MAILSTROM : Home sweet home

MAILSTROM : Home sweet home

Black bloc

 

 

The Great Money Trick -- the comic from the The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

The Great Money Trick -- the comic from the The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

Wee Matt Miscellany

"yir arse is oot the windae"

 

The Socialist Party is not a part of the "left."  We are opposed to measures which tinker with and attempt to reform capitalism. The left on the other hand have kept their agenda well hidden, if it has a discernable revolutionary current, it isn't obvious , indeed , even their active supporters appear afraid to engage with any discussion about what socialism *is*. However , it has been a " left " tactic in the past where they are hypocritically asking workers to vote for a parliamentary party to get reforms which you know you can't get, on a road which they don’t support , to socialism ,which is not defined except , that it is recognisable as another state capitalism . The Socialist Party is opposed to such trickery of workers. Simply, the "left" are not socialists and to argue it is then "yir arse is oot the windae", as we say.  Even limited equality cannot be achieved, while retaining the profit motive - It is economically impossible.

 The Socialist on the other hand are quite explicit that socialism is, "the common ownership and democratic control of all the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and on behalf of the whole population ". In other word a free access society. We stand for the original idea of socialism. Untrammelled by statist failures, indeed we predicted all of these failures. The "left" appear to want to administer capitalism. Far from splitting the " left ", we despise the "left " for its political cowardice, (being unable or unwilling to describe socialism to workers and nail their true colours to the socialist mast), of opportunism, (interference in workers struggles and grass roots movements to subvert them to their cause), and for its pretensions, (of assuming to know what socialism is, and presenting itself as a leadership towards it.)

The Socialist Party urges workers to "Abolish the wages system ". We insist that socialism as defined above is an immediate and practical possibility, requiring only a majority of workers who know what it is, who desire it and are willing to organise as equals, without a vanguard of political leaders forming an elite and a cadre of misinformed workers, as their expendable cannon fodder and irrelevant pawns , (our job is to inform , relay , and assist in this ) unlike the Leninist - Trotskyist , and former CP-er Stalinist Left , we don’t , as Lenin said , regard workers, "left to their own devices as being only capable of achieving trade union consciousness."

What exactly is the purpose of the SPGB standing in elections? To put the case for socialism, as no others do this, made by workers seizing control of their own destiny and working for socialism, without the leadership of vanguardist organisations or any other leadership. The Socialist Party does not look for support or supporters, rather we insist that on the contrary workers learn what socialism is, and join us as equals to bring it about. We don’t wish to lead them. They will not need leadership if they make themselves socialist. We don’t lie to workers by pretending, that by voting for reforms, or any other measure they are supporting socialism. We do not intervene in workers struggles, except as workers in struggle. We are stand against *all* the capitalist parties , this inevitably includes the “left” parties as they support a reformed capitalism with them as the new bosses, retaining wage labour capital, government control, and their platforms reflect this. The left ARE the forces of capitalism. Simply put, we are the only revolutionary alternative to capitalism. It is by insisting that left-wing reforms can ameliorate the conditions of workers , and that this equates to a "socialist " response , and who so mistrust the workers, that they can't describe the socialist alternative to them, are indeed the real reactionary element, leaving workers confusedly equating socialism with these tired and out-moded tried and failed remedies of the last century. (The Labour Party, The Communist Party, Social Democrat Parties of all stripes).

The Socialist Party has an honourable record since 1904 of never selling socialism short, and insisting it is an immediate and practical goal, requiring no other minimum demand, now that the vote has been won, that it can only be brought into existence by the workers themselves, comprising a majority, who know and understand what socialism is, a free access global society, without nation states. We don’t pander to nationalist sentiments, following slavishly Lenin's silly "Imperialism as the Highest Form of Capitalism" dogma. Our demand is the world for the workers and not for some new state-capitalist entity, or permissible level of wage slavery. In fact, many left-wing platforms to-day are even less radical than the Old Labour ones, where mistakenly they thought they were ushering in a new era, and piously mouthed phrases such as "we are the masters now " and "socialism will come like a thief in the night".

Wee Matt

A Bit of Light Relief

This little boy goes to his dad and asks, "What is politics?"

Dad says,"Well son, let me try to explain it this way. I'm the bread-winner of the family, so let's call me Capitalism. Your mom, she's the administrator of the money, so we'll call her the Government. We're here to take care of your needs, so we'll call you Human Needs. The nanny, we'll consider her the Working Class. And your baby brother, we'll call him the Future. Now, think about that and see if that makes sense."

So the little boy goes off to bed thinking about what Dad has said. Later that night he hears his baby brother crying, so he gets up to check on him. He finds that the baby has severely soiled his diaper. So the little boy goes to his parents' room and finds his mother sound asleep. Not wanting to wake her, he goes to the nanny's room. Finding the door locked, he peeks in the keyhole and sees his father in bed with the nanny. He gives up and goes back to bed.

The next morning, the little boy says to his father, "Dad, I think I understand the concept of politics now."The father says, "Good, son, tell me in your own words what you think politics is about."

The little boy replies, "Well, while Capitalism is screwing the Working Class, the Government is sound asleep, Human Needs are being ignored and the Future is in deep shit."

Capitalism cannot be reformed

We are offended by applying the description of 'socialism' to any of the Trotskyite parties, or even to the Labour Party. The Labour party has never been a socialist party.

“The Labour party has never been a socialist party, although there have always been socialists in it – a bit like Christians in the Church of England.” (Tony Benn)

It is grossly unjust also to smear people who have joined the Labour Party in this way, some of them might be, a small minority, not significant in respect of numbers and those will be practising 'entry-ism' but can easily be expelled later.

Supporting either the top-down machinations of Leninist control freaks who would only establish a state-capitalist dictatorship over the workers ,or the 'business friendly Labour party, or any parties of the left, right, centre of capitalism, who would govern over the workers, is a deluded choice. Leftist, rightist, centrist, are all manifestations of types of capitalism and that the term 'leftist' is devoid of any particular significance.

Capitalism cannot be reformed despite the well-meaning intentions of decent people in any of those political parties and has to be replaced by a new system of; production for use; democratic delegation, free access; and common ownership of all the means and instruments for creating and distributing wealth run by ourselves. Socialism is a post-capitalist society which will need to be established by the workers of the world, by themselves and for themselves.

Labour's infamous Clause 4 reflected their confused understanding of what socialism is, entails and constitutes. First, it equates common ownership with state ownership. i.e. Nationalisation. State intervention is not socialism. The state exists to help manage the affairs of the ruling class and may indeed intervene in their general interests, nationalising, welfare, to keep the workers fit for future exploitation etc. Secondly it calls for the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange. (our emphasis.) But a real commonly owned society would not require a means of rationing access to commonly owned wealth. It is a free access society.

No, the emancipation of the working class is freedom from waged slavery, common ownership of all the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth, production for use, utilising technological and informational infrastructure to provide self-regulation stock control systems and free access for all within a delegatory democratic administration over resources and not people by the people themselves and not a government.

We have a world to make and win and the organising societal ethos which will percolate through this, which proceeds from the organising tenet, "From each according to their ability to each according to their needs" will provide the social framework which will shape human behaviour, self-determinedly.

Capitalism cannot be reformed. However, well-intentioned politicians may be it is not in their gift to bestow upon us more “humble mortals”.

"The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves. We cannot, therefore, co-operate with people who openly state that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must be freed from above by philanthropic big bourgeois and petty bourgeois.’ (1879 Marx and Engels)

It is a post-capitalist society and damn all to do with nationalisation or the state-capitalism imposed by the feudal conditions of Russian experience or the state management over people and resources envisaged by the Labour Party.

The whole point of capitalism is to keep a relatively impoverished class of workers toiling away to produce an immense accumulated source of wealth for the parasite capitalist class and banks are just a money changing part of this.

"If money, according to Augier, “comes into the world with a congenital blood-stain on one cheek,” capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt." (Marx)

 

Dissolve the governments and politicians, elect yourselves into building a socialist world.

Socialist Standard No. 1343 July 2016

 

http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/no-1343-july-2016

• Editorial: Let’s Really Take Control
• Pathfinders: Guns, Gays and the NRA
• Letter: What Kind of Revolution?
• Halo Halo! God, Broadband and Buddhists
• Cooking the Books: No Basic Change
• Greasy Pole: European Union? Civil War?
• Material World: Population - What Explosion?
• The World Socialist Party of the U.S. Turns 100
• The SPA: Dashed on the Rocks of Compromise
• The ‘Democratic Socialism’ of Bernie Sanders
• Looking Back on Edward Bellamy
• Cooking the Books: Saving Private Capitalism
• Proper Gander: Branded Comedy
• Book Reviews: 'Being Red', 'The Great Divide', & 'Twentieth Century Socialism - A Minority Rule'
• Exhibition Review: Lion Salt Works
• 50 Years Ago: The Seamen's Struggle
• Rear View
• Cartoon: Free Lunch

Let us in

While the UK debate whether to remain in the EU, some of the most vulnerable people are desperate to gain entry, and are willing to risk life and health to do so. Europe is "on the cusp of a largely self-induced humanitarian crisis" because of a rapid build-up of migrants on Greece's borders, the UN has warned. "The crowded conditions are leading to shortages of food, shelter, water and sanitation," UN refugee agency (UNHCR) spokesman Adrian Edwards said. "Tensions have been building, fuelling violence and playing into the hands of people smugglers," he added. Frustrations boiled over and scores of migrants clashed with security guards. Some attempted to smash through a fence, prompting the guards to fire tear gas and rubber bullets. Close to 24,000 migrants in Greece are in need of housing. Some 8,500 of them are stuck in worsening conditions on the Greece-Macedonia border.

‘Murdered by the Tories'
11/02/16 21:35
Family of a mentally ill man who killed himself after his benefits were mistakenly halted have blamed the Tories for his suicide. Paul Donnachie was found dead at his home after an error saw his payments stop and he owed more than £3,000 in unpaid rent. The Glasgow man, who suffered from "severe" mental health issues, had been declared fit to work after he failed to attend a work capability assessment in June.

Upon realising their mistake, the council sent Mr Donnachie a letter telling him his benefits would be reinstated. But by the time it arrived it was too late - it was found unopened in his flat along with his body. It’s thought he had been dead for two months. The council letter informed him he had to reply within 14 days to have his housing benefit reinstated. Because he failed to do that, his arrears continued to build. His body was found when the council came to evict him. After his death, the authorities continue to hound him. One letter demanded £3002.72 that he owed in council tax arrears. They only discovered he was dead when they came to evict him.

Mr Donnachie's sister Eleanor told the Daily Record: “The Government murdered him. They are driving ordinary people to suicide. Paul suffered severe mental health problems. He failed to attend a work capability assessment on June 30 last year and was later told his Employment and Support Allowance was being stopped." Eleanor, from Coatbridge, Lanarkshire, said: “Something needs to be done. “The Conservative Government aren’t living in the real world and have no idea how people live. They don’t care about working-class people and the vulnerable.

