Recycling helps us avoid tackling Climate Change

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Climate change and environmental destruction are contentious and disputed topics.

In the US, for instance, there is a powerful faction of Republican politicians who flat-out deny that climate change even exists. In Britain, the former Environment Secretary, Owen Patterson, under David Cameron, is also a climate change skeptic, oddly enough. The current one, under Theresa May, does not appear to be much better in that department either. And it has become worse in the USA under Donald Trump. That is not to say that it was good under Obama.

These denials go against science: carbon emissions have increased by 35 per cent since 1990, and climate change is responsible for over 300,000 deaths a year, a figure that could rise to half a million people by 2030.Or so, at least, we are being told. It is blindingly obvious that we are heading towards environmental destruction and any failure to admit this is negligent and dangerous.

The climate is changing though – and I am swaying that rather carefully – whether all is down to CO2 emissions is another thing altogether. I would actually say that the entire thing of focusing on “carbon emissions” is also making us fail to look at other culprits, for which we, as humans, are also responsible, such as pollution, exploitations of soil and forests, etc., ad infinitum. Ever since they but the word carbon in front of emissions we have failed to look at the other contributing factors that used to go by the name of pollution, from air pollution, to pollution of soil, water and land. But that kind of pollution cannot be traded in the form of carbon certificates, those modern day indulgences.

The international system has set numerous targets to resolve the crisis, such as the UN Millennium Development Goals on the environment, but they are rarely, if ever, met. The many environment summits which regularly take place also fail to produce tangible results, with the big powers failing to agree on terms. On top of that they emit more pollution than almost anything else as those leaders keep jetting around the globe, together with entourage and journalists in tow. And let's not even talk of all those eco-organizations whose people also do this.

On the micro level, people tend to make quite an effort. We are often told to monitor our carbon footprint and in many countries, recycling has become normalized, a part of people's daily routine. These micro-level changes are theoretically somewhat reducing our environmental crisis. Or so we are led to believe.

A greener approach is encouraged by the governments, for both businesses and ordinary citizens. Despite this, the environment is not really improving. When we take our small green steps, we tend to assume that we are solving the problem, and that we do not have to worry about it anymore. This veneer of “action” misleads us and essentially pulls the wool over our eyes, stopping us from asking deeper questions about the environment and what truly contributes to climate change and wider environmental degradation.

We recycle our waste, but do not link it to the consumer society we live in. The media and advertising industries are constantly telling us to buy things we don't need, yet we rarely, if ever, link this to climate change. Our efforts to recycle nullify us and prevent deeper thought. In addition to that there is “greensumption”, the believe that we make a change when we buy “green” products. Hello!! We are still consuming and in that department often things that are greenwashed rather than anything else.

Debates surrounding the environment seldom link the problem to capitalism, and they are too often seen as separate issues. Capitalism is the elephant in the room.

Our capitalist world encourages and ingrains a consumerist mentality that is driving us to environmental ruin. It has been estimated that if everyone consumed at the same rate as your average American, then the world would only be able to support 1.4 billion people.

Capitalism, however, needs that kind of mentality to exist in order for corporations to thrive, and doing the recycling is not going to change our consumerist habits. Therefore what is really needed is a change of system not a change of habits. That, though, the powers-that-be (but really shouldn't be) are hardly going to tell us now, are they.

It is precisely this ideology that is behind the extraction of resources meant to facilitate our lifestyles. The environmental damage done by extractive industries far outweighs what we can achieve as individuals on a micro-level.

The United Nations Environment Program a while ago released a report highlighting how environmental damage caused by Shell in Ogoniland, Nigeria, could take more than 30 years to be reversed. Still, we don't make the link between what happens in places like Ogoniland and our consumer lifestyles at home. There is a huge disconnect there and environmental NGOs are often closely linked to big business, so they can't act as whistleblowers anymore. In other words, very few can do so, nowadays and it is up to us, the people, to make a noise.

Extractive industries have a huge influence in the policy making sphere, particularly in the US. It has been estimated that 94% of US Chamber of Commerce contributions went to climate denier candidates, with the oil and gas industries' lobby worth almost $1.5 billion per year.

It is, therefore, not difficult to see who is shaping policy and why our environmental crisis has only worsened in recent decades. As long as there are powerful interest groups influencing the EU and the US governments, it is unrealistic to expect international conventions to ever make a difference.

Big business has more say than local groups, such as indigenous people, who often have a powerful environmental message to share, but who are persistently ignored. It is beyond irony that the richest most powerful countries in the world are racing towards disaster while the so-called primitive societies are the ones at the forefront of trying to avert it.

There is definitely merit in reducing our individual environmental footprints, but in the grand scheme of things, it is unlikely to make any difference to the Planet's environmental outlook; at least, not as long as capitalism reigns supreme.

Encouraging micro-level changes and giving money to green NGOs merely serves as a smokescreen to prevent real in-depth analysis. It almost facilitates a system whereby corporate-made environmental degradation can continue, while we keep on recycling and forget about the problem.

In order to truly make a change we must begin to ask deeper questions about the society in which we live in and start trying to operate outside of the status quo capitalist framework. Thus we must change the system and no, social democracy will not make one iota of a difference here either the politicians in this often refer to themselves as democratic socialists.

But, as long as we are going to be lulled to sleep by the recycling message, and to believe that we can make a great and significant difference if we but separate our waste properly, etc., we will never get the idea to call for a change of system. Unless, however, the system is changed we – and our children and children's children – are not going to have a Planet on which to live. It is as simple but also as crass as that.

See for this also my article “Fighting climate change and poverty in the Third World at the same time?”

© 2018

Are Social-Democrats socialists?

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The short answer would and must be No. They are not socialists in the main even though there may be one or two socialists among the ranks of the Social-Democrats in this or that country. In the main, however, the social-democratic parties are a bit in the vein of the liberal parties in that they think that they can tinker at the edges of capitalism without needing to change the system too much and thus give workers a little more influence. This does not work.

