Patriotism is nationalism as an ideology. It is used to persuade workers they have a country to fight and die for. In fact, workers have no country, but the World to win, in common with fellow workers worldwide. Socialism is a post-capitalist, production for use society, of free access without prices or any need for a means of exchange, as everything is owned in common. Many people are attributing attempts to regulate capitalist excesses, with socialism when in fact they are elements of governing capitalism, using reformist means to manage discontent. The purpose of business is to exploit the worker for the surplus value which they alone create. Their failure (reforms) is just further evidence of the fact capitalism cannot be managed and requires replacement, by common ownership and democratic control of all the means of producing and distributing wealth, with production for use and local, regional and global control by the people themselves in conditions of free access and sharing of vital resources. Socialism has never existed anywhere, regardless of the labels political opportunists claimed for themselves, as it is a post-capitalist society. Many mistakenly refer socialism to top-down state capitalist efforts, in many cases to establish capitalist production methods, with its concomitants of waged enslaved conditions of production, poverty (absolute or relative) and war. 'Left wing' thinking is irrelevant to socialism, as in the main the Left attempt to manage capitalism and retain the features of it such as waged labour, governments and apparatus of state control. (Meet the new boss, same as the old boss)
Socialism is not some Left variant of capitalism, but the anti-thesis of it, with production for use, utilising the advanced technology of capitalism to create the superabundance of necessities which will be required for free access. It will be a fully democratic society, locally, regionally, globally, with recallable delegates where necessary on world bodies such as WHO as an example where we need specialised expertise. Too many folk fall into a trap of addressing the question from a perspective which has been shaped by a society with rationed access as a norm and attributing human behaviours arising out of the social conditioned normative responses of the present day, as general principles, a 'human nature' even. War as 'business by other means' is not a natural event but a social one arising out of competition.
Socialism will come about as the conscious political act of the immense majority acting in their class interest and will become seen, as in the interest of all humanity ultimately, ending war over resources, and artificially created scarcity, poverty absolute and relative, created by the production of commodities for markets in conditions of waged slavery, rather than production of useful utilities for human needs, so it will not have the same resistance, when it is seen to be in everyone’s ultimate self-interest to manage the planet and resources for all rather than depleting it for a minority parasitic owning class.
Jonathan Portes of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research thinks over-population alarm is wrong. “We find it hard to be positive about population growth. But it has boosted economic growth. It has made austerity less painful, by increasing total employment and tax revenues. And congestion, pressure on services – they’re considerably easier to cope with, from a collective point of view, than the opposite problems. We’ve forgotten what depopulation feels like.”
Between 1975 and 1978, the UK population fell. In 1982, it dropped again. “The population of inner London fell by 20% in the 70s,” says Jonathan Portes. “Many people said London was basically doomed. It was going to go the way of Detroit. Inner London would become wasteland.” The consequences of depopulation could be bleak: boarded-up houses; miles of urban dereliction; dwindling investment and passenger numbers in and on public transport. In some places, despite the recovery of the population since, this emptied Britain still exists.
Portes points out that much of the UK is not crowded anyway. Liverpool and Glasgow have barely half as many inhabitants now as they had at their peaks in the middle of the 20th century. All population statistics are by definition slightly out of date and approximate, but while England has roughly 410 people a sq. km – the second highest in the EU – Wales has only 150, Northern Ireland 135 and Scotland 70. Even heaving, stressful London is much less full of people than is widely supposed. “London is the lowest-density mega-city on the planet,” says Danny Dorling. “The densest part of London is four times less dense than Barcelona, a normal, well-planned European city that Britons all want to visit.”
Globally, 50% of the world’s population is crammed into just 1% of the Earth’s landmass. Yet if you wished you could fit the entire world’s human population into the state of Texas.
The world’s population is predicted by some to reach 11 billion by 2100. The map shows there is space for us all to live but it’ll take some clever socialist thinking, in a post-capitalist, commonly owned, production for use society to ensure we actually do.
The map is based on NASA’s gridded population data, which records the population of Earth in 14 square kilometre patches. This map uses a grid of 28 million cells of roughly 3 x 3 miles. “The yellow region in the map includes every cell with a population of 8,000 or more people. Since each of them has an area of about nine square miles, the population density of each yellow cell is at least 900 people per square mile, roughly the same population density as the state of Massachusetts.
It is the economic argument of accumulation, accumulation, of ever more profits for the capitalist parasite class is the driver of the destruction of harmonious use of resources. This senseless, in a sane society, competition between rival capitalists, the duplication of which leads to economic crises, leads to war and destruction of the natural environment. It is quite possible to produce a superabundance of all the necessities, food, clothing, shelter etc. in ways which ensure the satisfaction of human needs without wasteful overproduction. The end of the market system will end, armies, government, banking, insurance and all of the attendant paraphernalia associated with the waged rationed economy.
"From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs".
Do not settle for crumbs from the rich man's table, take over the bakery. We have the World to win.
Wee Matt
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