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"Has anybody been angry before about capitalism?" Hannah Allison, a 29-year-old organizer with the Democratic Socialists of America, asks from the stage of a recent meeting in Los Angeles.

The nearly 100 DSA members who've gathered at the Friendship Auditorium in Griffith Park on this Saturday afternoon erupt in cheers and applause, after hours of presentations by speakers at least twice Allison's age.

Allison, who's based at DSA's New York City headquarters, has been visiting the group's local chapters around the country on a mission to get new members especially younger and more diverse individuals, including those catalyzed by Bernie Sanders' campaign excited about organizing toward so-called democratic socialism. There are signs her efforts are starting to pay off. The group, which officially formed in 1982 but has roots in the early-20th-century socialist movement, has experienced a renaissance of late. The LA gathering is one of the group's largest in 25 years. And since last March, the DSA's membership has nearly tripled, to more than 15,000 members, with 90 local groups in 37 states.

Relative to other political groups, the DSA's numbers are still small, but the group is poised to become a leader in the national resistance against Trump's administration, if it can figure out what to tackle first. The independent, member-funded organization has attracted a legion of social-media-savvy young followers at a time when progressives are feeling angry and disillusioned with the Democratic Party in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election. With its DIY ethos members are encouraged to form their own chapters, organize niche committees and run for a position on its board of directors the DSA offers get-your-hands-dirty activism as an antidote to what its members see as the corporate, stuffy fundraiser culture in Washington. But its greatest appeal an egalitarian approach, combined with a desire to smash capitalism may also prove to be its biggest challenge when it comes to having a lasting impact on U.S. politics.

Credit Bernie Sanders for DSA's explosion in growth. The Independent Vermont senator ran for president last year as a Democrat but has long identified as a democratic socialist or, as he defined it in a 2006 interview, someone who believes in a democracy that's not influenced by Wall Street. At the time, he described democratic socialism as a system in which the government plays a strong role in ensuring all of its citizens have access to health care, childcare and a college education, regardless of income. "It means we do not allow large corporations and moneyed interests to destroy our environment, that we create a government not dominated by big-money interests," he said. "I mean, to me, it means democracy, frankly."

Most members of the DSA would agree with that statement. In fact, the group's website includes similar language: "Democratic socialists believe that both the economy and society should be run democratically to meet public needs, not to make profits for a few," it reads, also calling for a radical transformation "through greater economic and social democracy so that ordinary Americans can participate in the many decisions that affect our lives." (The DSA supported Sanders during the 2016 primary, praising his proposals and campaigning on his behalf, but Sanders has never been a member.)

"Bernie Sanders did a great service to us by saying, 'I'm a democratic socialist.' You then had a ton more interest coming in because of that, and I think interest in socialism [in general]," says DSA organizer Brandon Rey Ramirez, 26. "I think people want something different, and they want to be part of something where they feel like it's not super bureaucratic." Ramirez, like many of DSA's members, is a former Sanders supporter who critiqued Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign for its reliance on Wall Street funding and neo-liberalism, or "the trust of free markets over labor" and regulation, as he puts it.

Watch Bernie Sanders discuss what the democratic party needs to do by 2020.

DSA members point to Sanders' involvement in the Young People's Socialist League a former student group under the umbrella of what was then the Socialist Party of America while attending the University of Chicago in the early Sixties as evidence of his alignment with their ideologies. The DSA, too, is largely modeled after the Socialist Party of America, a fringe party that formed in 1901 and dissolved by 1972. Decades later, many of the party's former leaders, like Eugene Debs and Victor Berger, are revered as cult idols by young DSA members. Still, many Americans continue to think of "socialism" as a dirty word, likely thanks to its associations with communism and the Cold War. A Gallup poll from last May found that Americans of all ages favored capitalism to socialism, with one exception: people ages 18 to 29, whose views of each ideology were equally positive.