While it may be possible to have a kind of free-enterprise socialism where small businesses, as in owner-operated or family businesses, operate different to larger ones which all should and must be worker-owned as the means of production must be in the hands of the worker, capitalism with a social face and -conscience does not socialism make, not even socialism-lite.

The latter is, however, what many social-democratic parties, the British Labour Party included, are trying to achieve. They try to work with the bourgeoisie and capital rather than doing the right thing for the workers and society. Capitalism cannot be reformed into something that will give the workers a fair share; it is not in its character. The two are diametrically opposed, to be truthful.

And when it comes to the term of social-democracy we are back at that word democracy and the true meaning of it and it just does not work in the way that most parties, even those on the very left, including socialist and communist ones see society and the world. Democracy means that the people govern themselves and as long as there is a state and a government the people are slaves to the two and do not govern themselves. But, for some reason, everyone seems to believe that being permitted to vote for this or that party and this or that candidate a democracy makes. It does not. As Mark Twain put it so well, and I paraphrase: “If voting would make any difference they would make it illegal”. Got it?

Just to recap, social-democracy does not equal socialism and most social-democrats are not socialists and a great many of them are scared stiff of the very idea of true socialism because they are themselves so enmeshed in the capitalist system that they are afraid to let go of it. The politicians especially would basically remove themselves and they no longer would have any power but that is why most ever got into politics in the first place; to be able to wield power over the “little” people.

© 2015

Basing the Revolution on lies

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

A Revolution based on lies will either fail to get off the ground or fail in the end.

When we attempt to create a new society, a socialist society, even a communist one, then it cannot and must not be started with the same means as are being used by the enemy of the people. It must be based on honesty and trust.

While the enemy happily uses lies against us and in general lies must not be part of our arsenal and the fact that the enemy may have trashed trust does not mean that we should resort to lies and even half-truths. Even if we are in the gutter fighting to survive it is and must not be a case of “anything goes”, including lies. The Revolution will not happen if it is based on the same falsehoods as was that that it is meant to replace.

Talking about the enemy having trashed democracy means that we must first of all have had democracy which we have not as there is no democracy in any of the places that call themselves democratic countries. Just being allowed to vote for who is going to be the next captain and crew of the ship that they continues on the same course, right towards the abyss is not democracy, not even the start of it.

Mark Twain was right when he said that if voting would make a difference they would make it illegal. As it is still legal it is but being used by the powers-that-be (but rather should not be) to keep the masses in the belief that they have a say. If voting would really make a difference in the current systems then the powers would have banned it already. But it is useful to keep the masses in a dream and that is what counts.

If we are talking about working with democracy in our respective countries then that is the first lie that we must overcome and inform the people proper that they are not living in any kind of democracy. That the so-called democracy is but a fake, a lie.

However, that is probably the smallest of the lies. Creating fake pictures, even if with noble intent, also is lying and does not advance the course, especially not if and when this lie is being discovered. The same goes for any other half-truths, untruths and outright lies.

Yes, it is true that the enemy will employ all those means against the revolution and the revolutionaries but that still does not make it right that we employ the self-same methods and lies. All it will do is make the movement out to be false and its leadership and membership to be liars and something that cannot be trusted. Lies and falsehoods destroyed the Soviet Revolution and many other countries that attempted socialism, which, alas, was but state capitalism. There were lies against people who were critical of what the leaders were doing, there were lies about production, and so many more lies.

But we, as true revolutionaries must not stoop as low as they are and use the same kind of methods of deceit and of lies, regardless of what they are doing in that way. Our path must be the shining path of truth for only when we are honest with ourselves and with the people will the people back our cause which is, ultimately, their cause.

The system cannot be changed by the same means that it uses, be it lies, deception or others, though there may be a validation for the use of arms.

The revolutionary must be true to himself and with and to the working class and thus any untruths, however small, have no place in this.

© 2015

The Communist Manifesto – Book Review

Review by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The Communist Manifesto
by Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels
Originally published February 21, 1848

“There is still a compulsive quality to its prose as it provides insight after insight into the society in which we live, where it comes from and where its going to. It is still able to explain, as mainstream economists and sociologists cannot, today's world of recurrent wars and repeated economic crisis, of hunger for hundreds of millions on the one hand and 'overproduction' on the other. There are passages that could have come from the most recent writings on globalization.” writes the English Marxist Chris Harman in 2003 and one cannot disagree with that at all.

As The Communist Manifesto has, in early 2015, experienced somewhat of a revival and has become a best seller in the newly released Penguin Classics series I decided to re-read it and reacquaint myself with it once again as well.

What does “The Communist Manifesto” have to offer more than 165 years after its publication?

The answer must be: “A great deal and then some”.

Reading the words by Marx and Engels made me thing with almost every sentence, at least in the first parts, “has no one read it?” as they describe so very well what is going on in our world and society (again) today. And this is not just about the economic state of affairs, though they are definitely spot on in that department.

While one may not agree – necessarily – with everything as I, for one, do not believe in political parties any more than I believe in religions and I also believe that we must return to a much different life and society, much of what Marx and Engels wrote in the Manifesto is as valid today as it was in their days.

Why a review of The Communist Manifesto seeing that it is that old already?

One reason is that it has, as said already, recently – in early 2015 – become rather a best seller since it was releases as part of the newly released Penguin Classics series in the style of the old paperback of the range of bygone years.

The second is because the message – with some caveats, I like to add – is today as important – more so probably even – as it was in the days when it was first published in the first half of the 19th century.

Marx and Engels were well ahead of their times in many aspects in their analysis of the problems of and with capitalism but, as with Orwell's “1984”, no one seems to have read the writings or, if they did, they did not heed the messages and warnings.

Overproduction, of which Marx and Engels speak in the Manifesto has gone berserk to such an extent that products are made to be tossed out in six months to a year and all of it in order to keep the economy artificially growing, by forcing people to buy new every so often.

