100 Years of the Socialist Party of Great Britain (2004)

From the July 2004 issue of the News From Nowhere newsletter

We would like to congratulate the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB) on its 100th anniversary. The SPGB is the founding party of the World Socialist Movement of which both the SPC and WSPUS are members. It is not only a party of revolutionaries, but a party of working class intellectuals.

Formed by workers in London, the SPGB’s Principles sprang from the strands of Marxism closest to Marx. At its founding, a number of its most active members had studied Marxism under the tutelage of Marx’s daughter, Eleanor and her partner, Edward Aveling. Early issues of the Socialist Standard magazine contained interviews with Marx’s son-in- law, Paul Lafargue. Also influential was the work of William Morris and the Socialist League (which Eleanor Marx also participated in.) It is from Morris’ famous socialist utopian novel, News From Nowhere, from that book this newsletter takes its name.

But it was the founders of the SPGB, who gave the working class its most concise and liberatory vision of socialism. Building on the Socialist League’s work, they continued the socialist ideal that socialism will be not an continuation of capitalism, but a fundamentally different society. From Aveling, etc, they took a fundamental understanding of Marx’s critique of capitalism and expanded upon it to analyze new developments in the growth of capitalism.

And their analysis has been eerily correct. The SPGB was the first political grouping to understand the capitalist nature of the Bolshevik revolution. They critiqued Keynesian economics as it was developing in the 1930s, with the SPGBs main economics writer a post office worker. Again, the SPGB critiqued the development of the Labour Party’s Welfare State in post-world war 2 era. Arguing from a perspective of the liberation of the working class, rather than a political strategy, the SPGB explained why each of these methods of capitalism to control workers rebellion would fail. And in every case the SPGB’s analysis was correct.

That the SPGB has continued intact for 100 years, without major splits, without leaders, and democratically intact is another case in its favor. In this day of thuggish leftist parties and the bazillions of splits who each form their own 44th international, it is inspirational that a working class party of some size has done its work for a century. Who else can claim this?

F.N. Brill (WSP)

An open letter to the workers of the world (2004)

From the May 2004 issue of the World Socialist newsletter

The world we live in is one that is fraught with contradictions. Some 800 million of our fellow humans are chronically malnourished and at least 1.2 billion will, on any one day, go without food.

At the same time, the governments of the world destroy of vast amounts of food to keep prices high. They stockpile food until it rots and pay farmers to take land out of production. Why? Because the laws of supply and demand insist that you cannot eat unless they can make money from it.

600 million people are homeless, many sleeping on the streets, yet there is no shortage of vacant buildings and certainly no shortage of building materials. Again, we find that the market not only dictates who does and does not eat, but who does and does not have a home.

Over one billion have no access to clean water, while its growing scarcity will cause many wars this coming century. Meanwhile, the technology exists to desalinate millions of gallons each day and to set up treatment plants capable of cleaning the dirtiest water. However, there is not much profit in selling something which covers five-sixth’s of the planet, so the investment never comes.

Millions of children die each year of curable diseases, we still await breakthroughs in medical science. But there are literally thousands of scientists around the world employed in weapons programs – paid by their respective governments to devise new methods of murder, including germ warfare.

The list is as endless as it is insane. At every turn we see how capitalism destroys us physically and emotionally. At every turn we come smack up against the law of our age – “can’t pay, can’t have”. At every turn we find capitalism infecting all it comes into contact with.

Capitalism has enabled some fantastic technological feats. Demands of war sparked a race for rocket technology that has explored the furthest limits of the solar system. The search for oil and other resources has plumbed the deepest oceans and map out the ocean beds. We can split the atom, map the human genome, and perform amazing organ transplants. Nothing, it seems, is beyond us. Our capabilities are awe-inspiring. Sadly, in spite of the technology at our disposal, the never-ending demand for profits means that we have entered the 21st century with us every social ill that plagued the previous century. War, hunger, poverty, disease, and homelessness are still with us, and are rooted in the way we continue to organize our society. The irony is we are already capable of solving the major problems that face us. And we have been capable of solving them for quite some time – just not within capitalism.

