Solidarity with workers worldwide

Through the perversion of democracy to the ends of plutocracy, labour is robbed of the wealth which it alone produces, is denied the means of self-employment, and by compulsory idleness in wage slavery, is even deprived of the necessaries of life. Human and natural resources are thus wasted, that this plutocracy may rule. Ignorance and misery, with all their concomitant evils, are perpetuated, that the people may be kept in bondage. Science and technology are diverted from their humane purpose to the enslavement of men, women, and children. We believe that capitalism is a blood-sucking system which causes all economic development to benefit the ruling class. Either we as a people will continue down the unsustainable path of upholding capitalism’s callous disregard and neglect of human and environmental needs; or, we as a people will seek out and develop a new vision for the future and the world in which we live. The Socialist Party seeks to offer a new vision for our fellow-workers.

Against the capitalist system, the Socialist Party enters its protest. Once more it states its fundamental declaration that private property is the obvious cause of all economic servitude and political dependence. The time is fast coming when, in the natural course of social evolution, this system, through the destructive action of its failures and crimes on the one hand and the constructive tendencies of its trusts and other capitalistic combinations, on the other hand, shall have worked to its own downfall. We call upon the people to organise with a view to the substitution of the co-operative commonwealth for the present state of unplanned production, class war, and social disorder; a commonwealth in which every worker shall have the free exercise and full benefit of his faculties, multiplied by all the modern factors of civilisation. We call upon them to unite with us in a mighty effort to gain by all practicable means the political power. We believe that the liberation of working people throughout the world will come as a result of our own efforts. We believe it is our duty to our mothers and fathers, our children and ourselves, to organise ourselves to overcome our exploitation and oppression. We believe that all people are a part of a single entity. We believe that the genuine freedom of people everywhere is irreversibly linked to the creation of a unified socialist world. The Socialist Party believes that a new society must be organised and built that can serve the interests of the majority.  

Our Declaration of Principles is not only a concrete expression of this commitment to building a better world but also a guide to achieving it. The Socialist Party, as a political party of working people, provides a vehicle through which workers can strengthen and develop their political power. The Socialist Party is not a party of “outsiders,” attempting to influence through pressure. We are an integral part of our class, an organisational expression of socialist and class-consciousness. As a political party of working people, the tasks of the Socialist Party are not merely limited to activism. The struggle for a socialist transformation of society is a conscious effort, requiring an understanding of events taking place and the ability to formulate a common response. Thus, the Socialist Party is as much a party of education as it is a party of political activism. There should be no division between the “leaders” and the members; all members of the party must be able to take on the tasks necessary to advance the struggle for socialism.  Capitalism creates the necessity among working people to struggle against its system effects which confront them. Even without a conscious socialist movement, resistance will occur, albeit spontaneously and blindly. This is the unconscious expression of the fact that workers have nothing to lose except their illusions and everything to gain through the overthrow of capitalism. To succeed, however, this movement must elevate itself to the position of a ruling class by winning the battle for democracy.

THE SOCIALIST PARTY is a party of principle. With us, there are no hidden agendas and no secret deals.  Our principles are non-negotiable. We will not give up our vision for a better world for the sake of votes or legislative maneuvering. When you vote Socialist Party, what you see is what you get.

Automating women out of work

Women are bearing the brunt of jobs losses brought on by increased automation, while men are benefiting from the best-paid new jobs on the market, according to new research from the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA).

Up to 400,000 roles held by women in the public sector, banking and retail have been lost since 2011 due to a combination of automation and austerity measures, the RSA said.
Female workers have further lost out because of the fall in private-sector roles such as retail cashiers, personal assistants and hairdressers, according to the analysis.

The RSA found that programmers and software developers, as well as HR managers and directors, were among the top 20 fastest growing occupations, while retail cashiers and checkout operators were among the fastest shrinking.
Many jobs in the new economy are well paid but the research found only one in 20 new coders and programmers are women.

Benedict Dellot, head of the RSA Future Work Centre, said “The forces of creative destruction can be brutal for those on the losing side. The evidence is stacking up that women are being left behind in the new economy. The cliche of tech bros is entirely warranted. Barely one in 20 new coders and programmers are women. We knew that the tech industry was highly gendered but the scale of the problem is shocking.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/automation-robots-job-losses-women-digital-technology-rsa-banking-retail-a8702126.html

Pay Freeze in the USA

 With hundreds of thousands of federal employees currently furloughed or working without pay due to the ongoing government shutdown, President Donald Trump delivered another blow to struggling workers on Friday by signing an executive order that will freeze the pay of around two million public employees in 2019.

"This is just pouring salt into the wound," declared Tony Reardon, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents around 100,000 federal workers. "It is shocking that federal employees are taking yet another financial hit. As if missed paychecks and working without pay were not enough, now they have been told that they don't even deserve a modest pay increase."

Trump's executive order—which largely flew under the radar of national news coverage—makes official his announcement earlier this year that he would cancel a scheduled 2.1 percent pay raise for 1.8 million non-military federal workers. As justification, Trump cited the need to "put our nation on a fiscally sustainable course." The president's sudden concern for the budget deficit came just months after he signed into law $1.5 trillion in tax cuts to wealthy Americans.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/12/29/pouring-salt-wound-amid-shutdown-trump-signs-executive-order-freezing-pay-nearly-2

India's History

 When scholars use the term Aryan, it refers to a group of people who spoke Indo-European languages and called themselves Aryans. It does not refer to a race, as Hitler used it or as some in the Hindu right-wing use it.
Hindu right-wingers believe the source of Indian civilisation are people who called themselves Aryans - a nomadic tribe of horse-riding, cattle-rearing warriors and herders who composed Hinduism's oldest religious texts, the Vedas.

The Aryans, they argue, originated from India and then spread across large parts of Asia and Europe, helping set up the family of Indo-European languages that Europeans and Indians still speak today.

Many Indian scholars have questioned the "out of India" thesis, arguing that these Indo-European language speakers - or Aryans - were possibly just one of many streams of prehistoric migrants who arrived in India after the decline of an earlier civilisation. This was the Harappan (or Indus Valley) civilisation, which thrived in what is now north-western India and Pakistan around the same time as the Egyptians and Mesopotamians. However, Hindu right-wingers believe the Harappan civilisation was also an Aryan or Vedic civilisation.

The most recent study on this subject, led by geneticist David Reich of Harvard University, was published in March 2018 and co-authored by 92 scholars from all over the world - many of them leading names in disciplines as diverse as genetics, history, archaeology and anthropology. The study showed that there were two major migrations into India in the last 10,000 years.

The first one originated from the Zagros region in south-western Iran (which has the world's first evidence for goat domestication) and brought agriculturists, most likely herders, to India. This would have been between 7,000 and 3,000BCE. These Zagrosian herders mixed with the earlier inhabitants of the subcontinent - the First Indians, descendants of the Out of Africa (OoA) migrants who had reached India around 65,000 years ago - and together, they went on to create the Harappan civilisation.

