Letter: "Three clarifications" (2004)

Letter to the Editors from the December 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Three clarifications"

Dear Editors,

The August issue stated in the article ‘Why socialism is still relevant’ that: “Our party was formed to oppose the Labour party.” This raises three clarifications. Firstly, as the writer makes clear earlier in the article,”‘in short, the cause of our Party’s formation, capitalism, continues”, thus, reiterating the point that socialists are opposed to capitalism full stop. Secondly, whereas our opposition to the individual political parties of capitalism is merely incidental to the cause for our formation in 1904 we can only voice this opposition once they are actually formed, or in the process of being formed. Historically, the Labour Party was formed in 1906, two years after the SPGB – though even before its formation socialists were opposed to its reformist predecessor, the Labour Representative Committee. Thirdly, we are opposed to all other political parties regardless of whatever name they happen to go under and not just the Labour Party For they all stink of dishonesty, opportunism and quick-fix solutions and are so steeped in corruption they can only be obliterated by the conscious decision and concerted activity of a majority of the working class.

Brian Johnson, 

Pontypridd.

Letter: Importance of understanding (1977)

Letter to the Editors from the September 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Importance of understanding

I can only presume that the correspondents G. Walford and Ian Campbell (July Socialist Standard) have failed to hear the saying “better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know”. The human mind always fears something it may not understand fully, hence the fear of the religious supernatural, and the state capitalism of the so-called Communist countries. Due to the false propaganda spread under the banner of Socialism the working class are naturally enough in a confused state of mind.

A Socialist society is an unknown quantity to some extent. In that a Socialist understands what it will mean to mankind, but he cannot predict the future—how will it work and function? The working class can only be convinced of its possibility by gaining Socialist understanding. For example, by explaining what a change in the mode of production would mean to society, whether it is accepted by the individual or not, this by its very nature leads to further questions on the subject of Socialism. Therefore one less barrier breaks down. The SPGB have constantly propagated the case for Socialist understanding, knowing that ignorance only breeds further ignorance.

Both correspondents should ask themselves: have they acquired a Socialist understanding? If so, have they rejected or refused it, or do they fear what they understand?

Brian Johnson

Pontypridd

SPGB Meetings (2007)

Party News from the November 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Harder times for the unemployed (1996)

From the October 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is nothing governments can do to solve the capitalist problem of unemployment. Indeed, there is little talk these days about 'solving' it, the emphasis is simply on what to do with the 'culprits'

From October Unemployment Benefit—the Dole—will be known as the “Job Seekers Allowance”. Along with this will come targeting agreements, directives, responsibilities, job plans, prescribed programmes, reviews and flexibility. Buried under the tarnished gloss of this jargon lie compulsion, regimentation, sanctions and hardship for those who challenge the myth of exploitation by an employer as a “choice”. It means that the Tory government have finally recognised that the exercise of continually massaging the jobless figures is a worn-out facade and that the use of coercion is the only alternative in an effort to reduce the cost of maintaining the jobless white at the same time this will provide an opportunity for employers to take full advantage of short-term orders and low stocks for which cheap casual labour is ideally suited.

Austerity measures

The JSA should be viewed in the context of a long list of austerity measures affecting Social Security payments over many years. With the cost of Social Security a burden on the capitalist class all changes have been implemented with a view to reducing this financial bill. But paradoxically government intentions have not been matched by the reality. For despite the efforts to deter claimants by increasing the complexity and size of the benefit forms, along with tougher criteria on claimants' entitlement, the working class under the pressure of circumstances have in increasing numbers applied resourcefulness to find loopholes in the DSS minefield. Hence, the total bill for running the DSS has escalated to £93 billion. Whilst actual payments have decreased in relative value the total number of claimants has actually increased—along with fraud and the take-up rate for different benefits. Yet fortunately for the capitalists the take-up rate still falls far short of that estimated, resulting in a surplus of £3.2 billion returned to the Treasury in 1995/96, the difference between expected claimants and actual payments.

The government hope that the full enforcement of the sanctions contained within the JSA will make substantial savings and reductions in the unemployment register. Firstly by deterring registration, and secondly by placing the onus of finding a job on the individual claimant irrespective of the state of the labour market. By ignoring the fact that labour market demand is virtually stagnant and that the unemployed reserve are on hold until more production becomes profitable, it is a short step to asserting that the non-existent jobs are really there and that it only needs the unemployed to become “Jobseekers” to winkle them out or even to create them.

Workers who disagree with their Job Agreement (which is in fact a contractual obligation backed up by penalty reductions in benefit if not carried out) and its clauses of Job Plan, Jobseekers Directives, Review Procedure, regular attendance at Job Centres for “active signing” and are unable to prove they are “actively seeking work”, can expect a withdrawal of benefit for 1 to 26 weeks, or at least be faced with the misery of applying for hardship payments for their dependants only.

When these measures are combined with the changes that have already taken place in limiting Unemployment Benefit, Housing Benefit and Mortgage Interest payments and the action taken to align accommodation with the circumstances of unemployment through a notional “Relevant Rent” —take your choice, bedsit or doorway—they amount to increasing oppression and frustration for the unemployed.

Job Centre chaos

It is not only the claimants who are going to suffer the consequences of implementing the sanctions contained in the JSA. On the other side of the counters are another group of workers who have to deal with the short fuses generated by capitalism in a panic. On them falls the burden of being the paid enforcers when it comes to applying the sanctions. To help them in their endeavours they will be computer-linked with other Job Centres nation-wide and with the local labour Market System so they can ensure claimants are targeted and doing the rounds and that the Job Centres are also expected to reach the target demanded by Peter Lilley of 25 percent efficiency savings over the next three years. On top of this they will have received training in counselling skills to persuade claimants that the various options (which they have no choice on), contained within their Job Plan—retraining, employment placement; voluntary-work; signing up with employment agencies etc. are all in the claimants’ short-term interests, provided that is that they are happy to ignore the low wages, part-time and casual one-hour contracts and adverse working conditions which are not even acceptable to the low standards of the Health and Safety Executive. In order to protect Job Centre staff from the expected fallout from the outraged claimants who have sussed they have been classified as forced labour, the staff will be enclosed in booths protected by hardened shatterproof Perspex with security guards patrolling the floor.

Such a volatile situation with workers blaming each other instead of the system of wage slavery can only be expected from capitalism. Indeed as long as capitalism lasts the workers’ relative misery', destitution and deprivation will continue to fluctuate with the sway of boom and crisis.

This continuing uncertainty will find no relief by supporting the Labour Party. They have made it quite clear they agree with Peter Lilley that some form of sanctions are necessary for the unemployed. Their total agreement with letting the market set its own level of compulsion is sufficient testimony to the fact that they will end up doing much the same as the Tory ratbags are now applying. In any event it is not which party is in government but the compulsion built-in to the wages system that is detrimental to human relationships and the obstacle to our social well-being.

