Showing posts sorted by relevance for query wee matt. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query wee matt. Sort by date Show all posts

Monday, November 07, 2016

Wee Matt's Message to American Fellow-workers


Capitalism cannot be reformed to work in the interests of the wage worker.

Whoever becomes president; capitalism will continue with its poverty, homelessness, and hunger for many Americans. It’s not a new president that is needed but a new economic system. It makes no difference is that politicians and governments do not, and cannot, control the way the capitalist economy works. They have to navigate by sight in the face of what the capitalist economy throws up and so can do no more than react to how the economy moves. This quite apart from the fact that their remit to govern in the overall interest of the capitalist class. In fact, far from them controlling the way capitalism works, it's the other way round. Both Clinton and Trump want the power to organise the country for the benefit of its owning class. To support either candidate in this presidential election requires a massive feat of collective amnesia or delusion by the working class.

For after the shouting and the ballyhoo have died, capitalism, in America and the rest of the world, remains unscathed. This social system produces the horrors of war, poverty, insecurity and racial hatred. The Democrats and Republicans, like the other capitalist parties, can offer no end to these. Only the establishment of socialism can give us a world of peace and plenty. And for that, we do not need stage-managed ballyhoo. We need knowledge and the social responsibility that goes with it.

The majority of people—the working class, the useful, productive people in this society—are content to keep capitalism in being under the delusion that it is rather like a movie in which the baddies come to a bad end and goodie prevails. The problem is that there are so many baddies—war, poverty, starvation, mental stress, homelessness, alienation, crime, disease . . . And the "heroes" and "heroines are powerless to do anything about it but all those speech writers, strategists, and spin doctors try to tell us differently.

The socialist message to the American people is that they should think long and hard about what their new President will represent before casting their vote because the periodic election of Presidents function is to protect the class interest of wealth and privilege that perpetuate our servitude.


Wee Matt

Thursday, January 07, 2016

Common ownership is 'no' ownership.




Comments from the Guardian placed by Wee Matt

Democracy within capitalism serves elitist capitalist ends, i.e. springing from bourgeois democracy, which is constrained by the reinforced illusion, that 'business friendly' political parties, whether, Left, Right, Centrist, Green, Purple, Blue, Red, or Tartan necessitate the retention of unequal relations of production and distribution, through the retention of production for sale on a market with a view of realising profit for a minority class who enjoy a parasitic relationship to the production of a wage enslaved majority. The cliched analogy of "turkeys being allowed to vote for an alternative Christmas", which will still have the same outcomes springs to mind.

 That the capitalist class have different agendas is true, we have commercial versus industrial capitalists, local versus regional or global capitalist interests. That they compete against each other is true, even globally, unto war, hence the rise of governments to adjudicate upon and manage those different interests and maintain a regulated framework, for the collective 'capitalist' modus operandi. When we have a slump in trade globally, as at present, caused by the anarchy of the capitalist markets, which entails they go hell for leather to satisfy market demand, but crash when demand slackens, with unsaleable commodities and over extended debt, these rivalries come to the fore, but there is at the same time opportunities to carve out market niches, while driving down the rations of workers.

 Capitalist democracy is a sham. A growing awareness by the immense majority to the fact that, capitalism cannot be reformed and has to be replaced, by a post-capitalist, production for use, free access society without elites or governments, will see this same oppositionalism and consequent entrenchment of the ruling classes and a subsequent mislabeling and traducing of the growing politically aware majority until it becomes an unstoppable force, as nothing will stop an idea which time has come. It matters not if the new post-capitalist, democratic, free access, society is called socialism, communism, anarcho-communism or macaroni. "What is in a name a rose by any other name would smell as sweet". Marxism is not an ideology, but rather an analytical tool. Even Marx himself was said to have stated,"Thank heaven I am not a Marxist".

 The Socialist Party won't settle for crumbs from the rich war-mongering, leeching capitalist’s table. We want a post-capitalist, free access society. We want the whole world and everything in and on it, to be owned in common and controlled democratically, by the whole world’s population with wage slavery abolished forever. Who are we? The bottom line of your pay-slip is the wage you are paid not the nominal tax added to it. The Welfare State sprung out of the promises of successive governments to build a land fit for heroes made during the world wars and is a cost on employers, which must be borne by business, to keep an adequate supply of wage-slaves for present and future exploitation and of course, to prevent social unrest.

  Socialism is where we are truly social equals, free from fear of penury to develop further our understanding of our human condition. We are not speaking of a society such as the present one where production is rationed with production of commodities for sale on a market for a profit, leading to scarcity, with potentially rewarding outcomes for hoarding, there will be no elites controlling access etc. A post-capitalist world is also at the same time a post-scarcity one, as production for use, leads to the production of surpluses, as production is not switched off before needs are met, due to a fall in artificial demand via price mechanisms as at present.

 Relative to the present day then, there will be a superabundance of necessities. Greed and hoarding would be seen as silly. We would not need to change a person’s behaviour because that person needs first to understand that the world is experienced as phenomena, not objects, and that objects cannot provide happiness because objects are not identical with phenomena. i.e. that happiness is profoundly contingent. Thus we will be able to access all needs freely, without hindrance according to our 'self-determined' needs, operating upon the maxim of "From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs". A new sort of social behaviour will arise out of the implementation of the new society and new challenges. The idea is that, with the full development of socialism and unfettered productive forces, there will be enough to satisfy everyone's needs.

 If we do not learn the lessons of history we are doomed to repeat it. There is also a point we need to see and take this on board, about emergent elites or vanguards. The S.P.G.B. eschew leadership, for this reason. All previous revolutions have been minority ones and led by elites. We are talking of a majority revolution, such as the world has never seen. A democratic expression of a majority, who are and have become, politically aware and conscious of the aims and outcomes. Common ownership is effectively 'no' ownership. We will all own and share resources. With free access as a consequence.

 There is already a class struggle going on? The capitalists know full well they constitute a class in and for itself. A war on the poorest, is just but one aspect of it, with workers against workers also, enlisted to do battle on their masters behalf, to determine, deserving as opposed to undeserving recipients of poverty relief, to distract them from their own relationship to the phenomenal wealth, which they collectively produce for the minority ruling class. This in turn raises questions and possibilities of consciousness raising as the political debate ensues. We cannot get away from the class struggle, if we wish to establish a classless society.

 The capture of power of the State initially, is to render it innocuous. The State has to cease to be an administration over 'people' and become, shorn of its oppressive functions and apparatus, as there would be no longer any ruling class, elite interests, become an administration over 'things'. There are useful potential functions, we want doctors and airline pilots to be accredited in some accountable way. There would also be some world bodies capable of co-ordination stuff in an epidemic or a natural disaster to our brothers and sisters, the equivalent of the W.H.O. for instance. The forms and norms of everyday society would be in our own hands to develop, locally, regionally, globally as we extended functional decision making, where necessary over into recallable delegated bodies, free of the possibility of these becoming decision making functions 'over' the populace, as vested interests would not be able to arise to prevail, in a commonly owned production for use society with free access to the common wealth.