But with income inequality rising steadily in every state a trend that's likely to continue thanks to Trump's plans to deregulate Wall Street and fight federal minimum-wage increases some members of the DSA see socialism as the only path to economic parity in the United States. That includes members like Max Belasco, an IT worker at UCLA who says he had to sleep in his car for three months after moving to Los Angeles because he couldn't afford to pay rent, and his friend Tyler Wilson, who says workers from a temp agency he used to work for were routinely taken advantage of by corporations or, as he calls them, "sexual harassment factories" who viewed them as little more than disposable help. Belasco founded the unions and labor committee within DSA's Los Angeles chapter last month in an attempt to organize and align with union members throughout the city.

Membership in the DSA nationally has been further bolstered over the past several months by celebrities like Rob Delaney touting it on Twitter as the new cool kids' club for people who want to make a difference. "My web-page's sole purpose now is to lure teens & millennials into the #ripped arms of feminist socialism," the Catastrophe star tweeted to his 1.3 million followers last month with a link to the DSA's website. Other new members credit their interest in the DSA to the popular podcast Chapo Trap House, whose hosts frequently roast the Democratic Party in favor of socialist and even nihilist ideas. The organization's most enthusiastic members proudly feature the rose emoji an iteration of the DSA's logo in their Twitter handles.

But for all its great intentions and recent growth, the DSA has its work cut out for it to be able to make a measurable impact in Trump's America. One hurdle it could face is focus: The organization's goals tend to fluctuate depending on the individual chapter and local leadership. (Organizers say that's the point, dubbing the DSA a "big-tent" organization.)

Organizers are also grappling with a diversity issue. "Because of the way it's passed along on Twitter, we do have a lot of white dudes, which was much less true before [the election]," says LA organizer Miranda Sklaroff, 30. The DSA has struggled to recruit both women and people of color the populations the DSA most aims to stand in solidarity with. It's a challenge that has not gone unnoticed by the organization's national leadership. The group's constitution a series of organizing principles last amended in 2001 mandates that half of the 16 slots on the DSA's board of directors be reserved for women, and a quarter of them for people of color. But at the recent event in Los Angeles, the sea of mostly white, male 20-somethings is jarring, even as the solidarity with other groups is evident. "Black Lives Matter is real important," says DSA member Bernie Eisenberg, a Korean War vet who wears a "Veterans for Peace" trucker hat and a nametag describing himself as "the other Bernie." "I notice we have the signs up, but we need more people of color here to really move forward."

Eisenberg and other old-timers like self-described anarchist Carol Newton, 77, and 90-year-old retired social worker Jack Rothman are living evidence of one of the group's advantages: It's intergenerational, with activists from the Sixties passing along their knowledge to those of the social media generation, and vice versa. Ramirez recalls, for example, being amazed to learn about the time Newton knocked over a bus during a protest against the Vietnam War. "Somebody just goes, 'How the hell do you knock over a bus?' She's like, 'You just keep on pushing.' And it was just like, Jesus Christ, she has this awesome attitude.''

The most important thing the DSA might offer at this point is what Chapo Trap House co-host and longtime DSA member Amber A'Lee Frost called during a recent episode "a place to find comrades." That's how Sklaroff sees it, too. The DSA "is like a good balm for the existential dread and anxiety to go out and work and meet people who want to change the world just like you do," she says. "Right now we need everyone to just get together in a room and start working." For her part, she co-organized a museum workers' strike on Inauguration Day, participated in the Women's March and protested in front of Sen. Dianne Feinstein's office last month to encourage her to vote no on Trump attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions.

With new activist groups forming on a near daily basis in response to the Trump administration, Ramirez also sees the DSA's decades-long foundation as an asset. "What's interesting about DSA is that it's the long history of organizing, laying the intellectual groundwork it's built from both activists and academics, and now it's getting injected with this new kind of activist: the person who had been at Occupy, or they were activated by the Bernie Sanders campaign, or they want to resist Trump," says Ramirez.

For Newton and other DSA leaders, Trump's unexpected victory leaves them with conflicting thoughts: They see his administration wreaking havoc on the country and are doing everything they can to help those affected, but they also recognize that it's been a boon to their own organization. "We've been trying so hard for so long to build a chapter," Newton says. "Now look at all we have to do. We're going to be busy now for at least four years."

