REVIEWED BY STEPHEN O'BRIEN

“There is not much inspiration in this south western section of the city ... open green space is thin on the ground as council estates occupy much of the seat's territory... If a militant took the seat some interest would be excited, but it won't.” This was how the BBC's web site described the Glasgow seat of Pollock Park just before the 1997 British general election.

One of the many inspiring stories recounted in Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) activists Tommy Sheridan's and Allan McCombes' Imagine is the description of how a supposedly “uninspiring” estate like Pollock fought back after the city council tried to close its neighbourhood centre in 1997. The community rallied together. Despite the electricity being cut off, the local people continued to organise “bingo, band practise, yoga, sewing classes, children's parties and a youth club”. Pollock people eventually won and their hall was reopened. Sheridan and McCombes describe this as “a glimpse of the type of society we could build by harnessing the skills, talents, and energy of millions of ordinary people”.

McCombes is editor of the Scottish Socialist Voice, the SSP's newspaper, while Tommy Sheridan was the “militant” the BBC referred to who stood in Pollock Park in 1997 and won 11%. In 1999, he was elected to the Scottish parliament representing Glasgow.

It's not often that an MP is willing to face arrest and police batons to stand up for social justice and nuclear disarmament. Sheridan's parliamentary web site declares his admiration for Marx, Che Guevara, Lenin and Trotsky.

Imagine arose from the authors' realisation that there was a need for simplified but convincing arguments for socialism after they had travelled around Scotland explaining the SSP's case for “an independent socialist Scotland and a global challenge to the rule of capitalism”. The book's aim is to inspire people to “to get involved ... on the side of the weak against the strong, on the side of the poor against the rich, on the side of the underdog against the powerful”. It is certainly doing that. Imagine is in the top 10 list of bestsellers in Scotland.

After you read Imagine, you think, “that's right, the same sort of things happen here”. Ordinary struggles and social problems are explained in such a way that you realise that the capitalist system is rotten the world over, whether you are in Scotland or Australia.

It reminded me of the pensioners who stood on the picket lines outside Wallsend hospital near Newcastle for 12 months in the 1990-91 fight to retain medical services in the area. It also reminded me of the Newcastle State Dockyard workers who tried to stop the NSW Labor government privatising the yard. Memories were evoked of the more recent struggle of the STP metalworkers who relentlessly exposed the opulent lifestyle and “creative accountancy” of their bosses.

The case for socialism is argued in four parts, each based around phrases from John Lennon's songs. “Give Me Some Truth” explains how the working class has been ravaged by capitalist globalisation. “The rich get richer, not by trickling wealth down to the working class and the poor, but by making the working class and the poor even poorer”, the authors state. The consequences of this simple fact — which the capitalist class does so much to hide — are revealed in many fascinating, but appalling, statistics. One example: in Glasgow, “there are more people making a living from selling illegal drugs than from building ships”.

“Watching the Wheels Go Around” reveals the hidden workings of imperialism, like Third World exploitation, environmental degradation and the workings of “democracy”.

Sheridan and McCombes side with the battles against global capitalism that have been waged on the streets of Seattle, Washington, London and Melbourne. They defend young people's right to take to the streets.

The Scottish socialists challenge the notion that the capitalist system is organised rationally, asking: What do the rich really do? Do we really need them? “Even if the rich were to mount an all-out indefinite general strike involving every stockbroker, shareholder, investment analyst, fund manager, currency trader, property speculator, and company director, most of us would scarcely even notice the difference”, they observe. Perhaps the rich and their hirelings will get the message and stay home on May 1 when anti-globalisation activists in Australia blockade the country's stock exchanges.

“Power to the People” explains how the capitalists rely on politicians in parties like the Labor Party to apologise for, and justify, their class war against working people. British Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair and his fellow social-democratic hypocrites are major targets of Imagine. Blair's pledge to create a society with “equality of opportunity”, rather than equality, is compared to the “equality of opportunity” of the lottery.

This is how Sheridan and McCombes describe capitalist democracy: “The fighter in the blue corner always wins and the fighter in the red corner always loses. And, if there's ever any chance that the red corner will be victorious, the referee will call the fight to a halt and declare the blue corner the winner.”

The last section Imagine argues for socialism within the framework of Scottish independence. The case is made from a refreshing and progressive perspective that is inclusive of Scots of all races and backgrounds. It incorporates the issues of gay and lesbian rights, fighting women's oppression and solidarity with the people of the Third World and international freedom struggles.

Stress is placed on extending individual civil rights, promoting social ownership of the means of production, and community participation and direct democracy. “Large-scale industry, oil, gas, electricity, the national railway network could be owned by the people of Scotland as a whole and run by democratically elected boards in which workers, consumers and the wider socialist government were all represented”, the authors propose.

Many of the arguments traditionally used against socialism — that cite “human nature” and what happened in the Soviet bloc — are countered in a chapter amusingly called “Champagne and Cyanide”. The supposed socialist belief in restrictions on individual liberty and creativity are all convincingly tackled.

However, little mention is made of one of the best examples in favour of socialism — Cuba. That, I assume, has something to do with the context of the British left, in which many good activists remain confused on this question.

A strength of Imagine, and the SSP, is its inclusiveness and non-sectarianism. Don't expect a direct outline of the SSP's differences with other revolutionaries or polemics against other revolutionary parties. The authors' target is capitalism and its reformist apologists.

I would have preferred a clearer explanation of how to get to socialism. A “big bang theory” of socialism is rejected. However, enough historical examples of how masses of people have tried to change their society — such as the Spanish Revolution in 1936 and the 1968 worker-student uprising in Paris — are presented that allow readers to draw their own conclusions. You don't have to be a theoretical genius to realise the implication of the statement, “We need to tear up the old rule book and establish a new set of rules”.

As well as inspiring us to take sides, to become involved and to recognise the power of our own struggles, the book reveals the SSP project to be an excellent example of what revolutionary and socialist unity can achieve.

The Australian revolutionary left can learn much from Imagine and the work of the SSP. Imagine is not a set of instructions but a positive explanation at a time when the capitalist system is beginning to be questioned on a mass scale. To paraphrase a quote from Oscar Wilde used in Imagine: “Show me a book which can imagine utopia and I'll show you a book well worth reading.”

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