Rise of the Oligarchs

How Nationalised Services Became Private Empires

A trajectory which is never explained is "how could a Socialist State, with Nationalised property relations and State-owned Industries and Public Services. turn back into a Capitalist State once more, with most industries back in the hands of private owners?

Theoretically, there should have been nobody left within such a State, with enough prodigious wealth to ever buy these back! So, how was it achieved?

It wasn't an armed Counter-Revolution, so it must have been organised by a new, democratically-elected Government, with such as its "winning policy", promised in an election! But, why did they win, and what forces within Society were strongly in favour of such a radical change?

It wouldn't be the workers, unless, of course, they had been lied-to - for example, by promising, "More Freedom", "More Democracy" and "Less Corruption"!

But then, what section of Society would make such promises, while also wanting industry to remain in their hands, but, now primarily, for their own profit? It could only be one already privileged group - The Bureaucracy! They had been running the Nationalised Industries, ostensibly "for the people", and had got a taste for the even better life they could lead, if they got much-increased rewards for what they already were doing, but no longer as "privileged servants", but instead as owners! 

But, how could this possibly be organised?

Simply giving everything back to the pre-revolutionary Capitalists was not likely to be popular, so, could they be sold at a "knock down" price to "the best" of those who had been running things for the people for so long? Who else could it be? The prior state media would have been extolling the virtues of particular Public Servants, and the People would, most certainly, "have their favourites": no-one else would even be nationally known, at least politically.

NOTE: It is interesting how certain entertainers can also "fit the bill", in such situations, and head up "new parties" too! But who, among these well-known figures, were the known perpetrators of Corruption, and who could be trusted to continue to serve the people?

That was easy!

All those who were known to have actually extorted the backhanders, were the "baddies". While those "never-evidently-involved", and were now condemning such things, and from the higher echelons of the Bureaucracy; were they the "goodies"? So, in the rising political tumult, the easily-identified baddies would be out, while those they had actually been working for, and who had amassed the money needed to buy - they would be in!

The new government of ex-bureaucrats sold the Nationalised Industries at knock down prices to those with the money, and used that money to finance various projects that "proved which side they were on!" How else could the State owned industries have been sold-off?

And, how else could the billionaire Oligarchs have arisen so very quickly? It just had to be "Privatisation-on-steroids" - no wonder the new powers-that-be considered drugs-for-athletes a legitimate way forward! 

So, this analysis doesn't only fit the Failed Socialist States such as Russia and its Empire, but even Modern China - ostensibly still Socialist!

So what is all this anti-Russian, anti-China and even anti-Iran propaganda promoted by western politicians all about?! For their "dreaded enemies" are no longer threatening the End of Capitalism, but are energetically subscribing to it!

It is clearly the new inter-Capitalist rivalries. Remember, such rivalries caused both World War I and World War II!

Marxism

A Reissue! MARXISM III

This set of papers was originally published on the Shape Blog under the title Why Socialism? It was written as an multi-part introduction to the topic and became a very popular series on that site, vastly increasing its visitor numbers during the period.

Clearly many questions were still needing answers, for in spite of a long and illustrious history since the original publication of the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels in 1848, Socialism has accrued countless failures and even betrayals. Yet its central tenets are as true today as when they were first written down in that document, well over 150 years ago.

The position was not like that of the Utopian Socialists, but was based upon a materialist philosophic standpoint - a meeting of German philosophy, English political economics and French social history. It was, and is, a magnificent amalgam, founded upon the necessary processes of social revolution, to finally dismantle old class regimes and liberate the masses.

Yet, only in a few places was this possible, where the working class was in a position to carry through a revolution by itself. In most cases the only possible route to a successful uprising was via an alliance of classes, including both the peasantry and often a large slice of the as-yet unliberated middle class. The problem was always what would happen once the repressive regime had been vanquished. Could the task of establishing Socialism be straightforward, or would the classes of this revolutionary alliance break apart and begin to work for their own dominance? The answer to such questions has been produced time and again by history, in Russia, Germany, China and right up to the present day with the avalanche of revolutions precipitated by the Arab Spring.

Socialism grounded in solid Marxist theory is needed now more than ever, as Capitalism faulters and people across the globe take to the streets in their millions.

