How could a socialist society meet people’s needs?

People often wonder how could a socialist society work and would it work. I’m told constantly there is too much greed in society for socialism to ever work. We do live under capitalism a system based on greed for a few by their blind drive for greater profits. But how could production of the things we need and want be different under socialism surely this couldn’t work? I think it could and I’m not utopian I’m a revolutionary who doesn’t just see things as they are now but as a constant process things constantly changing and developing at different rates. In the 300 years or so of its existence capitalism has transformed the planet over and over again. Rail, electricity, the internal combustion engine, flight, space travel, telephones and electronic computers, the list is endless. The world economy is 17 times the size it was a century ago. In 1900 there were only a few thousand cars worldwide. Now there are 501 million. + Despite this, all the technology developed by capitalism has not provided clean water for 1.2 billion people or food for the 841 million who are seriously malnourished. Nor has it prevented the Aids epidemic rampaging through Africa. Upwards of 28 million Africans have the HIV virus and only 30,000 of them can get treatment. Capitalism is capable of spending billions on developing weaponry that is used to bomb the poor of Afghanistan into the rubble, but it cannot solve poverty, hunger or disease. So our alternative is socialism. A socialist economy would have to be a planned economy. This would involve bringing all of the big corporations, which control around 80% of the British economy, into democratic public ownership, under working-class control. Of course, it would not mean bringing small businesses, such as the local shops, many of which are forced out of business by the multinationals, into public ownership. Nor would it mean, as opponents of socialism claim, taking away personal ‘private property’. On the contrary, socialists are in favour of everyone having the right to a decent home and the other conveniences of modern life. A genuine socialist government would not be dictatorial. On the contrary, it would extend and deepen democracy enormously. This would be much more far-reaching than the parliamentary democracies of capitalism where we simply get to vote every few years for MPs who do whatever they like once elected. Instead, everyone would get to take part in deciding how society and the economy would be run. Nationally, regionally and locally – at every level - elected representatives would be accountable and subject to instant recall. Therefore, if the people who had elected them did not like what their representative did, they could make them stand for immediate re-election and, if they wished, replace them with someone else. Elected representatives would also only receive the average wage. Today MPs are a privileged section of society. Their lives are remote from those of ordinary people. This is no accident. From the earliest days of the Labour Party, the ruling class tried to buy-off socialist MPs. Its method is usually subtler than brown envelopes of cash: it is a high salary, a very comfortable lifestyle and the drip, drip of ceaseless flattery about how 'sensible' and 'wise' it is to be 'moderate' and 'realistic'. The result has been that countless numbers of MPs have decided that the best way to emancipate the working class is one by one – starting with them. That is why members of the Socialist Party who become MPs will only take the average wage of a skilled worker. In the 1980s, three MPs (Dave Nellist, Terry Fields and Pat Wall) were elected as Labour MPs on the policies of Militant (the Socialist Party’s predecessor). All took a worker’s wage. Today Joe Higgins, a TD (MP) in the Irish parliament, and a member of our sister organisation in Ireland, takes a worker’s wage and has been described by the tabloid press as "the red that money can’t buy". A socialist government would ensure that no elected representatives received financial privileges as a result of their position but, instead, lived the same lifestyle as those they represented. There is another crucial sense in which democracy would be far fuller in a socialist society. Under capitalism most of the important decisions are not taken in Westminster or local council chambers, they are taken in the boardrooms of the big corporations. By contrast, a socialist government would bring major industry into democratic public ownership. It would be necessary to draw up a plan, involving the whole of society, on what industry needed to produce. At every level, in communities and workplaces, committees would be set up and would elect representatives to regional and national government – again on the basis of recall at anytime if they disagreed with their decisions. Everybody would be able to participate in real decision-making about how best to run society. Many people will argue that this is utopian, that people would not be bothered to participate in such bodies. Yet in every mass struggle - from the Paris Commune of 1871 onwards - the embryos of this type of structure have come into existence. In Britain during the struggle to defeat the poll tax, when 18 million refused to pay the iniquitous tax, hundreds of thousands of people took part in meetings to plan the campaign. While the anti-poll tax unions were only temporary bodies, organised to fight against a single Tory attack, they nonetheless give a glimpse of working people’s capacity to organise. Even today, thousands of working-class people attend their tenants’ associations and other community meetings. And organisations in a workers’ state would be completely different to the toothless bodies that working-class people are currently allowed to take part in - the committees would actually have the power to say how the economy and society is organised. In addition, for a planned economy to work, it would be vital that the working class had the time to take part in the running of society. Therefore, measures such as a shorter working week and decent, affordable childcare would be a prerequisite for society to develop towards socialism. Another argument against a planned economy is that society is now too complicated to be planned. Some people argue that, in the past, when the majority of people's aspirations were more limited, it may have been possible to plan an economy. But that today, when people want washing machines, videos and fashionable clothes, they claim planning just would not work. Yet modern technology would, in reality, make planning far easier than it was in the past. In addition, it would use modern technology to limit the number of hours it was necessary to work. A socialist government could immediately introduce a maximum 35-hour week, with no loss of pay. Capitalism’s remorseless drive for profit means that new technology has been used, not to shorten the working week, but to throw workers on the scrap heap. "We are living in a world of glut, we have too much of everything from grain to cars." This is the real lunacy of capitalism. We have too much grain - which means more than can be sold at a profit - yet in Africa 20 million people are starving. A socialist government would harness technology to lower the number of hours it is necessary to work. This would give working-class people more time to participate in running society. Combined with a massive programme of socially necessary projects - such as increasing the numbers of teachers, doctors and nurses - unemployment could be eliminated. Private ownership of the means of production results in constant duplication. Companies fiercely compete to produce a certain product first and best. Socialism would eliminate this and thereby save a huge amount of resources. There would also be no need for marketing, on which capitalism spends $1 trillion a year. This does not mean, as is commonly claimed, that socialism would result in a lack of choice or poor quality goods: a society where everyone dresses in a grey uniform. It would be possible to have far more choice of the things which people desire to have a variety of (such as clothes, music, holidays etc) than under capitalism. However, society might choose not to have 200 brands of washing powder. All in all a socialist society would run by the mass’s for the mass’s with not just the wealth being shared out as we as socialists do not support sharing out the misery but owning the means of production to produce for peoples needs not profits of a few. With extracts taken from the socialist party’s excellent pamphlet what is socialism http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/WhatIsSocFrame.htm

Can a planned economy work by producing for peoples needs?

We are often asked as socialists well how would your socialism work? Well for a start it wouldn’t be ours it would be everyone’s everyone would have a true stake in society at long last.
Capitalism has created enormous wealth, science and technique. We have technology today that was unimaginable a generation ago.
The world economy is 17 times the size it was a century ago. Yet we are being told that the most basic public services - a decent public health service, the right to an affordable home - cannot be afforded by capitalism.
The current crisis is not caused by a bloated public sector but by the worst crisis of capitalism in 70 years. This is a crisis of the private not the public sector.
Yet all the major capitalist parties - Tories, Lib Dem and New Labour agree that it should be the working class and public services that pay for it.

It is clear to me and many others that there is the wealth in society to pay for all that we need. It is a lie that there is no money left and something we must and I mean must smash as there is huge amounts of money out there if it wasn’t so concentrated among a select rich few.

Capitalism has always been a system based on the exploitation of the majority, the working class, for the profits of a few at the top.
There was a brief period, from around 1950-73, when capitalism developed rapidly. At least in the more economically developed countries, including Britain, working-class people were able to win a few crumbs from the capitalists' table.
In Britain, a National Health Service and a mass council house building programme made a real improvement in workers' lives.
However, when capitalism went into crisis, it set about restoring its profits by driving down the share of the wealth taken by the working class. Production was moved abroad to countries with cheaper labour, wages were driven down, and spending on public services was cut back.

During the last boom profits reached an all-time record. However, they had difficulty finding profitable fields to invest in.
Investment in science, technique and production remained at an historic low. Why? Because working-class people lacked the means to buy the goods that could potentially be produced.
This is the terrible reality of capitalism. It does not matter that two billion people are without the most basic necessities of life; they are not 'a market' because they lack the money to buy what is produced.
Instead of investing in industry, the capitalist class made its profits in the last boom by gambling on the world's stock markets in a speculative frenzy. To try and increase their markets the working class got its own little share in the credit frenzy: cheap credit cards and mortgages - not crumbs but bubbles from the table.

How does Socialism create and maintain jobs and keep the economy functioning effectively and growing?
The first thing that would happen under socialism is that unemployment would be eliminated overnight. Even in 2000, during a boom period, the UK had 2 million people unemployed. The cost of this is estimated at £5,000 per family per year in terms of lost production and benefit claims. Under socialism everyone would be guaranteed a job by reducing the working week without loss of pay. The reason this doesn’t happen under capitalism (or at least neo-liberal capitalism) is because getting fewer people to do more work is a fantastic way to make profit! However, as Tony Benn said, if full employment can be used to fight Hitler why can’t it be used to feed people? Jobs would be created for the benefit of society as a whole, not for the bank balances of the rich.
As for allowing the economy to grow; even in a bureaucratically deformed workers’ state with no democracy such the USSR and other planned economies they had production levels that were for decades on a par and often better than in the West. This phenomenon would be magnified in a true socialist society with the active engagement of the population and the ‘oxygen’ of workers’ democracy.
Besides, as we’ve all seen recently, capitalism by no means guarantees economic growth indefinitely. What is happening at the present time is precisely what Karl Marx analysed years before, a classic case of over-production. Products such as cars were produced for people to buy but we could no long afford to buy back the things we had produced. And who suffers as a result of this system? Not the capitalists who caused this crisis but the ordinary workers who one day were in a job (so long as it made profit for the bosses) and the next on the scrapheap! This anarchy and unjust ‘employment strategy’ would be consigned to the dustbin of history.
How does it invest in research and development, and find new alternatives for industry, for example switching from dirty fuel such as coal to clean and renewable energy such as wind or hydroelectric power?
How does it create innovation and entrepreneurs, and inspire young people to work hard and achieve?

Under capitalism, the majority of people (i.e. the working class) are coerced to work, we literally have no choice but to otherwise we starve! We are compelled by the logic of capitalism to sell our labour and, as such, capitalism calls the shots, not the people who produce the wealth in society. Under socialism, people would of course be expected to work, but for very different reasons. Instead, workers would be encouraged to work for the benefit of society and not just reasons for of survival. Despite the arguments of conservatives, socialists believe that humanity is basically good but is shaped by the society it lives in. Therefore, I believe that people that believe in a society that works for them, and is, ultimately, run by them will make sure it works. As a socialist society is run by the working class it is in our interests to make sure it works. Every effort will be made to make people’s lives easier and it stands to reason that innovation will still be needed under socialism. A society can never be too efficient.
Again, under capitalism, innovation and entrepreneurship reflect class interests and is therefore only utilised to make profit and not for the overall good of society. The technology exists for everyone to drive around in environmentally-friendly cars but capitalism will not allow this to happen on a mass scale because it will cut into its profits. Production would be based on human need not personal greed.

