A brief summary of the political positions of the RSO
The Revolutionary Socialist Organization (RSO) is fighting against capitalism and for a new socialist economic and social order.
Every day it becomes more evident that the so-called “free market” has nothing to offer for most of the world’s population. Capitalism means hunger, poverty, environmental destruction, war and misery. Even in the richest countries in the world, millions live at or below the poverty line. In contrast, a small portion of the population owns the majority of the assets; in Britain 1% of the population owns more than a third of all assets.
Two classes are facing each other in the capitalist society. On one side are the capitalists who own the means of production. They are faced by the wage earners who are forced to sell their labor power. Many workers today are isolated, discouraged, and full of capitalist political ideas and filled with capitalist prejudices. Nevertheless, only the wage earners through strikes and other collective forms of struggle can bring the capitalist mode of production to a halt and hit the capitalist class at the critical point, their profits.
Capitalism in its neoliberal phase after the collapse of Stalinism in 1989-91 is politically and militarily on the rise world wide. The working class of the European countries is subject to massive social attacks. Trade unions and social democratic parties are unable to oppose this, but are perfectly integrated into the system. Their representatives participate in cutting public services and creating racist divisions. The Green Parties are not an alternative, they are bourgeois parties, some of which have a progressive rhetoric on human rights issues, but, where they participate in government, show that they are part of the normal capitalist state.
The different imperialist blocs are arming themselves. The imperialist “global player” is still the United States. But the EU is trying to downsize the military gap with the United States and is also more and more acting as a militarily independent bloc. In contrast, we support the resistance against imperialist wars and occupations and combine this with the slogan: “The main enemy is at home.”
To secure its domination, capitalism is (also) using and fostering the division of the working class. We are fighting against the oppression of people because of their ethnicity, gender, age or sexual orientation and we oppose these divisions with the unconditional support of every fight for equal rights.
We are for the socialization of large corporations and their transformation into co-operatives under democratic workers’ management and control. Capitalism can not be eliminated by a few votes or parliamentary reform. All attempts to overcome capitalism through reforms have failed (and have often led to bloody defeats). Only a fundamental upheaval, a revolution based on the active participation of large segments of the population can destroy the state of the ruling class, eliminate the bases of inequality, oppression and exploitation and create a free society.
We are Marxists and follow in the tradition of the “left opposition” against Stalinism by Leon Trotsky. Our alternative is socialism. Our socialism is a free, democratic society built on elected councils. We refer positively to the Russian October Revolution of 1917. This revolution has indeed failed in the Stalinist degeneration in the twenties, but the idea of an alternative to capitalism retains its validity. Our socialism has thus nothing to do with the “social” democratic parties, or with the Stalinist dictatorships in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Cuba and China. Capitalism is internationally organized and networked. Therefore, our revolutionary alternative has to be international and internationalist.
The RSO is not “the” revolutionary party. None of the currently existing organizations can claim that for themselves. A new revolutionary party will emerge from a process of transformations and mergers. The RSO will try to play a positive role in this process to build such a party and therefore put forward a revolutionary alternative to capitalism.
If you are interested in this project, then get in contact with us and support us in building a revolutionary and socialist organization!
Monday 23 January 2012
Thursday 24 November 2011
More people without home
Living in a
city, you might have noticed the increasing number ofhomeless people on the
streets. Many of this country’s homeless however, are not the men and women you
see sleeping rough, but families in B&Bs and other peoples houses.
Last year the number of people officially classed as homeless jumped by 14%. Repossesion and rising
unemployment see an increasing number of people with no home to call their
own.Some end up on the streets. Others
are lucky enough to get a roof over their heads- but only for a short amount of
time.
In certain
areas you’ll find empty, boarded-up houses scattered round the neighbourhoods,
whilst the families that once lived there now sleep on friends’ sofas, are
holed up in B&Bs or live in some other form of temporary accomodation.
There is not enough demand for these houses because the people who would need
them can’t afford them anymore. Currently, there is limited affordable housing
and people are being turfed from their homes; so what happens when more and
more people can’t even find temporary accomodation? Take America for example:
the situation is so bad that “Hoovervilles” (the name for the tent towns and
encampments made in public spaces inhabited by the homeless, first cropping up
during the Great Depression) are appearing across the country. If nothing is
done to stem this rise in homelessness, could we see a similar development in
the UK?
