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Wednesday, September 06, 2017

Those with money, eat; those without, don’t.

Money dominates Mankind almost completely in modern capitalism. Humankind's history shows no other human invention to which we have been so subservient towards. Most people have only vague notions about the nature of money. It is credited with magical, mystical powers which really stem from its users. It has no use or existence apart from men in society. Men do not derive power from money, but money derives its power from men.

It would be reprehensible for those in the Socialist Party to sneer at the myriad worldwide charities and NGOs all vainly striving to address and redress the countless oppressions and outrages that abound around the globe. Such activity is actually testimony to the highly social nature of the human species even in this most cut-throat capitalist society. Nevertheless, all these well-meaning, good-intentioned people have yet to grasp that their own activities, however benign, are actually serving to prolong the very conditions they seek to alleviate. Capitalism can only function in one way – the pursuit of profit. In specific, transitory circumstances where adequate profits cannot be realised, then crops will not be grown (or alternatively, be stockpiled or destroyed), and governments, as the agents of the dominant class, simply help facilitate this process. The plain incontrovertible truth is that there is but one root cause of world hunger and that is capitalism. The aid organisations responded in the best and only way they know to the obscenity that is world hunger. Ever-generous both with their time and their funds they keep requesting more and more of both. It is tragic that they never make that leap of the imagination to realise that no matter how much the capitalist system is tinkered with, it cannot be made to operate for the benefit of humanity at large. Lock, stock and barrel, the capitalist system has to go.

In capitalism everything produced by labour is reduced to money terms; has a price. All spheres of human activity are measured by cost. Every human relationship is either directly affected or tainted by money considerations. Working-class family life, particularly, centres around the wage-packet, which determines the standard of living, amenities and social status enjoyed, type of clothes and education of the children, the future wage-earners. Success is measured by pay, irrespective of the usefulness of work. The basic capitalist relations of buyer and seller, employer and employee, landlord and tenant, into which all enter, are regarded—almost revered—as indispensable, yet they need not exist at all at society's present technological development.

The rich are not rich merely because they have money, but because they own the means of production and distribution. The rent, interest and profit they accumulate, derived from the sale of commodities, produced by workers but owned by capitalists, represents their real wealth. The poor, on the other hand, are not poor because their wages are low but because, not owning means of production and distribution, they are compelled to continue as workers for wages whether high or low. Humanity has transformed the Earth yet the fruits of science and technology are not readily available to us. The money-system's straitjackets and stifles our every move. Millions still starve and live in slums. Capitalism's antiquated social relationships prevent abundance for all.

Rather than the social division into rich and poor, those contrasting extremes of wealth, the Socialist Party points the way to the next stage in social evolution, a world-wide, money-free, class-free society in which all the productive means would belong in common to all humanity. In socialism the means of life would be produced in abundance solely for use and distributed freely, not exchanged or sold, rendering money unnecessary. Freed from the debased motives engendered by capitalism, all individuals could realise their full physical and intellectual powers. We inhabit a world of potential abundance for all, but it is also the case that we have trapped ourselves within a social system of mass deprivation. Throughout the world, millions upon millions of men and women are denied their basic needs. Even in the so-called rich countries, poverty is the lot of the majority. Poverty characterises the life of every worker who is deprived of access to what society could provide for them, but they cannot afford to buy.

Socialism will discard the old rules of the buying and selling game of the market and will distribute what is needed on the basis of free and equal access. Money will be abolished: you cannot buy from yourself what you commonly own. The satisfaction of human needs will involve people giving according to their abilities and taking according to their needs. Free access means that no human being will need to buy anything. Anything that society can produce will be there for the taking. Decent food; the best houses possible to build; gas, electricity, water; TVs, computers, entertainment; all medical and educational services - all completely free and available for all.

Socialists do not have a narrow conception of need. We would not wish to give the impression that socialism will do no more than satisfying basic living requirements - although doing that alone will be a momentous step forward for the millions of workers now denied the satisfaction of their most elementary needs. More than that, socialism will allow humans to be creative and to explore our wider needs. 

 For too long our needs have been over-influenced by the selling process and the crude mind manipulation of the advertisers: in a socialist society we can begin to think about what we really require to be happy human beings and we shall set about supplying ourselves with the resources needed to live as fully as we can.  Socialism will not only be able to satisfy our existing needs, but it will enable us to question and challenge those needs - to escape from the poverty of capitalist-determined needs. Needs are social. We are only free to have goods and services to use if it is technically possible to produce them and if there are people ready to do so. In a socialist society, there is not going to be a sudden, utopian-like abundance of everything: the skies will not rain with goodies. Socialism will release from the constraints of profit the abundant resources of the planet and these will be used to allow us to live decently and well. We will have to realise that living in a world of cooperation entails giving as well as taking. In a worldwide human family, there will be no shortage of willing volunteers to ensure that those who cannot work are cared for; there will be no problem of people refusing to do what cooperation demands of their humanity. In a world of free access, it will be a pleasure to fulfill the necessity of working to produce goods and services, sure in the knowledge that one is not doing so to make a boss rich but to make all of our fellow inhabitants of the global village rich in the quality of life. No-one will be forced to do anything as a matter of compulsion in a socialist society: if anyone declines to participate in work he or she will simply be regarded as very odd. The last thing anyone will do once he or she is free to live in cooperative equality will be to spurn sociability and intercourse.

For years members of the Socialist Party have argued the case for such an exciting alternative of living. For how much longer we will remain a small minority? Will our fellow-workers continue to accept a world of misery and insecurity in the midst of potential plenty? Or will they unite to build a social system where never again will the cry of a hungry child whose parents lack the money to feed it be heard ever again?

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