Let this collection of essays on Democracy, Economics and Revolution, by a life-long Marxist, help with the problems of this, the most widespread unrest since the Europe-wide Year of Revolutions in 1848.

Read more...

The Unsolvable Problems of Capitalism

 The Answers are NOT within it!

On what economic basis can a society be constructed and maintained?

My western country is a capitalist society, which is based upon investment, by people with the reserves (wealth) to do it, into enterprises both big and small. The incentive for doing this is that the investor will “own” a piece of the company that has been invested in, and will therefore receive a proportion of its dividends (profits) annually. Also, the holder of the “share” can sell its investment to someone else via the Stock Exchange, and if your (i.e. the investor’s) company is doing well, you can make a profit on that too!

There is NO alternative to this method within capitalism. And, the problem always is, “How does the investor come by the wherewithall to invest?” Well, the present day answer is that they got it from other, prior investments – both in dividends (profits), or in selling other investments for more than they paid for them (profits). Capitalism feeds upon itself, but only, ostensibly, via private entrepreneurs, who fund its development, and thus “kindly provide jobs" for the working classes.

In the modern world the old small-scale production is simply not good enough. It is too expensive! Large-scale production will produce cheaper goods, but will necessarily also require large amounts of initial investments to even get started.

Now, of course, the question of where the very first investments came from before sufficient was available in profits or dividends was, indeed, a major problem. It was called Primitive Accumulation, and has been dealt with very well in a prior SHAPE Blog posting (February 2012), as well as in SHAPE Journal Special Issue 22 (in July 2013)

But, we must also address today’s ever-present problem, of sufficient available investment to keep the “immense pantechnicon moving”. For, it gets harder and dearer to set a new production in train, while at the same time older companies are less and less able to compete with those equipped with the latest facilities.

This is unavoidable due to the Declining Rate of Profit – recognised in the 19th century, and still in evidence today! It is, of course, caused by the incessant necessity for technical advance, in order to be cheaper than your competitors. So, not only in new start-ups, but also in updating and improving your equipment, the need for more investment is always arising.

Indeed, the demand actually outstrips the supply, so companies have also to borrow money at high rates to fill the gaps, and this takes the rate of interest that has to be paid OUT of the hands of the borrowers, and into those of the lenders. And these could only be the Banks!

The source of the Banks’ funds will be the wages and savings that they hold for literally everybody. The lender’s main criterion will be, “Will the borrowers continue to be able to pay the necessary interest?”, while a secondary one will be, “Will they, in the end, also pay back the loan?” If the lenders are satisfied with the answers, they will lend the money, sometimes even if the chance of a full repayment isn’t totally assured – but, of course, in such circumstances, the interest rate charged will be upped accordingly!

Now, usually, when a loan comes up for repayment, the loaned-to company simply borrows elsewhere to pay off the past loan, and the new lenders use the same criteria of ability-to-pay in deciding to forward the necessary amount. BUT, this method is NOT based upon true intrinsic values!

More money is loaned than will ever be repaid at the equivalent value, so the debts are extended ever further into the future. The consequence of this is Inflation!

Money values actually continually decline. In fact, it is a very important part of maintaining the capitalist system: for it affects the different classes selectively. As will be shown, it is very advantageous to the capitalists, as their financial mechanisms keep their values in an advantageous balance, but it is quite the reverse to workers, for the latter only lose by inflation.

NOTE: Good indicators are House values! My current home has risen in value from when I bought my first to now by a factor of 100. Is that mostly reflecting intrinsic value, or is it Inflation?

Now, think what this means in terms of loans and investments! What was borrowed and the interest payable will inevitably SHRINK due to inflation, for it involved borrowing at old values, and is increasingly paid off (with interest) at the new decreased values. So, capitalism depends upon Inflation to keep going!

NOTE: Indeed, the opposite possibility, that of Deflation would mean that both interest and even the final repayment value would be much more that what was initially borrowed. Capitalism would collapse!

Also, without the rich investors Capitalism also couldn’t work!

So let us inspect some downright lies.