As always the capitalists will fight back to maintain their profits and their system at the heart of all this.
That is why a crucial step towards solving the economic crisis would be to take the big corporations that dominate Britain's economy into democratic public ownership.
This would allow for production to be planned for need and not for profit. Even some of the representatives of capitalism have inadvertently recognised that this is the only way to solve the crisis.
Alan Greenspan, head of the US federal reserve during the boom years - once treated as a god by capitalism and how reviled as being responsible for the crisis - recently excused his role in the crisis by saying: "Unless there is a societal choice to abandon dynamic markets and leverage for some sort of central planning, I fear that preventing bubbles will in the end turn out to be unfeasible. Assuaging their aftermath seems to be the best we can hope for."
Democratically planned economy
In the coming years, on the basis of their experience of capitalism, millions of workers will draw the same conclusion as Greenspan. 'Central planning' in Britain - in the sense of a democratically planned economy - would mean that building workers, for example, could be put to work building and refurbishing high quality, environmentally friendly affordable social housing for the five million people who want it.
Huge resources could be put into the development of environmentally friendly technologies. The working week could be cut, without loss of pay.
This measure, combined with an expansion of public services, could quickly eliminate unemployment. All of these and much more would be possible on the basis of a democratic socialist plan of production.
Of course, capitalism is an international system, and any alternative could not stop at the shores of Britain. However, if a democratically elected socialist government in any country was to begin to implement the kind of programme outlined here it would act as an enormous inspiration to workers in the rest of the world struggling against capitalism's devastation of their living standards.
The ideas of genuine democratic socialism would spread like wildfire.




With extracts taken from Portsmouth socialist party s excellent blog and the socialist party’s website at www.socialistparty.org.uk

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.

Water shortages and droughts in the UK, what is the solution ?

On Monday the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) revealed that much of southern and eastern England was officially in a state of drought.

Hosting a drought summit Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman said groundwater levels in parts of south-east England were lower than in the infamously dry summer of 1976.

So with water shortages and droughts a real possibility now in the south east of England in particular with this being the most densely populated area in the country to we are left wondering what we shouldd o.

As socialsits we reject the idea that natural resources like water and sunlight should be privatised to enable rich boss's to cream off profits for a select few.

We would agree with the capitalists who are starting to make noises of moving water around the country to share out resources. But where we differ from them though is that we would base this on need not profit. We would put forward the idea of nationalising the water companies and bringing them into public ownership. This would enable ordinary water workers to draw up the needs of the people in a given area of the country and work with other parts of the country to best divide the resources that we need. This would all be possible as the money would be there as it wouldnt be being pocketed by rich boss's only interested in profits.

With extra money there to invest in decent water resources we could then become far greener by investing in purification systems to recycle water from the seas around us which we are surrounded by to then meet the needs of the people. This would all be possible under a socialist planned economy where the need for profit was taken out of the mix.

What would socialism look like and how would it work in reality ?

As socialists and revolutionaries we are often asked well what would socialism look like, how would it work and how would you avoid it going the same way as the Stalinist dictators and one party states such as China and Cuba etc. As a socialist I am faced with these sorts of questions often so I thought I’d answer a few on here.

This is a vast topic so I will revisit bits in the future no doubt.

As the current crisis of capitalism unfolds a new and potentially decisive layer of workers and youth will be looking for a socialist way forward. Naturally, this way forward raises crucial questions such as; how a socialist economy would work? How would it solve the problems of mass poverty and hunger? How could it put end to the environmental destruction of the planet?

How does Socialism create and maintain jobs and keep the economy functioning effectively and growing?
The first thing that would happen under socialism is that unemployment would be eliminated overnight. Even in 2000, during a boom period, the UK had 2 million people unemployed. The cost of this is estimated at £5,000 per family per year in terms of lost production and benefit claims. Under socialism everyone would be guaranteed a job by reducing the working week without loss of pay. The reason this doesn’t happen under capitalism (or at least neo-liberal capitalism) is because getting fewer people to do more work is a fantastic way to make profit! However, as Tony Benn said, if full employment can be used to fight Hitler why can’t it be used to feed people? Jobs would be created for the benefit of society as a whole, not for the bank balances of the rich.
As for allowing the economy to grow; even in a bureaucratically deformed workers’ state with no democracy such the USSR and other planned economies they had production levels that were for decades on a par and often better than in the West. This phenomenon would be magnified in a true socialist society with the active engagement of the population and the ‘oxygen’ of workers’ democracy.
Besides, as we’ve all seen recently, capitalism by no means guarantees economic growth indefinitely. What is happening at the present time is precisely what Karl Marx analysed years before, a classic case of over-production. Products such as cars were produced for people to buy but we could no long afford to buy back the things we had produced. And who suffers as a result of this system? Not the capitalists who caused this crisis but the ordinary workers who one day were in a job (so long as it made profit for the bosses) and the next on the scrapheap! This anarchy and unjust ‘employment strategy’ would be consigned to the dustbin of history.
How does it invest in research and development, and find new alternatives for industry, for example switching from dirty fuel such as coal to clean and renewable energy such as wind or hydroelectric power?
How does it create innovation and entrepreneurs, and inspire young people to work hard and achieve?

Under capitalism, the majority of people (i.e. the working class) are coerced to work, we literally have no choice but to otherwise we starve! We are compelled by the logic of capitalism to sell our labour and, as such, capitalism calls the shots, not the people who produce the wealth in society. Under socialism, people would of course be expected to work, but for very different reasons. Instead, workers would be encouraged to work for the benefit of society and not just reasons for of survival. Despite the arguments of conservatives, socialists believe that humanity is basically good but is shaped by the society it lives in. Therefore, I believe that people that believe in a society that works for them, and is, ultimately, run by them will make sure it works. As a socialist society is run by the working class it is in our interests to make sure it works. Every effort will be made to make people’s lives easier and it stands to reason that innovation will still be needed under socialism. A society can never be too efficient.
Again, under capitalism, innovation and entrepreneurship reflect class interests and is therefore only utilised to make profit and not for the overall good of society. The technology exists for everyone to drive around in environmentally-friendly cars but capitalism will not allow this to happen on a mass scale because it will cut into its profits. Production would be based on human need not personal greed.
On the subject of the environment: at the present time science also reflects the interests of the ruling class. What better example of capitalism caring for its own ends rather than the future of the planet and of working people than the Vestas wind turbine factory, where, rather than nationalise the company to save it from going under (although, absurdly, Vestas continues to make a profit) the factory was allowed to shut and 600 workers ended up on the dole. Research and development are based on creating the greatest profit for private owners and shareholders.
We argue for all industry, including energy, to be nationalised under workers’ control who could then draw up a plan of production to develop a sustainable and renewable economy that can save our planet from destruction. The technology exists now for our environment to be cleaned up but this does not fit in with the outlook of capitalism. Any workers that became surplus to requirements as unsustainable industries die out would have the opportunity to retrain in the new industry (something that the government should have done with miners who worked in pits whose reserves were GENUINELY exhausted).
Where does it get its money?
How does it continue to invest in services, industries, secure economic growth and job creation?
I know that you will say tax the rich, but there’s only so much milk you can get from a cow! Once you have taxed the rich into poverty, and hence created a universally poor society, where will you then get money?

There are a number of ways in which wealth will be created under socialism. Firstly, you are correct in saying we will take the wealth of the rich away from them. Taxing the rich would be one of our primary demands now but ultimately, in a socialist society, the wealth of the rich would be expropriated from them with compensation only paid on the basis of proven need. All large industry would be nationalised with the same principle of compensation applied. This would be more than a fair enough deal for the capitalists who rob the working class of the wealth we create on a daily basis!
Secondly, luxury expenditure for the rich will be ended. Capitalist experts are always keen to point out that ending the wealth of the rich will not solve the problems of society, because, however obscenely well off they are, there are not enough of them to make a big difference. Nevertheless, the rich do consume 5% of national income which amounts to £40 billion a year in Britain. This is a sum that could begin the process of transforming the NHS.
Thirdly, arms spending would be abandoned. On a world scale the waste of resources on arms is vast, reaching nearly $1 trillion each year at the end of the cold war – approximately $1,000 a year for every family on the planet. For socialism to work it would have to be an international system and, therefore, in time, the need for arms expenditure would become obsolete. Workers in the arms industry would be re-employed in other, socially useful, industries.
Finally, the obscene waste that occurs under capitalism (in resources and employment) will be abolished and a democratically planned economy will take its place. The world is currently dominated by a handful of multinational corporations who duplicate expenditure in research and development, spend unnecessary vast sums on advertising and design products with planned obsolescence. For example, rival drug companies spend billions on developing varieties of pain killers with marginally different effectiveness. There is also the disgraceful wastage of food that occurs due to overproduction or, even more shamefully, to manipulate prices on the world market.
Given these factors and the huge improvement in resources available and with the profit motive eventually abolished, a socialist government would invest in socially useful production. Commodities would exist for people to buy (planned and monitored democratically by consumer unions) and any money gained would be re-invested into society. Workers would be paid more than well enough to afford any commodity and would stimulate the economy accordingly. The notion of overproduction would become an absurdity. Trade relations between countries would be based on mutual co-operation (for example, in the USSR different countries specialised on the production of certain things but were traded equally).
The crucial difference is that firms will be operating to new rules. Wage rates, working conditions and prices will no longer be set by multi-national firms but by democratic government. Where the economy is unable to produce sufficient commodities to meet demand then a price mechanism and market could continue to operate. But with the profit motive removed many goods including basic foods, housing, fuel etc could be provided for free.
Lenin (in State and Revolution) and Trotsky (in The Revolution Betrayed) both argued that a state will be necessary during the transition from capitalism to communism. But as the planned economy develops it will be able to meet more and more of people’s wants until there is no need to ration and limit distribution and the state can wither away. They were writing in the early 20th century and today the distribution of such goods could be achieved far more efficiently than they can be retailed in shops, especially given recent developments in IT. What could be simpler than ordering free, publicly provided goods on the internet? Demand and future production needs could be monitored continuously and fed into the planning process.
Huge wealth is created under capitalism but is in the hands of a tiny minority, why on earth would we be in a state of poverty when this ratio is reversed and all the waste that accompanies capitalist society no longer exists? We are living under a system that impoverishes well over half the planet and the opponents of our ideas have the audacity to claim socialism would dump everyone into a perpetual state of poverty without any substantial arguments whatsoever! Far from being a society languishing in poverty, a socialist society would be a society of ‘superabundance’ . Capitalism is based on the fairy tale of the perfect market whereas a socialist planned economy deals with the realities of society and offers a way of providing for it.
This only touch’s the surface of the possibilities available to mankind if production was run by and in the interests of the majority rather than the minority. Of course, none of this would be possible without genuine democracy – where working people are involved at every stage of production and elected representatives receive no more than the workers they represent and are subject to recall at any stage.



with credits and thanks to portsmouth socialist party for extracts and input to this post.

