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the next step the aim of the communist party is to achieve a socialist Britain in which the means of production, distribution and exchange will be socially owned and utilised in a planned way for the benefit of all. this necessitates a revolutionary transformation of society, ending the existing capitalist system of exploitation and replacing it with a socialist society in which each contribute according to ability and receive according to work done. the communist manifesto In their Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), Marx and Engels analysed the development of capitalist society. They showed that the dominant structures and ideas of society reflect the ownership, by a minority class, of the means of production (the machinery, tools, materials, industrial and commercial land, etc.) and that social revolutions take place when that system of property ownership prevents the full development of society’s productive forces. Such a situation exists today with the contradiction between the narrow private ownership of industry, finance and commerce by the capitalist class, and the vast and inter-related social process of production carried out by the working class. In competition with each other, the capitalists squeeze as much surplus value (the source of profit) out of the workforce as they can, raising productivity, holding down wages and workers' purchasing power. In the public sector of the capitalist state apparatus, too, wages are held
down and productivity is driven up as vast amounts of public money are channelled into the private sector. At the same time, the capitalist monopolies invest in ever-greater capacity and produce commodities that periodically cannot be sold above their cost, i.e. at a profit. The result is over-production, cutbacks, redundancies and the destruction of productive forces. theory and practice This contradiction between capitalist profit and greed on one side, and public consumption and need on the other, ensures that capitalism is a system built on insecurity, poverty, misery and crisis. Capitalist exploitation and imperialism intensify inequalities of race and gender as well between regions and nations. It is a contradiction that can only be resolved by abolishing capitalism, and building a socialist society based on social ownership and planned production. Lenin creatively applied Marxism to the conditions of his time, when he analysed imperialism as the parasitic and moribund 'highest stage of capitalism', with economic and political power in the hands of enormous monopolies and cartels, whose struggle for the re-division of the world leads to conflict and war. He emphasised the need for the working class and its allies to take political power, guided by a revolutionary party and creating their own form of popular working class rule. As the world has developed, so also has the science of Marxism-Leninism. And, as with other sciences, its theory is put to the test every day. Life continually throws up new issues to be addressed, and new questions to be
Britain's road to socialism The Communist Party is guided by the theory and practice of Marxism-Leninism. But this is far from a fossilised set of ideas. The Communist Party’s programme, now called Britain's Road to Socialism, applies a Marxist-Leninist analysis to conditions as they have developed in Britain. The latest edition calls for mass activity and campaigning in favour of policies that challenge capitalist monopolies and extend democratic rights.
and practice ensures that obsolete ideas are discarded and new insights and approaches developed. Early in the 21st century, the capitalist world is dominated by trans-national corporations (TNCs or multinational companies), whose interests are promoted by their respective states which also act through international institutions such as the European Union, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation, the World Bank and NATO. The rich get richer as billions of people go without adequate food, shelter, clean water or health and education services. The capitalist monopolies and their political representatives put profit before people and before the earth’s environment. Capitalist exploitation and imperialism intensify inequalities of race and gender as well as those between regions and nations. education The need for popular resistance and class struggle, for the working class to take state power in fact, is as great as ever. But this requires theory as well as practice, through education and propaganda on the ideological front to inform and learn from action on the economic and political fronts. That is why the Communist Party publishes a theoretical and discussion journal, Communist Review,four times a year; organises the Communist University of Britain annually, together with regional & national communist universities in the districts and nations; and holds an Industrial Cadre School every year for trade unionists.
Such a militant mass movement can help produce and sustain a left government based on a Labour, socialist and Communist majority. At local, national and all-Britain levels, this combination of parliamentary and extraparliamentary struggle can put Britain on the road to socialist revolution. This would have to be a democratic and popular transfer of political powers, transforming the state apparatus and utilising the strength and creativity of the working class and its allies. For Britain to take the road to socialism, however, a strong and influential Communist Party is vital – a Marxist party which is both internationalist and rooted in the British labour movement. To read the latest edition of Britain’s Road to Socialism, the Programme of the Communist Party of Britain, go online to https://www.communistparty.org.uk/images/pdfs/BRS2018.pdf a disciplined workers' party Membership of the Communist Party is open to all people aged 16 and above who accept the aims, rules and policy of the Party, pay their dues regularly and work in a Party organisation. The basic organisation of the Party is the branch where members are encouraged to participate fully in branch work, in order to pool experience, deepen their own understanding of political affairs and of Marxist theory, and develop to their full potential as Communists. Branches normally meet monthly.
