Common ownership now

Most people react with disbelief to the idea of a world community where the means of production will be democratically controlled and socially owned. Critics say that socialist society will not work, on the grounds that people are by nature greedy or selfish or lazy. Socialists must be able to demonstrate that socialism is both an efficient and highly practicable alternative to the capitalist method of organising society. We must be able to offer convincing proof from capitalism itself and also from previous social orders that it is quite within man's powers to run a system based on voluntary work and the free distribution of whatever people need and want. A study of history and the social sciences, particularly anthropology, consistently reveals that things are rarely quite as they seem. Workers are never quite as oppressed and docile as the managers and bosses hope. There’s always a hidden undercurrent of resistance.

  The modern age has seen enormous gains in productivity of labour but where are the benefits for the working population? Do factory workers or farm workers or those in building and construction work less hours after having provided for the needs of the community? Of course they don't. Despite the much predicted society of leisure workers still work long hours and productivity means they are exploited more intensely.

We can very conservatively estimate that at least half of all the workers running the capitalist system would be redundant in a sane society where work would be organised economically solely for the needs of the community. This means that, including the present millions who are unemployed, socialism would more than double the numbers of people available to do useful work. Also, these vastly increased numbers would be free to use and further develop the most advanced techniques of production. All this would add up to a huge increase in our powers of production.

At first, to solve problems, production in socialism would have to be expanded. The priority would be to ensure that every person is comfortably housed and supplied with good quality food of their choice. The construction of a safe world energy system would be another urgent project. The present great differences in the world distribution of machinery, plant and up-to-date production methods would need to be evened out. But with an adequate structure of production in place we can anticipate that in socialism, we would soon be in a position to relax in the necessary work of providing for needs.

The idea of producing enough for the community and then relaxing to enjoy many other kinds of activity which may interest people is impossible under a capitalist system. Capitalist production is not primarily about supplying needs it is about making profit and accumulating capital. It can only work with a constant market pressure to renew its capacity for sales. Under capitalism a surplus of commodities, in excess of market capacity means they cannot be sold for a profit. This can bring about recession, workers thrown out of jobs.  In socialism, with the abolition of the market, and acting with voluntary co-operation, people will produce goods and distribute them to stores without any of the barriers of buying and selling.

It  means that for the production of component parts of machinery or household goods, etc, intense production runs using automated systems could supply not just sufficient components for immediate use but also stocks for anticipated future demand. These could be distributed as and when required and this would be an economical use of production facilities which could then be either shut down until when required again or with different tooling used for other production runs. The important point being that in socialism this could happen without any of the problems and chaos that an oversupply of commodities for the market causes under capitalism.

The idea of having enough for needs and then relaxing to enjoy it is perhaps an echo of the best times had by hunters and gatherers. But this way of life was never viable for larger populations who are compelled to produce what they consume. To begin with, during the advent of farming this inevitably required a lot of hard graft, but with the enormous increase in the powers of labour since then, this is no longer necessary. We can learn other lessons from hunter/gatherers. Until recently the aborigines of Australia held the land in common and co-operated to sustain a way of life that was in balance with their environment and had lasted for at least 40,000 years. The modern world has an urgent need to imitate that example. It is not human nature to grab, grab, grab, but it is the nature of capitalism.

Socialism originally meant common ownership and production solely for use. The first group to work out clearly the essential features of the alternative to the competitive, profit-seeking capitalist market economy that rapidly developed around them were the followers of Robert Owen, who were also the first to coin the word "socialist". For them the alternative to capitalism lay in the organisation of the production and distribution of wealth in accordance with the principle of "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs". They at least realised that the organisation of production and distribution on this basis necessary involved the disappearance-of-private property, buying and selling, money and prices, and the introduction of free access to goods on the basis of self-determined needs as well as the replacement of monetary calculation with calculation purely in physical terms—to match productive capacity and wants. As the Owenite journal The New Moral World, put it in 1835, "our enlarged resources for the creation of wealth" mean that "the necessity for attaching money—value to any production whatever "can be superseded and that "no money price will be known". Towards the end of the century socialist critics of capitalism saw such a system as applying on a society-wide basis, but they retained the understanding that there was no role whatsoever for market mechanisms and monetary calculation in such a socialist society.

As regards the allocation of resources and the matching of supply and demand at an aggregate level, there was, however, a general tendency to move from the idea that economic calculation would proceed in terms of value to the idea that such calculation could be conducted in purely quantitative or physical terms. This was a conviction that was largely rooted in the belief that under socialism production would be for use rather than exchange and that in such circumstances social utility, rather than exchange value, could be a direct guide as to what and how much to produce. Such production for use rather than profit involved a concern with the concrete material characteristics of needs and the means of satisfying them rather than any abstract notion of value. It involved a deliberate matching of goods with wants that did not involve or require their valuation. So-called "market socialism" is an absurd contradiction in terms. Any society which retains market mechanisms just can't be regarded as socialist, at least not without violating the original, historical meaning of the word.