In the centuries after 2000 BCE came the second set of immigrants (the Aryans) from the Eurasian Steppe, probably from the region now known as Kazakhstan. They likely brought with them an early version of Sanskrit, mastery over horses and a range of new cultural practices such as sacrificial rituals, all of which formed the basis of early Hindu/Vedic culture. (A thousand years before, people from the Steppe had also moved into Europe, replacing and mixing with agriculturists there, spawning new cultures and spreading Indo-European languages).

Other genetic studies have brought to light more migrations into India, such as that of the speakers of Austro-Asiatic languages who came from south-eastern Asia and the Tibeto-Burman.

These are not just theoretical debates. To many in the Hindu right wing, these findings are unpalatable. The new study puts an end to the debates and it has thus come as a shock to the Hindu right-wing. In a tweet attacking its co-author Prof Reich, ruling party MP and former Harvard University professor Subramanian Swamy said: "There are lies, damned lies and (Harvard's 'Third' Reich and Co's) statistics."

They have been campaigning to change school curricula and remove any mention of Aryan immigration from textbooks. And several hugely popular right-wing "history" handles have long been attacking India's leading historians who have defended the theory of Aryan migrations and continue to do so.

For Hindu nationalists, there is a cost of admitting that the Aryans were not the first inhabitants of India and that the Harappan civilisation existed long before their arrival. It would mean acknowledging that Aryans or their Vedic culture were not the singular fountainhead of Indian civilisation and that its earliest sources lay elsewhere.

India's junior minister for human resource development, Satyapal Singh, was recently quoted as saying: "Only Vedic education can nurture our children well and make them patriots who have mental discipline."

The idea of the mixing of different population groups is also unappealing to Hindu nationalists as they put a premium on racial purity. There is also the additional issue of the migration theory putting Aryans on the same footing as latter-day Muslim conquerors of India - such as the Mughals.

The ruling BJP government in Haryana state, which neighbours the Indian capital Delhi, has demanded that the Harappan civilisation be renamed the Saraswati river civilisation. Since the Saraswati is an important river that is mentioned in the earliest of the four Vedic texts, such a renaming would serve to emphasise the link between the civilisation and the Aryans.

 Indians have created a long-lasting civilisation from a variety of heredities and histories. The genius of the Indian civilisation during its best periods has been inclusion, not exclusion. Unity in diversity is, indeed, the central theme of India's genetic make-up.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-46616574

Is the UK Facing a New Migrant Crisis?

Rather than sneaking into the UK perilously hidden underneath lorries, some desperate migrants have taken to boats. 220 or so people have attempted the crossing in small boats since November and the Home Secretary Sajid Javid has described it as  "major incident". While the Bishop of Dover urges compassion, many are demanding that the might of the Royal Navy is deployed to turn back those little boats.

Maurice Wren, head of the Refugee Council, said: “The fact that people are boarding flimsy boats to cross one of the world’s busiest and most dangerous shipping lanes highlights the sense of fear and hopelessness that is gripping so many of the people stuck in northern France. Recent reports suggest that armed police are forcibly clearing and levelling the makeshift camps along the French coast, with the entirely predictable consequence that desperate people are again turning to smugglers who they see as offering their only hope of reaching safety.”

Leonard Doyle, spokesperson for the International Organisation for Migration, said: “People seem to criticise migration because it’s easy to do and it’s easy to stir up passions but, actually, these are really small numbers if you compare them to what other European countries are going through.”

An estimated 5,000 people pack up and leave every day, to flee Venezuela's economic collapse. Venezuela's crisis continues to affect all of South America.

We are talking about people who are leaving not because of a natural disaster, not because of a war," says Claudia Vargas Ribas, a migration expert at the Simón Bolívar University in Caracas.

President Maduro blames "imperialists" - the likes of the US and Europe - for waging "economic war" against Venezuela. But others say it is economic mismanagement.

More than 3 million people have fled Venezuela in recent years and that number is expected to rise to more than 5 million by the end of 2019. The vast majority of Venezuelans travel to other parts of South America. More than a million Venezuelans have chosen neighbouring Colombia as their new home, with half a million more travelling through it on their way further south to Ecuador, Peru and the countries beyond.

"The countries in the region are developing countries, we can't forget that," says Claudia Vargas Ribas. "So receiving this quantity of people has made their internal affairs more complicated."

"If you compare what Latin America has done with what Europe has done with its migrants - Europe which has better conditions and is more economically developed - the example that Latin America is showing is enormous," says sociologist Tomás Páez, who co-ordinates the Global Project of the Venezuelan Diaspora. Nevertheless, Paez cautions that with more and more Venezuelans arriving countries could tighten their immigration rules. "If they put brakes on it, what will grow is irregularity," says Mr Páez, adding that drug-trafficking, prostitution, and illegal industries will grow.

Experts believe what international aid has been promised so far is a drop in the bucket compared to what is needed. Promises on paper are not enough.

 Our nationality is after all an accident of birth.  Let’s welcome newcomers and wish for them what we hope for ourselves, a happy and prosperous new year.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-46524248

The Demand of the Socialist Party

READ THE SOCIALIST STANDARD IN 2019  

People are now waking up and fighting against exploitation which is a daily fact of their lives. The lies of the ruling class about “prosperity” are being further exposed every day. There is prosperity alright – but it is for a handful of rich capitalists – the conditions of the working people are getting worse and worse. The situation in health care, housing, and social services are rapidly deteriorating. The source of all these conditions and injustices in the soul-destroying system of capitalism set up with one thing in mind – to make the most profits possible for the handful of people who own the big banks and corporations. It is the system under which we, and our parents and grandparents before us, have done all the work. We mine the mines, build the buildings, produce all the products: and then get just enough to live on – if we fight hard enough for it! On the other hand, the small capitalist class builds up huge fortunes off of our labour. The Socialist Party stands for the complete overthrow of the capitalist system and the establishment of a socialist system where it is no longer possible to make a profit from the misery of people. There is only one class capable of a successful socialist revolution. That class is the working class.

Modern society is divided between those who produce wealth but do not own it and those who own wealth though never assisting in its production, between the class that owns and controls the means of wealth-production and those who own nothing but their energy.  Unable to obtain access to the means of life, the propertyless is compelled to sell his or her energy to those who own, who becomes a wage-slave and must bargain with the capitalist for a wage that will satisfy his or her wants. As the number of workers seeking to sell their energy is nearly always in excess of the demand, bargaining power is on the side of the buyers, or masters. It is a simple business axiom that when a commodity is plentiful it is generally cheap. But cheap labour-power means a low standard of living, and the owner of labour-power being human and more or less intelligent resents being thrust ever more deeply into poverty; while at the same time those who cut down his rations make huge additions to their bank balances and finding that markets have somehow become glutted, stop production for a time and turn their workers on the streets. Slow starvation on the dole for a time and then, back in the factory to repeat the process with, possibly, a lower wage and managers and overseers hustling and driving with feverish haste that they may be first with their goods on the awakening market.