Over 20 years ago, the World Health Organization announced that the ability existed to feed a world population twelve times its (then) size. However, the requirements of profit everywhere act as a stumbling block not only to the full use of the productive forces, but also to the full and unhindered use of science and technology in the service of humanity.

Socialists long ago realized that the problems we face are in fact social problems, because they have their roots in the way our world is organized for the production of profit, not need.

When you think about it,you’ll be hard pressed to find any aspect of our lives that is not subordinated to the requirements of profit. And this is the case the world over.

What is to be done?

If this is the case, then what can we do about it? Real socialists believe the only way forward lies in abolishing the money/wages/profit system that we know as capitalism and establishing a world of free access to the benefits of human knowledge. Then can we assert control over our own destiny, where we can enjoy a world in which there is no waste, pollution, want or war.

Since 1904, the World Socialist Movement has been advocating the establishment of such a system: a global society based upon the common and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing the things people need to live.

We advocate a world without borders, social classes, leaders, governments and armies. A world without money or wages, exchange, buying and selling. Where people can give freely of their abilities and take according to their own self-defined needs. A global system in which each person has a free and democratic say in how their world is run.

Human nature no barrier

Many people agree that such a world should be a beautiful place to live in. But they believe that “human nature” will always be a barrier, because humans are “by nature” greedy, selfish and aggressive. It is apparent what they are describing is not innate human nature, but behavior exhibited under particular circumstances. A human behavior shaped by the kind of system people are brought up in. Nobody is born as a racist or a patriot, as a bigot or with a belief in gods. Nobody is born a murderer, a robber or a rapist, and our alleged greed for money is no more a function of the natural human thought process than were slavery or witch burning.

The ideas of working people have been usually been acquired secondhand, passed down from the ruling class above us. Because the class which owns and controls the productive process, they also control the society’s intellectual life. Anti-social behavior is influenced by social circumstances at any given time, i.e., when we are poor, depressed, lonely, angry and frustrated.

Those who produce the world’s wealth are given educations which makes free-thought difficult. Our upbringings conditions us to accept without question the ideas of our “leaders”, bosses and superiors. The education system is geared to perpetuate the rule of an elite, insofar as it never encourages children to question and take issue with the status quo.

We believe that humans are by nature cooperative. For example look when communities are faced with the disasters, our humanity shines through and we “pull together” and cooperate to get through. There are millions of cases of people donating their blood and organs to complete strangers, sacrificing their lives for others, of people giving countless hours of their free time to charitable work – all of this without financial incentive.

Today, world capitalism threatens the human race with extinction. The reason this obnoxious system survives is because we accept it. Rest assured, no gene inclines us to defend the profit system.

Socialism hasn’t been tried

Many tell us that socialism has been tried and has failed. They then point to the former Soviet Union, to China, Cuba, etc., etc. But what was passed off as socialism was in fact state capitalism. A glance at these countries reveals they never abolished the wage system. Workers were exploited to support ruling classes and and those rulers outlawed dissent. They produced only profitable to do so, traded according to the dictates of international capital and were prepared to go to war to defend their economic interests.

Moreover it was believed that socialism could be established by force and that socialism could exist in one country. The Bolsheviks maintained that the revolution could only be carried out by a minority vanguard party and that workers were unable to understand the case for change.

Since 1904, our movement has maintained that socialism, like capitalism, can only exist on a global scale. Socialism will only come about when a majority of the world’s people want it and are prepared to organize for it peacefully and democratically. No vanguard can establish socialism – as Marx said: “the

emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself”.

We can do it

Agreeing with Marx, the WSM believes that there are two classes in society – the working class and the capitalist class, each determined by its relationship to the means of living. The capitalist class own and control the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth, and live as parasites off profits, rent and interest. The working class, own little more than our ability to sell our physical and mental abilities to the highest bidder.