Food For Thought 2 The Proof

And proof of this greed and corruption , if more were needed, comes from Heather Mallick's column in the Toronto Star, September 28. She writes about how banks pay massive fines as part of the price of doing business and then keep on doing whatever they want to. JPMorgan Chase, she writes, is negotiating the fine it will pay US regulators re mortgage -backed securities. The figure is around $11 billion, and comes after a $920 million fine last week for its London Whale loss. In Britain, the PPI (payment protection insurance) scandal has caused banks there to set aside sixteen million pounds (more than the cost of the London Olympics). Yet we are in the middle of austerity measures that seek to strip or modify every benefit the workers have gained for sixty years and health, education, and social programs are starved for money. Time to put this lot to bed! John Ayers.

Food For Thought

It's nearly fifty years since Ralph Nader wrote his sensational book, "Unsafe At Any Speed", his expose of the auto industry and their ignoring of car safety in return for sales – hence profits. Recently, his autobiography, "Told You So", was published and it shows Nader has changed little over the years. To some he may seem uncorrupted (he refused the services of a prostitute hired by General Motors to way(lay) him, he doesn't own a car (too unsafe) or real estate, and lives on $25,000 a year. Nader has campaigned for anti-pollution laws, founded several public interest research groups, made public a forgotten study on the appalling conditions in the meat processing plants, founded a national anti-nuclear umbrella group, put all his income into his advocacy groups, campaigned for health care, attacked corporate crime, attacked NAFTA and the decline of democracy, and the list goes on. It's easy enough to say we need people like him, in fact, we need him as long as we need capitalism, which is not at all. In the final analysis, Mr. Nader is a corrupt man. Like most of us, he was corrupted into believing capitalism was the best of all economic systems. Nader's great failure is in thinking it would be better for all if greed and dishonesty at the highest levels could be eliminated. The plain fact is that capitalism is a profit-oriented system that thrives on, and is based on, greed and dishonesty. It would be much better if Nader were to pour his vast efforts into working for the abolition of such a system. John Ayers.

Doing Away With Money

"Paper coin, that forgery
Of the title-deeds which we
Hold to something of the worth
Of the inheritance of earth."
Shelley 

Do we need money and wages? It sounds like a silly question, doesn’t it? Of course we need money and wages: we need it to pay our rent or mortgage and to buy food and clothes.

No point in the socialist case arouses such controversy as that of the abolition of money and wages. Marx identified money as one of the two main manifestations of human alienation (the other was the state) and looked forward to its abolition in a communist society where human values would apply: where the standard by which something would be considered ‘valuable’ would be human welfare. Marx also fully endorsed the slogan “Abolition of the Wages System!” a system which he regarded as a form of slavery. Money is just a means of saying ‘This is mine, not yours’

Money in various limited forms existed for hundreds of years before the advent of capitalism but because it is an indispensable element in the workings of capitalism its general usage expanded universally with the development of that system. For a start, it is the device whereby capitalism separates the worker from the fruits of his or her labour; an indispensable part of the process whereby a minority class of capitalists ration the consumption of the great majority who as workers of one sort or another produce all the real wealth of society.

Marx saw money as having two basic functions: (1) a medium of exchange or circulation, i.e. the means through which articles produced for sale get bought and sold; and (2) a measure of value, i.e. a common unit in which the value of articles produced for sale can be expressed as a price, and is thus a standard by which they can be compared. Marx also identified two kinds of paper token money: tokens that were convertible on demand into a fixed amount of the money-commodity and tokens which were not. The former created no problem. The latter, however, could create a problem if they were issued in a greater amount than the amount of the money-commodity that would otherwise circulate. In this case, if they circulated alongside gold or silver, the value of the tokens would depreciate, i.e. they would buy less than their face-value. If they were the only currency (as is the case today) this would result in a rise in the general price level, i.e. in a change in the standard of price. An inconvertible paper currency has to be managed by the government or some state institution such as a central bank which, to avoid depreciation or inflation, has to calculate the correct amount to issue. In Marx’s day the case where the only currency was paper token money was a hypothetical one which he only discussed in passing.