This overproduction is also rather frequently mentioned and exposed as a major problem for the situation of the working class in the book “The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists” and that book too should be read by all.

Marx and Engels write about the vision of “Utopian” Socialism of Robert Owen and others – a return to a simple life with equal status for all – as something almost disdainful. I, for one, however, believe that today that may just be the way forward. Industrial production is almost history and if all indicators are correct has but a short time left to live.

The “means of production in the hands of the state”, as espoused in the Manifesto is not the original ethos of “the means of production in the hands of the workers”. The state and the workers are not one and the same and by no stretch of imagination can they be seen interchangeable, even if the means of productions are nationalized. No, not even under communism. This leads and has lead to state capitalism masquerading as communism where the worker exchanges but the state as master over the corporate boss. Only when truly the means of productions are in the hands of the workers, physically and not just “on paper”, will the wage slave system and the slavery of the working class cease.

While Marx and Engels, maybe rightly so, rant – for lack of a better word – against what the call Bourgeois Socialism the fact remains that political change without social change, in the same way as social change without political change, as many later communists realized, will not help the proletariat much either. Both need to go hand-in-hand together. Political change on its own may not lead to social change in the same way as social change will not – necessarily – lead to political change.

When it comes to Robert Owen, et all, the harshness, I believe, is not justified as they and the Levellers – and yes, there was, maybe, no real working class in existence then if we see the working class only as the industrial factory workers – had in mind a society where all are equal and live and work under equal conditions. Should that not be our aim and goal?

If the dictatorship of the proletariat is to mean that only the proletariat will have the real rights and the rest, especially the former owners of the means of production, the landowners, and others, will be treated as second class people, then communism will never sit easy with all but the most violent of the working class, who would like to see all those that once held power be lead to the guillotine.

Also, and this was recognized to well by Ernst Thaelmann, the working class or not only those who work in manufacturing industry but the working class are all, theoretically, who work for an employer, for a master, be that the state, whether in the service of the state or in nationalized industries, or for a private or corporate boss.

He or she who works on the farms, as employee of the farmer, in the forests, and in public service, is as much a member of the working class as the miner or the factory worker at the production line.

Apart from the Bible, “The Communist Manifesto” has become the most widely read book in the world. Whenever there is trouble, anywhere in the world, the book becomes an item; when things quiet down, the book drops out of sight; when there is trouble again, the people who forgot remember. When fascist-type regimes seize power, it is always on the list of books to burn. When people dream of resistance “even if they are not Communists”it provides music for their dreams.

So, what would we then conclude from this about the fact that, in the beginning of 2015 the book is seeing a revival as far as purchases of copies are concerned, not that it cannot be gotten, nowadays, for free from sources on the Internet?

The nineties began with the mass destruction of Marx effigies. It was the “postmodern” age: We were not supposed to need big ideas. As the nineties end, we find ourselves in a dynamic global society ever more unified by downsizing, de-skilling and dread” just like Marx said. All of a sudden, the iconic looks more convincing than the ironic; that classic bearded presence, the atheist as biblical prophet, was back just in time for the millennium and times beyond. At the dawn of the twentieth century, there were workers who were ready to die with The Communist Manifesto. Now, in the first part of the twenty-first, there may be even more who are ready to live with it.

Marx saw the modern working class as an immense worldwide community waiting to happen. Such large possibilities give the story of organizing a permanent gravity and grandeur. The process of creating trade and labor unions is not just an item in interest-group politics but it is a vital part of what Lessing called “the education of the human race.”

It is not just educational either but existential: the process of people individually and collectively discovering who they are. And, as they learn who they are, they will come to see that they need one another in order to be themselves. They will see, because workers are smart: Bourgeois society has forced them to be, in order to survive its constant upheavals. Marx knows they will get it by and by. Solidarity is not sacrifice of yourself but the self's fulfillment. Learning to give yourself to other workers, who may look and sound very different from you but are like you in depth, gives a man or woman a place in the world and delivers the self from dread.

But the one important thing also to consider, as I have mentioned before, is to what actually is the “working class”?

Marx (and Engels) apparently only saw the working class as being those that were industrial workers and it took Lenin and Thaelmann in Germany to make the point that all workers are part of the working class and not just those working in heavy industry and the mines, for instance. In today's world the working class is far broader than what Marx and Engels envisaged and we must recognize that.

© 2015

The Left must find its way back to its roots

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The Left, the Labor Movement, must finds its way back to its roots, to the true socialism and communism from which it sprang and must abandon the misguided idea of being able to reform capitalism and make it into a user friendly version.

The British Labour Party and other political parties that proclaim socialism and social democracy are but apologists and have came off the rail like a train that has hit a fault switch. The Labour Party, for sure, has deserted its roots, the labor and trade union movement which founded it and has stabbed the working class in the back and continues to do so.

Not that the British Labour Party is alone in this of all the working class parties of Europe and the rest of the world. Far from it.

Labour, however, is literally advocating the creation of capitalism lite and Ed Milliband appears to have said as much in February 2014 and this is a total abandonment of the working class and of the principles on which the party was founded.

The majority of the British trade unions are, today, also no better in that they too are but interested, the leaders that is, in their cushy jobs at the top of those unions, drawing salaries that equal those of captains of industry, while their members are forced to eek out a living at less than the living wage.

Democracy is the road to socialism, said Marx. That is fine and good as long as it is true democracy where the central institutions in society are under popular control. What is, however, masquerading as democracy under capitalism is not democracy by definition. It is a system in which the central institutions of society are in principle under autocratic control and predominately by the corporations via lobbying and other way of influence exerted upon the do-called government. This makes capitalism, de facto, fascist in nature. There is tight control from at the top and strict obedience is established on every level and enforced.

Until such a time that all major institutions of society are under popular control of participants and communities it is pointless to talk about democracy and to claim that we live in one.