 The discussions on what forms the 'post-capitalist' world will take are already ongoing, as we see others, apart from people like myself even beginning to use this term  post-capitalism. This arises from the crisis of production, the possibilities of automation, a web of cooperatives and shared endeavours in the systems and software technology, alerting us to the possibility of self-regulated stock control, accounting in kind and no more need for monetary exchange. But all of this, interesting even seminal, as those developments are potentially depend upon their maximised fruition upon ownership and control being in the hands of 'all' of us and not some 'elite'.


 The real revolution will take place in the minds and hearts of the populace who make it happen and will be seen in existing developments in the general world. So there are no "blueprints for the cookshops of the future" in our scenario either. The people who make it happen, will make it work.

Wee Matt
Edinburgh Br




Tuesday, January 05, 2016

It’s human nature, aint it?




More comments from the Guardian placed by Wee Matt

"He who is morally impressed by power is never in a critical mood, and he is never a revolutionary character" - Erich Fromm

Some people prefer to live with a flawed understanding of the world around them, which attributes a 'base' human nature as a prime motivator to peoples’ behaviour, but humans behave differently depending upon the conditions that they live in. Even very short term changes in those conditions can dramatically change the way people behave. Most of what people refer to as "human nature" is actually human behaviour: reactions to the world around them. Human behaviour reflects society.

 In a society such as capitalism, people's needs are not met and reasonable people feel insecure. People tend to acquire and hoard goods because possession provides some security. People have a tendency to distrust others because the world is organized in such a dog-eat-dog manner. Under capitalism, and the previous systems, people have good reason to worry about tomorrow—they can lose their jobs, or be injured, or grow old, and need a cushion of wealth to fall back on.

 In a socialist society, everyone is entitled to have their needs met. They won't be kicked out onto the street, or forced to give up the pleasures of life. There will be no poverty. The "cushion" will be cooperatively provided by all. The 'Human Nature' argument is just a fueling of prejudice and all this prejudice, none of which can survive a moment's critical thought, has been used politically to resist progress. It has been used as an objection to socialism.

 The arguments that our behaviour is determined by our physical inheritance may pose as science but in reality they are socially determined prejudice, used as part of crude political ideology. In this argument all the bad examples of human behaviour which in the main are generated by capitalism, are called upon to say that a society based on equality and voluntary co-operation is impossible. Human beings are social animals capable of a wide range of behaviours. Millions are engaged in altruistic and voluntarist pursuits.

 Their very existence gives the lie to 'Human Nature arguments. The weakest argument around. Human behaviour is culturally created. In any case it is a matter of "enlightened self-interest" to get rid of minority ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, ending competition leading to war and impoverishment, and take them into common ownership with democratic control to have production for use, to produce a superabundance of wealth, from which we can all take according to our needs and contribute according to our abilities.

The Socialist Party is not part of the Left wing of capitalism and stands for its removal, not its reproduction. You should make common cause with fellow workers worldwide to establish a classless, post-capitalist, production for use, free access, commonly owned society. Abolish the wages and prices system.

 We leave you to the fantasy that the system in which poverty and war are concomitants, which created two world wars, culminating in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, is the best there is. The imperialist ambitions which caused the horrors of the Congo and Auschwitz, is incapable of being replaced by a humanity centred solution.

 Capitalism is an obsolete and outmoded method of production, which can never satisfy human needs while retaining private, corporate or state ownership of resources and the means and instruments for producing wealth as its mode of production can only satisfy market requirements and not human needs. It cannot exist without a vast infrastructure dedicated to waging of war (mis-named defence), poverty, absolute and relative and cannot husband the natural resources of the planet, due to the intense competitive nature of its market led system leading to clashes between rival capitalist interests over raw materials trade routes and geo-political advancement of its dominant market players. Religion is just a tool used by power seekers in the capitalist system to divide and rule it is no more to blame than nationalism, xenophobia, plundering of other countries for vital resources.

A genuine post-capitalist society would utilise the immense forces of production of capitalism, shorn of its private, corporate or state ownership, its wasteful war production and machinery, necessary only because of its intense competition with rival parasitic capitalist groups, leading to war over trade routes, markets and raw materials as well as geo-political advantage. It would replace production for sale on a market and waged-slavery and the waged rationed access to the wealth produced, with co-operative production for use, free labour and free access, to the social product for all, in conditions of production for use and unleash the technological capacity, within a moneyless society to provide a superabundance of the necessities of life, which we all could democratically oversee.

 Labour -power is the only commodity workers have in a rigged market, where we do not even have a "Right to work" and we do not receive the value of our labour. The only commodity this applies to is the workers labour power. We only receive the market price (wages) which is not equivalent to its value. The capitalist class pocket the full value of the surplus after realising the sale of the products of labour. If you are born poor you will die poor, generally speaking and relatively speaking with few exceptions. If you are born into the parasite capitalist owning class you will die richer than when you were born with few exceptions.

The whole world and everything in it and on it, is already run from top to bottom by the world's workers within the capitalist system. We are constrained by the mode of production for sale in the market, in conditions of waged slavery, a system where access to food, clothing, shelter and everything else, is rationed according to ability to pay for the goods and services, which we already collectively produce.

 Not only is all wealth produced by the worlds workers, we run this vast wealth production, in the factories and mines and workshops, even electing governments 'over' us, in the interests of the profits of the parasite capitalist economic class. The owners of this system generally do not run or manage it.

 The world’s economic activity should all be owned in common and controlled democratically, by the whole world’s population in a new post-capitalist arrangement of, production for use, with free access and democratic control over 'resources' and not people. The ends determine the means and the new society has to be a product of the democratic decision and will of the immense majority. Peacefully if we can, and forcefully only if we must if the democratic will of the immense majority is thwarted.

, Typical lefty Trotskyist behaviour in the Leninist mode think the end justifies the means. Instead of showing capitalism cannot be reformed and advocating its replacement, they advocate supporting of reformism to show later how the workers have been betrayed. They think workers are too dumb to realise their answer lies in replacing capitalism with a post-capitalist society and set out to be the vanguard which will lead them. There will not be a socialist state.

 Socialism is a direct democratic, self-organising world society, which achieves economic and political equality equilibrium, by the production for use non-ownership with free access and automatic stock control feedback loops.

 Capitalism is not self-organising, it is controlled violence, however, it is certainly a very resilient system, when it gains assent from the populace through the ballot box and ideological state apparatus, education, media etc. but it is just as likely to use direct top-down violence when its hegemony is threatened, by breaking the heads of the populace and proxy adventures, but the state-capitalism is not a product of socialism, no more than Bismarck's Germany was, but a product of trying to direct and develop capitalism, on top of a feudal system within a competitive capitalist world environment.