Marx in an early essay on the subject said, "That which exists for me through the medium of money, that which I can pay for, i.e. which money can buy, that am I, the possessor of money… If money is the bond that ties me to human life and society to me, which links me to nature and to man, is money not the bond of all bonds?" [his emphasis]

Money is at the core of human activity from the cradle to the grave. It dominates all of our lives. How often do we hear it said, “we do not have the resources”? What is meant by resources is always money. Every day politicians give lack of money as a reason why we cannot provide better health care or safe reliable trains or the many other public services that are in urgent need of improvement. This ignores the fact that productive resources are materials, means of production, transport, energy, communications and networks of infrastructure through which goods and services are produced. And all these depend on one single resource which is labour. These are the real resources on which the lives of communities depend and there is an abundance of labour to provide for needs.  Capitalist politicians  repeat their mantra “We do not have the resources” yet they are unable to see the availability of real resources because their minds are pre-occupied by the illusion that only money resources count. They imagine that real resources can only be brought into use by money, whereas the opposite is the truth. The powers of the community to solve problems can on be fully released with socialism and the abolition of money. Reliance on the imagined powers of money runs through every social problem.

To say that we cannot do without wages and the wages system is to say something which is absurd. Though it is true that wages are the means by which the workers live, it is equally true that wages are the means whereby the workers are robbed. The wage serves no other function than to render possible this robbery. It does not even record the fact that its possessor has performed his share of the world's work, for wages have a fleeting identity, and there is nothing to show how the coins they consist of are come by. Money means rationing. It is only useful when there are shortages to be rationed. No one can buy or sell air: it's free because there is plenty of it around. Food, clothing, shelter and entertainment should be free as air. But the means of rationing scarcity themselves keep the scarcity in existence. The only excuse for money is that there is not enough wealth to go round but it is the money system which makes sure there cannot be enough to go round. By abolishing money we create the conditions where money is unnecessary.

With the abolition of private property, wages, and money, it will be very easy to assure that each person shall perform his or her share of the necessary labour of production, and the "problem" of distribution then would be no problem at all.  Imagine that the world was run differently, that everything was free. Suppose you could go to the supermarket, collect the food you wanted for yourself and your family, and then just leave without having to queue at the checkouts. You’d probably choose the best-quality food without having to worry about its cost. In fact, since nobody would have to buy cheap and nasty food, all the food available would be top quality. There’d be no point in taking more than you needed, because you’d always be able to go back and get more if you ran out, and it’s just wasteful  to take lots of milk and bread, say, if you know you won’t be able to use them. This probably sounds like quite a good idea, but would this same principle work with clothes rather then food? Wouldn’t people just want masses of clothes, and always from the top designers and brand names? Quite probably people will still want to look smart and attractive, but this won’t be by wearing clothes that ‘cost a fortune’. And like food, there would be no point in having lots of clothes lying around in a wardrobe gathering dust: people would just take from the shops or warehouses what they wanted for their personal use, not what would be intended to impress others. Also, since nobody would profit from selling more clothes, there would be no relentless pushing of new fashions each year. So it’s not difficult to imagine a world without money, a world where what people consumed and enjoyed would not be limited by the size of their wage packet, where everyone could gain access to the best of everything.

 But then again, would people work in a world where there was no money and they were not getting paid? Yes, they would. The alternative, after all, would be a life of idleness, which may be great for a two-week holiday period every summer but soon becomes very boring. Work, too, would be made as enjoyable as possible, which means it would be safe, satisfying and fun. People would enjoy working with each other, never doing one kind of work for too long but appreciating the variety that can be provided. Producing useful things is pleasant in itself as evidenced by every hobbyist. In society which can land men on the moon and fire missiles across the face of the earth to within inches of a target, the technology certainly exists to do away with much of the unpleasant labour of society. Instead of research into more and more sophisticated killing machines socialism will devote resources to improving productive efficiency from the point of view of both the wealth producer and the wealth consumer. Work in socialism will be based upon voluntary co-operation and not the coercion of the wages system. The division between work (enforced drudgery) and leisure (when your time is your own) will be ended by socialism.

Are we suggesting that we should do away with money and revert to barter? No, we are not. Both money and barter are forms of exchange. Exchange is only possible when there is private property. In a society in which all wealth is owned in common there will be no property to exchange and there will therefore be no need for money or barter. The world is abundant in resources, yet poverty is the lot of the majority. The buying and selling system, based on production for profit, is economically inefficient from the point of view of those who produce the wealth. Socialism means free access to all wealth and production solely for need. This will mean that in a socialist society bread will be produced simply so that people may eat it, and not for sale on the market with a view to profit. The money and wages system is obsolete and anti-human. We cannot go back to being peasants and we should not want to. Keeping millions of people alive and well  on this planet necessitates technology. Only by intricate organization and large-scale productive techniques can we maintain abundance. Do not be afraid of machines. It is not machines which enslave, but capitalism, in whose service machines are employed. There is similarly a commonly held view that computers and automation is going to solve all our worries, that money will expire automatically as part of a "natural process of evolution". This is quite wrong. This society only new technology to increase profits and for no other reason. Employers even take machines out and put workers back in if they find that labour-power is cheaper.