Having said that, however, we must also ensure that the parties of the Left do not tread the course that the CPSU did once Stalin got the helm and forced collectivization, for instance, on the peasants in a way that killed many tens of thousands of them in the villages and those that were, as kulaks and kulak agents, deported to the wastes of Siberia for no other crime than wishing not to forcibly be joined to the kolchoz.

The collectivization was intended, by Lenin, to be voluntarily but under Stalin and his henchmen it became something else rather, as did many other things.

The entire economy was turned into state capitalism rather than socialism and communism and the means of production instead of ending up in the hands of the workers ended up in the hands of the state. That, however, was already a fault in Marx's thinking itself and should never have been cropped up nor adopted.

The means of production must be in the hands of those that work with those means and that means the workers and not the state. The state, in itself, is something that should be reconsidered also.

It is true that public utilities and transport, such as buses, trams and trains must be, well, public but businesses of all other kinds should be worker's cooperatives, family or individuals and not state monopolies or so-called “people's owed enterprises” which are, in fact, but state run with the workers changing from wage slaves to a business owner or corporation to wage slaves of the state.

Having said the afore about public utilities and transport that is not to say that they cannot be run as worker-owned and operated enterprises. Far from it. In fact that may just be the best solution for all.

The roots of the Left are not Marx, Engels and Lenin but go much further back to what Marx and Engels referred to, condescendingly, as utopians, such as the Diggers, Owen and others in Britain of the centuries before and the same time, and those include the ideas of the Co-operative Commonwealth. And while those ideas, to a degree, may also have been flawed, in the current economical and political climate it is those that show that their way may be the one to embark upon properly.

We must learn from the past mistakes but have a look at the so-called and often discarded utopian systems for a solution. It is then a case of looking at all those systems and taking the best from all of them and creating a new way. And the one notion that we have to get away from altogether is the state and the necessity of it.

© 2015

Capitalists can buy themselves out of any crisis

"Capitalists can buy themselves out of any crisis, so long as they make the workers pay" – Lenin

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Those words of Vladimir Ilyitch Ulyanov (Lenin) are still as true and valid today as they were when he made that statement, maybe even more so.

The capitalists will, on the backs of the poor and on the backs working class, buy themselves out of any crisis and most if not indeed all of those crises are created by the capitalists themselves. There are very few that cannot be laid at the door of capital and the banks.

Wars are almost always the result of the machinations of the capitalists and the ruling classes, the junkers and those others that lord it over the people. Other crises too are all too often orchestrated by those in order to further their interests whatever those may be at that particular time.

While the poor may commit (petty) crimes in order to feed themselves and their children they have never started a war or orchestrated some crisis to get what they want. They only, in general, go after what they need.

The ruling class and the capitalists, on the other hand, do not need more but still they want more. More resources, more money, and that ideally for nothing. They oppress the people, exploit the workers, and it is they who reap the profits and not the people what actually do the work. Many of them also do not even risk their own capital but play with stolen money and resources. Any poor person would end up in jail for what seems to be considered acceptable practice and even laudable when done by the capitalists and the ruling class to further their interests. Are they not growing the economy and that is what counts?

Aside from the fact that the perpetual growth economy not being sustainable it is all done by exploitation. Exploitation of the workers in the factories and businesses, exploitation of other countries and the exploitation of the environment to such an extent that the Earth is being destroyed. And all for profit and more, more and more money that they do not need.

Crises are manufactured so as to advance their interests, especially as regards to the exploitation of natural resources in other countries, whether oil, gas, gold, timber or whatever. The accusation against Saddam Hussein of Iraq of having weapons of mass destruction was fabricated in order for US companies especially to get their dirty hands on Iraq's oil and Afghanistan has not been invaded to fight Islamic terrorism but in order to get the minerals and rare earths that are there in them hills. And whose sons and daughters have to fight on the fields of battle? Those of the working class and not those of the ruling class.

Financial crises too have been fabricated in order to devalue currencies and destroy economies and the poor and the working class are the ones who have to carry the can once again by having to take wage cuts but having to pay every rising prices for food and utilities. It is they that are made to pay for the crises that the capitalists and the bankers create to further their own interests and those of the businesses and banks that they represent.

Only when the workers truly own the means of production and other businesses will the worker ever be free of this exploitation. But this liberation is not achievable by simply expropriating the current owner and making the state the owner of such businesses for the status quo of boss and worker still then remains.

Nationalizing of industry and businesses does not make for ownership by the workers (and the people). It creates nothing but ownership by the state, and I mean the state, that is to say state capitalism, and turning workers not into owners but into wage slave to the state and that just will not do.

© 2014

The people must liberate themselves

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

No organization of the working class – how ever well intentioned – and especially no party in the political sense can do this task for them. And all too often then, if tried, it becomes a “top down” approach no better than what went before; at times even worse.

All too often such attempt is, however, made to hasten the process of liberating the working class. This liberation is not a liberation at all but just a jump from the frying pan into the fire, exchanging one master, the capitalist ruling class, for another, the political party.

Nationalization of industry and means of production is one of those attempts, then calling it “owned by the people” though it is rather “owned by the state”. This is not was was and is meant by “the means of production in the hands of the workers”. It just transfers the means of production from being in the hands of the capitalists into the hands of the state, with the workers just exchanging the previous master for a new one in the form of the state.

The means of production and the land must indeed be placed into the hands of those who do the work and not the state. Nationalization does not put the means of production and the land into the hands of the people who work the machines and the land but it is but a transfer from ordinary capitalism to state capitalism. In fact, the state itself is something that needs to be abolished if the people are to be free, but that is another story.

The liberation of the proletariat and the peasantry, of the masses, must come from and be done by the grassroots and will require leadership of high caliber. This has to be a leadership that guides and nurtures rather than one that imposes its way and views onto the masses. The party is not always right, as we have seen often enough in the past.

