The calculation of labor-hour cost of producing treated drinking water In proposals for a rudimentary method for calculation labor costs associated with a socialist economy, we operate under the assumption that the labor-hour will be adopted as the unit of choice. This has the strongest tradition in socialist literature, however in the 21st...
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Marxism
Hypothetical Case for a Socialist Economic Model:
Adam Smith: A Capitalist Icon?
Mention of the name Adam Smith calls to mind the “invisible hand” of the market, free trade, even capitalism itself. And money makes this capitalist world go round. So the Bank of England’s decision to feature Smith’s face on its twenty-pound notes, starting this spring , certainly seems appropriate. The Bank’s Governor, Mervyn King,...
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Smash the State?
Have you ever heard the expression: “we must smash capitalism”? It’s a very popular expression among so-called revolutionists of the Leninist variety. It isn’t easy to figure out exactly what they mean by it but one gets the impression that the capitalist state, in all of its ramifications, must be destroyed and something brand...
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Capital
Capital is a product of human labour turned into a social power. The social character of labour assumes an objective character in the products themselves, the abstract relationship between commodities and human beings. The social relationship between capital and labour translates itself into a class conflict – the class struggle. The increase in capital...
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Reforms, Revolution and the ‘Left’
Socialists are revolutionaries: we believe that the establishment of a Socialist society will involve a fundamental change in the way people live, and will necessitate the capture of political power by the Socialist working class. As revolutionaries, we do not advocate reforms, that is, changes in the way capitalism runs, such as alterations to...
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Socialism and Religion
Scientific socialism rejects the delusive concepts that make up religion. This does not mean that socialism is committed to any fanatically narrow conceptions of rationality such as characterized some nineteenth-century materialisms. It means that socialism is opposed to superstition in any and all forms. Socialists see human beings as fully capable of shaping human...
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Canadian Marxists and the Search for a Third Way
By Peter Campbell, McGill-Queen’s University Press, Montreal & Kingston, pp.303, 1999. Peter Campbell discusses, and focuses on, the lives of four individuals—Ernest Winch, William Pritchard, Arthur Mould and Robert Russell, all of whom originally came from Britain and from religious backgrounds. The title and the phrase, “a Third Way”, is something of a misnomer,...
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Russia and State Capitalism
From Dave Perrin’s history of our companion party in the UK. the development of the WSPUS’ thinking developed on identical lines: The World’s First Socialist Revolution? When Jack Fitzgerald of the SPGB wrote in the Socialist Standard that the Russian upheavals of March and November, 1917 were by far the most important events...
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Maximilien Rubel: Anti-Bolshevik Marxist
Socialist Standard, June 1996. Maximilien Rubel who died at the end of February was not just a Marx-specialist, he was also someone who wanted Socialism in the real sense of a society of common ownership and democratic control from which what he along with Marx regarded as the two great expressions of human alienation,...
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Wages
Working people live on wages, which are obtained in their places of employment. Some workers own government bonds or company shares and derive income from these and from other sources. But all sources other than wages form a very small part of the average worker’s income. Mainly the workers live on wages and any...
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