 Socialists seek a class-free, prices-free, wage-free society, with private, state, corporate ownership abolished and replaced, with a tyranny-free, war-free, poverty-free, world commonwealth.

"He who owns the means by which I live owns my very life." - Shakespeare.

Wee Matt
Edinburgh Br.

Friday, December 15, 2006

Corruption inquiry into £6bn Saudi arms deal dropped

This was in the Scotsman today and Wee Matt's comments below was posted up.
Yes well, the Scotsman,as scummilly establishment, as all the other newspapers, doesn't have this on the front page either.Its water everywhere,Diana Parasite Doolittle's inquest,who gives a toss,and a nice wee Xmas story,funny how the poor are rediscovered at Xmas.The UK is one of the biggest arms dealers in the world after the US.They are as perfidious and shabby as any arms dealers.If you are going to have capitalism you will have arms being produced for sale with a view of making a profit.'twas ever thus.It is not a cop-out to say we won't work for fighter aircraft producers,any more than it is a cop-out to refuse to take part in the army or other services', slaughter of fellow/sister workers under any circumstances.

Workers of all countries.and none, have nothing in common with employers of any country, including their own.

Their interest lies in making common cause with workers all over the world and removing capitalism and its infrastructures of government,nation- states,buying and selling markets.root branch and all and establishing a free access socialist/communist society,(not the state capitalism of the Bolshevics Leninists Trotsyists SSP'ers/Solidarity/SWP Respect,Old Labourists,War Mongerers also in their day) ,democratically controled ,locally,regionally and globally by all the world's citizens.Real socialism in other words,"From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs."

http://www.worldsocialism.org

Wednesday, January 06, 2016

Get off your knees.

 
RISE UP
Another compilation of comments from the Guardian by Wee Matt

It is not a question of despising the rich, but addressing from whence their riches came. It is a social and political question of whether this allocation of privileged access to wealth, whether through inherited plunder of continents, or the slave trade, or modern waged slavery, by gun or by guile should continue. The Socialist Party doesn't think the capitalist class are scum, although some of them might qualify for this description. Many of them will be decent and honourable people. They are just playing the fortunate hand which they inherit and their education and so on equips them more than adequately to do this. They are schooled to think that this is the best of all possible outcomes, whether laissez faire trickle down or Keynesian re-distributive methods, with a modicum of state regulatory oversight for the greatest possible good for society. The dominant ideology of any society will be that of the ruling class. The raison d'être of capitalism is to accumulate or die within an intensely competitive environment.

 Their self-interest is a class interest even if some do not see it in those stark terms. It is the impersonal anarchy of the competitive global market system which determines embarkation upon ventures with outcomes such as "business by other means" war, mass lay-offs and redundancies, pressure upon labour costs to drive down subsistence levels of the wage slaves in order to render a leaner fitter business model for the purpose of further competition with advantageous outcomes over competitors.

Attempts to reform this will eventually and inevitably, lead to corrections upon the business friendly but welfare subsidised models and a return to the austere conditions of the rapacious austerity model, which will restrict the development of reform, however public spirited and well-meaning the governmental administrations, which arise in response to this. This is not to oppose reforms as such, they are a part of the class struggle after all and gave us the NHS and so on, but to oppose 'Reformism', as being any political solution to the problems of capitalism (war, poverty, waged slavery, inequality etc.) and capitalist accumulation, which can only be at the expense of the wealth producing working class. It is essential that the working class recognise it is in their immediate 'class interest' 99% to take control, of the means of producing and distributing wealth.

 No more money, banks, bankers, politicians and governments lording it over people. This would mean houses built to live in, food to eat, clothing to wear, medicine to treat the sick, rather than for sale on a market with a view of profit. Poverty is relative and absolute. It is an essential component of capitalism. How else will we agree to be wage slaves? Exploitation takes place at the point of production regardless of how well or poorly educated we are. Regardless of the size of the wage or salary.

 It is in the ultimate interest of humanity and the planet and environment, the 100% that this occur, although we do not expect the 1% to see this immediately, but no matter, they are superfluous to the production of wealth. We collectively run capitalism from top to bottom and nothing will stop an idea which time has come. All wealth springs from labour and should return to labour. It is a matter of class interest. We need to become more aware of the forms that conspicuous consumption by the rich take in the new century. It is not a question of envy. All this wealth is derived from the exploitation of the working class, the wealth producers, but who do not own. 

Capitalism and its inevitable concomitants of war, poverty, and planetary despoliation is well past its sell-by date.  Time to establish a post-capitalist production for use, free access world for all of the world’s people. We need to abolish wages and all prices and have production for use, with free access and common ownership. Dissolve all government 'over' the people and elect yourselves to govern over resources. We want the people to empower themselves. We do not seek followers but 'thinkers'.

 Miniscule we may well be, as we want people to educate themselves to aim for socialism for themselves, rather than lead them into being followers, as the Left-wing and capitalist supporting parties seem to do. We tell people 'don't vote for us as a 'protest' vote, only as a recognition of your understanding of the case for socialism.

 Britain's oldest socialist party, the S.P.G.B., has no leaders and all their meetings are open to the public, including Executive Committee meetings. The E.C. act as housekeepers, but do not run or govern the party. Only the members can make policy by individual Party poll. It is effectively ruled by the members, who have to satisfy the party they know what socialism is and is not, before they can join, as each member's vote carries equal weight.

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

The Socialist Party is focused upon the solution of socialism, free from the tyranny of markets, waged slavery and private, corporate or state ownership of resources, and the establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth, by and in the interest of the whole community, rather than a perpetuation of the same old repeated reformist non-solutions. Within Labour and Left parties,you won't have any socialist policy, but a recipe for reforms of capitalism. However well-meaning they are bound to fail. Capitalist politics are designed for the reproduction of capitalist rule.

 To change this we need to move into a post-capitalist narrative, in preparation for a (re-callable) delegated democratic, free access, post capitalist future. Socialism will be a system which would not have money, other than as a curiosity for decorating the living rooms, or in showcases in museums of antiquity, for children to learn how we wealth producers (labour) kept ourselves enslaved within a waged system in which the wealth producers (labour) received a waged ration of the collective produce and the idle parasite class (capitalists) received the bulk of the wealth produced. We collectively 'make' or build, everything. Why do we, the workers, the 99%, 'have to' buy anything, when all wealth comes from labour?

 No form of capitalism can be made to work in the interests of all. It never could be so. It is critically dependent upon the maximisation of exploited labour, from which all wealth derives, including the state, the armed forces, to protect the spoils and engage in competition with other capitalist nations and alliances, for raw materials and to plunder resources to the brink of war and beyond. It is a utopian fantasy that there is such a thing, as a 'fair days pay for a fair days work' or even a 'right to work'. Capitalism nevertheless put in place the technology and the necessity for an educated skilled workforce to run it, within its restricted remit of, production for the profit of the minority.