Toward the end of her speech, Allison, the New York DSA organizer, puts the dilemma in blunter terms. "Trump is awful, right? But ... as socialists, he's created this really good moment for us where we don't have to sugarcoat things or lie anymore. We can say we're socialists, right?" she says. "And that's why I think this particular moment, while dangerous, is so important."

To seize on the moment, she says, the DSA must build an inclusive movement with space for everyone to participate, and rely on its network of chapters to implement direct action at the local level. "We want to be a force that the neoliberal Democrats have to reckon with, that the GOP has to reckon with," she says. "That the racists and white supremacists have to reckon with."

Of course, accomplishing that will also require socialists to do something they're generally averse to: accumulating money. "But it's really important," Allison says on stage, "because nobody else is going to fund the overthrow of capitalism, so we've got to fund this shit ourselves."

The crowd laughs, and several people take out their wallets to pay their dues, passing envelopes back to Newton. Some members rush off to sign up for Sklaroff's feminist socialist committee or Belasco's unions and labor committee. There's talk of organizing a carpool to attend a protest happening at the airport that day, while others spread the word about upcoming actions. There's a lot of work to be done.

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How Democratic Socialists Are Building on Bernie's Momentum - RollingStone.com

by: Karla Ray Updated: Feb 8, 2017 - 11:30 PM

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. - Some parents and others are demanding that the University of Central Florida take action against a group of students, after the so-called Knights For Socialism group hosted an event described as a fight club on campus.

The event was tied to a promise to train students how to defend themselves against some supporters of President Donald Trump.

9 Investigates learned, however, that even with threats of violence against the group, the University has little control over the groups message right now.

One post by the Knights For Socialism advertised a Leftist Fight Club. Another stated Kick Their Axis- Stop the Alt-Right. The original event post, which is no longer available, said the fight club was open to everyone except Republicans.

Im very disappointed that UCF has not had a reaction to that yet, UCF College Republicans Chairwoman Karis Lockhart said by phone.

Its contradictory, because theyre willing to fight people for different beliefs, UCF student Ladranicia Lynch said.

9 Investigates learned those feelings extend beyond campus. One parent wrote to admissions officials in an email that if these students in this club are not expelled immediately, my son will be transferring to UF as soon as possible. Another man, claiming to be a student at the University of Alabama, threatened to bring a crowd to campus for a fight, writing we will have ambulences (sic) on standby.

No one should be trying to incite violence, using force, in any way, UCF student Stephen Rice said.

The Knights For Socialism received our messages requesting an interview and responded with the following statement:

"Knights for Socialism is committed to fighting for intersectional justice on campus and in the Orlando community. We stand with marginalized communities facing all kinds of persecution, whether it be because of their ethnicity, their immigration status, their gender, who they love, or the size of their income.

Knights for Socialism exists to bring together passionate students who want to take direct action to improve, protect, and serve their community.

In light of recent events on campus, around the state, and throughout the country, we've heard concerns from fellow colleagues who now don't feel safe doing normal things like studying at the library. This past week, we held the first of many events geared towards improving students' sense of safety on campus. While there was apparent controversy over the marketing for the event, we stand committed to building positive relationships with students of all ideologies. Last semester, we participated in a debate with campus libertarians, and we look forward to discussing and debating our ideas in the future."

The group posted on its page that the except Republicans comment in the fight club post was made in jest.

We found the University has little power to control the group, because its not registered to receive campus support or funding. However, the group has started the process to become a recognized student group.

A University spokesman said in a statement:

As Americans, all students have the right to free speech. However, we expect our entire campus community to be inclusive and respect the diverse perspectives of others. In fact, fostering "an open and supportive campus environment and respecting the rights of every individual" is one of the tenets of the UCF Creed. The group associated with the event you contacted us about is not a registered student organization - they are individual students. This means the group receives no university or state funding. Although UCF supports the rights of all students to express their viewpoints, that certainly does not mean those viewpoints represent the positions of the university.

