Socialism NOW!

The Socialist Party believes there is a way to overcome the world's economic and social problems and it is to replace the capitalist system with a socialist one. The only way to end poverty, unemployment, environmental destruction, war is to take society out of the hands of the capitalist class. The Socialist Party's objective is the socialist reconstruction of society. In a socialist system, commonly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprises would become the dominant form of ownership in our economy. For socialism to work, the working people must be intimately involved in helping to run the country and industry. Workers would be involved in management and in decision making at all levels. Socialism and democracy go hand-in-hand.

Right now the earth is producing more than enough to feed every human being — both on a global scale and within the countries associated with starvation. Enough grain is produced to provide everyone with ample protein and more than 3,000 calories a day. However, over one-third of this grain is fed to livestock. People are not hungry because food is scarce or because there are too many people. Pressure on the environment does not come from demands to produce more food — there is already enough.

In Mexico, where at least 80 per cent of the children in rural areas are undernourished, livestock — mostly for export to the USA — consume more basic grains than the country’s entire rural population. However, the system of ownership and control in agricultural production and the market economy prevents everyone being fed. The capacity to produce food is immense yet a large proportion of the world’s population lives in conditions of abject poverty and deprivation. 700 million people go hungry throughout the world. Hunger, deprivation, and homelessness are not limited to the under-developed world but increasingly hitting the poor in the rich countries. In the United States, about 40 million people are classified as “hungry” but no one can argue that this is because not enough food is being produced. Hunger exists in the face of plenty.

It is revealing that the assertion that hunger is caused by “over-population” is so widespread. It says a lot about how ordinary people are regarded. People are pictured as an economic liability when, in reality, all wealth begins with people, with human labour. The blame for growing poverty, hunger, and environmental degradation should not be placed on the poor and hungry, the victims. It should be placed on the pursuit of profit. Capitalism is based on the exploitation of labour and nature. Land, natural resources and energy sources are exploited at one end of the production process and the waste-absorbing capacity of the environment at the other end. The primary cause of the spiralling human and environmental crises on our planet is not the growing world population but capitalism’s unfair global economic policies. If “too many people” cause hunger, we would expect to find the most hunger in countries which have the most people in each area of land producing crops. But no such pattern exists. In reality, a food system where a few are in control inevitably under-uses and misuses food-producing resources. Throughout the world, larger landholders consistently produce less per hectare than the small producers. The environment is not being destroyed because people are trying to produce more food to feed growing populations. It is being destroyed because production is directed into the most profitable areas, regardless of the impact on humans or the environment, by predatory corporations which have concentrated control over food-producing resources in their hands. In Africa, large tracts of land perfectly suitable for permanent crops such as grazing grasses and fruit or nut trees have been torn up to make way for cotton and peanuts for export.

The best approach to combat poverty, world hunger, and ecological degradation is not through population control but through the fairer distribution of wealth and resources. It is not growing populations that threaten to destroy the environment, but forces of capital. Because of the nature of capitalism, millions starve to death each year — or survive year after year in a chronically malnourished state — because they are too poor to constitute an ‘effective demand’ on the market, and so they get nothing.  The root cause of today’s global crises is the globalisation of the market economy. Capitalism makes every effort to conceal this.

It was St Ambrose (340-397 AD) who said:

“Nature furnishes its wealth to all men in common. God beneficiently has created all things that their enjoyment be common to all living beings, and that the earth become the common possession of all. It is nature itself that has given birth to the right of the community, while it is only unjust usurpation that has created the right of private property.”

The right of private property, the right of a few to own and control the means by which all must live, the right of the owners of the means of production to utilise it to exploit the rest of the community in the interest of their personal profit, the right to determine what shall be produced and how, regardless of the misery and wretchedness of those who produce it.

In the wake of that principle, that so-called right, came slavery, in which the multitude toiled in chains that a few masters might live in luxury; feudalism, when a handful of nobles feasted and wallowed in idleness on the enforced labour of others; then capitalism, when the masses were herded into factories, to get the wherewithal to live, while the product of their labour was appropriated by the new lords of capital. The right to private property, the right to exploit, the right to rob, the right to over-produce and cause crises, the right to compete, and cause wars. The basic cause of capitalist ills, and the basic answer? The abolition of the right of private property, and instead the common ownership of the means of production, so that all may enjoy the fruit of their labour, and consume it, thus eliminating the crises of over-production, and the crises of military wars. For there is no other way. It is capitalism or socialism.