Is this the best capitalism can offer us ?

We are repeatably told there is no better system than capitalism and that all other systems have been found wanting. But today where we live in a ever declining level of living standards is what we have today the best capitalism can offer us all ?

A Mori poll out today shows 64% believed its unlikely that today's youth would have better life than their parents.

Against the background of the worst crisis "ever" (according to Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England) the claim that 'there is no alternative' is a difficult argument, to say the least, to sustain today. Yet all three main parties insist on it.

The real situation is revealed in the army of unemployed, the colossal wastage arising from the 'great recession', which threatens to topple into outright depression.

One million young people alongside one million women are part of what is likely to become a permanent 2.75 million minimum army of unemployed in Britain.

And this is just part of the legions of at least 200 million unemployed in the world who increasingly form a substratum of the poor, homeless and dispossessed.

Of this figure 81 million is composed of young people - who are condemned to a life of worklessness. There is almost a 50% rate of unemployed young people in Spain and 40% in Greece.

Added to this are the seven million in Britain and 1.6 billion worldwide in part-time 'precarious' jobs.

They are a 'precariat', a modern manifestation of the "reserve army of the unemployed", as written about by Karl Marx, who analysed capitalism.

This is a pool of cheap, sometimes almost slave labour - including young people working as 'interns' for nothing.

They may be drawn into work when needed and then conveniently tossed aside like an old boot when the economic cycle of capitalism deems they are 'surplus to requirements'.

Yet, argue the defenders of capitalism, this system is the best conceivable one for delivering goods and services to the peoples of Britain and the world.

It is true that capitalism, in its progressive phase, furnished the basis for the first time in history to abolish want and privation.

Now, however, it has turned into its opposite and become an absolute fetter to the further development of industry and society.

By its own admission, it is now a machine for destroying wealth and the lives of working people rather than creating it.

It is also destroying the environment. The majority of humankind will have to challenge this system and replace it with socialism in order to stop the decline of the planet.

A hallowed institution of capitalism, the International Monetary Fund admitted that $50 trillion, equal to the total production of the world in a year, was lost in 2008 alone because of the world crisis of capitalism.

In Britain, a minimum of £200 billion has been lost in GDP since the first quarter of 2008 due to the recession. This would be more than enough - two and half times - to cover the £81 billion cuts.

Moreover, economist Gavyn Davies in his blog for the Financial Times - house journal of the financial plutocrats who control the credit system, the nerve centre of capitalism - admits that growth remains far below the potential built up by the previous development of industry and will remain so for "several more years".

This means "there will be a massive further wastage of economic resources". Davies estimates that if the recession continues until 2016 - at least another five years of economic agony for working people - this will "amount to a loss of $5,900 billion, of which $2,200 billion is still to come in the next five years".

Added to this is the huge wastage on 'defence' spending and arms production, a total of $1.7 trillion a year.

Then there is the obscene $3 trillion already spent on the failed wars of Afghanistan and Iraq.

There is also the scandalous example of the 3,000 BAE workers thrown out of their jobs because of 'defence cuts'. How easy it would be to plan, for instance, to switch them with their accumulated technical expertise, into green technology and other necessary useful products?

But mention of the 'planning' of industry and society is anathema to the capitalists and their representatives.


However, the speed and depth of the present crisis of capitalism and its devastating effect on the lives of millions of workers in Britain and worldwide, poses sharply the issue not just of immediate measures that offer some relief for working people, but of more profound solutions, of 'system change'. This means outlining and fighting for a democratic socialist alternative.

The powerful and inspirational mass movements of the Greek workers have heroically battered away at the foundations of rotten Greek capitalism.

Their counterparts in Spain, Portugal, Italy and here in Britain, in this decisive movement of 30 November, seek to emulate them.

why socialists support the robin hood tax, but know it does not go far enough

We hear all the time from reformists of the capitalist system that a few more tax'es her eand there will sort things out. Especially from new labour who claim a bankers bonus's tax will save us from everything. They seem to support this idea of a robin hood tax which yes as socialists we support too but recognise the fact it does not go far enough in our view.

In a nutshell, the big idea behind the Robin Hood Tax is to generate billions of pounds – hopefully even hundreds of billions of pounds. That money will fight poverty in the UK and overseas. It will tackle climate change. And it will come from fairer taxation of the financial sector.

A tiny tax on the financial sector can generate £20 billion annually in the UK alone. That's enough to protect schools and hospitals. Enough to stop massive cuts across the public sector. Enough to build new lives around the world – and to deal with the new climate challenges our world is facing.

As a result of the financial crisis, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has calculated UK government debt will be 40% higher. That 40% equates to £737 billion pounds, or £28,000 pounds for every taxpayer in the country. Having to pay back that debt means cuts in vital services on which millions of people around the country rely.

Total cost to the UK of financial crisis in terms of lost output according to the IMF was 27% of 2008 GDP.


Capitalism is a social system based upon production for profit not social need. A 'rational' organisation of production is impossible because it is also a blind system. Workers will be thrown out of jobs when there is no 'demand' for their products.

In reality there is always a need for their products - but social need is subordinate to whether or not it is profitable for the capitalists.

Then when production increases in another field after a period of unemployment, some may be integrated back into industry.

Contrast this to the way production would be organised under socialism, especially through democratic workers' control and management.

If there was a surplus of workers and capital in one field and a deficiency in another, a democratic planned organisation of industry would just involve a voluntary transfer of goods and labour from one sector of the economy to another.

Karl Marx showed that this is what happens already, within a single factory or today even with multinational and transnational companies: "...That same [capitalist] mind denounces with equal vigour every conscious attempt to socially control and regulate the process of production, as an inroad upon such sacred things as the rights of property, freedom and unrestricted play for the bent of the individual capitalist.

"It is very characteristic that the enthusiastic apologists of the factory system have nothing more damning to urge against a general organisation of the labour of society, than that it would turn all society into one immense factory." [Karl Marx, Capital, vol 1, chapter XIV, section 4.]

Economic and political power must be taken out of the hands of the destroyers of wealth, the handful of capitalists who control industry and society.

In Britain, this would involve the taking over of a handful of monopoly firms that control 80-85% of the economy.

Compensation would be given to the ex-owners and particularly to the small shareholders on the basis of proven need.

Imagine what would then be possible by utilising the full potential of production! The famous capitalist economist John Maynard Keynes estimated in the 1930s that by the beginning of this century, by utilising the full potential that remained unused under capitalism, the average worker would work no more than 15 hours a week and therefore gain "freedom from economic cares"!

Such a prospect only appears 'utopian' because of the character of modern capitalism with its philosophy of a dog-eat-dog society combined with a programme of 'work til you drop' without respite or enjoyment, repression of wages and ever increasing poverty and unemployment.

Searing inequality - which has deepened and extended during this crisis - has fuelled the revolt of the working class, which in turn has sparked the worldwide 'Occupy' movement.

Its ringing denunciations of the 1% of the population that controls an unprecedented hoard of wealth to the detriment of the 99% majority have found a wide echo.

But the laudable attempts to close and eliminate the 'wealth gap' are likely to be stillborn under capitalism.

We support a 'Robin Hood tax' on the transactions of big business. But history shows that the capitalists always find a thousand and one ways to circumvent any law which seeks to claw back some of the wealth and eats into their profits.

When the Labour government of Harold Wilson attempted to do something similar through a corporation tax in the 1970s, such was the opposition of big business it was completely watered down and rendered largely ineffective.

The only way to prevent this is through the nationalisation of the banks and finance houses.

Similarly, the 'dictatorship of the market', which is holding the whole of Europe to ransom, should be met with the cancellation of the debt to the bond parasites.

This in turn could only succeed if nationalisation was carried through not just in one country but on a continental and world basis.

Inequality is intrinsic to capitalism. The exploitation of the working class - the capitalists garner what Marx called 'unpaid labour' in the form of profits - is the very foundation of the system.

From this flow all the inequalities and the class antagonisms which shape this society.

The system can go ahead for a while as long as the surplus is invested in productive industry to create more factories and thereby the production of more goods and services.

But it stagnates and falls back when the restricted incomes of the working class - particularly marked in the last few decades - mean they cannot buy back fully the goods and services they produce.

This results in 'overproduction', a glut of unsold goods and redundant workers and capital. This, in turn, can produce a 'death spiral' reflected in the paralysis of production evident throughout the world today.


Combine all this clear evidence of the wasteful character of the system with the extraordinary mass movements - Greece, Italy, Spain, Britain on 30 November, etc - and it is clear that capitalism faces one of its greatest threats in its long history.

In fact, a new social system is knocking at the door of history. This is the idea of a socialist democratically planned and organised economy and society. To usher it in requires a movement and the urgent building of a mass workers' party.

Ironically, this current threat to capitalism arises from its very triumph following the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the downfall of Stalinism.

The consequent dismantling of the planned, nationalised economies and their replacement by 'wild capitalism' represented a big ideological victory for capitalism.

This in turn moved the leaders of parties such as the old Labour Party, at its base a 'workers' party', and the trade unions to the right, leading to the transformation of these parties largely into pro-capitalist formations.

This meant that the capitalists no longer needed to look over their shoulders at a threat posed by the working class. There is no check on their actions as there had been previously.

Capitalism was therefore unrestrained in pursuing the policies of financialisation which were already underway in the late 1970s and 1980s.

In this sense, it became its own gravedigger, manifested in the economic madness of debt-driven capitalism; financial bubbles on top of financial bubbles, which collapsed like a house of cards in 2007-2008.

The consequences of this are evident in the idle factories, workplaces and the tragedy of the millions of 'idle hands' which presently litter the economic landscape of world capitalism.

"Hang on a moment! This idea of socialism is nothing new. It has been tried before and failed miserably in Russia, and elsewhere," argue the representatives of capitalism.

Winston Churchill, Tory prime minister in the Second World War and the 1950s, got it right, they say, when he asserted: "Capitalism has many faults but it is better than the other alternatives on offer." This threadbare argument is all that the capitalists can now fall back on.

Firstly, the Russia they refer to was a Stalinist regime not a genuinely socialist workers' democracy.

It was totalitarian in character and dominated by a bureaucratic elite, although resting ultimately on a nationalised planned economy.

Where the first attempts were made to lay the foundations of socialism, for instance in Russia between 1917 and 1923 this did not 'fail', as our critics argue.

On the contrary, the establishment of a nationalised planned economy with democratic control exercised by the working class and the poor peasant masses through 'soviets' - workers' councils - gave us a glimpse of what was possible on the basis of socialism.

Russia, a poor, culturally backward society, did not have the material base in terms of industry to immediately establish socialism alone.

However, the 'chain' of capitalism broke at its weakest link, and this inspired a worldwide workers' revolutionary wave.

Through the immediate shortening of the working day, working people will be allowed to participate in managing and controlling nationalised industry through a plan. Now, the working day is being extended under capitalism.

