"He who is
morally impressed by power is never in a critical mood, and he is never a
revolutionary character" - Erich
Fromm
Some people prefer to live with a flawed understanding of
the world around them, which attributes a 'base' human nature as a prime
motivator to peoples’ behaviour, but humans behave differently depending upon the
conditions that they live in. Even very short term changes in those conditions
can dramatically change the way people behave. Most of what people refer to as "human
nature" is actually human behaviour: reactions to the world around them.
Human behaviour reflects society.
In a society such as capitalism, people's needs are not met and reasonable people feel insecure. People tend to acquire and hoard goods because possession provides some security. People have a tendency to distrust others because the world is organized in such a dog-eat-dog manner. Under capitalism, and the previous systems, people have good reason to worry about tomorrow—they can lose their jobs, or be injured, or grow old, and need a cushion of wealth to fall back on.
In a socialist society, everyone is entitled to have their needs met. They won't be kicked out onto the street, or forced to give up the pleasures of life. There will be no poverty. The "cushion" will be cooperatively provided by all. The 'Human Nature' argument is just a fueling of prejudice and all this prejudice, none of which can survive a moment's critical thought, has been used politically to resist progress. It has been used as an objection to socialism.
The arguments that our behaviour is determined by our physical inheritance may pose as science but in reality they are socially determined prejudice, used as part of crude political ideology. In this argument all the bad examples of human behaviour which in the main are generated by capitalism, are called upon to say that a society based on equality and voluntary co-operation is impossible. Human beings are social animals capable of a wide range of behaviours. Millions are engaged in altruistic and voluntarist pursuits.
Their very existence gives the lie to 'Human Nature arguments. The weakest argument around. Human behaviour is culturally created. In any case it is a matter of "enlightened self-interest" to get rid of minority ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, ending competition leading to war and impoverishment, and take them into common ownership with democratic control to have production for use, to produce a superabundance of wealth, from which we can all take according to our needs and contribute according to our abilities.
In a society such as capitalism, people's needs are not met and reasonable people feel insecure. People tend to acquire and hoard goods because possession provides some security. People have a tendency to distrust others because the world is organized in such a dog-eat-dog manner. Under capitalism, and the previous systems, people have good reason to worry about tomorrow—they can lose their jobs, or be injured, or grow old, and need a cushion of wealth to fall back on.
In a socialist society, everyone is entitled to have their needs met. They won't be kicked out onto the street, or forced to give up the pleasures of life. There will be no poverty. The "cushion" will be cooperatively provided by all. The 'Human Nature' argument is just a fueling of prejudice and all this prejudice, none of which can survive a moment's critical thought, has been used politically to resist progress. It has been used as an objection to socialism.
The arguments that our behaviour is determined by our physical inheritance may pose as science but in reality they are socially determined prejudice, used as part of crude political ideology. In this argument all the bad examples of human behaviour which in the main are generated by capitalism, are called upon to say that a society based on equality and voluntary co-operation is impossible. Human beings are social animals capable of a wide range of behaviours. Millions are engaged in altruistic and voluntarist pursuits.
Their very existence gives the lie to 'Human Nature arguments. The weakest argument around. Human behaviour is culturally created. In any case it is a matter of "enlightened self-interest" to get rid of minority ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, ending competition leading to war and impoverishment, and take them into common ownership with democratic control to have production for use, to produce a superabundance of wealth, from which we can all take according to our needs and contribute according to our abilities.
The Socialist Party is not part of the Left wing of
capitalism and stands for its removal, not its reproduction. You should make
common cause with fellow workers worldwide to establish a classless,
post-capitalist, production for use, free access, commonly owned society.
Abolish the wages and prices system.
We leave you to the fantasy that the system in which poverty and war are concomitants, which created two world wars, culminating in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, is the best there is. The imperialist ambitions which caused the horrors of the Congo and Auschwitz, is incapable of being replaced by a humanity centred solution.
Capitalism is an obsolete and outmoded method of production, which can never satisfy human needs while retaining private, corporate or state ownership of resources and the means and instruments for producing wealth as its mode of production can only satisfy market requirements and not human needs. It cannot exist without a vast infrastructure dedicated to waging of war (mis-named defence), poverty, absolute and relative and cannot husband the natural resources of the planet, due to the intense competitive nature of its market led system leading to clashes between rival capitalist interests over raw materials trade routes and geo-political advancement of its dominant market players. Religion is just a tool used by power seekers in the capitalist system to divide and rule it is no more to blame than nationalism, xenophobia, plundering of other countries for vital resources.
We leave you to the fantasy that the system in which poverty and war are concomitants, which created two world wars, culminating in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, is the best there is. The imperialist ambitions which caused the horrors of the Congo and Auschwitz, is incapable of being replaced by a humanity centred solution.
Capitalism is an obsolete and outmoded method of production, which can never satisfy human needs while retaining private, corporate or state ownership of resources and the means and instruments for producing wealth as its mode of production can only satisfy market requirements and not human needs. It cannot exist without a vast infrastructure dedicated to waging of war (mis-named defence), poverty, absolute and relative and cannot husband the natural resources of the planet, due to the intense competitive nature of its market led system leading to clashes between rival capitalist interests over raw materials trade routes and geo-political advancement of its dominant market players. Religion is just a tool used by power seekers in the capitalist system to divide and rule it is no more to blame than nationalism, xenophobia, plundering of other countries for vital resources.
