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The best thing we can do for the young is for us to educate ourselves a fair bit,discourage them from following the footsteps of the failure of the previous generation which trusted political parties to reform capitalism, as it can not be reformed.Get rid of all smug pseudo ‘squeezed’ middle class pretensions with notions of ‘upperosity’ and realise that, if we ‘have’ to work for a wage or salary we are members of the exploited working class,whether we own our home or send young Dimkins to a private school or not.
That we make common cause with workers globally regionally and nationally to overthrow this system of class rule of a tiny percentage of the global population and usher in a revolutionary new ,post -capitalist system of global democratic,free access socialism.
Read,What is capitalism,
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/what-capitalism
What is socialism,
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/what-socialism
Understand that capitalism can not be reformed,
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/revolution-or-reform
and abolish the wages & prices system.
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1980s/1981/no-922-june-1981/world-without-money-5-questions
We really need to consider how to get rid of capitalsm,if we want to get rid of arms dealers ,nuclear weapons and war, which is concomitant upon capitalism along with poverty and waged slavery.
In a world of a potential superabundance of wealth, it is rationed out to the producers and resources are fought over to be squandered by states in the interest of their dominant capitalist interests.
Currently there is a North Pole war dance prelim going on for resources under the sea and in the South China Seas,old protagonists are eyeing each other up.
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‘In America trillions of dollars go to military and homeland security companies. Perpetual war represents perpetual profits for business and government interests. According to Morgan Keegan, a wealth management and capital firm, investment in homeland security companies is expected to yield a 12 percent annual growth through 2013 – a high return when compared to other parts of the depressed US economy. Former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff pushed the purchase of the heavily criticised (and little tested) full-body scanners used in airports. People were unaware that the manufacturer of the machine is a client of the Chertoff Group, his highly profitable security consulting agency.
The US “black budget” of secret intelligence programmes alone was estimated at $52.6bn for 2013. That is only the secret programmes, not the much larger intelligence and counterintelligence budgets. We now have 16 spy agencies that employ 107,035 employees. This is separate from the over one million people employed by the military and national security law enforcement agencies.
The US “black budget” of secret intelligence programmes alone was estimated at $52.6bn for 2013. That is only the secret programmes, not the much larger intelligence and counterintelligence budgets. We now have 16 spy agencies that employ 107,035 employees. This is separate from the over one million people employed by the military and national security law enforcement agencies.
In the first 10 days of the Libyan war alone, the Obama administration spent roughly $550m. That figure includes about $340m for munitions – mostly cruise missiles that must be replaced.
War may be hell for some but it is heaven for others.’
There is only one way to prevent war and if it breaks out to end it, namely, by the overthrow of capitalism, the real root from which war springs. The solution rests in the power of the working class. If world capitalism has no solution for its problems excepting new and more horrible slaughter, it is time this insane system were ended. The fight for socialism is the fight for peace. Destruction and carnage can be ended, not by the victory of one or other of the combatants which would merely lay the basis for new wars and is not in the interests of the workers of any country, but by the victory of the workers over capitalism.
http://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/our-war-is-class-war.html
Some of the moaners on here could have developed a spine and taken on their employers regarding pensions cuts.
In any case pensions are just deferred wages and in other cases pensions were part of wage negotiations which settled for less at the time as long as pensions were upped.
If the employers back out of deals take THEM on rather than pouring scorn on your fellow workers.
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I don’t think there is any human trash.We are one human species who are capable of much better things than to de-humanise either by the alienation of wage-slavery or incentivised and thus ideologically driven to profit from it..Rather that the social system creates the circumstances in which accumulation is a driven necessity.The pursuit of Profit in this system means that needs can not be met.This applies in all countries.Production in capitalism has to be for sale with a view of realising a profit.The vast production capacity can not be utilised in an efficient manner to satisfy all human needs.It is insanity, now we have this productive capacity to create a superabundance of wealth,we don’t put it to a human species orientated use in fraternity with all.
Money can become an obsolete method of accounting when all wealth,already created by the worlds workers is owned in common and controlled democratically.A real democracy where each can take according to their needs and contribute according to their ability will have no master or servant.
Money can become an obsolete method of accounting when all wealth,already created by the worlds workers is owned in common and controlled democratically.A real democracy where each can take according to their needs and contribute according to their ability will have no master or servant.
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What do you mean people like me?I don’t want to take over.I want the end of the necessity of government.The worlds people setting themselves free, can run a free access society without governments,nation states leaders and distribute according to self assessed need.
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What is unsaid that the same political class,on behalf of their capitalist paymasters often some them the same class, who are debating about social control issues, are capable of unspeakable horror to defend their capitalist interests.I was just listening to a rendition of Wilfred Owens, “Anthem for Doomed Youth”.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4–FiANvXE
and mused how some think this is the future past and not yet to come.
and mused how some think this is the future past and not yet to come.
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Extremely childish comments on here from some.I would have thought some deep questions might have been posed.Why is government,local , national and regional, necessary? Why do all governments regardless of whether they are Left,Right,Centre need to exercise control over the general populace? On whose behalf? Why ,when there is abundance of food and a capability to feed the worlds population several times over,as there is,19,000 children under the age of five – 13 each minute – die every day, mainly from preventable causes, do some people have to steal it ?Why when the worlds wealth is produced by the worlds workers, is a surplus over and above the ration given to them in the form of a wage or salary (for those who think they are middle-class),claimed by a small percentage of parasites who then use their schools,media,governments,local,regional,national to police the rest of us into acquiescing to this state of affairs? Why are you so slavish? We have a world to win.Abolishing the wages system with capitalism and its control methods this will set free labour ,whether mental or physical for the worlds benefit not a minority.
weematt commented on George Osborne’s cuts are a squeeze too far.
