Moore's musings

From the Socialism Or Your Money Back blog
We might not agree with Michael Moore upon everything in his new movie "Capitalism: A Love story" but in this interview there are points in which we do share . One of those is that the capitalist class rule by virtue of the consent of the many.

" Capitalism is not only an economic system that legalizes greed, it also has at its foundation a political system of capitalism that is, 'We have to buy the political system because we don't have enough votes. We're only 1% of the votes. We have to buy the people, and we have to buy the people by convincing them if they work hard, they too can be rich one day.' "

"I think they

[The wealthiest Americans] exposed themselves to a lot of middle class people who did believe in their system and they showed everybody the Ponzi scheme that it is. It's set up like a pyramid, so that the richest 1% at the top have more financial wealth than the 95% beneath them.
But the trick here is to get the 95% believing that if they work hard and slave away, they would get to the top of the pyramid. Of course, as we know, only a few people can stand on top of a pyramid. The fact that this crash exposed our economic system as a corrupt scam was something I didn't intend on happening while I was making the movie."
"Where's the cure for cancer? Where's the bullet train to take us from New York to L.A. in 10 hours? Where are the alternative energy systems to save us when we run out of oil? I wish these were the priorities. But when Wall Street sucks up our best mathematicians, physicists, engineers, when they should be working on these other things and instead they're working to create derivatives ... c'mon. We're in deep, deep trouble. We need the best minds working on these things."
In the movie , Moore ends with this conclusion: "Capitalism is an evil and you can't regulate evil. You have to replace it with something that is good for everyone."
He is not quite there yet on understanding what that "something" is but hopefully , he is getting there and also hopefully so are many others .

Alan Johnstone

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain 112

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 112th of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 1527 friends!

Recent blogs:

Unholy Wars

The Rise and Fall of the NHS

Parecon or socialism?

Quote for the week:

"All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind." Aristotle, (384 BC-322 BC).

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain

Socialist Meeting in Manchester: Capitalism in Crisis (2009)

A Socialist Party Day School
Organised by Manchester Branch
Saturday 12 September, 1pm - 5pm

Capitalism and the Crisis: the Latest Recession
Speaker: Adam Buick

Cassandras, Jeremiahs and Chicken-Lickens: Why it’s dangerous to hope for the worst.
Speaker: Paddy Shannon

Friends’ Meeting House
Mount Street
City Centre (next to Central Library and Manchester Town Hall)

*The first person to spot the deliberate typo in the poster gains free admission to the day school.

Cutbacks

From the Capitalism's Gravediggers website

Everyone, it seems, recognizes the need for cutbacks in both the private and government sectors during the current economic downturn. Some argue for increased government spending to stimulate the economy. Many argue about which government programmes should be cut. Few argue against all cuts.

Recession is one of capitalism's self-regulatory processes. Few enjoy them, but as everyone knows, that is just the way it is.

There are still enough workers — skilled, unskilled, white collar, blue collar — to do all the work needed to continue every government programme, and to make every product and staff every service, just as before the recession. The raw resources still exist.

The need for the programmes, products, and services has not disappeared.

But people are losing their jobs and their homes.

Capitalism cannot be concerned about people's jobs and homes. Capitalism does not have a conscience. Capitalism does not have malevolent intent. Capitalism is not a conspiracy and it is not sick. Capitalism is an economic system with its own rules and regulations. They are inherent in capitalism, just as gravity is inherent in mass. Capitalism's rules cannot be changed.

Capitalism's Gravediggers wants people to understand that capitalism is working as it must. No tinkering, no ‘revolutionary’ or evolutionary changes can make capitalism something else, or change its rules.

But people can free themselves from capitalism's rules by replacing capitalism with socialism.

Socialism will be no more and no less moral than capitalism. Socialism will have inherent rules which govern how it must function. But socialism's rules will not be capitalism's rules.

Instead of rules which demand production be dependent upon the expectation of profit, socialism will demand that if people's needs can be met, they will be met.

