Labour Party conference

“I’ll make capitalism work for the people..." promised Ed Miliband during his successful campaign to become Labour leader. Workers have heard this all before. The Labour Party has always tried to make capitalism work for the people. And every time that it has been in office, it has failed miserably to do so. The reason Labour – and indeed the Tories who also talk of a “people’s capitalism” – fail to make capitalism work for the people is that this is an impossible mission. Capitalism just cannot be made to work in the interest of all. It is a profit-making system that can only work as such, in the interest of those who live off profits.

The driving force of capitalism is the accumulation of capital out of profits. When this slows down, as at present, there is a crisis. So, governments must not do anything that might discourage the making of profits to accumulate as capital; in fact, even if it wasn’t their original intention they have to end up doing all they can to encourage this. Inevitably, this brings them into conflict with the wage and salary working class whose labour is the source of profits, imposing wage restraint and/or austerity on them. All governments have to put profits before people because capitalism, the system within which they have to work, runs on them.

The Labour Party has failed, so let’s start a new one. That’s what some trade unionists and leftwingers are saying. But why? Surely one of the lessons of the 20th century has been that Labourism is a dead end. It can’t succeed. Not because its leaders are insincere or incompetent or corrupt or not resolute enough. It fails because it sets itself the impossible mission of trying to gradually reform capitalism into socialism. This can’t be done, as experience, not just theoretical understanding, has confirmed. The last thing that is needed today is a non-socialist, trade-union based “Labour” party. We have seen the past and it doesn’t work.

In February 1906, the fledgling Labour Representation Committee (LRC), under the leadership of James Keir Hardie renamed itself and the Labour Party came into being. The Labour Party consciously steered the social-democratic or socialist movement of the early twentieth century away from social revolution to a futile policy of ‘reformism’, maintaining unswerving support for the exploitation of working people, the wages system, commodity production and the private ownership of the means of producing wealth. It had relied on a cynical propagation of the pretence that state-run capitalism and reforms represented "stepping stones" to a socialist society and what emerged from those years of reformist efforts was not a slowly evolving socialism but a Labourism which increasingly judged itself by the success of the one thing it could do in government – manage capitalism; all reformist baggage what emerged from years of reformist efforts was not a slowly evolving socialism but a Labourism which increasingly judged itself by the success of the one thing it could do in government – manage capitalism; The myth of nationalisation as an answer to the problems of capitalism beng more or less dead and all reformist baggage being abandoned in the pursuit of Labour's desire to manage capitalism better than the other lot. The Labour Party engineered its own metamorphosis, re-branding policies and redefining its agenda. The commitment to nationalisation enshrined in the 1918 Party constitution was abolished and Trade Union influence over policy – always more mythical than real – was publicly abandoned. Its image, thus transformed, seemed revitalised and business, media and the electorate acclaimed the party that now called itself New Labour.

If there are with two other people and the first one of them is openly hostile, abuses you at every turn and is obviously working for interests diametrically opposed to your own, you would have to be crazy to consider them a friend. But if the other person keeps telling you that they are on your side, sympathises about how awful the first person is being, and says you should trust them instead – while all the while they are pursuing interests just as opposed to yours and will proceed to stab you in the back at the first opportunity – then who is your real friend? Neither of them is the answer, of course, though we can say that you are less likely to be deceived by the openly hostile one. The function performed by the Labour Party is always to appear as the benign friend to the workers in distinction to the “wicked” Tories. Hoping that the Labour Party will behave differently is an unrealistic – indeed utopian – expectation. Any party that tries to run capitalism gets its hands grubby, as a matter of course, in what is a very dirty business. Voters vote governments out because they appear incompetent, incapable of finding solutions to the daily problems that confronts wage and salary earners. But government can never solve these problems because their permanent solution lies only in the abolition of capitalism and the wages system. Economic laws that politicians are powerless to change and leave little room for manoeuvre determine what politicians do and how they must react. The policies propounded by Tory or Labour are similar because they are manifestations of the same political imperative – a continuation of capitalism – and are distinguishable only to the extent that they propose different organisation methods to administer the same economic system. In misguided expressions of defiance that flow from frustration and lack of understanding, voters repeatedly swap Labour governments for Tory, or Tory governments for Labour - as they have on eight separate occasions since the second world war – in the hope that it will somehow make a difference.They are always disappointed by the outcome. How often have disillusioned Labour supporters and voters cried “betrayal!”?Mandating a political party to administer capitalism means that workers surrender political power to their class enemy - a lesson that workers seem unable to grasp as the same mistake is slavishly repeated over and over again.