The working class runs the world and it is important to grasp this fact. It is we who fish the oceans and tend the forests and till the land and plantations. It is we who build the cities and railroads, the bridges and roads, the docks and airports. It is we who staff the hospitals and schools,who empty the bins and go down the sewers. It is workers who produce everything society needs and provides all of its services.

The capitalists and their governments have no monopoly on our skills and abilities. These belong to us. Most inventions and improvements are the result of those who do the actual work thinking up easier ways of completing a task. The result of ideas being passed down, each one improving the techniques of the previous generations. If those who work so much in a world hobbled by the profit motive, then how much more are we capable of providing in a world free from profits?

Capitalism must go

We must admit that capitalism has raised some potentials of humanity. It is now quite possible to provide a comfortable living for every human on the planet. But if we follow the capitalist trajectory, we’re in for some pretty troublesome times.

But capitalism is a barrier to the fair and needed use of the world’s productive forces. In a world of potential abundance, profit imposes widespread artificial scarcity. Billions of humans are consigned to a life of abject poverty, whilst millions more live lives filled with uncertainty.

Our ability to imagine has brought us from the days when our ancestors chipped away at the first tools. Is it really such a huge leap of the imagination to envision a social system that can take over from the capitalist order?

Do we really need leaders deciding our lives for us? Do we need governments administering our lives when what is needed is the administration of the things? Must every decision be decided by what is the most profitable? Many don’t think so and have mobilized to confront what they perceive as major problems with capitalism.

There has been a worldwide backlash against globalization, corporate power and other iniquities of capitalism. Everywhere where the world’s elite have assembled, they have been met with protests that have attracted hundreds of thousands. Demonstrations in Seattle, etc. have fueled ongoing debate on the nature of capitalism. And thousands of articles have been published that explore the alternatives offered by the anti-globalisation movement.

It is now clear is that the anti-globalisation movement cannot replace capitalism with any real alternative social system. It simply is a loose coalition of different groups, each pursuing their own agenda. Some the reform of international institutions. Others call for fairer trading conditions. All, however, fail to address the root cause of the problems of capitalism.

Capitalism cannot be reformed in the interests of the world’s billions, because reform does not address the basic contradiction between profit and need. Governments cannot be depended upon because they only act as an executive of capitalism. An expansion of democracy, while welcome, makes little difference if candidates can only offer variations on the same policies.

Capitalism must be abolished if we as a species are to thrive. No amount of reform, however great, will work. Change must be global and irreversible. It must involve all of us. We need to erase borders and frontiers; to abolish states and governments and false concepts of nationalism. We need to abolish our money systems, and with it buying, selling and exchange. And in place of this we need to establish a different global social system – a society in which there is common ownership and true democratic control of the Earth’s natural and industrial resources. A society where the everyday things we need to live in comfort are produced and distributed freely and for no other reason than that they are needed. Socialism.

It is not an utopian fantasy to suggest we can live in such a world. We certainly have the know-how. All that is missing is the will – the desire for change that can make that advance possible; a belief in ourselves as masters of our own destiny; a belief that it is possible to fashion a world in our own interests.

Socialists build that new world, by building the understanding of what Socialism will be like. And we need your help. Socialism needs your writing, organizing and artistic skills. Please join us.

JB/FNB

Blogger's Note:

A version of this article also appeared in the May 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard. I'm not altogether sure which is the original version.

Chicken Little Politics? (2004)

From the March 2004 issue of the World Socialist newsletter

I am addicted to reading political journals of all stripes, left, right and center, as well as socialist. As I came to the positions of the World Socialist Movement, I began reading left newspapers with a new understanding. I now see a nearly constant hysterical pitch- Doom is coming! Fascism! Economic Collapse!! Environmental Degradation!!! Repent sinners, the end is near, join our vanguard, coalition and/or the affinity group and save the world through action, action, action . . .