A genuine post-capitalist society would utilise the immense
forces of production of capitalism, shorn of its private, corporate or state
ownership, its wasteful war production and machinery, necessary only because of
its intense competition with rival parasitic capitalist groups, leading to war
over trade routes, markets and raw materials as well as geo-political advantage.
It would replace production for sale on a market and waged-slavery and the
waged rationed access to the wealth produced, with co-operative production for
use, free labour and free access, to the social product for all, in conditions
of production for use and unleash the technological capacity, within a moneyless
society to provide a superabundance of the necessities of life, which we all
could democratically oversee.
Labour -power is the only commodity workers have in a rigged market, where we do not even have a "Right to work" and we do not receive the value of our labour. The only commodity this applies to is the workers labour power. We only receive the market price (wages) which is not equivalent to its value. The capitalist class pocket the full value of the surplus after realising the sale of the products of labour. If you are born poor you will die poor, generally speaking and relatively speaking with few exceptions. If you are born into the parasite capitalist owning class you will die richer than when you were born with few exceptions.
Labour -power is the only commodity workers have in a rigged market, where we do not even have a "Right to work" and we do not receive the value of our labour. The only commodity this applies to is the workers labour power. We only receive the market price (wages) which is not equivalent to its value. The capitalist class pocket the full value of the surplus after realising the sale of the products of labour. If you are born poor you will die poor, generally speaking and relatively speaking with few exceptions. If you are born into the parasite capitalist owning class you will die richer than when you were born with few exceptions.
The whole world and everything in it and on it, is already
run from top to bottom by the world's workers within the capitalist system. We
are constrained by the mode of production for sale in the market, in conditions of
waged slavery, a system where access to food, clothing, shelter and everything
else, is rationed according to ability to pay for the goods and services, which
we already collectively produce.
Not only is all wealth produced by the worlds workers, we run this vast wealth production, in the factories and mines and workshops, even electing governments 'over' us, in the interests of the profits of the parasite capitalist economic class. The owners of this system generally do not run or manage it.
The world’s economic activity should all be owned in common and controlled democratically, by the whole world’s population in a new post-capitalist arrangement of, production for use, with free access and democratic control over 'resources' and not people. The ends determine the means and the new society has to be a product of the democratic decision and will of the immense majority. Peacefully if we can, and forcefully only if we must if the democratic will of the immense majority is thwarted.
, Typical lefty Trotskyist behaviour in the Leninist mode think the end justifies the means. Instead of showing capitalism cannot be reformed and advocating its replacement, they advocate supporting of reformism to show later how the workers have been betrayed. They think workers are too dumb to realise their answer lies in replacing capitalism with a post-capitalist society and set out to be the vanguard which will lead them. There will not be a socialist state.
Socialism is a direct democratic, self-organising world society, which achieves economic and political equality equilibrium, by the production for use non-ownership with free access and automatic stock control feedback loops.
Capitalism is not self-organising, it is controlled violence, however, it is certainly a very resilient system, when it gains assent from the populace through the ballot box and ideological state apparatus, education, media etc. but it is just as likely to use direct top-down violence when its hegemony is threatened, by breaking the heads of the populace and proxy adventures, but the state-capitalism is not a product of socialism, no more than Bismarck's Germany was, but a product of trying to direct and develop capitalism, on top of a feudal system within a competitive capitalist world environment.
Socialists seek a class-free, prices-free, wage-free society, with private, state, corporate ownership abolished and replaced, with a tyranny-free, war-free, poverty-free, world commonwealth.
Not only is all wealth produced by the worlds workers, we run this vast wealth production, in the factories and mines and workshops, even electing governments 'over' us, in the interests of the profits of the parasite capitalist economic class. The owners of this system generally do not run or manage it.
The world’s economic activity should all be owned in common and controlled democratically, by the whole world’s population in a new post-capitalist arrangement of, production for use, with free access and democratic control over 'resources' and not people. The ends determine the means and the new society has to be a product of the democratic decision and will of the immense majority. Peacefully if we can, and forcefully only if we must if the democratic will of the immense majority is thwarted.
, Typical lefty Trotskyist behaviour in the Leninist mode think the end justifies the means. Instead of showing capitalism cannot be reformed and advocating its replacement, they advocate supporting of reformism to show later how the workers have been betrayed. They think workers are too dumb to realise their answer lies in replacing capitalism with a post-capitalist society and set out to be the vanguard which will lead them. There will not be a socialist state.
Socialism is a direct democratic, self-organising world society, which achieves economic and political equality equilibrium, by the production for use non-ownership with free access and automatic stock control feedback loops.
Capitalism is not self-organising, it is controlled violence, however, it is certainly a very resilient system, when it gains assent from the populace through the ballot box and ideological state apparatus, education, media etc. but it is just as likely to use direct top-down violence when its hegemony is threatened, by breaking the heads of the populace and proxy adventures, but the state-capitalism is not a product of socialism, no more than Bismarck's Germany was, but a product of trying to direct and develop capitalism, on top of a feudal system within a competitive capitalist world environment.
Socialists seek a class-free, prices-free, wage-free society, with private, state, corporate ownership abolished and replaced, with a tyranny-free, war-free, poverty-free, world commonwealth.
"He who owns the
means by which I live owns my very life." - Shakespeare.
Edinburgh Br.
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