 The abolition of money and wage will represent the liberation of slaves,  the dispossession of masters, i.e. the employing class and when we do away with money and wages we destroy the basis of the power of our rulers. Actually, socialists don’t just want to “abolish” money. Life without money under capitalism, where most things have to be bought, is pretty austere.What we want is to see established a system of society where money would become redundant, as it would in a society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means for producing wealth. In such a society the principle “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs” could apply. People would cooperate to produce what was needed to live and enjoy life and then have free access to this. The only way to live without money is to be part of genuine cooperating community where the links between people would be human not commercial,  a society-wide change not an individual lifestyle choice.

Our Sinking Economies?

Economic advisor to the Indian government, Jayati Ghost, recently co-authored a book titled, "Economic Reform Now: A Global Manifesto to Rescue our Sinking Economies." As Ghost points out, " China is suffering from a banking crisis and in India the situation is even more dramatic. Economic growth has almost halved and panicking investors are abandoning the rupee. Is the Asian era over before it has even begun?" – No comment needed. John Ayers.

The Woes of Being a Political Asylum Seeker

Thousands of decisions by the Home Office to refuse asylum seekers and migrants permission to remain in the UK have been withdrawn before a series of appeals. Critics say the Home Office’s actions have left the immigration status of some claimants unclear, contributing to a backlog of cases that have yet to be decided.  Labour MP Paul Blomfield said  “There are victims at the centre of it all who have bona fide applications and are being left in legal limbo.” Statistics show that half of all asylum appeals are successful.
However, Home Office officials have been set targets of turning down 70% of asylum appeals, and have been offered gift vouchers, cash bonuses and extra holiday if they hit them.
“The home secretary should be ensuring that the right decisions are made first time, so appeals aren’t needed, rather than costing the taxpayer money and keeping people’s lives in limbo just so her department can hit targets,” said David Hanson, the shadow minister for immigration.

An asylum seeker is someone who is fleeing persecution in their homeland, has arrived in another country, made themselves known to the authorities and exercised the legal right to apply for asylum. A refugee is someone whose asylum application is successful and is allowed to stay in the host country. A refused asylum seeker is someone who has had their application turned down and is awaiting return to their home country. It may be unsafe to return and therefore be some time before they can. Some of the top countries where asylum seekers come from have a well-known record of human rights abuses and ongoing conflicts eg. Zimbabwe, Iraq, Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia.  The UK signed the 1951 Convention on Refugees, which states that anyone has the right to apply for asylum in Britain and remain until a final decision on their application has been made.

Britain takes less than 3% of the world's asylum seekers. Asylum seekers receive 30% less than people on income support and 35% of them actually have degrees or professional qualifications. This information is readily available and could be accessed in few minutes on a web search engine but many are permitted to peddle propaganda without challenge or correction.

Yes it has to be acknowledged that the character of many parts of the UK has changed but this is nothing new. The cultural and social landscape of the UK has constantly changed over the centuries. Much of East and North London changed courtesy of Jewish immigration at the turn of the 20th century. Why is that okay but not so regarding newer arrivals to our shores?

The UK is not the  soft-touch for asylum seekers that politicians try to make out. The UK immigration system is extremely tough - there have been several recent pieces of legislation both in the UK and the EU that have made this tougher. For example: fines on airlines and other carriers for bringing in people without permission to enter; visa restrictions on refugee-producing countries and posting immigration officers overseas to prevent refugees from boarding planes to travel to the UK.

Once in the UK, it is very difficult for people to show that they have a genuine fear of persecution should they return to their country of origin since many have fled conflict or torture. Increasing restrictions on legal aid have also made it much more difficult for asylum seekers fleeing persecution to obtain quality legal advice and representation in order to get a full and fair hearing of their case. Many asylum seekers who are initially refused refugee status go on to win their appeals, reflecting the poor quality of initial decision making at the Home Office.

Most refugees in the world have no choice in their destination and end up fleeing to neighbouring countries (which are often equally poverty stricken). Two thirds of the world's refugees live in developing countries, often in refugee camps. But the UK is popular destination for some due to many family/friend connections and the world-wide adoption of the use of English as a second language.