On the one hand a super-abundance of wealth. On the other poverty to the verge of desperation. Whether they do little or nothing, those who own the means of life increase their wealth daily beyond their power to spend it. The propertyless wage-slaves are driven by the fear of the sack, and the more they yield the poorer they become. The capitalist increases his wealth by machinery and methods that enable one worker to do the work of many and then reduces that worker’s wages. He does nothing to assist production, but his overseers—themselves urged on by fear of the sack—in his interest, are constantly sacking and speeding up and reducing wages. This is the class war, waged from the employers’ side and accompanied by an avalanche of propaganda that attempts to reconcile these conflicting interest.  The antagonism cannot be hidden. It cannot be smoothed away by patriotic blather or glib phrases about the indivisible interests of employer and employed. Whether they want to "carry on a class war” or not the workers are compelled to fight back. Whether they understand how to carry the fight to a successful issue or not millions all over the world realise that it is necessary to organise against the capitalist class.

What does the Socialist Party demand? The abolition of every form of expropriation and oppression of man by man in social, political and economic life. Mankind shall be free and equal without exception. From this arises the need for society to increase both the quantity and the quality of the means of life and of culture, so it shall prove adequate to meet the very highest demands that can be made upon it; and it follows, therefore, that it is the duty of every person to co-operate in accordance with his or her abilities in the production of these means of culture and life.  The principle of all for one and one for all will be the life principle of the coming society. We wish every individual without exception to have a share in the means of culture and education according to his or her capacities and needs. 

The aim of the Socialist Party is to overthrow the capitalist class and the creation of a class-free and state-free society in which the guiding principle will be ’From each according to ability, to each according to need’.  Socialism will be based on the abolition of wage labour. Only by resisting all attempts at class collaboration, insisting on the independence of the working class, can a movement be built to challenge capitalism. This system of capitalism has now come close to running humanity into the ground. There are several parties around that call themselves “communist” or “socialist”. We have important disagreements with them. These parties all have one thing in common – they all dress themselves up with high-sounding revolutionary phrases, but underneath they are defenders of capitalism and attempt to sabotage the struggle of the working class.

Marxism is our guide to action. But it is not our Party's personal property. It belongs to the working class and is a mighty weapon of the working class. It is the business of all workers to grasp this theory and use it in the struggle to liberate our class. The Socialist Party takes the stand of the working class, which today is the only really revolutionary class.

A dressing down for sharia

Several Saudi Arabian women have posted photos of themselves stomping on the face veils some are forced to wear in the conservative kingdom in an online campaign to protest against strict dress codes in the country.

Niqabs are not the only religious dress Saudi women have campaigned against recently. Last month, several women wore their abayas — baggy, all-covering robes mandatory for Saudi females — inside out in protest. 
https://www.dw.com/en/saudi-women-step-on-face-veils-in-online-protest/a-46891033

Sudanese Mercenaries in Yemen

The war in Yemen the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. An economic blockade by the Saudis and their partners in the United Arab Emirates has pushed as many as 12 million people to the brink of starvation, killing some 85,000 children, according to aid groups.

The Saudis have used their vast oil wealth to outsource the war, mainly by hiring what Sudanese soldiers. A few thousand Emiratis are based around the port of Aden. But the rest of the coalition the Saudis and Emiratis have assembled is united mainly by dependence on their financial aid.  At any time for nearly four years as many as 14,000 Sudanese militiamen have been fighting in Yemen in tandem with the local militia aligned with the Saudis. Almost all the Sudanese fighters appear to come from the battle-scarred and impoverished region of Darfur, where some 300,000 people were killed and 1.2 million displaced during a dozen years of conflict over diminishing arable land and other scarce resources.

Most belong to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, a tribal militia previously known as the Janjaweed. They were blamed for the systematic rape of women and girls, indiscriminate killing and other war crimes during Darfur’s conflict, and veterans involved in those horrors are now leading their deployment to Yemen. Many of the Sudanese combatants are child-soldiers. Sanese families are so desperate for the money that they let their sons go fight. Many are ages 14 to 17. In interviews,  fighters who have returned from Yemen and another about to depart said that children made up at least 20 percent of their units or even more than 40 percent.

“People are desperate. They are fighting in Yemen because they know that in Sudan they don’t have a future,” said Hafiz Ismail Mohamed, a former banker, economic consultant and critic of the government. “We are exporting soldiers to fight like they are a commodity we are exchanging for foreign currency.”

The Saudi or Emirati command the Sudanese fighters almost exclusively by remote control, directing them to attack or retreat by radio and GPS systems provided to the Sudanese officers in charge of each unit.
“The Saudis...never fought with us.” said Mohamed Suleiman al-Fadil, a 28-year-old member of the Bani Hussein tribe who returned from Yemen at the end of last year. “Without us, the Houthis would take all of Saudi Arabia, including Mecca,”  Fadil said.
Ahmed, 25, a member of the Awlad Zeid tribe who fought near Hudaydah this year explained, “They treat the Sudanese like their firewood.”

The Pakistani military, despite a parliamentary vote blocking its participation, has quietly dispatched 1,000 soldiers to bolster Saudi forces inside the kingdom. Jordan has deployed jets and military advisers. Both governments rely heavily on aid from the Gulf monarchies. (A report by a United Nations panel suggested Eritrea  may have sent about 400 troops as well.)

The Sudanese ground troops unquestionably have made it easier for the Saudis and Emiratis to extend the war. The Sudanese have insulated the Saudis and Emiratis from the casualties that might test the patience of families at home. The Saudis issue them uniforms and weapons. Then Saudi officers provided two to four weeks of training, mainly in assembling and cleaning their guns. Finally, they were divided into units of 500 to 750 fighters. Then they traveled over land to Yemen, to battles in the Midi Desert, the Khalid ibn Walid camp in Taiz, or around Aden and Hudaydah.


The Sudanese mercenaries fight only for money.  They were paid in Saudi riyals, the equivalent of about $480 a month for a 14-year-old novice to about $530 a month for an experienced Janjaweed officer. They received an additional $185 to $285 for any month they saw combat — every month for some. Their pay deposited directly into the Faisal Islamic Bank of Sudan, partly owned by Saudis. At the end of a six-month rotation, each fighter also received a one-time payment of at least 700,000 Sudanese pounds — roughly $10,000 at the current official exchange rate. By comparison, a Sudanese doctor working overtime at multiple jobs might earn the equivalent of $500 a month, said Mr. Mohamed, the economic consultant.

Abdul Raheem, a 32-year-old member of the Rezeigat tribe said that last year his family paid a local militia leader a bribe worth $1,360 so that an older brother could go to Yemen as an officer. The brother, Abdul Rahman, died in combat in February 2018. “Life is like that,” Abdul Raheem said, stone-faced. Abdul Rahman’s wife and three children received the equivalent of $35,000 in Sudanese pounds.