Paul Donnachie’s disability benefit was ended in June 2015 after he missed four work capability assessments by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) who insisted he was capable of working and said the benefits cut would be backdated to June 3. The DWP subsequently contacted Glasgow City Council, who stopped Mr Donnachie's housing and council tax benefits. Again, the cut was backdated, so he was already in arrears with his rent and council tax. Mr Donnachie didn’t know where to turn after his benefits were stopped. In September, as he struggled to cope with no income, he applied to Glasgow City Council for a Scottish Welfare Crisis Grant to pay for gas, electricity and food. But his application was rejected and he was advised that if he wanted to eat, he should go to a food bank.


In November, a study from Oxford and Liverpool universities linked the DWP’s hated “fit for work” assessments to 590 suicides in England alone.

This is how socialism will be (2/4)
11/02/16 05:30
Many believe socialism to be unattainable yet the world about us is falling to pieces. The need for revolution is being realised more and more. Who are the one class that no society can do without? Those who work. Capitalist society cannot exist without the working-class. It is the working-class which sets in motion its formidable technical and mechanical apparatus. The working-class, by seeing after the functioning of large-scale production, by work in huge factories and stores, brings into existence organised work on a collective basis. And this collective work ought to show more clearly the exploitation of the individual. Modern production is mass production. But without doubt, profit therefrom is individual; that is to say, the riches collectively produced are appropriated by individual capitalists. As soon as workers becomes conscious of this fact, of this permanent scandal of capitalist society, they will begin to revolt against a state of things which ensures for the capitalist class the lion’s share and will demand its rightful due. Capitalism is maintained by class power and will only be displaced by other class power. Society in order to live must produce. In order to produce, use is made of the means of production which everyone knows; the land, the mines and machines. These means of production turn into means of domination when they are not at the disposal of society as a whole but are the private property of one class. In this manner, the great landowners through possession of the first instrument of labour – which is the land – were in a position to exploit first the slaves and later on the serfs, The landlord said: “The land belongs to me and you will be my slave and work for me on my land,” The peasant thus comes under the sway of the landowner. Each class which owns the means of production seeks to obtain political power, control of the State and the armed forces in order to safeguard its exclusive property, and maintain its monopoly of ownership.

Socialism is rule by the working people. They will decide how socialism is to work and the task of socialists therefore is to help guide the transfer of political power from capitalists to working people. Socialism means for the first time people taking charge of their own destiny. Humanity has so far been incapable of taking charge because of the class divisions that make it impossible to take decisions for the development of mankind as a whole. The result has been what we see today. Present-day society, based on a mistaken and blind individualism, reaches the very highest pinnacle of absurdity. At the top, we have a small class of owners who have in their possession all the means of happiness but who are incapable of making use of it because they are condemned to live apart from the working people which hates them. They pass their lives fearful of their privileges, fighting all forward-looking progressive movements which threaten their reign. They are more and more obliged to live as it were in a fortress, or gated communities as the real estate agents describe them. Being condemned on account of their riches to a life of idleness which is repugnant to human nature, the majority of them enjoy neither physical nor moral health. On the other hand we have the immense majority of the producing class, the workers condemned to routine work which undermines their health – work without any distraction and with the concomitant of numerous accidents and illness. Enforced idleness is the lot of the working-class on the onset of each periodic economic crisis. Disease and illness, products of poverty, decimates the toilers. Alcoholism and drug addiction through which they seek forgetfulness of their miserable lives, poisons them and helps to bring about their physical and moral degeneration. The life of the worker is twice as short as that of the rich. On the one hand, badly spent and unhappy lives among the upper classes, and on the other, no possibility of leading a normal life among the oppressed toilers. Here indeed is the true picture of society based on an internecine conflict between different classes. It is not the producing class, the creators of life, who rule but the parasites who dominate and oppress it.

Modern technology has created all the conditions for well-being and even luxury. If applied rationally our society would become a heaven on earth but through the absurd profit system in which we live, we find ourselves in a veritable hell. Mankind, instead of co-operating in the building harmonious planet, finds itself occupied in a war of each against all. The result is a useless social waste.


The victory of socialism is desirable because only socialism can put an end to the exploitation of man by man and of women by men. Because only socialism can put an end to the struggle for the re-division of the world, for national possessions, which takes place between the different continents, nations and races. Only socialism can put an end to war and poverty and the innumerable injustices which are an everyday feature of our lives. Socialism by suppressing the cause of these rivalries and antagonism – the monopoly of the means of production – forms a new society based on the principles of human solidarity and reciprocity, and economic soundness. It will put an end to all waste and all unproductive work. It will abolish antagonism of interests and reduce authority to a minimum, making it function not in the interests of a class but in the interests of society as a whole. Socialism consists of a rationalisation of production, of all our activities and our very lives themselves. And that, not in the interests of some, but for the benefit of all. Socialism is possible now. It is possible because it corresponds to the interests of all; because it satisfies the goodwill, the well-being and the common interest of the immense majority. Socialism is possible because the forces of production, thanks to machinery and robotics, have reached an unheard of scale of development. They only need to be put in action for the benefit of everyone in order that all members of society may be assured of complete well-being. Socialism is possible because men and women are more and more brought into close co-operation in pooling their efforts. All sorts of associations and organisations, political and intellectual are accustoming mankind to regulate work and life. Socialism everyday becomes more possible through the social education of the working-class, organised as it is in political parties, trade unions, and co-operatives. Rational organisation of production becomes more urgent as a consciousness of solidarity develops among the producers. The immense army of organised producers can take over control of mass production; everything stands ready by their own very nature to be placed in the hands of the workers who produce them.

The Council Cuts
11/02/16 22:51
Scotland faces the prospect of waves of industrial unrest, 'poverty wages', neighbourhood deterioration and rising rates of mental health problems as cuts to council budgets start to bite, it has been claimed. The decision by the country's 32 local authorities to reluctantly accept the Scottish Government's financial package for the year ahead has sparked warnings that the coming weeks will see the human cost of the biggest cash blow to councils in a generation unfold. Councils face a £1billion black hole in the next 12 months, with a £500million cut from Government and the same again in spending pressures.

One major union said the upshot will see many low-paid workers "pushed from stable home environments to foodbanks", adding that neighbourhoods in urban areas would witness a notable deterioration in quality of life as authorities make cutbacks to refuse collection, roads maintenance and parks upkeep.  The trade union Unison said that in South Lanarkshire around a dozen facilities for people with learning disabilities or the elderly will shut, up to 200 posts for people working with children with support issues or providing support to teachers will be axed and the number of social workers and social work assistants reduced. Argyll and Bute sets its budget today and if the proposals are accepted, Unison claims hundreds of council jobs will go including 20 per cent of their clerical assistants, classroom assistants, janitors and all 10 of the high school librarians.
 Benny Rankin, the GMB union's organiser in Glasgow, said: "Many of our members will lose around £1,000 in changes to their terms and conditions. That's enough to push you from a stable family environment to poverty wages and foodbanks. Back courts in many places are already in a state. Changes here will make that much worse with overflowing bins and industrial action taking us back to the 1970s."
National GMB organiser Alex McLuckie added: "You're talking up to half of all support staff in schools going in some areas. That's people working with children with disabilities, while home care becomes a pit stop for staff. "We've calculated around 9000 job losses. Nothing we're seeing is alerting that."

Meanwhile, the group which represents care providers for adults with disabilities and for older people through to those with homeless and addiction issues, said there was unprecedented anxiety amongst its 200,000-plus service users and 45,000 staff. The Coalition of Care and Support Providers in Scotland (CCPS) said the Government's requirement councils top up salaries for care sector staff meant they would simply spend less on those who need the services. CCPS director Annie Gunner Logan said: "There are only so many ways disabled people needing a shower can 'do things differently'."

Ian Hood, of the Learning Disability Alliance, said many people requiring social care, particularly younger people with "unfolding needs", would no longer meet eligibility criteria as councils cut back. He added: "We're already seeing people's care cut from 16 hours to three, leaving them stranded at home. Other services are no longer considered essential, like employment services for disabled adults. This keeps the cycle of poverty going and with the closure of day centres means increased mental health issues for many people and their carers."


Scotland - the Tax Haven
10/02/16 19:00
A legal loophole that has made Scotland a soft-touch for international money-launderers and tax evaders, according to critics. The legislation governing SLPs date from 1907. The English and Scottish Law Commissions recommended reform as far back as 2003 but no action has been taken by successive UK governments since.

Scottish limited partnerships (SLPs), The Herald revealed,are being marketed across Eastern Europe as tax avoidance vehicles. They are promoted across Eastern Europe as "Scottish zero-per-cent-tax companies" in the "Scottish offshore zone". This is because - unlike English partnerships - the Scottish firms do not have to provide financial reports or register for tax if it conducts its business overseas. Such firms - often registered in unglamorous housing schemes - were used as part of an alleged elaborate scam to loot $1bn from Moldovan banks.

The number of SLPs has more than doubled since 2009 on the back of a booming Scottish cottage industry creating them for foreign investors, especially from the eastern and south-eastern edges of the European Union. Capital flight, legal or illegal, is a huge issue in the former Soviet Union. Nearly $60bn left Russia alone in 2015. And that was a huge improvement from from than $150bn in 2014.

SLPs are now part of a range of offshore products that law enforcement experts say can be exploited to funnel money out of some of Europe's poorest nations. A classic scheme sees an SLP set up with two shareholders or "members" which are themselves companies based in Panama and the British Virgin Islands, where corporation tax is zero per cent. The resulting SLP carries the kudos of a "British" company and can open a bank account elsewhere, such as Cyprus or Latvia, but has no need to register for UK tax or provide full financial accounts in Scotland. Such a firm can then be used to move money from east to west without attracting the attention of officialdom.


One typical Russian-language advertisement for SLPs offers partnerships, complete with "nominal" or front-man shareholders and a Scottish legal address, for just 2000 Euros. The whole process takes just seven weeks. Another firm, with addresses in England, Cyprus and Russia says it can provide an off-the-shelf "ready-made" SLP in half an hour. The advert says SLPs are an "ideal solution for any investor who wants to work with a company registered in the European Union but at the same time exploit a tax-free instrument".

"Suffragette" - Film Review
11/02/16 22:52
The recent movie, "Suffragette" is well worth seeing but buyer beware. Though Meryl Streep is in it, she only appears as Mrs. Pankhurst for about three minutes in which she makes a speech that inspires the main character. This is a young laundress who becomes active in the movement. The strong point of the movie is that so many fictionalized versions of female suffrage struggles have shown them from a rich person's point of view. This main character is from the working class. It also focuses on the plight women where regarding custody battles. Legally, men had the final say in any decisions affecting the children. In the final analysis, the movie falls down by making it seem that political equality between the sexes is the main event but, in capitalism, there is no equality between the sexes or within the sexes.
John Ayers.