Now as the natural conclusion to reformism has completely overrun the Labour Party , they are a simple party of capitalist maintenance, with objectives of some form of new society being not just shunted into the background but completely out of existence. They are now more dedicated than ever to running with optimal efficiency the very system that creates poverty, misery, homelessness and war. As for those old Labourites who blame all on the mistakes of the past and present on certain leaders, this simply adds to the argument against leadership. In any case, the leader as a individual is irrelevant. Knocking one leader out of office and replacing them with another won’t change the system, and it’s the system that all attention should be focused on if we desire a radical change in the way we live.Trading one group of pro-capitalist apologists and careerist politicians for another can never be the answer. Changing society’s economic structure is the answer.

Fom greasy pole to property ladder

Former Labour cabinet minister Lord Mandelson is reported to have made an offer to buy an £8 million house.

The Mail on Sunday said the former business secretary was planning to buy the Grade II listed building in "one of London's most exclusive districts". The property is described as a four-storey Gothic revival house, featuring a wine cellar and a two-storey atrium, which once served as an almshouse.

A previous property deal famously cost Lord Mandelson him his first cabinet post in 1998 when it was revealed he bought a house in Notting Hill with the help of an undisclosed £373,000 loan from the then paymaster general Geoffrey Robinson.

Tory MP Richard Bacon said his proposed purchase now of such a lavish property little over a year after leaving government was "a matter of considerable public interest.. how he can afford such an expensive home within barely a year of leaving government."

http://breakingnews.heraldscotland.com/breaking-news/?mode=article&site=hs&id=N0500361313879310064A

The working-class movement has vacillated between four different roads:
1 ) The armed conquest of power by a small determined group which would hold on to power until the majority were converted – Blanquism
2 ) The seizure of the means of production and distribution by some form of industrial action – Syndicalism
3 ) The accomplishment of ever more sweeping reforms until capitalism had been reformed out of existence and society had “glided” into socialism – Reformism
4 ) The conquest of power by a majority of class-conscious workers antagonistic to reform policies, spurning leadership, using democratic methods, and imbued with the single aim of abolishing the capitalist ownership of the means of production and distribution in order to replace it by common ownership – Socialism.

In the history of the working class movement a variety of different parties have been formed; some following one or other of the above roads
Trying to change capitalism, or "reformism" is the one that has been taken by most people who have wanted to improve society. We do not deny that certain reforms won by the working class have helped to improve our general living and working conditions. Indeed, we see little wrong with people campaigning for reforms that bring essential improvements and enhance the quality of their lives, and some reforms do indeed make a difference to the lives of millions and can be viewed as "successful". There are examples of this in such fields as education, housing, child employment, work conditions and social security. Socialists have to acknowledge that the "welfare" state, the NHS and so on, made living standards for some sections of the working class better than they had been under rampant capitalism and its early ideology of laissez faire, although these ends should never be confused with socialism.

However, in this regard we also recognise that such "successes" have in reality done little more than to keep workers and their families in efficient working order and, while it has taken the edge of the problem, it has rarely managed to remove the problem completely. Socialists do not oppose reformism because it is against improvements in workers' lives lest they dampen their revolutionary ardour; nor, because it thinks that decadent capitalism simply cannot deliver on any reforms; but because our continued existence as propertyless wage slaves undermines whatever attempts we make to control and better our lives through reforms. Our objection to reformism is that by ignoring the essence of class, it throws blood, sweat and tears into battles that will be undermined by the workings of the wages system. All that effort, skill, energy, all those tools could be turned against class society, to create a society of common interest where we can make changes for our common mutual benefit. So long as class exists, any gains will be partial and fleeting, subject to the ongoing struggle.What we are opposed to is the whole culture of reformism, the idea that capitalism can be tamed and made palatable with the right reforms.