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No doubt Osbourne and his ilk are ideologically driven.However governments are flavoured ,even if it is with ‘regret’ they impose cuts on their populace,they don’t control events in respect of their economies,rather events control them.
The Labour government, like so many governments around the world,attempted to cut back on social spending because the capitalist class would no longer afford to pay for it at its previous levels. In times of economic difficulty welfare spending is always the first element of state expenditure for governments to look to cut back.
For the last three decades in particular governments across much of the industrialised world have been trying to cut back social spending–indeed, this was a project of the Tories in Britain when they were elected in 1979.
It makes any difference whether Labour Liberal Conservative or some Left wing governement is in power.. Because, in capitalism in a slump, there is no alternative to falling living standards for the majority.
Nobody wants their standard of living to be reduced, whether as cuts to their wages or their pensions or as the reduced income unemployment brings. But that’s what they get, even though they might vote against it.
To imagine that electing another set of politicians is going to make any difference, though, is an illusion. It assumes that governments control the way the capitalist economy works whereas in fact they have to govern on its terms of ‘no profit, no production’. They have to give priority to profits and profit-making. In a slump that means imposing austerity.
Henry Ford is reputed to have said that you can have a car of any colour so long as it’s black. Capitalism in a crisis is like that. You can elect any government, but that government will impose austerity.
The fuel that drives capitalism is profits. A slump means that capitalist businesses are investing less than before because it’s not so profitable. The only way capitalism can get out of this is if profitability revives. This happens spontaneously in a slump. The assets of failing and bankrupt firms pass cheaply to others, who can therefore use them more profitably. Interest rates fall, allowing firms that borrow money to invest to keep a larger proportion of their profits. Increased unemployment exerts a downward pressure on wages, increasing the share of profits in new production.
Leftwingers and trade union leaders think that the way out of a slump is to increase spending. Get the government to spend more, they say, and that will get production going again. But it won’t. For the simple reason that the increased wages or government spending would have to be at the expense of profits; which would make things worse. Some governments may start off trying to do this but they are very quickly obliged by the economic laws of capitalism to effect a U-turn and impose austerity.
That’s the way capitalism works, and it’s the only way it can work. Capitalism is a system that puts profits before people and cannot be reformed to do otherwise. The only way forward is not to vote for a change of government policy or to reform some aspect of capitalism, but to act to replace capitalism with socialism so that the Earth’s resources really can become the common heritage of all and used to serve human welfare.
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Socialism can only be established peacefully and democratically by the workers themselves.If you ‘have’ to work for a wage or salary then you are a worker. The so called middle call are in the main workers despite any notions of upperosity (Joyce). Socialism cannot be brought about by a small, dedicated minority ‘smashing the state’ in a violent revolution Bolshevic/Jacobin style.
Gordon Brown like all Labour politicians is a reformist supporter of capitalism.Socialism cannot be brought about “like a thief in the night” (Hardie) by reforming or nationalising nasty bits of capitalism away.What I advocate entails doing away with capitalism its politicians and leaders altogether .
The establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community.You can check this out for yourself by visiting the World Socialist Movement website at worldsocialism.org
Gordon Brown like all Labour politicians is a reformist supporter of capitalism.Socialism cannot be brought about “like a thief in the night” (Hardie) by reforming or nationalising nasty bits of capitalism away.What I advocate entails doing away with capitalism its politicians and leaders altogether .
The establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community.You can check this out for yourself by visiting the World Socialist Movement website at worldsocialism.org
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As long as capitalism exists, profits will always take priority over our real
needs. Some workers welcome reforms; some reforms have improved working
class conditions, but no reform can abolish that basic contradiction between profits and need. No matter how well-meaning the politicians, nor how colourful their promises, they are bound to fail because they do not control the system; rather, it controls them. The governments of the world may well introduce a thousand reforms, but we would still continue to live in a world ravaged by starvation, war,homelessness, unemployment, poverty and every other social ill. We would still live in a two-class society, with our real needs subordinated to the wishes of a minority. Why campaign for crumbs when the whole bakery is there to be taken?
needs. Some workers welcome reforms; some reforms have improved working
class conditions, but no reform can abolish that basic contradiction between profits and need. No matter how well-meaning the politicians, nor how colourful their promises, they are bound to fail because they do not control the system; rather, it controls them. The governments of the world may well introduce a thousand reforms, but we would still continue to live in a world ravaged by starvation, war,homelessness, unemployment, poverty and every other social ill. We would still live in a two-class society, with our real needs subordinated to the wishes of a minority. Why campaign for crumbs when the whole bakery is there to be taken?
Many workers are confused about ‘human nature’, arguing, for instance, that humans are ‘by nature’ greedy, selfish and aggressive and therefore unable to cooperate to help establish Socialism. What they are in fact citing are characteristics of human behaviour under varying conditions. Human behaviour is not fixed but determined by the kinds of society people are conditioned to live in. We are not born as racists or bigots, any more than we are born with a desire to burn witches or hoard money.
The capitalist jungle produces vicious, competitive ways of thinking and acting.
But we humans are able to adapt our behaviour and there is no reason why our
rational desire for comfort and human welfare should not allow us to cooperate.
Even under capitalism, people obtain great pleasure from doing a good turn for
others. Few enjoy participating in the ‘civilised’ warfare of the rat-race.
But we humans are able to adapt our behaviour and there is no reason why our
rational desire for comfort and human welfare should not allow us to cooperate.
Even under capitalism, people obtain great pleasure from doing a good turn for
others. Few enjoy participating in the ‘civilised’ warfare of the rat-race.