Blarney
10/02/16 14:52

Tongue in cheek award for December – Spanish company, Grifolos, a world leader in blood-plasma products, announced it was moving its $100 million distribution centre and treasury department from where all payments are made, to Dublin. The Irish government has just announced a new business-friendly corporate tax category. Grifolo insists it is not 'tax engineering' but has moved to Dublin to take advantage of the skilled work force there. Those who believe that, please raise your hands. John Ayers.


This is how socialism will be (1/4)
10/02/16 06:33
We grow more and more isolated from each other. Nobody seems to enjoy things anymore. Nobody seems to know the joy of life. What everybody does know, however, is that this society seems to be falling apart and this misery will continue as long as we allow it to. Everywhere people sell their lives in order to survive. Everywhere life has been reduced to daily subjugations and a series of humiliations. Even our "free time" lacks any freedom. The esteemed experts tell us that it's our fault for being too "greedy" or too "selfish." But there is nothing mysterious about it. Capitalism has become a fetter on our existence and development as genuinely human beings.

Capitalism is a system of society based upon an exchange economy. It has now become a fetter on our further development as human beings. Every time you stand in a line at a supermarket check-out you do not accomplish any productive or socially useful function. The only reason you're waiting in line is to pay for the food, even though it would be every bit as good whether or not you pay for it. But unless you pay for it, it cannot be realised as a commodity, as exchange-value. In terms of its social use-value it would be much simpler and indeed more efficient, if you simply walked out with it. In place of capitalist society with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free development of each individual is the condition for the free development of all. Production for profit will be replaced by production for pleasure. The end of the law of value will be the decisive beginning of the end of all alienations.

The "Left," of course, believe the problem with private capitalism is only that it doesn't do what it's supposed to on its own terms -- that there aren't enough "jobs," that people don't get high enough ("fair") wages for selling their lives, that women and "third world" people don't get their fair share of the shit pie, that Capital accumulation doesn't go on peacefully as it should. The "Left" has so little understanding of the actual workings of capitalism that when its tendency toward centralisation and monopolisation is pushed to an extreme such as was in Russia they think that it is no longer capitalism. In spite of their self-acclaimed "radicalism" they are really the staunchest of conservatives. And as capitalism -- the highest form of hierarchical society -- is falling apart, they dutifully try to come up with new ways of holding it together. As for the "Left," they can take their "transitional demands," "correct leadership" and "revolutionary self-sacrifice” and shove it where the sun don’t shine.

There will be no law of value no commodity exchange, no State and no religion to decide our activities for us; no "general interest," no "national interest," no pre-defined "human nature." Just our desires, skills, imagination, passions, and intelligence - developed over centuries and now freed for the first time, freed for the first time with all the world at our disposal. Unlike any previous revolutionary movement, the socialist revolution must be carried through actively and consciously by the overwhelming majority of the world's people. No "vanguard" Party can "lead" us, "represent" us, or seize power "on our behalf." Instead we must organise ourselves.

Capitalism has produced the largest and the most potentially important revolutionary class in all history – the working class which consists of all of us who are separated from control and ownership of the means of production and therefore have no control over our own life.  We are the overwhelming majority of the people in the world today. Our class includes not only industrial "blue collar" workers, but furthermore, white collar and "service" workers (skilled and unskilled alike), teachers, unemployed, welfare recipients, students, agricultural workers, and even a growing number of "professionals," artists and musicians The means of social production includes everything used for the production and reproduction of human beings and of society: not only factories, mines, raw materials, agricultural land, etc., but also all the implements and all the space and territory which are part of our overall life. We have no control over any of these because Capital has taken them all over and uses them all as Capital. Everything that is produced is produced and tolerated only insofar as it serves the needs of Capital i.e., of exchange-value which expands for the mere sake of expanding.

When the ruling class is fully overthrown we will be free to take on the re-organisation of everything. Each of us will be a co-owner of the entirety of the world's wealth and means of production. Planning and decision making will not be a separate or specialised activity. It will be an integrated part of production and of life, just like any other. We could easily begin by regularly holding popular assemblies in local public areas and production places of all sorts. Here ideas and plans could be initiated and elaborated with the full and direct participation of all those concerned. (Obviously not everyone will be interested in every question: the point is that anyone could, if they chose, participate in making any decision they think is important.)

When initial decisions have been made, the people at the assemblies can elect delegates who will then meet in regional and finally global councils with other delegates sent from assemblies throughout the world. They will meet simply to coordinate decisions already made by the people at their assemblies and will have no separate governing power of any kind. Their function will be rotated periodically among the population and monopolized by no one. Furthermore, they could be removed and replaced by their assemblies at any time. Even for planning and coordination of world-wide production, it is hard to say to what extent such meetings of delegates will prove necessary. With telecommunications equipment already existing, it would, in many cases, be simpler for the local assemblies to contact each other directly via the airwaves, and take part in each other's discussions. Such methods would be especially useful if you consider that in some cases even initial plans could not be made only locally and might immediately require direct dialogues between the respective assemblies. By means of mass communications networks such as the internet, each of us could be in instantaneous contact with each other in any part of the world, as well as with all the wealth of knowledge of the entirety of human history. Resources could be coordinated globally in order to maximise use-value and minimise difficulties in fulfilling desires. No longer would people be compelled to be competitive with each other. Instead the enrichment of others would only be a further enrichment of ourselves when we experience each other. The full and free development of each individual around us will be our own direct self-interest.

Whereas in capitalist society each individual can usually only pursue his interests narrowly, at the expense of others, in socialism every individual will have as his or her own the entirety of society and of social wealth. Each individual's pursuit of an ever-richer life would mean the pursuit of an ever-richer society. Nobody's activities need be restricted to a given "job" or locality. Each person can fish in the morning, plough the soil in the afternoon, compose and play music before dinner and write poetry in the evening, chop wood one day, cast steel the next, build castles one month and sail around the world the next (perhaps distributing the goodies they've made). And all of this without ever having to become as such a fisherman, a farm-worker, a musician, a poet, a woodsman, a steelworker, a construction worker or a sailor. There will no longer be a "work day." Nor a separate "leisure" time. Just life -- just the process of consciously creating and recreating ourselves and our world. With all the modern means of production at our individual disposal, each of us will have a direct self-interest in the building and rebuilding of the world in the image of our desires, and in participating fully in the accurate executing of this. Successful production in a socialist society will depend only on the real and immediate determination of each individual to live their life fully, to realise their wildest imaginations -- in the real world (that, by the way, is "how the work will get done").

Boffin the night away (1978)
09/02/16 19:00
From the June 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Under the heading “Britain’s Biggest Daily Sale” the Daily Mirror recently told us something important. Well, important enough to run to 3 pages on Wednesday 8 March and 2 pages on Thursday 9 March. Now that’s important and no mistake.

Who could resist it? I mean, a question like “Why Has This Man Captured A Princess’s Heart?”

Forget the heart, you sneer (for after all it is the Wednesday tea-break in the Heart Attack Machine Factory). How about her income? Now there is something worth capturing. Princess Margaret has a £50,000 annual income. Having squandered your 7p on the Daily Mirror you want the goods. “Why Has This Man Captured A Princess’s Heart?” You want a short, easy, fool-proof method.

Well it seems a distinct advantage, if you are in the Princess heart capturing business, for your old man to be well-heeled. We are informed by the biggest daily selling newspaper “Roddy’s brother Dai, older by 18 months, is fascinated by sport and hunting. Even these days, he will race home to the family’s 2,000 acre estate near Abergavenny, Gwent and hunt with unashamed zeal much to his father's delight”. Roddy wasn’t interested: "I am not particularly interested in killing small animals.”

So there’s a clue. Be a sort of gentle guy. Oh, and by the way, make sure your old man has 2,000 acres. Dustmen don’t capture Princess’s hearts.

O.K., you say, the guy isn’t a dustman so what does he work at? The biggest selling daily is ready to inform you. After all, knowledge is power.

The Daily Mirror is a little vague on this one though: “. . . a fair haired young landscape gardener (and would-be pop singer). . .”

The would-be pop singer is easy. Who isn’t? The Saturday nights of Clapham and Maryhill ring to the bath-room echo of plenty of potential Jaggers and Bowies. Gardener? No sweat there either. Their income is as poor as yours.

So what’s the Princess heart-winning ingredient? Let’s take a look at big brother—yes, the fox-hunting one. Whatever else you could say about Roddy Llewellyn’s occupation, his brother could never be accused of gardening.

Vagueness creeps over the biggest selling newspaper again. “Dai has done a variety of jobs. From the travel business (“I wore a bowler and stiff collar in those days”) to his present endeavours which involve boosting British goods in the US”.

But if they are vague on the work-life of the brothers they describe as “Two of Britain’s most intriguing bachelors” they are quite specific on the love-life. How do you think they became Britain’s top-selling newspaper?

They tell of Dai and one of his mates pulling a couple of “very English, very debby girls” in a nightclub of course. Dinner and on to another club. He then hired “a famous Latin-American singing group” to accompany them to Annabels and the Clermont Club. . . . and then on to a friend’s house.

And so to bed. In this case “eventually Dai and his companion ended up making love to the two girls side by side on a huge bed. while the group stood round serenading them—stark naked.”

To all dustmen, engineers, school teachers, labourers and other ungrateful workers who may be reading this—a word of warning.

If you want to find out how a section of society can lead this sort of life-style don’t read the Daily Mirror.

Oh, sure, they’ll give you details of Roddy’s visits to Barbados, Istanbul and Acapulco. You’ll get the details of "Dai’s 4 or 5 cocktail parties in a night...”

But to find out why you live the dull repetitive life you do; while Dai can say “My motivation is simple. Eat, drink and be merry—I genuinely don’t care what people think. I believe I should experience everything in life that is possible”—don’t look to the top selling newspaper.

Better take out a subscription to one of Britain’s lowest selling newspapers—The Socialist Standard.

For only in this newspaper will you read that the Dais and Roddys of this world lead their jet-set lifestyle only because you—the useful members of society —provide the wealth that makes it possible. Dai’s income comes from your endeavours. The wealth you produce is more than you get back in the form of a wage or a salary. The surplus you produce makes it possible for these parasites to live the way they do.

All this is bad enough, but the Daily Mirror going on about how Princess Margaret refers to her parasite boyfriend as “my darling angel” and similar gushing nonsense, is to add insult to injury.

The one piece of information to emerge out of the whole silly story is the item . . . "He’ll (Dai that is) eventually take her home, indulge in a bit of “boffing” (current upper class slang for you know what) and drive her home.”

Boffing. Now there’s a new one.

Next time the gaffer tells me that I'm not working hard enough. I can reply “Away and boff yourself.”