We oppose those organisations that promise to deliver a programme of reforms on behalf of the working class, often in order to gain a position of power. Such groups on the Left , often have real aims quite different to the reform programme they peddle. Many of the Left are going to put before the working class only what they think will be understood by the workers - proposals to improve and reform the present capitalist system- and , of course they are going to try to assume the leadership of such struggles as a way of achieving support for their vanguard party. These Left parties may try to initiate such struggles themselves and they will try to muscle in on any struggles of this sort that groups of workers have started off themselves.But it's all very cynical because they know that reformism ultimately leads nowhere (as they readily admit in their theoretical journals meant for circulation amongst their members, though not in the populist, agitational journals). The purpose in telling workers to engage in such struggles is to teach them a lesson, the hard way which is the only way some on the Left think they can learn i.e. by experiencing failure. The expectation is that when, these reformist struggles fail the workers will then turn against capitalism, under the Party Leadership.It is the old argument, advanced by Trotsky in his founding manifesto for the "Fourth International" in 1938 , that socialist consciousness will develop out of the struggle for reforms within capitalism: when workers realise that they can’t get the reforms they have been campaigning for they will, Trotsky pontificated, turn to the "cadres" of the Fourth International for leadership.In fact the working class never never happens so all that's achieved is to encourage reformist illusions amongst workers .The ultimate result of this is disillusionment with the possibility of radical change.

It can be summed up in the following:
1 ) The working class has a reformist consciousness.
2 ) It is the duty of the Revolutionary Party to be where the masses are.
3 ) Therefore, to be with the mass of the working class, we must advocate reforms.
Further:
4 ) The working class is only reformist minded.
5 ) Winning reformist battles will give the working class confidence.
6 ) So that, therefore, they will go on to have a socialist revolution.
Thus:
7 ) The working class will learn from its struggles, and will eventually come to realise that assuming power is the only way to meet its ends.
8 ) That the working class will realise, through the failure of reforms to meet its needs, the futility of reformism and capitalism, and will overthrow it.
9 ) That the working class will come to trust the Party that leads them to victory, and come a social crisis they will follow it to revolution.

It all relies upon a notion of the inherently revolutionary nature of the working class and that through the class struggle this inherently revolutionary character will show itself. Although , it hasn't.
Its also flawed because it shows no reason why, due to the failure of reform, the workers should turn to socialism. Why, since it was people calling themselves socialists who advocated that reform, don't they turn against it, or even to fascism? Under the model of revolution presented by the Trotskyists the only way the working class could come to socialist consciousness is through a revolution is made by the minority with themselves as its leaders.This, then, explains their dubious point about needing to "be" where the mass of the working class is. It is the reason why a supposedly revolutionary party should change its mind to be with the masses, rather than trying to get the masses to change their minds and be with it. They do not want workers to change their minds, merely to become followers. Their efforts are not geared towards changing minds, or raising revolutionary class consciousness.

What of the Labour Party ? They did seek to reform capitalism in the hope that perhaps a sudden change will take place and capitalism will prove to be a fair and fulfilling society for all its members. Now , as the natural conclusion to reformism has completely overrun them, they are a simple party of capitalist maintenance, with objectives of some form of new society being not just shunted into the background but completely out of existence. They are now more dedicated than ever to running with optimal efficiency the very system that creates poverty, misery, homelessness and war. Keeping the system and trying to make it work against its logic is not a viable option. Such reformism has been tried over the years and has failed. Those who set out to change society through winning political power and reforms have had to accept what was always inevitable, that reformism is a graveyard for such hopes. For anyone wishing to bring about a new and better world, reformism requires a pact with the devil. Where the forming of a government means being sucked into running the system. This is what has happened to the Labour Party.

Over decades, millions of workers have invested their hopes in so-called ‘practical’, ‘possibilist’ organisations like the Labour Party, hoping against hope that they would be able to neuter the market economy when, in reality, the market economy has successfully neutered them. they turned out to be the real ‘impossibilists’ – demanding an unattainable humanised capitalism – is one of the greatest tragedies of the last century, made all the greater because it was so predictable.They held idea that capitalism could be reformed into something kindly and user-friendly. It couldn't and it can't.

Socialists understand well the urge to do something now, to make a change. That makes us all the more determined, however, to get the message across, to clear away the barrier of the wages system, so that we can begin to build a truly human society. Why waste time fighting for half measures? We would better spend our time, energies, and resources educating people to establish socialism rather than waste time in the false belief that our present system can be made to work in everyone's interest.We do not claim “capitalist reforms” stand in the way of achieving socialism. If we did we'd logically have to oppose them; which we don't. We encourage workers to fight back against employers and, although we don't propose or advocate reforms, we don't oppose them if they genuinely do improve workers' lives under capitalism. What we say is not that they are obstacles to socialism but merely that they are irrelevant to socialism and that a socialist party should not advocate reforms.