Some Sudanese officers had told the soldiers explicitly, “Don’t fight harder than the money is worth, don’t fight more than you are paid for,” recalled Ahmed, of the Awlad Zeid tribe.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/28/world/africa/saudi-sudan-yemen-child-fighters.html

Unaffordable Houses

Just 5 per cent of homes to be built with government money will be the most affordable type of housing despite the prime minister’s pledge to build a “new generation of social homes“, ministers have admitted.
The government said only 12,500 of the 250,000 homes to be built with the affordable homes budget by 2022 will be social homes – equivalent to 2,500 per year.
The other 237,500 are likely to be more costly “affordable homes”, which can be sold for hundreds of thousands of pounds or rented out at up to 80 per cent of full market value.

There were 1,409 social homes built in England last year. With ministers now promising a total of around 2,500 per year until 2022, it means the increased funding will deliver only an additional 1,000 each year.
Housing charities condemned the revelation that the government will only fund 2,500 new social homes per year.
Greg Beales, campaign director of Shelter, said: “The gap between the number of social homes we need in this country and how many get built is vast. In fact, we delivered 84 per cent fewer social homes this year than in 2010. This is totally unacceptable when hundreds of thousands of people are homeless and millions more are struggling in unstable and expensive private renting."
Jon Sparkes, chief executive of homelessness charity Crisis, said: “It is very disappointing to see such a tiny proportion of the properties to be delivered through the Affordable Homes Programme being made available for social rent. Research shows we need 90,000 social homes built every year for the next 15 years to meet demand – both for those experiencing homelessness, and for those on low incomes, many of whom are at risk of homelessness. The current lack of genuinely affordable housing is leaving thousands living on a knife-edge, unable to keep up with spiralling rents and housing costs.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/government-housing-social-homes-spending-5-per-cent-affordable-council-theresa-may-conference-a8689591.html

The Strength of All for the Good of All

The world of tomorrow, if it remains capitalist, is an utterly black one. Only socialism unhindered by the profit motive would permit of the free development of the means of production and distribution with the object of use.  Only the socialist reorganisation of society can be the answer. The aim of the Socialist Party is to replace the world capitalist economy with a world commonwealth cooperative system. Socialist society, is mankind’s only way out, for it alone can abolish the contradictions of the capitalist system which threaten to degrade and destroy the human race. Socialists will abolish the class division of society, all forms of exploitation and oppression of man by man. Society will no longer consist of antagonistic classes in conflict with each other but will present a united commonwealth of labour. For the first time in its history mankind will take its fate into its own hands. Instead of destroying innumerable human lives and incalculable wealth in struggles between classes and nations, mankind will devote all its energy to the development and strengthening of its own collective might.

After abolishing private ownership of the means of production and converting these means into social property, world socialism will replace the elemental forces of the world market, competitive and blind processes of social production, by consciously organised and planned production for the purpose of satisfying rapidly growing social needs. With the abolition of competition and anarchy in production, devastating crises and still more devastating wars will disappear. Instead of the colossal waste of productive forces and spasmodic development of society-there will be a planned utilisation of all material resources and a painless economic development on the basis of the unrestricted, smooth and rapid development of productive forces.  Work will cease to be toiling for the benefit of a class enemy: instead of being merely a means of livelihood it will become a necessity of life: want and economic inequality, the misery of enslaved classes, and a wretched standard of life generally will disappear; the hierarchy created in the division of labour system will be abolished together with the antagonism between mental and manual labour; and the last vestige of the social inequality of the sexes will be removed. At the same time, the organs of class domination, and the State in the first place will disappear also. The State, being the embodiment of class domination, will die out in so far as classes die out, and with it, all measures of coercion will expire.

There is only one alternative, socialism, and there is only one party fighting for it, the Socialist Party. Capital is moving, rapidly, ceaselessly, remorselessly. Let the organised working people manage industry, eliminate private profit, plan production to suit the needs of the people – for peace, prosperity and plenty for all! 

The Socialist Party opposes all forms of reformism and gradualism. Our Marxism is revolutionary, an uncompromising hostility to capitalism. Socialism is not a reform, it is a revolution. We are not reformers, we are revolutionists. It is what distinguishes the Socialist Party from those who merely wish to patch up the present system and keep it. There certainly exists a radical difference between the Socialist Party and those who have adopted the term socialism.

The Socialist Party is organised upon the basis of the analysis of the capitalist system and the class struggle. The need is for clarity. The Socialist Party stands for the self-emancipation of the working class. The first requirement for the workers in all countries of the world is to break cleanly from the capitalist class and their political parties, and any and all concepts of coalitions with their parties. Capitalism remains what it has been from birth: a system of exploitation of the many for the enrichment and aggrandisement of the few.

We have always maintained that the only place for socialists is inside a socialist organisation, completely independent of all other political parties. This, we say, is the only way of carrying on the advocacy of socialist ideas free from compromise and from distracting side issues. Those who differed from us on this point have urged that it was worthwhile to make a sacrifice of some amount of independence in order to be inside the Labour Party and carry on our campaign there. But what has been the result of that policy? Never have events shown so plainly as now, how unsound is the policy and how poor its fruits. Victories at elections on non-socialist programmes may give power for certain things to those who come into control of the political machinery, but it will give no power for the furtherance of socialism. How can socialists hope to convince electors to support socialist principles when they are offering their support to non-socialist Labour politicians and their policies? To advocate socialism inside the Labour Party means condemning its manifesto and its methods. If the Socialist Party enters into the Labour Party, it must give up its work for socialism and devote at least part of its energies to promoting non-socialist candidates which it honestly knows are of no value to the working class. We cannot accept such conditions.

We are socialists because we believe that socialism is the sole hope of the working class. We are independent because that is the only safeguard against confusion and compromise and the growth of non-socialist tendencies in our own ranks.

THIS NEW YEAR

Green Growth? No Chance

Socialism Or Your Money Back blog often come across articles that express similar views as ourselves. An article called  "Better Technology Isn’t The Solution To Ecological Collapse" caught one of our reader's eye. It is worth quoting from.

"...When green growth theory was first proposed, there was no evidence on whether it would actually work–it was purely speculative. But over the past few years, three major studies have set out to examine this question. All have arrived at the same rather troubling conclusion: Even under best-case scenario conditions, absolute decoupling of GDP growth from material use is not possible on a global scale..."

 "...our existing economic operating system–capitalism–has a design flaw at its core. It requires that we produce and consume more and more stuff each year. If we don’t, then firms collapse and people lose their jobs and livelihoods. So it’s time to make room for new systems to emerge–systems that don’t require endless exponential growth just to stay afloat. This is where we need to focus our creative energy, rather than clinging to the false hope of “green growth” fantasies..."

Mongolian Protests

Tens of thousands of Mongolians took to the streets on Thursday to protest against corruption in the top echelons of politics, braving temperatures that dropped below minus 20 degrees Celsius in the capital, Ulaanbaatar.

