Friday, March 13, 2015

Be realistic, do the impossible

We are socialists because we share a vision of a humane social system based on rational planning, meaningful work, a healthy and sustainable environment, with gender and racial equality. Under capitalism, markets manufacture scarcity. Anything that is in abundance cannot be sold on the market. As capitalism must constantly grow without limit, so too must it also relentlessly create scarcity.  Capitalism is driven to destroy abundance. We live in an interconnected world. Nobody can escape climate change, which will be a problem so long as the world capitalist market persist. Local economies are perpetually undermined by world markets. Ideas about reverting to family farming and small business economy, breaking up monopoly capital don’t recognise the real forces driving capitalism. Concentrated capital can’t be opposed by weak capital. Alternative economic forms can’t escape the net of capitalism without first overturning it. Thus, even worker-owned cooperatives must exist and make a profit within the capitalist framework, or they go under. This isn’t to say these are not worthwhile efforts, but their limits under capitalism should be recognised. Our goal is a social and economic system based on direct democracy in politics and economy and on democratically planned production. We want a system of production and distribution that is in accordance with the needs of each individual and of society as a whole, and which takes into account the regenerative capacities of the natural environment. For us in the Socialist Party socialism is not a utopian vision of a distant future.

Many ecologists are rooted in the idea that “civilisation” threatens the rest of the planet, passing over any mention of the role of capitalist production entirely. If the problem lies in the individual amoral actions of humans, divorced from economics and politics, this opens the door to blaming certain humans for the ecological crisis. Focusing on overpopulation rather than resource misdistribution and capitalist growth boils down to blaming the poor. It ignores the facts that that the average American has an enormous carbon footprint compared to those in the Global South. The military machine produces massive emissions and pollution, and much of the industrial pollution in the developing world is from production for First World consumption. Also ignored is that birth rates rise with poverty and fall with adequate social development and the empowerment of women.

“Tragedy of the Commons” is an invented fable by Garrett Hardin, a University of California professor who argued for sterilisation of “genetically defective” people and against foreign food aid because it would enable starving children in poor countries to survive, increasing overpopulation. It has been used as justification to disenfranchise indigenous people of their land and delegitimise non-capitalist social systems. It argues for enclosure and privatisation of public property on the claim that users of the commons are inherently selfish and will overuse the resource by trying to outcompete their neighbour. It has no basis or evidence in reality whatsoever. In reality, communities with common ownership of property have existed stably for thousands of years by self-regulating through common decision-making. This was true democratic, social management of resources, and it resulted in balance. It is private property in the capitalist era which has driven over-exploitation, the exact opposite of Hardin’s thesis.

The goals of The Socialist Party is a life free of exploitation, insecurity, poverty; an end to unemployment, hunger and homelessness; an end to all forms of discrimination, prejudice and bigotry; the extension of democracy and the creation of a truly humane and rationally planned society that will stimulate the fullest flowering of the human personality, creativity and talent. The advocates of capitalism hold that such goals are unrealistic because that human beings are inherently selfish and evil. We are confident, however, that such goals can be realised, but only through a socialist society. Since its inception capitalism has been fatally flawed. Its inherent laws - to maximise profit on the backs of the working class - give rise to the class struggle. History is a continuous story of people rising up against those who exploit and oppress them, to demand what's theirs. Socialists say that capitalism won't be around forever. Just like previous societies weren't around forever either. Slavery gave rise to feudalism and feudalism to capitalism. So, too, capitalism gives rise to socialism.

Poverty will be ended quickly with the end of unemployment and the redeployment of the vast resources now wasted in war production. There are plenty of jobs that need doing and plenty of people who can do them. Automation at the service of the working people will lead to both reduced hours of work and higher living standards, with no layoffs. Under capitalism, improvements in skill, organisation and technology are rightly feared by the worker, since they threaten jobs. Under socialism, they offer the chance to make the job more interesting and rewarding, as well as to improve living standards. Socialism provides moral incentives because the fruits of labor benefit all. No person robs others of the profits from their labour; when social goals are adopted by the majority, people will want to work for these goals. Work will seem less a burden, more and more a creative activity, where everyone is his/her neighbour's helper instead of rival. With capitalism gone, crime will also begin to disappear, for it is the vicious profit system that corrupts people and breeds crime.

There are broadly two ways in which the socialist movement strives for change. Some like ourselves are organised as parties to gain political power. Others are organised as protest movements fighting for change but with no desire to seize political power. We believe that the struggle for socialism must necessarily make use of both types of strategies in parallel for the abolition of the existing social relations. To carry through the socialist economic and social transformation requires political rule by the working class - a government of, by and for the people. Capitalists like to claim that socialism means dictatorship and capitalism means democracy. The opposite is true. Capitalism is the dictatorship of the market, a system of the rich, for the rich, by the rich. Socialism completes the democratic project by extending popular decision making to the economic sphere. Socialism is democracy. Capitalism is a system of wage slavery which turns individuals into commodities who are purchased and owned through market exchange which creates a sense of being owned and a loss of dignity.  


The Socialist Party say that it is possible to bring socialism through peaceful means, through the ballot box. One thing is clear, there won't be socialism until the majority of the people want it. Socialism is our vision for the future. It is a vision winning more and more people to because it is the logical replacement for capitalism and the next inevitable step up the ladder of human civilisation.

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