If you are convinced, however, that groups or parties promising reforms deserve your support, we would urge you to consider the following points.The campaign, whether directed at right-wing or left-wing governments, will often only succeed if it can be reconciled with the profit-making needs of the system. In other words, the reform will often be turned to the benefit of the capitalist class at the expense of any working class gain. Any reform can be reversed and eroded later if a government finds it necessary. Reforms rarely, if ever, actually solve the problem they were intended to solve.Socialists make a choice. We choose to use our time and limited funds to work to eliminate the cause of the problems. One can pick any single problem and find that improvements have taken place, usually only after a very long period of agitation. But rarely, if ever, has the problem actually disappeared, and usually other related problems have arisen to fill the vacuum of left by the "solution".

If the view remains that the struggle for reforms is worthwhile then imagine just how many palliatives and ameliorations will be offered and conceded by a besieged capitalist class in a desperate attempt to retain ownership rights if the working class were demanding the maximum programme of full and complete appropriation and nothing less . To stem the socialist tide the capitalist parties will sink their differences and draw closer together, much as religions do today in the face of the world avalanche of atheism. Reforms now derided as Utopian will be two a penny - in an attempt to fob
off the workers. Perhaps, for example, capitalism will provide a batch of free services, on the understanding that this is "the beginning" of a free society, but socialists will not be taken in.

If a pipe bursts and the water is flooding the house , one can start bailing the water out while it continues to flow in , or one can turn the water off, and then start bailing it out . It may take a while to find the tap, but unless the water is turned off, the water will continue to rise and bailing is rather pointless. Socialists are not immune to the human tragedies which occur daily, by the millions, and which generate thousands of social activist groups trying to stem the tide. Socialists suffer those tragedies as severely as anyone else, but work to encourage people to find the tap and turn it off.

the failure of the trickle down strategy

The Trotskyist website WSWS has posted an interesting article on the failure of New Labour reformism .

For the last three decades the Institute of Fiscal Studies has produced a report on the UK Gini coefficient ( The Gini coefficient can range from 0 to 1 and provides an objective measure of income inequality, which allows every country to be ranked against others and against its own past performance. A coefficient of 0 would mean income is shared equally between all individuals, whilst a coefficient of 1 would mean one person within the population has all the income and everyone else none. So a higher Gini coefficient figure indicates a higher level of inequality ).

The figure has increased from 0.25 when Thatcher came to power to now 0.36, beyond the normal bounds of inequality seen in developed countries.

The report also notes that the number of those in relative poverty, which is defined as those with an income less than 60 percent of the median, has risen over the last three years.

“Poverty for working-age adults without dependent children is now at its highest level since the start of our comparable time series in 1961,” according to the IFS report.

The IFS report concludes, “Over the past three years, average living standards have continued to stagnate, though poverty and income inequality both rose. We expect that the current recession will again lead to a change in the course of poverty inequality and average living standards. Unfortunately, the only thing we can be near-certain of is that average living standards will fall, but we cannot be sure how this pain will be shared.” - i think we can guess who .

The contrast between rich and poor is even starker when the mean or arithmetical average is considered. The mean earnings figure for 2007-08 was £487 a week. It is calculated that 65 percent of the population earn less than this sum. A small proportion of the population, 1.2 million, has earnings above £1,500 a week. The incomes of Members of Parliament range up to £1,100 a week, putting them above 91 percent of the population. Only nine percent of households in the UK have a higher income. If their expenses are included in the calculation they have a higher income than 96 percent of the UK population. If they have a working partner, their household income is in the very top income bracket.

“Ten years ago the government committed to eradicating child poverty but these figures show progress has stalled,” Hilary Fisher, director of End Child Poverty said. “In the previous two years, child poverty actually rose. Progress has been made on child poverty, but the UK is way off track on its targets. Budget 2009 invested less than a pint of milk per week per child in family incomes and did nothing to narrow the gap.”

A Joseph Rowntree Foundation Report concluded that the measures brought in by the Labour government to address inequality were stalling.The report issued in February stated that “child poverty remains amongst the highest in Europe,” despite the fact that the government had focused on this area. Health inequalities also continued to widen.

“The UK’s experience in the 1980s and 1990s showed that the strategy of hoping that growth in living standards at the top would ‘trickle down’ to those at the bottom did not work."

The Conservative Leftists

My , Oh , My , aren't the Tories changing .

