Should revolutionaries standin elections ?

I thought i'd share this excelletn piece by A-Fed Scotland who put a very convincing case for organising outside of elections and for me this is the best critique of leftists who stand in elections in a long while and is worth a read. "By Mike Sabot in a personal capacity. The original article by Ben Wray (ISG) is here. http://internationalsocialist.org.uk/index.php/2014/03/the-case-for-an-electoral-party/ The only reliable and sustainable basis on which to build a left party is to orientate it towards the only democratic institutions that everyone can engage in and the only institutions that have democratic authority over society – parliamentary elections. In Scotland that means, most importantly, Holyrood. Generally those in the parliamentary left don’t attempt to justify why they participate in elections and see it not only as a useful form of action but, in fact, the primary means of bringing about fundamental social change. It’s just what socialists do, right? Ben Wray should be thanked for elaborating on this. Nonetheless, I’d argue that his case for an electoral party is contradictory and rests on a number of unfounded assumptions. I doubt I can change his mind, but I do think it’s possible and really important that more people are brought around to libertarian communist politics. That means organising as a class where it matters, outside and against parliament. I’ll try and keep this brief and directly respond to some of the points made. Let’s start at the very end of the piece where it’s said that the broad idea is that of ‘challenging the system at its point of greatest weakness: the governmental level’. It seems a bit odd that I need to make this argument, but assuming we’re talking about capitalism here, surely other socialists would agree that the working class is strongest at the point of production and at work in general. It’s there that we can disrupt capital, through organising we can force our demands on employers, or harm their profits through threats of collective action, and actual striking, go-slows, sabotage etc. This isn’t to say that organising around unpaid labour, in our neighbourhoods and against oppressions isn’t absolutely essential and isn’t just as important to transform society, but we need to try to link these struggles to the strategic site of production and work. By contrast, the influence we can have as a class at the level of government is minimal, except where our extra-parliamentary movements can ‘wring’ reforms out of it. Some leftists will recoil immediately, arguing that ‘parliament isn’t democratic, it doesn’t serve the people and the working class increasingly don’t trust it and don’t vote’. This is all true but it isn’t a convincing argument against engaging in parliamentary elections because there are no alternative democratic institutions which possess anywhere near the same democratic legitimacy in society as parliament does. On the one hand, it’s accepted that parliament isn’t ‘democratic’ but on the other, it still has ‘democratic legitimacy’ and is the only institution that ‘everyone can engage in’. In practice, the mainstream left really does accept and endorse parliament as democracy in action, or close enough, and that it’s possible to control it for progressive ends. Otherwise, why bother? But the critique of the institution isn’t explored because it’s seen as unrealistic to reject something which undeniably a) has real power, and b) is understood to be the political arena by the majority. This is what ‘democratic legitimacy’ really means here. The communist argument would be that you don’t start with what is seen as ‘legitimate’ or not, or where the majority are. It is axiomatic that, outside of a period of mass struggle, most people won’t seriously question existing social relations. Gradualist reform and social democracy will be seen as all that’s on offer. What works and how we can recreate a militant labour movement is a different question entirely. What are some basic points against electoralism? Most people can’t meaningfully engage in it. That’s the point. Representation takes decision-making power away from working class people and invests it in a small minority. This order-giver versus order-taker split is an expression of the wider class society. If they’re to be successful, electoral parties have to become ‘popular’ rather than ‘class’-based. They seek coalitions and try not to appear too radical to attract support. The more mainstream they become the greater the chance of gaining seats. Often these parties are mobilised behind a dominant personality with charisma and oratory skills. How exactly do you avoid the situation where some individuals accumulate more power or importance? Some like to argue that it’s possible to be both ‘on the streets’ and in parliament. In reality, parliament takes first place and tends to push out everything else. Where parties are involved in extra-parliamentary activity it’s usually to its detriment, by co-opting things or exploiting them. Whatever the manifesto of left-wing parties, parliament and government is concerned with the political management of capitalist society. It isn’t structurally possible to challenge capital through the state and it’s questionable to what extent reforms can be passed without the leverage of a militant labour movement, and in this conjuncture. The function of electoral parties on the left, arguing the case for a better-run capitalism – whatever the radical rhetoric – is to demobilize and divert from more serious threats, like rank-and-file direct action. Don’t get me wrong, I am not for becoming like the politicians. I believe representatives should take a workers wage; I believe they should be accountable to the community they are elected from None of these things would let the electoral party off the hook from ‘becoming like the politicians’. A workers’ wage doesn’t challenge the hierarchical relationship of representative to represented. And politicians speak all the time about being accountable but most people know this is meaningless. Only recallable delegates are genuinely accountable. Those who don’t vote aren’t setting up co-operatives to run communities or workers’ councils to run workplaces. Their process of re-engagement and democratic renewal will likely pass through parliamentary elections on their way to participatory democratic control of society, if we are to ever get there. Not voting isn’t important in itself, and for the growing distrust of politicians and the electoral process to achieve anything it would have to find expression in new forms of organising. But it’d be naive to think that participatory or direct democracy is something that will be proclaimed one day by parliament – handed down from above. Rather it needs to be prefigured in whatever struggle we’re involved in. The point is, however apparently dire our situation and despite the broad extra-parliamentary left being a small minority, it is both possible and absolutely necessary that we create new directly democratic institutions. Coming from a revolutionary unionist or syndicalist position, I see unions ‘as associations of workers’, rather than as representatives or service-providers, as probably the most crucial institutional forms for class struggle.* The fact that the trade union movement is so weak means that we actually have an opportunity to go about building a new labour movement controlled from below and rejecting collaboration with bosses. A false dichotomy is sometimes raised by the mainstream left that you either have to accept electoralism or you’re for some sort of revolutionary insurrection tomorrow. Instead, we need to take the long road of trying to spread militant rank-and-file organising, of winning small but significant victories and gaining strength. Whether it’s the IWGB in the Tres Cosas Campaign, the IWW in organising service workers or in setting up rank-and-file networks in, for example, the education sector, SolFed’s campaign against workfare – these are all examples of radical unions ‘as associations’ doing really inspiring work. I’d also add Glasgow SolNet’s direct action victories for private tenants and ECAP’s actions by and for claimants, as examples of union-like structures outside the workplace. Put it this way – what do you think the capitalist elite want us to do? Leave parliament to their mates and focus on extra-parliamentary activism, or challenge for democratic control over society? The question should answer itself. The history of left-wing electoral parties around the world is one where the elites were not threatened by their entry into parliament. In fact, in Britain, the Labour Party was welcomed by many existing parliamentarians as a reasonable, collaborative bunch who would help to control the extremists in the labour movement and work for the national good. They were right. The working class is strong to the extent that it is autonomous and can act in its own class interests outside of the state. Where left-wing electoral parties exist in parliament, the extra-parliamentary left should try to argue the case for class struggle politics with their grassroots, use pressure to gain concessions, and keep up a constant critique of the leadership. * For the difference, see the excellent SolFed pamphlet Fighting for Ourselves, pp 12-13." with thanks to A-Fed Scotland for this excellent critique of electoralism http://scotlandaf.wordpress.com/2014/03/04/quick-reply-to-the-case-for-an-electoral-party/

A thank you at Christmas

To all who have read this blog during the year and even just skimmed read bits I thank you for stopping by. This year has been an emotional one for me where politically I’ve transformed myself going from an out and out Marxist and Trotskyist in the Socialist party to ending it being in no party questioning party politicise and Marxism itself. 2013 has been a big year for myself looking back at may where I stood in a local election in the county council elections where I received beyond my wildest hopes I gained 59 votes in a huge Tory are whilst standing for TUSC. Whilst this blew me away I never thought this would change much locally and nationally I still feel TUSC are plugging away in vain with a lot of the oppositional votes going to labour for now and frankly their strategy and message is not working and I have explained this elsewhere. But for me attending various protests and meetings earlier in the year to now where my activism is on the low side of things it’s been a big year of change for me. Personally I’ve reached point where I am no longer as big into politics as I was but still keep a firm interest in such matters and am still as I’d call myself a socialist but maybe with al to of anti leadership ideas and a few more autonomous views where democracy matters a lot more to me now than before. I am a lot more of an independent critical thinker now than I was and I feel better for it. I am no longer under the control of an unappointed leadership who see themselves as leaders of us all. A new start and a new wave of thinking is breaking out on the left and many of the old left parties are in crisis and will face bigger upheavals in 2014 I feel as they fail to adapt to this new period we are entering. Now I’m free of all dogma’s and party controls I feel free to express myself as best I can and I am happier for it. I encourage others struggling with a oppressive top down party to break from it you will be better off for it trust me they are not the be all and end all as I’ve discovered they are ultimately holding us back I feel. As Karl Marx rightly pointed out only works can change society no one else no self appointed leaders or parties they can only lead us to state bureaucracy and less freedom as shown in the last century we must learn the lessons and not repeat our mistakes. I have a few irons in the fire and my political journey may not yet be over but 2014 looks to be another big year with European elections and the Scottish independence referendum to watch closely the next year looks to be shaping up to be another big one for many who have progressive outlook on things and look to turn things around for the working-class. A lot has happened in the last year and 2014 will be interesting for many reasons many events are yet to happen that we will have no idea they will happen but to ground ourselves in solidarity with our common people other workers and those oppressed right across the world is key. I understand now revolution is not around the corner for us in the UK but things can change very quickly and we must be awake to them but things do not just happen our ground work this year will influence watt happens next year. The fantastic work by students on campus’s up and down the land but notably in London and Brighton has set the path for bigger and better struggles next year for students against cops on campus and outsourcing too. This looks set to be another big battle ground of struggle for 2014 which we should keep our eye on. But going forward we cannot make big predictions as some do at the end of a year going into new one but what we can say is that workers may have suffered b big defeats in the past but there is no grantee they will go on suffering big defeats a time will come where there is a layer in society with not much left to loose who will be the first to really fight back and give this gov a scare and possibly upset the whole apple cart. I once again thank all for reading this blog this year and hope you can continue in to the New Year and offering your suggestions for improvements if possible. # Happy New Year and a safe and prosperous 2014 to all.