But is the left (which is distinct from socialism) advocating practical action or perpetual motion? There have been plenty of perpetual motion machines invented, and they are as successful as the left has been, doomed to entropy. In racing around posing countless reforms, transitional demands, desperate for any contact with the working class, the left has forgotten what it is they thought they wanted in the first place.

Instead of seeing that the revolution will come from a profound change in social consciousness, they substitute adrenaline headlines to try and scare folks into party activities, which aim for reforms, which they think will slowly raise consciousness. But the problem is that working for reforms can succeed only if we don’t talk about, or at best downplay, talking about the “s” word.

A friend of mine in my union is active in a post-trotskyist group that does many good union activities in the US and Canada. They teach workers how to take back their unions, fight the boss on the shop floor, etc. For 30 years they done very good, practical, day-to-day union work. My friend has told me that some founders, after all these years of working for these reforms for the workers, have confessed to him they are disappointed that they never, ever, get to talk about their ‘socialism’.

Likewise the doddering Communist Party USA acts as the loyal left wing of the Democratic Party. Both parties are active in much practical work, have lots of followers. But when the need for socialism gets left behind, what is the practical consequence? You maintain capitalism and the problems you are trying to stop.

Throughout the 100 years of the existence of the World Socialist Movement, we have refused to play the game of chicken little politics. In the 1930s, when the left from Social-democrats to anarchists were hysterically calling that the economy was about to collapse, and that would be the end of capitalism, we said no, while the economy may or may not collapse, that doesn’t mean that capitalism will. Then and now we will tell you that there may or may not be fascism around the bend, and environmental collapse may occur or maybe the lions will sleep with the lambs.

We’re socialists, not fortune tellers, what we do know is that capitalism is based on the exploitation of workers. As workers understand that, become conscious, we will have the ability to create a new world free of the inhuman demands of a system driven by profits.

Eugene Debs once said, “It's better to ask for what you want and not get it, than ask for what you don’t want and get it.” If you really want socialism, join the World Socialist Party. Ask for what you do want.

F.N. Brill

Class War in Canada (2011)

Book Reviews from issue 22 of the World Socialist Review

The Impossibilists -- The Socialist Party of Canada and the One Big Union, Selected Articles 1906-1938. Revised edition with added material. Includes Ginger Goodwin's writings. Perfect bound book, 90 pages, US $14.00 

Peter E. Newell, The Impossibilists: A Brief Profile of the Socialist Party of Canada. 404 pages, US$18.95.



These two recently published books deal with our companion party in the World Socialist Movement, the Socialist Party of Canada. The SPC is the only one of the companion parties to have become a mass movement.

The articles brought together in the first of these books include reports of organizing work as well as theoretical and polemical pieces. Of particular interest are the critiques of the USSR and its Leninist followers in the “Comical” Party of Canada.

Included in this edition are the writings of Ginger Goodwin. Widely known in Canada up to his death in 1918, Goodwin was an organizer both for the SPC and for the United Mine Workers Union. For a number of years he was also vice president of the Federation of Labor of British Columbia.

Up until 1918 Goodwin was classified as unfit for military service due to lung conditions related to coal mining, but he was called up for active service after he organized several strikes in the Nanaimo coal mining region. Convinced that he had been set up, he avoided conscription by escaping to the woods outside of Cumberland, BC. On July 27, 1918, Goodwin was shot without warning by a Mountie* as he was walking to his cabin. Goodwin was and continues to be a legend among the workers of British Columbia. Since the 1980s a yearly gathering of workers has been held in Cumberland, B.C. to honor his memory.

The One Big Union (OBU) was founded in 1919 as an industrial union similar to the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) but based on socialist principles. Like the SPC and Karl Marx, the OBU saw class struggle as a constant in capitalist society, but unlike the IWW it did not regard itself as prefiguring the new society.

The OBU started off with 40,000 members in Canada and another 30,000 in the US. Its creation shook the American Federation of Labor to its core. The OBU gained its members through the withdrawal of union locals from existing Canadian and American unions. In 1919 the US Western District of the International Longshoremen’s Association voted to leave the ILA and join the OBU. Similarly, there were serious moves for the Washington State and Montana State AFLs to switch to the OBU.