Instead of rules which generate unemployment and its attendant hardship when workers produce more than can be sold at a profit, the leisure long promised by technology will be delivered.

Instead of rules which force people from their homes, or into unsatisfactory housing, everyone will have a home.

Instead of rules which govern society based upon arcane money economics, socialism will be based upon our ability to provide for each other’s needs. That ability has existed for a long time, but capitalism cannot turn our ability into sufficient goods and services of the kind and quality required to satisfy our needs.

We can accept the hardships of recession, or we can build socialism.

Steve Szalai

Bloodgate: Capitalism corrupts rugby

From the SPGB blog, Socialism Or Your Money Back

A scandal like the recent one at Harlequins RFC, where a player elaborately faked an injury according to a plan drawn up by the manager so that a key drop kicker could come on to try to score the points needed to win, was bound to happen sooner or later after the game went “professional”.

When the game was amateur – still in living memory – this sort of thing would never have happened. But now rugby clubs are profit-seeking businesses and players are not just paid but paid bonuses if they win.

My father was the secretary of the Newbridge Rugby Football Club which at the time – the 50s and 60s – was one of the top 16 rugby clubs in South Wales. He was in fact the “Hon. Secretary”, that is the unpaid secretary – which is already a significant fact in that none of the club’s officials were paid; all were volunteers elected by the club’s members at the annual general meeting and carrying out their duties in their spare time. This was the same in the other clubs too. Not any more. Rugby clubs are now profit-seeking businesses run by professional executives.

The players weren’t paid either – OK, occasionally they might find money in their boots as “expenses”. As in all the other clubs in what were then mining valleys, they worked or lived locally. In other words, they were playing for enjoyment and for recognition from the community in which they lived. Not any more. Rugby players today are like paid gladiators, recruited from all over the world with no connection with the area where the business which employs them is situated.

There were no league tables, so every match was what in football is called a “friendly”. In other words, all that was at stake was the outcome of the particular match. Teams played to win of course, but if they lost that was that, there was no other consequence. The top 16 clubs didn’t play just against each other, but also against other, smaller clubs from their local area. Even the most prestigious among the 16 such as Cardiff, Newport and Swansea were prepared to do this.

In short, the game – which was the team sport followed by most workers in South Wales – was free from monetary or commercial considerations. It hadn’t yet been “commodified”. Then the rot set in. It began (at least in my opinion) with the introduction of league tables. This can be argued against since there is nothing inherently commercial about league tables (we could conceive of them existing in socialism and they are also part of the amateur game), but they still meant that, from then on, matches were no longer “friendlies”, and I still say that a friendly is played in a quite different spirit from a league match. Basically, leagues matches are more competitive. Which was why in fact they were introduced.

In any event, the real rot set in when the game became professional. This resulted from international rugby having become a spectator sport. In other words, it had already become a potential commodity from which those with money could make a profit. From then on it’s been downhill all the way, with the Harlequins scandal as the inevitable result. There’ll be more to come, as has long been the case in professional soccer and cricket.

Capitalism is the opposite of Midas. Everything Midas touched turned to gold. Everything capitalism touches turns to crap.

Adam Buick

Harry Potter and the Unchanging Church (2009)

From the September 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Amongst the crazier news items to captivate the hacks of what used to be Fleet Street surely the one about the Pope and Harry Potter must takes a bit of beating. In a world of widespread poverty and hunger, global pollution and the threat of a nuclear conflict, The Times saw the necessity of devoting a spread to this non-event.

"Once condemned by the Pope for undermining the soul of Christianity, Harry Potter has been forgiven. In 2003, two years before he was elected Pope Benedict XV1, Joseph Ratzinger, then a Cardinal and head of Vatican doctrine, said J.K. Rowling's stories of the boy wizard threatened to corrupt an understanding of Christian faith among the impressionable young. ... Now however the Pope seems to have fallen under the Potter spell. The latest in the film series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, is on general release in Britain today, and has won surprising praise from the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano" (London Times, 15 July).