How powerful is global capitalism at present?

Well a very interesting question indeed as it would appear contradictory. On one hand you have a system which seems incredibly powerful and somewhat untouchable in terms of any real threat from an outside force from an opposing system. We used to have Stalinism of course in the east with the USSR and the Chinese totalitarian regimes which for all their brutal dictatorial and clamping down on freedoms and democracy at least offered the idea that there was at least a different system possible if you wished. Yet there is no movement that looks likely that it will take power any time soon in terms of an alternative economic system. Not to do the working class down as they are extremely powerful yet I am not convinced are ready to take power anywhere on the planet. On the other hand we have a system of capitalism which is in probably the biggest crisis its faced since the 30's and possibly ever some say. So we do have a real contradiction in many ways. It is hard to understand on the surface anyway how powerful and how strong of a system capitalism is at the moment. On the one hand it seems quite fragile and yet on the other side it looks indestructible and that there is no way of changing things. Of course as we know and as we learn from the past no social and political system is indestructible and nothing stays the same forever. Dialectics tells us as much so to think that capitalism is here to stay and it can’t be changed or removed is just not true. It may seem like we are a long long way from change and in many ways we are yet change is always on the agenda and is constantly happening even when we cannot see it at the very moment. Revolutions are not just things that appear they are constantly being developed and worked on. I do believe that we can start to begin to build the new society in the shell of the old by putting into practice our ideals and values right now not after the revolution we can begin to shape things even if all be it on a small scale to start with. We must be in a way the change we want to see to oppose things we don’t agree with and we don’t want to take with us to the new society we must start today by opposing the likes of racism, fascism , sexism and all forms of discrimination. We must lead from example as revolutionaries we cant expect others to follow us and buy into our ideas if we ourselves do not live up to our own ideals. So in terms of power capitalism is still very much in the driving seat but for how long and in what form we cannot say. We must remember any victory we win off the ruling class must be forced home and if there is the opportunity to remove this rotten exploitative system then we must cease any chance we get!

The question of leadership

I have been in organisations with strong and weak leadership and have come to the conclusion that leadership itself is fundamentally flawed in many ways. During my time in the socialist party we were told the working class needs new fighting leadership but I am not sure this is quite true on many levels. Of course we were told while a member of such sects that Trotsky’s famous quote that the crisis facing the working class is the crisis of leadership and some seem to have taken this particular quote to the point of dogma and frozen it in time and done little with it sadly. I am a believer that we are our own leaders and that leadership as a concept is a concept for bureaucracy. I think we all have it within us to lead and control our own struggles now. Why do we need a self appointed leadership to control and manage our own struggles they are ours for a reason surely? I have firm belief that the working class can lead its own struggles and battles without a leadership. In fact leadership starts from within and some take it further but if we all lead our own struggles by not giving our struggles over to some far distant appointed body we can remain in control. In fact I believe now that if we reject the concept of leadership in the term understood today anyway which of course can and will change in time is no blueprint for success at all. I do think that if we, we own and control our own struggles we cannot and will not be sold out by leaderships and bodies looking to act and speak on our behalf. Only us the workers the rank-and-file of the movement and the world can control and affect change. Lets be honest when has a leader ever acted in our own interests. Once we have given permission to someone else to decide what is best for us we have in affect already lost because we can no longer affect change ourselves it is down to someone else not us. Leadership as a concept is not a bad thing but it is how that power of change and understanding shifts from us to a body of people we are trusting to act and speak on our behalf. I am naturally dis trustful of leadership due to my experiences some may have good experiences but I do think in the end we will all see leaders or those who claim to be our leaders in the light cold light of day for all to dsee as opportunists . The mass's have the answer and will not be fooled some may be some of the time but not forever. Workers and those at the bottom of the pile will have nothing to loose very soon and then you will see a fight back and this will be spontaneous and leaderless. For this to succeed people will need to learn for themselves and take each step at a time if they loose they must take that on the chin and learn from it not look to leaders to make things better as they simply will not they will act in their own interest as they always have done and always will.

The real meaning of May Day

A press release from the National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) Millions of workers around the world will be marking May Day today (1st May) and over the next few days. The media and the mainstream politicians will attempt to gloss over the real meaning of this holiday. But it will be a celebration of the struggle of workers and ordinary poor people through the ages for a decent life. The NSSN believes that this 2013 International Workers' Day must be more than a memorial. NSSN national chair Rob Williams said: "The first May Day in 1886 was the first general strike in the USA, called to fight for an eight hour day. "The bosses' reprisals saw four of the workers' leaders executed. May Day isn't some quaint holiday but a celebration of the struggle undertaken by working people for the basic necessities, none of which were given willingly by the employers or their governments. "In that sense, nothing much seems to have changed, with the huge Con-Dem austerity offensive which is attacking the poor, the sick and the unemployed - young and old. "For those in work, more is being demanded for less. 60% of those being affected by the cuts to welfare are working and there are 1 million workers claiming housing benefit - a figure that's doubled. 40% of the civil servants administering the new Universal Credit will be claiming it! The NSSN will be attending the countless May Day rallies to call on the TUC and the unions to name the date for a 24 hour general strike" At last week's TUC General Council meeting, lobbied by the NSSN (video-nssn-lobby-of-the-tuc/) it seems that the TUC agreed to organise a meeting of all unions currently engaged in strikes and those planning ballots. With 250,000 civil servants from the PCS taking action plus some 700,000 teachers about to recommence their dispute plus innumerable other smaller disputes currently taking place, this could be significant. Also, the government has made its final pay offer to millions of council workers confirming its 1% pay cap - effectively a 2% pay cut in real terms. The NSSN believes there is a basis for joint strike action on a similar scale to that of 30th November 2011, when up to two million public sector workers went on strike to defend their pensions. The NSSN was initiated by the RMT in 2006 and is holding its 7th annual conference in London on 29th June 2013. Speakers include PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka and the leaders of the CWU and the POA. Email - info@shopstewards.net Website - www.shopstewards.net Phone Rob Williams on 07816134690

The inspiration of the Workers and Socialist party in South Africa

Over the last few weeks and months I have been hugely inspired by our CWI comrades in South Africa. With the launch of the WASP the Workers and Socialist Party in South Africa shows what can be achieved with very small resources and numbers of comrades on the ground. The launch of the Workers & Socialist Party was the direct outcome of the struggles of the mineworkers of South Africa throughout the course of last year. With thanks to Democratic Socialist Movement (CWI in South Africa) reporters The Marikana massacre, where police armed with automatic weapons opened fire and killed 34 striking miners, was a watershed in post-Apartheid South Africa. Echoing this, one headline covering the launch read “born in post-Marikana anger, Workers & Socialist Party enters SA politics”. The most significant feature of the 2012 mineworkers’ strikes was the organisation of independent rank-and-file led strike committees outside of the existing unions and bargaining mechanisms. Across the country – in the platinum belt, the gold fields and elsewhere – shaft after shaft created their own organisation and pushed forward a new militant leadership. The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) which had collaborated with the mine bosses were evicted at a stroke. On the initiative of the Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM, CWI South Africa) these shaft-based committees organised first across the mining heartland of Rustenburg and then into a national mineworkers strike committee. The ANC government and their Tripartite Alliance partners – the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) of which NUM is the largest affiliate – refused to support the mineworkers. Not only was support refused but the mineworkers were vilified and demonised by the very organisations that claim to represent them. There is no doubt that in their campaign against the mineworkers’ independent strike committees the groundwork for the Marikana massacre was laid. The recognition by the mineworkers that they stood alone and without a political voice was decisive in the emergence of WASP. The mining industry is the mainstay of the SA economy and the mineworkers the backbone of the working class, but it is not just here that the class struggle rages intensely. The farmworkers of the Western Cape have risen up in several waves from late 2012 to demand higher wages. They followed the model established by the mineworkers and moved to organise independent strike committees and they too forced concessions from the government and the big business farmers. In community after community, service delivery protests are held daily, in demand of roads, sanitation, electricity and water. In Sasolburg, the community exploded in a mass movement against attempts to cut funding even further. In the public sector, under the pressure of a growing budget deficit, mighty battles over pay and outsourcing loom. This is the South Africa that the ANC governs. Raised to power on the backs of the mass workers struggles up to 1994, its support had already eroded before Marikana for its failure to satisfy the aspirations of the masses. Now, in the aftermath of Marikana, and mired in corruption, it has lost whole swathes of its ‘traditional base’ amongst the working class and poor masses. Cosatu is riven with division and the process of disintegration is progressing. Workers are not allowing the slavish support for the Tripartite Alliance by the Cosatu leadership to hold back their struggles. New independent unions are being created and discontent amongst Cosatu rank-and-file and shop stewards is simmering. Against this background, and with a continuing widespread support for socialism amongst the masses, the Workers & Socialist Party has emerged. The launch event and the aftermath have given a clear indication of how WASP has emerged organically from the conclusions workers have drawn from the betrayals of the ANC and the recent experience of struggle. As one of the speakers at the launch, a workers’ committee member from the Carletonville gold mines south of Johannesburg said: “This is the time to build and prepare to fight… During the strike we saw the NUM, Cosatu, the ANC and SACP – none of them came to defend us. Instead they attacked us. It was the DSM alone that came to us when we were on the mountain, and stayed there with us to fight.” The mineworkers embrace WASP as “our” party. It was in these terms that delegates from different mines pledged their support at the launch. Speakers included workers’ delegates from Klerksdorp Uranium, Kumba Iron Ore, Bokoni Platinum, Gold Fields KDC, Harmony Gold, the Mpumalanga coal mines and Anglo Gold Ashanti. As the launch was broadcast on TV, a mineworkers leader from a mine that was unable to attend the launch phoned to report that dozens of workers had turned up at his office demanding to know: “how do we join OUR party?!” The president and executive members of the new National Transport & Allied Workers Union (NATAWU) attended and spoke from the top table. NATAWU is a left-split from the Cosatu-affiliated SATAWU transport union and is already out-stripping them in membership because of their willingness to decisively lead struggle in a series of strikes in the transport sector over recent weeks. The turnout at the launch far exceeded expectations. Pretoria/Tshwane is outside of the mining heartlands. The bulk of the 600-strong audience were Tshwane Municipality workers who, alongside the DSM, waged a struggle against dismissal and won. Hundreds walked miles in order to attend the launch of THEIR party. Already WASP is establishing itself as a party of struggle that can win victories. Students and young people also travelled from far to attend the launch. As Elmond Magedi, a DSM activist and initiator of the new Socialist Youth Movement that is being formed, said in his speech at the launch, young people are at hit by the hardest blows of a system in crisis – mass unemployment, a dysfunctional education system, rape and violence – and have a key role to play in building WASP to fight for a socialist future. And it is not just in South Africa that WASP is making waves. A teacher from Namibia – a member of the teachers’ worker committee – travelled days to attend the launch, despite the death of his son days earlier. Since the launch WASP has been contacted by, amongst others, a group of farmworkers and a group of health workers asking to join and help build WASP. Big business and the capitalist class in SA recognise the discontent amongst the working class and the vacuum that exists and are scrambling desperately to renew the credibility of their system by promoting “new” faces in the ANC, the neo-liberal Democratic Alliance and now also the newly announced Agang, led by one of Africa’s richest women capitalists, Mamphela Ramphele. WASP will sting the hopes of rallying any substantial mass around such attempts. While the ruling class has mostly responded with deafening silence, the few attempts at discrediting WASP by bourgeois analysts nevertheless reflect their warranted unease. The working class response is off to a good start with the launch. A worker from the Sishen Kumba Iron Ore mine in the Northern Cape summed up the mood in his speech – “We are so fortunate to be here today to launch our organisation which is we must build into a force to fight for us. Now we must go back to all shafts and build.”

