Author: alanjjohnstone
What is behind the label?
Frequently overlooked in her valuable contributions and campaigns for socialism has been Sylvia Pankhurst. She wrote a number of articles that describe socialism such as “The Future Society” and “Socialism”, both available at Marxist Internet Archive https://www.marxists.org/archive/pankhurst-sylvia/index.htm An article that appears to be absent is the following one first published in Workers’ Dreadnought, 3 November…
Socialism in the 21st Century
The concluding chapter of “Practical Socialism — Its Principles and Methods” (2006) by Pieter Lawrence It has been said that the Capitalist system digs its own grave; it does not! The only way it will be consigned to history is when a majority of people take political action to end it. But what the capitalist system does…
The Alternative To Capitalism
The following is a chapter from the 1986 book, State Capitalism: the Wages System Under New Management, by Adam Buick and the late John Crump. The Alternative To Capitalism If state capitalism is not socialism, what is? In other words, if state ownership and management of production does not amount to the abolition of capitalism but…
The One Big Union
The One Big Union, therefore, seeks to organize the wage worker, not according to craft, but according to industry; according to class and class needs. We, therefore, call upon all workers to organize irrespective of nationality, sex, or craft into a workers’ organization, so that we may be enabled to more successfully carry on the…
“The Great Money Trick”
We’re still ragged and we’re still tricked. The passage from Robert Tressell’s ‘The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists’ in which Frank Owen, the main character, outlines how the use of money under capitalism enriches capitalists and exploits the working class. “…Money is the cause of poverty because it is the device by which those who are too lazy to work are…
We are not alone
“Instead of the conservative motto, “A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work!” they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, “Abolition of the wages system!” (Karl Marx, Value, Price and Profit.) Though the World Socialist Movement doesn’t necessarily agree with the Industrial Workers of the World on everything, but we do think they present a…
Abolishing money
An Old Debate It is quite difficult to envisage a world without money. It requires a considerable imagination to think of life without, pound-notes, coins, banks and financial worries over paying the next bill. From birth to the grave, workers’ lives are conditioned by money. People grow old before their time because of it. Without money we…
The “Economic Calculation” Controversy
Unravelling of a myth by Robin Cox The economic calculation argument (ECA) has to do with the claim that, in the absence of market prices, a socialist economy would be unable to make rational choices concerning the allocation of resources and that this would make socialism an impracticable proposition. Tracing the historical development of this…
How Socialism Can Organise Production Without Money
From World Socialist No2 Winter 1984 1. Labour-time accounting or calculation in kind? In 1920 Ludwig von Mises published an article “Die Wirtschaftsrechnung im sozialistischen Germeinwesen” , which was translated into English in 1935 as “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth” and published in Collectivist Economic Planning: Critical Studies on the Possibilities of Socialism edited by Fron…
The Role of the Soviets
The role of the soviets in Russia’s bourgeois revolution: the point of view of Julius Martov This article originally appeared in the French political journal, Economies et societes, cahiers de l’ISMEA, Paris, serie S, Number 18, April-May 1976 issue. The basic principle defended by Marx throughout his forty years of socialist activity can be summed…