The protesters - organisers estimated there were 25,000 of them - focused their anger on Mongolia’s parliamentary speaker, Enkhbold Miyegombo, and the two main ruling parties, the Mongolian People’s Party and the Democratic Party. There has been rising anger over a long-running corruption case related to allegations that Enkhbold and other political figures had looked to raise £18.21 million by selling off government positions. The Mongolian People’s Union, opposes the two main parties, together known by the abbreviation Manan.

“We will not allow the situation where the Manan faction gets all the wealth and resources, while people ... remain with nothing,” member of parliament Ayursaikhan Tumurbaatar told media. “The air pollution, people’s poverty, wealth inequality all started with Enkhbold since he was the mayor of Ulaanbaatar city,” he said.

At the Thursday protest, people held up placards with messages such as “We Demand Enkhbold Resign”.

Protester Dejid Avirmed told Reuters that people were fed up that in a mineral-rich, democratic country like Mongolia many still lived in poverty.

“Mongolians are very patient, but now we lose our patience,” she told Reuters at the protest in the central square in front of parliament. Enkhbold should resign. A shame on him that he makes this many people protest in this mid-winter cold.”

https://ewn.co.za/2018/12/27/mongolians-protest-against-corruption-as-temperature-plunges

Yes, Greta, change is necessary but radical change

On 5 December 2018 social and print media published news of a press conference at the United Nation’s COP24 climate change conference held in Katowice, Poland. The news and a short video rapidly became viral on social media with large viewership and shares. The centre of attraction was a brave and articulate young girl, Greta Thunberg aged just 15, a young climate activist from Sweden. Sitting by the side of the UN general secretary, she uttered some rousing truths which at the first instance made us delighted. She blamed all political leaders of past and present generations for the catastrophic climate changes which have brought the whole human civilization and nature that environs us to the brink of disaster We could not but only congratulate her courageous words, ‘We have not come here to beg the world leaders to care for our future. They have ignored us, they ignored us in the past and they will ignore us again. We have come here to let them know that change is coming whether they like it or not.’

Yes we understand that a change is necessary. A radical change is essential in our thinking, leading to a radical change in our socio-economic system to save the Earth, life and human civilizations. But for that, we have to replace the existing profit-based, exploitative, oppressive, manipulative, disruptive and dehumanizing capitalist society with our much-awaited socialist society. A worldwide association of humans irrespective of nationalities, race, ethnicity, and sex has to be organized, which will function on the basis of participatory democratic principles. The socialist, resource-based sustainable economy will produce things as per social needs with democratic control over the means of production and distribution. Preserving ecological balance is only possible in a world socialist society.

The most serious barrier is the prevailing capitalist mode of production. It’s the responsibility of the working class, the creator and sustainer of human civilizations, to protect it by establishing world socialism democratically with the force of our immense majority. But our valiant young girl’s remedial prescription made us disheartened and apprehensive. Before the commencement of the summit, as a mode of protest, she has been organizing her schoolmates for a school strike on every Friday and sitting in a demonstration outside the Swedish parliament.

The demand of her climate movement is to compel the Swedish government to implement the Paris agreement to reduce the carbon emission to check global warming within a safe range. Till then she will continue to sit and demonstrate in front of the parliament with her schoolmates weekly on a specified day. She also made an appeal to children all over the world to sit and demonstrate in front of their national parliaments to make people aware of the dangers of climate changes. This is no doubt a praiseworthy initiative but we would like to express our concern that she might used by the capitalist class to channelize people’s anguish into a reformist blind alley.

In the first week of October 2018, the United Nation released an alarming report that we have only twelve years left to prevent a catastrophic climate change that would wreak havoc on the world population and environment.  But are the climate changes sudden? Scientists have been warning world leaders from 1977 about the threat, when the climate changes were not even talked about much. But the corporate businesses that are responsible for most of the world carbon emission successfully ran a campaign to suppress the climate facts and worked to keep the United States from signing Kyoto protocol, which helped China and India, two other giant emitters of greenhouse gas, to avoid signing.

The capitalist propaganda machines are spreading the illusion that ‘carbon tax’ on emission will reduce the use of fossil fuels and encourage the entrepreneurs to use clean energy, but this is not going to happen. In socialism, which is the only scientific and lasting solution to these climate catastrophes. Nevertheless, as long as capitalism persists, the logic of market economy cannot reduce their chunk of profits out of the use of cheap fossil fuels but would plan to make money even out of natural calamities. Natural calamities can ruin an individual capitalist but it’s good for the capitalist class as a whole because it’s good for the markets.


The exact class which is actively cranking up the global thermostat that threatens to inundate 20 percent of global population is actually controlling the United Nations and parliaments of different nations. So we think we, the working class, should expect nothing from the ruling minority capitalist class but should rapidly organize ourselves into a political party of our own on global basis with the aim of establishing socialism worldwide democratically; which is the only way out for human civilizations to survive.

PARTHA PRATIK MUKHERJEE

Japan's Falling Population

Japan suffered its biggest population decline on record this year. In 2018 there were 921,000 births, 25,000 fewer than last year and the lowest number since comparable records began in 1899. It is also the third year in a row the number of births has been below one million. There were 1.37m deaths. The natural decline of Japan’s population by 448,000 is the biggest ever.

The current birth rate stands at 1.43, well below the 2.07 required to keep the population stable.


Japan has the highest proportion of older people – or those aged 65 and over – in the world, followed by Italy, Portugal and Germany. The National Institute of Population and Social Security Research in Tokyo estimated that more than 35% of Japanese will be aged 65 or over by 2040.
Japanese people have an impressive life expectancy – 87.2 years for women and 81.01 years for men – which experts attribute to regular medical examinations, universal healthcare coverage and, among older generations, a preference for Japan’s traditional low-fat diet. But the growing population of older people is expected to place unprecedented strain on health and welfare services in the decades to come. Some of those costs will be met by a controversial rise in the consumption (sales) tax, from 8% to 10%, next October. Earlier this year the government said 26.1 million – or just over 20% of the total population of 126.7 million – were aged 70 and over. The number of centenarians, meanwhile, had risen to 69,785 as of September this year, with women making up 88% of the total.


 Parliament has approved an immigration bill that will pave the way for the arrival of hundreds of thousands of blue-collar workers to address the worst labour shortage in decades.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/27/japan-shrinking-as-birthrate-falls-to-lowest-level-in-history

Migration - No Other Choice

 About 3.3 million people have fled Venezuela since 2015 and the United Nations estimates about two million more could follow in 2019. Every day, about 5,000 Venezuelans leave home in one of the biggest exodus of people in modern South American history.

"I know what it's like to have to leave home with nothing. I've experienced the suffering, the hunger, Venezuelans are going through," Muentes told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "It breaks my heart seeing children beg for food. I had to do something to help," said Muentes, who provides free shelter in her home in the border city of Cucuta.

In total about one in every 10 people in Venezuela have fled their country in the past three years, with about one million now living in Colombia, 500,000 in Peru, 222,000 in Ecuador, 130,000 in Argentina and 85,000 in Brazil, as well as tens of thousands living in several Caribbean islands.