Gravedigger

Globalisation – what does it mean? (2006)

From the September 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

The second part of our article analysing capitalist globalisation. Last month we looked at how this affected capital. This month we examine its impact on the world’s population at large

The continuing surge in globalisation has had profound human and social effects on vast numbers of people, the fundamental nature of these effects depending on their class position in society, i.e. whether they are capitalists or workers. On the one hand the opportunities for the capitalist class to accumulate wealth has increased multilaterally with, for example, politicians and civil servants in the poorer states quite happy to find the funding for trade fairs, economic surveys, development studies, and visits by heads of state in an effort to increase the profits of that class from the global market.

On the other hand this global frenzy is resulting in upheaval for whole communities, while the transition from rural to urban living is in turn altering human geography radically with rural areas either becoming human deserts or concentrated industrial sprawl. Likewise most global housing areas resemble one another to such an extent that even the shantytowns are becoming uniform in the type of building materials used.

When these social transformations are combined with factors like the increasing mobility of labour – mobility from the peasantry to the modernity of wage slavery – they come with well known costs for the disempowered majority: misery, destitution, family breakdown and homelessness. The most visible aspects of this are to be seen with thousands of families living on the streets of Calcutta, or those families forced to scrape an existence by living on a waste tip in San Paulo, or perhaps a PhD from Addis Ababa University driving a cab in New York city, let alone those staffing a call centre in New Delhi alongside a wall full of useless diplomas.

Such potential human resources being wasted to further the interests of profit maximisation cannot but have an impact on rising social expectations and aspirations. These then come into conflict with people’s sense of achievement. Consequently, we are witnessing a sharp rise in the incidence of mental health problems. And the resulting increase in cases of anxiety, depression, insomnia, mood swings and stress, are to be evidenced in the packed waiting areas of the mental health clinics, along with the expanding appointments for the services of psychotherapists. Add this to the overcrowded waiting lists for the physically sick in the developed and developing countries and many global health services there are in crisis management mode.

Inequality

Whilst this human tragedy unfolds our political masters are still chanting the mantra that some of the wealth created will eventually ‘trickle down’ to those 2.8 billion people living on less than $2 a day and also to those 1.3 billion living in even more extreme poverty. Unable to solve the problem of absolute and relative poverty, the global politicians have now agreed in their misguided wisdom to try and tackle the problems and issues of extreme poverty only. By this they mean those 1.3 billion people who have to their cost found that the system of wage slavery holds no guarantees of the provision of a living wage, and subsequently finding it impossible to exist on less than a dollar a day. And where the material difference between relative, absolute and, and if you so wish extreme poverty, is so profoundly stark that it creates a sense of inevitability and disempowerment, it is invariably accompanied by disillusionment. This is especially so in cultural terms, with millions being forced from the rural poverty of subsistence living into becoming a landless peasant within an urban environment dominated by the tyranny of wages and surrounded by the advertising of mass consumerism.

The WHO, UN, World Bank, and Jubilee 2000 have reported many of the indicators of global inequality in recent years, and summarised they are:

• One-fifth of the world’s population is living in extreme poverty.
• 100 million children live or work on the street.
• Half the world’s population are lacking access to the most essential medicines.
• The combined wealth of the world’s 200 richest people reached $1 trillion in 1999; the combined income of 582 million living in the 43 least developed countries is $146b.
• 70 per cent of the world’s poor and two thirds of the worlds illiterate are women.
• An estimated 827.5m people are undernourished. Of which 647m, or over one third (37 percent) consist of the world’s children.
• More than 30,000 children die each day from easily preventable diseases.
• The top fifth own 86 per cent of the world’s wealth, while the lowest fifth own just one per cent.
• The wealth of the world’s three wealthiest billionaires is more than that of the GNP of all the least developing countries and their 600 million people.
• When Argentina defaulted on its debts, 300,000 people were forced to live off the garbage dumps surrounding the city of Buenos Aires.
• The number of people living in extreme poverty has actually risen by 28m.

Yet it is not only developing and undeveloped countries who are experiencing issues of inequality; even in the major developed countries, like the US, income inequality is now on the increase with one report claiming: 

“The gap between rich and poor in America is the widest in 70 years, according to a new study published by the Center for the Budget and Policy Priorities The research, based on newly released figures from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, shows that the top 1 percent of Americans – who earn an average of $862,000 each after tax (or $1.3m before tax) – receive more money than the 110m Americans in the bottom 40 percent of the income distribution, whose income averages $21,350 each year. The income going to the richest 1 percent has gone threefold in real terms in the past twenty years, while the income of the poorest 40 percent went up by a more modest 11 percent” (BBC News Online, 25 September, 2003 : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3138232.stm ).

Much the same picture is painted in the UK with the figures from the National Statistics Office and Inland Revenue for 2002/3 showing that the richest 5 percent owned 43 percent of the wealth, while the poorest 50 percent owned just 6 percent; similarly the top 2.4m households owned assets worth around £1,300b, while the bottom 12m owned assets of around £150m. Also according to a Policy Institute report last year, 22 percent of the UK population are still living below the poverty line, including 3.8m children (or 30 percent of all children), 2.2m pensioners, and 6.6m working age adults.

In effect a total of 12.6m people in the UK population are confronted with higher mortality; lower education outcomes; less decent homes; and financial exclusion, due to surviving on, or below 60 percent of median income after housing costs.

On a much more local scale the Child Poverty Action Group revealed in their publication ‘Poverty – the Facts (5th edition)’ that over 80 percent of the children living in the Townhill district of Swansea were defined as poor; benefits make up a larger proportion of total income in Wales than in England or Scotland, with a higher proportion of children living in households claiming income support – 18.9 percent – compared to the UK-wide figure of 13.5 percent; and 32 percent of pensioners in Inner London were affected by income poverty, and children in London are even worse off than those in Wales with 24 percent of households in receipt of income support, or other means tested benefits.

Socialist Outlook

These are just some of the facts and figures that are considered normal to the modern workings of capitalism. They help to serve the purpose of illustrating that the globalisation of capitalism has masked a growing polarisation both within and between countries and that local circumstances are merely a reflection of the global situation where ‘trickle-down’ economics has in reality turned into a flood of inequality, destitution and instability. This confirms what Marxists have consistently stated that the prosperity for the few is dependant on the deprivation of the many. Indeed, despite the huge amounts of abundant wealth created by workers within capitalism, the system is incapable of accounting for the fact that the cases of millions of people dying through malnourishment, or because they lack clean water, adequate shelter, and health care is on the increase. This alone serves as a damning confirmation that there hasn’t been any fundamental shift in the ownership of wealth. It also reaffirms our position that this state of affairs is likely to continue, besides endorsing the contention that the capitalist class will use either system of trading – protectionism or free trade – when it suits their purpose to accumulate wealth.

Failure to grasp the revolutionary challenge this analysis poses has led to the formation of the anti-globalisation protest movement which campaigns on the issues of extreme poverty, world debt and the adoption of protectionist measures for those developing and undeveloped countries who have found that the reality of ‘free trade’ only applies primarily to the G8 nations. Whilst there is no denying that such campaigns have made tremendous strides in highlighting the effects of globalisation, when it comes to outlining proposals for viable alternatives to capitalism, their mindset is locked onto the belief that a ‘fairer’ global society is possible within the framework of capitalism.