2017 Cox Media Group.

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9 Investigates 'Fight Club' at UCF - WFTV Orlando

Throughout an improbable rise to national prominence over the past two years, Senator Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) railed against millionaires and billionaires and called for a sweeping expansion of government programs and services. Among his myriad exhortations were calls for a single-payer healthcare system, free college, and a doubling of the federal minimum wage. If enacted, these and other similar proposals would have ushered in European-style socialism to the United States, economic policies that the nonpartisan Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center and the Urban Institute Health Policy Center jointly projected would add $18 trillion to the already massive national debt.

Proponents argue these steps are necessary because private-sector costs are too high, and the average family simply cannot afford them. In-state public college, for example, is estimated to run nearly $25,000 per year when all expenses are included. With U.S. median family income in 2015 of $55,775, a four-year cost of $100,000 would, at first glance, seem virtually impossible to pay. That's one of the main reasons why student loan debt levels have exploded.

But is it really? As with all arguments, the devil is in the details.

Americans Are Notoriously Poor Savers

In 2015, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) released data that indicated the average family savings rate for 25 Western nations was 6.5 percent. The Eurozone, coincidentally, posted the same rate. While savings over the next two years were projected to remain stable or rise slightly for the group as a whole, the percentage of household income tucked away by Americans already significantly below average at 4.87 percent was expected to decline to 3.13 percent by the end of this year.

That's an embarrassingly low number. If the projections hold true, the United States will rank among the bottom five of the countries on the list when the calendar turns to 2018. Caught in the throes of rampant consumerism, American savings patterns are clearly heading in the wrong direction. It's little wonder why millions of people are throwing their hands in the air, demanding any form of change, leading to the rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. To a large degree, they simply don't know what else to do.

A Little Planning Goes a Long Way

One of the biggest failures of an ineffective public-school system is the lack of personal financial literacy. Just 17 states mandate taking a class in personal finances, a shocking failure to prepare students to make informed economic decisions that will in all likelihood impact their entire lives.

The facts back up that assertion. According to a GoBankingRates survey, one-third of Americans have no retirement savings whatsoever, and 56 percent have less than $10,000 set aside. At that rate, the majority will be forced to rely upon a teetering Social Security system for their retirement, which can't provide more than subsistence-level income even in a best-case scenario.

One of the common arguments against saving money is the current low interest rate environment. Although artificially low interest rates are clearly a deleterious influence, they should never be a deterrent. Positive returns, even if below the rate of inflation, are far preferable to suffering credit card interest rates when emergencies arise.

The Power of Discipline

As motivational speaker Allen Klein once wrote, A little perspective, like a little humor, goes a long way. Many Americans fail to save money because they do not believe they can afford to do so. In time, this overarching belief becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, leading to a paycheck-to-paycheck existence and very little savings in the bank.

It doesn't have to be that way. Consider the following scenario for a typical American family:

$56,000 household income

Income rising two percent annually

Saving 10 percent of annual income for 20 years: half earmarked for retirement and half for college-related expenses

Average annual retirement returns of five percent and non-retirement returns of two percent

Using the above assumptions, retirement savings would rise to over $160,000 in 20 years without even considering the potential of employer matching funds, while the family college fund would swell to approximately $83,000. Suddenly, a subsistence-level retirement is no longer inevitable and the $100,000 college price tag is largely covered without using up home equity or taking on a massive amount of student debt. Add another percent or two along the way (many investment counselors recommend increasing the savings percentage by one percent annually) and both numbers jump in concert.

College can be paid for without government handouts or massive levels of debt. For all the subjects covered in school, you'd think that would be covered on day one.

Living Below One's Means

Naturally, the counterargument will be that there just isn't room in the family budget to save that much money. A close look at how money is spent is bound to show otherwise. The typical vacation for a family of four costs $4,580, while the average person spends $1,092 on coffee. Voila, we've just found 10 percent, and we've barely even scratched the surface. A little here and a little more there will get the family where it needs to be, and before long, it becomes the new normal.