How does inflation affect Working People? Looking at the current situation we see inflation going up much faster than wages: it makes them constantly poorer, while their masters pay old dues at the new lesser values. They actually gain doubly! For their loans decline in current values, while their workforce becomes ever cheaper! The situation fulfils their needs perfectly: they can overcome the devastating, if temporary, reinstatement of real value, in a depression or slump, by making the Working class pay for the subsequent re-build!

Now, if you think about the past and present methods of Imperialism and Globalisation, it is clear that they were all followed in order to pay less! For, what they were doing was exporting their problems to what was called The Third World would certainly enable that saving. But, in the end, even that was to some extent terminated as the Third World rose up and Empires melted away! 

The biggest and most recent solution was to bring the Socialist countries back into the capitalist fold by showing sections of those populations (those who could, in the right conditions, become rich) just how well they would do under capitalism. And it worked - for a while at least!

China is the best example. It provides goods cheaper because its workers are paid less. But now, both Russia and China are becoming not only markets and sources of cheap labour, but competitors in the capitalist stakes. Why do you think capitalist Russia is such a bogey?

The Arab Spring and current upheavals in the Middle East are other examples of the exploitation. And, in consequence, local populations are correctly blaming Western capitalism for their problems, and not only rebelling against their imposed, dictatorial leaders, but also increasingly mounting an assault upon the real behind-the-scenes manipulators – the western capitalists. It is no wonder that the current alliance against the Islamic State, as well as the USA, also significantly includes the reactionary regimes in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar and Jordan. What an amazing mix! Are they really in it for humanitarian or moral reasons? You know that cannot be true!

Yet, the Sunni version of Islam, which is claimed to be the Islamic State’s motivation, is the same as that in Saudi Arabia, and of the rulers of Bahrain, regularly acting against their own Shia people. Why would these reactionary regimes line up with the capitalist west?

By the way, it is interesting who does the work in these oil-rich Arab countries? It isn’t the indigenous inhabitants, but brought in labourers from elsewhere without any legal or representational rights.

So, who or what can oppose these collections of parasites?

It isn’t this or that religious group, or anyone else on moral grounds, but only the committed socialists who are for the Workers in all countries, and fight for the End of Capitalism, and its worldwide exploitation and even interventionist wars but only in their constant pursuit of even more Profit! 

The Promise of Virgin Land

The Promise of Virgin Land...

...And the ultimate Terrorist Response

The man finally reaches the crest of the rise, and looks down before him upon vast and verdant grasslands that reach as far as the eye can see. It appears to be entirely uninhabited! Large herds of bison roam steadily along across this seemingly infinite and ideal expanse. Yet, the whole area seems to be completely untouched by the action of people.

The silent watcher had only recently escaped from a war-torn Europe, where he had no chance of getting anywhere, or doing anything to change his desperate existence. He was entirely without education, but he could both farm the land, and handle livestock. And, here, before him, was the ideal and uninhabited place The Promised Land, where he could indeed build a good life.

Then, in the distance, he notices a small group of fast-moving, bare-back riders. They are native “Indians”, and they cut out a few strays from the herd and with bows and arrows manage to down several. They fairly quickly remove the best and easily carried parts of the beasts, and depart, whooping with delight. This, it appears is their land!

But, touching his rifle, the watching man realises that they are no kind of farmer, but primitive hunter/gatherers, and as such they need these vast areas to support their families and their tribe. “What a waste!”, thinks the watching farmer. “This land should be farmed!”

It could support many, many people like himself, and with such resources and this ideal land, they would finally be masters of their own destiny! “We must have these valuable grasslands! For, we could develop vast herds of cattle to feed the burgeoning cities in the east. We could build our own state!”

And, of course, this man wasn’t alone. Not only were there literally tens of thousands regularly arriving in America, looking for just such a chance, but the moneymen and politicians in those eastern cities, had also realised the profits that could be made from these verdant plains.

The Indians had to be removed!

These plains must be turned into productive farms. So, by a continual drift of immigrant farmers, plus the machinations, lies and betrayals of the politicians, this land was taken, and the Indians all but destroyed.

The Indians gradually realised that the treaties and agreements would never be honoured, and the only thing that they could do was to kill all interlopers, whoever and whatever they were. They must forcibly clear their land of the perpetual tide of land grabbers. They could not beat the armies that were sent to “pacify” them, so what is today called Terrorism arose! And then, as now, the solution was the same – “Wipe out the terrorists! For they kill the innocent!” – while also taking control of their lands in order to exploit its benefits to the full.