 But workers now run capitalism from top to bottom and are more than capable of running the new society without elites. So the capitalist class are superfluous to the production process, a mere parasite class, redundant in the process and we can take it all over and have a production for the use of all, free access society with no need to compete with and against others, thus ending the rat race of war and all the other aspects of capitalism. The biggest catastrophe for the labour movement, (as opposed to the Labour Party,) is that the workers elected a capitalist party to reform capitalism, rather than electing themselves to remove capitalism with its inevitable war and poverty. You do not need leaders. It is a capitalist political snare.

"I am not a Labor Leader; I do not want you to follow me or anyone else; if you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of this capitalist wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I led you in, some one else would lead you out. You must use your heads as well as your hands, and get yourself out of your present condition; as it is now the capitalists use your heads and your hands."- Eugene V. Debs

 Workers already run capitalism from top-to-bottom. We can run the new post-capitalist, commonly-owned, free-access society without any hierarchies. Capitalism is not forever. However the fact of it ,is that our unmanageable market-system its instability-prone outcomes, propels capitalist apologists to try and justify its excesses within parameters which ensure its continuation and reproduction. This drains many of their critical capacity to envision the post-capitalist future potential of the whole human species. Competition for markets, trade routes and raw materials with its attendant ever present threats of war, big and small, gluts, depression, booms and busts, redundancy and overwork, poverty actual, absolute and relative, in the midst of potential of plenty. Production for profit of the few, can be swiftly be replaced by production for use by all.

 Freedom from the anarchic tyranny of markets, in conditions of waged slavery for the profit of a few, replaced by production for use by free workers, to satisfy the needs of humanity. Rationed access by prices, for the producers of wealth, replaced by free access according to self-determined needs. Privileged ownership by individuals, corporation, states replaced by common ownership by us all. Government 'over' us to protect the privileges of the few and limit our democratic impulses within those which best serve the continued dominance of privilege, rather than the democratic freedoms of a delegated administration over things and resources by true social equals. If you are born poor you will die poor, generally speaking and relatively speaking, with few exceptions. If you are born into the parasite capitalist owning class, you will die richer than when you were born, with few exceptions.

Capitalism cannot be regulated, reformed and cured of its booms, busts, wars, and inequality of outcomes, as it thrives upon those, as essential for its existence. We have not experimented with socialism/communism. But ‘They’ have experimented with either developing capitalism in a state capitalist format, (successfully being seen as a threat, to the other older capitalist models, not in any ideological sense but as competing trade or competing geopolitical threats to the dominant existing ones) or experimented as a Utopian/Owenite style meddling/tinkering with capitalism, in the social democratic interventionist regulationist models of the Labour party or Scandinavian parties, in the hope of achieving more equitable outcomes. Nor can it be captured by vanguardist elements in Jacobin/Lenin leaderist style revolutions, (leadership is a capitalist political principle) as this folly will only repeat previous systems of elite class dominance over the mass of populations.

 But capitalism can and must, be superseded by a new society, emerging with its technological capacities for production intact, with the immense majority in favour, consciously opting for a real functioning democracy of social equals, in relation to the ownership and control of societal outputs of production. Of course we can delegate specialist functions rather than spend time nattering, but the delegates must be instantly recallable.

 The world’s workers not only produce all of the world’s wealth, but we run capitalism from top to bottom. We manage it and make decisions on behalf of the minority capitalist class. We are more than capable of running the new society, utilising its informational technology, in conditions of common ownership of the means of production and distribution and collective common ownership of the resulting output of production for use, within a genuine democratic framework of genuine social equality, with free access to the collective produce. Those post- capitalist conditions of real social and economic freedom for all, will ensure a flowering of humanity, the advancement of creative and scientific solutions, such as the world has never seen. We have a world to win.

The socialist model is not Utopian but a matter of class interest. The last great emancipation will be that of the wage slaves, as we have a free access world to make and win. As William Morris explained:
“One man with an idea in his head is in danger of being considered a madman: two men with the same idea in common may be foolish, but can hardly be mad; ten men sharing an idea begin to act, a hundred draw attention as fanatics, a thousand and society begins to tremble, a hundred thousand and there is war abroad, and the cause has victories tangible and real; and why only a hundred thousand? Why not a hundred million and peace upon the earth? You and I who agree together, it is we who have to answer that question.”

The great appear great because we are on our knees: Let us rise. Stand tall, Look around and Demand change – Your survival depends on it.  

Wee Matt
Edinburgh Br.




Friday, March 11, 2016

The Need for a New Economic System

We have imprisoned ourselves by not looking at making the post-capitalist commonly owned future. It is a question of seizing the present ownership and control of the means and instruments for creating and distributing wealth, in combination with production for sale on a market, in conditions of waged-slavery, for the immense majority, from minority, private, corporate or state ownership and control. By making them the common property of all, with production for use, in conditions of democratic re callable delegated organisation with free access and doing away with wages and prices altogether, whether social wages or any other rationing of access we can make a society of relative superabundance. It is in our own hands. We don't need leaders to lead us up the garden path, but thinkers. We have a world to win.

Capitalism cannot be made nicer and reforms will always be clawed back as the busts are just as much a part of capitalism as the booms. Unions are a part of capitalism. Necessary though they are, they are not yet revolutionary until we become revolutionary, in our outlook and begin to realise the building of the post-capitalist future we wish to see. We need to move to a genuine commonly owned society, not some top down nationalised statist relic of the past, retaining waged slavery, but one where all wealth production and distribution is for use and owned in common, not privately, by corporations or by the state, with democratic control of resources in conditions of free access. Real common ownership is effectively non ownership. In a production for use society money will be redundant, as wages and prices are a part of the market system of production for sale. Money will be unnecessary in a commonly owned, post-capitalist, production for use society.

Away with your capitalist catechism of received absolute truths. Capitalism inevitably divides humanity through wars, racism, sexism, and class antagonism Poverty, absolute and relative, is entrenched within the capitalist system in the enrichment and service of the economic parasite capitalist class whose watchword is Accumulate, accumulate!. War in capitalism, is 'business by other means', a consequence of capitalist competition, and arises out of competition between rival capitalist entities organised in nations, trade blocs, spheres of geo-political interest in the battle for , raw materials, securing of trade routes and economic and politically dominant privilege to further, all those ends. Nothing is forever, there is no absolute truth, social systems come and go, just as chattel slavery gave way to feudalism and feudalism in turn was superseded by capitalism , so too will capitalism's obsolete excrescence of waged slavery perish in arrival of its post-capitalist nemesis. The revolutionary antithesis of capitalism is a post-capitalist society, socialism, not as an idealistic panacea, but as a sensible process of overcoming humanity’s divisions and building economic and social democracy, where the resources and productive capacity of the world belong to its people, who use them to meet human needs rather than to generate private profits for a few owners.