Other countries manage to figure it all out. Germans saved an average of 9.55 percent in 2015, while denizens of Hungary saved 9.02 percent. In Switzerland, the savings rate was an incredible 17.82 percent, with the savings percentages in Luxembourg and Sweden 17.34 and 15.83, respectively.

The high savings rates seen in a number of European countries, paradoxically, appear to be due in part to collective debt aversion because of higher taxes and a lower standard of living. Germany and Switzerland, for example, possess some of the lowest home ownership rates in the Western world.

The Socialism Antidote

The point of the preceding exercise is to show that free college, socialized medicine, and the other tax-draining, budget-busting platforms of the far Left aren't the answer. Personal responsibility, achieved through financial discipline and dedication of purpose, will absolutely help every American reach their financial goals.

Is it worth living slightly below one's means now to guarantee the future for you and your children? Even Bernie Sanders couldn't disagree with that statement.

Continue reading here:
Savings: The Socialism Antidote - The New American

By Julie Hyland 9 February 2017

This is the first part of a two-part series on the British pseudo-lefts support for immigration controls.

Britains pseudo-left groups have all condemned US President Donald Trump for his anti-Muslim travel ban, denouncing the assault as reactionary, discriminatory, divisive and racist. Yet, when it comes to the issue of the free movement of labour, there is little to distinguish between the far-right oligarch in the White House and the supposedly liberal or socialist left in Britain.

From the Labour Party and the trade unions to the Socialist Party, the Stalinist Morning Star and others, all are united in their demand to reinforce border controls in the UK. Support for restricting immigration exists irrespective of these organisations standpoint on Britain exiting the European Union.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who campaigned for a Remain vote in the referendum last June and who supports continued access to the European Single Market, has accepted restrictions on free movement, supposedly out of respect for the Leave vote. Labour is not wedded to freedom of movement for EU citizens as a point of principle, he has said.

His stance was welcomed by leading Remain campaigner Paul Mason. Free movement is not a principle of socialism, he argued in the Guardian. It has undermined social justice and must be modified, he added, calling for a temporary suspension of free movement within the EU for 10 years.

Labour must recognise that what drives opposition to free movement among progressive, left-minded people is that, in addition to suppressing wage growth at the low end, it says to people with strong cultural traditions, a strong sense of place and community (sometimes all they have left from the industrial era) that your past does not matter.

Mason elaborated on the theme that immigration restrictions are necessary to foster respect for culture, community and traditions. This is an argument that could have come straight out of Trumps mouth, proving that fake-left opportunists who denounce the US president for their own ends today will not have to travel far to align themselves with an overtly right-wing programme tomorrow.

As for the pro-Brexit pseudo-left, in the referendum they sought to provide socialist window dressing for a Leave campaign spearheaded by neo-Thatcherites from the Conservative Party and the UK Independence Party (UKIP). The Socialist Equality Party warned at the time that behind their efforts to give nationalism a left twist, [T]hey are subordinating the working class to an initiative aimed at shifting political life even further along a nationalist trajectory, thereby strengthening and emboldening the far right in the UK and across Europe while weakening the political defences of the working class. Having helped release the genie of British nationalism, they are politically responsible for its consequences.

Their unpardonable toying with left populism as a supposed antidote to the right has now hardened into outright support for anti-migrant restrictions.

Former Labour MP George Galloway notoriously joined platforms with Nigel Farage in the Brexit referendum. He praised the then-UKIP leader as his ally and authored the slogan Left, Right, Left, Right, forward march to victory

Farage is now the favourite Briton of Trump, who describes his own America First agenda as Brexit plus, plus, plus.

Nowadays, Galloway spends his time attacking the idea that, in a capitalist society, its some kind of principle that we should allow as many workers to join the queue for a declining number of jobs, or baiting the pro-Remain Scottish National Party for believing we have more in common with Bulgaria and Romania than with Britain.