Democracy and the Rule of Law

While our scientists concern themselves with revealing the “Eternal Laws of Nature”, which “make absolutely everything what it is”, our rulers insist that no country will ever prosper unless and until it agrees to the Rule of Law in all its undertakings.

But clearly, these are not the “Eternal Natural Laws” sought by the scientists. They are quite different – always laid down by a country’s Ruling Class to maintain the status quo, whether the lawmaker is a king, a Council or an elected Government. And, what gives these ruling bodies the power to enforce these “laws”?

It isn’t the consent of the population: they are never actually asked! Indeed, the nearest they get to having any sort of input, is that every five years or so, they are given the chance to choose among a small group of Political Parties (none of which is remotely what the majority of the people want), which one should rule the country for the next five year period. So if the people don’t determine the policies and Laws of the land, who does?

Well, you can never ask such a question entirely within the present! For every such situation exists within an already established structure of wealth and power, and hence to answer the question posed, we must see how such structures were originally established.

Well crudely and quite evidently the historical acquisition of power to lay down the Laws of a society always resided in those who could dispose “bodies of armed men” to establish their will! These could be a private army, a police force, or even a nation’s armed forces.

But as the populace gained more rights, a new mechanism was developed, which gave the appearance of such “ruling and enforcing” organisations bearing the stamp of carrying out the wishes of, and conforming to the ideas of, the majority of those ruled.

This great illusion was, of course, Democracy!

But, it was always a confidence trick! When the chips were down, and the mismatch between the people and their rulers was strikingly evident, the enforcement of the Rule of Law, was clearly still in the hands of the very same lot, who wielded the bodies of armed men to enforce the will of the real rulers – themselves. And, who were they?

They were NOT the ruling majority in the elected parliament, for they certainly did not own nor control the nation’s means of Production, Distribution and Exchange that were the real sources of wealth and power in Society. They were, most certainly, in the hands of unelected individuals who had amassed their wealth and power by very different means indeed.

The analysis of what is usually called Primitive Accumulation shows that the methods used were never in conformity with any agreed rules, or “Natural Laws”.

For violence and War were the original initiators of this process, along with the largesse of the victors to their supporters, which enabled the building of a large penumbra of these followers to act as enforcers and get wealth and privilege for their contributions.

In Britain the best-known prototype was the invasion of William the Conqueror, who crossed the channel with his army, beat the current rulers, and confiscated all their assets, to be distributed among his followers. And, in spite of the later inclusion of Captains of Industry in this ruling elite, none were legitimate rulers, in the sense of being the choice of those who were ruled. They had taken the country by force, in order to own what was originally someone else’s. They decided upon the original Laws of the Land, and they were all in defence of their acquired loot and status. No contribution was allowed from their subjects, yet this ruling class now “owned” literally everything!

Now, over the centuries, in spite of the struggles of the people, which forced some concessions with regard to what is termed “political representation”, the ownership of wealth and real power were never touched. And the duality of a powerless government and a powered Ruling Class was the means by which this basic state could remain untouched, though masked by the “false front” of Democracy!

How could this ever be changed?

Clearly, a state with the wealth and real power in the hands of unelected owners would have to be terminated! The elected government would have to own literally all these crucial engines of production and power. The state would have to own the lot, and yet itself be subject to the control of the people.

Democracy as it is currently established is totally insufficient. For it only marginally serves the population at large. Its main purpose is to support the owners of wealth and their investment of capital in what they consider to give them the best return. Serving the populace comes nowhere in these determining imperatives. What is done is there to hopefully prevent the revulsion of the masses and the possibility of a revolution.

The means of Production, Distribution and Exchange have to be nationalised – taken into State Ownership, and the State itself must be entirely elected by the people.

The name for this is Socialism!

Postscript:

Yet how this can be made to work has to be very different from the current arrangements, for whatever political parties are set up to deliver, the fact that the wealth remains primarily in private hands means that they, as a group, have the wherewithall to buy their wants and needs from those who are supposed to represent the people at large.

Whichever such resources remain in private hands, the undermining of whatever democratic institutions have been put in place will be unavoidable.