According to Every Child Matters (ECM), the rights of the child must be upheld above and beyond any question of immigration status. However, frequently, asylum seeking children are discriminated against and not treated as children first and foremost. In 2008, the UK government lifted the reservation on the article relating to immigration in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). This came as a welcome change - guaranteeing that children seeking asylum will be entitled to the same protection and access to services as other children and benefit from the "best interest" rule, under article three of the convention, in the same way as British children. Nevertheless, the UK government have consistently shown their true colours on this issue, directly contravening the ECM and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child by holding children in detention. In 2010, the new government recently made a very welcome commitment that they would "end the detention of children for immigration purposes". This policy has still not been put into place. Although they are given limited support by Social Services, many of the unaccompanied children arriving here do not even have access to legal advice, and most of them are not at an age to understand the legal procedures they are going through. It is paramount that asylum seekers are offered sanctuary in the UK and a fair chance to have their stories heard.

Asylum seekers are just here to take advantage of the benefit system and steal our jobs is another myth put about by politicians. Recent studies show that asylum seekers know very little about their final country of destination or about the UK benefits system before they come here. Those who are here for economic gain are neither refugees nor asylum seekers: they are economic migrants (mainly from Eastern Europe). Asylum seekers have been forced to leave their countries because they are being persecuted whereas economic migrants on the other hand, make a conscious choice to leave their country.

Asylum seekers do not get large handouts from the state; whilst they are awaiting a decision on their asylum case they receive 30% less than those on Income Support (the minimum amount that a person can reasonably live on in UK according to the government themselves). Though many would love to be able to contribute to the UK economic system, asylum seekers are not allowed to work. Approximately 33% of asylum seekers have degrees or professional qualifications but they are denied the chance to use these skills whilst awaiting a decision on their case. Refugees have made a massive cultural, social and economic contribution to life in the UK in the last 450 years, despite often negative government and popular responses. Some famous refugees include Michael Marks (founder of Marks and Spencer from Russia/Poland). People born outside the UK (including refugees and asylum seekers) are significant contributors to the economy.

Statistics show there has been no refugee crime wave and that there's no established connection between asylum and increased crime rates. In fact, asylum seekers are more likely to be the victims of crime than the perpetrators. There has been an increase in the number of violent attacks on asylum seekers as a result of their negative portrayal in the popular press.

Socialism Now

Our goal as a political party is not necessarily to win elections but instead to inspire people and to win them over to the socialist cause.  Workers have to learn through their own experiences that capitalism cannot and will not provide them with a tolerable standard of living. Many political parties are supported because they tell lies and because they pander to the illusions of their followers.  Even after failures they still cannot tell the truth but, in order to retain their support, must think up some other excuse like "betrayal" and “treachery”.

It is a hard but undeniable fact that no political party - including The Socialist Party - can legislate to humanise capitalism or make it run in the interest of the working class. That is why it is important that the working class stops giving its support to politicians who support the profit system. None of them can solve unemployment or crime or any of the other social problems we face today, despite their proclaimed recipes for success. None of them will prevent tens of millions starving to death each year. None of them will provide decent housing for everyone. None of them will end the threat of human annihilation as a result of war, because militarism is inevitable within a system based upon the ferocious competition for resources, markets and trade. Why waste your time voting for parties that cannot make any of these urgently needed changes? Why go on in the hope that some miracle will happen and end the insanity of the profit system? We don't want your vote if you think socialism means nationalisation, higher taxation, welfare state, council estates, national liberation, legalising marijuana or anything of that sort. In short, we don't want your vote if you think we need to keep and act within existing capitalism. We make you no false promises nor do we patronise you and neither do we beg for your support. We do not ask for your support unless you are convinced that the case for socialism is a rational one and in your interest. All we're doing is holding the banner aloft. If you want to make socialism happen you've got to prepared to do the work yourself - we're not leaders, and don't want to be. If you need someone to lead you into the promised land, some other person lead you straight back out again. Supporting the Socialist Party says you are ready to act to make real change to the world . A message to other fellow socialists that they do not stand alone. A declaration to fellow workers that the actual idea of socialism is not some bedtime fairy-tale.

Many people are questioning the destructive effects of capitalism and are rejecting the self-appointed  leaders of the traditional left. This is something that is to be encouraged. The most important battle is to continue the destruction of capitalism's legitimacy in the minds of our fellow class members. That is, to drive the development of our class as a class-for-itself, mindful of the fact that capitalism is a thing that can be destroyed and a thing that should be destroyed. The aim of The Socialist Party is to show that there is another view of social change that has often been dismissed by those who get involved with "anti-capitalist" politics. The working class needs to do some serious thinking about society—how it is and how it could be. Millions of politically conscious workers will be a threat to capitalism. We will educate and organise with more and more workers. Once we are a majority there will be no stopping us. The result will be social revolution. The Socialist Party works to bring about the political consciousness and organisation that will make a revolution possible. Our efforts are limited. But our analysis cannot be faulted and our principles are never compromised. We will continue to advocate the sanity of the case for a revolutionary transformation of society.