Let’s hope he doesn’t read the Daily Mirror.

Dick Donnelly
Glasgow Br.

Lift the curtain, look behind it and see the world as it really is
09/02/16 05:30
Our everyday our lives is sold hour after hour, week after week, generation after generation. Few of us have property or even less of us possess a business we can make money from, so we are forced to sell our time and energy to someone else. We are the working class — the proles.

WORK

"Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour,and lives the more, the more labour it sucks." –Karl Marx

We don’t work because we want to. We work because we have no other way to exist. We sell our time and energy to a boss in order to buy the things we need to survive.

We are brought together with other workers and assigned different tasks. We specialise in different aspects of the work and repeat these tasks over and over again. Our time at work is not really part of our lives. It is dead time controlled by our bosses and managers. We live in limbo like zombies – the walking dead – or more accurately the working dead.  During our time at work we make things that our bosses can sell. These things can be objects like tee-shirts, computers and skyscrapers or services like cleaning floors and helping to maintain healthy patients or driving the bus to take you where you want to go, being fast-food worker to take your order or being the person who calls you at home to try to get you to buy things you don’t need. The work is not done because of what it produces. We do it to get paid, and the boss pays us for it to make a profit. At the end of the day the bosses re-invest the money we make them, and enlarge their businesses. Our work is stored up in the things our bosses own and sell—capital. They are always looking for new ways to store up our activity in things, new markets to sell them to, and new people with nothing to sell but their time and energy to work for them. What we get from work is enough money to pay for rent, food and clothes—enough to keep us coming back to work.

When we’re not at work, we spend time traveling to or from work, preparing for work, resting up because we’re exhausted from work or trying to forget about work. The only thing worse than work, is not having it. Then we waste our weeks away looking for work, without getting paid for it. If welfare is available, it is a bureaucratic pain-in-the-ass to get and is never as much as working. The constant threat of unemployment is what keeps us going to work every day. And our work is the basis of this society. The power our bosses get from it expands every time we work. It is the predominant force in every country in the world.

It is very different for the employers. They are very satisfied with the capitalist system. Why shouldn't they be? They get rich by it. At work we are under the control of our bosses, and of the markets they sell to. But an invisible hand imposes a work-like discipline and pointlessness on the rest of our lives as well. All sort of other activities tend to become as alienating, boring and stressful as work: housework, education and leisure. That’s capitalism.

For our bosses, work is the way that they get their money to make more money. For us, work is a miserable way to survive. The less they pay us, the less we make. The faster they can get us to work, the harder we have to work. Our interests are opposed, and there is a constant struggle between bosses and workers at work—and in the rest of the society based on work. It is about time that everybody wakes up to the fact that we "the people", the working class, and our employers have nothing in common.

Most of us spend most of our time working and are mostly poor, while the owners, who are mostly rich, manage and profit off our work. All the communities and institutions of society are built up around this basic division. There are racial, cultural and language divisions. There is division around sex and age. There is the division between nations and those with and without citizenship. We are divided around religion. Yet we are all brought together to buy and sell on the market. We are all now organized around capital. We are all used to help our bosses to accumulate more. Poor people from one country can be made to identify with their bosses from the same country and can be made to fight poor people from other countries. Workers have a harder time organizing a strike with workers who look different and speak a different language, especially if one group thinks it’s better than the other. These divisions are reflected in and reflect the division of labor at work. The “nation” is imaginary and false. It denies the basic division of society. Business owners run the government and the media, the schools and prisons, the welfare offices and the police. We have our lives run by them. The media put forward their view of the world. We are taught their history. The government provides services to keep their society running smoothly. And when all else fails, they have the police, the prisons and the army to enforce their will if “consensus” falters.

The ruling class organise us against each other, but we can organise ourselves against them. The whole point of class and being “the proles” is the recognition that people from different communities have essentially similar experiences, and to show that people should not hate each other. This is the starting point to fight our masters. When we begin to fight for our own interests we see that others are doing the same thing. Prejudices fall away, and our anger is directed where it belongs. Differences become irrelevant and our fight becomes more effective by involving people from different experiences.

There will be no need money when there is no need for buying and selling or to measure work-time. There will be no need for a government to manage society, when society is not divided between employers and employees and when people can run their lives themselves. The more we are governed, the less we are free. The only thing that interests us about the State is its abolition.


When we start to fight against the exploitative conditions of our lives, a completely different kind of activity appears. We do not look for a leader to come change things for us. We do it ourselves, with other working class people. We organize in a way where everyone takes part in the activity, and there is no division between leaders and followers. We do not fight for our leaders, for our bosses or for our country. We fight for ourselves. We’re in a war—a class war. There are no other solutions other than winning this war. We cannot reform capitalism with palliative measures into something more humane. The cure does not lie in forming a new government, or even ourselves becoming the new bosses. We are workers who want to abolish work and class. This is what revolution really means. Our political platform is to end politics.


Killing Animals In Zimbabwe
09/02/16 07:59
An article in the Toronto Star of November 14, focused on the illegal hunting of animals, specifically, lions and elephants in Zimbabwe. Poachers are poaching and killing dozens of elephants with cyanide. This is a problem for the local capitalists because they aren't getting their cut. Zimbabwe's 'hunting' industry brings in more than US$200 million annually, and, they claim, benefits 800,000 people living in communities that allow hunts on their land and getting income from the fees paid by operators and hunters. In other words, killing animals helps to keep the economy going.
One hunter paid $50,000 for a hunt in which he killed a lion that he probably located easily since it was wearing a GPS collar. This may be sickening news but capitalism is all about money and profit. Obviously, it must be clear to anyone that this has got to change!
 John Ayers.

We are the people to change the world
08/02/16 06:00

“The earth shall rise on new foundations” - The Internationale

The aim of the Socialist Party is to build a socialist society. This aim is shared by all the companion parties within the World Socialist Movement. Socialism will be a classless society, in which all the means of producing wealth are owned in common. Instead of being divided into workers and employers, rich and poor, society will be an association of free people, all making their special contributions to the well-being of society, which in return will supply them with what they need in order to live full and happy lives. Such a society can be summed up in the slogan: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

For this to be possible, socialism must be based on abundance. Production will be organised in such a way that there is plenty of everything for everybody: not only food, houses, and so forth, to satisfy material needs; but also schools, theatres and concert-halls, play-grounds and sports-fields so that people can lead full, physical and cultural lives.

The nature of work will itself have changed. Through the development of science much of its drudgery will have disappeared. With the abolition of the exchange economy, of buying and selling, a whole range of occupations based upon commerce and finance disappears. Because it will be a community of plenty, where there is enough for all and therefore no advantage can be obtained by theft or other forms of crime, all need for courts of justice and police will have disappeared. In other words, the State, which is the sum of all these institutions and organisations, will itself disappear. Instead of one section of society ruling and oppressing another, men will have grown accustomed to living together in society without fear and compulsion. Thus, for the first time, mankind, united in a world-wide family of nations. It is obvious that by the time such a stage of human development has been reached many institutions which we accept today as essential, such as policemen and prisons, employers and workers, armies and civil servants, will have disappeared.

It is often argued that, however desirable socialism may be, it could never be made to work, because, whatever changes are made in the form of society, human nature will always remain fundamentally the same: there must always be rulers and ruled, rich and poor, employers and employed. This argument springs from ignorance of the facts. The study of history, and the observation of primitive communities still living in the world, prove that in the earliest kind of society not only were the land and the tools (what are called the means of production) regarded as the common property of the tribe, but everyone shared in the common tasks of production as well as in the product of their labour. Because of the low level of technique such communities were necessarily extremely primitive and poor, but because there was common ownership, and therefore no classes, they are correctly described as “primitive Communism.” Gradually, however, as mankind achieved greater mastery over the forces of nature through increased society the exploitation of the vast majority by a small privileged section, and the class struggles resulting from that, were unavoidable because of the low technical and productive development. Now, however, capitalist society has led to such a tremendous improvement in technique and to such a vast increase in the productive forces that there is no longer any need for the division of society into classes. Moreover, by explaining how the capitalist class exploits the working class Marx was able to show that the very existence of the capitalist class, instead of helping forward the development of the productive forces, is now increasingly hindering such development.

It follows, then, that the next step forward in the development of human society can only be taken by the working class. By taking this step, the socialistworking class, being itself the great majority of the people, will end the exploitation of man by man.  Socialist society needs to be global. It is not something which can be established in one country, isolated from the rest of the world. On the contrary it must eventually embrace all the peoples of the world; and in so doing it will put an end to war. Because no wars can take place in a truly international society there will be no need for armies or the manufacture of armaments.

Capitalist society is a society divided into two main classes: the capitalists, or bourgeoisie; and the working class, or proletariat. The former own the land, the factories and the machines, and all the means by which wealth is produced (the means of production), and are therefore the ruling class, though they do no productive work themselves. The latter though they do all the real productive work of society, own neither the means of production nor the wealth they create; and, therefore, are forced to sell to the capitalists their ability to work and produce. Numerically, the capitalists are an insignificant minority, while the workers constitute the vast majority of the people.

Capitalism is not based on plenty. Though it has developed, for the first time in history, the possibility of providing enough for everybody, it has always condemned a great part of the people to live in poverty and insecurity. This is because the capitalist class, who decide what is to be produced, base their decisions not on what people need but upon how much profit they will make when the goods are sold in the market.

Capitalist society is not a peaceful, international society, but, on the contrary, nationalist. Just as within each capitalist country the various capitalists and groups of capitalists compete with each other in order to sell their goods at a greater profit, so capitalist countries as a whole enter into competition with other capitalist countries. This competition inevitably leads to wars: on the one hand to enslave more backward countries; and on the other, to re-divide the countries which have been enslaved between the different capitalist countries. Such wars are not in the interests of the working class, but only of the capitalists.

 Because capitalism is a class society, in which the small class of monopoly capitalists exploits the great majority of the people—not only the manual workers, but also the professional and technical workers, and the small farmers and shopkeepers—it is necessary for the capitalists to impose their will upon the people. It does this, partly by filling all the key posts in the armed forces, the Civil Service and all legal institutions (that is, in the State) with members of its own class; partly through its control of the media , by which public opinion is influenced.
Thus, while in a capitalist democracy it is true that the majority of the people have the opportunity of taking part every few years in the election of the Government and of the local authorities, and in addition have won a number of democratic rights such as the right to organise in trade unions and political parties, freedom of the Press, etc., nevertheless the real power of the State remains in the hands of the capitalists.

Under capitalism, human society is condemned to a series of bitter struggles; class against class, nation against nation, and individual against individual. Inevitably, therefore, the great majority of the people, instead of being inspired by a common social purpose, are forced to struggle for their own individual and selfish interests. Moreover, since capitalism condemns the majority of people to poverty or insecurity, there is a continual waste of human talent and ability.