Socialism stands for the sole aim of establishing a global system of society in which there will be common ownership and democratic control of the world’s
natural and industrial resources. We advocate a world social system in which each person has free access to the benefits of civilisation and an equal
say in how their society is run; a world in which production is freed from the artificial constraints of profit and used for the benefit of all.
natural and industrial resources. We advocate a world social system in which each person has free access to the benefits of civilisation and an equal
say in how their society is run; a world in which production is freed from the artificial constraints of profit and used for the benefit of all.
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Sir Richard Evans , Regius Professor of History and President of Wolfson College Cambridge asks “How can you possibly claim that Britain was fighting for democracy and liberal values when the main ally was Tsarist Russia? That was a despotism that put Germany in the shade and sponsored pogroms in 1903-6.”
He also pointed out that unlike Germany where male suffrage was universal – 40 per cent of those British troops fighting in the war did not have the vote until 1918.
A view from the actual trenches after the famous Xmas truce and football game.
A view from the actual trenches after the famous Xmas truce and football game.
The English officer R.J. Fairhead saw the evil, but not in the soldiers. They just had to fight. In his statement, he strongly attacked the political structure in Europe and looked above the taught national stereotypes.
“Politicians do not listen to those whom they claim to represent and the failure to take notice of the fragile peace declared for that brief period led to the anti-government revolution throughout Europe.”
His learned hatred for the Germans was converted to a general hate for the whole situation and the system which made a war like this possible.
“Politicians do not listen to those whom they claim to represent and the failure to take notice of the fragile peace declared for that brief period led to the anti-government revolution throughout Europe.”
His learned hatred for the Germans was converted to a general hate for the whole situation and the system which made a war like this possible.
Lieutenant A.P. Sinkinson describes similar experiences:
“As I walked slowly back to our own trenches I thought of Mr. Asquish’s sentence about not sheathing the sword until the enemy be finally crushed. It is all very well for Englishmen living comfortable at home to talk in flowing periods, but when you are out here you begin to realize that sustained hatred impossible.”
Sinkinson saw that Germans were not worse people than himself. Only the people at home, far away from the cruelties, the brutalities, from death and from the war’s real grimace, could keep their hatred.
“As I walked slowly back to our own trenches I thought of Mr. Asquish’s sentence about not sheathing the sword until the enemy be finally crushed. It is all very well for Englishmen living comfortable at home to talk in flowing periods, but when you are out here you begin to realize that sustained hatred impossible.”
Sinkinson saw that Germans were not worse people than himself. Only the people at home, far away from the cruelties, the brutalities, from death and from the war’s real grimace, could keep their hatred.
That the opinion toward the enemies had changed after the truce is emphasized by Westminster Rifle Man Percy. The new experiences he had with the Germans whom he met made him rethink everything he had heard about them. He wrote that:
“They [Germans] where really magnificent in the whole thing [Christmas Truce] and jolly good sorts. I now have a different opinion of the German. Both sides have now started firing, and are deadly enemies again. Strange it all seems, doesn’t it?”
“They [Germans] where really magnificent in the whole thing [Christmas Truce] and jolly good sorts. I now have a different opinion of the German. Both sides have now started firing, and are deadly enemies again. Strange it all seems, doesn’t it?”
Obviously Percy recognized how surreal the situation was. He started to rethink his attitude toward the Germans but he did not think about stopping fighting them.
After having met the enemy between the trenches, started thinking about all they had read and heard about them.
For many, the former hatred was vanished. They now recognized the soldiers from the other side of the trenches as human as themselves. They were not mercenaries, no inhuman monsters eager for war, just humans. The stereotypes they know from the time before the war and before they met their enemies did not fit after meeting their enemies.
Not all Germans acted like it was described in the newspaper and were not as arrogant as the German Kaiser.
On the other hand not all the English soldiers were mercenaries fighting for material well-being. These soldiers started to reflect their own experiences and started to compare their experiences with what they knew before about their enemies.
The conclusion they made was that their prefabricated picture and the experiences they gained did not fit together. It was hard for the soldiers, faced with the reality of the war, to maintain the black and white propaganda picture.
Workers have NO country.Abolish the wages system and share the world in common with your fellow workers.
It is not ‘your’ welfare state but the capitalist class’ welfare state.It was set up to maintain the reserve labour force for when an economic downturn occurred.Cradle to grave provision happened out of political expediency to buy off discontent.Especially after the Wars.Its cost is a burden on the capitalist class.
If you work for a wage or salary your tax is deducted form the employers wage bill, what you receive is the bottom line.The nominal National Insurance and other contributions workers pay are a con in order to gull you into the impression it is ‘your” welfare state.
Your target is the capitalist class who have collectively reneged on the promised provision,the employeers who have a done deal on pensions,often in lieu of wage settlements in the past and now protest their unaffordability.
Your discontent should be channeled into making common cause with workers of all lands and none to remove the parasitic capitalist class,who produce nothing but live off the fat of the land everywhere.
Abolish the wages system and establish a global,free access socialist system where production is for use, without rationing of access by prices ,wages or private ownership of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth.
Your discontent should be channeled into making common cause with workers of all lands and none to remove the parasitic capitalist class,who produce nothing but live off the fat of the land everywhere.
Abolish the wages system and establish a global,free access socialist system where production is for use, without rationing of access by prices ,wages or private ownership of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth.
Let all wealth be owned in common and controlled democratically without elites, by the whole population.
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The phrase ‘Nation-State’ itself assumes that the states into which the world is divided are the political expression of pre-existing ‘nations’. In fact, it’s the other way round. It is the ‘nation’ that is the creation of the state. States inculcate into their subjects the idea that they form a community with a common interest and that the state represents that interest. The result is that people come to refer to themselves and other subjects of the same state as ‘we’ and ‘us’.
Real socialists do not speak of ‘we’ and ‘us’ in relation to so-called ‘Nation-States’ in which they happen to have been born or live. We know that, in every state, there are two classes with opposed interests: the class of those who own and control the means of production and the rest, the vast majority, who do not and, to live, have to sell their mental and physical energies to those who do for a wage or a salary.