Work in socialism will not be wage-slavery. People will not have to sell their energies to the minority who own the means of production and distribution - the factories, offices, transport systems, shops, etc. - in return for a wage or salary. In socialism - a society based on common ownership - people will co-operate to produce those things which they need as a community- useful things, which will be freely available to all members of society. With the profit motive removed, men and women will be able to choose their work in accordance with their talents, skills and preferences, contributing as much or as little as they feel able. The criterion for choosing one kind of activity rather than another will no longer be which one pays the most, has the best perks, the best prospects for promotion or the most job security. All these considerations will be obsolete in a moneyless socialist world. Work will no longer be the activity we do to obtain the wage packet or salary which enables us to survive. In capitalism because of the need for the ruling class to protect its own interests against the opposing interests of the workers, the majority have very little say in the decision-making process - in central government, at local level, or at work. In socialism, however, each individual will be able to participate fully in the making of the decisions which affect their lives. Democracy in socialism will not be the sham that it is in capitalism but a meaningful process which recognises the worth of everyone and through which people will be able to contribute fully to society in accordance with their particular skills, knowledge or experience.

Capitalism is organised crime, and we are all its victims.

Welcome To Capitalism!

High in the Himalayas is the kingdom of Bhutan, the prototype of the mythical Shangri-la, a country, due to its isolation, was free from the turmoil and strife that beset the rest of the world. It survived for centuries without paved roads and electricity and with barter for currency. It wasn't enough for Bhutan's king to leave well enough alone – in the early sixties he decided to bring his happy land into the modern world. By 1999, it was decided that Bhutan needed something they never had before, a psychiatrist! Since then, Dr. Chenco Dorji has treated more than 5,300 depressed, anxious, psychotic, alcoholic, and drug-addled Bhutanese. Welcome to the modern world! Welcome to capitalism! John Ayers.

Red on the outside, Green in the inside

16th  October was World Food Day.

“It’s not just about production of enough food for everyone; it means that every individual must have access to food,” Adriana Opromolla, Caritas International campaign manager

Today, millions do not have enough to eat and billions lack the right nutrients to be healthy. The  Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP) and the World Health Organization (WHO highlights that despite some evidence of progress 805 million people - or 1 in 9 people – still suffer from hunger. ”

Gary Gardner, a researcher with the Worldwatch Institute, in his research found that 13 counties were totally dependent on imported grains in 2013, 51 were dependent on imports for more than 50 percent, and 77 were dependent on imports for over 25 percent. More than 90 million people in the world are totally dependent on imported grains, 376 million are dependent on imports for more than 50 percent and 882 million are dependent on imports for more than 25 percent.

Poor diets stunt the growth of 162 million children every year, 97 percent of them in the developing world, trapping communities in a cycle of poverty and ill health. The consequences for those affected can be devastating. Malnourished children tend to start school later, have poorer levels of concentration and lower scores in cognitive ability tests.  Many carry these burdens through into later life.  According to the WHO, a staggering 2 billion people are affected by iron deficiency which contributes to anaemia. More than 250 million children suffer from Vitamin A deficiency which is a major public health challenge in more than half the countries on the planet, with half a million children going blind each year. Half of these children die within 12 months.

Meanwhile, 1.3 billion of us are classified as overweight or obese, fuelled by a food system that is damaging not just our bodies but the environment too. If trends towards Western diets continue, the impact of food production alone will reach, if not exceed, the global targets for total greenhouse gases.

 A study led by the Harvard School of Public Health found that rising levels of CO2 are stripping staple foods of vital nutrients, rendering crops such as wheat, rice and soya less nutritious for millions of people in developing countries. If these climate and socio-economic trends continue, the number of under-nourished children in Africa alone is expected to rise ten-fold by 2050.

Our current agricultural production system is inefficient. We continue to destroy tropical forests for agricultural expansion and this contributes 12 percent to the total warming of the planet today. And much of the food we produce, we waste.  Figures from the Institute of Mechanical Engineers show as much as 2 billion tonnes of food – 50 percent of all we produce – never makes it onto a plate.