The post-capitalist revolution will be the task of the immense majority, using the flawed , 'representative' democratic means available, (democracy, capitalism's Achilles heel, if you like) to usher in the new society and as it is a commonly owned one, seizing all the advances of capitalist technology and communications structures, with an educated, politically aware working class, (who already run capitalism from top to bottom) then proceeding to delegatory democracy, without ruling elites with free access to the social product, we eliminate the flaws which characterized minority led revolution. We have a productive capacity capable of feeding clothing and sheltering and protecting all of the inhabitants of this planet in conditions of superabundance deployed in the service of a minority parasite class. Capitalism is based on exploitation, on paying workers less than the value they produce, and pocketing the difference, the surplus value.


Wee Matt

Monday, January 04, 2016

Dissolve all governments and elect yourselves


The first in a series of compilations of comments placed in the Guardian by Wee Matt of Edinburgh branch.

"Rise, like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number!
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you:
Ye are many—they are few!"
Shelley

Social systems do not 'naturally' arise, but are a consequence of technology and class struggle. All previous revolutions have been minority led ones thus, establishing new ruling elites. The post capitalist revolution will be the work of the immense majority, the abolition of waged slavery and the ending of elites and privilege, with the establishment of common ownership and free access to the wealth created under conditions of democratic control over resources by all.

 Nothing is forever, including capitalism. It is an obsolete and outmoded method of production. It can never satisfy human needs while retaining private, corporate or state ownership of resources and the means and instruments for producing wealth as its mode of production, can only satisfy market requirements and not human needs. The ideas of capitalism, overthrowing feudal relations and the Divine Right of Kings, would have seemed a fantasy in feudal times.

 The bourgeois democracy brought in by capitalism, is its own Achilles heel. The educated working class who presently produce all of the wealth, but do not own it, who run capitalism from top to bottom, yet it is not in their own interests, but the interests of a privileged minority, will dig the grave of capitalism. The wealth producers 99%, are compelled to wage-enslaved production (for sale) of wealth for the 1% capitalist parasitic class. The interests of the 99% lies in removing ownership and control from the 1% and establishing a commonly owned society. Nothing will stop an idea which time has come.

 Our present system of society is fraught with contradictions. We have the technological potential to adequately feed, clothe, house and provide a decent life for every man, woman and child on Earth, yet instead of abundance for all there exists poverty, insecurity and misery for the vast majority.

At the heart of all these social problems is the conflict between the need to accumulate and reproduce capital on one hand and the need to fulfill human want on the other. Productive activity is mediated through the mechanism of market exchange, so production ceases when profit fails to be realised, not when human need is satisfied. Instead of directly co-ordinating to fulfil its needs, humanity is dominated by the blind imperatives of an economic system. If humanity as a whole were to democratically take control of the productive apparatus of society and free its operations from the constraints of the profit motive, an already existing, but as yet untapped potential for abundance could be realised.

This would of course entail a complete transformation in property relations. Instead of a society based on minority control, production for profit, and market exchange, we would have one based on common ownership and production for need. Instead of being mediated through the market system, production decisions would be co-ordinated directly according to the self-defined needs of global society, and the means of production belong to everybody.

The capitalist system deliberately depresses wages in an economic downturn. Damn all to do with our fellow workers from other lands. Instead of slavishly scapegoating fellow workers, we should get up off our knees, be making common cause with workers of all lands and none, to remove this iniquitous system of capitalism with its 'production for sale to profit a minority owning parasite class. There is no such thing as middle class. Even if you have a huge mortgage almost paid and send young Dimkins to a private school. If you have to work for a wage or salary you are working class. Wages/salaries (rations) are just so much food, clothing, shelter, and enough if you have any kids to bring them up to be the next generation of wage slaves. They are set at a rate which ensure you show up of more exploitation in order to survive while you employer gets rich from selling off the (unpaid) surplus value you produce. Tax is not our problem. You only ever get the bottom line in your pay cheque. Taxation is a burden upon the employing class, so sod 'em. If by some stroke the nominal tax (the top line) paid by your employer was reduced, so too would your wages. Wages are subsistence payments.

 Meanwhile the parasite class are creaming off all of the surplus wealth which is created by the working class. We need to take the ownership of the wealth producing and distribution capacity from the hands of the parasite class, whether individuals, combinations, states or corporations and make them owned by us all in common, within a democratic, classless, post-capitalist framework of production for use instead of for sale with free access by all to the collective wealth.

We have been able to do this since the start of the 20th century, but settled for reforms instead or state capitalist solutions. State provision has damn all to do with 'socialism'. Most people think it means some kind of reformist capitalism with a vague 'fair do's' for the worker, or if they are on the 'Left' some kind of state ownership of resources.

 Communism/Socialism, (the terms are interchangeably), is a democratic, commonly owned, production for use, money-free, post- capitalist society which has yet to arrive and not to be confused, with the post-feudal state capitalist regime of the Soviets era, or the reform capitalism of the Labour Party or Social-Democratic parties of Europe. The NHS is a product of capitalism, designed to be cheaper for the capitalist class, employers etc. than private healthcare insurance options. Realistically within capitalism, we could have massive council house building projects, but there would be screams of rage from those whose profit was affected, the same parasite capitalist builders who prosecuted the Shrewsbury workers, also from those whose house values were eroded and yet another government would eventually try to rein this in. Capitalism cannot be reformed. Profit is paramount.

 The Socialist Party does not advocating a ‘citizens wage’, indeed, it wishes to abolish the wages system in its entirety and establish a commonly owned world. If wage or salary earners are paid £100 a week by the government, they can use this income to maintain themselves; which means that the employer will be relieved of having to include an amount to cover this expenditure in the wage packet or salary cheque. Economic forces will therefore tend to ensure that wages and salaries fall to a level which, when added to Basic Income, will allow the employee to maintain him or herself. In other words, wages or salaries would become sufficient only to top up Basic Income to the economically determined level. Or, put the other way round, Basic Income (like Family Allowances today) would be a subsidy to employers, and a massive one at that.

 Free access would be a much more direct way of ensuring that people were freed from material insecurity than the impractical Basic Income Scheme proposed by the reformist parties. It would also involve, as a corollary, the transformation of work. Instead of working for wages to produce profits for an employer, people will be able to co-operate to produce what they really needed. In fact such direct production for use, replacing production for sale and the profit motive, is the only possible framework within which we can satisfy our needs in an ecologically acceptable way. For, with the end of production for sale will go also the pressure for blind economic growth generated by the competitive struggle for profits.
“The watchword of Capital Accumulate! Accumulate!”- Marx

The socialist answer would be to allow people free access to the common store of wealth set aside for personal consumption, according to what they themselves judged to be their reasonable needs. Other needs would be satisfied on the same basis. Houses and flats would be rent-free, with heating, lighting and water supplied free of charge. Transport, communications, health care and education would be organised as free public services. There need be no admission charges to museums, parks, libraries and other places of entertainment and recreation. Socialism has NEVER existed anywhere, to have had its time. 
Even Tony Benn acknowledged that “The Labour party has never been a socialist party, although there have always been socialists in it – a bit like Christians in the Church of England.” 
The Labour Party has never been a socialist party but reformist capitalist one. Socialism has never been tried or existed. All you have ever had were attempts to tame capitalism's worst excesses and those failed because capitalism cannot be reformed. 