It is not difficult to believe that the political scum of all parties, very public stance against eastern European (aka Roma) immigration is fuelled largely by a desire to appeal to the populist vote and is a demagogic tactic aimed at seducing the far right. Each year we are reminded by the government of the day to remember the Jewish Holocaust, yet the Roma Devouring stays forgotten. August the 2nd is the Roma Holocaust Memorial Day, marking the start of the liquidation by the Nazis of the ’gypsy’ camp at Auschwitz. The silence of British politicians was deafening. Our rulers have a long history of camouflaging the failures of capitalism, particularly in times of economic slump, by seeking out scapegoats.
Wage and salary workers in one state have the same basic interest as their counterparts in other states. We are all members of the world working class and have a common interest in working together to establish a world without frontiers in which the resources of the globe will have become the common heritage of all the people of the world and used for the benefit of all.
It is not difficult to believe that the political scum of all parties, very public stance against eastern European (aka Roma) immigration is fuelled largely by a desire to appeal to the populist vote and is a demagogic tactic aimed at seducing the far right. Each year we are reminded by the government of the day to remember the Jewish Holocaust, yet the Roma Devouring stays forgotten. August the 2nd is the Roma Holocaust Memorial Day, marking the start of the liquidation by the Nazis of the ’gypsy’ camp at Auschwitz. The silence of British politicians was deafening. Our rulers have a long history of camouflaging the failures of capitalism, particularly in times of economic slump, by seeking out scapegoats.
Wage and salary workers in one state have the same basic interest as their counterparts in other states. We are all members of the world working class and have a common interest in working together to establish a world without frontiers in which the resources of the globe will have become the common heritage of all the people of the world and used for the benefit of all.
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/revolution-or-reform
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You either have a weird notion of socialism or are deliberately maligning it.Socialism has never existed anywhere in the world.
Governments ,whether they claim to be pro-worker or mixed enterprise or laissez-faire are managers of various strands of capitalism.See a definition of what socialism is before you make a bigger ass of yourself.
Governments ,whether they claim to be pro-worker or mixed enterprise or laissez-faire are managers of various strands of capitalism.See a definition of what socialism is before you make a bigger ass of yourself.
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/what-socialism
Value is created by labour.Not governments.Certainly, governments at the behest of the capitalist class by virtue of their minority ownership of the means and instruments for creating and distributing wealth direct the labour into profitable production of commodities for the capitalist class. This production is not aimed at satisfying human needs as the tap is turned off as soon as it is deemed unprofitable to continue and workers are thrown onto the scrapheap long before satisfaction of needs can be realised. Of course this is an intrinsic feature of capitalist development where workers can only ever gain a ration of what they collectively produce, but they produce and add value by selling their commodity to the capitalists namely their labour power.It is here at the point of production, where exploitation begins and this extraction of surplus value from the worlds workers is the basis of profit.Firstly, capitalism is a system in which wealth takes the form of commodities. i.e. objects produced for sale on the market. Commodity production is not unique to capitalism, but the commodity nature of labour power is. So, capitalism is defined by the fact that the mental and physical energies of most people have to be sold on the market for a price called a wage or a salary. Where there is wage labour there is capitalism. Secondly, capitalism is defined by the law of value. Value is a social relationship which exists in property society where commodities are exchanged. Where there are no commodities, because production and distribution have advanced beyond the stage of buying and selling relationships, there will be no need for the concept of value or for prices and money. As Marx pointed out, “Value is the expression of the specifically characteristic nature of the capitalist process of production”
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Socialism has never been in existence.If you are referring to the former soviet bloc countries ,even John Foster Dulles knew that, as he said to Kruschev,”what you have is state capitalism”.Lenin himself conceded,State capitalism would be a step forward for us.If on the other hand you are referring to Labour governments or Social-Democratic governments,once again these are just reformed capitalism.Socialism/communism does away with government over people and replaces it with an administration of things.i.e. resources allocations etc.It is a democraticaly administered ,commonly owned system of free access and voluntary work.It can’t be imposed from above by a political class and must be achieved by a politically conscious working class majority with a clear objective in realising, “From each according to their ability,to each according to their needs” as the operating tenet. Check out worldsocialism.org
All of the focus is on what is best for capitalism. Extractive elites are an integral feature of capitalism.
Marx correctly outlined:
1.-the boom-slump cycle endemic to capitalism and how no government intervention—however benign—would be able to prevent it;
2.-how the market economy would eventually spread its tentacles into every aspect of human life, conquering the entire planet in the process;
3.-how an excess issue by governments of paper currency beyond that required by additional value production is the real cause of inflation;
3.-class division and the modern development of a world economy where the division between the richest and the poorest is the widest in human history;
4.-the growth of a colossal credit-based financial apparatus that, as time goes on, becomes increasingly isolated from the realities of the wealth production.
process on which it depends.
If anyone doubts the prescience of the Marxian analysis, consider the following passages from the Manifesto about the development of world capitalism and the ruling capitalist class:
“The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation . . . It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e. to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.”
And yet:
“Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange, and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.”
In a world of uncontrollable global economic crises, permanent warfare, rampaging environmental destruction, unprecedented income inequality, social dislocation and delinquency, who can in all seriousness say that Marx was fundamentally wrong? And if his identification of the problems of the modern world and their trajectory is so accurate his proposed solution for them must surely command attention too.
Marx correctly outlined:
1.-the boom-slump cycle endemic to capitalism and how no government intervention—however benign—would be able to prevent it;
2.-how the market economy would eventually spread its tentacles into every aspect of human life, conquering the entire planet in the process;
3.-how an excess issue by governments of paper currency beyond that required by additional value production is the real cause of inflation;
3.-class division and the modern development of a world economy where the division between the richest and the poorest is the widest in human history;
4.-the growth of a colossal credit-based financial apparatus that, as time goes on, becomes increasingly isolated from the realities of the wealth production.
process on which it depends.