The still outstanding questions are about personal wealth!

To Serve and to STRIKE!

There is a great deal bandied about these days concerning the duty to serve.

Currently, the Tory Government is considering a new Law to jail people in the caring services, who “wilfully neglect” any patients in their care.

It is, of course, a major attempt to blame the servers for a quite evident decline in the quality of services during this particularly parlous current state of Capitalism, and, of course, the cuts meant to remedy the situation. You would think from the rhetoric that they, the Tories, are doing all they can to “serve” the community, but are being traitorously let down by the “soon-to-be-criminal” actions of our professional carers.

But surely, we have to ask, “In considering the provision of services to the mass of the people in general, we need to define who is best equipped to provide them, and why?”

Of course, to answer this we must first ask, “Can a service be provided effectively on the basis of delivering that service having to generate a worthwhile profit?"

Note: A profit is not wages! Over and above the payment of wages to those delivering the service, there is an added margin, paid to the owners of the facilities, which is The Profit!

The proponents of the Capitalist System do not only insist that it can, but they actually also say that it is the only effective way of doing it. Are they right? 

 

The crucial imperative in a capitalist system is that it is financed by people with large financial resources, who will invest the necessary wherewithall to allow businesses to be set up to provide various services, but only if they get both a regular dividend on their investment, and in addition can sell that investment for a different kind of profit too.

Clearly, the motivations of these crucial investors are by no means a philanthropic desire to “serve” society. It is a group of people who already possess quite considerable resources, but who ideally want those to provide a substantial income, without reducing their extractable initial investment, and without them having to actually do anything, apart from observing their investment carefully to ensure its profitability.

They are scarcely imbued with ”service to the community”!

They may interpret a current excitement or concern in the population as likely to produce a sufficient demand to allow investments in those areas to deliver what they are exclusively interested in – unearned income in as large amounts as possible, while still maintaining the value of their original investment for return when they think fit.

Some time ago I decided to look into the question as to how these people came to have such large disposable wealth, that they could then invest in the capitalist way. And it turned out that the main way had always been Theft! My researches turned into a rather long paper on the SHAPE Blog entitled Primitive Accumulation, and it was to become the most accessed SHAPE paper in the last five years.

Not one single capitalist accumulated their wealth by either saving earned wages, or by just making things and selling them. It always was, and still is, impossible to accumulate the vast sums involved by such means.

And, there is another kind of stealing, which is regarded as entirely legal.

It is acquiring what you know to be valuable, from people who are unaware of that value, by paying ridiculously low amounts to the owners, and then selling what you have acquired at something like its true value.

[Unsurprisingly, when negotiating to buy such things, they still force down the price as far as they can. Is that not stealing? Yet, it is not only regarded as entirely legal, but also both very clever and meritorious. So, “dishonest trading“ is a very good method too!]

“Conning the ignorant” is generally considered to be “good business”, and when coupled with bribes and “transactions of mutual benefit”, can also fleece public organisations in the very same way.

So, quite apart from explaining where investable capital was acquired, this investigation also demonstrated how very inappropriate such people are to provide services for the general population. They couldn’t be more in appropriate!

And, of course, to do it without a problem, you have to cultivate an extremely low opinion of the people you are conning. So these “dealers” are scarcely the group of people likely to conscientiously serve the community, are they?

Indeed, they also can have zero grasp of what services should be, and how much they should cost ordinary people. That is never really a major consideration, “For these are the people we con everyday for our wealth and status. Our only really important consideration must be how lucrative will an investment in such an undertaking be!”

Not quite the same is it?

They will be concerned... but it will be, “How can we organise it so that the return on our investment is satisfactory – that is – will it be big enough!”

No! No! No! No! No!

You can never trust such people to provide a Service!

They may deliver something passable to initially secure the deal, but as soon as possible it will be modified with the only important principle taking over “How do we milk this for maximum profit?”

Now, you may well wonder how they get away with it, but once such a division of society has been established, with all the wealth and influence on one side, and everyone else on the other, how can things be changed? Well, initially they certainly couldn’t! No one had the wherewithall to counter the power of the wealthy. For they not only owned the businesses, but also the means of disseminating the News. 