Of the
homeless families, there are 4 million children living in poverty after housing
costs have been paid, 1 million in overcrowded spaces and 90,000 in temporary
accomodation. Not only do they no longer have anywhere of their own to spend
their childhood years, they also become affected by physical and mental health
problems. It has been proven that homeless children suffer from insecurity,
asthma, poor education and many other problems. All this happens despite the
government’s pledge in 1999 to end child poverty by 2020. Instead of ending
child poverty, the current housing benefit cuts could push more children into
poverty.
The inherent
greed in the current system is being increasingly laid bare for all to see. The
government has placed importance on profits over people. With less homeless
people than there are empty houses (720,000 homes in November 2011) we should
question why the empty houses can’t simply be given to those without a home?
The answer is that the capitalists would rather see people on the streets than
give a house away for free. Not only are there thousands of empty homes, but
there are plenty of acres available for building homes on the large estates and
second homes of the capitalists. Again, the capitalists would rather see people
on the streets than give up their excess land and their second homes. Perhaps
we should start taking some advice from Bertolt Brecht’s poem “Resolution of
the Communards”:
While you leave us without a place to stay,
We decided to install us now there,
Because in our holes, it doesn't suit us any more.
Saturday 19 November 2011
One Year on, The "Arab Spring"
Early 2011 saw the
beginning of a massive uprising in the Arab countries of the Middle East and
North Africa. All over the region, regimes that were in power for decades were
toppled. There is hardly a country in the region that has not been affected.
The struggles saw thousands of workers in the streets venting their anger,
being truly inspirational in their efforts, to people all over the world.
Unfortunately the vision of a better and more just society that was shared by so
many has not yet materialized.
The Causes
Although there are
massive differences between the Arab countries, there are also some strong
uniting factors, first and foremost a common cultural sphere and a common
language. There is also a similarity in the sense that the whole region has
been at the mercy of imperialism for years. All the Arab economies are heavily
dependent on the foreign capital of Western European countries, especially
Britain, France and the USA, first as colonies and later more indirectly via
capital dependency. For example, the main foreign holders of Egyptian assets
are British and American companies. The regions wealth of natural resources,
namely oil and important trading routes, like the Suez canal, have given it a
special importance in the imperialist game of parasitic plunder by the Western
European and North American bourgeoisie.
The imperialists held
their grip on the region via a whole bunch of proxy regimes. All the regimes of
the region are extremely oppressive and authoritarian by Western standards. The
power of these regimes, no matter whether dressed up as monarchies or
republics, was, and is, mainly based on an excessive military apparatus that
has a special role in these societies. The Arab people were often denied the most
basic freedoms and rights, such as freedom of the press and free access to
media or the right to (freely) vote. The power of the local bourgeoisie was
bloodily exercised by the military which lived parasitically of the people.
On top of all these
factors came the economic crisis that started in 2007. Already in 2008, due to
massive speculation on grain and the consequent rising grain prices, hunger
riots in Egypt broke out. With the tightening economic climate the bourgeoisie
in the Arab countries became less and less willing to finance corrupt and
parasitic dynasties of rulers. Also, the
possibility for the ruling elite to make concessions to the working class and
the poor in these countries was drastically reduced. This explains why the
outburst of anger could take such a mass character and why the bourgeoisie was
actually often joining the upsurges.
From Tunisia... to Egypt... to Libya... to
Syria?
The general prairie
fire in the Arab world started with the rising of the people in Tunisia. A
period of mass demonstrations followed an incidence where an unemployed
graduate, who had become a street peddler, set himself on fire after his
license was taken away from him. In the following mass demonstrations the
organised working class, namely the Tunisian trade union federation UGTT played
a decisive role, although politically subordinate to the bourgeois forces. Ben
Ali had ruled Tunisia for 23 years and his clan had scrounged a large amount of
the economies profits. On January 15th last year he was brought
down. After this success many Arab countries witnessed similar revolts.
The most significant
of them was most likely Egypt, where the Dictatorship of Mubarak was brought to
an end after 30 years. The main force behind the uprising however was not the
working class but the urban poor, the petit bourgeoisie and parts of the
national bourgeoisie. Young people especially, who had graduated from
university and faced mass unemployment, were the motor of the protests.