The lull before the coming storm

In Britain today it may appear relatively quiet on the class struggle front there has been little in the way of mass action by workers so far this year and you’d be forgiven for thinking workers are just keeping their heads down to avoid attacks. Of course this will not last and mass social explosions can erupt at anytime be it next week, next month or next year we as Marxists know that struggle will break out again on a mass scale what form it comes in we cannot predict. If no lead is given by the labour movement or the union bureaucracy and the right wing in the unions are seen as a block on workers taking action we could see mass social explosions in all sorts of different way we can’t even rule out riots again in our inner cities where people’s anger is burning up with rage. What is clear to me is that in 2012 it was the year that the Tories were exposed as a government for the rich of the rich and the gulf in wealth from the top 10% and the bottom 10% had become glaringly obvious to many. Many ask why people are not fighting back. We have to remember people’s consciousness always lags behind the reality of the current situation. Just having mass planned poverty which in affect is austerity’s true name does not necessarily equal mass resistance. Only the disappointments in people’s expectations encourage them to take another route to venting their frustrations and mass struggle can break out then. The trade unions are seen by many as not relevant to their situations, many are not even aware of trade unions still and secondly do not know what a trade union can do for them. The unions themselves do not help this by constantly selling their members out barring a few fighting left unions such as the PCS and the RMT for example. Unions need to appeal to people and fight for them. It’s no coincidence that union membership increased around N30 when workers were seeing a lead being given and felt encouraged to get involved and fight back. Since the sell out by Dave Prentice and other right wing trade union leaders people have understandably felt demoralised. This will not last and new issues even small ones can spark a mass response. I mean a small local campaign to save the Lewisham A and E drew in mass numbers just imagine if a national demonstration on a weekend was called by the trade unions to save the NHS it could be massive. What is clear though is that although things may seem quiet in Britain right now and things appear calm things are bubbling away under the surface cuts have not stopped raining down on the working class and the anger is still there if not heightened due to the lack of an outlet as yet. This will change it has to a dam will break if an unsustainable amount of pressure exists behind it this will be the Sam in the coming period. We as socialists and Marxists must be aware to these changes coming and be prepared to run to catch up as when the working class moves it can move frighteningly quickly if we have the correct perspectives and ideas we can be in the best position to give a clear direction for the overall victory of struggles. For the overall direction to change society on a socialist basis to meet the needs of the many not just the few.