The Russian revolution was a post-feudal one, not a post-capitalist one.

"State capitalism would be a step forward for us." - Lenin
"What you have is state capitalism." John Foster Dulles to Nikita Khruschev

 Engels and Marx would have no problem seeing that as a bourgeois revolution without a huge emerging bourgeois capitalist class, the intelligentsia and the State stepping into the breach. Real Marxists in the UK, the S.P.G.B., called it state capitalism in 1918.

 If production were geared directly to supplying needs, it would eventually tend to platform off at a level sufficient to provide for current needs and repairing and maintaining the existing stock of means of production. Abolish the wages system, we have a commonly-owned world to win. If there are wages and salaries, it is not socialism. State ownership is not socialism. Social programmes are not socialism. Socialism means democracy at all levels of society, including the workplace. Socialism means a wage-free, money-free society. Socialism means voluntary labour. Socialism means free access to the goods produced by society. Millions already engage in voluntary work. In any case, with production for use, we can accelerate the production of necessities and so have free access to all we need and require. It would be no problem. Food to eat, houses to live in, medicine for the sick, rather than for sale for the profit of a minority with access rationed via wages, as presently. What are waiting for? Another capitalist fallout leading to World War 3 and more war-science on civilians such as Nagasaki and Hiroshima by the ‘good’ guys?

"The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor" - Voltaire
"..capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt"  - Marx



Friday, October 09, 2015

Money free, wage free, market free

It is at the point of production exploitation takes place. Robert Tressell's ‘Ragged Trousered Philanthropists’ piece on waged slavery is still applicable today.

Poverty is both actual and relative.

Capitalism is global and will continue to exploit locally and globally to extract surplus value from the workers it employs on a waged rationed access basis. It must 'exploit or die' its watchword, Accumulate! Accumulate!
"…capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt". (Marx)

We need to have a dialogue with fellow workers worldwide, and make our common cause about abolishing waged slavery and establishing a post-capitalist commonly owned world of free access for all, in re callable delegated democratic conditions of social equality.

Capitalism cannot be reformed and must be replaced, by a post-capitalist society, a commonly-owned, production-for-use, not a for-sale society.
Which has free access to the common produce.
Which is a money free, wage free, market free society.
Which has delegated democracy over the control of resources. Not representative democracy over people.

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

The Socialist Party of Great Britain speakers, who had a platform in Royal Exchange Square in Glasgow on most Saturday afternoons espoused the unequivocal case for socialism. They were and still are, the only political party who don't want to be leaders or 'guvnors', insisting, 'don't vote for us if you don't understand', that the task of bringing in socialism is the task of the working class themselves and pointed to self-education allied with political action as the means of self-liberation.

Edinburgh Branch

Monday, May 15, 2017

Putting world socialism on the ballot

Those who would like to vote the Socialist Party, invariably cast their votes no matter how reluctantly for the candidate most likely to ensure the defeat of the Tory. What is the difference between the Labour Tweedledee and the Tory Tweedledum?

The return of a Socialist Party candidate does not then mean the immediate realisation of a programme of palliatives commonly set before the electors by the rest of the parties. The election of a Socialist Party member to any public body at present, is only valuable in so far as it is the return of a disturber of the political peace. Until socialism attains a foothold any seat captured must simply be regarded as a means of spoiling the political intrigues and games played by the politicians.

As William Morris wrote: “I believe that the Socialists will certainly send members to Parliament when they are strong enough to do so: in itself I see no harm in that, so long as it is understood that they go there as rebels...”

For the third time in as many years we are being asked to make a decision for the capitalist class. Last year it was whether Britain PLC should or should not remain in the capitalist EU.

The year before it was about which set of professional politicians should run the state machine on behalf of the capitalist class. Now, we are being asked to do this again.
But, in voting to continue with capitalism, those who bother to vote will be voting for the problems in fields such as housing, health care, education and the environment to continue, because the root cause of these problems is capitalism and its economic imperative to put making profits before satisfying people's needs.

Britain's oldest socialist party,the Socialist Party of Great Britain (1904) consists of working men and women and has no funding save from its own donations.

It has no leaders and has no wish for followers either and never has done, it holds that the emancipation of the working calss is the task of the working class itself.

A vote for the SPGB candidate or writing “world socialism” across your ballot paper says a plague on all the parties of capitalism and is a vote for your self emacipation.

We do not want a mere protest vote, but an active politically conscious one supporting the democratic post-capitalist society, of common ownership,(not state ownership), production for use and free access run by our selves, not governments over people but the people administering over the commonly owned resources.

But, except in the few constituencies where they will be candidates standing for this, namely these 3 seats in the coming General Election: Islington North, Battersea, and Swansea West, we shan't be voting for any of the candidates on offer but instead casting a write-in vote for "world socialism" by writing this across our ballot paper.

Socialism is an advanced post-capitalist society of common ownership, production for use and free access. Money or any other means of exchange will be unnecessary with the abolition of waged slavery, the last great emancipation taht of the wage slaves, and free access to the commonly owned wealth being the normative distribution method overseen by us all in a recallable delegatory democratic framework as an administration by the people over the commonly owned resources, rather than government over the people, in the interests of and by an elite parasite class.

World Socialism – is a revolutionary advancement for the human species which will make 21st century capitalism look like the Dark Ages, yet the debate is not yet out in the open. Hardly anyone dares conceive of a society after capitalism, so powerful is its hold on the collective mind. But we dare.

Wee Matt/AJJ


Wednesday, November 30, 2016

What is Money

Money is merely a means of exchange, in a commonly owned world, where production is for use, no means of exchange would be necessary access could be free and, money would be in the museums of antiquity.

The monetary system has evolved gradually and has been in existence as a system for about 250 years in England and for a much shorter period abroad. We make a distinction between the ancient coinage of Greece, Carthage and Rome, which although used to effect the exchange of commodities was at that period incidental to the main stream of an exchange system which was based on surpluses and barter.

As a general social form, money developed alongside the development of commodity production, and at the point in history when all wealth was produced in the form of commodities money became the universal medium or equivalent through which all exchange transactions were carried out.

The first condition for the introduction of a monetary system is when social products become commodities, i.e. articles produced for sale and exchange. It is quite obvious that commodities cannot go to the market on their own. As they are owned by someone or other, he is the person who will take or send them there.

Likewise, there are other owners of commodities carrying out a similar function. Each will recognize the other as a private proprietor — that is, they respect each other’s rights to dispose of the social product to their own immediate advantage. Eventually they embellish their right through a set of legal relations:

"This juridical relation, which thus expresses itself in a contract, whether such contract be part of a developed legal system or not, is a relation between two wills, and is but the reflex of the real economical relation between the two. It is this economical relation that determines the subject matter in each such juridical act." (Marx, Capital Vol. I, p. 96. Kerr ed.)