The basis of the Times's surprise seems to be the changing of the unchanging church, but the history of the Roman Catholic religion is one of change to accord with the changes in the non-spititual world. Indeed the church's backflips have been many and the Times article even listed a few of them.

Until the Second Vatican Council, in 1962-65, Catholic Mass was celebrated only in Latin. In 2003 the Church withdrew a threat to excommunicate the parents of a Nicaraguan girl aged 9 who had an abortion after being raped. 26,000 signed a petition against the move. In 2007 they abolished Limbo, a sort of halfway point between Heaven and Hell. All these recent changes are in addition to Pope John Paul II in 1992 finally admitting that the Church was in error 359 years before when they condemned Galileo for claiming that the Earth revolved around the Sun.

In order to survive the Roman Catholic Church has had to change in line with how secular society changes. There are some unchanging tenets of their practice however – their unfaltering support of private property and their collecting dishes at church services. The Lord may provide for the gullible faithful but the clergy rely on something more tangible for their income.

Richard Donnelly

'Bloody foreigners' (2009)

Book Review from the September 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bloody Foreigners – The story of immigration to Britain. By Robert Winder. Abacus

“In 1859 Friedrich Engels poked a man in the eye with an umbrella and soon heard from the man's lawyers. 'Needless to say', he wrote, 'these blasted English don't want to deprive themselves of the pleasure of getting their hands on a bloody foreigner.'”

This book is an account of the 'tangled roots' of history that make up the mongrel ‘British nation’, pointing out that from the amalgamation of Jutes, Saxons, Romans, Danes etc. up to the present time one would be hard-pressed to find a true (pure) Englishman. Immigration, and conversely emigration, has been an intricate part of its development. In the 12th century came French Jews to London, Lincoln, York and Norwich; in the Elizabethan age Italian musicians, German businessmen and the first African slaves; then Protestants from the Low Countries seeking religious tolerance; Huguenot refugees from France 'en masse' in the 17th century; likewise Greek Christians fleeing from the Turks. In 1768, courtesy of the slave trade, there were 20,000 black Londoners out of a total population of 600,000 and in 1840 400,000 Irish escaping the potato famine came to Manchester, London, Liverpool and Glasgow. By the end of the 19th century 40,000 Italians and 50,000 Germans had settled here plus 150,000 Jewish evacuees from Tsarist pogroms in Russia. At the time of their arrival most of these groups suffered hostility of varying degrees but as the generations rolled by they were gradually accepted.

Some of the well-known immigrants and their institutions include Rothschilds, Reuters, Marks and Spencer, Trust House Forte, Tesco, Joseph Conrad, Harold Pinter, Doris Lessing, Simon Schama and Linford Christie.

Kings were imported from Germany and Holland, queens from France and Spain and fighting forces from the wide world were drafted to fight in World Wars 1 and 2 and then post-WW2 large numbers of workers were actively recruited from the colonies.

As a result of intricate research Winder exposes the manipulations, lies and exaggerations of media accounts of more recent waves of immigration and asylum seekers, e.g. in the Thatcher era, with immigrants making up 4 percent of the population, she gave her vision of what made Britain 'Great' – 9 percent felt there were too many immigrants before she expounded compared with 21 percent who admitted to being worried afterwards. Other examples reveal the actual state of monetary and housing benefits to immigrants which are wildly different from the stories abounding in the media.

Poor bloody foreigners – they're just used as a convenient group, easy to label and point the finger at. Instead of falling for the divide and rule tactics which weaken us all, workers should recognise who their real enemy is and work together to defeat the system that enslaves us all.

Janet Surman

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain 111

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 111th of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 1522 friends!

Recent blogs:

Then and Now - The Penny Drops

The call of the patriot

The crisis: an open letter to trade unionists

Quote for the week:

..It doesn't matter if you're black or white, the only color that really matters is green...MacFarlane, Zuckerman, Calaghan, Family Guy, (1999+).