From Marikana to a new workers party in South Africa

The recent determined struggle of South African miners, who have braved bloody repression by state forces, has created political shockwaves throughout the country. The intensification of working class struggles has exposed not only the ruthlessness of the capitalist system but also the rottenness of the ruling ANC government and its allies in the trade union bureaucracy. Weizmann Hamilton of the Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM), the Socialist Party's sister party in South Africa, spoke to the Socialist about how these developments have propelled the beginnings of a new workers' party with a socialist programme, onto the political agenda. There cannot be any question about the historical significance of the recent strike movement of the miners; specifically, the massacre that took place on 16 August at Marikana when 34 Lonmin workers were mowed down by police. It is no exaggeration to say that that single event constitutes an historical faultline in the post-Apartheid history of South Africa (SA). The impact of the event on the consciousness of the entire population, but especially the working class, will determine the country's future political course. Because what was revealed in those 300 seconds of gunfire - the biggest atrocity in the country since the 1960 Sharpeville massacre - was the role played by all the key political and social forces inside the country. It clarified in the minds of the working class the class character of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) government and its relationship to the mining bosses and the role of the state and the trade union leadership. All of these things were laid bare by the massacre in a way that no other event could have, ie it sharply posed the nature of the tasks and the challenges that face the working class in SA. One thing is clear, the massacre was the result of a plan that had been thought through by the state, together with the bosses, and carried out as a premeditated act. It is inconceivable that the decision could have been taken to try and drown the strike in blood without it having been authorised politically by the tops of government. In that sense the administration of president Jacob Zuma has the blood of the Marikana workers on its hands. The manner in which the trade union leadership of Cosatu (Congress of South African Trade Unions) and, principally, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), has reacted to these events, has reinforced the conclusions that workers had been drawing prior to the massacre about what the NUM had been turned into. There is a widespread understanding - even expressed in the media by capitalist commentators - that the NUM has revealed itself as a 'baas boy' union, ie a union of the bosses. There is a widespread contempt for the leadership of the NUM. Everything they did subsequent to the massacre was to reinforce those conclusions. The historical tragedy of these events is that the NUM - the most powerful and influential union, whose history confirmed the most militant traditions of Cosatu - was revealed to be the conduit through which everything that is rotten about the trade union movement has been channelled. The NUM leadership has degenerated to such a level that even after the Lonmin workers, despite the massacre, courageously continued the struggle, forcing management to capitulate into conceding a wage settlement ranging from 11% to 22% - at the highest end, not far off the miners' original demand for R12,500, the NUM leadership could not bring themselves to acknowledge that achievement. On the contrary, they denounced the agreement! The NUM general secretary, Frans Baleni, earns R100,000 (£7,000) a month from the subs of his members and yet he had the temerity to go to the workers and say to them that the demand for R12,500 a month is unrealistic and that it will do damage to the economy! 'Intolerable' In the first instance, the workers had risen up in support for a demand for a decent living wage. And given the substantial profits of the platinum bosses and throughout the mining industry, then the demand for R12,500 a month was entirely realisable. But it was the fact that the miners rose up against the entire arrangement for the perpetuation of their own slavery; that is the most significant aspect of the strike. They were also rising up against the authority of the NUM as the principal instrument for the maintenance of their own subjugation by the mining bosses. This was why the strike was 'intolerable' to the mining bosses and the state and why they deemed it necessary to try and crush the strike in blood. But of course it has had the entirely opposite effect because, now, the NUM is hated beyond the platinum mining industry. With that this has led to a precipitous decline in the authority of Cosatu itself. Cosatu and the NUM leadership has completely failed to appreciate the historical significance of what took place on 16 August. Instead they have attempted to restore the NUM as the recognised organisation of the miners. They even went to the extent of actually organising a "hands off the NUM" demo on 27 October in Rustenburg to, in the words of the Cosatu president, S'dumo Dlamini, 'reclaim Rustenburg out of the hands of counter-revolutionaries'! So against who was this demo being directed at? The workers themselves and, of course, the DSM. Strike committees Fortunately the clashes between the mineworkers and the Cosatu officials were not as bad as we had feared. Nonetheless, it was a humiliating experience for Cosatu's leadership. For a long time they were prevented by their own former members (miners in Anglo Platinum) from getting to the stadium for a rally and could only hold it under the protection of the police! Similarly, when Cosatu's general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi attempted to address thousands of striking miners at the Orkney Mine in Klerksdorp he was chased away. He later blamed, falsely, the DSM for this humiliation. This is the beginning of the end of the NUM in the platinum industry and in the whole of the mining industry but it is also potentially the beginning of the unravelling of Cosatu itself. This is not a certainty but if the leadership does not change course, combined with its failure to address the critical class issue in SA and in particular its determination to remain inside the trap of the Tripartite Alliance (ie the ANC, Cosatu and the SA Communist Party), then it is likely that it will completely disintegrate. The SACP reaction to the Marikana uprising was to say that the workers were being misled by a 'Pondoland vigilante mafia'. In other words workers are incapable of comprehending their own oppression and exploitation! There are a whole host of 'conspirators' who the Cosatu, NUM and SACP leaders identify for the Marikana uprising. They blamed the Chamber of Mines for creating Amcu, attributing the strikes as arising out of rivalry with the NUM. In fact, AMCU is the accidental beneficiary of the collapse of authority of the NUM. Some workers have joined AMCU but now have misgivings because AMCU does not have a radical alternative programme to the NUM and because the main leadership in the mines is the independent workers' strike committees. It is these committees where a framework for the embryo of a new trade union federation exists. As far as the DSM is concerned the committees need to become the repositories for the restoration of the militant traditions of the working class in the trade union movement. The DSM's role in developing workers' struggles Our role is, partly, to be the memory of the working class so that it can retie the knot of history between the old traditions that created Cosatu in the struggle to defeat apartheid, and the new tasks facing the working class today. Last year we took the initiative of calling an Assembly for Workers' Unity (AWU). Its purpose was to face one of the most important challenges in front of the working class. There are three main theatres of struggle. One is the protests against corruption and poor service delivery, which are growing in intensity and frequency. There have been some 11,000 protests over poor service delivery this year. Then there has been an enormous increase in workplace action among organised workers. And then there are protests by students against debt and academic and financial exclusions, in particular over the unaffordability of tuition fees and of student accommodation for working class students. There is a permanent class war taking place along these fronts in the country. However, there is no coordination of the service delivery protests and even of the workplace disputes and no coordination of the student strikes. The student formations have become a mirror image of their political counterparts because they operate as the student wings of the ANC and PAC (Pan African Congress) etc. They have become training academies for the new post-Apartheid elite. At their conferences you see luxury cars in the parking lots. And yet these formations are meant to be representative of the working class! So our approach was to encourage the coordination of struggles within each theatre and across them. This is the concept behind AWU. The AWU pulled in organisations like the Thembelihle Crisis Committee, and invited the Socialist Civic Movement in Mpumalanga, and others, to promote a common programme and platform of action, for example a single day of action for service delivery protests starting in the regions, then provincial and finally on a national basis. We didn't get the response we were hoping for but nonetheless it laid down a marker for future struggles. And it is this same approach that we developed among the striking mineworkers. Our first tactic was to bring together all the efforts of the struggling miners; because up to that point the Lonmin workers were protesting on their own, as were the Anglo Platinum workers. There was a common determination to struggle but no common demands and without any coordination. So we did the obvious thing and encouraged the establishment of strike committees and on a coordinated basis to campaign, firstly, for a general strike across Rustenburg, and then to call for a wider general strike of the miners within the country. At the same time we promoted the idea of unity between the working class communities surrounding the mining areas and the strikers. In Limpopo we have had great success in getting the communities on board not only to support the mineworkers but also the idea of a mass workers' party, which was endorsed at a mass meeting of 5,000. The current 'balance of forces' in the mining industry As far as the recent strike wave is concerned, most areas have returned to work. The only mine still out on strike is Bokoni in Limpopo, where the key members of the local strike committee, (including the chair of the national strike committee) are in jail at the moment. Last week we were able to bring local Cosatu structures on board and stage a protest over the detention of the strike committee. At Anglo Platinum the return to work agreement was signed by the strike committee which is highly significant as officially no provision exists for such recognition in the collective bargaining arrangement in the mine. Although they didn't achieve their demand for R16,500 a month wage they did receive a R4,500 and 'incentive' (partly a loan) which breaks the 'no work, no pay' principle. In reality they have been paid for going on strike! The bosses have also agreed to bring forward pay negotiations which weren't scheduled until May 2013 and to withdraw the threat of mass dismissals. The mining bosses have been forced to recognise the reality of the change in the balance of power in the industry. It represents a defeat for the state and for the mining bosses and for the Cosatu and NUM bureaucracies. The bosses are hinting at massive retrenchments in industry in 2013 so the battles lines are being drawn for a new wave of struggle. There is now a breathing space for the workers to coordinate and develop their organisations and their strategic and tactical plans. Building a new mass workers' party on a socialist programme The strike has elevated the question of a political alternative for the workers firmly and irrevocably onto the agenda. The idea of a new mass workers' party is now part of the political discourse inside the country. Many commentators recognise that this demand has been injected into the political situation by the DSM. The DSM is now taking the initiative to take matters forward. On 15 December plans to launch the new mass workers' party will be announced by the DSM and the miners' national strike committee. Already, at a meeting in Limpopo, 5,000 workers endorsed the call for a mass workers' party. A press conference, preceded by a rally of the mineworkers, will proclaim the political independence of the working class from the tripartite alliance in which they have been incarcerated. The new party will target the 2014 elections. The press conference will happen the day before the ANC's conference, the run up to which has exposed sharp factional conflicts and is likely to prove to be the most divisive conference certainly since 2007 and the eviction of Thabo Mbeki as president. The ANC's authority is in such decline that the strategists of capitalism are encouraging the historically-white liberal opposition Democratic Alliance to "change its demographics", ie elect more blacks to leadership positions to give it greater appeal to black workers, as well as other political alternatives. A resolution proclaiming a new mass workers' party has been discussed by all the miners' shaft committees. The idea will be to launch the new party on 23 March 2013, coinciding with the Sharpeville massacre anniversary. Before that there will be various events, rallies, marches, and a recall campaign of councillors so that they can be substituted with real fighters from the new party. It will be a broad formation with provision for the participation of existing organised political entities. We will be approaching a number of organisations to be part of this process. We are confident that such a new party will fill the political void that has long existed on the left in SA. This will be the crowning achievement of the Marikana uprising. Marikana Commission of Inquiry According to Jacob Zuma the motivation for the establishment of the Marikana commission into the massacre is 'to establish the truth', because no one, apparently, knows why it happened! Prior to the massacre on 16 August, ten people had died at Marikana. Consequently, the workers took the decision to relocate away from the mine and to go to a nearby koppie (small hill) and demanded that management should come and discuss with them. The forces of the state had prepared by portraying the miners who carried traditional weapons as being provocatively armed. A radio interview on 15 August, between management, the NUM and AMCU, publicly stated that negotiations would take place the following day. When AMCU turned up management was nowhere to be found. Later management said that all negotiations were off. It is clear that the decision had been taken overnight to end negotiations and that the strike was going to have to be crushed. Three thousand police were deployed from the tactical response unit with military firepower. Armoured vehicles were deployed, helicopters with snipers and reels of razor wire to trap the workers. Incidentally, the majority of the 34 dead miners were not killed at the spot shown on the TV footage when police opened fire, they were killed elsewhere. Some had bullet wounds to the head suggesting executions. Evidence has also been tampered with. What revelations have so far emerged at the commission completely confirms what workers knew. It is clear that the tops of the ANC and NUM regarded the situation as an 'intolerable' defiance of state authority. The ANC's Cyril Ramaphosa, in particular, is implicated in the massacre. Beforehand he had described the strike as an 'act of criminality'. Ramaphosa is the former general secretary of the NUM who sits on the board of directors of Lonmin (he has a 9% share in the company paid for by Lonmin itself!). Ramaphosa's reputation has been tarnished irreparably. This is a man who was once a leading worker militant who has become one of the world's richest individuals. The role of the commission with its four-month long investigation is partly to take the sting out the situation but is also to cover up the government's culpability. It will probably result in some naming of scapegoats, in all likelihood junior level police officers. The overwhelming mission is to ensure that the government is not held responsible. Even in advance of the commission's outcome Cosatu's leadership has confirmed its political support for president Jacob Zuma. Marikana represents the biggest atrocity since Sharpeville and yet Cosatu has not organised a protest but instead tried to rehabilitate the discredited NUM, whose shop stewards at Lonmin, incidentally, have their offices next to the police station! This article was first published in issue 746 of the socialist the weeky paper from the socialist party of England and Wales detailing workers struggles at home and around the world and pointing the way forward.

Why I’ve taken to reading the capitalist press

Yep you’ve read that correct I have started looking at the bourgeois press the more quality stuff that is. You may be surprised to hear that but there is a method in my madness. I haven’t suddenly chucked my Marxist principles out the window but in fact I’m taking a greater interest in the global economy for several reasons. As a Marxist reading our own material can be great propaganda and agitation material to win over workers but to find out what is really going on out there in capitalism reading such publications as the Economist and the Financial times and the Wall Street Journal to name just a few. These are in the main well put together papers and magazines. They are often pro market of course and do not tell it how it is from the workers perspective. But that is where I need to apply Marxist analysis to understand what is really going on underneath the surface of society and in the economy at large. There is an old phrase that revolutions start at the top and in many ways this is true the tops of the trees begin to shake at first and this sends shock waves to the very foundations of society. Understanding what is happening at the very top of capitalism and the process’s involved just as Karl Marx did in his excellent analysis of capitalist production in the 1800’s can give us a excellent insight into predicting what will happen next in terms of the class struggle. Understanding if we’re in a period of growth or decline and how the economy is going to develop or contract in the next period. Understanding b bourgeois ideaology can be interesting but can also provide us a glimpse of their thinking. The old phrase keep your friends close but your enemies closer applies here. Understanding the twists and turns of the class struggle is key to applying the correct slogans and understanding of what period we are in and how we can best put forward a programme to change society towards a socialist transformation of society. While I don’t read the capitalist press religiously it does pay all workers if they can to take an interest in the wider economy out there to see where we are going and to independently educate ourselves. Watching our own news and our own material will only tell you so much it’s good to get a rounded out perspective on the world and the way society is heading. Its key for all revolutionaries who have a aim in changing society to understand capitalism and how it works this does not mean agreeing with it but to over throw capitalism we must understand it where its weakness’s lie and when it is most venerable. These tend to be the points just before an incline or just after a crash Trotsky’s curve of capitalist development is an excellent piece to get to grip with this idea of when workers can go on the offensive and will be most confident of wins. But we are now in a huge downturn in capitalism and there will be opportunities for workers to come to power many opportunities. We must learn the lessons to be prepared to take those chances when they arise. Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat the mistakes of history as they say.

What is Bourgeois democracy?

The term bourgeois democracy is often put about as describing life under capitalism and how life is for the masses of ordinary people. This blogpost will attempt to describe what democracy is like under capitalism and the limits of democracy under this current system.