Change, and this is true for political change as well as change in other quarters, cannot be imposed on the people from above (by force of arms or coercion) how ever well intentioned. It must come from the roots through proper nurturing by those who have seen the light of the new dawn.

© 2014

The problem with communism

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The title is misleading on purpose as there is and was no problem with communism only that that which has, after the death of Lenin, been masquerading as communism in most places was not communism but state capitalism.

While the talk was about the means of production in the hands of the workers and farmers the fact was that those means were in the hands of the state and that the worker exchanged being a wage slave to a private owner to that of being a wage slave to the state.

Communism after Lenin, when Stalin and Beria usurped the leadership of the Russian Communist Party, became state capitalism with forced collectivization of farms and industry and led, in the end, to the downfall of this version of communism which was not true communism.

For the working masses, whether workers or farmers, to truly be in control they must own the mean of production and not the state. There are simply no two ways about it. While it may be possible to plan production according to the possible needs and demands of the people the control of the means of production must not be in the hands of the state. One form of capitalism is not better than another form of capitalism; it remains an exploitative system where the worker has no choice. They are still slaves, whichever one wants to look at it.

Co-operations, whether agricultural or industrial ones, and the same in retail, are the true answer, where every worker is a stakeholder and shareholder in the business and not just a salary recipient. Only then will the workers not just feel empowered but be empowered as they truly are the owners of the means of production.

To nationalize industry and agriculture is not putting the means of production into the hands of the workers and farmers but to put the means of production into the hands of the state which is not, regardless what some may believe, the same as into the hands of the working class and the farming community for they are not the owners but the state.

Communism is as old as the hills. Well, almost! Scientific socialism and communism, as defined by Marx and Engels and refined, one could say, by Lenin, is just grown out of it. It was designed for the modern industrial world where the workers faced, and still today face, exploitation by the capitalists, by the bosses.

However, the first Christians practiced a form of communism but they too were not the first and others followed later who were not Christian or religious at all though much of the communism that they practiced was, to a degree at least, based on the teachings of the New Testament and the early church.

The Diggers are probably the best known communist group that was going to form agrarian communities where things were held in common. The Quakers also, to a degree, practiced a Christian form of communism and many of the philanthropists of the pre-Victorian and Victorian era in Britain were Quakers or Christian Socialists, such as Rowntree and Cadbury. It was George Cadbury who developed the Bournville estate, a model village designed to give the company's workers good living conditions.

As far as the working and living conditions of the workers in other factories are concerned, however, they were dismal and few factory owners had even the slightest inclination to change this. It would have eaten into their profits.

A slave who was bought by an owner was treated better than any of those workers of the factories and other businesses of the industrial revolution for, as soon as the slave was a wage slave and was paid per hour of labor it was easier for the business owner to lay him off and hire new – cheaper labor - at time in the form of children.

Philanthropists inspired by Christian socialism and later the Trade Unions, many of which also were based on the same principles, fought for the change in those practices and got us all the eight hour working day, which today is once again under threat, as is decent pay for our labors.

The established parties of the left, of the working class, and even the Trade Unions, have made deals and much of what has been fought for by the martyrs of the first hour is being swept away.

The so-called party of the working class in Britain, the Labour Party, founded in 1900 and created by the Trade Unions and other movements of the working class, has become more or less the left wing of the right and has entirely deserted the working class and other parts of the labor movement, such as it is today, simply cannot get the people interested.

The proletariat is first of all not organized and, I hate to say, dumbed down by the establishment and the media that works for the establishment only...

They have also been dumbed down to believe that being allowed to go to vote every four or five years changing one party of oppression for another is the way things will change for the better. As someone said: “If voting would change anything the powers-that-be would have made it illegal long ago”.

Communism is not a problem and there is no problem with it except in the eyes of the capitalists and those in capitalist counties, which are almost all on the globe at the moment with a few exception, and they may not be true communism either, who have been blinded by the propaganda of their governments.

True communism is the liberator of the working class and the working class – and communists and socialists must learn to understand that too – are not just industrial workers but also farmers (peasants) and all who work for a wage. This was something that Ernst Thaelmann had difficulties getting into the heads of some member of the German Communist Party in the 1930s who saw the party (and I am saying that despite of not believing in political parties) as for the industrial workers only and exclusively. In addition to that also small craftsmen and others must be included. All, in fact, must be included bar the exploiters and those that make a living on the backs of others.

Nationalization of businesses, however, is not the way to go whatever Marx and Engels and Lenin have believed. By nationalizing companies all that is being done is moving from “free-market” capitalism to state capitalism but not to “means of productions in the hands of the workers” and it is the latter that must be achieved. So-called free-market capitalism and state capitalism are but opposite faces of the same coin and a liberation of the workers can only be achieved if the means of production truly are in the hands of the workers and not in the hands of the state.

Communism, as we have seen it so far, in the main, is far removed from what it truly should be and is intended to be and has been all but state capitalism in about 90% of the cases. And even the latter, often, which may have begun properly, so to speak, ended up going the same route.

The problem does not lie and never did lie with communism as an ideal and a system but with the interpretation of it. The means of production never were truly – in the main – given into the hands of the workers and thus it was just a continuation of capitalism and wage slavery. But it is not the ideal that is at fault, it has been the implementation.

© 2014

Labour will only succeed as a pro-business party: Ed Balls

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

In an interview with the Financial Times in January 2014 Ed Balls, the Shadow Chancellor, stated that “Labour will only succeed as a pro-business party” and this is where he shows his true colors and they are definitely not the Labour red and it shows how far that the party has traveled since its inception as a party for the trade union movement and how far it has gone off course.

There is already an abundance of pro-business parties at Westminster, more than enough of them, one should think. The three main parties are already vying with UKIP to be the most pro-business party, and Labour is no exception here. To many, the sight of the traditional workers party turning gamekeeper leaves the socialists and those of the working class scratching our heads.