The Stalinist Communist Party of Britain provides the political hymn sheet from which the left nationalists attempt a pose of theoretical legitimacy. The Morning Star has run a series of articles on free movement, mostly berating the left and young people, in particular, for defending it.

Typical was an article by columnist Julian Jones, who wrote, By being so positive towards EU free movement, sectors of the left are naively, or willingly, falling into a trap of their own making

Defence of free movement is not, and should not be, the position of the organised left, he continued, complaining of the young, in particular who have been duped into thinking that free movement of people is a near-socialist principle.

Jones cynically uses the fact that many young migrants working in the UK have effectively been forced out of their countries by EU austerity to claim that border controls are in their own best interests, as well as that of low-skilled workers in the UK.

The Unite unions general secretary, Len McCluskey, in an op-ed on December 16 made a feint of opposing impractical demands to pull up the drawbridge on migrants. But his bottom line was that we are well past the point where the issue of free movement can be ignored.

Lets have no doubt: the free movement of labour is a class question, McCluskey wrote.

He continued: Karl Marx identified that fact a long time ago. A study of the struggle waged by the British working class, he wrote in 1867, reveals that in order to oppose their workers, the employers either bring in workers from abroad or else transfer manufacture to countries where there is a cheap labour force.

McCluskeys article is typical of the rank dishonesty that characterises the pseudo-lefts attack on free movement. His citation of Marx is taken from an 1867 statement of the International Workingmans Association, under the heading On the Lausanne Congress.

McCluskey omits what comes immediately after his citation, where Marx states, Given this state of affairs, if the working class wishes to continue its struggle with some chance of success, the national organisations must become international.

The distortion of Marxs position is not accidental. McCluskey writes that of course, all socialists must ultimately look forward to a day when people can move freely across the world and live or work where they will. He goes on: But that is a utopia removed from the world of today, and would require international economic planning and public ownership to make a reality.

McCluskey is an opponent of the working class as well as the class struggle and socialism. He has no intention of attaining a world where people can live or work where they will. His sole concern is to justify the existing capitalist reality, which means recognising the exigencies of labour supply and demand.

What is required, he argues, is a straightforward trade union response to the issue of immigration such as Unite has proposed, whereby any employer wishing to recruit labour abroad can only do so if they are either covered by a proper trade union agreement, or by sectoral collective bargaining.

The same line is taken by the Socialist Party, formerly Militant. Welcoming the Leave vote as a working class revolt, their Socialism Today argued: The socialist and trade union movement from its earliest days has never supported the free movement of goods, services and capital-- or labour--as a point of principle, but instead has always striven for the greatest possible degree of workers control, the highest form of which, of course, would be a democratic socialist society with a planned economy.

Taking trade union cretinism to extremes, they compare support for immigration controls to the trade unions previous support for the closed shop, whereby only union members can be employed in a particular workplace, a very concrete form of border control not supported by the capitalists.

Like McCluskey, the SPs reference to a future socialism is window dressing for their accommodation to the requirements of capital in the here and now. They insist that it is impermissible to defend the right to free movement because it would alienate the vast majority of the working class, including many more long-standing immigrants, who would see it as a threat to jobs, wages and living conditions. It was on this basis that they notoriously backed protests at the Lindsey oil refinery in 2009 demanding British jobs for British workers.

These efforts to transform Marx and the socialist movement into border guards--trade union members, of course--cannot be allowed to stand.

These organisations have nothing in common with the founder of scientific socialism. Their support for immigration controls is the outcome of their perspective of national economic regulation under capitalism, which is diametrically opposed to the perspective of revolutionary socialist internationalism.

In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels explained the revolutionary character of capitalist production which, in its drive to constantly expand the market for its products, chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. Through the creation and exploitation of a world market, they explained, the bourgeoisie has given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country.

In words that could have been directed against McCluskey et al, the great revolutionaries continued: To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature

The truly revolutionising character of capitalist production was expressed in its creation of the international working class--the gravedigger of the bourgeoisie. The proletarian is without property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family relations; modern industrial labour, modern subjection to capital, the same in England as in France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him of every trace of national character. Law, morality, religion are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.