In 1923 the OBU led a strike of 120,000 textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Other areas where it was strong were the San Francisco Bay Area and the important mining region centered in Butte, Montana.

By 1925 the OBU was washed up in the United States, but in Canada it remained a national union until 1956, when it took its 16,000 members into the merger of the Canadian AFL and CIO federations.

The second book under review is a history of the Socialist Party of Canada by Peter E. Newell. The author is a member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB) – another companion party of the World Socialist Movement.

The book provides a chronological account of the SPC, both during its heyday between 1912 and 1925 and following its rebirth in the early 1930s. The research is impeccable and dispels some of the myths that have been spread about the SPC by Leninists of various stripes. This work will be of great value to labor historians as well as to socialists.

However, we still need a third book on the SPC that would provide an organizational history – an account of how the party was established and organized, how it grew, how it approached issues, and how it interacted with the OBU and other workers’ organizations. For example, although I have been researching the history of the SPC for over a dozen years, I only recently discovered that the SPC organized an unemployment movement in Toronto.

FN Brill

The Life and Letters of Isaac Rab (2011)

Book Review from issue 22 of the World Socialist Review

Role Modeling Socialist Behavior: The Life and Letters of Isaac Rab by Karla Doris Rab,  504 pages. Lulu Press. $23.16.

For most of the twentieth century, Isaac Rab (1893 – 1986) was well known in the Boston area as a socialist soap-box orator, lecturer, and teacher. He was a founding member of the World Socialist Party of the United States and a central figure in the Boston Local for many years.

In this book, our comrade Karla Rab, who is the granddaughter of Isaac Rab, tells the story of his life and presents a large selection of his surviving correspondence as well as many photographs. She draws on her own reminiscences and on those of many others who knew her grandfather.

Isaac Rab was born into an immigrant socialist family on December 22, 1893. He devoted his whole life to the cause until his death on New Year’s Eve 1986. In 1916 he helped form the WSP from the left wing of the Michigan Socialist Party in Detroit. Later he settled in Boston, where he organized the Boston Local of the WSPUS in 1932. He also taught classes on Marxian economics for other organizations, including the Communist Party, the Proletarian Party, and various Trotskyist groupings.

Karla Rab’s book is, of course, about much more than her grandfather as an individual. It is the first history of the World Socialist Movement in the United States. Its importance is great but subtle. It is often said that history is written by the winners. Even the obscure history of North American left politics has its hierarchy. Credibility is given only to “winners” such as the Industrial Workers of the World, the Communist Party, and the Congress of Industrial Organizations – even though many of the problems that plague the workers' movement are the logical outcomes of their policies.



Social democrats and Leninists like to portray smaller groups like the WSPUS as “isolated sects.” And as the history of the working class movement has been written mainly by them, who is to challenge what they say? However, with the collapse of the left in the United States there has been a reassessment of what various political organizations actually accomplished. For example, in their study of the Auto Workers Union [1] the 1930s era Trotskyists Genora and Sol Dollinger conclude that the Communist “leaders” of the Flint sit-down strikes only succeeded thanks to assistance from the Proletarian Party, which has usually been derided as an isolated sect.

The book under review proves that the WSPUS, while small, was hardly isolated. Rab’s letters demonstrate involvement in the United Auto Workers and the Typographers' Union (a model of democratic unionism) as well as discussions and debates among a wide range of left groups. Among the members of the WSPUS there were highly experienced class warriors. William Pritchard and Jack McDonald had helped lead the Western Labour Rebellion in Canada. Sam Orner had been an IWW organizer in the hard metal mines of the American Rockies as well as the leader of a famous strike of New York City taxi cab drivers in 1934. (He was the model for the character Lefty in Clifford Odet’s famous play, Waiting for Lefty.) The Detroit Local of the WSPUS had members who had helped form the United Auto Workers and played roles in the educational services of the most militant UAW locals (Irving Canter, Joe Brown, David Davenport, Frank Marquart). [2]

Another important thing about Karla Rab’s book is that it shows how Rab organized his political activity. His letters are a lesson of lasting value in how to approach the personal as well as the intellectual and educational aspects of building a movement for socialism. I have forty years of experience in organizing community groups and labor unions as well as political groups. I have found this book a first-class resource and have dipped into it repeatedly since first reading it in draft form.