Although Mubarak was brought down, the military which is a massive factor in
Egyptian society and previously was the pillar of Mubarak’s reign remained in
power. The overall situation for workers in Egypt has only marginally improved,
anti-trade union laws actually became even worse.
A break in the pattern
was the struggle that emerged in Libya. After having initially been a
spontaneous manifestation of general anger about Colonel Gaddafi’s four decade
rule, the resistance movement was taken over by a clique of former Gaddafi
loyalist who suddenly realized that they were better off on the side of the
NATO imperialists. The uprising turned into a bloody civil war and eventually
NATO forces, seeing their chance to get some booty from Libya’s oil reserves
and trying to appease the region by showing presence, came out in support of
the rebels.
The next state in-line
for a regime change seems to be Syria, where the 30 year rule of the Assad clan
is challenged by a massive rebel uprising. So far around 7000 people have been
brutally murdered by the pro government forces since the beginning of the
uprising last March. However the anti-Assad rebels seem to be hardly an
improvement for the working masses of Syria. The rebels are made up mainly of
petty bourgeois forces, trying to replace Assad’s regime with some bourgeois
democratic regime and not opposing foreign intervention. In Syria, another
Libya-like scenario seems likely. The Syrian working class has the least to win
from a civil war and foreign intervention, for them this will only mean more
suffering and more unnecessary losses.
Bourgeois democracy is the dictatorship of
capital!
Wherever a “democratic
regime change” has taken place in the Arab world it has so far been hardly an
improvement for the working people of these countries. In Egypt and in Tunisia,
the bourgeoisie and the military remain in power, in the proxy-elections in
these two countries mainly right-wing Islamic forces have profited. “Bourgeois
democracy” in these countries doesn’t mean a change of the living conditions of
the working class or more freedoms but merely more participation in power for
the national bourgeoisie.
Like the economies of
the Arab countries are dependent on foreign capital, the governments in the
region will always be dependent on the imperialist bourgeoisie. “Bourgeois
Democracy” is a privilege of the imperialist countries and is paid for with the
super-exploitation of the third world. All attempts to build Western-like
democracies in the Arab countries must therefore be in vain. The imperialists
will always make sure that the Arab states guarantee the imperialist’s
parasitic interests in the region. Even the “democratic” countries in the
Middle East, such as Turkey have to base their power heavily on the military to
control the contradictions in the powder keg of a society. So if the working
class and all the oppressed people in the Arab countries want to strive for
something better than the smokescreen of democracy they have to go beyond the
bourgeois order of things.
A working class answer is needed!
Although workers have
broadly participated in the various uprisings in the Arab world the working
class as an independent political factor has not yet stepped onto the scene in
this region. The first promising steps have been taken, like the strike movement
in Egypt after Mubarak had been expelled from power. These steps however, are
only small ones and the big step has yet to be made. The working class in the
Arab countries has a fighting tradition, dating back 50 years and more. The
pro-imperialist proxy-dictatorships in the region have made all attempts
possible to wipe out this tradition. However even now there are germs of a new
fighting working class. The strikes in Egypt in 2006 and in 2011 after the fall
of the Mubarak regime are a first glimpse of the enormous size and power the
working class holds in these countries. If the working class makes use of its
tradition and finds a way of appropriating the revolutionary ideas of Marxism
it could really spark off an Arab revolution.
In Britain we have to
recognize that it is not an Arab question, but a question of the working class
as a whole. Britain is at the forefront of the economic exploitation of the
region and has participated majorly in the military offensive against Libya.
The working class in Britain can gain no freedom as long as it holds other
people in shackles. The most practical solidarity we can give to the struggle
of the Arab working class is to struggle against our own imperialist-capitalist
rulers in Britain!
Tuesday 15 November 2011
End the Imperialist War in Afghanistan
Another month in the
decade long imperialist war in Afghanistan, another high profile massacre of
innocent Afghan civilians by an American soldier. This time Staff Sergeant
Robert Bales of the 3rd Stryker Brigade left the NATO military base
in southern Kandahar province in the early hours of Sunday 11 March and broke
into the homes of local Afghan villagers living near the base. He then calmly
made his way through the hamlet and shot dead 16 people mostly women and
children. It’s reported that the soldier hunted down members of a family like
military targets and that some of his victims were found covered in burn marks
inflicted by Bales.