 Read the chapter on Money on Capital, on how money is transformed into capital. Money by itself is not capital.
 The transformation of Money into Capital

Wealth is torrented upwards to the owners of the means of producing and distributing it. It is created by the wage slaves but rationed out to them in the form of wages and salaries based upon the value of the workers commodity, 'labour power'.

The value of a commodity, even the workers commodity, is dependent upon the amount of 'socially necessary' labour time incorporated within it. (Note value and price are not the same thing.) Exploitation takes place at the point of production. This labour power produces a surplus value for the employer which is realised on the market place. This is so even if the employee is engaged in non-manufacturing, say a service industry as they are a part of supporting the wealth generating sector or a part of its maintainance, say as health workers.

Capitalists are not 'bad’ people, it is not a question of morality, but rather, the necessity of capital to accumulate arises out of its economic class interest, which can only be done so from exploiting the workers disadvantaged economic situation (i.e. non-ownership of the means of production and distribution) for their capacity to produce surplus value, when exploited for waged rations. We are not making a moral argument, but a class one.

Wee Matt

Sunday, July 10, 2016

Time to wake up.

The working class are the engine of social change. Basically if one has to work for a wage or salary in order to live, they are a part of the working class. (90-95%) If one owns or inherits, sufficient resources, investment, capital, means of producing wealth by exploiting others, they are members of the parasite capitalist class (5-10%). (We are not speaking of pensioners here.)

All wealth is created by the working class being exploited, by virtue of their necessity to work, in order to live, for a wage or salary (ration) to produce a surplus value over what they earn, which is then sold on the market to realise a profit for the parasite class. This is true whether they work by hand or by brain, in industry or in services supporting industry. Once the working class begin to see themselves as the engine for social change they will be able to usher in a new post-capitalist society of common ownership and democratic control, over the means of producing and distributing wealth, with production for use and free access for all.

The Labour Party is the liberal party. It was formed from them with some trade union support. It never was a socialist party, it stood and still stands for wage-slavery. The Labour Party is irrelevant, except as a capitalist party of business offering some piece-meal reforms. Who produces all the wealth, manages and runs capitalism from top to bottom? The working class that is who. The Labour Party doesn't have to become a party of the liberal left, it is and always has been so, under the misapprehension that capitalism can be reformed in some meaningful way. It was never a socialist party but a reformist one.

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

Corbyn/Sanders “Democratic Socialism” has never existed. You are describing reform capitalism with mixtures of state capitalism and regulated free capitalism. Those still retained waged slavery, production for sale etc. still essentially class societies with exploitation an essential component of it. Venezuela has damn all to do with socialism. It is a capitalism, with state capitalistic control of some industries and attempts to reform some of the hideous consequences of capitalism. No more socialist than Bismarck's Germany was.

Socialism/communism is a post-capitalist society which will not have any government over people but will be a commonly owned, democratic resource-based economy with decisions made locally, regionally and globally by the people themselves using recallable delegation where necessary in world bodies such as WHO. It has nothing to do with the Left wing state capitalist, Leninist nonsense of the former soviet blocs or the British state capitalist post-war nationalising reforms of capitalism, which serves as a useful straw man for capitalist politicians, to prevent workers engaging with the real case for socialism, a post -capitalist settlement of human affairs.

If you need a leader, strong or otherwise, you are a part of the problem.

" Rise, like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number!
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you:
Ye are many—they are few!" (Shelley)

We then can dissolve all governments over people and elect ourselves to administer resources in a resource based free access economy without social classes or parasitic elites. We have the World to win, a post-capitalist society to make. We can dispense with nation states and all government over people, when we have a commonly owned, production for use, free access, post-capitalist society organised upon the tenet of, "From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs". Governments would wither away into an "administration of things", with recallable delegation where required.


Wee Matt

Friday, January 08, 2016

De omnibus dubitandum

 Compilation of comments from the Guardian placed by Wee Matt

"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles."

 Marx and Engels are spot on there. Marx saw the struggle of the bourgeoisie to win power from the landed aristocracy as inevitable. It heralded, not just the birth of capitalism, but its assumption of power as an economic and political class, which would in turn help develop the forces of production changing them from the small handyman craft productive systems into the socialised production methods with a skilled educated workforce, however unconsciously this heralded the possibility, that they may be eventually captured by the subject wealth producer working class. Now, we workers, run capitalism from top-to-bottom. A free access society of common ownership and democratic control has been possible since the start of the 20th century. A change of ownership from elites, individuals, corporations, states, to common ownership, is a simple matter of changing political awareness and consciousness to this end, as in the ultimate self-interest, of all of humanity.

 As a preview of globalisation and a snapshot of methods applied to get there, Marx had this to say:
"...And whereas in the sixteenth century, and partly still in the seventeenth, the sudden expansion of trade and the creation of a new world market had an overwhelming influence on the defeat of the old mode of production and the rise of the capitalist mode, this happened in reverse on the basis of the capitalist mode of production, once it had been created. The world market itself forms the basis for this mode of production. On the other hand, the immanent need that this has to produce on an ever greater scale drives it to the constant expansion of the world market, so that now it not trade that revolutionizes industry, but rather industry that constantly revolutionizes trade. Moreover, commercial supremacy is now linked with greater or lesser prevalence of the conditioned for large-scale industry…. In India, moreover, the English applied their direct political and economic power, as masters and landlords, to destroying these small economic communities." (Capital Vol.3)

 On the franchise, in 1879 Marx commented:
"The point was not to pursue the franchise as though it were a Workers' Holy Grail, but to transform it from the institute of fraud . . . into an instrument of emancipation"
Adding:
"We cannot, therefore, co-operate with people who openly state that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves"

 Marx's analysis of capitalism is acknowledged, even by some conservatives, who do not agree with his conclusions as influential, formative, groundbreaking, pioneering, original, creative, innovative works. He was never meant to be read uncritically. His favourite aphorism was, "de dubitas dubitandum" (doubt everything).

 The notion that inequalities can be legislated away is a fanciful one. Inequality is a prerequisite for the exploitation of waged slaves. Exploitation takes place at the point of production in order to satisfy the needs of the parasite capitalist class to Accumulate! Accumulate! Supply and demand are artificially induced by inequality inbuilt into the system.  Workers 'never' receive the value of their commodity (labour power). So true demand never equates with actual human needs, only with purchasing power. Production is turned off, before needs can be met in the interests of the profit of the parasite class, who individually, corporately, collectively and through state control in state-capitalist command economies, own the means of production and distribution. All wealth flows from labour. Capital (stolen surplus-value in a rigged market) is an encumbrance upon the satisfaction of human needs, as the needs of Capital require the exploitation of the majority along with attendant war, policing and the curtailment of freedom to be available for exploitative waged slavery upon pain of penury.