Their main tactic is to bring mass protest to bear on politicians and on institutions like the G8, WTO, IMF and World Bank, despite the fact that such a mindset of working towards a ‘fairer’ global society has a long history of failure, based as it is on the false assumption that capitalism can be made to work in the interest of all – rich and poor alike.

Although the effects of globalisation with the human suffering it brings can lead to bleak and negative conclusions about the future, it is also possible to draw different conclusions, ones that are far more positive and meaningful. For what comes out of this rather gloomy picture is the certainty that capitalism has outlived its usefulness as a progressive mode of production. For it reached its early retirement at the turn of the 20th Century – once it had established itself as a global system consisting of integrated and interdependent productive units. As soon as it reached this point it had fulfilled its purpose and turned into a global monster of uncontrollable destructiveness.

With capitalism failing to deliver for the majority it has become more obvious that now is the time to move on to a system of common ownership that is capable of meeting the self-defined needs of the great majority and not just the interests of a wealthy minority. In order to attain such a system of free access an essential prerequisite is for a majority of the global working class to reach an understanding that their sense of social achievement can only be fulfilled by becoming conscious in class terms that capitalism can never be made to operate in their interests. Once they have reached this revolutionary conclusion – and only then – will capitalism lose its basis of support and be replaced by socialism.

Brian Johnson

Globalisation – what does it mean? (2006)

From the August 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

We begin a two-part article on the continuing surge in capitalist globalisation. This month we deal with the globalisation of capital.

Following the downfall of state capitalism in Eastern Europe the idea of one global market soon found common cause in neo-conservative and neo-liberal circles. Indeed, for these ideologists of capitalism the world market  only became truly global once the former state capitalist regimes threw open their doors to private finance and capital investment from the G7 nations. Obviously, for such thinking to take hold it had to ignore a multitude of historical facts concerning the economic development of capitalism and its eventual transformation into a world system.

In 1865, for example the first global regulatory agency was formed with the creation of the International Telegraph Union, along with the first global medical resource, which we know as the Red Cross. Also, if globalisation only took place when the G7 nations became G8 (with Russia joining) then the new ‘thinkers’ need to explain how two wars commonly referred to as world wars were fought over who was to dominate access to global raw materials and a market that was already global. Another historical fact that is largely ignored is that despite supposed ideological differences the trade between the state capitalist regimes and the rest of the world increased throughout the Cold War.

This is how the economist Keynes confirmed – rather belatedly – in the aftermath of World War One, the process of globalisation that had gone on until then: 

“What an extraordinary episode in the economic progress of man that age which came to end in August 1914! . . .  The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, in such quantity as he might see fit, and reasonably expect their early delivery upon his doorstep; he could at the same moment and by the same means adventure his wealth in the natural sources and new enterprises of any quarter of the world, and share, without exertion or even trouble, in their prospective fruits and advantages; or he could decide to couple the security of his fortunes with the good faith of the townspeople of any substantial municipality in any continent that fancy or information might recommend.” (The Economic Consequences of the Peace, 1919)

Coming from Keynes it would be rather naive to expect him to describe the wave of globalisation that had taken place around the turn of the twentieth century in terms other than pro-capitalist ones. For unlike Marx, who saw the main instrument for social change originating with the class conscious workers, Keynes was convinced throughout his life that the capitalist class held the centre stage, albeit with the need of some interventionist help from the state.

Marx had also predicted the potential for capitalism to become a global system, with its attendant economic, political and social consequences, when he and Engels drew up the Communist Manifesto in 1848. And he confirmed, far earlier than anyone else, the trend for capitalism to evolve towards economic interdependency and globalisation when Das Capital was published in 1867.

Spoils of war

The arguments over the benefits of ‘protectionism’ versus free trade that existed during the nineteenth century, and then in the periods just before and then after the First World War, were never entirely resolved within the capitalist class one way or another. Fierce arguments raged with various policy initiatives and reversals, though for most of the dominant states of the time (such as Britain) what passed for ‘free trade’ gained something of an ascendancy by stealth.

But in terms of the globalisation of the system, the most crucial event took place rather later, towards the end of another war caused by competition over economic power and military interests — World War Two. Significantly, in the summer of 1944 at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire the gangster representatives of 44 countries held a meeting to hammer out a deal on global trade and sharing the spoils of (the latest) war. This included the creation of the World Bank and the IMF and the initial setting up of a General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT),with the latter coming into force in 1948.

Although these new institutions eased the existing rules on tariffs and the movement of currency, by seeking common ground on exports and imports and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), they had no powers to control new forms of protectionism that had been instigated by the major powers in order to maintain their market share and economic dominance. And this was reflected in what happened shortly after the Second World War ended, when the US introduced the Marshall Plan in 1949 involving $13.5 billion of loans by the US government to near-bankrupt European economies. All told $90 billion was steered towards 16 countries that agreed to move towards currency convertibility, lowered trade tariffs, who promoted exports to the US and who were ‘tough on communism’. This not only meant that the US export market was protected in Western Europe but was also, in retrospect the first economic warning shots in the start of the Cold War.

Cold War Economics

The Cold War itself proved to be a nice little earner for those countries in the “developing” world who allied themselves to either East or West, with most of the proceeds ending up in arms deals or directly into the pockets of corrupt politicians and bureaucrats. Not that this bothered the developed countries, for during this period of Cold War economics many developing and undeveloped countries found themselves accepting loan agreements whether they wanted them or not – and with very favourable terms of borrowing at very low rates of interest, plus longterm payback dates. They seemed at the time to have little to lose by becoming debtor nations. As for the creditor nations, both East and West, their aim during the cold war was to increase their hegemony and market share by making the client debtor nations militarily and financially dependent on them as creditor states and to gain the upper hand over their competitors.

The loans themselves came from a variety of sources: manufacturing and financial businesses, banks, donor states, the IMF and the World Bank being the main lenders. Much of this money was lent under a ‘no risk’ guarantee covered by Export Credit Agreements (ECA), where individual donor states with their export agencies would underwrite the loans through aid contracts — specifying that the capital investment could only be spent through named companies established in the donor state.

For instance, the Nigerian government could have decided to build a university, and could approach a donor state like the UK to finance the project, both seeking agreement as to the profitability of the aid. The UK government would then stipulate that the university could to be built by a UK developer and equipped by British manufacturers and key posts staffed with British-trained personnel. Should the Nigerian government default on their repayments of the loan what would usually happen is that the UK would agree to pay off the loan under ECA if the Nigerian government issued a bond tied to a percentage of Nigerian oil exports in order to cover the amount owed. This would ensure the capital invested stayed in circulation via petrodollars, despite the losses incurred. Obviously, deals like this could only continue whilst there was sufficient confidence in the strength of the US-driven Western economies.

