Socialism and Planning Part 1

The impossibility of ‘One Big Plan’ In any kind of society, people need to plan. Even in the most gung-ho, ruggedly individualist laissez faire society imaginable, there would be plenty of planning. Entrepreneurs would have to plan what and how much to produce, along with the requisite quantities of material and labour inputs needed, in the face […]

Warszawianka (music)

Tu Compagno (music)

Old Capitalist Fallacies

The World Socialist Movement argues that human behaviour arises from the way society is organised. People’s attitudes and actions reflect the social relationships they form to produce wealth. Advocates for capitalism assert it is not such a bad system as it has been subject to reforms to provide a tolerable existence for workers: Workers used to have to make provision for unemployment, […]

 If socialism is a dream, capitalism is a nightmare

Present-day society is accurately labelled as capitalism because the production of its wealth is a process of the accumulation of capital. Investment in production is as capital; it is wealth which is applied to produce more of it, for disposal for profit. Thus capitalism is a society in which wealth takes the form of commodities—although […]

Let’s make a revolution

The plot of a thousand sci-fi novels and movies is that the end of the world comes with a comet or asteroid colliding with the Earth, or perhaps a solar flare burning up our planet. The likelihood is, of course, that the world will be destroyed by an “internal’’ agency such as a nuclear war […]

Never Cross a Picket Line (music)

The Lords of Labour (music)

Trade Unions (3/3)

An injury to one is an injury to all Since their origin, employers, governments and the media have been obsessed with trade unions.  The Government, to please and placate the die-hard ideologues in the Conservative Party and the more unthinking of its voters generally, has chosen to propose legislation containing very drastic amendments to the law as it affects trade unions to take effective strike action. It […]

Trade Unions (2/3)

The Socialist Attitude Toward Trade Unions.  The aim of trade unions is not socialism and, therefore, the principles and policy of The World Socialist Movement are quite distinct from those of trade unions. Trade unions are organised within capitalism to “collectively bargain” with employers in terms of wage slavery. The World Socialist Movement’s aim is […]