CPB
communist party pamphlets manifestopress www.communist-party.org.uk manifestopress.org.uk
The EU, Brexit and class politics Which way for the labour movement? Communist Party general secretary Robert Griffiths – who chaired the Lexit campaign – revisits the arguments set out in the Left Exit from the EU pamphlet issued during the referendum campaign. £2 €2.5 We want real jobs
s In Marx’s Das Kapital and
Wage inequality in Britain is the
capitalism today Robert
worst in Europe and this goes
Griffiths takes us back to the
with precariousness and de-
foundations of Marx’s critique of
unionisation, both driven by
capitalism and demonstrates its
neo-liberalism. This pamphlet
relevance. Published to mark the
came out of a weekend
200 anniversary of Marx’s birth
Communist Party/YCL school
the book shows how reading
for young workers in precarious
Das Kapital sheds light on the
jobs and union organisers.
reality of capitalist crisis today.
£2 €2.5
£8 €9
Workers of all lands, unite! written by the Communist Party’s anti racist/antifascist commission sets out a labour movement policy on migration, labour and refugees taking into account Britain’s imperialist history and present day role and our membership of the bosses’ EU. £2 €2.5
China’s new era
State Monopoly Capitalism
and what it means
by Gretchen Binus, Beate
The aim of this pamphlet is to
Landefeld and Andreas Wehr.
strip away the layers of myth
Introduction by Jonathan White
and misunderstanding that
The 2007/8 worldwide banking
surround discussions on China
collapse exposed the cyclical
and its growing role in the world
nature of modern capitalism’s
economy.
enduring crisis. With the
Written by Communist Party
collapse in bank confidence
China expert Kenny Coyle
came a resurgence of interest
£2 €2.5
in Marxism. £4.95 €5.50
The only English language, socialist, daily newspaper published in the world, featuring the work of the Labour left, trade unions, other progressive political organisations. Britain’s only socialist daily covers international and environmental issues and includes excellent comment on the arts and sports. It is a daily voice against oppression and exploitation to counteract the propaganda of the capitalist owned press. If you like what the paper stands for, ask your local newsagent to stock the paper and buy it every day. l Join one of the Readers & Supporters Groups l contributing to the Fighting Fund l Buy some shares (£1 each, as a share-holder you can go to the People’s Press annual meetings, elect the management committee and contribute to policy on the paper). l Keep up to date on www.morningstaronline.co.uk and follow on Twitter and Facebook £1 weekdays, £1.50 at weekends. From newsagents or online at www.morningstaronline.co.uk
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Workers of all lands, unite!
NHS crisis Fix it now! Emergency Demo Noon, Saturday 3 February Assemble Gower Street Central London WC1 Join the Red Block on the march behind the CPB slogan
communist propaGanda Unity! is the Communist Party’s mass distribution newspaper issued free in print, digital and online versions. Special editions are produced for big labour movement events, peace, solidarity and
PRIVATISATION
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L Eight decades before the NHS came into being Karl Marx suffered from his liver, haemorrhoids, insomnia and boils. “The bourgeoisie will remember my carbuncles until their dying day,” he said in a letter to Friedrich Engels in 1867
HE NHS crisis is upon us. Ministers were warned that without extra cash and resources the winter would bring an avalanche of infections and a hospital-beds crisis. The Royal College of Emergency Medicine warned that A&E departments needed 2,200 more beds – and even before the latest crisis hit, waiting lists had topped four million. Yet the government is driving further cuts in beds while urging hospitals to divert patients into alternative services which barely exist. Social care is also enduring a cuts-driven crisis, but in Theresa May fumbled cabinet reshuffle she handed social care to her arrogant and serially incompetent health secretary, Jeremy Hunt. Hospital flu admissions in the first week of 2018 were nearly double the number seen in 2010-11 during the swine-flu epidemic. After thousands of operations were cancelled Jeremy Hunt claimed to have made the “most extensive preparations ever” for the winter period. More than 33,000 nurses left the NHS in 2017 - a rise of 20 per cent since 2012-13. A Commons health select committee inquiry
into the nursing workforce showed that NHS staff are struggling with poor access to continuing professional development, low pay and “a general sense of not feeling valued”. Nurses' pay has fallen by 14 per cent in real terms since 2010, while last year's abolition of NHS bursaries means nursing students are forced to pay £9,250 in tuition-fee loans. The NHS in England is facing a new Tory onslaught involving drastic cuts, privatisation and yet another reorganisation. The Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STPs) combined with the Five Year Forward View (5YFV) will speed up privatisation, while driving through £22 billion in cuts. The Tory plans are nakedly based on the US model where so-called Accountable Care Systems (ACS) control health services and award contracts to profit-making private-sector health and finance firms. Even the Tory MP who chairs the Commons select committee has called for a delay to the new contract for Accountable Care Organisations. The model contracts propose using the notorious Special Purpose Vehicles – the mechanism which spearheaded private finance initiative (PFI) schemes.