The Russian revolution and its aftermath indicated the direction in which society could develop, particularly if socialism was rooted in the advanced industrialised countries.

Great efforts were made to establish a collective, solidarity type of consciousness. Industry and society were under the control of the workers and poor farmers.

This allowed the setting up of communal laundries and eating places in the first period after the revolution.

However, it is unlikely that the organisation of a new social society in today's conditions will be like this.

Given the widespread use of technology today - domestic washing machines - communal laundries are probably not necessary.

On the other hand, such is the intensity of the working day - for instance in America - that a form of 'communal' eating already exists in the form of 'diners'.

These tend to be widely used by working people during the working week, with families eating at home at the weekends.

It is impossible to prescribe exactly how a plan of production, with all the details and priorities to be worked out, will be implemented in today's society.

This will be best left to the initiative and intelligence of the working class organised through their own collective power.

But the present horrors of capitalism will continue to exist, indeed, will be perpetuated, if this system is not replaced by socialism.



So we do support such a tax but stress this is not it and will not solve all our concerns as working people. only the end of this rotten capitalist system will do for us.

We will not pay for their crisis, join the fightback on N30

We now stand at 28 trade unions who have balloted and voted yes for strike action next wednesday the 30th of November. This could possibly be the biggest day of action since the first day of the 1926 general strike.

The titanic strike of 30 November in Britain will display the colossal power of the working class through the trade unions, to resist the savage cuts demanded by the capitalists and their political representatives, the Con-Dem austerity coalition.

It also presents a unique opportunity that must not be lost for the leaders and ranks of the trade unions to reach big audiences of working people.

Many will be involved in mass action for the first time and therefore can be receptive to discussion and debate about a real alternative to the future of unrelieved misery, 'planned poverty', promised by Osborne and Cameron with Clegg and Co in tow.

The PCS civil service union has already proposed an immediate alternative to Osborne's £81 billion worth of cuts over four years.

It demands the collection of the massive £120 billion unpaid tax of big business which, if implemented, would render the cuts completely unnecessary. The Socialist Party and the whole labour movement support this demand.

However, the speed and depth of the present crisis of capitalism and its devastating effect on the lives of millions of workers in Britain and worldwide poses sharply the issue, not just of immediate measures that offer some relief for working people, but of more profound solutions, of 'system change'. This means outlining and fighting for a democratic socialist alternative.

The powerful and inspirational mass movements of the Greek workers have heroically battered away at the foundations of rotten Greek capitalism.

Their counterparts in Spain, Portugal, Italy and here in Britain, in this decisive movement of 30 November, seek to emulate them.

It is also articulated in the tremendous 'Occupy' movement, which in the last months has swept through 1,000 cities worldwide and touched every continent.

Moreover, this first breeze of the class struggle - which foreshadows the storms and hurricanes to come - has even touched the summits of capitalism.

A founder of the far from radical Independent newspaper, Andreas Whitham Smith, recently stunned readers by telling them that the threat of "revolution" was stalking "Western capitalism".

However, this was not the deathbed repentance and repudiation of a former stalwart of capitalism but a warning to the capitalists themselves of the need for 'change' in the structure and organisation of their system in order to avoid such a 'nightmare'.

Not one of the leaders of the main political parties in Britain is proposing serious change. David Cameron, pressed on all sides by the increasing unpopularity of the venal system he presides over, poses as an alternative, mythical 'moral markets', a contradiction in terms.

Obscene bankers' bonuses, eye-watering and growing inequality, sky-rocketing poverty and unemployment are to be underpinned by the cement of a new capitalist 'morality'.

This represents an attempt by the apostles of capitalist slavery to reconcile us to the perpetuation of this failing system.

We can imagine Cameron's reply: "The talent and ability of bankers and the chief execs of top companies should receive their due rewards. Without them, we are doomed."

Ed Miliband, the New Labour leader, fares no better with his appeal for a "better capitalism", counterposing "productive" capitalism, which is 'good' to "predator" capitalism, which is 'bad'.

In reality, these are just different wings of the brutal profit system and are linked together in perpetuating the current deadly paralysis of society.

at least 200 million unemployed in the world who increasingly form a substratum of the poor, homeless and dispossessed.

Eighty-one million of this figure is composed of young people - who are condemned to a life of 'worklessness'. There is almost a 50% rate of unemployed young people in Spain and 40% in Greece.

Added to this are the seven million in Britain and 1.6 billion worldwide in part-time 'precarious' jobs.

They are a 'precariat', a modern manifestation of Marx's "reserve army of the unemployed". This is a pool of cheap, sometimes almost slave labour - including young people working as 'interns' for nothing.

They may be drawn into work when needed and then conveniently tossed aside like an old boot when the economic cycle of capitalism deems they are 'surplus to requirements'.




It is important we turn out in our numbers on the day and not just make this a nice day off work but a real show of solidarity across the working class. Bringing together public and private sector workers. Linking up teh occupations with teh construction workers and sparks who are facing struggles too.

We support a 'Robin Hood tax' on the transactions of big business. But history shows that the capitalists always find a million and one ways to circumvent any law which seeks to claw back some of the wealth and eats into their profits.

When the Labour government of Harold Wilson attempted to do something similar through a corporation tax in the 1970s, such was the opposition of big business it was completely watered-down and rendered largely ineffective.

The only way to prevent this is through the nationalisation of the banks and finance houses. Similarly, the 'dictatorship of the market', which is holding the whole of Europe to ransom, should be met with the cancellation of the debt to the bond parasites.

Nationalisation
This in turn could only succeed if nationalisation was carried through not just in one country but on a continental and world basis.

Inequality is intrinsic to capitalism. The exploitation of the working class - the capitalists garner what Marx called 'unpaid labour' in the form of profits - is the very foundation of the system.

From this flow all the inequalities and the class antagonisms which shape this society. The system can go ahead for a while as long as the surplus is invested in productive industry to create more factories and thereby the production of more goods and services.

But it stagnates and falls back when the restricted incomes of the working class - particularly marked in the last few decades - means they cannot buy back fully the goods and services they produce.

This results in 'overproduction', a glut of unsold goods and redundant workers and capital. This, in turn, can produce a 'death spiral' reflected in the paralysis of production evident throughout the world today.

Combine all this clear evidence of the wasteful character of the system with the extraordinary mass movements - Greece, Italy, Spain, Britain on 30 November, etc - and it is clear that capitalism faces one of its greatest threats in its long history.

In fact, a new social system is knocking at the door of history. This is the idea of a socialist democratically planned and organised economy and society. To usher it in requires a movement and the urgent building of a mass workers' party.

Ironically, this current threat to capitalism arises from its very triumph following the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the downfall of Stalinism.

The consequent dismantling of the planned nationalised, economies and its replacement by 'wild capitalism' represented a big ideological victory for capitalism.

This in turn moved the leaders of parties such as the old Labour Party, at its base a 'workers' party', and the trade unions to the right, leading to the transformation of these parties largely into pro-capitalist formations.

This meant that the capitalists no longer needed to look over their shoulders at a threat posed by the working class.

There is no check on their actions as there had been previously. Capitalism was therefore unrestrained in pursuing the policies of financialisation which were already underway in the late 1970s and 1980s.

In this sense, it became its own gravedigger, manifested in the economic madness of debt-driven capitalism; financial bubbles on top of financial bubbles, which collapsed like a house of cards in 2007-2008.

The consequences of this are evident in the idle factories, workplaces and the tragedy of the millions of 'idle hands' which presently litter the economic landscape of world capitalism.

It is true support for a socialist alternative will not develop easily or automatically given the relentless anti-socialist, pro-capitalist propaganda of the last two decades.

It has to be argued for and explained, particularly when the working class is on the move, as it will be on 30 November.

But support in the polls for the 'Occupy' movements has demonstrated the broad support for a better world.

The '99%' does not yet have a full understanding, consciousness, of how to achieve that alternative. Even those involved in the 'Occupy' movement know what they don't want but do not have a clear alternative.

Yet their aims can only be realised through real 'system change', socialism. Brutal capitalism is demonstrating daily the blind alley which this system is in and is preparing the ground for millions to search for an alternative.

Capitalism is incapable of satisfying human requirements in today's world. Socialism is the idea which will dominate the 21st-century.



extracts taken from this excellent article by Peter Taaffe on the socialist party website bits of which he talked about in his speech at socialism 2011
http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/13185/21-11-2011/capitalism-is-crisis-there-is-an-alternative-fight-for-socialism

Capitalist leaders desperate to calm economic turmoil

this excellent article posted on www.socialistworld.net the website for the CWI, Committee for workers international and is written by international secretary Claire Doyle.

As their system continues to slide into its worst crisis since the 1930s, the frantic efforts of world capitalist leaders to reverse the process are farcical, contradictory and ineffective.

"Is anyone in control? Is this a runaway train?" asked a presenter on a British news programme on Monday evening - the day Wall Street crashed by 6% and markets everywhere plummeted.

In a matter of weeks, more than $5 trillion has been wiped from equity market values worldwide - half of that total in the past week. The creditworthiness of the most powerful economy in the world has been questioned.

Eurozone leaders are stumbling from one summit to another without being able to solve the crisis.

Last Friday (5 August) the credit rating agency, Standard and Poor, down-graded US government bonds from AAA to AA+. This, they said, was due to the debacle between Democrats and Republicans over the debt ceiling for the US - now standing at $14 trillion - the highest in the world.

Then S&P found its sums were wrong (by a mere $ 2 trillion!). But, extremely pessimistic about growth prospects, they still maintained that lenders would have doubts about buying US government bonds.

But, apparently, those who have the most invested in US 'Treasuries' - namely the Chinese Government, with two-thirds of its foreign reserves of $3,187 billion in dollars - have no intention of selling! It may be diversifying more into Europe and elsewhere but, like most other creditors to the US government, they are not pulling out, and the cost for the US of borrowing money has not increased dramatically.

Nevertheless, the official Chinese 'People's Daily' newspaper took the opportunity to suggest that the US government should not "become blind to the great risks that a weak greenback could pose to the world's fragile economic recovery by lifting dollar-denominated commodities prices...It is time for the US to tighten its belt and solve its structural problems, in order to resume its reputation and restore world confidence".

The biggest concern in relation to the US economy is now whether it is facing a 'double dip'. There are fears that the austerity measures needed to tackle high levels of debt in the US and some eurozone countries, could actually stifle their already weak economic recovery.

There are renewed expectations that the Federal Reserve will announce a new round of quantitative easing, or QE3, in response to forecasts of the US having a 50-50 chance of entering recession before the end of the year.

Fears about the future of the world economy have been reflected in the price of gold and oil. Gold, always a favourite in uncertain times, jumped to a new nominal record of $1,720 an ounce by the end of Monday.

The price of oil has considerably declined on concerns that weak global growth could lead to a fall in demand.

As the CWI has explained on many occasions, the very feeble recovery, due to massive injections of public money, has not been accompanied by any sizeable growth in gross domestic product.