If anyone doubts the prescience of the Marxian analysis, consider the following passages from the Manifesto about the development of world capitalism and the ruling capitalist class:
“The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation . . . It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e. to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.”
And yet:
“Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange, and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.”
In a world of uncontrollable global economic crises, permanent warfare, rampaging environmental destruction, unprecedented income inequality, social dislocation and delinquency, who can in all seriousness say that Marx was fundamentally wrong? And if his identification of the problems of the modern world and their trajectory is so accurate his proposed solution for them must surely command attention too.
Let us abolish the wages system and establish a global,free access socialist system where production is for use, without rationing of access by prices ,wages or private ownership of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth.Let all wealth be owned in common and controlled democratically without elites, by the whole population.Check out what the World Socialist Movement says socialism is ,what capitalism is and inform yourselves as to the replacement of this outmoded system with the new one.
weematt commented on Where will it kick off next?.
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Capitalism can’t be reformed and has to be replaced by a democratic,global,government-less,moneyless,priceless, free access socialist society operating the organising tenet ,”From each according to their ability to each according to their needs.”There is no middle class in society.There are only two classes,the workers and a minority parasitic capitalist class who live off the surplus-value produced by the workers.If you have to work for a wage or salary in order to live then you are a member of the working class which must make the revolution which makes all wealth the common heritage of all the planet and abolishes class ownership of the means and instruments for producing wealth forever.
weematt commented on Can you be too leftwing?.
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Your looking in the wrong places.There won’t be any wages, employment or unemployment,in a socialist society .It will be organised along the principles of Free Access and voluntary work.Work and leisure may even become blurred distinctions.
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/what-socialism
weematt commented on Can you be too leftwing?.
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The Soviet Union had damn all to do with communism.It was no more communist then Revolutionary France.The Jacobinistic seizure of power by the Bolsheviks is testament to this.It merely replaced feudalism with a state capitalist system.
Marx would have told them so,as real socialists did at the time,..”Is this huge mass of people, numbering about 160,000,000 and spread over eight and a half millions of square miles, ready for Socialism? Are the hunters of the North, the struggling peasant proprietors of the South, the agricultural wage slaves of the Central Provinces, and the industrial wage slaves of the towns convinced of the necessity, and equipped with the knowledge requisite, for the establishment of the social ownership of the means of life?
Unless a mental revolution such as the world has never seen before has taken place, or an economic change has occurred immensely more rapidly than history has recorded, the answer is “No!”..
Marx would have told them so,as real socialists did at the time,..”Is this huge mass of people, numbering about 160,000,000 and spread over eight and a half millions of square miles, ready for Socialism? Are the hunters of the North, the struggling peasant proprietors of the South, the agricultural wage slaves of the Central Provinces, and the industrial wage slaves of the towns convinced of the necessity, and equipped with the knowledge requisite, for the establishment of the social ownership of the means of life?
Unless a mental revolution such as the world has never seen before has taken place, or an economic change has occurred immensely more rapidly than history has recorded, the answer is “No!”..
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1910s/1918/no-168-august-1918/revolution-russia-where-it-fails
Damn all to do with human nature.
weematt commented on Can you be too leftwing?.
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You only need inequality in a system which rewards possession of the means and instruments of producing and distibuting wealth to a ruling class of parasites and plunderers of surplus value.All wealth comes from labour by the majority,the application of human labour to natural resources and is then rationed out in the forms of wages and salaries.It is irrelevant how high or low those may be.The Great Money Trick ensures that it torrents upwards to the parasite class,who will go to war.Look at the great North Pole war dance,the space hop,intent on seizing ownership of resources in a few hands in order to use this ownership to exploit labour and make a profit.You can’t have a ‘nice’ capitalism with a ‘little bit’ of inequality.It is a system which came into the world oozing blood from every pore. It is this very capitalism,providing mathematics and logic to aid some intelligent discomfort to complacent intellects, which condemns about 19,000 children under the age of five – 13 each minute –to die every day, mainly from preventable causes.
In 2011, nearly 7 million children died before age five, as compared to 1990 when nearly 12 million did. While that translates into 14,000 fewer children dying every day in 2011 than in 1990, it still translates into the deaths of 19,000 children under age five every day in 2011.
How long? The horror that is capitalism is here and now and can not be civilised or tamed in any meaningful way to eliminate the above.
In 2011, nearly 7 million children died before age five, as compared to 1990 when nearly 12 million did. While that translates into 14,000 fewer children dying every day in 2011 than in 1990, it still translates into the deaths of 19,000 children under age five every day in 2011.
How long? The horror that is capitalism is here and now and can not be civilised or tamed in any meaningful way to eliminate the above.
weematt commented on Can you be too leftwing?.
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Left and right are parts of the same capitalist system.Variations of themes Statist,Neo-con,Centrist or otherwise.All the left have done with their failed experiments of minimum programmes,to fool workers into supporting their elitist Jacobinistic leaderist distortions,is bloody the vision of socialism/communism as a classless,wageless,moneyless,free access society, which to get there involved the active emancipation of the working class by their own efforts.