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain

Material World: March of the far right (2009)

The Material World Column from the September 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

In many parts of Europe far-right populist, as well as fascist and neo-Nazi political parties, have increased their support in local, national and European elections recently (though not everywhere, not in Poland for instance).

In many areas hundreds of thousands of workers have voted, not for socialism, as the economic crisis and downturn of international capitalism deepens, but for localism, nationalism and racist policies. What has happened in part of northern England, has likewise been mirrored in northeast France—the British National Party in England and the Front National in France. An extreme example of the trend was the municipal by-election in June and July in Hénin-Beaumont.

Poverty and Corruption
Hénin-Beaumont, just north of Arras and half-way between Lens and Douai in the Pas-de-Calais, is a former mining town with a population of 27,000; and in the words of Jason Burke, “one of the poorest parts of France, a wasteland of red-brick terrace homes, crumbling blocks of public housing, half-deserted industrial estates and vast fields of wheat bisected by six-lane motorways taking holiday-makers elsewhere” (Observer, 5 July).

Although a recent film, “Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis” (“Welcome amongst the Ch’tis”, the popular name for people from this part of France), about a postal worker sent there from the south of the country, which I saw (in western France), popularised the locals, it made no difference to the unemployment, now officially 20 percent, alcoholism (mostly cheap beer), drug abuse and domestic violence; and with the lowest levels of education in the country.

As in many areas of Britain, with the Labour Party, this part of France, including Hénin-Beaumont, was a long-time fiefdom of the reformist Parti Socialiste, which has become thoroughly corrupt, subject to cronyism and patronage. The PS, running the municipal council for almost 60 years, is split into a number of allegedly left and right factions; and the mayor is in jail, charged with corruption, fiddling expenses and local taxes, resulting in cuts in the municipal budget. It can’t get much worse.

Enter the Front National
For the first time in recent years the FN decided to field a candidate, for the municipal authority. The party's local candidate Steeve Briois hoped—probably expected—to become mayor, reversing a general decline since 2002. Marine Le Pen, the 40-year-old daughter of the FN leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, canvassed the area, popularising the slogan “France for the French” (shades of Gordon Brown’s “British jobs for British workers,” supported by the BNP), and claiming to be the natural inheritors of working-class politics in France. Since 1990 the FN has in fact increased its influence and support within the working class by beating the nationalist drum and playing the anti-Islam card.

Like the BNP, Marine Le Pen and her supporters, have tended to soften (but not abandon) the FN’s anti-immigration language, and tone down its racism and anti-semitism. She promotes a populist, “Strasserite”, image rather than her father’s former neo-Nazi views (see the Socialist Standard, February and March, 1993).

In the first round of the Hénin-Beaumont election the Front National polled just under 40 percent, more than double that of any other candidate. Briois assumed his mayoralty was “in the bag”. Unfortunately for him, however, the left and right formed an alliance, and collectively polled 52 percent in a 62 percent turnout, thus squeezing the FN out.

Europe
The Front National did not fare particularly well in this year’s European elections either. It won just 6.3 percent, down from 1,684,792 in 2004 to 1,091,681 this year in a low poll.

It has three seats, down from seven in the last Parliament (just one more than the BNP), occupied by Jean-Marie Le Pen, his daughter, Marine, and Bruno Gollnisch, a friend of Nick Griffin. Jean-Yves Camus, writing in the July number of International Searchlight, observes: “The result leaves the FN weaker than before, but not yet dead. It was notably ahead of the two parties of the alternative left, the New Anti-Capitalist Party and the Left Front”.

The Front National in France, like the British National Party, has nothing to offer the working class, but the same old worn-out reformist policies and slogans that have failed, time and time again. The workers of Hénin-Beaumont, France, Britain and worldwide, will have to look, and act, beyond the petty nationalisms of such parties and politicians.

Peter E. Newell

Socialist Meeting in London: Masters and Servants

Socialist Party public meeting

“The free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves”

Speaker: Danny Lambert

Sunday, September 6th

6pm

The Socialist Party Head Office,

52 Clapham High Street,

London SW4 7UN.