Apart from some notable exceptions it did not bring jobs for the tens of millions of unemployed nor stem what seems like a war on the poor - massive cuts in public spending.

Further cutbacks and downturns in the prospects for young people lie behind the outbursts of anger seen this week on Britain's streets. Seriously prepared strikes and general strikes are urgently needed in a series of countries now to stem the attacks on pension rights.

The CWI warned that, without the trade union leaders giving a clear lead in the struggle against cuts - across Europe and in other countries - clashes with police and attacks on property could erupt in the most deprived urban areas.

In Britain now, analogies are being drawn with the 'riots' under Thatcher in the '80s and the uprisings of the dispossessed in the 'banlieus' of Paris two years ago.

Looting and arson tend to harm the very communities in which the most oppressed live. But it is entirely understandable that the pent up anger of young people against the system and against the corrupt and often racist police should break out on the streets.

Attacks on the real looters - the bankers and big business - are more to the point.

A programme of jobs and homes for all has to be accompanied by a struggle for the nationalisation under democratic workers' control and management of the banks and big monopolies can channel all the anger and frustration of youth and workers against the system.

Crisis measures
Two weeks ago, there was a special meeting of Eurozone finance ministers to agree on another bail-out for Greece. Within hours it was clear this would not solve the underlying problems of that country or prevent a default on the national debt. (See article: Eurozone: Last-minute rescue package)

Before the July 21 agreement can even come into force, it has to be ratified by all of the Eurozone governments, mostly through their parliaments, which are not in session during the month of August.

Willem Buiter of Citigroup made the comment that, "getting 17 eurozone parliaments to support major changes is like getting a centipede hurdling"!

Only two weeks after this - last Sunday - under pressure from the Eurozone leaders, especially Merkel and Sarkozy, the European Central Bank was forced to announce new measures to try and prevent the stock markets going into a tail-spin after Friday's news from America! The previous policy of buying Italian and Spanish bonds on the open market was reversed.

This has reduced, at least temporarily, the rates on these countries' borrowings. Other discussions have taken place about expanding the powers to intervene by using the €440bn in the European Financial Stability Fund but they are hampered by the need for unanimity across the zone.

Just these two governments alone need to find an extra €840bn over the coming 18 months - more than the total of bail-outs already found for Greece, Ireland and Portugal.

The ECB measure will ease the situation in relation to the debts of Italy and Spain. But the strings attached will bring them into head on confrontation with their populations.

Tobias Blattner, a former economist at the European Central Bank, said on Monday that the ECB's intervention had done little to help the crisis of confidence gripping the share markets.

"This reflects the fundamentals that growth is in a very bad situation on both sides of the Atlantic and this is why the ECB's interventions will not change anything".

Italy's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, last week tried to give the impression there was no major problem in Italy. But his country has one of the biggest debts as a percentage of GDP (nearly 120%) and an economy which has failed to grow more than a fraction of 1% for the past two decades.

He has now agreed, with his government, that the budget cuts planned for 2014 (well after the next general election) will be brought forward to 2013 - still after the next election is due! Berlusconi himself has said he will not stand next time round, but he desperately needs a government in power that will not allow three major court cases against him to proceed.

Spain's prime minister, Zapatero, has also declared he will not stand in the next election, sensing the widespread dissatisfaction with his inability to get Spain's economy back into healthy growth.

He has nevertheless agreed to increase austerity measures as a condition of the new loans. The massive level of youth unemployment and a feeling of utter neglect by politicians has been behind the mass movement of the 'indignados' - young people disillusioned with political parties and looking for radical, even revolutionary solutions.

David Jones, an analyst at the firm IG Index, believes that investors will remain unconvinced about putting their money into anything, despite the various attempts by leaders and international authorities to reassure the markets.

"It hasn't changed the feeling that politicians both in Europe and in the US are always a few steps behind where the crisis is," he said. "Markets still think there is a lot of talk from politicians but not much action".

This he sees as a major political reason "why the markets have been so weak over the past week".

Richard Hunter, a broker from Hargreaves Lansdown, said: "The markets are looking for a concrete plan out of Europe and the US in terms of how they are going to deal with their deficits." But because of private ownership and the states' role in defending the national interests of their own capitalists, a clear plan is something that capitalism, by its very nature, can never provide.

Capitalist anarchy, socialist development
Trying to control an anarchic and blind system, none of the measures they take seems to stem the downward spiral into the worst crisis since the 1930s.

The measures they take to try and rescue their system will mean yet more cuts and austerity, yet more suffering and anguish for the vast majority of the world's population.

As it is, according to a medical journal, the Lancet, as a direct result of economic collapse in Greece and Ireland, the suicide rates have soared in the past two years by 16 and 14% respectively.

The accumulating crises - economic and political - of the last few weeks, have only served to underline the chaotic and wasteful way in which capitalism works...or fails to work.

Only 58.1% of Americans of working age now have a real job. Tens of millions of people world-wide - young and old - are on the scrap-heap when they could be producing goods and providing services.

On the basis of public ownership and democratic planning, all the human and physical resources of society could be harnessed for the benefit of the vast majority instead of the increasingly rich minority.

The stranglehold of the banks and capitalist politicians over the lives of millions, in fact, billions, has to be broken. Mass movements including general strikes will show the power that the working class can wield in society.

Linked with the energy and anger of the youth, new mass workers' parties can be rapidly built. Confidence in the idea of a socialist alternative to capitalism can and must be renewed without delay.

What next to defeat the cuts

in this week socialist paper from the socialsit party is a excellent editorial frm Hannah Sell assistant general secretary of the party who will be speaking in stevenage on Monday 18th of July if anyone is interested.

this article below takes a snapshot of where we find ourselves and the way forward, from a socialist perspective, you may or may not agree with all the proposals put forward but thought you'd be interested to hear Hannah's thoughts.

"They thought we wouldn't do it, they thought we'd lie down and let them walk all over us. They were wrong". This is how Mary Bousted, general secretary of the most 'moderate' union taking part in the 30 June strike - the ATL, summed up the mood of the strikers, to huge applause, at the London rally.

Those who took part in the strike action are now walking a head taller. A new generation has been imbued with the confidence that comes from taking part in effective collective action.

If the huge TUC demo on 26 March was a powerful show of strength by the trade union movement, on 30 June battle with the government was engaged for the first time.

This was the biggest single day of strike action since the 1980s. The strikes were overwhelmingly solid - decisively answering the government propaganda that a majority in the unions taking action did not support the strike. Overall at least 200,000 - 84% of PCS members - took strike action, far more than the 70,000 who voted in the ballot.

As Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the PCS civil service union put it: "It is not voting in the ballot that matters, it is voting with your feet." PCS members in Downing Street even took strike action, as did 90% of all civilian police support workers, who are organised by the PCS.

For the first time in five years PCS members from the Cabinet Office organised and ran a picket line outside the main entrance to their department. The teachers' strike was just as solid, with more than 11,000 schools closing for the day.

And this was definitely not a 'duvet day' strike. In London a third or more of all NUT members participated in the demonstration. The same could be said of the marches and rallies that took place in virtually every town and city in Britain.

While all the major capitalist parties in Westminster attacked the strikes, with only a handful of MPs - who really do have 'gold-plated' pensions - refusing to cross the PCS picket lines, it is a different story with the population as a whole.

It is widely understood that the strikes were about defending all public services from the Con-Dems' slaughter, as well as the right to a decent pension. The picket lines and rallies were deafened by the constant sound of drivers honking their support for the strike.

Support

Click for gallery. 12 pics Manchester, photos Hugh Caffrey (Click to enlarge)

The latest opinion polls show the Con-Dems have lost the argument on public sector pensions, with a clear majority opposing the government's proposals. There have been desperate attempts by the capitalist press to whip up anti-strike hysteria - including the Daily Mail trying to blame the strike for the tragic death of a school student who was killed by a falling branch.

But the polls show opinion as being evenly divided. A new Guardian/ICM poll found 41% support the strike, as opposed to 42% who did not, with YouGov finding similar. However, among women, young people, and those in the North and Midlands a majority supported the strikes.

The government looks, and is, very weak as it scratches around to find a justification for its wholesale attack on pensions. As the pressure mounts on the government the cracks in the coalition are beginning to widen over a whole number of issues.

The latest divisions to be revealed could lead to another u-turn. Cracks are forming between sections of the Tory Party over the consequences of their brutal attacks on benefits. A letter written by the private secretary of Eric Pickles, Tory communities minister, to Cameron in January has come to light. It pointed out the glaringly obvious; that 40,000 or more families will be made homeless as a result of the government's housing benefits cuts.

It is clear that Eric Pickles is driven by the fear of the electoral consequences of 40,000 families living on the streets - and the economic cost of keeping them in hostels, which would be greater than the current housing benefit bill. This government is very weak and its vicious cuts agenda can be defeated.

Just as workers were given confidence by the 30 June strike, the government was frightened, it felt the earth shake beneath its feet. However, one day's action will not be enough to force the government to retreat from its attack on public sector pensions, which is driven in large part by the desire to 'prepare' the public sector for future privatisation.

This was the first such action many of the strikers, particularly the teachers, had taken. Inevitably, there were hopes that a one-day strike might make the government 'listen'. Others, however, understood that the government is listening; the Con-Dems know the pain they are inflicting, but are determined to drive through the destruction of public sector pensions in the interests of big business. And there was widespread determination among the strikers - to escalate the strike action if the government didn't retreat.

Next step
The Socialist Party's call for a 24-hour public sector general strike, received overwhelming support. At the London rally, Mark Serwotka's call for four million to strike in October - "including Unison, Unite and the GMB" was met with a standing ovation.

A massive campaign now needs to be built within all those unions who have not yet balloted for action. Those trade union leaders must be pushed to organise ballots immediately in order to be able to join the strike action in the autumn. The government must not be allowed to divide public sector workers.

The National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) is planning a rally and march to the TUC conference in London on 11 September, in order to exert pressure on the trade union leadership to coordinate a strike of the whole public sector in the autumn.

It was not only on industrial strategy, however, that the Socialist Party's programme got a warm response. Mary Bousted of the ATL, again summed up strikers' fury when she said: "I am glad that the ATL is not affiliated to any political party; Ed Miliband is a disgrace." She went on to ask: "What has he and his shadow cabinet, which is laughingly called an opposition ever done? Sisters, and brothers, we're doing it for ourselves."

The potential for trade unionists to create a new party - that stands in the interests of working class people - has been made crystal clear in the last week.

Even if trade union candidates were to initially stand on a limited programme - opposition to all cuts in jobs, pensions, services and benefits, and repeal of the anti-trade union laws - it would mark a significant step forward.

However, the struggle that public sector workers are currently fighting goes beyond those immediate issues. The pension reform is one aspect of the government's assault on workers' living conditions.

The government's pension reforms are estimated to 'save' £2.8 billion. The mass movement against the poll tax forced the then Tory government to scrap it at a cost of around £7 billion in today's prices. Faced with a determined mass movement the government can also be forced to retreat on pensions.