This horrific incident,
though astonishing, is not unprecedented. It was only in 2010 in the same
province that three US Soldiers formed a ‘kill team’ which murdered three
Afghan civilians. Last year a hungover British guardsmen stabbed a 10 year old
boy in the kidney for no apparent reason. British soldiers are currently on
trial for abusing Afghan children whilst US wikileaks files reported 21 separate
incidents of British troops shooting dead or bombing Afghan civilians. The UN
reported that last year NATO and its Afghan allies were responsible for 410
civilian deaths, a figure widely agreed to be a gross underestimate of the true
number of civilians killed by the occupying forces.
Nor is the murder of
civilians limited to Afghanistan. The war in Iraq was punctuated by occupation massacres from the
start: Haditha, where 24 men, women and children were murdered in cold blood by US
marines in 2005, the killing of 17 by Blackwater military contractors
in 2007, and another dozen by a US Apache crew in Baghdad the same year are
among the more notorious.
NATO
will no doubt blame the latest massacre on a mentally unstable Robert Bales and
wash its hands of all responsibility for the atrocity. The fact though that
such horrors occur time and time again during their imperialist occupations
prove that they are endemic. Afghanistan is being occupied, not for the good of
the Afghan people but due to the strategy of the U.S.A in maintaining it’s
hegemony over the region. It props up
one of the most corrupt and unpopular regimes in the world, that of
President Karzai, and bombs any opposition into the ground. As of going to
press, 404 British soldiers, 1,827
American soldiers and tens of thousands of innocent Afghan civilians have lost
their lives during the war. Many more will die before the planned withdrawal of
NATO troops in 2014 but nothing will have been achieved, an incredibly sad loss
of human life to feed the needs of imperialism.
Sunday 13 November 2011
Back to the workhouse
The methods that the rich are willing to
use to squeeze every last bit of profit for themselves out of workers seemingly
knows no limits. Not content with putting hundreds of thousands of people on
the dole through sackings, the rich, capitalist classes now cry that these same
people, who they put out of work, are lazy and undeserving of the paltry £53 a
week that they receive to live off whilst having to search for non-existent
jobs. The con-dem government has listened to the concerns of the rich and
implemented a scheme whereby people will be forced to work for free or have
their job seekers allowance stopped, in what certainly harps back to the
infamous workhouses of Victorian Britian.
The scheme known unofficially as workfare
is a way for big businesses such as Tesco, Asda, Mcdonalds, Burger King, Pizza
Hut, Primark, Boots, The Arcadia Group of stores which includes Topman and
Burton amongst a host of others to add to their already enormous profits by
effectively employing slave labour.
An unemployed person can now be told by the
Job Centre that they must work 30 hours a week for a company such as Tesco that
has offered them ‘work experience’. They will not be paid for this work, nor
even guaranteed a permanent job with the company once they have completed the
26 week placement. If they refuse to perform unpaid labour for the company
offering the placement then they will have their benefits stopped for 13 weeks
the first time they refuse to participate, for six months the second time and
for three years the third time, condemning them to possible homelessness and
starvation.
Unemployed persons are thus forced to work
for free and to produce value for the company employing their labour. Companies
such as Asda which already make over £10 million profit in a single day
benefit, while the workers who create this wealth get nothing. The scheme has
already forced 24,000 people to work without pay whilst Tesco a company that
made £1.9billion in the last six months exploited 1,400 of those working. Some
of the workers employed in this way even have to do nightshifts and work in
freezers without proper protective clothing.
Aside from the moral outrage this scheme
provokes there is also the absurdity of it. Implemented by the champions of the
free market, the conservative party, the scheme is actually using public funds
to provide the job seekers allowance the person receives in lieu of any proper
payment from the company. So the government is subsidizing large corporations’
labour costs.
The capitalists clearly think that they can
get away with this robbery. If it were up to them they would have us all
working for free, and unless the working class forcefully resists the workfare
scheme then they will get their way, this can already be seen with permanent
Tesco staff being sent home early from work as the company has people working
for free.
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