(nearest tubes: Clapham North and Clapham Common.)

Website: SPGB

Email: spgb@worldsocialism.org

Socialism Or Your Money Back Blog

Editorial: Capitalism and the two world wars (2009)

Editorial from the September 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

The two world wars that disgraced human history in the 20th century were essentially wars to change or preserve an existing carve-up of the world between the leading capitalist states.

In the first world war Imperial Germany attempted to upset, by force of arms, the then existing imperialist division of the world which benefited in particular Britain and France. The second world war too – which broke out seventy years ago this month – was the result of Germany and Japan throwing off unfavourable treaties, territorial divisions and trading arrangements imposed by Britain, France and the United States. From this, historical perspective, it was a continuation of the first world war.

In such wars it is the challenging powers that have to take the initiative and so appear as the "aggressors", but only those completely taken in by the propaganda of the victorious powers (and of course the winners also win the right to impose their version of history) will believe that it was just Germany that was responsible for the first and second world wars. An objective examination of the situation shows that, apart from their "business war" aspects (over markets, raw materials and investment outlets), the two world wars were wars (on the one side) to try to change the existing imperialist carve-up of the world and (on the other side) to preserve it. What was responsible for these wars was the whole world system of capitalism with its competitive struggle for profits and its collection of competing armed states. No one state, or politician, or people can be blamed for them; they were the result of the "normal" functioning of the capitalist world system.

As socialism had been historically possible since the end of the 19th century humanity could have avoided them. Neither of them justified "the shedding of a single drop of working class blood", as we declared in our anti-war manifesto in 1914, or as Harry Patch, one of the last survivors to have fought in that war, who died in July, put it, it was "not worth one death let alone all the millions".

The “War to end all wars” did no such thing. Nor did its even bloodier sequel, World War Nº 2, which resulted in the division of the world into two imperialist spheres of influence, the US sphere and the Russian sphere, with a continuous series of local wars at the boundaries between the two, which lasted until the collapse of the Russian Empire twenty years ago this autumn. This collapse was hailed "the end of history" and there was talk of a "peace dividend". Tony Blair of all people even declared shortly after becoming Prime Minister in May 1997: "Mine is the first generation able to contemplate the possibility that we may live our entire lives without going to war or sending our children to war".. Empty rhetoric from a capitalist politician who was later to send British troops to kill and be killed in Iraq and Afghanistan to protect oil supplies and prevent another challenge to the powers currently dominating the world.

There will be wars, the threat of wars and the waste of preparing for wars as long as capitalism lasts. The only end to war is the end of capitalism – the socialist revolution.

The Economic Crisis: Will Capitalism Fail?

From the Socialist Party of Canada website

Despite the recent pronouncement by the governor of The Bank of Canada that the recession is over, we are suffering through the worst crisis in capitalism since the 1930s Depression. Even he had to admit that the employment figures might not recover until 2014. So for the over seven million North Americans who have lost their jobs in this recession, the recession is definitely not over. The Toronto jobless rate was recently pegged at 9.6% and 15% for the 18-24 age group. These figures are even worse as they are shamelessly manipulated and ‘seasonally adjusted’ to reflect only a fraction of the real rate. For example, those who have given up looking for jobs, those in part-time jobs who want full time, and those who are underemployed and take temporary jobs until something better comes along, are not counted. Unfortunately, the job of the modern-day economist is to be a cheerleader for the capitalist system and put a happy face on the bleak outlook that capitalism offers. Recently, an ‘economist’ interviewed on CBC radio, explained the continued rise in unemployment as a good sign because it meant that more people must be looking for a job and that is a sign of their confidence in an improving economy! Today, however, the TSE dropped a gut-wrenching 316 points, wiping out much of the recent gain that gave rise to optimism.

Oprah reported that 10 000 American families per day were losing their homes to repossession. The houses sit empty because the stock of unsold houses is so high. Thus we have millions of families who have to live with friends or relatives, or, worse, in tent cities because they have no home, and millions of homes standing empty waiting for tenants. It’s all part of the madness of a system that can only produce for those with the money to pay for their commodities and to hell with those who can’t.