Bourgeois democracy essentially is A government that serves in the interests of the bourgeois class. The word Democratic is attached to such a government, because in it all people in such a society have certain freedoms: those who own the means of production , the bourgeoisie, are free to buy and sell labor-power and what is produced by it solely for their own benefit. Those who own only their own ability to labor , the proletariat, are free to sell themselves to any bourgeois who will buy their labor power, for the benefit of maintaining their own survival, and giving greater strength and power to the bourgeoisie.
The state fundamentally represents the interests of one class over others. On this basis Lenin named bourgeois democracy bourgeois dictatorship. On the same token, Lenin made no distinction that the socialist state, being a state that represents the working-class, is a dictatorship of the proletariat.
In no civilized capitalist country does "democracy in general" exist; all that exists is bourgeois democracy, and it is not a question of "dictatorship in general", but of the dictatorship of the oppressed class, i.e., the proletariat, over its oppressors and exploiters, i.e., the bourgeoisie, in order to overcome the resistance offered by the exploiters in their fight to maintain their domination.
Vladimir Lenin
First Congress of the Communist International
In capitalist society, providing it develops under the most favourable conditions, we have a more or less complete democracy in the democratic republic. But this democracy is always hemmed in by the narrow limits set by capitalist exploitation, and consequently always remains, in effect, a democracy for the minority, only for the propertied classes, only for the rich. Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in the ancient Greek republics: freedom for the slave-owners. Owing to the conditions of capitalist exploitation, the modern wage slaves are so crushed by want and poverty that "they cannot be bothered with democracy", "cannot be bothered with politics"; in the ordinary, peaceful course of events, the majority of the population is debarred from participation in public and political life.
Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich - that is the democracy of capitalist society. If we look more closely into the machinery of capitalist democracy, we see everywhere, in the "petty" - supposedly petty - details of the suffrage (residential qualifications, exclusion of women, etc.), in the technique of the representative institutions, in the actual obstacles to the right of assembly (public buildings are not for "paupers"!), in the purely capitalist organization of the daily press, etc., etc., - we see restriction after restriction upon democracy. These restrictions, exceptions, exclusions, obstacles for the poor seem slight, especially in the eyes of one who has never known want himself and has never been inclose contact with the oppressed classes in their mass life (and nine out of 10, if not 99 out of 100, bourgeois publicists and politicians come under this category); but in their sum total these restrictions exclude and squeeze out the poor from politics, from active participation in democracy.
When the term democracy is used today we tend to think of using our vote every 5 years to elect a new government to attack us each time. It’s that thought that democracy is tied up in that tiny voting slip you have when you enter the ballot box. Many people consider democracy simply that. But for socialists we see democracy a far wider term with the access to society being just one part. Having democracy over the economic and social situation is key to a truly democratic society. Socialism would truly be democratic and the illusion of what excuse for democracy we have today would be shattered.

I think as capitalism comes under further pressure from its internal contradictions which are bound up within the system the grip on democracy becomes tighter and is limited to the mass’s unless democracy is used too much to affect change which could put the system into danger. Democracy is something which can be picked up and retracted if the ruling class in a given country feel threatened. Such as when a fascist regime is ushered in to protect the bourgeois society from revolution. The idea of democracy is certainly I will return to in the future when it comes to changing society to benefit the many not just the few.

Solidarity on international workers day happy may day to all

On the 1st of May around the world workers are uniting together to stand together on international workers day.

Otherwise known as May Day. In Britain there will be many rally’s marches and events held to celebrate this day where we can feel our strength and unity together as a collective force.

Fewer and fewer times we get to feel this feeling. I felt it last year on November 30th where 2 million workers took strike action that day. The labour movement hasn’t fully realised its power for sometime I hope this is about to change.

The power working people have when we unite is huge. One of the greatest movements there is when workers get up off their knees and fight back against their exploitation.

With the crisis of capitalism deepening everyday let’s remember we are far stronger united than divided lets fight every attempt to divide and rule us by the ruling class. We are far greater in numbers but let’s unite on grounds of our class all races, genders, ages, sexualities and religions. We are all workers and all want a better life for the human race.

This May Day let’s remember those workers who have given their lives to the struggle for a better society a fairer world and a world free of injustices.
Let’s double our efforts to fight for a socialist transformation of society putting peoples social needs first.

As Karl Marx prescribed workers of the world you have nothing to lose but your chains, workers of the world unite!

What is democracy?

Many people think today we have democracy, we are allowed every 5 years maybe sooner in local council elections a vote on which capitalist party gets to attack us for the next period.

But as socialists we call this bourgeois democracy and when it comes down to it isn’t much of a democracy at all.

What Makes democracy?
SOCIALISTS FIGHT to defend and extend democratic rights that have been won by past struggles. Having the right to vote, to form trade unions and political parties, to hold meetings and demonstrate, which is banned in many countries, is a major advantage for our class. It allows workers to organise openly to improve conditions and struggle for a socialist society. Socialists and workers' organisations can gain influence by taking part in elections.


Democracy usually refers to the right to vote, a free press and free speech, among other rights. Many countries on their 'democratic' list are stretching the definition.
Russia, whose government elections suffer from ballot rigging and fraud, are included and countries like Turkey are breezily described as being "military-influenced". Nigeria is apparently defined as a presidential parliamentary democracy (transitional).
Corruption and undemocratic methods are rampant in all governments of the West.
Take the recent Tory party’s scandal with the cash for dinner’s disgrace where rich corporations and businessmen could buy a dinner with the Prime Minister for 250 thousand pounds for a bit of influence. So much for your vote making a difference any longer.


CAPITALIST DEMOCRACY has limitations. We may be allowed a vote every four or five years to have a say in which party is elected. But once elected, it is very difficult to bring governments to account.
Many voted for New Labour in the last decade but few agree with policies such as privatising air traffic control or introducing tuition fees. There is no democracy in how the economy is run, what our wages should be, how many jobs are created or what is produced. These decisions are made by the bosses who only give concessions to head off struggles.
What little 'democracy' we have is being eroded. Cameron and the con-dems are 'reforming' many democratic institutions which means we will have less rights


Some argue that a turn away from traditional politics is a positive process and that we need to look at new forms of protest and a new democracy with political parties being outdated.
Movements such as the occupy movement have turned to direct action as a way of achieving things with an implicit hostility to politics and political parties. Alternative movements are referred to as DIY politics, bypassing the political process by building self-help groups and taking part in direct action. What could be more democratic than being able to freely exchange ideas in a democratic occupation camp and on the internet?
Some argue for a looser form of organisation on an anarchist style of horizontal leaderships with consensus decision making these are often very small groups on the fringes of the labour movement.

But "small functional groups which ebb and flow" will never be able to challenge the rule of capitalism. Workers and oppressed have to be organised to build struggles and confront the highly organised forces of those who control society with the aim of achieving socialism. Many involved in these groups are concluding that global capitalism is the enemy and some are open to the idea of a socialist alternative.
A new mass party of the working class will have to be more democratic than the past experience of mass workers' organisations like the Labour Party and the trade unions. When the Labour Party swung to the left in the late 1970s and 1980s, reflecting working-class struggle, Militant supporters and others on the Left fought hard for democratic procedures. We cannot accept workers organisations being run in an undemocratic way and Socialist Party members are the strongest fighters for democratic change in the trade unions.
As well as arguing for democracy within the working-class organisations, we also have to be alert to the attacks on democracy from the ruling class. Our lives are dictated to by big business and the rich and they would attempt to dismantle democratic rights if these became an obstacle to their power.
To stand in elections requires money and publicity while the media is controlled by the rich. This does not mean that the working class cannot build support and win power. But to achieve socialism requires an independent working-class mass party, embracing Marxist ideas.
Only under a socialist society can there be true democracy. Where production and distribution are owned and controlled by all then people can genuinely participate in running society.

UNTIL THE Reform Act of 1867 only a wealthy minority of the population had the vote. If these owners of big business, the banks and land could have continued to exploit the masses that created their wealth, without allowing them any role in the political process, they would have done so.
The struggles of the working class forced the ruling class to make some democratic concessions but never enough to threaten their dominant position. Not until 1928 could all men and women over the age of 21 votes. This was won through the struggles of the Chartists, trade unionists, suffragists and suffragettes - directly through campaigning for the vote but also by the working class demonstrating their industrial strength.
These early campaigners fought for the right to vote as a means to change their appalling conditions. While the working class saw representative institutions such as parliament and local councils as a means to implement change, the ruling class attempted to use democracy as means to divert struggle into safe channels.
The implication is that there is no need for fundamental social and economic transformation - i.e. a revolution - when change can be implemented through the ballot box. Although many reforms including democratic rights have been implemented by Parliament, it has been struggles outside Parliament that has forced this change.
Once the masses had won the vote, the ruling class planned to make it as ineffective as possible. Their biggest fear was the working class building its own party. Walter Bagehot in his book "The English constitution" in 1872 said: "A political combination of the lower classes, as such and for their own objects is an evil of the first magnitude."




So while we may have some form of democracy today lets not be under any illusion it’s far from a democratic society we live in. Only by transforming society to a socialist based economy based on peoples needs first democratically decided at every step of the way when people have real decision making influence can we call society truly democratic in my opinion.

misrepresenting socialism, answering the critics

Socialism is a system that is often misrepresented on purpose and accidentily by various groups of people.

If you’re a capitalist or a person who supports capitalism you will look for any way at all to discredit Marxism and socialism that it cannot work and is doomed to failure.

I thought I’d look at some of the most common attacks that are made on socialists and others who see a future in a alternative system of socialism.
People tend to accept as true the things they hear over and over again. But repetition doesn't make things true. Because the truth and the facts often contradict "common knowledge", socialists have to show that "common knowledge" is wrong. That takes more words than just accepting the status quo.

How would a socialist economy work?
Under capitalism, institutions where immense wealth is concentrated (corporations) run the economy, exploiting working people to increase their own concentrated wealth. The essence of a socialist economy is to flip this relationship upside-down, with working people running the economy, utilizing the enormous wealth and productivity of society to enrich their lives. To do this, we would have to take over all the biggest banks and corporations and put their resources into public ownership and democratic control.