It was the European Union model of privatised public services – driven by the Maastricht and Lisbon treaties – which led to Blair’s ‘New’ Labour vastly expanding PFI. As usual the latest plans are being hatched in secrecy with no consultation of patients or staff. There is no attempt to base the schemes on clinical evidence. Driven by cuts, the plans will ‘rationalise’ and centralise services and are already leading to closures. For patients the plans mean worsened healthcare, longer waiting lists, delayed operations and a beds shortage which leaves the NHS unable to meet the inevitable winter crises. Health unions warn that the workforce plans will blur professional roles while staff recruitment is frozen. ‘Flexible’ working will mean fewer staff doing more. Our NHS is not for sale or profit. The Communist Party believes that our NHS must be publicly accountable, publicly funded and publicly run. Communists agree with health professionals that change should always be fully funded, clinically driven and evidence led. #StopSTPs #SaveOurNHS #
Carillion and Capita signify a new crisis CAPITALISM
A
FTER THE 2008 banking crash and now the Carillion collapse who can doubt that capitalism is in crisis. Bloated multinationals like Carillion are the product of an unholy alliance between the Tory Party and ‘New’ Labour which saw the banks deregulated, public services privatised and pricey PFI replace public investment in infrastructure projects. Public spending cuts and wage freeze led to a decade of austerity. Carillion grew out of the takeover of construction firms to bid for public private partnerships. The firm functioned as a giant Ponzi scheme depending on a stream of contracts underwritten by the tax payer. But with tight
profit margins in construction and projects like railways, hospitals and roads taking years to complete the firm looked increasingly at risk. However dodgy the firm’s finances were shareholders still got their dividends and bosses their bonuses. Now thousands of workers face losing their jobs and their pensions look at risk. Complicit in the cover up of Carillion’s chronic instability are pension regulators and KPMG and Price Waterhouse Cooper. The Financial Conduct Authority is investigating profit warnings made by the company last year. The Pensions Regulator, kept quiet about the fact that Carillion paid out £80m in dividends and only put £47m into its pension scheme, in spite of its £580m deficit. Carillion’s shares are held by profit-hungry
investment banks, asset management funds and private equity funds. These sharks bought or sold its shares by looking at its revenue and the amount of cash on its balance book. Executive pay and bonuses were linked to the ability to generate cash and support the share price. So Carillion had to bid low to win contracts and keep expanding into more risky areas. The government cannot rescue the firm because of the neoliberal “austerity” borrowing rules it follows and because state aid would fall foul of the free market EU rules. The deepening capitalist crisis shows that popular power and thorough going socialist measures are needed to rebuild Britain’s productive economy and break free from the EU big business club. #
Jeremy Corbyn “The Morning Star is the most precious and only voice we have in the daily media” £1 weekdays, £1.50 at weekends. From newsagents or online at www.morningstaronline.co.uk
People’s Assembly Against Austerity demonstrations and daily at the Trades Union L Nazi Azov fighters, now incorporated into the Ukrainian army seen here displaying their NATO and nazi banners.
No to nazis in Ukraine THE POLITICAL forces behind Azov trace their origins to the nazi collaborators and Ukrainian SS divisions who murdered thousands of Jewish and Polish people Following the EU/Nato-engineered right-wing coup in Ukraine the Communist Party faces a ban. Living standards plumet and the oligarchic regime continues to enrich itself. Britain’s Young Communist League has called a national day of action on 10 February 2018 in solidarity with the Communist Party and Komsomol (Young Communists) of Ukraine against state oppression and the rehabilitation of fascism. The YCL has called for a demonstration outside the Ukrainian Embassy in London (60 Holland Park, W11 3SJ) from 1pm onwards on Saturday 10 February 2018. Demonstrations are also being planned for Edinburgh, Glasgow and Manchester on the same day. Please contact office@ycl.org.uk if you are able to attend or want to organise a demonstration in your town or city. www.ycl.org.uk/intl/saru #
COMMUNIST REVIEW89
Congress. Current issues can be obtained at www.communist-party.org.uk while back numbers and a wide range of revolutionary material is available online at https://issuu.com/communist_party/docs communist reVieW is the communist party’s Journal of theory and discussion numBer 89 autumn 2018 £2.50
TWO BLOGS ON KEYNESIAN ECONOMICS Michael Roberts KARL MARX’S ECOSOCIALISM Martin Levy reviews Kohei Saito REMEMBERING DOMENICO LOSURDO Alex Höbel SOUL FOOD Mike Quille
editorial Martin Levy
SEX, GENDER, CLASS AND IDENTITY
sex, Gender, class and identity Mary Davis | Trish Lavelle | Susan Michie
Mary Davis | Trish Lavelle | Susan Michie | Joanne Stevenson | Deirdre O’Neil
| Jo Stevenson | Deirdre O’Neil COMMUNIST PARTY THEORY AND DISCUSSION JOURNAL NUMBER 89 AUTUMN 2018 £2.50
tWo BloGs on Keynesian economics Michael Roberts Karl marx’s ecosocialism Martin Levy reviews Kohei Saito rememBerinG domenico losurdo Alex Höbel soul food Mike Quille Contact Yorkshire Communist Party via
CPB
Yorkshire Communists
H Leeds (07866 479489)
H Sheffield (07531 079268)
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