The financial meltdown triggered by the sub-prime mortgage fiasco is the greatest financial disaster since 1929. Venerated financial houses, such as Lehman Brothers, that have been solid for decades and with assets in the hundreds of billions came tumbling down or required billions in federal money to stay afloat. And, of course, the collapse of General Motors, the cadillac of corporations, is something no one would have predicted just a short time ago.

Every recession is a crisis in the capitalist mode of production. Marx wrote that capitalist production moves through certain periodic cycles. It moves through a state of quiescence, growing animation, prosperity, overtrade, crisis, and stagnation - what is referred to today as ‘the business cycle’. The manifestation of a recession is an oversupply of goods to the market that cannot be sold immediately, sending a signal to the production units to slow down or stop production and thus creating unemployment. The production units reduce orders for the means of production, raw materials and machinery, which causes more lay-offs and the unemployed reduce their purchases, creating a snowball rolling down a hill effect. But what causes the overproduction? Marxist scholars such as Rudolph Hilferding and Mikhail Tugan-Baranovsky pointed to the anarchy of capitalist production as the culprit and scientific socialists developed this idea. For steady sustained growth, capitalist production needs a state of equilibrium between the various sectors of the economy and between supply and demand. The absence of social regulation means that this is rarely achieved and only for short periods of time. Production is based on the expectation of profit and profit is highest in a boom period. Then the drive for maximum profits sees production lines ramped up and new ones created. No one wants to miss out on the bonanza and no one expects to be the one who can’t sell his commodities. Eventually, of course, all this expansion means that productive capacity goes beyond what the market can absorb and productive capital is tied up in the form of unsold goods. Profits drop and capital turns over slower or is withdrawn altogether. In addition, the reserve army (that part of the work force that is often unemployed or on welfare and kept around only to be activated in times of expanded production) disappears in a boom so that demand for labour increases, raising its price and reducing profitability and depleting the investment fund of the capitalists. This results in a lower demand for producer goods, i.e. natural resources, machines, etc. producing a crisis in that sector. Thus the anarchy of production, the loss of equilibrium between sectors, and rising wages, create the climate for recession.

Once the recession is upon us, conditions that are favourable to a recovery become apparent. Companies that declare bankruptcy sell off their assets cheaply to their rivals. Less demand for producer goods means lower prices. The reserve army and many others are laid off creating a competition for jobs and thus lowering wages. Lower demand for loans reduces interest rates like any other commodity. The large stocks built up before the advent of the recession gradually decline to a point where production is again necessary. All of these factors make investing in production more attractive and the cycle begins its upward swing. It is evident then that the seeds of every boom are to be found in every recession and, conversely, the seeds of every recession are to be found in every boom. This boom and bust cycle is an entirely natural occurrence of the capitalist mode of production. It hasn’t collapsed capitalism yet, and, in fact, recessions tend to strengthen the system by weeding out the weak and inefficient enterprises, something not apparent in the state-run capitalism of the Soviet Union, contributing to its demise. Collapse theories developed in the latter part of the nineteenth century, in part as a response to the Long Depression, 1873 to 1895. Several leading theoreticians and leaders of left organizations presented collapse scenarios. Karl Kautsky said that capitalism is incapable of prolonged survival because of the inability of markets to keep pace with production. Henry Hyndman, of the Social Democratic Federation, thought that the depression would bring an attempt to substitute collective for capitalist control, i.e. a social revolution. Engels wrote that while productive power increases in geometric ratio, markets increase in an arithmetic one. Rosa Luxembourg, Kautsky, and Bogdanov based collapse theories on the restricted purchasing power of the working class. This underconsumption theory argued that aggregate demand, i.e. workers’ consumption fund plus capitalists’ consumption fund could not buy the total product, especially when the capitalists used some of their fund for reinvestment thus reducing the total available for buying products. Luxembourg theorized that the extra product, not bought by the workers or the capitalists, was disposed of in those parts of the world not yet under the capitalist mode of production. Since the tendency of capitalism is to expand and spread, then that market would shrink until the extra product could not be sold putting capitalism into a crisis from which it could never recover. The companion parties of the World Socialist Movement argued that total aggregate demand consists of workers’ consumption plus capitalists’ consumption plus capitalists’ investments because those investments were not lost but used to buy the means of production – raw materials, machinery, buildings etc.