There will be no such thing as a socialist ‘government’.Higher wages and shorter work hours are sometimes possible under capitalism. But:
‘At the same time, and quite apart from the general servitude involved in the wages system, the working class ought not to exaggerate to themselves the ultimate working of these everyday struggles. They ought not to forget that they are fighting with effects, but not with the causes of those effects; that they are retarding the downward movement, but not changing its direction; that they are applying palliatives, not curing the malady. They ought, therefore, not to be exclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerilla fights incessantly springing up from the never ceasing encroachments of capital or changes of the market. They ought to understand that, with all the miseries it imposes upon them, the present system simultaneously engenders the material conditions and the social forms necessary for an economical reconstruction of society. Instead of the conservative motto: “A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work!” they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword: “Abolition of the wages system!” ‘ (Karl Marx, Value, Price and Profit, 1865. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-profit/ch03.htm#c14
The socialist transformation of society will see government become the democratic administration of ‘things’ proceeding from the operating tenet of,”From each according to their ability,to each according to their needs”.
There will be no such thing as a socialist ‘government’.Higher wages and shorter work hours are sometimes possible under capitalism. But:
‘At the same time, and quite apart from the general servitude involved in the wages system, the working class ought not to exaggerate to themselves the ultimate working of these everyday struggles. They ought not to forget that they are fighting with effects, but not with the causes of those effects; that they are retarding the downward movement, but not changing its direction; that they are applying palliatives, not curing the malady. They ought, therefore, not to be exclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerilla fights incessantly springing up from the never ceasing encroachments of capital or changes of the market. They ought to understand that, with all the miseries it imposes upon them, the present system simultaneously engenders the material conditions and the social forms necessary for an economical reconstruction of society. Instead of the conservative motto: “A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work!” they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword: “Abolition of the wages system!” ‘ (Karl Marx, Value, Price and Profit, 1865. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-profit/ch03.htm#c14
The socialist transformation of society will see government become the democratic administration of ‘things’ proceeding from the operating tenet of,”From each according to their ability,to each according to their needs”.
We have no need for a political class,humane,murderous,thoughtful or otherwise blurring this vision.
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Polly and Gaurdianistas need to raise their sights above their relatively cocooned existence which they personally experience,tinkering about on the margins for some modicum of personal improvement for themselves or others in order to assess, if they are a part of the problem.
Simply put capitalism can not be reformed in any lasting way and needs to be replaced.Support of left style capitalism,Labour,Green,Lib-Dem or nicer Toryism, exacerbates an already indefensible system in which the vast majority are waged-slaves and a tiny minority are parasites upon their labour. Capital doesn’t create jobs,security or food ,clothing, shelter to satisfy human needs.Capital doesn’t create anything.It is human labour applied to nature from which all wealth proceeds and it is to workers that all wealth should be not rationed or doled or waged,but ‘freely’ available to take according to self determined needs.
Doing away with the priveleged capitalist class ownership of the means of production and distribution capitalism removes this parasitism.It also frees up a whole tranche of presently useful occupations which only serve rationed access to the market in the dominant interests of Capital,to which all else is subsiervant, but which would be useless in a Free access democratic socialist society,such as banks,governments,advisers,marketeers of all stripes,till operators,police ,judges,lawyers,insurance.
Simply put capitalism can not be reformed in any lasting way and needs to be replaced.Support of left style capitalism,Labour,Green,Lib-Dem or nicer Toryism, exacerbates an already indefensible system in which the vast majority are waged-slaves and a tiny minority are parasites upon their labour. Capital doesn’t create jobs,security or food ,clothing, shelter to satisfy human needs.Capital doesn’t create anything.It is human labour applied to nature from which all wealth proceeds and it is to workers that all wealth should be not rationed or doled or waged,but ‘freely’ available to take according to self determined needs.
Doing away with the priveleged capitalist class ownership of the means of production and distribution capitalism removes this parasitism.It also frees up a whole tranche of presently useful occupations which only serve rationed access to the market in the dominant interests of Capital,to which all else is subsiervant, but which would be useless in a Free access democratic socialist society,such as banks,governments,advisers,marketeers of all stripes,till operators,police ,judges,lawyers,insurance.
About 19,000 children under the age of five – 13 each minute – die every day, mainly from preventable causes.
In 2011, nearly 7 million children died before age five, as compared to 1990 when nearly 12 million did. While that translates into 14,000 fewer children dying every day in 2011 than in 1990, it still translates into the deaths of 19,000 children under age five every day in 2011.How long? How long?
In 2011, nearly 7 million children died before age five, as compared to 1990 when nearly 12 million did. While that translates into 14,000 fewer children dying every day in 2011 than in 1990, it still translates into the deaths of 19,000 children under age five every day in 2011.How long? How long?
Abolish the wages system.
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There is nothing new in any of this.History is forever repeating itself without us learning much from it. The halo of capitalism has been smashed by the recession. The halo of our industrial system is gone. It is no longer a sacred thing, which must not be meddled with because of fear of the consequences. For years the working-class has been silent, a sleeping giant lulled to sleep by its own victories and the ability of capitalism to expand and provide a gradually rising standard of living. The working-class has had to struggle to realise these gains, but this struggle has been contained within the limits and rules established by the system.
The World is rich in natural resources. It is capable of satisfying the needs of all its people. Capitalism is a system based on exploitation. A handful of parasites live off the backs of the workers and could not care less about their situation. There can never be class peace between exploiter and exploited, between boss and worker.The working class cannot eliminate exploitation and poverty unless it overthrows the capitalist system.
The World is rich in natural resources. It is capable of satisfying the needs of all its people. Capitalism is a system based on exploitation. A handful of parasites live off the backs of the workers and could not care less about their situation. There can never be class peace between exploiter and exploited, between boss and worker.The working class cannot eliminate exploitation and poverty unless it overthrows the capitalist system.
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Full employment is a mirage.When we get close to it,in boom times, we drive up wages where we can as part of the class struggle,There is no right to work in capitalism and anyway, they need a reserve army of labour to terrify the rest of us who get out of line.We really need to consider employment as waged slavery where we can only get back a ration of the wealth we produce while the owners of the means of wealth production siphon off our unpaid labour power.The answer is to make common cause globally with our fellow workers and get rid of wage-slavery,abolishing the wages and prices system.