We’re in so many urgent crises that we have to change everything. Or else. And there’s no one to do it for us. There’s just us. Everyone, everywhere who cares what happens to each other, to humanity, to Nature and the planet, to the future can make a difference. Possibly all the difference. What do we have to do is to change the system in which we live. We have to be radical. Revolutionary in our thinking and actions.

The climate on Earth has gone critical—greenhouse gases, poisoned waters, dying oceans, melting ice, heat waves, drought, floods, cyclones, air pollution. Then there is the constant poverty, the hunger, the seemingly endless wars, the forced migrations, the joblessness, the hopelessness. It’s all inter-connected. It’s capitalism. It’s up to us to change everything. We’ll have to have everyone we can, doing what they think best, giving everything they have. And when we give our all things change. We are stronger so we have something more to give. Will it be enough? Who can say? Who knows which future we’ll have? Who can measure the power our imagination? Who knows the limits of our creativity?

Now is the time. 2016 is our year. Don't wait for everyone to get on board before YOU make change. The first thing to do is for YOU to change. Stop being afraid.
“Alone, we can only do so much to fight for justice and inequality. But, if we stand together and spark a fire, we will discover that we are more powerful than we ever imagined. We are the people we've been waiting for.”


Ending War
07/02/16 06:00

Capitalism is war, plain and simple. It’s not just market society with a war on top, it is war all the way down, and can only be properly understood as such. Peace is a social myth we have constructed to delude or amuse ourselves in our leisure moments eating rat stew in the trenches.
War is an inevitable concomitant of capitalist competition for trade, trade routes, raw materials and exploitative opportunities. When tough negotiations fail, war is always an option under some pretext.

Nation states, schools and commercial businesses are organised hierarchically, like armies, and we are all reluctant conscripts, squaddies whose task it is to fight whoever we’re told to fight, whose received ambition may be to make NCO or officer but whose real ambition, if we’re not blinded by patriotism or xenophobia or bloodlust, is to not get killed.

Understanding that capitalism is war helps to make sense of the news in a way that nothing else does. Random acts of violence no longer seem random. The fear and the paranoia and the endless search for scapegoats and snake-oil cures become explicable, even predictable. The impotent and irrelevant posturing of politicians are meaningless precisely because they are war propaganda, as bogus as Hollywood fantasies, monarchical pomp or religious preaching. This is not civil society with a few oddballs and quirks, it is society in shellshock, having a continuous mental breakdown.

And where do you fit in? There’s no room for shirkers or ‘conshies’ in this war. You don’t have a choice not to fight. If you struggle to make ends meet, you’re in the war. If you struggle against disability prejudice, you’re in the war. If you feel oppressed by white racists, loud-mouthed bigots, the council, the boss at work, the ‘male gaze’, you’re in the war. You don’t have a choice not to fight, but you do have a choice what to fight, and how to fight.

For socialists, the only part of this war that makes any sense, which is worth fighting, that might realistically stand a chance of ending war forever, is the class war, the war against the idea of capitalism itself, the mindset of private property and public poverty, the universal acceptance of oppression. Everyone else is fighting to win, or not lose, or just survive. If we were to win the class war, it would remove the main reason for fighting all the other wars. In socialism, society could finally start to recover from the hell it has put itself through.

Stop electing leaders and elect yourselves to common ownership and democratic control of all the world’s wealth with workers worldwide.

All wars are fought on behalf of the ruling class. Fought over markets, trade routes, vital resources, with intense competition and geopolitical rivalries and ambitions and the last two great wars were not fought for any grand ideal, despite the rhetoric employed to engage workers in the slaughter of their brothers and sisters fellow workers, whom they had more in common with than the bellicose parasite capitalist class of all nations, sending them to their doom.

War, wrapped in the cant of nationalism is used by ruling elites to thwart and destroy the aspirations of workingmen and -women and distract us from our disempowerment.
“Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder. … And that is war, in a nutshell,” the five-time socialist presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs said during World War I. “The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.” Debs, who in 1912 received almost a million votes, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for saying this. “I have been accused of obstructing the war,” Debs said in court. “I admit it. I abhor war. I would oppose war if I stood alone.”

A member of the IWW once addressed a court:

“You ask me why the I.W.W. is not patriotic to the United States. If you were a bum without a blanket; if you had left your wife and kids when you went west for a job, and had never located them since; if your job had never kept you long enough in a place to qualify you to vote; if you slept in a lousy, sour bunkhouse, and ate food just as rotten as they could give you and get by with it; if deputy sheriffs shot your cooking cans full of holes and spilled your grub on the ground; if your wages were lowered on you when the bosses thought they had you down; if there was one law for Ford, Suhr, and Mooney and another for Harry Thaw: if every person who represented law and order and the nation beat you up, railroaded you to jail, and the good Christian people cheered and told them to go to it, how in hell do you expect a man to be patriotic? This war is a business man’s war and we don’t see why we should go out and get shot in order to save the lovely state of affairs that we now enjoy.”


A real social revolution
06/02/16 06:00


The Earth’s greatest single resource is its people. The world could be a paradise for its inhabitants but it definitely is not a paradise for the majority of people. Who and what is responsible? It is the capitalists and their profit-seeking system. Our planet is ruled for and by capitalists for their own interests. What is wrong with the world is the way society is organised, the “system of society” which prevails. Two main features of this society are it is divided into rich and poor—a tiny handful of rich (1 per cent of the population own more than half the wealth) who need not do any work, and the overwhelming majority who toil their whole lives through and that wars, involving incalculable suffering to the people, are a regular occurrence. Resources are squandered in production of weapons of mass destruction, armies, navies and air forces by the global capitalist players.

It is a system of exploitation. By exploitation we mean living off the labour of other people. There have been previous forms of exploitation. In slave society, the slave-owners lived off the labour of the slaves who were their property. In feudal society, the feudal lords lived off the forced labour of the serfs. In capitalist society the worker is neither a slave nor yet a serf, i.e. forced to do free, unpaid labour for a master. But he or she is exploited just the same, even though the form of this exploitation is not as open and clear as was the case with the slaves and the serfs. The essence of exploitation under capitalism consists in this — that the workers, when set to work with raw materials and machinery, produce far more in values than what is paid out by the capitalists in wages. In short, they produce a surplus which is taken by the capitalists and for which they are not paid. Thus they are robbed of the values they produce. This is the source of capitalist profit. Capitalism holds no future for the humanity other than the destruction of the environment, poverty, disease and war. Capitalism’s not natural and it need not be permanent. But that’s up to you. Human nature does not exist beyond eating sleeping and procreating and socialising. Human behaviour is social. Competition breeds competition, cooperation breeds cooperation. If human nature ruled out cooperation for the greater good, even capitalism could not exist. The human nature argument is a slavish,religious/ ideological reinforcing, nonsense one.

For workers, the problem is capitalism. We produce all the wealth—in fact we run the useful parts of society from top to bottom—but we don't get all the benefits of our production of goods and our running of services and we don't have direct control of the society we run. Our economic function under capitalism is to produce wealth for an exploiting and parasitical class, the capitalist class. Since the 19th Century, these basic facts haven't changed. We had capitalism then and we've got capitalism now. Workers were exploited them we're exploited now. The rich had luxury then and they've got it now. Workers had the problems of housing, making ends meet, and economic insecurity then and we've got the same problems now. This is in spite of the fact that we produce every bit of useful wealth that becomes available and run all the useful services that people need.

Capitalism produced for profit then and it produces for profit now. When there was no prospect of profit then, workers became unemployed. It is exactly the same now. At the turn of the century the privileges of the rich were based on their ownership of the means of production and all natural resources and on their control over workers through the state machine. It is exactly the same now.

We live in a world where solidarity and mutual support has been reduced to charity and volunteering and with a victim’s mentality, blaming one another and deferentially pleading with governments and our employers rather than reacting our exploitation and oppressions with strikes and revolutionary demands. We have lost any sense of our real class power.

We must establish a world where people collectively plan and produce, share and care for one another. It isn't enough just to have a clear understanding of what causes the problems of the working class; we must also have a very clear understanding of how they could be solved. That solution is socialism. This will be a practical and straightforward system of useful work producing useful goods free from the economic constraints of production for profit, without any exchange of any kind and without therefore the use of money.

Production will be humanised in the sense that human beings won't have a price put on either their ability to work or the product of their work. Jobs won't have a price on them, nor will goods, nor will needs. Instead of working for wages people will cooperate, and this will bring work under the control of those who carry it out. It will be the self-determined activity of individuals responding to the needs of the community of which they form a part and who have the responsibility and the real power of decision-making and action. That is the sane system we must establish and it is the only sensible definition of socialism.

When will you all wake up to an obsolete system which has food, clothing, and shelter, indeed everything useful, as commodities for sale on the market with a view to realising a profit for the few while the wealth creators (working class) receive a rationing of access via the waged slavery system?


What we must do, is make common cause with workers worldwide to remove the capitalist class private, corporate and state, ownership of all the means and instruments for producing wealth, which leads to rationed access (wages and salaries) for the useful working class and privileged access and further accumulation of the spoils for the parasite class (capitalists). This cannot be reformed in any human-centred way. A real social revolution will establish a post-capitalist society of common ownership and democratic control globally, with production for use and not for sale on a market, free access according to needs and the world for the workers.

A Letter from a Glasgow Docker (1947)
05/02/16 18:30
From the June 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since 1932, when the Glasgow dockers broke away from the Transport and General Workers’ Union and formed their present organisation, the Scottish T. & G. W. Union, they have opposed the English dockers’ struggles for decasualisation of dock labour. Recruitment to the Glasgow Union has (with one exception) been always based on the hereditary principle and restricted to docker’s sons.

Coincident with the forming of a Ministry of War Transport Dock-Labour Scheme in April, 1941, was the heavy bombardment of the main English ports which resulted in Glasgow becoming the busiest port in Britain. To meet with this situation, the Government transferred hundreds of dockers from London, Liverpool, Hull, etc., to Glasgow and allowed about 1,500 local men who could prove work at the port before September, 1939, to join the scheme. The English dockers (members of the T.G.W. union or “Bevin’s union, as it is dubbed) were treated in a disgusting manner by the Glasgow Union. Glasgow union members had priority for employment which meant that the most unpleasant, irksome and ill-paid jobs were the lot of the English dockers.

The 1,500 Glasgow men were not allowed to join the union and were prevented from joining any union or forming one.

With the end of hostilities, the English dockers were sent to their home ports, most of them with bitter feelings regarding the Glasgow Union.

When the National dock strike took place in October-November, 1945, the 1,500 Glasgow (non-union) dockers were the first in Scotland to join the national movement for 25s. a day, etc.

One outcome of the 1945 strike was the agreement to take joint action in any subsequent disputes, an agreement endorsed by the Glasgow union membership.

In January-May, 1946, the 1,500 Glasgow “non-union’’ men were dismissed without a word of protest from the local union, in fact the dismissals were approved of by the union. 