"There's a sense of solidarity, which is very admirable," said Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council. "The 35 countries in Europe collectively panicked because one million people came to 35 countries in 2015 across the Mediterranean. Now five nations in Latin America received three million and they still haven't closed the borders."

Not surprisingly though, there are signs the solidarity and good will is waning in countries which are already battling poverty and weak economies. Xenophobia has increased, including reports of attacks against migrants.
"There's no adequate education or assistance programs, which means that there will be more social tension within the group and between the groups, in the host communities," Egeland said.

Colombia's schools, hospitals and other services are struggling to cope.  The arrival of Venezuelan immigrants costs Colombia about 0.5 percent of its gross domestic product per year - equivalent to $1.5 billion. Ecuador has said it needs about $550 million to provide aid to migrants. More than 65,000 Venezuelans have requested asylum in Brasil so far, where tensions have also arisen. This month, Chile refused to sign a U.N. migration pact aimed at improving migrant integration and protection. Chile also now requires Venezuelans to apply for entry at consulates in Venezuela and to show a passport, which many do not have.

The number of slums in Chile, one of Latin America's most prosperous and stable economies, has nearly doubled since 2011, the government said on Wednesday, as an influx of migrants increasingly face a lack of low-income housing and rising rents. Chile's Housing Ministry said it had identified 822 slums in Chile that largely lack access to basic services like water, sewage disposal and electricity, an increase of 78 percent from 2011. The slums comprise a total of 46,423 homes, the ministry said in a statement, of which only 10 percent had access to potable water.

Chile and other comparatively wealthy Latin American nations are absorbing a wave of mass migration from destitute nations in the region such as Haiti and Venezuela, increasing demands on social services. Immigration into Chile has increased more than sixfold in around 25 years, from 114,500 in the 1992 census to 746,465 last year. The government attributes the rise in slums to the high cost of housing in the northern third of the country, where many migrants enter Chile.

"I think the humanitarian response and funding, and even diplomatic interest, in this crisis has really lagged behind," said Amanda Catanzano, senior director of advocacy at aid group, International Rescue Committee. "The scale of the crisis is staggering, the magnitude and impact are still not understood. It's growing. And that's not sustainable in the absence of a coordinated regional response, the likes of which we really haven't seen yet."

Elsewhere in Latin America, thousands of migrants from Central America, mainly El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, leave their homes every year, fleeing gang violence, poverty and joblessness to seek a better life in the United States.
"It's entire families. It's not anymore the youngest, the strongest," said Francesca Fontanini, spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR). "The journey up north is much longer, more risky," Fontanini said. "Since Trump, it's much more difficult to cross the border."

A new migrant crisis is unfolding in Nicaragua, where more than 300 people have been killed since April as the leftist government of Daniel Ortega has responded, often brutally, to anti-government protests. The crackdown has led to tens of thousands of Nicaraguans, many of them students, pouring into neighbouring Costa Rica. More than 23,000 have applied for asylum.
"They were lucky because Costa Rica immediately opened the doors," Fontanini said.

His prediction is that, "As long as people don't feel safe and have no food, they will keep coming. They have no other choice."

http://news.trust.org/item/20181227005419-3y0s9/

http://news.trust.org/item/20181226225715-r8oaz/

Racism in Pay

Britain's black and ethnic minority workers face a "pay penalty" and earn less than white colleagues in the same jobs, according to a report from the Resolution Foundation which says overall the 1.6m BAME workers are paid about £3.2bn less than their white counterparts every year.

It noted that BAME workers have long earned less, on average, than white male workers, due in part due to differences in qualification levels and the types of jobs they do.

But the foundation said its "pay penalty" calculation took into account factors including industry sector, occupations, contract types, education level and degree attainment of individual workers.

The foundation's research says the biggest impact was on black male graduates, who were paid 17%, or £3.90 an hour, less compared to their white peers.

Pakistani and Bangladeshi male graduates earned an average of 12% less an hour, while among female graduates, black women were said to face a pay penalty of £1.62 an hour, or 9%.

Among non-graduates, Pakistani and Bangladeshi men were reported to be the worst affected. The research said they earned £1.91 an hour, or 14%, less than white colleagues, with black male non-graduates £1.31 an hour, or 9%, worse off.
Kathleen Henehan, research and policy analyst at the Resolution Foundation, said: "A record number of young BAME workers have degrees, and a record number are in work. However, despite this welcome progress, many... face significant disadvantages in the workplace."

It used data from a survey of 100,000 people over 10 years.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-46690212

The Great White Hope

Jack London is greatly admired for his fine writing and the socialist ideals that he held. This article in the Guardian, however, revealed that London absorbed the ugly attitudes of racism which were prevalent at the time. It is said that he originated the phrase the "Great White Hope" regards Jim Jeffries who fought Jack Johnson and lost in July 1910, a fight which was filmed but which was not screened in many places due to the result.

The racism didn't go unnoticed in the columns of the Socialist Standard. In the August 1910 issue this was written:

The risks of capitalists have been finely illustrated at the expense of the cinematograph people who shelled out some £30,000 to the principals in and promoter of the recent glove contest in America. One Jeffries essayed to “take up the white man’s burden,” which in this instance was to prove the superiority of the white over any other human complexion. It was thought a pretty safe calculation that the universal interest in the spectacle of “Mistah Jeff ” taking up the white man’s burden, would warrant the outlay, but alas ! for the “schemes of mice and men,” it was forgotten that the same pictures might show the black man helping him to lay it down again. Of course, the overlooking of this contingency made all the difference.

Was it to be supposed that civilisation could stand it? We all know that civilisation is based firstly upon the superiority of the white to the coloured races, and secondly upon the superiority of the capitalist to the ordinary or worker white. But what sort of an effect would these moving pictures have upon the social aspect in Africa, and what tale would they whisper into the ear of young India, and how would they be received on the banks of the Nile, where the burden of the white man’s civilisation sits none too lightly on brown backs? The best black man has beaten the best white. The best black is better than the best white. The black is better than the white.

As Japan snatched the halo of sanctity from the Western brow when she drove the Russian legions before her, so these pictures of the best white man trying and failing to chew all he had bitten off might be taken by the dusky ones the world over as evidence that the miraculous no more belongs to the white skin than to the Western position, and that even the most godlike of white men has a crick in his neck if the axe is put on in the right place—and then goodbye to British misrule in India and Egypt, and farewell to white supremacy in East and West. And then when the worker white made the startling discovery that there was nothing inferior to him he might begin to seriously ask if there is anything superior, and such an inward searching really would place the foundations of our capitalist civilisation in jeopardy."

In August 1915, there as another passing reference to Jack Johnson in the Socialist Standard.

"The Johnson-Jeffries fight was banned from the Cinema halls, but the Willard-Johnson fight was not. Is this change of policy due to the discovery both in France and England that the man of colour is morally fit to fight the white man (and therefore to give him a hiding) or to the fact that in the first case the black man won, while in the second case he lost?..."