The working class has nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of, individual property The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority.

The watchword of the socialist workers movement for Marx and Engels was, Workers of all Lands, Unite! This perspective flowed from the scientific analysis of capitalism that was developed by Marx on the basis of historical materialism.

The pseudo-left cite Marxs analysis of the industrial reserve army or relative surplus population to justify their support for border controls. But once again, they distort this analysis beyond all recognition.

For Marx, this phenomenon was not a temporary aberration, but intrinsic to capitalist accumulation. This is because capitalist industry consists of two parts--machinery and workers--the ratio between which is called the organic composition of capital. The number of workers in employment is variable. It is dependent on whether or not it is profitable for the capitalist to employ workers to run the machinery, the constant capital. And this, in turn, is affected by the growth of technology, which requires a smaller number of workers to produce greater quantities of goods, as well as the state of competition within an industry. [For detailed analysis, see Capital Volume 1, Chapter 25].

Marx wrote, The labouring population therefore produces, along with the accumulation of capital produced by it, the means by which it itself is made relatively superfluous, is turned into a relative surplus population; and it does this to an always increasing extent. This is a law of population peculiar to the capitalist mode of production.

For Marx, Every labourer belonged to the surplus/reserve army of labour during the time when he is only partially employed or wholly unemployed.

In a devastating critique of modern-day calls for immigration controls, Marx insisted that this problem was not to be solved by the folly now patent of the economic wisdom that preaches to the labourers the accommodation of their number to the requirements of capital.

In fact, The greater the social wealth, the functioning capital, the extent and energy of its growth, and, therefore, all the absolute mass of the proletariat and the productiveness of its labour, the greater is the industrial reserve army.

The solution, Marx insisted, was cooperation between workers to protect their common class interests in combination against the bourgeoisie. In the inaugural address of the International Working Mens Association (the First International) in 1864, Marx concluded, Past experience has shown how disregard of that bond of brotherhood which ought to exist between the workmen of different countries, and incites them to stand firmly by each other in all their struggles for emancipation, will be chastised by the common discomfiture of their incoherent efforts.

Praising the struggle by the Lancashire cotton textile works who, against their own bosses and the British Empire, and on pain of starvation, agitated in support of the North in the American Civil War and for the abolition of slavery, he continued, If the emancipation of the working classes requires their fraternal concurrence, how are they to fulfil that great mission with a foreign policy in pursuit of criminal designs, playing upon national prejudices, and squandering in piratical wars the peoples blood and treasure?

It was the duty of the working classes to master themselves the mysteries of international politics; to watch the diplomatic acts of their respective governments; to counteract them, if necessary, by all means in their power; when unable to prevent, to combine in simultaneous denunciations, and to vindicate the simple laws or morals and justice which ought to govern the relations of private individuals, as the rules paramount of the intercourse of nations.

The fight for such a foreign policy forms part of the general struggle for the emancipation of the working classes.

Proletarians of all countries, unite!

To be continued

See the article here:
Socialism and defence of the free movement of labour: Part one - World Socialist Web Site

I wish to apologize for taking time to respond to you. I was immersed in a lot of commitments and struggled to find time to develop a befitting response. You will also pardon me as I fail to address you properly, your pen name, as well as the picture attached to your News24 account makes it impossible for me to determine your gender.

Your reply to myself, which was published online by News24 on 3 January 2017, is interesting for me. Following your confession that you have read a few of my articles has shown me that your critique extended beyond the article in question. I will therefore respond with that in mind. Here under please receive my points in reaction to your arguments;

In Paragraph 3, you make interesting observations about the inextricable relationship between states (you narrowly refer to governments) and owners of production, which in this case is a few individuals. But you immediately distort this observation by blaming governments (or states), for the problems of the world.

This observation is problematic in that it assumes that all governments, or states, operate in isolation from external players. The observation is also weakened by the contradiction contained in the statement; The problems of the world are caused by weak governments that are caught up in capitalism.

