Author: alanjjohnstone
Happy New Year
We wish all our web visitors a Happy New Year. We very much wish them that but at the present time, the signs of the coming new year being happy are none too hopeful. At the dawn of another new year, it is fitting that we look backwards at the past. 2021 was the year in which the world…
WSM and Trade Unions 3/3
As the trade union movement stands today it is still craft and sectional in outlook, still mainly pro-capitalist. The struggle on the economic field held under capitalism has to be, and is, carried on by socialists and non-socialist alike. The small number of workers who really understand the meaning of socialism is such that any attempt…
WSM and Trade Unions 2/3
For clarity, we should state the World Socialist Movement’s position towards trade unions We recognise that, under capitalism, workers depend on the wage or salary they get for the sale of their labour-power and that it is in their interest to get the highest possible price for this; collective organisation and action, as via trade unions, can help…
WSM and Trade Unions 1/3
Trade unions arise out of the wage-relation that is at the basis of capitalism. When we say that labour-power has a commodity nature, it must express its value through a struggle in the labour market. Combining together in trade unions to exert collective pressure on employers is a way workers can prevent their wages from falling…
Imponerle impuestos a los ricos
Es mejor abolir los capitalistas Abundan las estadísticas que muestran cómo los más ricos de todo el mundo se han vuelto aún más ricos. Los economistas explican que nunca en la historia de la humanidad la desigualdad en una sociedad no ha sido tan extrema como en esta época actual. La concentración de la riqueza…
What is the WSM 3/3
Against the Left Arguing with left-wingers is not always a useful way to spend our time. Lack of political progress and success leads to the perpetual plea from the left-wing, “We’ve got the wrong leadership”. Many political groups pose as “leaders” of the working class. We do not. The World Socialist Movement (WSM) say that fellow workers should…
What is the WSM 2/3
The World Socialist Movement (WSM) is not the socialist “party” that Marx had envisaged, that is, the working class as a whole organised politically for socialism. This will come later. For the moment, the WSM can be described as only socialist advocates or an educational organisation and it can’t be anything else (and nor would it try to be) at the moment. Possibly, we…
What is the WSM 1/3
As wage workers, the vast majority of us have endless economic problems to worry about – pay and prices, rents and mortgages, sickness, unemployment, old age. Even more worrisome can seem the large and perhaps overwhelming problems facing us as human beings: war, poverty and the compulsive ecological destruction of our own planet by those who seek…
Reforms and Reformism 3/3
After over a century of reform activity, and the sincere efforts of a multitude of reformers, the world is in a greater mess than ever it was. We, socialists, are often accused of being opposed to reforms, social legislation designed to ameliorate some intolerable situation. Not so. We of the World Socialist Movement are not…
Reforms and Reformism 2/3
The World Socialist Movement neither promotes nor condemns positive reforms to capitalism. We believe that socialists shouldn’t work for reforms to capitalism, because only a movement for socialism itself can establish socialism. Those who work for reforms hold either that reforms to capitalism will eventually result in socialism, or that supporting reforms is an appropriate way to…