Crisis of Over-Accumulation

During the early 1970s this changed dramatically when loss of confidence over escalating costs of the Vietnam War became evident with many countries selling off their dollar reserves in favour of gold. Unable to withstand this pressure the US came off the Gold Standard in 1971 and allowed the fixed exchange rate system that was pegged to the dollar to collapse. The price of gold increased and there followed a period of financial instability which, in essence, reflected the return of economic crisis in the sphere of production, with economic downturns in major western economies and growing unemployment. It was at this time that the main oil-producing cartel dominated by capitalists in the Middle East (OPEC) decided to quadruple their oil prices. These events eventually flooded the North American and European financial markets with vast amounts of accumulated petrodollars searching for profitable investment that was difficult to find in the more ‘traditional markets’ of the post-war period. Due to the European Economic Community (EEC) at the time being insufficiently organised or integrated to attract the massive amounts of capital in the OPEC countries, some of it filtered towards the Pacific Rim, commonly referred to as the ‘Asian Tigers’.

With the exception of the Multi-fibre Agreement drawn up by GATT, much of this investment for Asia hit a variety of protectionist barriers on the export of capital. Although GATT tried to get around monetary restrictions with the introduction of the SWIFT system for electronic interbank fund transfers worldwide and other measures, the pressure for change in currency regulations intensified throughout the 1980s as capitalism’s trade cycle returned with a vengeance with plummeting production and soaring unemployment.

Out of this emerged what came to be called the ‘Washington Consensus’ instigated by the neo-liberals within the US Treasury, IMF and World Bank who advocated a programme to free up capital assets by: privatising state owned monopolies; reducing personal and business taxation; deregulating financial institutions; removing restrictions on FDI; and reducing public spending, particularly on welfare benefits. Urged on by the collapse of the state capitalist regimes who could not compete economically or militarily any longer with the dominant Western economies, the pressure continued to intensify for deregulation of currency movement and the abandonment of GATT, and its replacement by the World Trade Organisation. This eventually took place in 1995 and under it trade and the movement of currency and capital assets has had a much more straightforward path to profitable markets.

Deregulation of currency movement and the removal of restrictions on FDI, however, proved to be just too late for the developing countries on the Pacific Rim. By 1997 these countries had found their credit was severely overextended, delivering a lower rate of profit than predicted by the pundits and speculators of the financial institutions. The unintended consequence of the crisis in South East Asia was the acceleration of the movement of currency into other areas still — like China and India — where there were better prospects of profits.

This is the nature of capitalism for the accumulation of capital is dependent on economic growth, regardless of the risk attached, and is essential to the workings of a system that puts competition and the pursuit of profit, at each link in the chain — from production to distribution and eventual sale to the consumer — above all else.

Risks

With the velocity facilitated by the internet, clearly the overall economic trend is towards short-term profits through FDI, currency speculation and by squeezing market share of competitors, particularly in manufacturing and services. But that does not mean that the developed countries are solely concentrating their investments in the developing countries — far from it. The greater volume of trade and investment is still between the G8 countries themselves who, forced by global market conditions, have taken into account the relative economic, political and social stability of the developed world, compared to what they would sometimes gain from relatively precarious investment in any of the developing, or even undeveloped countries.

Generally, what is most noticeable about this economic activity is that all the developing countries targeted by the World Bank, IMF and the WTO were selected because they have access to sufficient energy and water supplies to sustain a short-term industrialisation programme, rather than sustained long-term growth. For example, China is scouring the world for all the uranium ore available and every drop of oil necessary to accomplish its aim of overtaking Japan and becoming the main industrial nation in South East Asia and second to the US globally. And China is currently finding it very difficult to meet the increased demand for electricity and for bottled and industrial water, and consequently using 47 percent of the world’s cement to complete the damming of the Yangzi, and meet their targets on urbanisation and industrial capacity. In effect the Chinese have soon come to realise that without sufficient energy and water their plans for long-term growth are unachievable. Although this economic targeting over energy and water resources is undoubtedly a high-risk strategy, and has all the potential for military conflicts over essential resources, it is one explanation why the emphasis is on short-term profit and speculation.

What is also apparent is that the freeing up of the movement on capital has not entirely been accompanied by a corresponding deregulation in the movement of labour. Indeed, the restrictions on immigration have been tightened in some cases, and strictly enforced by some countries to hold back the flood of economic, and mostly illegal, immigrants chasing the movement of capital in the developed and developing countries. These phenomena have led to the growth in human trafficking — and the casualties are being found suffocated in the back of lorries at Dover harbour, or drowned on a beach in Morecambe Bay or even crushed by a train in the Eurotunnel.

There are also other risks associated with the pursuit of industrial growth in the developing world, the most obvious one being the spread of AIDS, particularly in Africa where it has been helped along by a tenfold increase in the transportation of commodities. And then there’s the risk that the increase in global pollution and the onset of global warming will put severe pressure on the relocation of coastal communities.

A less immediately obvious risk is of an increase in capitalist industrial growth in some countries facilitating and encouraging the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction and their eventual use in competitive power struggles between states. These and other risk factors can only accelerate as the demands for more energy and water increase in line with industrial growth.

The reasons why these patterns of risky economic activity are so pronounced are many and varied, but all are nonetheless based on capitalism’s inherent competitive drive to maximise profits regardless of the consequences. The actual growth in economic development in parts of the developing world attracting investment has been on a tremendous scale with developing countries like Brazil, China and India sucking in vast amounts of capital to increase their infrastructure and manufacturing base. In particular the annual percentage increase in GDP for China (9.8) and India (8.1) illustrates how these economies are being dramatically reshaped in the interests of capitalism.

Brian Johnson

Next month: the impact that the continuing surge in globalisation is having on people in the developing and undeveloped countries.

Goodbye to the Welfare State . . . as we know it (1998)

From the March 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

As members of the working class living on state benefits are well aware, it is quite impossible to put a little by for a rainy day, for every day is forecast as a downpour, and trying to keep your head out of the deluge is a constant problem. And for those who are wholly dependent on benefits as their only source of income, their whole lifestyle is dictated by their resourcefulness in eking out their pittance from one day to the next. Yet the Labour government is planning to make things worse.

One of the major problems for the Labour government is the ongoing increase in the benefits bill—which this year is approaching £100 billion—accounting for the largest slice of government expenditure. The changes in the NHS and education system, brought about by the Tory administration, were plainly underfunded and have resulted in Labour putting Tory Plan B into effect by instigating a deliberate purge in social security payments to enable them to fund the NHS and education changes set in motion by the previous government. In order to meet these financial targets Blair needs to make savings of around £8 billion on the social security budget.

Scraping the barrel

Alongside this Labour are also faced with the problem of attracting skilled workers back into the workforce should the economy show signs of improving. Why put workers through costly training programmes when there are ample skilled workers already available, albeit suffering ill-health or disability to varying degrees? Far better to meet the demands for a low paid, short-term casual and part-time workforce by scraping the barrel and getting the skilled disabled—specifically those who are suffering less than 65 percent disability—back into the labour market. With 2.8 million people of working age claiming benefits due to ill-health or disability, Harriet Harman, the Secretary of State for Social Security, intends to ensure their amount of benefits does not act a disincentive to them returning to employment.

This explains the emphasis Tony Blair places on “offering the opportunity” to those who are sick and disabled to provide for themselves with “appropriate support”. But such explanations also provide the means for the Blair government to distance itself from the present obligation of “provision of universal benefits for life” to a scenario of capping universal entitlement to incapacity and disability benefits to one, or two years, so that after that period means tested benefits come into operation.

