Theory Makes Perfect

Socialists need a party. It isn't enough to wage purely economic struggles against capitalism, because capitalism isn't purely economic. If (and when) the working class strike with enough effectiveness to shut down major sectors of the economy, the state will be wielded by the capitalist class against them. Strikes will be broken with the police and the army, resources will be forcefully expropriated to keep things running, and the rights of ordinary people will be brutally curtailed in a "state of emergency". Besides, the state acts in so many ways to keep the working class in its place even before any industrial action is taken. Class relations are underwritten by employment law, capitalist property is enforced and protected, the working class is put to war against itself by nation states. The capitalist state by definition is used by the powerful minority to dominate the vast majority. It is for this reason that the working class must participate in politics, and d...

What would a socialist economic system look like? Here's a possible vision. A key aspect of such a society would be that workers exercise control over what they produce and how that product is used. In capitalism, you pretty much take the jobs you can get. The kind of jobs people have access to will very much depend on their background and class. Did they have access to good schools, training and qualifications, do they have connections to the industry, etc. Under socialism, people will have more choice of what to do. They will have access to the same high level of education and training as anyone else. Their chosen profession will be based on their natural talents and their preferences. Furthermore, workplaces will be democratic, meaning that all workers will have a say in major decisions such as how work is done, how the fruits of work are allocated and how the workplace is run. This is in stark contrast to the authoritarian model of capitalist businesses, where the business owne...

Labour Theory of Value When you produce something, it costs you the time that you put into it. When, for example, you cook a meal, it might take you an hour to prepare the food. But imagine all the hours that have also gone into that meal indirectly: the time spent growing and preparing the ingredients, the time spent transporting and collecting them, the time spent honing your cooking skills, the time spent making the utensils. Commodities, i.e. products that are bought and sold, have value (economic or exchange value) because of the average labour time put into them. So for example wool, in the abstract, has a value based on the amount of time it takes society (or the average worker) to make wool. It's average labour time which determines the overall value of wool in the abstract because some people can produce more or less in a given amount of time, but if the whole of society set about producing wool then the time it took to produce that wool per worker would by definition be t...

There is a lot in the news about supposed labour shortages, with driving positions being unfilled and meat processing companies asking the government to allow them to use more prison labour, no doubt because they have fewer rights and can be made to work for less. This is having a knock on effect on the economy, with empty supermarket shelves and restaurants closing. Some are attributing this at least in part to Brexit and Covid, with workers either leaving the country or staying at home. While that's undoubtedly part of the picture, deeper causes should also be investigated. In a country of 70 million there should be no problem for the population to grow, prepare, distribute and where necessary import food for everyone. But in the UK a lot of food is wasted; every year 2 million tonnes of food, the equivalent of 1.3 billion meals, goes unsold but is still edible . Meanwhile 8.4 million people in the UK are struggling to afford to eat. Even before Brexit and the pandemic, food b...

Imagine capitalist society as a grand hotel. The floors correspond to your place in society. Most of the people who read this won't be on the ground floor; they will be privileged to live in the "developed" world, and so will be a few floors up. But most of the people who read this will be far away from the top of the hotel. They will be working for the people upstairs, and will have a worse standard of living than the people upstairs as well. Imagine that the people on the lower floors, the "working class", are given jobs which involve using the equipment and materials owned by the people on the top floors, the "ruling class". The equipment is given to the workers through the service elevator, and the goods and services they produce are transported upstairs. The bosses on the upper floors give the workers money in return, with which they can buy back some of what they produce. As I said, the people reading this probably aren't on the ground floor....

Hi, The purpose of this blog is to clarify my own thoughts about political theory and practice. This blog is written from a Marxist perspective and will aim to analyse Marxist texts, as well as content from other political tendencies from a Marxist viewpoint, current events, strategies and political ideas. The context of this blog is that I'm a socialist in Britain, looking for some sense and organisation on the left after the end of the Corbyn Labour leadership, with a startlingly authoritarian, reactionary Conservative government, during a global pandemic and continuous economic crises. The world can seem on the surface to be crumbling, but capitalism and the political establishment seem uncontested. But the crises we face will lead to discontent and action in society. People will and are protesting the attack on trade unions and worker rights by bosses and the ruling class, evictions, low pay and the increasing wealth of the super-rich, crumbling state support for the public and...