Plenty for Everybody

The Socialist Party is not in existence to malign or misrepresent anybody; neither is it prepared to lie in the interests of the organization or in any other interest. It exists to speak the truth upon questions affecting the working class. Since its inception, The Socialist Party has consistently propagated the principles of socialism and consistently refused to retreat from its position of irreconcilable antagonism to every manifestation of capitalism. In so doing it claims to be proceeding along the only lines that a party rightly expressing working-class interests — which are, and can never by any chance be other than, in diametrical opposition to capitalist interests — can pursue. In entering the arena of political activity, The Socialist Party has, of necessity, to continually justify its position in the eyes of those —whether members of bodies claiming to be socialist or not — who are not in possession of all the facts—just as it has to justify its existence in opposition to the orthodox political parties. To do so effectively it must, of course, make references to the actions of persons and parties. Such references we assert most emphatically have never been in the nature of abuse of individuals or misrepresentation of organizations. If it can be shown that we have been guilty either of the one or of the other, we are quite as ready now, as we always have been, to make honourable and straightforward amends. We ask the workers whose class interests we champion and to whom we belong, to constitute themselves our judges in this.

We are the “impossiblists.” If possiblism consists in determination to do the thing that cannot affect the result desired, we are the “impossiblists.” We accept the epithet and all the opprobrium that attaches to it. Workers of Great Britain, we who tell the whole truth are the “impossiblists.” They who squander your energies and divert your purpose and lead you into a ditch are the “possiblists.” Choose ye this day whom ye will have as champions of your interests. A study of the Socialist Party's literature will help you recognise the folly of placing your trust in "leaders.” Replace blind faith in “leadership” with working class understanding.

To end poverty we need to know how it began.   poverty is a relatively recent phenomenon unknown to our "primitive" forbears. Early hunter-gatherer needs were easily met with little effort, permitting a surfeit of leisure. Wealth was more or less evenly shared on a communistic basis. Anti-social behaviour was minimised because in a small group everyone knew everyone else. Social hierarchies, as such, did not exist although a kind of "pecking order" operated based on respect and influence, not authority. This way of life came to an end although its remnants can still be found in remote corners of the world today.

Colin Clark, an agricultural economist, in the 1970s denied that overpopulation is, or is ever likely to be, a problem and has insisted that the world is quite capable of providing for many times its present population.  Clark estimates that the average consumption of people in North America and Western Europe is about 8 times the bare human subsistence level. How much land, he asks, would be needed to allow one person to live at the American level if the best agricultural techniques were applied? Only 2763 square metres or about two-thirds of an acre. Is there enough land in the world to allow the present world's population to live at this level? The potential agricultural area of the world . . . could provide for the consumption. at these very high standards, of 35.1 billion people, or over 10 times the world’s present population. This, it will be remembered, is on the assumption of the general use of agricultural methods already practiced by the average farmer in the Netherlands or similar countries, without allowing for any further improvements in agricultural technology, for any provision of food from the sea, or for any extension of present systems of irrigation. This. remember, is only a measure of what the world could provide if the most productive modern techniques were applied everywhere. To do this would take time and demand a massive technical and educational programme of a kind only a rationally-organised socialist world could mount. But it does show that nobody need now starve and that overpopulation is just a myth.

Producing enough food to feed the world’s growing population is not a problem in itself: We have the technology to get the rest of the world into the position of food surplus that the West has enjoyed in recent years. The problem of course is poverty. The hungry people of the world simply do not have the money to buy the food they need and so do not constitute a profitable market. Food production is limited to what can be sold profitably, and its rate of expansion is governed by the rate of expansion of the market for food. A balance between supply and demand means no more than that there is as much food on the market as can be purchased with the money available. It does not mean that there is enough food to meet all human needs. The only framework for a rational solution of this problem is production to meet human needs on the basis of the common ownership of the world’s resources. This means an end to finance and trade, and the problems they bring, and the institution of the planned distribution of food to where it is needed.

 If all we had to do to maintain the world’s population in food was to measure now much we needed, apply scientific discoveries and then grow the food required, we would have few food problems. In a socialist world this essentially is all we would have to do. Certainly some of the problems — the technical (including the training of farmers in modern methods) not the financial ones — that they go on to discuss would be inherited, but they too could be solved within a society geared to serving human needs instead of profits.