The present Social Security Review is the third since the Beveridge proposals for a two-tier National insurance/national assistance social security system were implemented in 1948, with each review making major changes in “the application of universal entitlement” by a mixture of increased bureaucracy and deterrence through lack of appropriate information, or any help from qualified staff at point of access to enable benefit claimants to actually receive their full entitlement. This is a major reason why one million pensioners fail to apply for the full range of various benefits that are available.

The whole purpose of the two previous reviews was to make substantial cuts in the social security budget. So we should not expect this one to be any different. But another lesson of history, which Labour have failed to learn (and as the present cost of social security amply illustrates), is that the previous reviews proved to be damp squibs when confronted by workers more resolute in keeping their heads above water than meddling politicians or inept bureaucrats.

Blair is bowing to the need to impose austerity measures in response to the global crisis of capitalism and the Maastricht criteria in order to ensure British capitalists are well-placed if and when the upturn in the global economy occurs and for possible entry into the single European currency. Such measures also offer the opportunity of projecting the image of a “reforming government” when plainly they are no such thing, but merely a reorganising (and cutting-back) on past reforms.

It is also hoped to curtail fraud and abuse by developing an integrated computer system for the Employment Service, the DSS, local authorities and the Inland Revenue. Initially this reorganisation will put increased pressure on DSS staff and hinder them in achieving their cost and efficiency targets set at 25 percent savings, and also undoubtedly lead to inevitable delays in claimants’ payments whilst claims are being processed. As for claimants, with delayed payment notorious for the creation of a “crisis period” any further adverse moves will only exacerbate the problems of those caught up in the poverty trap.

Various leaks have suggested which benefits could come under the hammer. For instance, Child Benefit is likely to be limited to under 16-year-olds and also capped for those who earn over £20,000-£30,000 a year. Likewise Statutory Sick Pay and Statutory Maternity Pay face the possibility of being capped at the level of £20,000 yearly earnings—resulting in 8.8 percent of claimants of SMP who are currently over that bracket having their disposable income accordingly reduced. Incapacity Benefit could be limited to one or two years, after which those claimants found to be only 65 percent disabled will be encouraged back into the work force by linking them to the means-tested Disability Working Allowance, or something similar. Should this “opportunity” to return to wage slavery found to be wanting no doubt more compelling measures will be used in conjunction with the Job Seekers Allowance. For those in receipt of Severe Disablement Allowance and Industrial Injuries Benefit there is the possibility of both these benefits being amalgamated under a new disability heading and either taxed accordingly, or made an overlapping benefit against other disability benefits.

Since the introduction of policies such as Care in the Community, and with the creation of unitary authorities, many Social Services departments are being hard pressed to meet many of their statutory obligations within their present budgets. This state of affairs has resulted in them considering charging for some of the services they dispense to the mentally and physically disabled. This raises the possibility of claimants currently receiving either the care component for Disability Living Allowance, or if aged over 65, Attendance Allowance, finding they will have to forfeit these particular benefits for receiving local authority care or support. It is also highly likely that both these benefits will, be capped for those earning over £20,000 a year, or taxed as income—and therefore in a roundabout way means-tested—or even for that matter directly means-tested.

The introduction of disablement benefits undoubtedly enabled many recipients to partake in activities which previously had been denied them, especially those who experienced difficulties with mobility. The prospect of this continuing looks bleak for those claiming the mobility component of Disability Living Allowance for it is highly possible that on reaching the age of 65 they can look forward to a life sentence of being housebound with the mobility component being cut from that age.

If such measures are actually put into practice the limited autonomy the disabled presently enjoy will face even further erosion, leading no doubt to an explosion of discontent from the numerous charities and agencies involved with disablement issues, and also from those who were instrumental in obtaining reforms of this nature—in recognition that the needs of the disabled outweigh those of the able-bodied. But with Blair clearly stating that “the welfare state had been left behind by social and economic change”, it is pretty obvious their pleas are going to be met with cynical platitudes from the politicians.

Deterring take-up

Whatever austerity measures are actually imposed on those benefits which presently come under the criteria of “universal entitlement”, the general trend will be towards linking them with some form of means-testing in order to deter the recent high growth in the take-up rate for benefits—especially from the sick and disabled. The high take-up rate for disability benefits in particular proved to be a stumbling block for the Tories, who sought to curb it by installing a stricter medical criteria, and by introducing the Benefit Integrity project which randomly selects 12 percent of claimants for review (this alone is expected to cover 500,000 disability claims) and resulted in 10 percent of those reviewed having their payments cut. Yet despite these and other measures workers have managed to counter them by adopting the realistic attitude of “getting what they can from the system”, and responding in kind with 345,859 new claims for DLA and a further 55,605 new claims for Industrial Injuries Benefit since April.

With a full-blown means test unlikely to become the norm for claiming benefits—for the extra cost of administration would be self-defeating—and with Blair making a point of emphasising that the means-tested safety nets of Income Support, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit also face scrutiny, it can be expected that cuts will be implemented on these already meagre handouts. For instance, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit could be made applicable to only one person per household—irrespective of whether other members of the household claim Income Support. Alternatively, claimants could be made to pay 20 percent of their rent before Housing Benefit comes into operation. If such measures are adopted it will inevitably mean that means-tested claimants will feel the pinch by being expected to pay a portion of their benefit towards rent.

Socialists argue that all reformist activity is subject to the changing nature of capitalism. To fight the same old welfare reform battles over several decades is demoralising enough, but when previous reforms are put into reverse the case against the system which puts profits before needs is stronger than ever.

Even before Labour won the May election, the Child Poverty Action Group in their Rights Guide to non-means-tested benefits, made a point of forecasting that “Is it naïve of us to hope that our successors(s) as authors of this Guide will have a comprehensive range of non-means-tested benefits to describe here in six years time?” (March 1997.) Frankly with Blair and his ilk locked into the profit system, the Socialist Party can confidently assure the CPAG that their guide for 2003 will be a decidedly slimmer version.

G. Digger

Election results (2021)

Party News from the June 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party stood 4 candidates in last month’s regional and local elections. In Wales we contested Cardiff Central constituency in the elections to the Welsh Assembly (now called The Senedd), the same we had in the 2019 General Election, with ten others standing for capitalism in one form or another. Some 43,000 election manifestos were delivered free by Royal Mail to households there. In Kent we stood two candidates for the County Council, as we had done four years ago, and one in a by-election for Folkestone town council. As there is no free postal distribution for local elections, some 20,000 were distributed commercially and by members of Kent and Sussex branch.

The results are:

Cardiff Central: Labour 13,100; LibDems 5,460; Conservative 3,788, Plaid Cymru 3,470; Green 1,552; Abolish Welsh Assembly 440; Propel 268; Freedom Alliance 156; Reform UK 151; Socialist 82; Gwlad 65.

Folkestone East: Labour 1324; Conservative 1132; Foundation Party 561; LibDems 361; Socialist 89.

Folkestone West: Conservative 2105; Labour 1782; LibDems 541; Independent 264; Reform UK 127; Socialist 55.