Employing those out of work and reallocating investment and jobs towards social priorities – healthcare, education, clean energy, etc. – would give a huge boost to productivity and wealth in society. Democratic planning of the economy would allow us to make sure everyone had a good-paying job, high-quality health care, free education at all levels, and, of course, basic physical necessities like food and housing. It wouldn’t be limited to just the basics, though; we could choose to invest in empowering people to make music, art, writing, film, fashion, and all sorts of other forms of cultural development.

This type of economic system would require conscious planning, but this is already true to a large extent under capitalism. Corporations, with economies larger than entire countries are able to plan out their levels of production, spread of distribution, pricing schemes and so on without falling to pieces, so there’s no reason working people shouldn’t be able to do the same.

The difference is that planning under capitalism is fractured, incomplete and undemocratic, with the goal of maximizing profit for the individual firm. Under socialism, we could structure investment of the world’s wealth with a big picture, bird’s eye view of the whole economy, with the goal of fulfilling human needs, sustaining the environment and enabling a liberated human existence.

A socialist economic system would have to be globally integrated. This is also the case already under capitalism, where we live in a globally interdependent world. Right now globalization on a capitalist basis means brutal exploitation of the weaker economies, and a race to the bottom for workers everywhere. Under socialism, global economic integration would be part of the plan to enrich people’s lives on a global scale.

A socialist economy would handle the environment very differently. Today, companies don’t care about environmental costs because they are able to externalize them onto the public. The costs associated with contaminated air and drinking water are real, but they don’t show up as a red number on Monsanto’s balance sheet. That is why no corporation will ever undertake the necessary steps to save the environment on the basis of “free market” principles.

Democratic planning of the economy would eliminate the profit motive behind externalizing the costs of pollution. Instead, efficiency, environmental sustainability and meeting the basic needs of all would form the core principles of economic decision-making. Instead of inadequate measures like energy-efficient light bulbs and recycling-awareness programs, a socialist economy could invest in completely overhauling the way everything is produced, utilizing all the latest green technologies for maximum sustainability and creating millions of jobs in the process.

How would a socialist democracy work?
As most of us currently experience it, “democracy” boils down to voting once every couple years for which wealthy career politician will make all the decisions for us. Of course, there’s nothing democratic about this at all, especially when the whole process is corrupted by corporate money.

In contrast, socialist democracy would take place day to day, week to week, in every workplace, school and community. Workers would rotate management tasks, and elected managers would be subject to recall and replacement whenever the workers saw fit. All decisions could be overturned by majority vote.

School curriculum and policy would be jointly agreed upon by parents, teachers and students, rather than imposed by distant administrators and bureaucrats. Neighborhood assemblies would decide who is and is not empowered with policing authority and instruct elected officers how to prioritize their efforts.

All investment and economic decisions should be made democratically. Workplace and neighborhood assemblies would elect representatives to massively expanded local and regional councils, which in turn would elect national representatives. Elected representatives should have no special privileges or pay above their electorate, and they should be subject to instant recall.

In order to facilitate this process of democratic decision-making, there should be space roped off in regular work and school schedules for decision-making meetings and discussions. With the increased wealth created, the work-week could be shortened without loss of pay to allow people time and energy to become engaged politically, and to pursue their other life goals outside work and school.
Wouldn’t a bureaucratic elite just take over?
Undoubtedly, in the first stages of a socialist society, a struggle against careerists and corruption within the system would be necessary. The poisonous ideological baggage inherited from centuries of class rule would not just fade away overnight. However, by establishing public ownership of society’s productive resources, eliminating privileges, and creating bottom-up structures of democratic management and control, the obstacles to prevent aspiring bureaucrats seizing power would be immense.

The main example driving fear of a bureaucratic takeover is Stalin seizing power in the Soviet Union only a few years after Russia’s working-class revolution in 1917. This tragic degeneration of the Russian Revolution is something Marxists have grappled with in numerous books. The basic conclusion supported by a serious historical analysis is that this degeneration was neither natural nor inevitable, but the result of particular circumstances.

Russia was among the poorest countries in the world at the time of its revolution, and it was even further devastated when the deposed capitalist rulers, backed by 21 foreign armies, tried to violently retake power from the democratic workers’ movement, resulting in a bloody civil war. Though revolutions took place elsewhere across Europe, most notably Germany, they were all defeated, leaving Russia poor, broken and alone.

This was not a healthy ground upon which socialism could be built. The whole basis of socialism is having enough to go around, but Russia didn’t have that. In this context, the democratic structures in the Soviets (workers’ assemblies) ceased to function. Who wants to go to political meetings when you’re worried about where your next meal is going to come from?

It was this vacuum of workers’ power from below, fueled by the isolation and economic starvation of the country, that spawned the bureaucratization of Russian society and the rise of Stalin as this bureaucracy’s dictatorial figurehead. Even then, it was not a natural progression. Stalin had to jail, murder, exile, or otherwise force into submission literally millions of people whose only crime was adherence to the democratic principles of the 1917 revolution.

This experience shows the importance of building the fight for socialism as a global movement. Because of imperialist plundering of resources around the world, some countries may lack a stable economic basis for socialism, and will need to trade with and get help from the richer countries. If Russia had been joined by a successful revolution in even one other country, such as Germany, history would have turned out very differently.
Wouldn’t it be easier to reform capitalism?
Unfortunately, contrary to official accounts, the history of capitalism is not one of consistent progress towards ever loftier heights of democracy and prosperity. Rather, every serious reform has required mass struggle, often shaking the system to its core.

Reforms are not granted out of the kind hearts of well-meaning politicians, but are concessions grudgingly granted to appease or distract rising movements of working people hungry for real change. Whether we’re talking about civil rights, the weekend off, or the right to organize a union, every one of these required an all-out fight against the profit-driven logic of capitalism, where countless innocents were murdered by elites desperate to put down their struggles.

Under capitalism, even these partial reforms are not permanent, not a foothold or new baseline to work from. As we have seen in the last few decades, the capitalists and their politicians will roll back reforms as soon as they think they can get away with it.

Social programs that people fought tooth and nail for in the past are being dismantled or undermined via budget cuts. After almost destroying unions in the private sector already – where less than 7% of workers in the US are in a union – corporate politicians in state after state are now going after the public sector, where over a third of workers are still unionized.

A stable basis for ongoing reforms will require working people to take political power out of the hands of the capitalists and wield it themselves – that is, overthrow capitalism and establish socialism. There’s no way around it; the fight for reforms and the struggle for socialist transformation are one and the same.
Socialism sounds great on paper, but is it realistic?
The only constant in history is uninterrupted change. From ancient slave states to the feudal landowner lordships to the global capitalist system of today, people have repeatedly overthrown old systems after they became a brake on progressive development. The truly unrealistic and utopian idea is that problems like war, poverty and environmental devastation will be solved on the basis of capitalism.

Though socialism is realistic, it’s not inevitable. Again and again, crisis-ridden capitalism has forced workers and the oppressed into revolutionary uprisings. Several have happened in the last year, most prominently in Egypt and Tunisia. But while many revolutions succeed in toppling governments, few have achieved system change. Capitalism will always find a way out on the backs of workers, youth and the poor if we fail to replace it with something better.

That’s where socialists come in: We take seriously the study of history, learning from both defeats and successes of revolutions and mass movements. We aim to spread these lessons widely so that future revolutions succeed in establishing socialism. That doesn’t just mean reading a lot of books. It means actively building and engaging with the movements that exist right now, boldly bringing in socialist ideas while learning from others in struggle, working out the way forward together.

If you agree with these ideas, consider joining the Socialist Party today.

The importance of theory in the class struggle

We often hear many people out there in the wider movement ask ourselves well what is your theory to back up your politiacl ideas.

We as socialists and more specifically marxists are very keen to learn the lessons of history and keep a keen eye on theory at every stage of the class struggle.

i personally enjoy theory and learning about the working class history and class struggles that have erupted over the years and decades in the past. I am almost to the end of Das Capital Volumne 1 its been a fantastic read with so much strength in depth in its theory and understanding.

Karl Marx one of the greatest revolutionary thinkers ever wrote this book along with his good friend Frederich Engels in the 19th century and is still to this day the best explaination of capitalism as it is today. I am not saying all of what Marx wrote back then in the 1800's is relevant today as it is not but the lessons and the teachings of how capitalism works are as true today as they were back then.

It is avery well put together study and analysis that has never been disproved even by economists and capitalists today.

But theory is fantastic but cannot be a idol proccess and a stand alone method to the class struggle it must be applied and go hand in hand with practical day to day struggles and applying marxist theory and lessons learnt by Leon trotsky and Lenin to todays struggles by workers in everyday situations.

Capitalism and our version of it as our particular version is quite unique in a sense in Britain having its full rich history based here we as working class fighters have a wealth of historic events we can study and learn from to make suer we do not repeat the mistakes of the past in the future.

As Marxists we do not live in the past as many opponents of our ideas throw at us instead quite the contary we look to the past to fuel us with ideas and lessons to make the right and correct analysis for todays situation and current class contiousness. Knowing at what period are we passing is key. Having good theory and failing to draw the correct conclusions from a ebb or a flow in the class struggle can leave you marooned on the wrong side of history.

For example some on the left saw the fall of the Berlin Wall and the soviet union as a step forward and a great victory for the working class at that time. Whilst we'll always support the falling of a iron fisted dictator we in the CWI at the time correctly saw that this was a massive defeat for the working class as much of their gains including nationalised industry and free health care and transport for example are under great threat from the capiatlists who were looking to reafirm their grip on the world market in the late 80's and this consequently saw a reemergance of capitalism in Russia and the former Eastern block countries.

TO think that this period was a big victory for the working class and they can now go on the offensive looking to make gains was a huge mistake and still many on the left are still coming to terms with the realities of that big mistake. So as i say theory is important but drawing the correct conclusions from new events in the class struggle globally not just on a national basis is key to drawing support and influence in the movement .