However, pensions are only one part of the £81 billion that the government is planning to cut from public services, the biggest cuts in 80 years. New Labour supports cuts on only a slightly smaller scale. While we can force the government to retreat on different aspects of the cuts, the struggle against them all is, in reality, a struggle against the consequences of capitalism today and therefore poses the need for a socialist alternative.

"Public sector workers are being asked to pay again for the £850 billion that was used to bail out the banks." Mary Bousted was correct in this, but it is not only public sector workers, but all workers, who are being made to pay for the economic crisis.

As Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, put it, workers in Britain are facing the longest period of wage restraint since the 1920s. Meanwhile the financiers and speculators, the capitalist wolves, are enjoying as big a bonanza as they did during the boom. In the last year the wealth of the richest 1,000 people increased by 18%.

Capitalist crisis
The crisis of capitalism goes beyond bailouts of the banks. The crisis in the financial system was the fault line along which all the underlying contradictions of capitalism have been laid bare. Capitalism has always been a blind profit-driven system based on the exploitation of the majority - the working class - for the profits of a few at the top.

There was a brief period - from around 1950 to 1973 - when capitalism developed rapidly. At least in the more economically developed countries, including Britain, working class people were able to win a few crumbs from the capitalists' table. In Britain a National Health Service and a mass council house building programme made a real improvement in workers' lives.

However, when that post-war period ended, capitalism set about restoring its profits by driving down the share of the wealth taken by the working class.

Production was moved abroad to countries with worse workers' rights and cheaper labour, wages were driven down, and spending on public services was cut back. Of course these processes were taking place even during the last boom.

As the Financial Times reported last week, wage restraint is not new: "Fork-lift truck drivers in Britain could expect to earn £19,068 in 2010, about 5% lower than in 1978, after adjusting for inflation. Median male real US earnings have not risen since 1975. Average real Japanese household incomes after taxation fell in the decade to the mid-2000s. And those in Germany have been falling in the past ten years."

During the last boom profits reached an all-time record. However, the bosses had difficulty finding profitable fields to invest in. Investment in science, technique and production remained at an historic low. Why? Not because they were not needed but because working class people lacked the means to buy the goods that could potentially be produced.

This is the terrible reality of capitalism. It didn't matter that two billion people are without the most basic necessities of life - they are not 'a market' because they lack the money to buy what is produced. Improving education or health care is only in the interests of capitalism if a profit can be made from it.

Instead of investing in industry the capitalist class made its profits in the last boom by gambling on the world's stock markets in a speculative frenzy. The financial crisis was the inevitable result.

Socialists, like growing numbers of people, argue that the rich should be the ones who pay for the crisis - via dramatically increased taxes for the super-rich and the big corporations.

For most of the 1970s the tax rate for the highest band of income was 83%. Back then big corporations paid 52% of their profits in tax, but that percentage has been reduced step-by-step ever since. It is currently just 28%, with reductions for the next three years planned by the Con-Dems.

Even with the existing low levels of taxation for the rich, the PCS union points out that more than £120 billion goes uncollected, evaded and avoided every year.

But while we favour taxing the rich, we also recognise that the 'markets' - either the big corporations or the bond traders who are holding whole countries such as Greece to ransom - will never meekly accept dramatically increased regulation and taxation.

So what is the alternative to this market madness? The starting point is to oppose all the cuts. Faced with a determined and organised working class, big business will be forced to retreat. However, in its relentless pursuit of profit, capitalism would then come back with other ways of making the working class pay for the crisis, for example by using inflation. That is why we need a socialist solution.

For a start we call for the nationalisation of the big banking and finance companies. Compensation should be paid on the basis of proven need - but without one penny going to the speculators who are demanding that the working class pay for the crisis for which they - the speculators - bear responsibility.

It would then be necessary to introduce a state monopoly of foreign trade - so that it would be a democratically elected government - not the market - that controls imports and exports including capital.

Nationalisation
A socialist nationalised banking sector would be democratically run by representatives of banking workers and trade unions, the wider working class, as well as the government. Decisions would be made to meet the needs of the majority, for example offering cheap loans and mortgages for housing and for the planned development of industry and services and ending all repossessions of people's homes.

However, that would only be the start. Capitalism has led to enormous economic destruction. In Britain around 10% of wealth has already been lost as a result of the recession, due to factories and workplaces closing. This has resulted in 2.5 million, and rising, officially unemployed. Nor is there any prospect of a return to healthy growth. The best prospect that can be hoped for under capitalism is a prolonged period of economic stagnation.

That is why a crucial step towards solving the economic crisis would be to take the big corporations that dominate Britain's economy into democratic public ownership. This would then allow for production to be planned for need and not for profit.

It would be possible to enormously expand the education system and the health service. Building workers, for example, could be put to work building and refurbishing high quality, environmentally friendly affordable social housing for the five million people who want it.

Huge resources could be put into the development of environmentally friendly technologies. The retirement age could immediately be reduced to 60, or even less, for all those that wanted to retire. The working week could be cut, without loss of pay. This measure, combined with an expansion of public services, could quickly eliminate unemployment.

All of these, and much more, would be possible on the basis of a democratic socialist plan of production.

Of course, capitalism is an international system, and any alternative could not stop at the shores of Britain. However, if a democratically elected socialist government in any country was to begin to implement the kind of programme outlined here it would act as an enormous inspiration to workers in the rest of the world struggling against capitalism's devastation of their living standards.

Even more so than the revolutions across North Africa and the Middle East, the ideas of genuine democratic socialism would spread like wildfire.

Chief executive pay to FTSE 100 companies shoots up in last decade, time for nationalisation ?

The pay of FTSE100 Chief Executive's has risen by 343% in the last decade. it is revealed today. This shocking statistic is sign that despite the poor and the working class being hit with harsher and harsher cuts to their standards of living with the rich capitalists trying to regain the money they used to bail out their banks which failed they are increasing their wealth even still.

It is a disgrace that pay to the rich goes up while pay to the working class is being cut. Where is the fairness in that ?

It isnt that's why. It is capitalism which enables this to happen. The system that is designed so the wealth of a few is concentrated at the top while the workers suffer through exploitation and austerity measures.

Well enough is enough really under a socialist society the top 150 top monopolies many are in the FTSE 100 will be brought under nationalised democratic workers control to be used for the benifit of society not the few rich fat cats at the very top.

This would include the banks where this is rife and allow the workers to control the finances of the country for the betterment of the mass's. Funding schooling, health care, transport and decent affordable housing for all. There is clearly more than enough money going around in this country for us all to live a decent standard of life. We are not asking for the earth as socialists but a fair life for fair pay and a end to discrimination and exploitation.

why we take a international outlook in terms of socialism

So it is often asked why do socialists take such a interest in foreign affairs of their comrades abroad . Well as Leon Trotsky correctly pointed out the revolution to socialism must be linked to the working class across the world if it is to succeed .

Many deformed workers states such as Cuba and the old stalinist USSR had many benifits to a planned economy and towards the end they were proping eachother up.

Amoung many critisisms of these two single state socialist models it is often said by many socialists that these could have been built on needing a further political revolution reaching out to neighbouring nations and uniting the working class over national borders. As to the working class there are no nations. National borders are no more than invisable lines often there to preserve a capitalist interest be that to do with oil or a military base.

But to the working class we have no nationality, we are all the same class whichever border you are on. We all more or less face the same oppressors - the capitalist ruling class which hold us in place to preserve their own system.

As Lenin rightly pointed out a revolutionary movement and feelings in one party of Europe can influence the oppositie side of teh continent. Much like now where we are wittnessing the magnificant struggles and uprisings of the Arab Spring across North Africa and the Middle East this is having a influence on the struggles of the workers in Greece, Spain and even Italy there are rumblings of unease. This is down to the fact across the EU which is in a turmoil of a economic failiure of the common market. It is a failure of the market and capitalism as we know it. I really do feel the EU will begin to break up much like the USSr began to break up when stalinism was defeating itself.

All there is to ask will the downfall of something like teh EU which lets be honest will be a huge blow to the capitalists and the ruling class will this shake them to their foundations much like the ideas of socialism were pushed back in the late 1980's and early 1990's. We can all but hope as socialists wanting to see the end of this rotten capitalist system and a move towards a democratic workers socialist state.

But the fact for any socialist revolution to really spread this must be across borders and throughout cultures with the working class joining hands to over throw the capitalist unfair system.

For each country does not possess all of its resources that it requires to function alone much like with a capitalist system there can still be trade between nations to get waht they need. Much like when Cuba and Russia had to ship eachother oil to survive while trade embargo's in place by America unfairly due to their fear of their commonist ideas.
This of course will be workers controlled with no profits going to rich owners. This is all party of our vision for a planned economy.
A planned economy based on the need to spread the wealth to the many not just the few.

We in the socialist party are part of a growing international as it is known the CWI. a collection of political partys and organisations spread across 40 odd nations which share our ideas. We believe this to be nessesary due to the need for a international outlook across the world. Spreading our ideas in just one country will have no impact world wide we need to have parties and organisations interveening in struggles and confrontations in these more local disputes. From these we can learn from eachother and build towards a socialist world.

Here is a list of the different political partys across the world that are involved with the CWI that the socialist party of England and Wales are in formly Militant.

The following are the sections claimed by the CWI.

Argentina - La Chispa (The Spark)
Australia - Socialist Party ()
Austria - Sozialistische LinksPartei (Socialist Left Party, )
Belgium - (Flemish) Linkse Socialistische Partij (Socialist Left Party) / (French) Parti Socialiste de Lutte (Socialist Party of Struggle)
Bolivia - Alternativa Socialista Revolucionaria (Revolutionary Socialist Alternative) ()
Brazil - Liberdade, Socialismo e Revolução (Freedom, Socialism and Revolution) ()
Canada - Socialist Alternative
Chile - Socialismo Revolucionario ()
China - China Worker (News and Analysis of Workers Struggles in China) ()
Cyprus - CWI Cyprus
Czech Republic - Socialistická alternativa Budoucnost (Socialist Alternative the Future) ()
England & Wales - Socialist Party of England and Wales ()
France - Gauche Révolutionnaire (Revolutionary Left) ()
Germany - Sozialistische Alternative (Socialist Alternative) ()
Greece - Xekinima - Socialist Internationalist Organisation ()
Hong Kong - Socialist Action
Iceland - Sósíalískt Réttlaetisflokksins ()
Ireland - An Pháirtí Sóisialach / Socialist Party ()
India - Dudiyora Horaata (New Socialist Alternative )
Israel- Ma'avak Sotzialisti (Socialist Struggle) ([2])
Italy - ControCorrente ()
Japan - Kokusai Rentai (International Solidarity )
Kashmir - CWI Kashmir
Kazakhstan - Socialist Resistance of Kazakhstan ()
Lebanon - CWI Lebanon ()
Malaysia - CWI Malaysia ()
Mexico - Socialismo Revolucionario ()
Netherlands - Socialistisch Alternatief ()
Nigeria - Democratic Socialist Movement ()
Pakistan - Socialist Movement Pakistan ()
Poland - Grupa na rzecz Partii Robotniczej (Group for a Workers Party) ()
Portugal - Socialismo Revolucionario (Revolutionary Socialism) ()
Québec - Alternative Socialiste (Socialist Alternative) ()
Russia - Rossijskaja sekcija Komiteta za Rabochij Internacional (Russian Section of the CWI) ()
Scotland - Socialist Party Scotland ([3]), CWI platform in Solidarity (Scotland) ()
Spain - Socialismo Revolucionario
Sri Lanka - United Socialist Party ()
South Africa - Democratic Socialist Movement () (formerly the Marxist Workers Tendency of the ANC)
Sweden - Rättvisepartiet Socialisterna (Socialist Justice Party) ()
Taiwan - Taiwan Socialist League
United States - Socialist Alternative ()
Venezuela - Socialismo Revolucionario (Revolutionary Socialism) ()

what is the future for socialism

I thought i'd relay this excellent article by Lynn Walsh from www.marxist.net as i have just read it and thought it was excellently put and highlights a lot of questions that i will tackle in the coming weeks and months.