Folkestone Town Council Central Ward: Conservative 1119; Labour 916; LibDem 255; Independent 218; Socialist 61; Independent 44.

Election Communications (2021)

Party News from the April 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

  In the elections on 6 May the Socialist Party is contesting the Cardiff Central seat in the Welsh Assembly and two wards in Folkestone in the Kent County Council elections. Some 43,000 election manifestos will be distributed in Cardiff by Royal Mail while in Kent about 26,500 electors will be offered the choice of voting Socialist.

Welsh Parliament Cardiff Central 6 May 2021

‘Great Resets’

The pandemic has led to much thrilling talk about Great Resets and rethinking the future. Wales’s 6th election since devolution is taking place on 6 May. Do you think that’s going to cause a Great Reset or even much change at all?

You know very well it won’t.

And why not?

Because most of the candidates don’t want change. Instead they will be wittering on about how they propose to fix the faulty system we live under – capitalism – so it’s maybe a tiny bit better for you and yours. But every politician says this. In every party. In every election. And they never really fix anything.

The reason they can’t fix capitalism’s problems is because capitalism IS the problem.

If you want to vote for these hopeless ‘fixers’ on 6 May, go right ahead. If you expect change, don’t hold your breath.

But one of the candidates isn’t saying any of this. Brian Johnson of the Socialist Party of Great Britain says you can’t fix capitalism, because it only works for the tiny minority who possess most of the wealth. And if you can’t fix it, you certainly shouldn’t vote for it.

Especially as there’s an alternative.

Capitalism has revolutionised our science and technology so that we can now produce a global sufficiency of the basics of life. That means we could abolish buying and selling, take the world back from the rich, and run it collectively as a communally owned resource.

It’s not ‘human nature’ that’s causing poverty, inequality, wars and global warming. It’s the fact that we have a 21st-century planet being trashed by an obsolete 19th-century economic system that gives all the power to the tiny minority.

Universal free access would be simpler, cheaper, faster, smarter, a genuine Great Reset.

Vote for Brian Johnson if you like the idea of real change.

Alternatively, there’s always your trusty ‘fixers’.

Further information and offers of help: botterillr@gmail.com Phone: 02920-615826.

 

Folkestone Council Elections 6 May 2021

We can do better than this!

The residents of Folkestone know all too well the powerlessness of life under capitalism. The system that demands that nothing is made, built or planted unless someone, somewhere can profit from it.

The construction of monstrous blocks of ‘high end’ apartments along Marine Parade – with the harbour next – have nothing to do with solving Folkestone’s housing crisis, and everything to do with raking in huge profits for developers. Developers are not paid to care about the homeless, those living in sub-standard accommodation or the young struggling to afford rocketing private rents at a time of rising unemployment and economic crisis.

But it’s easy to blame developers. They are as much at the mercy of the profit system as the rest of us – although their wealth cushions them from its worst effects. Doubtless they would much rather build beautiful homes that fit the scale of Folkestone and meet the needs of local people. But that’s not why houses are built under capitalism.

Now imagine a society where all of us, not just in Folkestone but across the world, actually own the resources of the world. Where we decide together what we build based on people’s needs, not just the demands of the profit system. Then what could Marine Parade, the harbour and Princes Parade look like?

In this election only the Socialist Party stands for the total abolition of the profit system and its replacement by a global society based on the common ownership and democratic control of all the resources of our amazing planet.

It’s time to consign capitalism to the dustbin of history.

Further information and offers of help: Email: spgb.ksrb@worldsocialism.org Mobile: 07971 71556

Brown Reorganises Poverty (2005)

From the March 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard 

They don’t give out more money, they just give out the same money in different directions. And the more they change the systems, the less the system changes.

The Labour government is in the process of introducing new measures through the inclusion in the social security system of tax credits which more than likely will not only deter workers from claiming their full entitlement to benefits, but not claim any at all.

Gordon Brown and his team in the Treasury are trying their hardest to put over the image that these new measures are a direct assault on child poverty when in fact all they are doing is keeping the annual budget for social security stable around the figure of £100 billion, knowing full well that once it starts going over this amount his future career in politics will be on the line. So despite the fact that politicians go through the pretence of improving certain features of social security, it is nothing else than shadow boxing around the issue of child poverty. For there’s no intention, so far as this government (or any other whatever its political hue) is concerned, of doling out any new money.

By the time the full package of the current social security overhaul is completed a new means of administering and calculating entitlement to social security benefits will be in place, where the emphasis will be on the introduction of further means-tested benefits rather than on non-means-tested benefits.  Means-tested benefits, besides being far more costly to administer than non-means-tested ones, are subject to bureaucratic hold-ups where the claimant suffers the consequences of waiting anything from 6 to 13 weeks for their claim to be processed, leading to a crisis period when you’re unsure if your claim will be successful or not.

 

Ever since its introduction in 1948 the social security system and in particular its means-tested benefits has been notoriously associated with compulsion, complexity and confusion and it’s likely that the outcome of these changes will mean more of the same.  Indeed, for many claimants the benefits system is in total and permanent disarray where the possibility of obtaining a ‘fair shake’ in an effort to maximize their full entitlement to benefits depends on their individual skills in negotiating a legal minefield with sanity intact.

 

So it is no surprise that the bureaucratic nightmare associated with social security claims has resulted in a significant increase in the percentage of workers finding it is not worth the hassle.  For example, in Rhondda Cynon Taf alone, it is estimated by the census that there are some 6,000 individuals who despite being entitled to some kind of social security do not claim any whatsoever.  Nationally, there are also estimates of approximately 800,000 pensioners who fail to claim their full entitlement to a various array of benefits.  These are just some of the many reasons why £6.2 billion was returned to the Treasury in 2002-3 in unclaimed benefits. But these figures also suggest that, when considered as a whole, the barriers of compulsion, complexity and confusion are inherent to the social security system. As such they are proving to be effective bureaucratic deterrents for claimants, thus keeping the burden on the capitalist class of meeting the cost of maintenance and reproduction of the non-working section of the working class below what they have estimated. These estimates are in any event is based on a growing domestic economy and, when this is no longer the case, historically social security is hit the first and hardest.

The introduction of tax credits also includes major changes in the administration and payment of social security, and especially who is legally responsible for any mistakes that are made by either the claimants or bureaucrats. Whilst both benefits and tax credits are part and parcel of the social security system, currently the Department of Works and Pensions (DWP) are responsible for the paper chase and payment of benefits, and only responsible for the administration of tax credits, whilst the Inland Revenue is solely responsible for the payment of tax credits.  Eventually, it is planned that the DWP will deal only with the administration of benefits and tax credits and the Inland Revenue with the payments of all social security and tax credits. Obviously, during this transition period there is a considerable amount of bureaucratic and legal overlap between the DWP and the Inland Revenue, resulting in further increases in the miscalculation of benefits.