Looking at your post, it is unclear if you apportion the problems of the world to capitalism, due to weak governments being involved or being affected by capitalism, or whether the problems of the world are caused by weaknesses within governments themselves. But later on, you argue that I must not blame capitalism. The contradiction is loud here.

In your reply, you have been unable to counter my argument that capitalism has failed to solve the problems of the world. This is because there can be no scientific, credible argument to counter my claim. It is impossible to prove how capitalism has improved the lives of the people.

The capitalist project has been characterized by crises since time immemorial. Prabhat Patnaik, Professor Emeritus at the Center for Economic Studies and Planning at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, wrote the following in 2016; The thirty-year crisis of capitalism, which encompassed two world wars and the Great Depression, was followed by a period that some economists call the Golden Age of capitalism. Today, however, capitalism is once again enmeshed in a crisis that portends far-reaching consequences. I am not referring here to the mere phenomenon of the generally slower average growth that has marked the system since the mid-1970s. Rather, I am talking specifically of the crisis that started with the collapse of the U.S. housing bubble in 2007-8 and which, far from abating, is only becoming more pronounced.

The current economic crisis, which started in the US, is not accidental, but is a by-product of the fundamental nature of capitalism. The system of capitalism promises all and sundry that all problems will be solved by some invisible hand. That invisible hand was literally invisible when the housing bubble exploded in US in 2007-08. Instead of the market correcting itself, the US government spent millions of dollars to rescue private firms that were affected by the crisis. The US government, in so doing, was involved in a process of nationalization of debt.

Capitalism has failed to solve the problems of inequality, poverty and unemployment. South Africa is a clear case study. Many amongst us are fed the lie that we need a certain level of economic growth in order for the economy to create jobs. That is a lie. Capitalism does not care about alleviating poverty, or creating jobs, or reducing inequality. In all the three cases, capitalism vies for the opposite.

Ina sheer display of the monstrosity of capitalism, in 2015/16 financial year, Shoprite CEO Whitey Basson earned an annual basic salary of R49.7 million, plus a performance bonus of R50 million, leaving him with an annual pay of R100 million. This when ordinary employees of Shoprite take home about R500 per week. We dont care that Basson has worked in that company for 45 years, but this pay is an insult to the many employees, who serve the company as slaves, only for one greedy person to enjoy the fruits of their sweat. This is capitalism.

In UK, it is reported that the FTSE 100 average CEO is paid 129 times more than an average employee. The US, as the ultimate model of capitalism, is the worst. This is where capitalism and its failures can be studies without fail.

Even the educated people you are reffering to, who you state choose capitalism, are slaves of the capitalist project. The all sell their labour to their masters, and receive meagre wages. You can be an investment Broker, Engineer, etc., as long as you sell your labour, you are a slave of the capitalists. Through your labour, companies like PHG make trillions of dollars every day. The cars, houses, expensive watches they flash are nothing but tools of enslaving them further.

You enquired why socialism has not worked. This assertion is flawed and exposes your gross misinformation. Cuba is a socialist country and the system is working, not only for Cubans but for the world. Given its highly advanced education system, Cuba teaches medicine to some Americans who offer medical support in poor communities, thanks to state subsidies. Cuba has doctors, engineers and other professionals working all over the world, including in South Africa. In Cuba, there are no street people, like is the case in America, UK, South Africa and elsewhere.

Another example is China, where communism is practiced. The state, through legislation, policy and intervention, is in charge of the economy. There is no claim of an invisible hand in China as the hand is directly from the Communist Party of China. China is about to surpass US as the worlds largest economy.

The fall of the Soviet Union was not because the system had failed. It was mainly because of the weakening of the party and its infiltration by external elements.

I still maintain, Capitalism has never, and shall never, solve the problems of the world. Socialism is a worthy alternative. Socialism shall replace the greedy, selfish and exploitative character of capitalism

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A reply to No Ohno: On Socialism and Capitalism - News24