 Socialism is a post-capitalist world which indeed may be one of a superabundance of the necessities of living a useful and productive life free from wage-slavery, poverty, the booms, busts, wars and other attendant social ills of capitalism. “We'll look after you cradle to the grave,” was the promise of the capitalist class to the wage-slaves. They can’t afford that and we can't afford them. Don't settle for crumbs. Inequality has nothing all to do with immigration.

 Workers from the UK work elsewhere in the world including the E.U. The capitalist class as a whole supports the free movement of labour, if and when profitable, except when this proves unpopular, but it can then be used by their political opportunists and lackeys to scapegoat my fellow workers, rather than the instigators of the poverty and terror they flee from. We all have more in common with fellow workers worldwide than any of our home-grown capitalist economic blood-sucking class.

 Inequality is an essential component of capitalism in order that we are subject to waged slavery to enrich the parasite capitalist class. It is the capitalist class of social leeches who are the enemy and not our fellow workers from overseas or at home. The poor are the essential part of creating the wealth for the rich. It is from labour that all wealth is derived. Capitalism cannot be reformed in any lasting way. To remove the blight of poverty disease and war from the planet we must hasten, the introduction of common ownership and democratic control of production and distribution.

 There is no middle class. The middle class were the rising mercantile class and industrialists who became the upper class as they merged with the aristocrats and landowners in 19th and very early 20th century. The common perception of higher paid, white collar workers, academics, doctors, scientists etc. as constituting a 'middle' class with interests separate from other workers is a false one in general economic and political interest terms. 'Intellectuals' are just as likely to be and identify themselves as, working class. That they 'have to' sell their 'mental and physical' energies for a wage or a salary is a determination of their actual class position, even if they are falsely categorised within a mystical middle class category. Marx learned his socialism from the workers already organised for it and drew his lessons from the actuality of the slaughter of those workers.

 Taxation more or less, government spending more or less, is essentially an argument between small-fry tiddler capitalists losers, too irrelevant for to be swallowed up by, bigger fish capitalists winners with the ear of government, who would hope to be swallowed up by conglomerate sharks, the latter two being the vested interests capitalist governments listen to and of course, the masters of war. If one 'has to' work for a wage or salary, even if one sends young Dimkins to a private school and owns a dwelling with or without a mortgage, we have more interests in common with workers worldwide than with the local regional or global capitalist class.

 'We' the public at large, do not sponsor the state, except in local community charges and VAT through taxation. It is the capitalist class as a whole from their profits who sponsor the state. It is precisely because of the dominant interests of the capitalist class as a whole, the state cannot be reformed to represent a common interests of 'We'. That this assent to be governed 'over' has to be won in a bourgeois democracy via an extended franchised plebiscite, (won through trade unions and political struggle) only makes it a necessity for the P.R. pretence that we share a common purpose vis-a-vis taxation and the like. It is a manipulated delusion, that taxation should be a concern of the vast majority, which disguises the real interests of those ruling groups, upon whose interests governments govern over us. Your employer pays all of it, as it is deducted before you receive it. Your wage/salary IS the bottom line. If by government magic the 'nominal' tax you pay was removed your wage/salary ration would be reduced, as this would mean an increase in the bottom line and the employer won't pay twice for the upkeep of their government and give you a rise. The adjustment is to ensure if you are single, unmarried etc. you don't get the same ration as someone with kids (future wage-slaves) to support etc.

 Who sponsors the state? The capitalist class. Many are obsessed with the incorrect idea that the state and its government is an independent entity. The state springs up from the interests of dominant ruling class groups, from the days of kings and princes, to the rise of the merchant adventurers and then the capitalist class, now global in their reach to ensure the best governments money can buy. The state Genie is out of the bottle and it is now a local, regional and global capitalist one. You cannot tame it, or put it back in the bottle and retain wage slavery, with production for sale on the market. The state and government 'over' the people will not cease to exist until those states are captured by the worlds workers to prevent bloodshed, the last great emancipation, that of the wage slaves and the world is owned in common as true social and economic equals, in a class free , access free, wage- slavery free society and thus the dominant capitalist class and economic interests groups cease to exist as a class, as all of our interests will then be in common, to produce for use according to our capacity and access according to our needs. The state and governments will be redundant in the moneyless classless society.

Thursday, January 18, 2007

A Bit of Light Relief





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


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


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


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


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


Friday, May 26, 2017

Capitalism is not forever.

Sham solutions, Shameless capitalism

Left and Right are a part of the same capitalist shithole. Instead the Socialist Party stands dedicated to achieving the following objective:
"The establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community." 

This post-capitalist society of social equals, will not require rationing of access to social wealth, via waged slavery, based upon ability to pay for them, but will proceed from a production for use, free access principle of:
"From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs."

We are addressing the need of a post-capitalist society utilising the existing available and future technology, which capitalism cannot do, as it would implode and lead to war (over-dumping, trade routes and raw materials).

 One run by us all in common, (no governments over people) with free access (no rationing by wage or prices) to the collectively produced super-abundance, that this would produce from a production for use society, and not some state capitalist monstrosity such as existed in post-feudal experiments such as Russia was.

 Because the rate of exploitation is greater, with the intensification and new technology as capitalism’s productive forces have outgrown the production relation, this means capitalism has achieved its limited potential, of creating the possibility for its own obsolescent redundancy and the new post-capitalist society of super-abundance and free access is now more than possible, as it has been since the start of last century.

 We do not need decadent 'Capital' any more as we presently, the world’s working class 95%, run society from top to bottom and are quite capable of running the new post-capitalist era without elites.

 The employer has the upper hand always. Do you not understand what wage slavery means. The choice is work or dole. It is time we stopped expecting politicians to deliver salvation for us and took ownership and control into our collective hands to end the capitalist system, the immense majority being self-led and using democratic means, the end of governments over people and utilisation of this political awareness to have the people themselves administer over things, utilising recallable delegates when necessary.

You have to make a mental leap from considering how things are done today, with standing armies and competing local, regional and global interests allied with anarchic production for sale market allocation for the benefit of 1-5% minority privileged owning groups, with the majority in waged enslaved conditions of rationed access to the wealth they collectively produce, into commonly owned production for use cooperative, global, regional and local, endeavours with free access and the situation is resolved into cooperative allocations and sharing of raw materials as opposed to warring competition.

The material productive forces of society have come into conflict with the existing relations of production. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations have turned into their fetters or, in other words, the productive forces have outgrown the production relation.

But nothing will stop an idea which time has come.

All wealth comes from the world's working class.

The capitalist class, liberals or neo-cons, are an economic parasite class.

That class is easily removable when the workers of the world aspire to a free access, democratically controlled, commonly owned world where production is for the use of everyone to satisfy all human needs, where the organising principle is:
"All for All".

Wee Matt
FOR A MONEY-FREE WORLD