Under the previous Department of Social Security, any overpayments were the responsibility of the local office to correct and if the overpayment was through a miscalculation – made by them – it effectively meant that under the law, as it then stood; the claimant was not compelled to make a repayment. Although this obvious loophole must have cost millions in lost revenue, it most certainly left many a claimant with a knowing smile every giro day. For under the previous law the claimant could not be punished or held responsible for someone else’s mistake.   The change in the law now means that the claimant is held responsible for notifying the DWP of the miscalculation even when it’s the department’s mistake.  But even when the miscalculation is corrected, the problems for the claimants – especially those on Working Tax Credit (WTC) – don’t end there for the overpayments in tax credits can go on being paid until the end of the tax year.  This means in effect that WTC claimants in particular can face a comparative mountain of debt, whether they are responsible for it or not.

But the problems for the 6 million claimants of WTC still don’t stop there. On its introduction Gordon Brown hailed it as a radical step forward in providing a stepping-stone out of the dependency and poverty trap by granting those on low wages a top-up, dependent on their circumstances. What he didn’t say was that when the claimant actually took that step to increase their financial prospects in the labour market they enter a new tax bracket, which is then calculated over the whole year and also puts them outside the scope of WTC. Which meant for the former WTC claimant who followed Brown’s advice, the Inland Revenue could in effect penalize them to the tune of £2000 to £3000 in backdated overpayments of WTC, thus wiping out any corresponding increases in wages.

For the WTC claimant it means, if they don’t want to be faced with a hefty demand from the Inland Revenue, to fine-tune any changes in the job market so that their income corresponds to the yearly tax demand. Presently, approximately 2 million claimants, or around 33 percent of the total claimants for WTC, are facing the prospect of paying these repayments within the next twelve months. If they fail to meet this deadline, which undoubtedly many of them will, they face being saddled with a further bill for the interest on the amount still owing – which is usually over the basic rate of interest charged by the banks. Gordon Brown, the CEO of Financial Operations GB plc, with a client base of 2 million, has probably created the biggest loan-shark business in Europe, feeding off the poverty of those workers who are trying their hardest to improve their means of living.

Brian Johnson

Party News: South Wales and West of England Tour (1985)

Party News from the April 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

With a few exceptions, I don't usually post details of old SPGB meetings on the blog, but I thought this set of meetings was interesting because the SPGB had obviously made the effort to organize meetings in parts of world where they didn't usually hold meetings. Llantrisant, Glynneath and Llanelli were untested territory for the SPGB.

A mini write up of this propaganda tour appeared in the June 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard.

Manifestos: The Socialist Alternative (2019)

Party News from the December 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

CARDIFF

What is this election about?

The wide view

Our world contains massive resources – raw materials, systems of manufacture, communications technology, sophisticated transport. Enough to give everyone a comfortable and fulfilling life.

It’s also beset by perennial problems – wars, never-ending poverty, economic and other kinds of insecurity. The profit motive of society means that life is becoming more and more commercialised and people are increasingly isolated from one another with drug abuse and mental illness on the increase. Capitalism – and governments – are proving incapable of dealing with climate change and other threats to the environment. The standard of living may have risen for some but the quality of life deteriorates.

Why don’t we change our world so that we can have the benefit of the resources without the problems?

How can we do that?

   We can do that by holding the world’s resources in common and using them directly to serve everyone’s needs instead of just producing ad nauseam to create ever greater profits for a tiny minority. This is genuine socialism – a moneyless society of free access to goods and services. Forget about the other uses of the word.

So, we vote you in and you create this wonderful world for us. How can we trust you to do that?

   You can’t and neither can we. The new society we’re putting forward can only be created when a majority of people like you actively decide to do it. You can use us, the Socialist Party, as an instrument of the democratic revolution we are advocating, but you yourselves must be in control of what happens.

But isn’t this all fantasy politics? People are too selfish to put everything at risk for the sake of pie in the sky?

  Stick to the case you know best – yourself. Are you too selfish to realise that your on interests (as well as those of the people around you) can be advanced by making an alliance with others and pursuing joint interests? Are you sufficiently open-minded to consider alternatives to our present social arrangements? If you want to prove you can do this, one way is to take advantage of the free subscription to our journal, the Socialist Standard, offered on this leaflet.

Hasn’t socialism been tried and shown not to work?

   No. Small political minorities have tried concentrating resources in the hands of the state, but that has just continued the profit system in another, often more oppressive, form. That isn’t socialism. Instead we are talking about a world where we all democratically decide how to use those resources directly for our own mutual benefit and in a way which minimises the impact on the environment.

  This is all a long-way off. In the meantime shouldn’t ‘progressive’ organisations sink their differences, defend working people against attacks on their living standards and eventually work towards a socialist society?

It’s true that we all have to live in the here and now, but how far off the socialist society we advocate is depends on when people are prepared to take democratic action (i.e. vote) to establish it. More than a century of attempts to reform capitalism have shown that none of its major problems can be removed. So it’s clear that if we do nothing about socialism ‘in the meantime’, the meantime lasts forever. And we are putting off perhaps for all time the greatest advance that human society could ever make.

So does this election matter? Does Brexit matter?

  This election is about one way or another of organising the profit system, capitalism, so it doesn’t matter which of the major parties is elected. Nothing will change. Brexit is a small detail in that system, so it doesn’t matter that an arrangement has been made to manipulate that detail in the interests of the tiny minority who hold most of the wealth. What does matter is how many voters understand the case we are putting for a real social upgrade – a world community without states or frontiers based on participatory democracy – and show their preference for that by casting their vote for the Socialist Party candidate, Brian Johnson.

We are talking about a society of material abundance, without buying and selling, where everyone has access to what they need without the rationing system called money.

We are talking about a rational and sustainable society where people are the Earth’s custodians, not its destroyers, where they contribute the knowledge, skills and effort to maintain it.

This is a system that will make 21st century capitalism look like the Dark Ages. Hardly anyone dares conceive of a society after capitalism, so powewrful is its hold on the collective mind. But we do and that is why we are putting the debate out into the open.

Capitalism will do all it can to discredit the idea of world socialism. Don’t let it succeed. Take a first step by voting for our candidate, Brian Johnson.

FOLKESTONE

Profit or Needs, not Leave or Remain, is the real issue

This election, we’re told, is about Brexit. Whether ‘we’ will be richer or poorer, freer or more subservient if we stay in or leave the European Union, with or without a deal.

But does anyone seriously expect that Leaving or Remaining will end child poverty? Homelessness and food banks? Collapsing health and social services? Unemployment – or the mass insecurity of zero-hour-contracts? War and forced migration? The destruction of the Earth’s wildlife and natural resources? The threat of disastrous climate change?

The Brexit ‘debate’ simply obscures the real issue: a failed economic system where nothing is produced unless a profit can be made from it. Where human needs are everywhere subject to the inhuman demands of market forces. And this system will continue to rule our lives whether our new leaders are based in Brussels or London, Belfast or Edinburgh.

The Socialist Party stands for putting an end to this profit system. For replacing it with a society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the world’s natural and industrial resources.

We live in a world of potential plenty, where we could meet our needs by freely cooperating on the basis of ‘from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.’ There is no need for anyone anywhere in the world to go without what they need to live a happy, healthy and fulfilled life. What prevents this is the ownership of resources today by a privileged few and production for sale with the aim of making a profit.