When the recent strike took place in Glasgow about the “redundancy” of 500 union members, the union coined the slogans “Square deal for the Clyde” and “Scottish cargoes for Glasgow."

Faced with the fact that in July the new, Government-approved, dock-labour scheme commences and its certainty of further redundancies in London, Liverpool and elsewhere, some of the dockers in London (not members of the T.G.W. Union) went on strike for a few days to demonstrate their solidarity with the Glasgow men.

The Glasgow men are now back at work on the agreement that an inquiry be made on the needs of the port of Glasgow.

The results of that inquiry won't be substantially different from the “Fact-finding” committee set up by the Government which recommended the dismissal of 800 men—watered down to 500.

The Glasgow men take a very narrow and insular view of T.U. activity, and are only militant on local, sectional questions.

The larger unions, whilst democratic in formal structure, are still dominated by rank and file apathy which permits the sway of the permanent officials.

The whole dock industrial scene is one of internecine intrigue and struggles between the smaller unions and the T.G.W. Union.

The unofficial “National Port-Workers Defence Committee’’ is, despite its naive trust in the Labour Government, probably the brightest development so far, from a class standpoint.

As certain as anything can be is national dock disputes after July of this year when the Government rationalises the dock industry.

These are, briefly, the facts. The whole dock union organisation throughout Great Britain is in ferment with the approach of entire Ministry of Labour control of the industry and strikes, disputes, and union wrangling will be accentuated.

T. A. Mulheron

Gun Control? No Thanks
05/02/16 13:43
We all know that the gun laws in the US are ridiculous and why – so the gun manufacturers can keep on selling their products and make huge profits, and that they command so many lobbyists and so much capital that they can control a government on that question. An editorial in the Toronto Star revealed that gun violence in that country claims a life every sixteen minutes; more Americans die from guns in six months than died from terrorism for the last twenty-five years and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars; more Americans have died from guns since 1968 than on the battlefields of all the wars in American history; American children are fourteen times more likely to die from guns than children in other developed countries. Incredible figures, unbelievable that a few can control the many and continue the slaughter in the name of profit. Just hours before the San Bernadino massacre, a group of doctors went to Capitol Hill to present a petition of more than 2,000 signatures demanding an end to the two- decade funding freeze that has effectively killed public research into gun violence in the US and with it, any legislation that may have followed.
 In 1996, the Republican-controlled Congress stripped $2.6 million from the budget of The Centre for Disease Control that was earmarked for gun violence research and instead passed a bill that expressly forbid that agency from doing any research that "may be used to advocate or promote gun control." The result of this law and many others over time can be deduced from the figures for gun deaths per million in other developed countries – Japan, 0.1, Norway, 0.9, England, 0.9, Australia, 1.7, France, 2.0, Germany, 2.1, Canada, 5.6, US, 31.2. Only Mexico and Columbia (121.7 and 446.3 respectively) with their own special drug war problems have higher numbers.
John Ayers.

Educate, Agitate, Organise.
05/02/16 06:00


All the wealth of the capitalist class springs from slavery - wage slavery. Collectively all wealth flows from the labour of the working class. Capitalism cannot function otherwise. We need to abolish it not reform it. Wage slavery in all industries is never coupled with generous terms and conditions. The Socialist Party support unions taking on the employers whenever they do so. This is an essential part of the class struggle but can only ever be defensive of workers interests.

It is past time to do away with capitalism and Capital, buying and selling, money, banks insurance, war, nations, wages or prices and usher in globally, the post-capitalist age of abundance In a world capable of creating a abundance of wealth, landing men on other planets, exploring space and building ever more sophisticated weapons of mass destruction, the problem is of ownership and control of the means and instruments for creating wealth with a rationed (via wage-slavery) distribution of resources. Take power for yourself. Abolish the wages system. Establish common ownership, democratic control, free access socialism.

Wages are a rationing of access to societies gross product.  The people who move wealth around are also wage slaves, some highly rewarded, but most in medium earning brackets and a necessary part of the production process inside a capitalist market system.  It is intense global competition in a shrinking global market which leads to crisis. It is the rate of profit which is fairly consistent, but the means of production requires ever more intense exploitation of hands on production workers and the service sector.

It is capitalism itself which is out of sync with the potential possibilities of its technology.  It is possible to have a superabundance of wealth freely accessible if we get rid of the capitalist class.  Almost all government spending is for the maintenance of the capitalist system. The bulk of wealth torrents upwards and only trickles back down when exploitative opportunities arrive.

You can't just redistribute wealth. Exploitation is built into capitalism. It can't be made fairer. You can’t even gradually reform it, as the market system eventually shakes out and reasserts control, over impediments to producing profit. Market crashes and crises are how this happens. The capitalist class can ride this out for long periods but the workers are disciplined by their poverty with increased rates of exploitation and lack of reserves into the new capitalist order. This is what we are presently witnessing.

The technological advances of capitalist production have to be shorn of their class ownership and a post capitalist order introduced in which all wealth is common wealth. A democratic, global, post-capitalist, free access socialist society is the answer.

Capitalism is obsolete as a method for production and distribution, as it can’t solve the production problem without rationing access to the producer by waged slavery. The distribution criteria of capitalism has production cease, when there is no profit to be earned, so human needs go unmet.

The intensity of competition for shrinking markets causes workers’ wages to be cut or depressed and the rate of exploitation is intensified. Until new products come on and expansion can ensue workers are thrown onto relief or short term work, while the parasite class can sit in ease and luxury on the wealth they steal by the wages system until they can reinvest some of this as capital (dead labour) in emerging opportunities to exploit workers further.

Capitalism is a splintered society; divided not just by sectional ownership of the means of production but by the economic rivalry of independent states striving to exercise authority over given geographical areas.

Conventional political parties endorse the framework of capitalism and compete to win control over the state and to administer the economic system within its boundaries, which necessarily means perpetuating the wages system and the persistent hardship for wage and salary earners.

The policies propounded by these parties are similar because they are manifestations of the same political imperative – a continuation of capitalism – and are distinguishable only to the extent that they propose different organisation methods to administer the same economic system. But while trading one group of careerist politicians for another can never be the answer, changing society’s economic structure is the only answer. It is a delusion if any wage worker thinks they have done better under any of the political parties. All is relative and if you work for a wage or salary, you are in an exploitative relationship with the capitalist class being the exploiter of your capacity to produce wealth from your ability to work.

Capitalism exists only because workers allow it to exist. Changing the structure of society, however, is not as simple as changing political allegiance to a party. Capitalism is based firmly on a principle of leadership, where a minority in secret makes decisions and the excluded majority is told what they should do and how they should think. Changing the world’s economic structure by converting the means of production from class ownership to common ownership requires that workers individually understand what they want and actively combine to change their condition. Socialism cannot be delivered by leaders and is achievable only by the concerted action of a politically conscious mass movement without direction or leaders, for only then will the majority become the decision-makers. The task may be daunting but must begin somewhere. Workers would do well to start by considering whether capitalism – under any political party - is really the future they want.


What Ladder?
05/02/16 01:30
40% of Scots who are not already on the property ladder do not believe they will ever be able to buy their own house.
However, only 14% said they were "concerned" about the prospect of never being a homeowner, according to a report from Bank of Scotland.
While 40% believed they will never own their home, 26% were more optimistic about being able to buy.
The remaining 26% said they did not know if they will ever own property.

Alienation
04/02/16 14:16

A friend on the police force told an SPC member that twenty-five per cent of the people have no feeling towards others, hence the high number of psychopaths around. Even if not statistically correct, it does point to the way capitalism dehumanizes and alienates people from each other. There is only one cure and it won't be found within capitalism. John Ayers

Profit Madness
04/02/16 14:11
On November 14, The Weather Station on TV in Toronto said that smog in China was fifty to sixty times above the acceptable levels. This gives a clear indication of just how profit mad the capitalist class is. As long as profit is made, to hell with the health of the people. John Ayers

Climate's Expensive Talks
04/02/16 14:08

 Figures on the recent Paris climate talks may tell a story:-

Number of delegates at the summit – 40,000

Number of police officers deployed – 11,000

Budget for the two weeks of talks - $240 millions

Countries represented – 196

Heads of state who will participate – 147

The number of legally binding climate treaties – 0!

Revolution is freedom to think and act
04/02/16 06:30

"Civilisation has done little for labour except to modify the forms of its exploitation."Eugene Debs

Politics is too important to be left to politicians. People are right to be discontented and to protest about their situation, but they need to be more discerning and choose the right target. It’s not the Westminster politicians, nor the Brussels bureaucracy, nor the East European migrants who are to blame for their plight. It’s the world-wide capitalist system of production for profit. That’s what they should target. But protesting against it and its effects is not enough. They need to go beyond this and organise politically to bring the whole system to an end and replace it by one in which the resources of the Earth have become the common heritage of all humanity and used to improve the lot of people everywhere.

Revolution is a complete transformation in how we think and act. This acts upon society. Capitalist technological development allied with intense competition between its players has already outstripped its capacity to consume its products, as the requirement for profit for the capitalist class, puts a brake on distribution.

Contrary to what is said the immense technological capacity of capitalism to produce, which can't be utilised under a capitalist market system, as it needs to switch off production ,before human needs can be satisfied and find ever new commodities, to resume the business of making profits, which makes revolution possible. The workers who think they have something to lose are quite simply mistaken. They are living in poverty, relative or actual. The comparison has to be made between the 85 people who own more wealth than the bottom 40% of society and not the modicum of gilding of our waged slave chains. The elites do not bring anything to the production process save capital (dead labour) already creamed off workers surplus value.

Previous revolutions were bloody affairs as they were competing class interests for dominance over subject classes. There won’t be any subject class after the capitalist class are dispossessed of their ownership of the means and instruments of creating and distributing wealth. It is the working class only who create wealth. Not the capitalist/parasite class. Their capital investments are only stolen surplus value (dead labour.) The solution is a revolutionary removal of parasitic/capitalist/elites, either corporate, state or private individual owning and controlling the means and instruments of producing and distributing wealth. Any solutions inside capitalism are illusory, they sow the seeds of the next crisis. Capitalism cannot be reformed to work in the interests of the majority. All wealth flows from the workers who do not just produce wealth in capitalism they also run and manage capitalism from top to bottom, but can only do so in the interests of the owners.

This has to be rearranged by a post-capitalist development where the problem of distribution of wealth can finally be resolved by common ownership and production for use, rather than for sale. A change to post-capitalist society does not necessarily mean the bloodbath which accompanied previous revolution. From the initial capture of the state by the majority to prevent its forces of repression being used against workers. There will be no socialism without socialists and the immense majority world over will have to become socialist – a socialist global collective working class, while conquering political power of the states, dismantling their bureaucratic-military top-down apparatus and democratizing (bottom-up) all useful organs and dispossessing the capitalist class. This done the state withers away from being government 'over people' to becoming an administration 'over things'.