As lenin told us quite rightly "Without a revolutionary theory there cannot be a revolutionary movement. "

Politics begin where the masses are, not where there are thousands, but where there are millions, that is where serious politics begin.
(Vladimir Lenin)


"It is impossible to predict the time and progress of revolution. It is governed by its own more or less mysterious laws" (Vladimir I Lenin)

But as lenin correctly pointed out a ounce of practical action in struggle is worth 10 times the amount of theoritical struggle, what he was trying to say that there is no greater expereince to the class struggle than actually getting out there and living it fighting it on a day to day basis.

The role strikes have on class contiousness , lessons from 1926 ?

When the working class or part of the working class go out on strike it is not done lightly. Many reactionaries think workers love going out on strike and do it at the drop of the hat. This is not true. Many take it very seriously indeed.

The act of withdrawing your labour is a very powerful and symbolic one indeed where it hands the power back to the worker that work cannot be done if they do withdraw their labour.

It focus's the mind and concentrates their class contiousness.

At our socialist party branch meeting last night we discussed the 1926 general strike in Britain where the question of power and who holds it was posed and this frightened the establishment and the ruling class, including the trade union bureaucracy

last thing the TUC leaders wanted was a successful general strike. When it started they did everything to end it.
calling a general strike.
1926 general strike
TWO DAYS after the strike was called off, 100,000 more workers were on strike than at the beginning.

"There were no trains, no buses, no trams, no papers, no building, no power. In a strike, 100% is an unobtainable figure generally, but even this real 100% was frequently achieved". (The Common People, Postgate and Cole.)

Winston Churchill summed up the attitude of the ruling class: "It is a conflict which, if it is fought to a conclusion, can only end in the overthrow of parliamentary government or in its decisive victory, there is no middle course open".

British capitalism was weakened after the First World War. Simultaneously the British working class had been radicalised by the Russian revolution and the European-wide revolutionary movement which followed the war.

The British capitalists were forced to concede their dominance in world markets to American imperialism, the real victors of the war.

By 1925, exports from British industry had fallen to 76% of pre-war levels and imports had grown to 111%. The ruling class went on the offensive to attack working-class wages and conditions to boost profits.

The miners had elected a new union leader, Arthur Cook. He was a giant in comparison to other union leaders at the time.

He considered himself a follower of Lenin but he did not fully understand Lenin's methods, in particular the need for a revolutionary party.

In March 1925 the coal bosses cut the miners' wages and demanded they work an extra hour a day without pay. In a refrain familiar to Corus or Vauxhall workers, the capitalist press raged that this was the only way the coal industry could be saved.

Also, Baldwin, then Tory prime minister, made it clear that this was a prelude to a general offensive on all workers' wages and conditions: "All the workers of this country have to take reductions".

In response, Cook coined the slogan: "Not a penny off the pay not a second on the day".

The miners appealed to the TUC, who threatened a general strike.

The government, faced with a militant working class, was unprepared for a showdown. To give themselves some breathing space they proposed a commission under Sir Herbert Samuel to examine the coal industry.

Meanwhile, they gave the coal bosses a nine-month subsidy to forestall any moves by them against the miners. They then used these nine months to prepare for a fight to the finish with the working class.

In 1981, Thatcher also retreated in the face of miners' strikes against pit closures. She then spent the next three years building up coal stocks and preparing an inevitable struggle with the miners.

Churchill, a member of Baldwin's cabinet, organised a scab army to break the strike. Lord Londonderry, the chief spokesman for the coal bosses, summed up the attitude of the ruling class: "Whatever it may cost in blood and treasure we shall find that the trade unions will be smashed from top to bottom".

The ruling class's ruthless determination stood in stark contrast to the faint heartedness of the TUC leadership, both Right and Left. Jimmy Thomas, the rail union leader, boasted that he had "groveled" before Baldwin in an attempt to avert the strike.

Left-winger Purcell condemned as "damned Russian gold" the £1.5 million collected by the Russian workers in support of the British workers.

The strike begins
IN MAY 1926, with the subsidy ended, the mine owners launched their attack on the miners' wages and conditions. One million miners came out on strike and demanded that the TUC call a general strike.

But the TUC only called the first meeting of the general council strike committee six days before the deadline.

Jimmy Thomas spoke on 19 April 1926 about: "loose passions being let loose" and "every sane miners' leader wants, as every employer wants - peace". But the only peace the bosses wanted was a complete victory over the miners and the working class.

The ruling class mistook the cowardice of the union leaders for the workers' mood. Millions answered the strike call and hundreds of thousands of others demanded to be called out. The TUC tried to control the strike but the movement developed its own momentum.

Non-trade unionists struck. 100 trades councils became 'Councils of Action'. The employers were forced to ask them for permission to move essential goods.

The Councils of Action had the means of overthrowing the capitalist order and instituting a workers' government, just as had happened in Russia in 1917.

But this would only have been possible if a revolutionary party had come to the head of the movement. Such a party would have called for the Councils of Action to be linked up nationally.

The Councils of Action would have made a class appeal to the rank and file of the army to assist the working class. A workers' government, based on the Councils of Action, could have gone on to take state power and carry through a socialist transformation of the economy.

Stalinism
THE YOUNG Communist Party, formed a few years before, was found wanting. This wasn't just through inexperience, it was under the influence of the increasingly Stalinised Communist International.

Trotsky, who at the time was isolated in Russia by Stalin, was a lone voice in the Communist International, warning that the British ruling class was preparing for a showdown.

Under Stalin's influence the Russian leadership, instead of warning the British workers against their own leaders, created illusions particularly in the left of the TUC leadership by forming an Anglo-Soviet committee.

From the beginning of the strike, the general council conspired with Samuel. He recommended big cuts in the miners' wages and all except Cook on the general council went along with this as they called off the strike.

Workers were stunned when they heard the news, the strike had won nothing for the miners, who continued their strike for another six months before being forced back to work.

The TUC did not even get a 'no victimisation' agreement, so even more rail workers, dockers and others came out again when they heard the terms of the surrender.

Power or defeat
THIS WAS more than a strike over wages and hours, which was recognised by all but the union leaders.

Trotsky had warned that inevitably an all-out general strike poses the question of who rules. Either it leads to power or becomes a severe defeat for the working class.

Marxists do not lightly raise the demand for a general strike. In periods of heightened class struggle we have called for a one-day general strike, such as during the miners' strikes in the 1980s and the pit closure crisis in 1992.

The demand for a 24-hour general strike is a means of demonstrating its own power to the working class. It sends a shot across the bow of the ruling class, that unless they back off more serious action is likely.

The 1926 general strike affected all classes and demonstrated the potential power of the working class to run society. But its failure showed the crucial need for revolutionary leadership.

Without such leadership, even the working class's most heroic efforts to rid itself of capitalism are unlikely to succeed. Without a revolutionary party, firmly rooted in the working class and its mass organisations, the reformist trade union and labour leaders will betray the movement.

We must ensure that this does not happen again by building a mass socialist revolutionary party that can play this vital role in the future.


With extracts taken from Bill Mullins, Socialist Party Industrial Organiser excellent pamphlett on the general strike.

Is reformism more utopian than ever ?

Reformism – a programme which restricts the workers’ struggle to allegedly “achievable aims” and fosters the illusion that society can be transformed by incremental changes over a protracted period – was energetically combated by Marxists from the time of Marx.
In the era of globalised capitalism, with its programme of brutal neo-liberal attacks on the working class, these ideas are more Utopian than they have ever been. This does not mean that Marxists must not fight in defence of every past gain or that they should not struggle for improvements in the conditions of the working class. However, we must constantly seek to explain that, even when victories are achieved, these of necessity are of a temporary character – given with the left hand and taken back by the right when conditions are ‘ripe’. It is therefore necessary to build a powerful working class force that can carry through a socialist transformation in the organisation and running of society.
The forces of socialism and Marxism were thrown back in terms of numbers and support in the 1990s. But the viability of democratic and liberating socialism, as propounded by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, retains its validity even in a period of relative isolation of the forces which argue for them. The march of events, the breakdown of capitalism, creates changes in the conditions and ultimately, therefore, in the consciousness of the working class. It can and will bring these ideas back onto the political agenda. That process is already under way, with the strikes of 30th june and 30th november 2011 and the massive 26 of march working calss demonstration the workers are finally starting to feel their power as a class again, This will develop at a ferocious pace. While fighting for socialism, the CWI is closely involved in the day-to-day struggles of working people.
Unlike others who are prepared just to comment from the sidelines, the CWI has never hesitated to get involved in the day-to-day struggles of the working class. Hence, our achievements in a number of countries. Our British section, a pioneer in many fields, as mentioned above, now has the most successful electoral record of any party to the left of the Labour Party in England and Wales. Moreover, in the trade unions we have a more significant number of members of the Socialist Party on national committees and at the base than any other trend on the left in Britain. This has only been possible because our trade union cadres and our members generally have dug roots in local areas and within some of the trade unions.
At the same time, we have never hidden our ideas and our programme, openly proclaiming ourselves as socialists and Trotskyists. More importantly, we have expressed the general ideas of Marxism in a manner that can be grasped by the most developed working men and women. This is why the CWI, in general, has managed to gather some of the best working class fighters into its ranks, although still too few for the tasks ahead i am convinced this will grow as events unfold.


But as the crisis in capitalism deepens which i have no doubt itw ill do the small timid claims for reformism will become increasingly utopian as the ruling class look to take back all of the gains of the working class in the last period. There is a major shift going on out there and there will be chances for the working class to take power if they are ready and prepared for it. This is another reason why a new mass workers party is needed to fight for reforms but point out they may only be temporary and that a fight for a new society based on peoples needs is our true aim as marxists.

The importance of Marx's theory of surplus value in capitalist production

Karl marx was one of the greatest thinkers ever to have lived. He cracked capitalism and its mysterious ways of working when he discovered what he called surplus value. This is still to this day a huge part of capitlist production. Yet still it is a theroy which isnt well known unelss you’re a marxist and have studied marx.