In addition, since the exchange value of a commodity is determined by the amount of socially necessary labour embedded in it, then a value equal to that must be shared between the workers and the capitalists, i.e. the total purchasing power is equal to the total sum of values. Even though value and price may vary (according to the supply and demand of the market) the sum total of values equals the sum total of prices. Thus the workers and the capitalists together would be able to buy all the products on the market. If underconsumption were true, then it would have stifled the growth of capitalism completely. A second collapse theory centered around the falling rate of profit due to the rising rate of the organic composition of capital. Capital invested is divided into two parts. Constant capital is that part that buys the raw materials and producer goods such as machinery and is transferred directly through the productive process to the finished product. Variable capital is used to buy labour-power that produces surplus value (that value created by the worker over and above his wage) that is embedded in the commodity and realized at its sale. That is the only source of profit. As technology and machinery develop, more of the invested capital goes into the constant part and less into buying labour-power, more into dead labour (machinery) and less into living labour. Thus the part producing surplus-value shrinks and with it the rate of profit. However, so far, the fall in the rate of profit has been very slow and often not apparent at all. Marx noted that this falling rate is only a tendency, not a law, and is offset by many other factors such as shift work, increased use of the machinery, ( increases the rate of exploitation), cheapening of the elements of constant capital (cheap goods that don’t last long), higher productivity, including higher intensity of work, and the increased rate of the turnover of capital. Thus, it is unlikely that the rise in the organic composition of capital will bring about collapse of the system. The real evidence is that capitalism has continued and continues to expand despite regular crises and doesn’t look like collapsing any time soon. Whether other factors such as the end of an oil-based economy or global warming will have a major effect on the health of capitalism remains to be seen What we can say for sure is that :

(1) A recession is a normal consequence of capitalism.
(2) A recession can invigorate capitalism.
(3) Capitalism is not likely to collapse of its own accord any time soon.
(4) If collapse theories were true, all socialists would need to do is sit back and do nothing.
(5) If capitalism did collapse, it wouldn’t necessarily mean that socialism would follow.
(6) Socialism is the task of the working class and can only come about by the actions of a conscious majority understanding and wanting socialism.
(7) Thus we must assume capitalism will continue and work towards its demise.
(8) Collapse theories therefore undermine the real work of socialists, just as do time and energy spent on reforms and alternative systems within capitalism such as cooperatives, fair trade, and communes.

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain 110

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 110th of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 1521 friends!

Recent blogs:

The power behind the shame

Capital, science fiction and labour

Fat Cats: creaming off profits

Quote for the week:

"Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks. The time during which the labourer works, is the time during which the capitalist consumes the labour-power he has purchased of him." Marx, Capital, Volume I, Chapter 10, (1867).

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain

Socialist Meeting in London: Marx, Myth and Money

The Socialist Party

Presents

Marx, Myth and Money

Speaker: Pat Deutz

Saturday, August 29th

7pm

The Socialist Party Head Office,

52 Clapham High Street,

London SW4 7UN.

(nearest tubes: Clapham North and Clapham Common.)

Website: SPGB

Email: spgb@worldsocialism.org

Socialism Or Your Money Back Blog

Did Trotsky Point the Way to Socialism? (2009)

Two part video of a debate between Adam Buick of The Socialist Party and Hillel Ticktin, editor of the Critique Journal, from January of this year.

The debate took place in Hillhead Public Library in Glasgow on the question of 'Did Trotsky Point the Way to Socialism? Ticktin was arguing in the affirmative with Buick taking the opposing view:

Part 1

Part 2