LYNN WALSH, editor of Socialism Today, British monthly magazine of the Socialist Party argues that socialism, far from being 'finished', will once again become the idea that guides workers and youth in the struggle for a new society.
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From Socialism Today, issue one, September 1995

WHAT, TODAY, ARE the prospects for socialism? Many on the left, including figures previously identified with revolutionary Marxism, are now utterly pessimistic.

In 1968, for instance, Tariq Ali epitomised the mass student radicalisation in Britain. The other day, however, Tariq commented that the restoration of capitalism in Russia signified that "the game was up for another four or five decades..." (Guardian, 22 July). Capitalism, in other words, has been granted a new lease of life - revolution is off history's agenda for half a century!

Today, Tariq Ali epitomises a generation of one-time Marxist intellectuals who are now utterly disillusioned with the prospect of a socialist transformation of society within the foreseeable future. This change in outlook undoubtedly has a social basis - the rebels of '68 are now professors, film producers, business executives, etc.

Berlin Wall
More fundamentally this ideological shift reflects the momentous events of the last few years - above all, the collapse of the 'socialist' regimes of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (in reality, bureaucratised Stalinist states) and the international social and economic trends which have crystallised since the fall of the Berlin Wall in October 1989.

The disillusionment of the Marxistic left, moreover, parallels the abandonment of socialist objectives and the open acceptance of the capitalist market by all the main trends in the labour movement, from right-wing to ex-Stalinist reformists.

No one could deny that 1989 was a climactic year. The rapid disintegration of the Stalinist states - non-capitalist societies which acted as a check on world capitalism - was a momentous event. While these totalitarian regimes were a grotesque caricature of socialism, the destruction of the centrally planned economies on which they rested, despite the economic distortions imposed by bureaucracy, was objectively a defeat for the working class internationally.

Moreover, the collapse of Stalinism acted as a catalyst, turning the accumulating quantity of pre-1989 trends into the quality of a new relationship of political forces internationally.

Naturally, the capitalist leaders seized the opportunity to launch a 'Kulturkampf, an ideological campaign to prove that socialism is unworkable and that the capitalist market is the only viable way of managing society. The bourgeoisie experienced a resurgence of confidence as they continued to claw back the post-war gains of the working class - an onslaught which the traditional leaders of the labour movement had no policy or political will to resist.

Changes
But do these changes mean that the abolition of capitalism and the socialist reconstruction of society are postponed for fifty years? What are the arguments used to rationalise the mood of pessimism? The main components seem to be as follows:

The collapse of the 'really existing' model of 'socialism' in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere (Angola, Ethiopia, etc) has destroyed the claim that economic planning can replace the capitalist market. (Ironically, this argument is widely accepted despite the fact that the Trotskyist left and officially even the reformist left never accepted the Stalinist states as genuine models of socialism).

Capitalism, through developing new technology and greatly extending globalisation, has significantly strengthened its position internationally, enhancing its ability to ride out crises and gaining more room for manoeuvre against the working class.

The reformist leaders of the traditional Social Democratic and Labour parties and of the trade unions have abandoned any commitment to progressive reforms in favour of the working class and now accept the permanence of the capitalist market. The tendency towards the mutation of traditional reformist organisations into liberal-capitalist parties has dramatically undermined the credibility of socialist ideas. (Again, it is ironic that many former Marxists should be influenced by this shift, when Marxism never accepted that step-by-step reform of capitalism could provide a route to socialism).

As the combined result of these trends, the working class has been to some extent weakened economically, socially, and politically. Technological changes, new management methods and globalisation have undermined the strength of the unions, especially the 'heavy battalions' in industries like coal mining, steel making, engineering, etc.

At the same time, the openly pro-capitalist orientation of the social democratic leaders has politically disorientated large sections of the working class, who have largely been left leaderless in opposing the renewed capitalist offensive. On top of this, the collapse of Stalinism, the only existing model of 'socialism', has demoralised the politically active workers.

There is clearly more than a grain of truth in this presentation of recent events, which reflects real trends and processes.

But to conclude from them that socialism has been deferred for fifty years is a one-sided and completely false interpretation of these developments. The most important task of Socialism Today will be to refute this argument.

In our future issues we shall seek through factual and theoretical analysis to substantiate the case which we can only boldly outline in this, our inaugural issue. We will affirm the need for an anti-capitalist programme based on the ideas of Marxism and the perspective of a socialist transformation of society.

1989 was an historic turning point -not in our view, the beginning of a new era of flourishing capitalist development, but the end of an exceptional 'golden age' for the bourgeoisie in the advanced capitalist countries and the beginning of protracted economic depression, social polarisation and political upheaval in which the working class will reassert its role as the decisive force for social progress.

Far from being 'finished' (or even marginalised) for fifty years, the working class will, in the next period, engage in unprecedented struggles against capitalist oppression -and the workers' aims will once again be expressed in the language of socialism.

The collapse of Stalinism
THE COLLAPSE OF the Stalinist states does not prove the superiority of capitalism, that economic planning is unviable or that the market is the only effective means of running economies.

Instead it bears out the warnings made by Lenin and Trotsky in 1917: while the working class could begin the task of the socialist revolution, a socialist society could not be constructed within the frontiers of an economically and culturally backward society.

Socialism had to achieve a higher level of organisation than capitalism, which had already created a world market. Successful economic planning and workers' democracy, depended, therefore, on the spread of the revolution to a series of economically advanced countries with strong proletariats.

The collapse of the Stalinist regimes, moreover, confirmed the critique of Stalinism put forward by Trotsky in the 1930s. Trotsky argued that the development of a privileged bureaucracy, which under Stalin's dictatorial rule usurped the control of society by workers' representatives, would severely limit and eventually undermine the gains of a planned economy.

Trotsky warned that in the bureaucrats' greed for privileges and personal power lay the seeds of a future capitalist restoration. The way out lay through a political revolution in which the workers would overthrow the ruling elite, revive workers' democracy, and develop economic planning - on the basis of internationalist links with the workers of other countries.

Bureaucracy
Subsequently, although there were moves towards political revolution, for instance in Hungary in 1956, the bureaucracy managed to consolidate itself to a greater extent than envisaged by Trotsky. This was largely due to the weakness of the major capitalist states during the crisis period of the 1930s and the intra-capitalist conflicts of World War Two, when the western powers were obliged to lean on the Soviet Union against their fascist rivals.

Given the new balance of forces following the war, capitalism was forced to retreat, conceding Eastern Europe (and later China) to a strengthened Stalinism.

Economic planning, despite the enormous human cost under totalitarian control, proved some of its potential. The Soviet Union was transformed into a mighty industrial power, and later a nuclear superpower that rivalled US imperialism for a period. While workers notoriously lacked good quality consumer goods, in other respects living standards were immeasurably raised, with full employment, cheap housing, good education and health services, etc.

Nevertheless, as Trotsky predicted, the progress that could be made under a bureaucracy was strictly limited. The bureaucracy stifled every element of democracy, and established a rigid command structure that reflected the conditions under which it was formed: the political purges of the 1930s and the technical-industrial structure of the basic heavy industries, vintage 1940s.

While successive reformers, from Khrushchev to Gorbachev, tinkered with the system and achieved temporary improvements, the bureaucratic apparatus was ultimately incapable of adapting to new technology and the changed social conditions of a modern industrial society. Without the initiative of the workers being involved, planning began to be more and more undermined, with the market reappearing by the back door - through unofficial bartering between enterprises and a black market in food and consumer goods to fill the enormous gaps in the plan.

The mass movement of Solidarity in Poland in the early 1980s signalled that the 'game was up' for Stalinism. Shaken, the 'liberal' wing of the bureaucracy under Gorbachev desperately attempted to reform the system - only to trigger the disintegration of central planning and the collapse into market anarchy.

The collapse of economic planning arose from the internal contradictions of Stalinism, not from the superiority of the market. On the contrary, the return to the market represents a counter-revolutionary regression to private profit-seeking and anarchy, highlighted by the prominence of mafia elements in the economy of the former Soviet Union. Far from demonstrating its superiority, the advent of the market brought the biggest slump in modern times.

Stalinism was not a healthy experiment in socialist construction - it was an extremely contradictory detour which led to a cul-de-sac. But we cannot allow this historical experience to be buried by capitalist propaganda that socialism is dead, only capitalism works. We have to explain the concrete historical circumstances which determined the degeneration of the first workers' state, separating what was progressive from what was reactionary, and applying the lessons to the formulation of a socialist programme for the future.

A capitalist renaissance?
THE 'DEATH OF communism' after 1989 inspired an orgy of capitalist triumphalism.

Undoubtedly, after four decades of 'cold war' rivalry between US imperialism and the Soviet superpower, the implosion of Stalinism appeared as a victory for 'the West'. The US-led intervention against Iraq in the Gulf War, which took place under exceptionally favourable conditions for imperialism, reinforced the impression that the West was strengthened.

In the economic sphere, the fall of the Berlin Wall came when the capitalists internationally were buoyed up with confidence as a result of the super-profits (and reduced taxation) derived from the speculative boom of the late 1980s. This profits-ecstasy trip carried over to 1990-91, even though the world economy relapsed into a period of prolonged stagnation.

The capitalists consoled themselves with the remarkable growth spurt that was taking place in China, some areas of Asia, and some Latin American countries, where the imposing of 'structural reform programmes' following the 1980s debt crisis opened up highly profitable fields of speculative investment.

But had the conditions been established for a global capitalist renaissance? The answer, on any sober analysis, must clearly be no. The profits of big business and especially the big capitalist speculators have been restored to the high levels of the post-war upswing period (1950-73).

This has been achieved, however, mainly through intensified exploitation of the working class - lower pay levels, lower welfare spending, and harsher management regimes in the workplace.