 The parties committed to running the market system – and that includes the Labour Party and the Greens – are making empty promises. A vote for them is a wasted vote as this system operates on the basis that making profits must always come before meeting needs, whatever those in government might want or have promised.

We are standing here to give you a chance to show that you reject the profit-driven market system and want a classless society of equal men and women geared to directly satisfying people’s needs.

To show this, vote for the  Socialist Party candidate, Andy Thomas, and then come and join us, not to mend the present system but to bring a movement strong enough to end it.

Write The Socialist Party, 74 Linden Crescent, Folkestone, Kent CT19 5SB

Email spgb.ksrb@worldsocialism.org


How you can help
South Wales branch will be holding an election stall on Saturday 7 December from 1 pm to 3pm in Queen Street (Newport road end) in central Cardiff. There will also be leafletting elsewhere in the constituency. More information and offers of help contact Richard Botterill, election agent, at botterillr@gmail.com

Kent and Sussex branch will be meeting on Sunday 1 December from 2pm in The Muggleton Inn (Wetherspoon), 8 High Street, Maidstone, ME14 1 HJ (first floor) to discuss the campaign. Offers of help with leafletting and other activities in Folkestone: email spgb.ksrb@worldsocialism.org or write to The Socialist Party, 74 Linden Crescent, Folkestone, Kent CT19 5SB.

The Socialist Party also has leaflets for distribution outside the two constituencies saying that socialists will be casting a write-in vote for «World Socialism». Copies for distribution available from spgb@worldsocialism.org or write to the Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN or phone 020 7622 3811.

General Election 2017 (2017)

Party News from the June 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

News and information on the coming election Thursday 8th June

Standing in Swansea West

BREXIT: DOES IT MATTER?

Will BREXIT – whether hard or soft – do anything to solve the problems people in this country are suffering from - job insecurity, inequality, poverty, crime, poor healthcare?

The answer has to be ‘no’. And the reason is that these problems don’t come from particular constitutional arrangements. They come from the way society is organised – production for profit and ownership of the vast majority of the wealth by a tiny minority of people: the global system of capitalism.

The other parties

This is the system all other political parties exist to administer. They have different ideas on how that system can best be maintained, but all agree it must be retained.

Many of their supporters have good intentions but are unaware that, in campaigning for these, they are helping to maintain this built-in system of minority privilege. So, however different Corbyn’s policies may seem from May’s, they offer no alternative to the present way of running society.

No matter how well-meaning politicians may be they can’t control that system – it controls them. The best any government can do is try to ride its storms.

So what's the alternative?

We propose an alternative to the society based on ownership of capital and market forces that currently exists in the UK, Europe and worldwide. This alternative is a society of common ownership that we call socialism.

Not ‘socialism’ as you may understand it. Not the type of dictatorship that collapsed in Russia and elsewhere – which were forms of state capitalism in fact. Not any of the schemes for state control advocated by some in the Labour Party.

For us socialism means something completely different and something much better. We are talking about:

•           a world community without states or frontiers based on participatory democracy

•           a society without buying and selling where everyone has access to what they require to satisfy their needs, without the rationing system that is money

•           a society where people use the earth’s abundant resources rationally and sustainably, and contribute their knowledge, skills and experience freely to produce what is needed

To sum up:

•           If you don't like present-day society – with or without Brexit.

•           If you’re fed up with the way so many people are forced to live – hanging on for dear life to a job that gives little satisfaction and doing it just for the money

•           If you are sick of seeing grinding poverty alongside obscene wealth

•           If you are sick of the Earth being abused by corporations who don’t care about the future or the environment

•           If you think the root cause of most problems is the market system and the governments that maintain that system

. . . then you’re thinking like we are.

What can you do?

The new society is one without leaders just as it is one without owners and wage-slaves. It is a wholly democratic society, one which can only be achieved when you – and enough like-minded people - join together to bring it about peacefully and democratically.

If you agree with this, you will want to cast your vote for our candidate. In voting for Brian Johnson, the Socialist Party of Great Britain candidate, you will be voting for the socialism you – and we – stand for.

– Election manifesto of our candidate in Swansea West

************************************************************

Standing in London too

The Socialist Party is also standing in London, in Battersea and in Islington North. The candidates are Danny Lambert and Bill Martin.

Islington North, where we also stood in 2015, is Jeremy Corbyn's constituency. At that time he was just an ordinary leftwing Labour MP. In the meantime he has become the Leader of the Labour Party. This hasn't changed our attitude towards him or the Labour Party. We have always been opposed to the Labour Party and have never seen it as a vehicle for socialism.

Battersea is the next door constituency to Vauxhall which we normally contest. It is not far from our  Head Office in Clapham High Street which are being used as our election rooms.

Copies of the manifesto in London can be obtained by a sending a stamped addressed envelope to: The Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN. Also available are “I'm Voting for World Socialism” stickers.

Offers of help, phone 0207 622 3811 or email spgb@worldsocialism.org

Don't (1980)

From the October 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

If I won the pools or was in charge of the country I would soon sort out the unions, lazy, unemployed, students, immigration, housing, slums, wages, pollution, oil prices, vandalism, prison population, food scarcity . . . The proper solutions vary from the extreme of forced labour by conscription of vandals, lazy and unemployed, to the liberal idea of employing more social workers, sociologists. do-gooders and turning the Isle of Wight into a rest home for the workers who cannot cope with the stresses of the wages system.

Were it possible for both of these to realise their far off dreams it would be not long before they found out the reality of the capitalist system. The beast consistently refuses to take advice, and it controls you, regardless of all the information you might pump into the computers concerning world hunger, poverty, homelessness and lack of medical facilities.

The question remains—how do you bring the beast under control? In truth capitalism cannot be brought under control and it only exists because the majority of the working class support it and they continue to support capitalism when they repeatedly seek solutions from a system that only benefits the few who live off the exploited labour of the many.

Brian Johnson

Party News (2016)

From the June 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party stood 3 candidates in the Greater London Assembly and 1 candidate in the Welsh Assembly elections on 5 May. Here are the results:

Lambeth and Southwark: Lab 96,946 (51.63%), Con 34,703 (18.48), Green  25,793 (13.74), LibDem 21,489 (11.4), UKIP 6,591 (3.51), Kevin Parkin (Soc) 1,333 (0.71), All Peoples Party 906 (0.48).

London North East: Lab 134,307 (58.7%), Con 32,565 (14.23),  Green 29,401 (12.85), LibDem 14,312 (6.26), UKIP 11,315 (4.95), Respect 5,068 (2.22), Bill Martin (Soc) 1,293 (0.57), Communist League 536 (0.23).

London South West:  Con 84,381 (39.47%),  Lab 62,937 (29.4), LibDem 30,654 (14.34), Green 19,745 (9.24), UKIP 14,983 (7.01), Adam Buick (Soc) 1,065 (0.50).

Swansea West: Lab 9,014 (40.6%) Con  3,934 (17.7%), Plaid Cymru 3,325 (14.5), UKIP 3,058 (13.8), LibDem 2,012 (9.1), Green 883 (4.0), Brian Johnson (Soc) 76 (0.3)