Socialism is rule by the people. They will decide how socialism is to work. The task of socialists is to help and steer the transfer of power from capitalists to the people. To use the word “socialism” for anything but people’s power is to misuse the term.
The Socialist Party argues that it is capitalism, not over-population, which is responsible for the "scarcity" we experience in our lives. Many in the Green movement accept the idea that the planet is full and there are too many people in the World, and that we need to do something about it. The Socialist Party position is it is not people who are the problem, but the way our social life is organiSed: capitalism. Those who support the ‘overpopulation’ argument quite simply play into the hands of governments, nationalists and anti-feminists who are quite happy to step up demographic controls, people management and anti-immigration policies. Also by interpreting population growth as the root cause of the environmental crisis they completely disregard the systemic nature of the problem and thus let capitalism off the hook. Throughout history, the overpopulation argument has been used to present people and children as the source of inherently social problems. Whether it’s the poor, the blacks or Asians all have been used strategically as scapegoats for an irrational and unproductive use of space and resources within a capitalist economy. Closing the borders while presenting immigrants as swarms of migrants exhausting national resources like locusts are common images for racists and nationalists. We should be attacking capitalism, not families. It isn’t surprising that newcomers will eventually be blamed for capitalism’s failures. Capitalism doesn’t make sense and neither do capitalist solutions. The ‘overpopulation’ proponents ask not for a new form of social organisation (that might see land and resources accessed and shared more evenly, contributing to less poverty, more sustainable lifestyles and fewer wars) but takes the shameful and hopeless route of blaming people, the victims.
Socialism will very likely dramatically improve people's life-spans and higher standards of living are likely to lower birthrates, leading to longer-term population stability. Once we are living in socialism, the release of human creativity to solve the problem of a finite planet and potential ever-expending population will provide many strategies that we can't even begin to imagine. New technologies of food production and medicine will be able to do more and more to remove the 'problem' in the first place. The major thing is the re-organisation of society.
Food availability depends on a number of factors. The first one is the purchasing capacity of the people. We should not forget that, during the 1974 famine, Bangladesh's per capita food availability was the highest to date. Even then, over 30,000 people died of starvation and millions suffered from malnutrition at that time, as the poor didn't have access to food grains for lack of purchasing capacity.
In 2010 a food crisis hit West Africa but it has nothing to do with shortages of food. From the Guardian.
The Guardian reported:
"When you walk through the markets, you can see that there is food here. The problem is that the ability to buy it has disappeared. People here depend on livestock to support themselves, but animals are being killed on the edge of exhaustion, and that means they are being sold for far less money. And on top of that, the cost of food basics has risen".
Basically market mechanisms are failing to allow people to get the food they need.
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