalism, and try futilely to set things straight. But the SYSTEM that produces their sufferings they do not dream of attacking. They see neither a definite goal nor the way to it.

Yet a small minority there is who, by experience, thought, and study, is clear-sighted enough to see the way before them. These are the class-conscious and revolutionary proletarians. They know that no palliatives or tinkering reforms of any kind will, or can remove the blighting effects of the present system or emancipate their class from wage slavery. Only the destruction of capitalism itself, and the establishment by the workers of the socialist commonwealth in its place ever can.

We have seen an accentuated and ever-increasing class struggle, growing out of the essential antagonism between the wealth-producing workers and their exploiters. And that conflict of interests produces an increased class consciousness in some, whilst it illuminates and reveals for others the essential clash of the classes that is the outcome of the capitalist system, and of which they probably had not been otherwise aware. Also, the development of a predatory and ruthless system of capitalism automatically not only produces its antagonists but drives them to combat it. And the result is that weapon after weapon will be tried and discarded—because they are no good.

At best, the function of the trade unions is simply that of collective bargaining for a better price for their members’ labour-power, and better conditions, not to abolish the system under which they are daily robbed. It all finally reduces down to the matter of class consciousness—an exact knowledge of their position, importance, and potentialities, on the part of the workers AS A CLASS in relation to society as a whole, and especially to to the capitalist class, to whom they stand as propertyless, wealth-producing slaves. Class consciousness must be the basis of all revolutionary political action, and it is a tremendous driving force, wherever it is developed. It germinates from a mixture of experience and the study of Marxian economics. Without class consciousness as arriving force all the varied activities of the proletariat to better their conditions must necessarily be weakened in power.

Our exploiters, the capitalist class, hold and will continue to keep as long as they can, the whole edifice of society as a means to conserve and further their own class interests. It is only because they have the POLITICAL POWER that they wield such force as they do. It is obvious, then, that no action whatever on the part of the long-oppressed proletariat will emancipate the workers from wage-slavery other than the capture of political power for the purpose of overthrowing capitalism and establishing socialism.

An unbreakable sense of working-class solidarity can only spread at the same rate as socialist understanding develops among all sections of the workers. The Socialist Party constantly attempts to foster this unity in its work of analysing capitalism and its class structure and presenting the socialist alternative to present society. Now so long as the working class think that socialism is impossible, then it is impossible. And as they accept the very existence of capitalism, and the priorities and fundamentals of the system, as evidence in favour of keeping it in being, they continue to think that socialism is impossible, undesirable, insane 

The Function of Debt (video)

 He keeps referring to the so-called National Debt being “our” debt and that “we” have to pay the interest on it. But it is not our debt, something the working class owes.

 It is the debt of the capitalist state. Its function, within the capitalist economy, is to cover government spending which would otherwise have to be covered by higher taxation. Parenti seems to imply that it could be covered by the government simply creating more money. The government could do this — and governments have — but this doesn’t create any new wealth. If overdone it depreciates the unit in which wealth is expressed (inflation) and so causes a rise in the general price level. Which, if tax thresholds remain the same, amounts to an increase in taxation. More info at:

Cooking the Books II: The National Debt: whose debt? – worldsocialism.org/spgb

Class War Battleground

Capitalism has become a very complicated affair, far too complicated to allow of the personal management of the capitalists. Hence various institutions necessary to their maintenance have come into being. The most important of these institutions is Parliament, through which all the other institutions are controlled—for example, education, the media, and the armed forces. The capitalists propose certain representatives for Parliament, and the workers, carefully educated by the capitalist media to believe that they really represent working-class interests, obediently vote them in. These capitalist henchmen— Tory or Labour, it makes not the slightest difference—proceed to pass laws for the safeguarding of their employers' interests.

It should be quite obvious that the whole power of the capitalists lies in a government that can summon the inevitable deciding factor, force, when needed. Therefore the only logical thing for the workers to do is to capture that government, and so in a constitutional manner gain control of the armed forces. This can only be accomplished when the majority of the working class have reached class-consciousness—in other words, when the bulk of the workers have arrived at a complete understanding of their position as wage-slaves under the existing system of society. They will then utilise their powers of voting to further their own interests instead of the interests of a class that has always ruthlessly oppressed them.

Socialism can only be realised by the success of the working class in its struggle against the owning class. The socialist movement is built upon the facts of this class struggle, a struggle to uphold the interests of their class in the daily conflict with employers.