It would appear that Ed Balls is stuck in the Westminster bubble where the needs of the City of London take priority over the needs of the rest of the country and he needs to get out and see real life for a while. And he is, that must be said, not the only one in that party who needs to do so. They need to immerse themselves in the lives of the people, the working class who they are meant to represent, and see what life it truly like.

There are many self-proclaimed socialist in the Labour Party who would not know what socialism is meant to be even if it bit them in the proverbial backside. They would not even recognize it.

Socialism – and that is what the true Labour Party was based upon when it was founded as a political party by the Unions – is about the people, the working people, the working class, and about the peasantry and not about aiding and abetting the capitalists. Capitalism cannot be reformed. It must be ended.

For too long the Labour Party and its cousins, the so-called Social-Democrat parties in Europe (and elsewhere), have tried to play Socialism Lite, trying to create “capitalism with a human face”, as they refer to it. Sorry, it does not work and will never work. The corporations will see to that, and that includes the corporations called governments. Capitalism will never have a human face regardless of what any of those parties will try and try to tell the people.

All the Social-Democrats everywhere, including Labour in Britain, have been doing is tinkering around the edges and always mindful not too upset the business community.

Nothing against business, but it has to be business where the means of production are in the hands of the workers and the farmers and not where they are in the hands of either private exploiters, national or international corporations, or indeed the state, as was done under so-called socialism in the countries that adopted the Stalinist approach. State capitalism is not socialism. That means no nationalization of businesses with the possible exception of the vital utilities such as electricity, gas and water.

Neither capitalism per se, nor nationalization, that is to say state capitalism, under the guise of people-owned companies, is working or has worked, as far as business is concerned and the rights and incomes of the workers and peasants. Only when the means of production are owned by those who use them and produce the goods and services will a change come about in the condition of those who work in the shops, workshops and factories and in the fields and forests, and will turn those workers from slaves to owners. No nationalization can and will ever do that.

For far too long, during the the twentieth and now in the twenty-first century have we interpreted socialism as businesses being owned by the state. That is not what the term “means of production in the hands of the workers” means. It means what it says, namely that the means of production must be owned by those who do the work and not owned by the state or any private individual or group of people.

Those who interpret the term “means of production in the hands of the workers” as the businesses being owned by the state remind me of the people who love to interpret the Bible in similar ways that suit them and who manage to read stuff “between the lines”.

The problem also is political parties per se and the Labour Party is no exception there in that a party will always force its members to, especially when they are part of the government or opposition, vote along party lines and will not allow them to vote according to their consciences or the brief they have received from their constituents or even the grassroots of the party. The truth is that if Labour moves any further away from its roots and the working class it will not succeed but fail, and fail miserably.

Unless, and I say that even though I advocate the destruction of the party system altogether, the Labour Party returns to its roots, to socialism and total support of the working class it is not fit for the purpose and thus the working class will need to find a new way and leave that party far behind.

The trade unions should remove their support for this party now and tell it where to go for it is, after all, the party that the trade unions gave life to. It must be allowed to flounder and be cast upon the waters to sink if it is not willing to return to its roots and its values.

But, the trade unions, more than once, themselves have abandoned the workers for political gains, especially the TUC, and we of the working class must never forget that either. Too many of the leadership of the unions love their power, love to exert it and fear to lose it and to that end are prepared to make all manner of compromises, leaving the workers out in the cold.

Let's not forget who stabbed the miners in the back in 1926 and even in the Thatcher era. It was the TUC. The congress of the trade unions, that it is purported to be but which it, apparently, is not.

We already have a Tory Party and we don't need a pink version of the same. The country and the working class of this country need a true red organization that will bring about true socialism for the working class where the means of production truly will be in the hands of the workers. We need a true worker ownership of the means of production and not state capitalism, under whichever guise it masquerades. But, alas, the Labour Party of today would never understand that and neither does the British Communist Party, alas, nor any others.

© 2014

The problem with the British Labour Party

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The problem with the British Labour Party is that is has been infected with a Blairite ideology for the best part of 20 years, and that when the pack is reshuffled, and Blairite ministers are kicked to the kerb, they are just as likely to be replaced by other Blairites and left-wing Tories, to give them the correct name.

The party, in fact, has lost its way and has become nothing more than a slightly left-wing Tory party and has left the working class in the lurch and, in fact, betrayed the working class and the Trade Unions that created the Labour Party.

Personally I do not believe that the Labour Party, the formerly British party of the working class, can be reformed; neither from the inside nor from the outside, and the working class of Britain needs to look for another way. I say “another way” not another party to further its interest and finally bring about the changes that are necessary to put the means of production into the hands of whose who do the work. However, nationalization of industry and businesses and a planned economy is not the answer. This only creates, as Albert Einstein put it in his essay “On Socialism” that a planned economy as such may be accompanied by the complete enslavement of the individual. Nothing could be added to that.

Any such organization of the working class must be and has to be answerable to its members and the working class as a whole and not be “staffed” with career politicians and those looking for an easy job.

The British Labour Party no longer is representing the working class as far too many of those that are in position of leadership have never have done a real day's work in their entire lives. Many come from upper middle class to even better backgrounds and have been to the schools of the elite, such as Eaton and nothing ever that comes out of Eaton will benefit the working class.

Tony Blair, the man who basically destroyed the Labour Party as it was, and that almost single-handed, may have been, as it has been suggested, an establishment plant, tasked with destroying the party of the British working class.

The Labour Party of today is bleeding members left, right and center (and no, this has nothing to do with political leanings) and the leadership seems incapable to understand why this is so. Rather to work to retain the real working class grassroots within the party they are more interested in getting the center left and center right to become Labour members.

Ever since the later 1970s the Labour Party has stopped representing the British working class and, maybe, already before that time, though it then still had some true Socialists within its ranks and those of the leadership.