Climate change: capitalism can't cope

Last October the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published a report on what they consider would have to be done, and by when, to avoid average global temperature rising by the end of the century by more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. They concluded that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions would have to be stabilised by 2030, in the sense of no more being released into the atmosphere than can be absorbed by Nature or by human action. Hence the headlines about only twelve years left to avoid disaster. Then, in December, a full-scale two-week conference on climate change, with delegates from the 190 states that had signed the 2015 Paris Agreement to take measures aimed at limiting the rise to 2°C, was held in Katowice in Poland.

The facts

1. That the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has gone up since pre-industrial times (from 280 parts per million to 410 ppm today).

2. That the average global temperature has also gone up since records began in the 1850s (by about 1°C to about 15°C or 59°F today).

3. That this is not just an accidental correlation but that the first has caused the second. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, i.e., a gas that absorbs heat from the Sun; in fact without it and the other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (mainly water vapour, i.e clouds) the Earth’s temperature would be –18°C.

4. That most of the increase in CO2 is the result of human activity, in particular, the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) since the mid-nineteenth century to generate energy and power transport. In one sense this is a good thing because it means that it easier for humans to stop it than if it were some natural phenomenon.

5. That a rise in the average global temperature has various effects, the main ones being:

(a) a rise in sea levels as oceans warm up and so expand and as the polar icecaps begin to melt;

(b) more stormy weather in some regions due to more energy being in the atmosphere;

(c) changes in regional agriculture conditions and ecology, disastrous in some places though not necessarily negative everywhere.

Guestimates

We know definitely that, unless the rate of emission of CO2 is stabilised, average global temperature is going to continue rise and that this will affect sea levels, the weather, and regional agricultural and ecological conditions. (In fact, it will continue to rise for a while even if emissions were stabilised tomorrow, as an effect of past emissions). The question is by how much and to what extent. This is where the speculation begins.

Not, however, wild speculation but speculation based on certain assumptions. In drawing up scenarios of what might happen in the future, scientists have to make two basic assumptions. First, about the link between a rise in CO2 in the atmosphere and the rise in average global temperature. Second, about what humans do, or do not do, to reduce or compensate for CO2 emissions.

As to the first, nobody knows with certainty what it is. The standard that scientists have chosen is an estimate of by how much the global average temperature would rise if the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere doubled. This is not easy to calculate as there are feedbacks. Once these have been taken into account, the figure they come up with is anything between 1.5°C and 4.5°C, variously described as “the best estimate”, “most likely”, or even “the best guess”. It is, in fact, a “guestimate”, albeit an informed one.

Polar ice-core records show that in the pre-industrial past the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere was for centuries 280 ppm. Today it is 410 ppm. If present trends continue it will reach 560 ppm, i.e., double, by 2050. In that case, in period after that date until the end of the century average global temperature would gradually rise to 1.5°C or by 4.5°C above pre-industrial levels or by anything in between.

As average global temperature has already gone up by about 1°C since pre-industrial times we are talking about a possible further rise by the end of the century of between 0.5°C and 3.5°C.  That’s as accurate as you can get. The trouble is that there would be a huge difference in effects between the lower and the higher figure. All we can safely say is that if CO2 emissions continue to increase, so global average temperature will go up and so the effects of this will be felt. Since most of these effects will be negative, CO2 emissions should be reduced in any event.

But how? One suggested way can be set aside – individuals changing their individual behaviour, as by not driving a car, not travelling by air, eating less or no meat, tuning the temperature of their home down and wearing a sweater, etc. Clearly, the effect of this could only be marginal, quite apart from the fact that the level of popular consumption is linked to the state of the economy which in turn is linked to the prospects for making and accumulating of profits as more capital. The tail can’t wag the dog. What is required is action at global level to deal with production methods that involve directly emitting CO2 into the atmosphere.

Nest of vipers

Co-ordinated global action is what is needed, but capitalism impedes this. Capitalism is a world system under which capitalist enterprises and states compete against each other to secure markets and sources of raw materials. It is driven by an imperative that imposes itself on those organising production to use the cheapest available methods so as to survive in the struggle to make and accumulate profits. ‘Growth’ of production is built-in to it.

Energy is a key input of all production; its cost affects the competitiveness on both home and world markets of goods produced within the frontiers of a state. This is why states are particularly concerned with the cost of energy and its security of supply. At the moment coal, oil, and natural gas are still cheaper than alternatives such as renewables and nuclear, which is why they were used in the past and continue to be used.

When Trump says that he is not going to accept any measures that are ‘bad for business’ he is expressing the position that all states take and have to take. No state is going to decide unilaterally not to use its cheapest source of energy, even if it is one that emits CO2, as that would increase its energy costs and undermine its competitiveness internally as well as on world markets. So the states into which the capitalist world is divided have agreed that the United Nations should take the initiative. However, the various climate change conferences that the UN has organised have shown that the ‘nations’ are far from being ‘united’. They have proved to be a veritable nest of vipers as each state tries not only to advantage itself but to disadvantage its rivals.

The only agreement that has been possible – in fact, given capitalism, the only one that is possible – is one which disadvantages no one compare to everyone else. This was the outcome of 2015 conference in Paris which agreed that all states should commit themselves to reducing emissions so as to avoid average global temperature rising 2°C above pre-industrial levels (a further 1°C from today) by the end of the century. However, as the UN is toothless and can’t impose anything on states, it left to each state to decide, in the light of its particular circumstances, what measures it would take to contribute towards this.

In November the journal Nature Communications published an article analysing the measures pledged by states in pursuit of the Paris Agreement (www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-07223-9), one of whose conclusions the Guardian (16 November) summarised as:

'Under the Paris agreement, there is no top-down consensus on what is a fair share of responsibility. Instead, each nation sets its own bottom-up targets according to a number of different factors, including political will, level of industrialisation, ability to pay, population size, historical responsibility for emissions. Almost every government, the authors say, selects an interpretation of equity that serves their own interests and allows them to achieve a relative gain on other nations.’

The conference in Katowice didn’t alter this but just worked out common rules for verifying whether the self-determined measures were being implemented and to what extent. It left unchanged a state’s right to decide what measures to adopt.

Lowest level consensus

Under capitalism, the best that can be achieved is some non-binding inter-governmental agreement that would disadvantage nobody commercially. Clearly, this is pretty minimalist, a consensus at the lowest level. The promised measures, if adopted, will have some effect in slowing down global warming, which should mean the IPCC’s worst case scenario of a further rise in average global temperature of 3.8°C by 2100 won’t be realised, even if they are not enough to limit the rise to a further 1°C (making the rise 2°C since pre-industrial times).

It is looking highly unlikely if capitalism continues, that the rise in average global temperature this century is going to be held to this limit. This would bring other problems which would be more acute the more the limit is exceeded and which capitalism would be equally incapable of coping with, in particular, the population displacements due to rising sea levels and worsened agricultural conditions in some parts of the world. Co-ordinated global action would also be required to deal with this, but once again capitalism’s division into competing capitalist states will impede this.