As socialism/communism has never existed anywhere,state capitalism at best in the former soviet countries and under Labour and Tory governments here,a mixed version of state capitalism,we have to understand what real socialism/communism is.
A free access democratic system of production for use without wages,prices,government,nation states etc. where we collectively own and control the planets resources without a ruling class of bureacrats, managers or capitalists.
The organising tenet of this new society would be ,”From each according to their ability,to each according to their needs”.This has damn all to do with nationalising or any of the panaceas of the past.
As socialism/communism has never existed anywhere,state capitalism at best in the former soviet countries and under Labour and Tory governments here,a mixed version of state capitalism,we have to understand what real socialism/communism is.
A free access democratic system of production for use without wages,prices,government,nation states etc. where we collectively own and control the planets resources without a ruling class of bureacrats, managers or capitalists.
The organising tenet of this new society would be ,”From each according to their ability,to each according to their needs”.This has damn all to do with nationalising or any of the panaceas of the past.
This revolutionary alternative to capitalism requires you to take control of your political life and consciously aspire to it .It can’t be given to you on a plate by a political party.You can find out more on the World Socialist Movement site.As Marx said to trade unionists.”Inscribe upon your banners the abolition of the wages system”
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20 per cent of the population still stuck in poverty.
Mr Horton, the Fabian Society’s research director, told The Independent: “We could be at a tipping point that sends Britain back towards Victorian levels of inequality and social segregation, and makes the solidarity which could challenge that social segregation ever more difficult to recover.” He added: “Inequality in Britain today, on some measures, is at its highest since the early 1960s…”
The value of unemployment benefit has been falling relative to average earnings.
Needless to say the report recommends reforms and palliatives to redress the situation . The report says the original goals of Sir William Beveridge, architect of the welfare state, must be rediscovered.
Welfare cuts that are meant to get the jobless back to work are driving down the living standards of hundreds of thousands of people who are in no position to find a job.There never was a golden age of the welfare state. The history of income maintenance in Britain has been the history of coercion, discipline and surveillance.Now new layers of social control has been added.The ‘welfare state’ is in difficulty across the industrialised world. Despite this, welfare systems will not be dismantled completely — their main aim, after all, is to provide some support for workers who are ill or unemployed so that they might return to the labour market at a later date. They also help mitigate against social unrest. The Government has tried to sell its welfare reforms on the back of mistruths and nasty stereotypes. However, this research exposes what a devastating impact its policies are having on communities throughout the country. Ministers are not cracking down on cheats as they claim, but destroying the safety net that our welfare state is meant to provide for those who fall on hard times through no fault of their own.
weematt commented on Tom Daley praised as role model after revealing he is in same-sex relationship.
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I wish I had known about sexual fluidity when I was a teen.I shagged both sexes at 15 untill mid 20′s.This was especially so when I was pissed on Guinness and dark rum.If I had been sporty and abstained from the booze like most of these clean cut sorts today I would probably been a confused celibate.It was a puzzle for me later when people started to define and label into straight/gay categories.
I don’t think it is anybodies business,including me, what the lad is.He always seemed a nice lad which is what I go on and I don’t give a toss for celebrities love life.I don’t usually look at ,or comment on these matters.
I don’t think it is anybodies business,including me, what the lad is.He always seemed a nice lad which is what I go on and I don’t give a toss for celebrities love life.I don’t usually look at ,or comment on these matters.
weematt commented on Shame on the greed of my beloved Celtic FC.
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Abolish the wages and prices system.There is no such thing as a fair days pay.Wages are only ever a rationing of access to the massive wealth collectively produced.Wage workers are exploited at the point of production for the surplus value which they produce in order for the parasite capitalist class to amass huge profits.Businesses such as Celtic footbal club are no different in this respect regardless of the founding ethos.However workers on this thread should be expressing solidarity with their fellow/sister workers here and not nitpicking over rivalries. Of course the sectarian divisions in Scotland and elsewhere have workers at each others throats rather than pursuing their common interest,which is getting rid of the parasitic capitalist system and establishing a free access,moneyless,government less, social system.Such are the modern versions of bread and circuses. Abolish the wages system and establish common ownership of all wealth production and distribution rendering board rooms obsolete.I am an atheist but here is an interesting quote “When sport is considered only in economic terms and consequently for victory at every cost, it risks reducing athletes to mere trading material from whom profits are extracted” Pope Francis
The State is the governance and control of the vast majority by a dominant minority class in its interests.Working people have no country.It is in the interests of the vast majority to do away with this ownership and control of the earth’s resources by this parasitic minority,whether control is exercised through national, regional, or global coercive, i.e. governing apparatus. The fact that this government is by assent through the chimera of the elective process,into which the rich buy priveleged input ,doesn’t remove the domination of the vast majority and their compulsion into conditions of wage slavery in order to profit the capitalist class.We have more in common with workers in England ,Poland,Bangla Desh etc.than we will ever have with the parasite class who wish to exploit us.Instead of opting for government over us for a pittance of a wage or salary,opt for the whole world to be owned in common and controlled democratically without governments,nation states or politicians.It is your world to be won,make common cause with your fellow worker, don’t slavishly settle for anything less.
http://www.worldsocialism.org/index.php
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It would be nice if struggles for national independance could magically result in a classless society, but that’s, unfortunately, not the way societies progress. Scottish’ capitalism is not only tied to the British capitalism but also to international capitalism. Any kind of Scottish state that didn’t offer benefits to corporations would see capital flight and a serious drop in its economy — the Scottish socialist economy is a myth. Nationalism just replaces one set of bosses with another, and also helps to divide the working class. As if an “independent” Scotland would be any less affected by the world slump or being sacked by a Scottish boss be more agreeable. Will a social revolution come about through consitutional moves towards independence? No! All moves towards independence have entrenched the power of the Scottish elite. The SNP have been bank-rolled by millionaires like Tom Farmer and Brian Soutar.