David Cameron plans to create the Conservative Co-operative Movement , to steal the clothes of Robert Owen, founder of the Co-operative movement and since dubbed the father of English socialism.

Mr Cameron's argument is that the Co-operative movement is not necessarily socialist and, by using the title Pioneer Schools - after the Rochdale Pioneers - for his first proposals under this new co-operative approach, he is harking back to the very early days of the movement before it was irrevocably aligned with socialism.

"The co-operative principle captures precisely the vision of social progress that we on the centre-right believe in - the idea of social responsibility, that we're all in this together, that there is such a thing as society, it's just not the same thing as the state," he said. Similarly, his statement that the movement will campaign for "public ownership of public services and public facilities", does not mean he believes in state ownership of those services.

Out-doing the Co-operative Party and those nostalgic adherents to guild socialism within the Labour Party , and perhaps even out-doing the anarcho-capitalists of the libertarian right with his apparent anti-statism

"All over Britain, all over the world, something is happening which I find really exciting. People are coming together in new forms of collective activity - bespoke organisations designed to tackle entrenched social and economic problems...We need to break that centralised control...

...Manchester became great in the 19th century when the words 'Manchester liberalism' stood for free trade and capitalism.

And of course the city also inspired another idea - Friedrich Engels lived here for many years and he wrote about the dark side of the industrial revolution.

But capitalism and communism weren't the only ideas to take their inspiration from Manchester.

In 1844, a few miles up the road from here, a group of 28 weavers and other artisans formed the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers - a local store, selling household necessities and owned by members of the local community. The Rochdale Pioneers created the first successful co-operative in the world. And for me the co-operative model represents an enormously exciting possibility for public service reform and the fight against poverty and social breakdown.
A co-op has a flexibility and dynamism that a central state agency lacks.
Like the Rochdale Pioneers, a co-op is part of the community it serves. Its interests are their interests. And it is able to respond to the needs of the community immediately and directly...

...I've asked Greg Clark, the shadow minister for charities and social enterprise, to make mutualisation a core part of our policy framework for the voluntary sector...

...Social justice really means neighbourhoods acting collectively and voluntarily. It means people fulfilling their duties to each other through the natural networks, the institutions and associations of a community.
Social justice means social responsibility: the idea that we're all in this together, that there is such a thing as society - it's just not the same thing as the state.

That is my political philosophy in a nutshell "- David Cameron , Leader of the Conservative Party

What next ? - Che Guevara in a business suit ?

when is bomb not a bomb

The UK is the world's third largest user of lethal cluster bombs over the last ten years .
In February 2007 the UK joined 46 other nations in calling for a worldwide ban on cluster bombs. This initiative, called the Oslo process, is expected to lead to a treaty banning cluster bombs next year. Cluster bomblets are notoriously unreliable and many fail to explode on impact, remaining a lethal hazard to civilians months after the initial attack. Even in test conditions, around 6% of these bombs malfunction , cluster bomb reliability rates are consistently found to be higher in combat conditions than in tests. In December last year Hillary Benn, the then Secretary of State for International Development, said that cluster munitions 'represent a threat to aid-workers, peace-keepers, medical services, internally-displaced persons' after the cessation of hostilities.

As recently as 23 November 2006, the government listed the CRV-7 as a cluster munition.
But on 16 July this year, just months after it said it would back a worldwide cluster bomb ban, the Government said the CRV-7 was no longer a cluster bomb.
The move would mean that the Hydra CRV-7 rocket system, which can deliver 171 'M73' bomblets from a helicopter-mounted rocket pod, would remain part of British arsenals. Britain also insists on keeping its artillery delivered M85 cluster bomblets because they are supposed to self-destruct if they do not explode on impact. Last year in Lebanon, these same weapons failed in large numbers, killing and injuring civilians. A recent Foreign Affairs Select Committee report estimated a failure rate of up to 10%, a figure far in excess of government claims.

Anna MacDonald, Head of Arms Control for Oxfam said:
'Current UK policy on cluster bombs makes no sense. They say they want an international treaty - but they also want to keep using cluster bombs well known to kill and injure civilians.'

Money ,Money , Money

picture courtesy of Capitalist Money Madness

Dr Philip Beresford, compiler of the annual Times Rich List which was published yesterday said:-

"The past decade of Labour government under Tony Blair has proved a golden age for the rich rarely seen in British history..."

'Nuff Said .