Our basic food systems have to be re-imagined so that the world is producing nutritious food in a more sustainable way. One of the first tasks of socialism will be to rectify the worst effects of capitalism on populations, to ensure that local needs are satisfied in all locations. On the agricultural issue this may, at least initially, curtail the growing of (now-called) "cash" crops such as tea, coffee, tobacco or bananas whilst local populations stabilise their ability to feed all their own inhabitants. Emphasis would be placed on the quality, health and fertility of the soil, sustainability being paramount. Farmers in the developed world would be freed from the constraints of capital, quotas, restrictions and above all competition, enabling them to produce foods required by the local populace and, if need be, in other parts of the world. This means supporting the world’s small-holder farmers. One of the legacies of the colonisation of the South by the North has been the imposition of methods of farming along with the types of crops to be grown. Huge areas of previously diverse multi-crop forests were reduced to plantations growing single crops specifically for export – bananas, sugar cane, pineapples – decimating the land through soil erosion from this unsuitable method of farming and taking away the land and livelihood of local peasants. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) reports that 11 percent of the world’s land is highly degraded and 25 percent is moderately degraded. The heavy-handed, arrogant approach of incomers showing no regard for centuries old successful sustainable methods of farming. It means converting degraded lands back into productive farms. A healthier, more sustainable future is possible. But, the sustainability, food and health nexus must be dealt with together if we are going to fix the global food system. Socialists have always contended that the world could produce enough to feed every human being on the planet. This has been confirmed time and again by bodies such as the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation and World Health Organisation as well as by agronomists and other specialists in the field.

Alison Power, a professor at the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology of Cornell University in New York state, said the concept is an umbrella that can encompass too many different factors. “There are two approaches to grow production, intensification of conventional agriculture and agroecology. In the last 20 years food production has doubled, but problems like poverty aren’t solved only with that,” Power told IPS. “ In the last 20 years food production has doubled, but problems like poverty aren't solved only with that. So what is needed then is adaptation by small farmers with innovations based on agroecology,” said the expert.  The initiative includes techniques such as conservation agriculture, agroforestry, intercropping, conservation agriculture, crop rotation, improved extreme weather forecasting, integrated crop-livestock management and improved water management. The aim is to increase the ecological production of food in order to reduce carbon emissions.

The capitalist system is the most productive mode of production in the history of humankind. Enough food could be produced to feed all of the world’s population, yet people go hungry. Why? People are starving simply because they lack the means to pay, not because the food cannot be produced – as this new output demonstrates, there is plenty of scope for increasing supply. What could the production of food be like in a society without the need for profit, without competition from big businesses, without promotional advertising, without any money changing hands? Processing plants, packing houses, transport vehicles from local to international, cold storage, warehousing facilities, stock keeping know-how, all the necessary components are already on hand with individuals well-versed in logistics adjusting supply to demand and ensuring sufficient supplies for each and every area, the main difference from now will be satisfying need not profit. To re-establish common ownership and co-operation would in fact revert to relationships which were normal for humanity for the very long period of pre-history. Now, of course, we would enjoy these relationships with all the advantages of modern technology and know-how.  To save the species and the planet, what we need is a return to the communal life of hunter-gatherer days but at a higher technological level. In future years, people will look back  agog as they hear of millions of preventable human deaths because capitalism can't, won't, daren't raise the lives of these people above the rights of private property.

 Daniel Maingi works with the organization Growth Partners for Africa. The Seattle Times reported him as saying that while the goal of helping African farmers is laudable, the ‘green revolution' approach is based on Western-style agriculture, with its reliance on fertilizer, weed killers and single crops, such as corn. As much of Africa is so dry, it's not suited for thirsty crops, and heavy use of fertilizer kills worms and microbes important for soil health. Maingi argued that the model of farming in the West is not appropriate for farming in most of Africa and that  the West should invest in indigenous knowledge and agro-ecology. Growth Partners Africa works with farmers to enrich the soil with manure and other organic material, to use less water and to grow a variety of crops, including some that would be considered weeds on an industrial farm. For Maingi,  food sovereignty in  Africa  means reverting back to a way of farming and eating that pre-dates major investment from the West.

Mariam Mayet of the African Centre for Biosafety in South Africa says that many countries are subsidizing farmers to buy fertilizer as part of the chemical-industrial model of  agriculture, but that takes money away from public crop-breeding programmes that provide improved seeds to farmers at low cost. “It's a system designed to benefit agribusinesses and not small-scale farmers.”

While small farms produce most of the world's food, recent reports show they face being displaced from their land and are experiencing unnecessary hardship. The evidence shows that small peasant/family farms are the bedrock of global food production. The bad news is that they are squeezed onto less than a quarter of the world's farmland and such land is under threat. The world is fast losing farms and farmers through the concentration of land into the hands of the rich and powerful. A global trend that is being driven by big agritech that seeks to eradicate the small farmer and undermine local economies and food sovereignty by subjecting countries to the vagaries of rigged global markets. Institutional investors, including hedge funds, private equity, pension funds and university endowments, are eager to capitalise on global farmland as a new and highly desirable asset class. Financial returns, not food security, are what matter. In the US, for instance, with rising interest from investors and surging land prices, giant pension funds are committing billions to buy agricultural land.