National independence is a chimera. Scottish independence is a distraction from building working class solidarity against capitalism. Nationalism is, at best, a dead-end and, at worst, reactionary. The socialist objective is to liberate humanity, not liberate nations.
The Top 20 Landowners in Scotland:
The Top 20 Landowners in Scotland:
www.highlandclearances.co.uk/clearances/postclearances_whoownsscotland.htm
http://socialist-courier.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/lets-forget-differences-and-talk-of.html
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The answer is make common cause with workers world-wide and abolish the wages-system and prices in a free access Socialist society.No need for a capitalists,or their policing governments,as the capitalists produce nothing and only bring exploitation to the table.Workers produce all wealth and are rationed in their access to it by wages. They build the houses produce food,clothing,shelter,anything you care to name.The Great Money Trick chapter in the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists,describes the robbery. Check http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/what-socialism
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/what-capitalism
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Capitalism is a system of organised scarcity..Governments of all stripes attempt to manage this ,but the fact is the system manages them.We can’t have the ‘fairer capitalism ‘ of socia reformers .It is an anarchic market system which will waste human resources as soon as it is necessary for shoring up profits.Production is always choked off before human needs can be satisfied.Indeed the satisfaction of human needs isn’t the purpose of capitalism.
Profit is.Capitalism can’t be reformed.
You can end it to make a classless society where politicians and governments are made redundant and establish democratic control from all of the people .Only with a world of common ownership and democratic control of all wealth,food ,clothing, housing, fuel and all resources,based around the organising tenet of,”from each according to their abilities,to each according to their needs can humankind become truly human.
Profit is.Capitalism can’t be reformed.
You can end it to make a classless society where politicians and governments are made redundant and establish democratic control from all of the people .Only with a world of common ownership and democratic control of all wealth,food ,clothing, housing, fuel and all resources,based around the organising tenet of,”from each according to their abilities,to each according to their needs can humankind become truly human.
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It is all damn silly and I wonder why they believe themselves.Not just Milliband but Michael Kumhof , Romain Rancière and Meade.It is almost like a religious belief in the face of the astounding facts that capitalism can never be reformed in any meaningful way.We all must seize hold of our personal responsibility to work for its demise and replacement with a world of free access ,wage-less priceless socialism,without competition,governments or nation states eye-balling each other up over control of resources on land under sea and elsewhere in space.
Only with a world of common ownership and democratic control of all wealth,food ,clothing, housing, fuel and all resources,based around the organising tenet of,”from each according to their abilities,to each according to their needs can humankind become truly human.
The fact that extant society is not one of conscious motivation, directed towards social ends, but of profit motivation, places grave restrictions on its productive powers and hence consuming powers. As Marx points out,
“… It is not a fact that too much wealth is produced. But it is true that there is a periodical over-production of wealth in its capitalistic and self-contradictory form. . . . The capitalist mode of production for this reason meets with barriers at a certain scale of production which would be inadequate under different conditions. It comes to a standstill at a point determined by the production and realisation of profit, not by the satisfaction of social needs.” Vol 3 (p. 303).
This is why Marx indicted capitalism as a system of organised scarcity..Only you can end it and establish a classless society with politicians redundant along with their mentors.
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Communism as ever been tried.You are confusing the Leninist experiment of state capitalism.It was and is impossible to build communism on top of a feudal economy.Lenin himself admitted “state capitalism would be a step forward for us”. If you equate the Bolsheviks with the Jacobins of the French revolution then you are closer to what really happened.
Communism/socialism is the common ownership of the means and instruments for creating and distributing wealth.It requires an advanced technological base and can be run without nation states ,governments,markets or buying and selling of any kind.It is essentially a free access global economy with political power in the hands of all the people,locally regionally and globally. It would mean the end of social classes and either governing or technocratic elites.Where we may delegate responsibility the delegates will be subject to instant recall.You can see much more of what real socialism/communism is on the World Socialist Movement site at worldsocialism.org.
Communism/socialism is the common ownership of the means and instruments for creating and distributing wealth.It requires an advanced technological base and can be run without nation states ,governments,markets or buying and selling of any kind.It is essentially a free access global economy with political power in the hands of all the people,locally regionally and globally. It would mean the end of social classes and either governing or technocratic elites.Where we may delegate responsibility the delegates will be subject to instant recall.You can see much more of what real socialism/communism is on the World Socialist Movement site at worldsocialism.org.
Capitalism cannot meet the needs of the majority of us, the workers (or proletariat) of the world, no matter how progressive it might become in the future.
To meet these needs capitalism must be replaced by a free access system of production for use without the ration of wages and prices mechanisms. IOW democratic real socialism as originally espoused which will require no government or nation states and an organising tenet of ‘From each according totheir ability to each according to their needs’.
Abolish wages system and prices and establish commopn ownership.
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It is estimated that about 170 million people have been murdered by their own governments in the past century.” A hundred years of political reformism, thousands of “peace” conferences and this is what capitalism produces.
Justice is whore at the service of the powerful.There are no ‘good guys’ in any of the capitalist governments.The economic and political system which gives rise to governments, local,regional and global needs to be replaced by one where all wealth is owned in common and control is exercised by the whole population of this global system with access to its wealth (all the necessities of life already produced by the worlds working class) is freely determined according to self-assessed needs.
Justice is whore at the service of the powerful.There are no ‘good guys’ in any of the capitalist governments.The economic and political system which gives rise to governments, local,regional and global needs to be replaced by one where all wealth is owned in common and control is exercised by the whole population of this global system with access to its wealth (all the necessities of life already produced by the worlds working class) is freely determined according to self-assessed needs.