They quickly gained owning-possession of the newspapers, and then later, the Radio stations and even the Television stations too, so the public were only told what the owners wanted them to be told.

Making a difference seemed impossible!

But, who actually produced everything? Surely, that was what ordinary people did for a wage? And, if they didn’t produce, the owners would find themselves in dire straights. Investors would sell their shares in the affected company, and the value of the company and of the investments within it would plummet!

So, workers slowly began to build defensive organisations to counter the power of the rich. They first built Unions and then political parties.

How do you think the Labour Party got its name?

By acting together, pooling their meagre resources, but most of all by using the power of the Strike! 

They could withdraw their labour – refuse to work, and stop anyone else from stepping in and doing their jobs. The picketed Strike was born and was breathtakingly effective!

Yet, how would these same people be in service jobs?

They were certainly fully aware of the vast majority of the people they would have to serve. Before the Welfare State they did ALL the Service of ordinary people, and they did it for nothing!

In my street I had half a dozen “Mams” (or “Aunties” as they were called). If any family had some sort of calamity, people were round immediately asking what they could do.

Do you even have to ask who make the very best people in service jobs?

It is surely obvious.

And these are the very same people who went on Strike, who put out fires, and protected us from the criminal classes (who were NOT workers, by the way, but the lower end of the owning class, who were still accumulating in the original way by straight theft)

Indeed, perhaps the reason for the title of this paper is becoming clear. For, in providing an appropriate service, you have to fully appreciate what service should involve, when thinking about those being served. While being ready to strike when defending yourself against those who are usually in charge of such provision.

Yet, the Tories love to contrast these as incompatible opposites – claiming that workers strike because they ignore the service requirements that will be lost by such actions. But, of course, the real ignorers of those needing to be served are those who only see them as a means of making ever-larger profits.

New Special Issue: Marxism III - Why Socialism?

The set of papers in this new Special Issue were originally published here on the Shape Blog under the title the Why Socialism? series. It was written as a multi-part introduction to the topic and became a very popular series vastly increasing its visitor numbers over many months.

Clearly many questions were still needing answers, for in spite of a long and illustrious history since the original publication of the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels in 1848, Socialism has accrued countless failures and even betrayals. Yet its central tenets are as true today as when they were first written down in that document, well over 150 years ago.

The position was not like that of the Utopian Socialists, but was based upon a materialist philosophic standpoint - a meeting of German philosophy, English political economics and French social history. It was, and is, a magnificent amalgam, founded upon the necessary processes of social revolution, to finally dismantle old class regimes and liberate the masses.

Yet, only in a few places was this possible, where the working class was in a position to carry through a revolution by itself. In most cases the only possible route to a successful uprising was via an alliance of classes, including both the peasantry and often a large slice of the as-yet unliberated middle class. The problem was always what would happen once the repressive regime had been vanquished. Could the task of establishing Socialism be straightforward, or would the classes of this revolutionary alliance break apart and begin to work for their own dominance? The answer to such questions has been produced time and again by history, in Russia, Germany, China and right up to the present day with the avalanche of revolutions precipitated by the Arab Spring.

Socialism grounded in solid Marxist theory is needed now more than ever, as Capitalism faulters and people across the globe take to the streets in their millions.

Let this collection of essays on Democracy, Economics and Revolution, by a life-long Marxist, help with the problems of this, the most widespread unrest since the Europe-wide Year of Revolutions in 1848.

Read here.

Why Socialism X: Socialised Capital I

Funding Development

Now, once the Capitalist System is no more, the usual way of getting the necessary financial resources for setting up any sort of new business, commissioning any necessary external services, or subsequent re-tooling, will require alternative means.

And it will no longer be the DeLorean Model of acquiring state funding to deliver “sorely-needed jobs” in a depressed area, only to dupe ill-informed politicians, and, in effect, enlarge their own increasing wealth with far from communal motives - such will no longer be allowed to happen.

The question must be, “What must these alternative methods be, and how will their sources both acquire their financial resources and deliver required funding?”

Clearly, from the outset, personal profit will be excluded as a motive.

With Service as the driving force, the usual bids will be suggestions for improving or extending what already exists, and the usual sequences will probably involve funding for some sort of pilot schemes. Thus, very different imperatives will drive that system, more like developments in Hospitals, the Fire Service or the Co-op (CWS) than in the capitalist environment with short-termism and money motives.