John Smith was a true Socialists though inspired by his Faith and the teachings of Christ while others were more inspired by the teachings of Marx, Engels and Lenin. While John Smith died a far too early death others were expunged and purged by the Blairites and others hellbent on purging the party of all that believed in true Socialism.

We need a new organization of the working class in Britain and not a new Labour Party or a reformed Labour Party as political parties will always make compromises in order to get elected. The working class needs an organization to lead them and then must take its own steps to change the country into a worker and peasant state, finally breaking the rule of the junkers and the aristocracy. Chance would be a fine thing though.

© 2013

Communism is bad

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Really? On the contrary but what we have seen disguised as communism since the death of V I Lenin was not communism at all and neither socialism. It was state capitalism.

While the claim was always made of the means of production being in the hands of the workers the truth was that they were not. They were, in fact, in the hands of the state and the state became the employer and thus, the exploiter of the working class.

Communism after Lenin, apart from being state capitalism, was Stalinism and that in – almost – all countries where it was “implemented”.

The American people, others that Communists, and people from many other Western nations, believe that socialism and communism equals what we have seen before in the Soviet Union when it was run by Stalin and Beria and their successors and in the countries that later came under the USSR's influence but what we saw was, in fact, state capitalism masquerading as socialism and communism.

It was always claimed that it was based on Marxism and Leninism but nothing could be further from the truth.

Stalin and Beria were two power-hungry warlords from the Caucasus and turned the USSR, after the death of Lenin, onto their private fiefdom with farms, workshops and factories being forcibly collectivized and confiscated by the state to become state-owned business.

The small farmers, the so-called Kulaks, were hounded to death, literally, and the co-operative farms of small farmers were forcibly turned into kolkhozy, collective farms. Although some kolkhozy formed immediately after the October Revolution in 1917 those, initially, were formed on a voluntary basis by the farmers. After 1929, however, Stalin forced all farmers to band together into such kolkozy which then, basically, became the same as the state-owned farms, the sovkhozy, though operated differently. But I digressed.

When it comes to economics in a communist society it needs to be true co-operatives which then means that the means of production are truly owned by the workers, and that regardless of the size of the business.

True communism is totally different to what we have seen masquerading as it under the name of socialism and communism or as scientific socialism/communism during the twentieth century ever since the death of Lenin and the take over by the Stalin and Beria clique at the Kremlin.

However, in order for true communism to work and benefit all it must be applied properly and it must be applied from below and not from above.

The system needs to be redesigned in a completely new way and primarily with consideration of the people and the state must be abolished once and for all and that also includes conglomerates such as the European Union and other such like bodies.

The state does not work and thus real communism has to be detached from the idea of the state and a government. It must be a system by the people for the people run by the people at a local level, a tribal level. Only in that way can people actually govern themselves and this personal governance can only work under true communism. And only under true communism can people run the economy in a proper way that will benefit everyone and the Planet.

The problem with revolution is, however, as was already evident in the French Revolution and later in the Russian Revolution, or better, in that case after, after the death of Comrade Lenin, is the usurpation of power by people hellbent in gaining and maintaining power over the people.

Those people are not true revolutionaries but counter-revolutionaries in truth and fact as they are actually usurping the will of the people, often murdering, as in the case of the French Revolution and also with regards to the death of Leon Bronstein, aka Leon Trotsky. The latter who was murdered, although he was the actually appointed successor of V I Lenin, whose testament was falsified by Stalin, on Stalin’s orders in Mexico to where he, Comrade Trotsky, had fled.

Neither true socialism nor communism are bad. The opposite rather. However, we, the people, must be careful that no one will usurp the revolution that must come from the bottom, from the grassroots, from the people, and to that end we must be ever vigilant against those that could aim to do just that. Communism is not bad but the people who bend it to gain power over the people and more than just the people of one group or place are.

And that was the case in the French Revolution and in the USSR after the death of Lenin when Stalin turned it, the country, into a fiefdom of his and of Beria. Communism was turned by Stalin and Beria from what it was meant to be into an oppressive system that killed millions of people. It was not communism that did that, and not just in the USSR, but it was Stalinism. Let's get one straight. And the problem with the economy? It was state capitalism, a system that, like capitalism per se, that does not work. But it was not communism as a system itself that caused the failures of the economy in those countries really. It was a failure of the way the system was created and, more often than not, due to sabotage.

If we want to get away from exploitation of both man and the environment and away from consumerism then the way to go is a proper – and the stress is on the word proper – planned economy and properly planned one. A local economy where only that what people really need and want is produced and not where products are made that then need to be sold to people requiring the creation of a need. The latter is the way the capitalist economy of today is created and where advertising is brainwashing people into believing that if they just have this or that product then they will be happy and their lives will be fulfilled only for yet another product to come along that advertising suggests to them they need. And fulfillment and happiness goes right out of the window.

True communism is the future. One where the state no longer exists and where people, in small groups and communities, govern themselves.

© 2013

The myth about a bloody October Revolution

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Time and again the myth is being perpetuated, especially in the American media, and during the Cold War (and still today) also in Britain, Germany and other countries, that the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917 (according to the then calendar of Russia even though it was, theoretically in the early days of November of that year) was bloody and cost many lives during the “storming” of the Winter Palace. The truth is that the Bolshevik take-over was an almost bloodless coup. But that again could not make for a good scare story against communism now, would it.

In his book, which was later also made into a film “Ten Days That Shook The World”, American journalists John Reed, then a correspondent for the “Daily Worker”, makes mention of the fact that the Bolshevik take-over, backed by the workers, soldiers and peasants, was almost bloodless and he was there when it all happened, and a direct witness.

Not that those lies are anything new as far as popular revolutions are concerned. The Sandinistas were being demonized – and probably still are – the the powers-that-be in the US – when they had (and again have) the power in Nicaragua.