Marx himself considered his theory of surplus-value his most important contribution to the progress of economic analysis (Marx, letter to Engels of 24 August 1867). It is through this theory that the wide scope of his sociological and historical thought enables him simultaneously to place the capitalist mode of production in his historical context, and to find the root of its inner economic contradictions and its laws of motion in the specific relations of production on which it is based.
As said before, Marx’s theory of classes is based on the recognition that in each class society, part of society (the ruling class) appropriates the social surplus product. But that surplus product can take three essentially different forms (or a combination of them). It can take the form of straightforward unpaid surplus labour, as in the slave mode of production, early feudalism or some sectors of the Asiatic mode of production (unpaid corvée labour for the Empire). It can take the form of goods appropriated by the ruling class in the form of use-values pure and simple (the products of surplus labour), as under feudalism when feudal rent is paid in a certain amount of produce (produce rent) or in its more modern remnants, such as sharecropping. And it can take a money form, like money-rent in the final phases of feudalism, and capitalist profits. Surplus-value is essentially just that: the money form of the social surplus product or, what amounts to the same, the money product of surplus labour. It has therefore a common root with all other forms of surplus product: unpaid labour.
This means that Marx’s theory of surplus-value is basically a deduction (or residual) theory of the ruling classes’ income. The whole social product (the net national income) is produced in the course of the process of production, exactly as the whole crop is harvested by the peasants. What happens on the market (or through appropriation of the produce) is a distribution (or redistribution) of what already has been created. The surplus product, and therefore also its money form, surplus-value, is the residual of that new (net) social product (income) which remains after the producing classes have received their compensation (under capitalism: their wages). This ’deduction’ theory of the ruling classes’ income is thus ipso factor an exploitation theory. Not in the ethical sense of the word - although Marx and Engels obviously manifested a lot of understandable moral indignation at the fate of all the exploited throughout history, and especially at the fate of the modern proletariat - but in the economic one. The income of the ruling classes can always be reduced in the final analysis to the product of unpaid labour: that is the heart of Marx’s theory of exploitation.
That is also the reason why Marx attached so much importance to treating surplus-value as a general category, over and above profits (themselves subdivided into industrial profits, bank profits, commercial profits etc.), interest and rent, which are all part of the total surplus product produced by wage labour. It is this general category which explains both the existence (the common interest) of the ruling class (all those who live off surplus value), and the origins of the class struggle under capitalism.
Marx likewise laid bare the economic mechanism through which surplus-value originates. At the basis of that economic mechanism is a huge social upheaval which started in Western Europe in the 15th century and slowly spread over the rest of the continent and all other continents (in many so-called underdeveloped countries, it is still going on to this day).
Through many concomitant economic (including technical), social, political and cultural transformations, the mass of the direct producers, essentially peasants and handicraftsmen, are separated from their means of production and cut off from free access to the land. They are therefore unable to produce their livelihood on their own account. In order to keep themselves and their families alive, they have to hire out their arms, their muscles and their brains, to the owners of the means of production (including land). If and when these owners have enough money capital at their disposal to buy raw materials and pay wages, they can start to organise production on a capitalist basis, using wage labour to transform the raw materials which they buy, with the tools they own, into finished products which they then automatically own too.
The capitalist mode of production thus presupposes that the producers’ labour power has become a commodity. Like all other commodities, the commodity labour power has an exchange value and a use value. The exchange value of labour power, like the exchange value of all other commodities, is the amount of socially necessary labour embodied in it, i.e. its reproduction costs. This means concretely the value of all the consumer goods and services necessary for a labourer to work day after day, week after week, month after month, at approximately the same level of intensity, and for the members of the labouring classes to remain approximately stable in number and skill (i.e. for a certain number of working-class children to be fed, kept and schooled, so as to replace their parents when they are unable to work any more, or die). But the use value of the commodity labour power is precisely its capacity to create new value, including its potential to create more value than its own reproduction costs. Surplus-value is but that difference between the total new value created by the commodity labour power, and its own value, its own reproduction costs. The whole marxian theory of surplus-value is therefore based upon that subtle distinction between ’labour power’ and ’labour’ (or value). But there is nothing ’metaphysical’ about this distinction. It is simply an explanation (demystification) of a process which occurs daily in millions of cases.
The capitalist does not buy the worker’s ’labour’. If he did that there would be obvious theft, for the worker’s wage is obviously smaller than the total value he adds to that of the raw materials in the course of the process of production. No: the capitalist buys ’labour power’, and often (not always of course) he buys it at its justum pretium, at its real value. So he feels unjustly accused when he is said to have caused a ’dishonest’ operation. The worker is victim not of vulgar theft but of a social set-up which condemns him first to transform his productive capacity into a commodity, then to sell that labour power on a specific market (the labour market) characterised by institutional inequality, and finally to content himself with the market price he can get for that commodity, irrespective of whether the new value he creates during the process of production exceeds that market price (his wage) by a small amount, a large amount, or an enormous amount.
The labour power the capitalist has bought ’adds value’ to that of the used-up raw materials and tools (machinery, buildings etc.). If, and until that point of time, this added value is inferior or equal to the workers’ wages, surplus-value cannot originate. But in that case, the capitalist has obviously no interest in hiring wage labour. He only hires it because that wage labour has the quality (the use value) to add to the raw materials’ value more than its own value (i.e. its own wages). This ’additional added value’ (the difference between total ’value added’ and wages) is precisely surplus-value. Its emergence from the process of production is the precondition for the capitalists’ hiring workers, for the existence of the capitalist mode of production.
The institutional inequality existing on the labour market (masked for liberal economists, sociologists and moral philosophers alike by juridical equality) arises from the very fact that the capitalist mode of production is based upon generalised commodity production, generalised market economy. This implies that a propertyless labourer, who owns no capital, who has no reserves of larger sums of money but who has to buy his food and clothes, pay his rent and even elementary public transportation for journeying between home and workplace, in a continuous way in exchange of money, is under the economic compulsion to sell the only commodity he possesses, to wit his labour power, also on a continuous basis. He cannot withdraw from the labour market until the wages go up. He cannot wait.
But the capitalist, who has money reserves, can temporarily withdraw from the labour market. He can lay his workers off, can even close or sell his enterprise and wait a couple of years before starting again in business. The institutional differences makes price determination of the labour market a game with loaded dice, heavily biased against the working class. One just has to imagine a social set-up in which each citizen would be guaranteed an annual minimum income by the community, irrespective of whether he is employed or not, to understand that ’wage determination’ under these circumstances would be quite different from what it is under capitalism. In such a set-up the individual would really have the economic choice whether to sell his labour power to another person (or a firm) or not. Under capitalism, he has no choice. His is forced by economic compulsion to go through that sale, practically at any price.
The economic function and importance of trade unions for the wage-earners also clearly arises from that elementary analysis. For it is precisely the workers’ ’combination’ and their assembling a collective resistance fund (what was called by the first French unions caisses de résistance, ’reserve deposits’) which enables them, for example through a strike, to withdraw the supply of labour power temporarily from the market so as to stop a downward trend of wages or induce a wage increase. There is nothing ’unjust’ in such a temporary withdrawal of the supply of labour power, as there are constant withdrawals of demand for labour power by the capitalists, sometimes on a huge scale never equalled by strikes. Through the functioning of strong labour unions, the working class tries to correct, albeit partially and modestly, the institutional inequality on the labour market of which it is a victim, without ever being able to neutralise it durably or completely.
It cannot neutralise it durably because in the very way in which capitalism functions there is a powerful built-in corrective in favour of capital: the inevitable emergence of an industrial reserve army of labour. There are three key sources for that reserve army: the mass of precapitalist producers and self-employed (independent peasants, handicraftsmen, trades-people, professional people, small and medium-sized capitalists); the mass of housewives (and to a lesser extent, children); the mass of the wage-earners themselves, who potentially can be thrown out of employment.
The first two sources have to be visualised not only in each capitalist country seen separately but on a world scale, through the operations of international migration. They are still unlimited to a great extent, although the number of wage-earners the world over (including agricultural wage labourers) has already passed the one billion mark. As the third source, while it is obviously not unlimited (if wage labour would disappear altogether, if all wage labourers would be fired, surplus-value production would disappear too; that is why ’total robotism’ is impossible under capitalism), its reserves are enormous, precisely in tandem with the enormous growth of the absolute number of wage earners.
The fluctuations of the industrial reserve army are determined both by the business cycle and by long-term trends of capital accumulation. Rapidly increasing capital accumulation attracts wage labour on a massive scale, including through international migration. Likewise, deceleration, stagnation or even decline of capital accumulation inflates the reserve army of labour. There is thus an upper limit to wage increases, when profits (realised profits and expected profits) are ’excessively’ reduced in the eyes of the capitalists, which triggers off such decelerated, stagnating or declining capital accumulation, thereby decreasing employment and wages, till a ’reasonable’ level of profits is restored. This process does not correspond to any ’natural economic law’ (or necessity), nor does it correspond to any ’immanent justice’. It just expresses the inner logic of the capitalist mode of production, which is geared to profit. Other forms of economic organisation could function, have functioned and are functioning on the basis of other logics, which do not lead to periodic massive unemployment. On the contrary, a socialist would say - and Marx certainly thought so - that the capitalist system is an ’unjust’, or better stated ’alienating’, ’inhuman’ social system, precisely because it cannot function without periodically reducing employment and the satisfaction of elementary needs for tens of millions of human beings.
Marx’s theory of surplus-value is therefore closely intertwined with a theory of wages which is far away from Malthus’s, Ricardo’s or the early socialists’ (like Ferdinand Lassalle’s) ‘iron law of wages’, in which wages tend to fluctuate around the physiological minimum. That crude theory of ‘absolute pauperisation’ of the working class under capitalism, attributed to Marx by many authors (Popper, 1945, et a1.), is not Marx’s at all, as many contemporary authors have convincingly demonstrated (see among others Rosdolsky, 1968). Such an ‘iron law of wages’ is essentially a demographic one, in which birth rates and the frequency of marriages determine the fluctuation of employment and unemployment and thereby the level of wages.