Outside the advanced, high-tech sectors of the economy (micro-electronics, communications technology, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, etc) the growth of production and productivity has been lower than during the upswing period. In the major industrial economies, notably the US and Japan, there has been a 'hollowing out' of industry, with the accelerated displacement of manufacturing industry by the service sector.

Far from a period of renaissance, capitalism has entered a period of chronic depression. The cycle of booms and slumps will continue (as we have already seen since 1990), but successive recovery periods will not eradicate the underlying causes of long-term decline -on the contrary, they will be accentuated all the more.

The boom of the 1980s in the advanced capitalist countries, the wave of speculative investment in certain Third World countries, and the rather weak recovery of the major economies in the last two or three years, have not in any way halted the erosion of the conditions of long-term growth which were established in the post-war period.

Within the advanced capitalist countries the capitalists have restored profitability by clawing back the concessions which they were obliged to make to the working class during the post-war upswing: full employment, relatively high wage levels, the welfare state etc.

Result
Faced with a decline in profitability after the late 1960s, the capitalist class began to draw the conclusion that it could no longer afford the overheads of the 'welfare state'. In the 1980s Thatcherism or Reaganomics became the order of the day, with the privatisation of state industries, cutbacks in state welfare spending, and an assault on established trade union strength.

The result, however, has been a drastic undermining of the market, which had underpinned the high investment and sustained profitability of the upswing period. The capitalists are caught in a contradiction.

Internationally, the end of the upswing at the time of the oil price crisis in 1973-74, led to a breakdown of the relatively stable framework of the capitalist world economy established in the immediate post-war period. There has, it is true, been an acceleration of the growth of world trade during the 1980s and early 1990s, but this has brought increased tensions between the major exporters. This is reflected in the formation of major trading blocs, the European Union and NAFTA, with a looser Asian bloc around Japan.

Above all, however, the breakdown of world economic relations is reflected in the collapse of the relatively stable Bretton Woods money system after 1973, and the introduction of floating rates. Together with the deregulation of financial markets and the upsurge in global speculative investment (itself a signal of the capitalists turn away from development of the productive forces) this has introduced a major element of instability into the world economy.

'Globalisation' means, in reality, a return to the pro-1913 position, when there was previously the unfettered movement of capital on the world market. However, the position for capitalism is less favourable now. Then, the gold standard prevailed, which largely ruled out speculative flows based purely on changes in exchange rates and interest rates.

Moreover, there was greater freedom of movement for labour, which meant that workers were able to migrate from areas of mass unemployment (like the poorer countries of southern and eastern Europe) to expanding economies (such as the US, Latin America, Australasia, etc). Also government debts were much lower then than today's historically unprecedented levels.

It is the conditions of deep crisis, not sustained upswing, which are now being assembled in the world economy. While there is no mechanical, linear link between economic crisis and political struggle, the economic crisis which will unfold in the coming years will inevitably provoke mass struggles both in the advanced capitalist countries and in the semi- and under-developed countries.

The collapse of reformist socialism
THE IDEA THAT socialism has been finally eclipsed has been reinforced by the dramatic swing to the right by the leaders of the Social Democratic and Labour Parties, together with their allies in the trade unions.

Since the early 1980s the leaders of reformist socialism have abandoned their previous formal commitment to an alternative socialist society and even ditched their political commitment to progressive reforms in favour of the working class.

Many examples could be given. Even before the slump of 1979-81, which marked the turn of major capitalist governments towards 'free market' policies, the British Labour government of 1974-79 adopted deflationary monetarist policies. This spelt the end of reformism based on Keynesianism in Britain, and opened the era of reformism-without-reforms.

During the 1980s this counter-reformist trend was followed by social democratic leaders in other European countries -Gonzalez in Spain, Papendreou in Greece and Mitterrand in France, who after the Socialist Party victory in 1981 initially embarked upon a reformist policy, only to abandon it within a year.

The collapse of the Stalinist regimes enormously accelerated this development. Fundamentally, however, the process of political degeneration of the Labour leaders was rooted in the social trends of the preceding period.

The strength of the social democratic workers' organisations was based on the long post-war upswing. Given the balance of forces, with the strengthening of the working class during the period of full employment and the then economic needs of the capitalist class, it was in the interests of big business to concede higher wage levels, higher welfare spending, and to encourage full employment.

The electoral success of the social democratic leaders (which was, in any case, extremely patchy) was based, not on the appeal of their ideas, but on these social conditions. When in power there was scope for reformist parties to carry out reforms, thus securing them a basis of working class support. As these social-economic conditions were eroded, so was the electoral basis of the reformist parties generally undermined.

Paradox
After 1973 the capitalists were still obliged in many countries to make concessions to the workers, who at that stage still retained the trade union strength accumulated during the upswing. Reformist governments were still able, initially, to introduce some limited reforms - only for them to be rapidly wiped out by accelerating inflation and escalating unemployment, which helped discredit these parties electorally.

Paradoxically, many on the Marxist left internationally have been totally demoralised by the collapse of the reformist left. This is contradictory, because Marxism never accepted that step-by-step reforms within the framework of capitalism could produce a socialist society. What is true is that through their domination of the traditional mass workers' parties and the trade unions, the reformists have acted as an enormous political and organisational barrier to the defence of workers' interests against a capitalist assault.

There is not one of the traditional workers' organisations, however, which is not currently in a state of crisis. The reformist leaders no longer have a mass electoral base which they can take for granted. This is yet another aspect of the testing and erosion of the ideas and institutions which were strengthened during the post-war upswing. The weakening of the social democracy represents a weakening of one of the props on which capitalist stability rested during the upswing period. In the coming period of mass working class struggle what remains of these organisations will be put to the test. Sections of them will either be democratised and transformed into vehicles of struggle, or they will be swept aside to make way for new mass organisations and movements of the workers.

The role of the working class
BUT IS NOT the ideological swing to the right based on the defeat of the working class? Has not the balance of class forces within the advanced capitalist countries and internationally tipped decisively in favour of capitalism over the last 10 to 20 years?

After all, it may be argued, throughout the advanced capitalist countries mass unemployment has undermined the strength of organised workers. The state, especially in Britain but in other countries too, has been able to claw back trade union rights conceded in the past.

The 'big battalions' of organised workers have been seriously undermined by de-industrialisation and relocation. An ever-increasing section of workers are now forced to accept temporary, part-time, casual employment of various kinds, with low pay and very few rights.

These trends (together with the undermining of working class loyalty to the traditional workers' parties) have to be recognised. There is no justification, however, for drawing the conclusion that the working class is therefore finished as a force capable of a historic struggle against the capitalist system and for a new socialist order of society. There has been no defeat in the last two decades on the scale of the fascist counter-revolution in the 1930s.

What we have seen in the last period is not a smashing of the power of the organised labour movement, but a clawing back of some (and in some countries a substantial share) of the exceptional gains made by the working class during the period of post-war upswing. After the slump of 1974-75 the capitalists abandoned Keynesianism and turned to neo-liberalism - and a long-term policy of undermining the power of the organised working class.

There were massive struggles internationally against this capitalist offensive, in many cases limiting or delaying the retrenchment. However, the subjective factor, the lack of leaders with the necessary strategy and tactics, was decisive. The general capitalist offensive, based on changes in production methods and the world division of labour, could only be successfully resisted on the basis of a bold anti-capitalist programme - linking day-today demands to the perspective of socialist change. Yet the union leaders, following the social democratic leaders, in most cases accepted the logic of the market.

In the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe there has, it is clear, been a devastating defeat for the working class. The legacy of totalitarian Stalinism, which allowed no element of independent working class democracy, is the atomisation of the working class.

The recovery of working class forces will take some time, especially in the former Soviet Union. Nevertheless, we can already see the signs of a renewal of the working class in recent industrial struggles in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and other East European countries.

In the advanced capitalist countries, however, the recent period has seen an almost continuous wave of struggle against the capitalist offensive on living standards and democratic rights. In both Italy and France for instance there is a glaring contradiction between the relationship of political forces, where right-wing parties have triumphed against the ideologically bankrupt parties of the left, and the balance of social forces, where mass workers' struggles have successfully resisted onslaughts by big business and the state.

In Mexico, the Zapatista uprising, which reflects profound discontent amongst a majority of the urban and rural proletariat, triggered a collapse of the Mexican 'economic miracle', which in turn sent shock waves around the world economy.

The working class remains the decisive force for change. They will not passively allow a worsening of conditions, of mass unemployment and impoverishment, which are clearly on the capitalists' agenda in the next period.

Moreover, the workers cannot resist these barbarous conditions without challenging the whole system. Far from seeing the end of the working class as a progressive force, we are experiencing the beginning of a new phase of struggle. The crisis within the traditional workers' parties is clearing the ground for a renewal of anti-capitalist, socialist struggle.

There will also be a process of democratisation and renewal within the trade unions. Far from being eclipsed by the 'new middle class', the working class will increasingly draw behind it wide sections of the middle strata of society, who are themselves being squeezed and in reality proletarianised by the capitalist crisis.

The programme of socialism
THE ATTRACTIVE POWER of socialist ideas, for reasons outlined, has undoubtedly been weakened in recent years. But this will be the transitory effect of a passing conjuncture.

Consciousness, especially of the newer generation of workers and youth, will be determined by current conditions and the events which will unfold.

As struggles develop, the more active workers and youth will be impelled to search for an anti-capitalist programme -which can only be formulated in socialist terms.

Paradoxically, today there is a level of social tension, political protest, and youth rebellion unprecedented in the post-war period. The fragmented character of the movements to which this gives rise is primarily due to the political bankruptcy of the traditional mass organisations.

But the struggles of different layers of workers, together with the phenomena of 'new social movements', are a response to the various symptoms of capitalist decline. It is impossible to defend living standards and democratic rights, to halt the devastation of the environment, let alone end the various bloody conflicts internationally, without confronting the power of the capitalist class.

Those who accept the market as an eternal form of social organisation are, in reality, condemning the majority of society to a future of increased social polarisation, mass impoverishment, and the reappearance of barbarous conditions of oppression and conflict.

Acceptance of the 'market' means acceptance of the domination of world production and trade by a small handful of big capitalist monopolies, the determination of social priorities by their drive for profits, and the 'organisation' of economic life by the anarchic market of capitalism.

The only viable alternative to this remains the socialist planned economy, not on the Stalinist model, but on the basis of international planning and democratic workers' management and control. On such a basis, science and technology could be applied to production in a balanced way, to meet human needs and for the harmonious development of society in the interests of the majority.

Only on this basis will the fundamental contradictions of capitalism - private ownership of the means of production and the division of the world economy into ultimately antagonistic national economies - be overcome, thus eliminating the fundamental roots of oppression and conflict.

Our task, through intervention in struggle and a dialogue with the workers and youth, is to elaborate a socialist programme which will effectively provide a guide to action and re-establish the authority of genuine Marxism. Unless we are to capitulate to a barbarous capitalism we must fight for a socialist future.