According to CIA and others the Nicaraguan Sandinistas were supplying the “rebels” in El Salvador with weapons via a land route. The problem that there was Honduras slap bang in the middle was no excuse to continue to perpetuate this lie and pressurizing people into believing it.

I am not saying that things did not go wrong in the Soviet Union after the death of Vladimir Ilyitch Ulyanov-Lenin, and after Stalin (Ioseb Besarionis dze Jugashvili) and Beria wrested control unto themselves, and turned the USSR into a fiefdom run by two Gerogian warlords, namely himself and Beria running the NKVD.

In the beginning even western journalists, and not just John Reed, commended the Soviet Union as a workers' and peasants' paradise. It was Stalin and Beria turned into a nightmare from 1924 onwards. But, nevertheless, the capitalist powers of Britain, America and Japan, et al, attacked the USSR and let lose the counter-revolutionary forces that did serious damage to the young country, the world's first workers' and peasants' state.

The fact that the country was turning into a workers' and peasants' paradise was an anathema to the capitalist powers-that-be and thus every effort was made to destroy the Soviet Union and to strangle the child. All manner of lies and falsehoods were concocted to discredit the October Revolution and the country that it gave birth to. While still imperfect in that it still used a government, more or less, from above it was a start to free the people from poverty and especially wars.

But the powers-that-be could not permit the latter to happen as capitalism needs wars to work, to all intents and purposes, in order to perpetuate itself across the globe.

It is true that many of the so-called communist states that followed the USSR followed the Stalinist model and were nationalist and state capitalism rather than true workers' and peasants' states, and this includes the German Democratic Republic, especially under Honecker, though it began under Ulbricht, others did not follow the Stalinist model but were still being attacked on all fronts by the USA and other so-called free countries. And that more or less simply because they were interfering with the capitalists and their aims.

Nicaragua and El Salvador were the operating ground of United Fruit Company with its own army which was, basically, a CIA force and the same goes for Cuba and other Central and South American countries where the people wanted to go a different route to that prescribed by the USA, such as Chile.

The dangers that were painted were but non-existent as regards to the peoples of other countries but were just dangers to the interests of the capitalists and those of the United States and nothing has changed as far as the United States and its global interests are concerned, any country that stands in the way will be attacked and “liberated” using lies and false intelligence in the same way as they were going to liberate the Soviet Union just born from the joke of communism during the counter-revolutionary years.

The massacres that were carried out by the Whites were never mentioned and only the Reds, according to the West, did things wrong. And this story continued and continued well into the late 20th century until the collapse of the entire socialist bloc. Now all those countries are nicely in the capitalist fold and many are turning fascist, just as the powers-that-be have intended. Any country that steps back – so to speak – towards the old way is being threatened in the same way as any country heading towards that way, such as Venezuela and others in Latin America. And the CIA, in the pay of the capitalists of the USA, does not stop at murder either, not even that of priests and bishops, such as the murder of Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero at the steps of the Cathedral in San Salvador. If anyone is for the poor, for the people, he or she is an enemy of American interests and it appears that they will have to be eliminated or, as referred to in CIA jargon, “terminated with extreme prejudice”.

Lies and falsehoods are still being perpetuated against those that want to establish a system by the people for the people as soon as this interferes but in the slightest with the interests of the capitalists and the United States. Be this Venezuela, Cuba or any other country, whether in Latin America or elsewhere. The sphere of interest of the USA seems to be everywhere in the world where they decide it to be and they will go to any length to protect those interests and anyone who stands in the way, individual or country, is to be eliminated.

And America stands for what? Freedom and democracy, we are told. Yes, sure, as long as it fits into their ways of thinking and the same goes for some other countries, Britain included. The latter which still has not grasped the fact that it no longer has an Empire and who was also very instrumental in painting the October Revolution in blood. The blood came, however, only during the counter-revolution and not during the revolution per se, and the British support for the White Guards was instrumental in that.

The world has been lied to then and is still being lied to. The problem is that the majority of the people are either too dim or too brainwashed to understand this fact.

© 2013

Labour has deserted the working class

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

RMT general secretary Bob Crow has accused Labour of deserting the working class and called for a new political party rooted in the trade unions after Ed Miliband promised Labour would cap benefits spending if elected to office.

The fact is that Bob Crow is absolutely right when he said that the Labour Party has deserted the working class and is did that already under Tony Blair when “New Labour” was created and under Ed Miliband with the “One Nation Labour” it is getting worse still.

The Labour Party now, under Miliband, is having a tiswas with the trade unions because it has been accused of being in the pockets of the trade unions and thus they are going to cut their nose off in spite their face and want to distant themselves from the movement that gave the party birth.

Labour has moved so far to the right that it is difficult to differentiate between that party and the Tories and one could, as I have done before, refer to them as the left-wing conservatives while the Lib-Dems are middle ground conservatives. The once party of the working class, Labour, has become a party full of toffs and people who have never done a real day's work in their lives and are about as far removed from the working class and the lives of the real working people as Moscow is from Cape Town; further probably.

The Labour Party rose out of the trade unions and the movements of the working class but, since Blair, has been stabbing the working class in the back. Ever since the death of John Smith the Labour Party has been leaning further and further to the right and deserted the working people more and more.

It has to also be said that many of the trade unions today are about as democratic as the Stalinist Soviet Union and thus are not suitable to create a new party of the working class. The working class itself – from within itself – has to bring about a new party of the working class. One with true values of socialism and democracy and which puts the interest of the working people above everything else.

What This country needs, and not this country only, is a party of unity of all those on the left, whether in a party or not. A true Socialist Unity Party that truly will be representative of the working class. The Labour Party in the UK, in the same way as the Social Democrat Party in Germany, and other, has long ago lost the mandate.

While it might be possible to resurrect a true Labour Party as was intended by the founders of the Labour movement a unity of all true socialist parties would make much more sense and would create a better power base and the trade unions, after being reformed and brought back to democracy and honesty, could be an integral part of it.

© 2013