The lesson is that those concerned about global overwarming should direct their efforts to getting rid of capitalism and replacing it with a system where the Earth’s natural and industrial resources will have become the common heritage of all humanity. This will put a stop to the operation of the current economic imperative to seek and accumulate profits and will provide the framework for co-ordinated global action to deal not only with global warming but other current problems such as world poverty and constant war somewhere in the world.

ADAM BUICK

Quote of the Day

 Nevile Henderson, the British ambassador in Berlin, on returning to London as war began:

“It would be idle to deny the great achievements of the man who restored to the German nation its self-respect and its disciplined orderliness … Many of Herr Hitler’s social reforms, in spite of their complete disregard of personal liberty of thought, word or deed, were on highly advanced democratic lines.”

 Hitler’s “labour camps”, Henderson thought, showed how “a benevolent dictatorship” works.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/dec/23/nein-by-paddy-ashdown-review-hitler

Embrace Falling Fertility

 Recent figures revealed that, globally, women now have on average 2.4 children in their lifetime a measure known as total fertility rate (TFR). But while in some countries that figure is far higher – in Niger it is more than seven – in almost half of countries, including the UK, Russia and Japan, it has fallen to below two.

 Sarah Harper, former director of the Royal Institution and an expert on population change, working at the University of Oxford, said that far from igniting alarm and panic falling total fertility rates were to be embraced, and countries should not worry if their population is not growing. She warned that the focus on boosting populations was outdated and potentially bad for women. Empowering women might do more to change a country’s total fertility rate than pushing pro-natalism, said Harper, although that would not necessarily cause a baby boom. “In those societies that enable women to stay in the labour market and have children, they will go from none or one child probably up to two per woman.”

And there was another solution: movement of people – something Harper said had helped Europe and north America cope with ageing populations, boosting economies since the second world war.

“Migration is that wonderful balancing act,” she added.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/26/falling-total-fertility-rate-should-be-welcomed-population-expert-says

Socialism Is The Way Out

Our consciousness is roused by our inevitable conflicts with the forces of capitalism in our daily (particularly working) lives. How we interpret that experience, however, and what sort of political action (if any) we take depends very much on the information and the intellectual tools at our disposal. We should perhaps talk in terms of "subjective" and "objective" class consciousness. Subjective class consciousness (“consciousness in itself") perhaps relates to ways of thinking and feeling born out of daily contact with capitalism and expresses itself in such vehicles as trade unions, friendly societies, and perhaps political parties other than the Socialist Party. Objective class consciousness, on the other hand, should perhaps be seen as a culmination of struggles with capitalism and expresses itself in terms of the abolition of capitalism by workers ("consciousness for itself"). Engaging in the daily struggles of other people/groups is all very well if they invite you to do so or ask for your help. Otherwise, it is false. Instead of building working class solidarity, this creates suspicion and mistrust. Countless examples of manipulation of trade union activities by left-wing groups have demonstrated this. Every socialist has more than enough to do in being active in his/her own daily struggles and in spreading socialist information and ideas.

Many have said socialism will make no headway with the workers until religion had been eradicated from their minds. We have never belittled the power of religion when used by an unscrupulous ruling class to befog the minds of those they ruled. Furthermore, we assert that it has been consciously used as a bulwark to discourage active thought by the workers on the why and wherefore of capitalist supremacy and privilege. We do not dispute the fact that socialism cannot be achieved by a working class that believes in the supernatural. Socialism is based on the scientific interpretation of history. Religion is part of that history and is the result of man's ignorance of natural forces. With their progress in the knowledge of socialism, the workers must, therefore, shed their superstitions and become materialistic in their outlook.

Almost from the beginning of social life men an women have thought and planned for an ordered relationship in their dealings with each other. But a changing environment has always defeated them. In their struggle with nature for the necessaries of life, the discoveries they made always changed the nature of the problem. There could be no resting place. No period in history where they could truthfully say, "There will be no more history." Where conditions were static and man's relations within society could be determined once and for all. This has always been the dream, not only of Utopians, but of every despot and every class, throughout the ages, that has achieved power. Their dreams and plans have passed with them. Has the present ruling class any hope of achieving stability? Does society at present show any signs of being able to control and regulate the production and distribution of wealth on lines satisfactory to all? Emphatically no.

There is only one way out. That is to abolish capitalism and establish socialism in its place. End private property society that robs us of the wealth we produce and establish a worldwide society that is based on common ownership and in which there will be no capitalist or working classes, no owners and non-owners, no wage workers and no money. This society is coming, but it will come all the quicker if you join with us in our work for socialism.

The Socialist Party indicts capitalism at the barrier to progress and civilisation. There can be no common interests between those who own the factories, mines, mills, and land, with the workers who do all of the producing. One class does all the work, produces all, suffers all the hardships necessary to accomplish the task. The other class owns, but does not know, nor cares to know, how to produce wealth, yet persists by rights that it labels “legal” and otherwise to live upon what it does not produce. One class works long hours under conditions generally and necessarily established by and suitable to the masters of industry, receives low wages, so that there may be high dividends and profits for the masters. For it must be borne in mind longer hours mean greater wealth produced, low wages mean greater profits for the capitalists. Shorter hours mean less production by each worker or group of workers, therefore the expense to the masters is greater to produce a certain amount of wealth. High wages, shorter hours, better shop conditions that will protect life and limb are objected to by the capitalist for a thousand and one “reasons,” but really because it all means greater cost—thus less dividends—resulting in less palatial mansions, less limousines, less yachts, less private jets. The exploitation of people causes suffering and misery while environmental destruction results in degradation on a vast scale. The Socialist Party argue these problems are fundamentally caused by our economic and political system: capitalism. There are reasons for hope. Despite the divide-and-rule tactics used by politicians, more and more people are recognising the connection between social and environmental issues. Progress might be slow and patchy but steadily people are listening to the message at the heart of socialism.

 It is common to describe members of the Socialist Party as dreamers, and thereby remove them from the sphere of practical politics. As socialists, we insist that we are practical, that we are working for something now and not in the dim and distant future. In fact, we insist that, from the workers' standpoint, we are the only practical people because we have the solution to all the economic evils that baffle our rulers, and our solution is one that can be applied now. To apply this solution all that is needed is the understanding by the majority of the workers of the few basic ideas. When the taunt is flung at us that socialism is a dream, what is really meant is that the workers have neither the capacity to understand nor to apply socialist principles and that socialism, as a system, is not capable of being run by human beings.

For those who shrink at the thought of social change and the overthrowing of the Establishment, let them take heart. Revolutions are terrible things. They upset society but the socialist revolution will not shake society to pieces; it will simply break the shackles of property and, with them, the ties that bind down the majority of people to lives of unending toil in return for the mere necessities of existence. Socialism offers a quick, easy, and certain road out of the economic evils that afflict the workers to-day. For its accomplishment, it requires the understanding and mutual co-operation of the mass of the workers.