 “Considering:
That the emancipation of the productive class is that of all human beings without distinction of sex or race;
That the producers can be free only insofar as they are in possession of the means of production;
That there are only two forms under which the means of production can belong to them:
The individual form which has never existed generally and which is being more and more eliminated by the process of industry;
The collective form whose material and intellectual elements are being formed by the very development of capitalist society.
Considering
That this collective appropriation can only be the outcome of the revolutionary action of the productive class – or proletariat – organized in a separate political party.
That such organization must be pursued by all the means, which the proletariat has at its disposal, including universal suffrage, thus transformed from the instrument of trickery, which it has been up till now into an instrument of emancipation.”  Marx on Universal Suffrage and Political Self-organisation May 10, 1880

Marx states: “No social order ever perishes before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have developed; and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself” (Preface to A Critique of Political Economy).
Does the current mode of production ─ capitalism ─ act as a fetter upon production? Are the material conditions which currently exist, sufficiently mature to support new, higher relations of production: socialism? We have developed our ability to produce to a level which easily enables us to meet everyone’s needs. But the relations of production-capitalism-disable us. Capitalism cannot accommodate that necessary production. By and large people do not go hungry because there is no food, but because they are, from the unalterable perspective of capitalism, unworthy: they cannot afford to eat. They cannot afford to eat because from capitalism’s perspective there is no reason to employ them and pay them. We have developed the material productive forces to such an extent that fewer and fewer workers can produce more and more of the things we need to live. But still, people cannot get the necessities of life. Marx cannot be faulted in his analysis of why a market economy in the modern world contains the seeds of its own destruction, assuming that the ownership of the means of production remained concentrated in too few hands and workers had only their labor to sell in direct competition with labour-displacing technology or with workers willing to work for lower wages.

For years we have been told that improvements in production should mean reduced working hours. Instead it means that many of us work longer hours for the same pay. Many others are not permitted to work because capital does not require their labour. This is more evidence that our productive ability has outstripped the ability of capitalism to accommodate our ability to produce.

The apologists for capital would have us believe that Karl Marx was wrong about almost everything he said and wrote. But it is clear that “the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production.” Marx was right.

The material conditions for new, higher relations of production have been carried in the womb of capitalism for too long. It is time for a birthing. It is time to release our ability to produce and to solve our problems, by providing the appropriate relations of production: socialism.

Marx views can be summarised:
1. The working class must first, either peacefully or violently, win control of the State.
2. Then they must make it completely democratic, and,
3. Use it to dispossess the capitalists and establish the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production.
4. This done, there would no longer be any need for the State, which consequently would cease to exist in Socialism.

 Marx's views were distorted in two opposing ways.
 First, by some Social Democrats who made him stand for a gradual, peaceful transition to Socialism by means of social reform measures passed by parliament.
Secondly, by Lenin. When Lenin returned to Russia in April 1917 after the overthrow of the Tsar he began to advocate that his party, the Bolsheviks, should aim to seize power in the near future. He knew that they could only do this in a violent uprising. Forced into hiding in August and September he wrote this pamphlet The State and Revolution in which he distorted Marx's views so as to justify in Marxist terms the Bolsheviks' planned insurrection.


Marx and Engels in fact made no distinction between Socialism and Communism; they were terms they used interchangeably to refer to future classless, Stateless society based on social or common ownership. Marx describes British industry as “vampire-like” which “could but live by sucking blood, and children’s blood too”. He also said “Capital is dead labour which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks". In The Condition of the Working Class in England, Engels identifies and blames the “vampire property-holding class” as the source of "all the social troubles". There is no happy ending in capitalism just horrors.

The Glasgow Effect
04/02/16 00:22
Possilpark is less than two miles from the affluent, fashionable area around the University of Glasgow, yet this neighbourhood has the worst life expectancy rates in the UK, and perhaps in western Europe. The Glasgow Centre for Population Health calculated that between the years 2008 and 2012 an average man in Ruchill and Possilpark – a neighbourhood of 10,700 people, would die aged just 66 – barely old enough to collect his state pension.
The latest data for 2014 shows men in the wider Scottish parliamentary constituency that is home to Possilpark – Glasgow Maryhill and Springburn – will die aged 72 on average, five years younger than across Scotland; for women life expectancy is 77, against a Scottish figure of 81. Other British cities have identical levels of poverty, yet their citizens live longer. Glasgow’s figures are a significant factor in Scotland’s poor overall life expectancy rates: Scots still die earlier than in any other west European country, at 79 against 81 in England and Wales, or 82 in Spain, Sweden and Italy. Once about average, Scottish life expectancy has been bottom of the European pack for the last 30 years.

Advances in modern healthcare, new and refurbished housing, and slow changes to lifestyle have improved life expectancy. While they may live longer than before they do so in poor health, with complex, chronic illnesses. Clinicians call it premature multi-morbidity: patients who may be life-long smokers living with obesity, lung disease or ailing hearts. “Our patients have multiple chronic diseases about 15 to 20 years earlier than in affluent areas. They are living longer in poorer health,” says Dr Lynsay Crawford, a GP at Balmore medical practice. “They’re living longer but not in good health, lots of them. They’ve had their triple bypasses which has kept them alive, but then we have them in their 70s with heart and lung disease, and heart failure. I think that health has improved, but not in the way we would see in wealthier areas,” added her practice partner, Dr Allison Reid.


Dr Crawford’s, Balmore surgery is a leading member in the Deep End, a network of the 100 practices with Scotland’s most deprived catchment areas that campaigns for higher spending and targeted policies. Balmore’s patients live with the third worst deprivation levels of all GP surgeries in Scotland. Four in 10 of Balmore’s 3,511 patients have chronic diseases. While rates are slowly improving, nearly 34% of patients smoke, against a Scottish average of 19.7% and double the UK’s 15.9%; it has 151 patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, double the Scottish average; and almost 200 patients with coronary heart disease, at 5.7% against the Scottish rate of 4.2%. The clinic has made significant progress on high blood pressure rates. They have fallen to 13.6%, while Scotland’s average has risen steadily, and is now higher than Balmore’s. Still, 231 Balmore patients have diabetes, 6.7% versus 4.9% for Scotland; and 296 have asthma, a third more than the Scotland-wide rate. More than 300 have a history of depression, nearly 50% higher than the Scottish average.

There are subtle differences in the strategies pursued by Crawford and Reid compared with GPs in more affluent and less troubled communities. At Balmore, a doctor’s dire ultimatums to quit smoking, or to cut down on fatty, sugary foods, will simply fail. Patients will stop turning up. The GPs believe their authority rests very heavily on trust, carefully calibrated negotiation and a lack of judgment about a patient’s lifestyle and history. Getting someone to cut down their smoking or change their diet is by coaxing, negotiation. There is a strong sense that smoking is a rare pleasure in a difficult world; beating addiction is harder with great routine stress in daily life. They have alcoholics with multiple illnesses directly linked to their alcohol abuse, poor diet and damp homes. Those men will often quite candidly describe how heavily they drank the night before. They still need and deserve treatment, respect rather than censure, says Crawford. “I have several patients who are significant alcoholics and know that they’re going to die from that. But they come to you because I don’t make judgments, and they don’t lie to me about how much they’re drinking.”

03/02/16 19:00
African Hothouse (1966)
From the January 1966 issue of the SocialistStandard

In 1957 Ghana became the first of many Colonies to achieve independence within the Commonwealth. Much has been said and written about these new Nations in the intervening period and those who were loudest in their support and praise have usually seen their hopes drowned in a welter of dictatorship and suppression.

Certain conditions must be fulfilled before the idea of Socialism can arise. Of paramount importance is a highly developed industrial society in which the propertyless mass of wage-slaves is increasingly forced into the consciousness that its interests are in conflict with those of the owning class. Some workers, hearing us say this, consider the backward areas throughout the world. They see those millions of primitives whose way of life has never changed in a thousand years and feel that all this renders Socialism, if not impossible, something for the distant future.

Is it really so hopeless? We think not. Therefore, a progress report is required to see whether things are as unchanging and permanent as they seem to be. A comprehensive survey of all the new States is beyond the space at our disposal and a skimped attempt would simply defeat our purpose. So we shall look at one country only, and the question now arises—which one? Ghana, with its 400 years of western influence, would be the easiest choice, but we are looking for something less obvious This presents itself in —the Federation of Nigeria.

Here, the barriers to Socialism seem insurmountable. The most densely populated African National—55 million according to hotly disputed Government figures—it was, if anything, even more backward than Ghana in the days of Empire and generally had little contact with the West until recent years.

In the more developed South (East and West Regions combined) the inhabitants are distinct from those of the Moslem-dominated North. The Southern City has many modern features, with the motor vehicle a common sight. The North, in contrast, is from the world of Arabian Nights with its Minarets and feudal Emirs. A Nation where, instead of one people sharing the same life, speech and background, there are over 250 different tribal groups with no common language and with vastly assorted stages of development.

As late as 1920, the Governor of the day, Sir Hugh Clifford, ridiculed the idea ‘That this collection of self-contained and mutually independent Native States separated from one another by distance, history and tradition, political, social and religious barriers, were capable of being welded into a single homogeneous Nation”. This was the picture up to Independence.

Independence was the culmination of half a century of demanding freedom from the shackles of Colonialism. The driving force was the urbanised African who had come to work in Lagos, the big trading centre. By 1896 he was protesting that most of his taxes were going towards improving European residential areas. Down the years he found himself debarred from real advancement because of his native origin and he resented serving under white men whom he considered his inferior. Strict segregation, plus the fact that everything luxurious was for Europeans only, heightened the desire to be rid of the British. The absence of a reactionary settler class—it really was the white man’s grave—prepared the ground for the inevitable. After the war the rising tide of Nationalism engulfed Nigeria just as it did almost everywhere and degrees of Self-Government were demanded and won until, in October 1960, British Rule came to an end.

In 1947, outside of textiles and palm-oil, only one factory existed in the whole of Nigeria. Between then and 1960 there was a dramatic increase in unbanisation, with an estimated half-million wage and salary earners. But the vast majority were, and to a lesser degree still are, subsistence Farmers. Some of them worked part of the year in the Towns or Mines, but living off the land was the main way of life. Unlike today, there was nothing else for it

In his increasing contact with the modern world it becomes clear to the native that there is more to life than the Village can offer. He may hear that the earnings for a few hours work in Town bring a return the equal of many hours of back-breaking toil in the fields. This, or the desire for education, among other reasons, send him into the City to begin the process of losing his backward past—that of “de-tribalisation”.