FN Brill 

Notes

[1] Soll Dollinger and Genora Johnson Dollinger, Not Automatic: Women and the Left in the Forging of the Auto Workers Union (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000).

[2] See: Frank Marquart, An Auto Worker’s Journal: The UAW from Crusade to One-Party Union (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1976).

Rich Politicians (2010)

Cross-posted from the World Socialist Party of the United States website

CBS News reports that although the basic pay for members of Congress is $174,000, nearly half — 261, to be exact — are millionaires (there are 535 total members of the House and Senate). Just 1 percent of Americans overall can say the same. 55 members had an average calculated wealth of $10 million or more in 2009.

While the economy has generally faltered over the past two years, congressional members actually saw their collective personal wealth increase by more than 16 percent between 2008 and 2009.

The wealthiest member of Congress is Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), whose holdings exceed $303.5 million. Rep Jane Harman (D-Calif.) is close behind with $293.4 million, and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) rounds out the top three at $238.8 million. In the House, five Democrats and five Republicans make up the 10 wealthiest members, while in the Senate, six Democrats and four Republicans make up the top 10.

The median wealth of a House member in 2009 stood at $765,010, while the median wealth for a senator in 2009 was nearly $2.38 million.

The most popular company among members of Congress, CRP found, was General Electric, in which 82 current members invested. The second most popular company was Bank of America, which 63 members invested in.

FN Brill

PDX - 4/27 - Meet the World Socialist Party of the United States

World Socialist Party of the United States member, FN Brill, will be speaking at the Portland pre-Mayday event at the IWW’s Liberty Hall (311 N. Ivy) this Sunday April 27th at 7:30pm.

‘Rogue Traders’ or Business As Usual?

From the World Socialist Party of the United States website:

The case of the ‘Rogue’ French Bank trader, Jerome Kerviel, underscores many observations about capitalism made by socialists.

Most importantly, it shows how “social” capitalism has become. The more capitalism grows, the more connected we are to the actions of everyone else. If the accusations are true, one minor 31 year old French bank trader can cause the potential impoverishment of many. We are all tied together, and capitalist rugged individualism is an illusion. the scary fact is that while capitalism has bound us to each other, it is anti-social in it’s structure.

This case also shows how capitalism’s operates as a big crap game. The trader purportedly lost 4.9 Billion Euros in unauthorized gambles on future stock and bond prices. Evidently he lost badly. But again, as stated above., capitalism is social even if it is structured anti-socially. So while this ‘rogue’ trader does his job by placing society’s wealth on the gambling table. Since it’s anti-social certain folks - workers - loose every time, win or lose. As the hobo folksinger Utah Phillips said in his lament on the gentrification of Denver’s skid road:

My bookie joint closed when your cops pulled a raid,
But you built a new hall for the stock market trade.

Finally, we’ll observe the role of “justice” in capitalism. Scapegoat or no, the young French trader who lost Billions in wealth will likely face 3 to 5 years in prison. This sentence is similar to those in the US. But compare it to the black man in California who received a life sentence for stealing a slice of pizza. Or the case of the Native American elder who served 18 months of a 5 year prison term for selling 300 salmon. He was sentenced the same month as American ‘junk bond’ trader Michael Milliken who served 22 months on a 10 year term for 1 Billion Dollars in fraud.

Utah Phillips again sums up the issue:

Now I’m finding out there’s just one kind of war -
It’s the one going on ‘tween the rich and the poor;
I don’t know a lot about what you’d call class,
But the upper and middle can all kiss my ass.

FN Brill