It does not depend upon the workers’ state of mind. The struggle is bound to exist whether it is recognised or not. The existence of a body of the population with no means of living but that of working for the group of owners —that fact alone denotes a class struggle. The workers cannot take action to seek work and wages without displaying the conflict of interests between them and employers, and the inevitable struggle that is involved in it. The never-ceasing battles over details of wages and hours are the actual result of the conflict of interests, and are inseparable from the struggle of the working class to live as wage-slaves in a society which allows them no other way of living as a class. Around the question of the job and work-place conditions, the workers are always compelled to struggle, and always will be while there is a working class dependent upon employers for existence. The economic battleground of the class struggle is limited to a guerrilla warfare. The employing class maintain their supremacy in the struggle because they have control of powers which enable them to defeat the workers. That power is political.

The workers are in the class struggle, but are not conscious of their interests. Hence they fight, blindly and vainly to improve their condition. Inside the unions, in political parties and in their everyday actions they do things which work to the capitalists’ advantage. They continue to act on lines which perpetuate the system that enslaves them, and support leaders and parties that work against the workers’ interests. The workers must recognise that the class struggle exists. They must become aware of their slave position, and the way out, if they are to prosecute the struggle to a victorious conclusion for themselves.  If the working class become conscious of their class interests and welfare, they will refuse to take actions which injure them.

Class consciousness was never more needed than now. To the Socialist Party, class consciousness is the breaking down of all barriers to understanding. Without it, militancy means nothing. The conflict between the classes is more than a struggle for each to gain from the other: it is the division which reaches across all others. The class-conscious worker knows where he or she stands in society. Their interests are opposed at every point to those of the capitalist class; their cause can only be the cause of revolution for the abolishing of classes. Without that understanding, militancy can mean little. It is not mere preamble that the Socialist Party’s principles open by stating the class division in capitalism: it is the all important basis from which the rest must follow.

Working Girl Blues

 

Most People and Socialism

 

Most people think that whichever government is elected it will make no real difference to their lives. Most people are right.

 

Most people think that political leaders are dishonest careerists. Most people are right.

 

Most people think that the world is in a mess: millions unemployed, homeless and house repossessions, kids on the streets, a collapsing health service, wars, ecological destruction, countless millions starving while farmers are paid to let food rot. Most People are right.

 

Most people think that little can be done to change it. They’re wrong.

 

Society does not have to be like this. We live under a system where:

· Production is for profit, not primarily for need.

· The richest 10 per cent own over half of all personal marketable wealth.

· The richest one per cent own three times as much as the poorest 50 per cent added together.

· The economy is run to make the rich stay rich at the expense of the poor.

 

The world market can never be run in the interest of the majority of us who produce the wealth but do not possess the major resources. No tinkering with the profit system by any government can ever make it comfortable, secure and happy for the majority of us.

 

All of the politicians in this election are asking you to vote for them so that they can run capitalism—continue the mess—carry on putting profit before needs—piling on the misery. 

It is all very well being against austerity but the cruel fact is that, when capitalism is going through one of its recurring crises, there is no alternative within the system to austerity. It is not the government that is to blame but the capitalist system. In imposing austerity all that governments are doing is what is required by the way capitalism works.

Of course austerity should be resisted to the extent that it can be – that’s what trade unions and such organisations are for – but without illusions. The most that can be achieved is a few mitigations here and there or a different distribution of the cuts, but they cannot be avoided. This is not defeatism. It is realism. The only alternative to the present austerity is neither a change of economic policy nor a change of government. It is a change of system. Socialism is the only realistic alternative to the present austerity. That’s what those who call themselves socialists should be advocating. Whatever job a worker does, and whatever the pay for it, does not change the facts of their class position in capitalist society. Capitalism is divided; on one side are the workers, who sell their abilities for a wage, and on the other the capitalists, who buy those abilities.

The interests of those two groups have always been opposed, and that will stay as long as capitalism lasts. Only a basically different society can bring us social harmony.

 

What we need is a new way of running society based on:

· The common ownership of all resources by the whole community, not just a rich minority.

· Democratic control of the community by everyone, without distinction of age, race or sex, instead of rule by unelected company directors or state bureaucrats.

· Production purely for use, not profit.

· Free and equal access to all goods and services—an end to the market and to money.

 

Only the Socialist Party stands for genuine socialism.

 

Support for  the Socialist Party means that:

· You reject the policies of the profit system.

· You understand and want the real socialist alternative.

· You do not need leaders to do your thinking and run society for you.