It starts the moment he parts from the controls of the Tribe and the ties of the Village. He must adapt himself to the new conditions in order to survive, and the changes are great. He walks on different ground and keeps different hours. The tools he uses have changed and with them his idea of himself. The traditional life of the Village with its protections and comforts are no longer his; instead, he is in a jungle where those things do not exist. New associations must be sought and these usually present themselves at work and are seldom from his particular background. Thus, new interests are created and when problems arise they may not be treated as personal or Tribal in nature but as social issues which demand new thinking. More, these new associates have different Gods from his own—or no God at all—so his acceptance of conventional superstition is challenged. To sum up, there is enormous pressure for re-examination of his beliefs, standards, values and aspirations. At the same time, the contradiction of a wage-worker’s life and the spectacle of immense wealth displayed in Stores, etc., leads to the development of the idea of crime. No longer can the Village expatriate simply pick up anything he wishes to make use of. Those things are now privately owned and must be paid for. He is living in a money economy.

What protection has he? The same as anyone else; he joins a Trade Union. Here again the story is one of a mushrooming under the conditions of emergent Capitalism. Pre-war, only Clerks and Administrative workers in Nigeria were organised. There was little compulsion to work for wages and jobs were only taken to supplement agricultural income while the depression reduced demand for labour in both Government and private sectors.

In 1940 only five Unions existed, claiming 3,500 members between them. By 1956 they numbered almost 200 with 170,000 members. Progress, if swift, was erratic with many Unions vanishing as quickly as they came. There were reasons for this.

    (1) Poor communications between Branches separated by great distances.
    (2) The small scale of industry—some Unions had only 50 members!
    (3) Seasonal nature of many jobs.
    (4) Large labour surplus.

Today, although still split by factional squabbles, the Movement continues to grow. In July 1964, a major strike involving a million workers took place over wage-rates and lasted two weeks despite everything the Government could throw at it. Threats to dismiss all strikers were ignored and with the country at a virtual standstill the Government was forced to accede to many of the strikers’ demands.

This growth in trade union strength has occurred in the face of Tribal loyalties and animosities. Does this mean Tribalism is a spent force? Far from it. In fact it has staged something of a come-back in recent times. Before I960, when Nationalist aspirations were rampant, differences of Tribe and Region were submerged in the unity of aim—independence. Nowadays, the political leaders, jockeying for position and power, are having to invoke all the old antagonisms—although the dangers of this are obvious and recognised. Also, as the demand for the more skilled type of labour—administration, education, etc.—slackens off, then those who have not yet landed a good position must exert pressure wherever they can.

In the long run the past will lose out to the demands of the new social order. Those who have spent much of their lives with the Tribe will remain under its influence to some extent, but the generations who know only City life and who receive a uniform education will have little interest in the ancient ties.

In any case, Tribalism is not confined to primitive peoples. It is present, although in modified form, throughout modern society and can be seen among Scots, Irish, Jews, etc. These groups who consider themselves different because of Nationality or Religion will still unite with outsiders for political or economic reasons.

And capitalist education is in Nigeria forging ahead. The Ashby Commission, set up at the time of independence to map-out the necessary rate of expansion, recognised that lack of skilled manpower was the biggest obstacle to development, and put forward “massive, expensive, and unconventional” recommendations which included four new Universities by 1980. Today, that target has been beaten. Four million children are already receiving Primary schooling and the plan is for an additional half million each year.

Everywhere the story is one of rapid “Westernisation''. The Lagos Sunday Times (19/9/65) provides the following sample. “The sleek Mercedes Benz saloon glides out of the corner. At the same time, august lady at the Bus stop flips out a miniature looking glass from the dazzling' bag slung over one arm and after applying another layer of lipstick. smoothens down her skirl. With a screech of brakes the car stops and a not-too-young face smiles at the lady . .. Want a lift madam , . . and so begins yet another etc., etc. . . " The article goes on to deplore faithless women in WIGS who leave “whimpering infants” and ‘‘good husbands" to indulge in affairs. True, this is more a picture of upper-crust life but the trend is unmistakably away from the old values and standards.

Ultimately, the greatest factor in the development of Nigeria's working-class is that it is part of a world economic system, the effects of which it cannot escape. The catastrophic fall in prices on the world market of its chief export. Cocoa, has meant a large and increasing balance of payments deficit. The result has been to cut imports drastically of manufactured goods from those countries mainly responsible for the adverse trade balance, such as Japan. Thus, favourable conditions are created for the expansion of home-grown industry and one Company exulted in a full-page ad. in the Daily Times (21/9/65), “With the recent decision of the Federal Government to restrict the 'importation of imitation jewellery from Hong-Kong and Japan, our factory has taken positive action to increase its capital investment by ordering more machinery, resulting in increased production capacity to cope with this restriction”.

The political upheavals which have been part of the Nigerian scene lately have brought forth suggestions that the Federation may be in the process of breaking-up into several smaller units. Even if this should happen the developments outlined above will continue to a greater or lesser degree, but the conclusion must be the same. That the part of Africa now known as Nigeria is advancing towards the image held out to it by the older, established Nations—that of an industrialised, class-divided. Capitalist society.

Vic Vanni
Glasgow Br.

Delegatory Democracy
03/02/16 06:00

We do not need leaders. It is silly to expect politicians to be leaders in the class struggle. Politicians are elected to run capitalism in the interests of the business class 5%. In a representative democracy this is diametrically opposed to the interests of workers 95%.

All the economic clout is with the corporations and landowners, owned by a tiny minority of people, possibly around 5 percent. Owning the means of production allows them to cream off a profit or a surplus for themselves, and they do this by exploiting the rest of us. Their economic power is backed up by political power. The state is there to try and manage the status quo, and protect the interests of those with all the wealth. This doesn’t mean that they have control over the economy, though. Market forces fluctuate between growth and slump regardless of what politicians and corporate strategists want.

This arrangement leads to massive inequalities in wealth, not just within this country, but across the globe. Goods and services only go to those who can afford them, not to those who need them. Those who can’t afford the basics risk falling into a lifestyle of poverty it’s hard to escape from. Living in an unequal world where everything is rationed creates divisions between us, leading to prejudice and discrimination. Even those of us with a reasonable standard of living never have enough real involvement or sense of ownership in where we work and live.

To solve the problems in society, we have to change the way society is structured. This means going from our world where the means to produce and distribute wealth are owned by a minority, to one where those resources and facilities are owned by everyone in common. Then, goods would be produced and services would be run directly for anyone who wants them, without the dictates of the economic market. Industries and services would be run just to satisfy people’s needs and wants.

All this could only be achieved by fundamentally changing the way society is organised, a revolution. The kind of revolution we want is one which involves the vast majority of people across the world. Every country now is part of an integrated global economy and class structure. So, people across the world would have to want to change society. The only legitimate and practical way this could be achieved is by organising equally and democratically. This means voluntary, creative work, with decisions and responsibilities agreed through everyone having an equal say. This would mean a much broader and more inclusive use of democracy than we’re used to today. Different democratic organisations or procedures would apply in different circumstances. This doesn’t mean having leaders or groups with more authority than others.

The Socialist Party detest any kind of Nationalism. The fact is however all capitalist politics including the Scot Nats, are serving the interests of a minority parasite capitalist class. The majority need to get off their knees, get rid of representative politics which only represents the dominant economic interests of the capitalist class and make the democratic revolution with delegatory functions which will harness the productive capacity and technology available in a free access moneyless society to reduce the working day/week, and produce a commonly owned superabundance of wealth with production for use, to satisfy needs, and not for sale to satisfy the profits of a parasite class in our lifetime. Socialism is a classless, elite-free, post-capitalist system, which can only be developed upon an advanced technological society capable of producing a superabundance of goods and services to allow them to be accessed freely according to needs.

A choice of extreme Tory cuts or less extreme Labour cuts. No, it is no choice. Capitalism must go and workers must make it go. A plague on all parties who wish to retain capitalism. Only workers themselves can bring to fruition the post-capitalist revolution of free-access, delegated democracy, production for use, a price-free, wageless, moneyless, society. Business is not 'people friendly'. Real socialism will do away with the business of exploiting workers in return for a wage or salary and channeling profits to the few. Socialism should be hostile to all the parties of capitalism, Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, Purple or whatever flag they drape over their wage-slavery administration exploitative activities. Capitalism cannot be reformed.it comes into the world oozing blood form every pore. Dissolve all government 'over' you and elect yourselves into common ownership and democratic control over all the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth.

"I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I led you in, someone else would lead you out. You must use your heads as well as your hands, and get yourself out of your present condition; as it is now the capitalists use your heads and your hands." Eugene Debs


“Laird bashing...run for the hills and glens..."
03/02/16 05:03
Scotland's patchwork of vast estates was created on the misery of crofters and clansmen by an elite, created out of the Clearances. Today half of the privately owned Scottish countryside still belongs to 432 landowners. For the people here, the little slivers where they live are cramped and narrow. You can't build here, that's an estate. You can't build there, that belongs to the laird. It is hard to live here. Wages are a third below the Scottish average, but prices come out a third higher. One landowner in Jura, who happens to be the Prime Minister's stepfather-in-law, has warned the SNP may bring about a “Mugabe-style” land grab.

Rob Gibson MSP, who chairs the Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment committee which is scrutinising the Land Reform Bill, explained “The landowners and their organisations have been hyperactive. I have never heard from so many lords, earls and dukes in my life.”

Scotland’s lairds have retaliated to threats to their fiefdoms by warning they may stop letting out land long term to tenant farmers and substantially reduce the amount of land they would be willing to let out on anything other than a short-term basis. Their warnings were echoed by small landowners, who said the proposal represented a “fundamental breach” of their property rights and may stop them letting out their farms. The proposed law is that it permits tenant farmers with no successors to sell on their secure tenancies. Landowners could only regain control over the land by paying a tenant farmer a sum equivalent of up to 25 per cent of the land’s capital value, whereas any other buyer would only have to pay the market value of the lease.

Buccleuch Estates, owned by the Duke of Buccleuch, Scotland’s largest landowner, was one of many landowners to argue that the represented “the confiscation of a property owner’s interest.”

Moray Estates, which is owned by the Earl of Moray and his family, declared that “you cannot bully or force owners to let property.”

Seafield and Strathspey Estates, which covers 35,000 hectares owned by the Earl of Seafield, said: “It will destroy confidence to let agricultural land in Scotland to the detriment of new entrants, existing tenants and the farming sector generally.

Dunecht Estates, which is owned by Charles Pearson, the younger son of the late Third Viscount Cowdray, said: “It will deliver a crushing blow to confidence to let land going forward and therefore sabotage other proposals in the Bill that are aimed at encouraging letting.”

Kindcardine Estates said: “This measure will be disastrous for the supply of rented land. No landlord will ever trust that a future Scottish Government will not change the rules with retrospective legislation on other types of agricultural tenancy.”

 Removing non-domestic rates exemption from shooting and deer forests should mean the laird of Inverinate, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, is liable for the same rates the caravan site at Morvich has paid for years.