Now, clearly, the wherewithall for doing this in Capitalism is the wealth in the hands of private individuals and banks.

But, even they had to start from somewhere.

It was partly to address these present questions that the first paper in this series was the one about Primitive Accumulation that had been necessary before Capitalism had really taken off.

The main way then was the universally applied “robbery-with-violence" (or War as it is sometimes called)

Now though production of food and commodities for sale had been around for millennia, it only rarely concentrated vast amounts of wealth into few hands. So, war was decidedly better at achieving this concentration.

The rewards for victory in those methods were booty and land, and thus great empires were erected upon this means alone.

Now clearly, a new socialist state cannot use the same methods, but to keep industry and commerce working, it can, and must, take back into the possession of the people all the wealth amassed by entrepreneurs, capitalists and thieves of various kinds. All wealth would have to be confiscated and become the resources for the new state and its people.

All Banks and Corporations would be nationalised without compensation for the same reasons, and where individuals or groups decided to run off with their ill-gotten gains, they would be pursued by revolutionary armed forces to free that booty and return it for the benefit of all.

In addition, all firms would be re-organised to be under Worker’s Control, but with a commitment to both their local Community and to the State via taxes, policies and Revolutionary Law, though these would be very different from a Capitalist Regime, where after having paid Income Tax, National Insurance, VAT on most purchases and many other taxes and fees, the proportion of earnings left to be used in whatever way the workers and their families thought fit was, and is, derisory.

There will be, of course, mammoth opposition from the privileged layers of the old regime, who though their power was not necessarily extensive, could live very comfortable lives, and that would no longer be guaranteed by the well-tried methods of ancestors accruing sufficient wealth to ensure it by whatever means available.

The Theme would certainly be Service and Reward, rather than personal Success and Wealth.

So those well used to such things will certainly fight to bring the new State to its knees. [14 capitalist nations invaded Russia after the successful revolution in 1917 with the intention of destroying the new Socialist state and returning it to its previous owners (or perhaps themselves?)].

But, nevertheless, without the multiple layers of profit taken and the Principle of Serving the Community, many things would begin to be achieved. Sufficient houses of sound quality would be built to ensure everyone a home.

Landlords would be no more!

All such functions would not be for profit, but for need, and though the old capitalists will fight to their last breaths to regain their wealth, they will not succeed. Because this time it will not be one isolated revolution surrounded by hostile and powerful enemy states, but the famed “Domino Effect”.

As with the Arab Spring of 2011, one country after another will topple their rulers, and will co-operate with each other NOT, of course, like the UK, France and the USA who “co-operated” with the Libyan rebels, merely to get a piece of the Oil, but as equal partners for mutual good of their peoples.

Now, when managers are running a company on behalf of investors, they must feed the voracious appetite of those people as their prime necessity. So, all possible means are used to maximise profit, and these are only very rarely reflected in increased wages to those workers employed in that company.

My stepfather was regularly sacked when he demanded a better deal for his Foundry Gang, and just as regularly re-employed because his superiors could neither do what he was able to do, nor find anyone else to do it for them.

Nevertheless, his position was unique, and almost all workers just had to keep stum or be kicked out. Indeed, even the defensive organisations of the Working Class were considered by owners to be the main enemy, and in certain eras, such as in the 1980s in the UK, a Tory Government was willing to shut down vast tracts of manufacturing and mining to destroy the most effective Trades Unions. 

So, the question arises, “What will the imperatives be in organisations now owned by the People at large?” No voracious investors wishing to keep (or even inflate) their very comfortable lives, so what would be the incentives and rewards under this new system? Who would get them, and on whose judgment?

Why Socialism I: Primitive Accumulation

This is the first part of a new series on Socialism to be published collaboratively with The Red Eye Portal

Primitive Accumulation:
How Investors First Got Their Capital

At such a time as this, when Capitalism is being exposed for what it really is – it becomes increasingly important to recall just how it came to be – how our “entrepreneurs” accrued the wherewithall “to invest” and “support” money-making ventures of all sorts.

In other words, what forms of Primitive Accumulation produced the necessary Capital to fund a growing Capitalism?
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