 Giant agritech corporations like Monsanto with their patented seeds and associated chemical inputs are working to ensure a shift away from diversified agriculture that guarantees balanced local food production, the protection of people's livelihoods and environmental sustainability. Agritech corporations are being allowed to shape government policy by being granted a strategic role in trade negotiations. They are increasingly setting the policy/knowledge framework by being allowed to fund and determine the nature of research carried out in public universities and institutes. They continue to propagate the myth that they have the answer to global hunger and poverty, despite evidence that they do not. The Gates Foundation and Western governments are placing African agriculture it in the hands of big agritech for private profit and strategic control under the pretext of helping the poor and end hunger.

We urgently need to build a worldwide movement to bring a speedy halt to the carnage. As the Kenyan activist, Dniel Maingi says “ …  take capitalism and business out of farming in  Africa . The West should invest in indigenous knowledge and agro-ecology, education and infrastructure and stand in solidarity with the food sovereignty movement.”

Anti-capitalism - what is it?

Hundreds of  different organisations are not a movement. They are not even anti-capitalist, in the sense that they haven't yet agreed on a definition of capitalism.  'Anti-capitalist' groups supposedly advocate the abolition of the capitalist system altogether but fail to specify what should replace it and how this change should come about.

Capitalism is an economic system where productive resources are used as "capital", i.e. they are used to produce more wealth with a view to profit; this sets in motion an impersonal and uncontrollable economic mechanism which leads to the accumulation, in fits and starts, of more and more capital, of more and more wealth used to produce further wealth with a view to profit. Capitalism is, then, a system of capital accumulation. Hence, of course, its name.  Many talk instead about a "market economy". Capitalism is indeed a market economy, but not a simple market economy. A key difference of course is that under capitalism production is not carried out by self-employed producers but wage and salary workers employed by business enterprises. In other words, under capitalism, the producers have become separated from the means of production. This makes all the difference. The producers are now not bringing to market what they have produced (that belongs to their employer, the owner of the means of production) but only their working skills, so they receive the value not of their product but only of their ability to work, which is less. The product is still under normal circumstances sold at its full labour-time value but the proceeds go not to the direct producers but are pocketed by the owners of the means of production. Profit is the difference between this and what they pay, as wages and salaries, for the working skills they purchase on the labour market.  Capitalism cannot be described as an economy geared to satisfying consumer demands. The products of capitalist production have to find a buyer of course but this is only incidental to the main aim of making a profit, of ending up with more money than was originally invested. Production is initiated not by what consumers are prepared to pay for to satisfy their needs but by what the owners of the means of production calculate can be sold at a profit. This is what makes the wheels of capitalism grind—or not grind, or not grind so quickly, as the case may be—depending on the level of the rate of profit. Capitalism is not a "steady state economy". On the contrary, it is an ever-expanding economy of capital accumulation. In other words, most of the profits are capitalised, i.e. reinvested in production, so that production, the stock of means of production, and the amount of capital, all tend to increase over time, not in a smooth straight line, but only in fits and starts.

Unless these anti-capitalist protesters take the time to study what exactly capitalism is and how it operates they risk not advocating a viable alternative. Some who consider themselves anti-capitalist campaign to try to put the clock back by returning to the simple market economy that may have existed in early colonial North America. The farmers, butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers would be producing their particular products which would sell at a price reflecting the average amount of time required to produce it. There would be no profit and no exploitation because everybody would be receiving the full value of what their labour had produced. They would just be exchanging so much labour in one form for the same amount in a different form.
Marx called such an economy "simple commodity production" (a commodity being, for him, an item of wealth produced for sale), but it is doubtful whether it has ever existed in a pure form. The nearest that may have come to it would have been in some of the early colonial America. This is an important strand in the Green movement’s thinking as exemplified by the slogan "small is beautiful". It is an  idyllic picture of an economy of self-employed small scale producers producing for a local market. This wouldn't be capitalism but it wouldn't be possible either, if only because enough to feed, clothe and house the world's population would not be able to be produced on this basis. If it were possible to go back to the sort of economy that the likes of the mutualist  Benjamin Tucker envisaged, the tendency with laissez-faire would be for capitalism to develop again. competition would result in those firms which employed the most productive machinery winning out against those employing out of date and so less productive machinery. So, there would be a tendency towards a yet greater concentration of industry into the hands of the big firms, which would get bigger even if still at this stage worker-controlled co-operatives.

But what about the displaced independent artisans and the members of bankrupt workers' co-operatives? How would they get a living? Would they not be obliged to sell their skills to the worker-controlled firms that had won out in the battle of competition? But if wage labour appeared then so would profits and exploitation even if these profits would accrue to the members of the worker-controlled firms. Some might be prepared to share these with their new employees, but the continuing competitive pressures would oblige them to give priority to investing them in new, more productive machinery so as to be able to stay in business and not go bankrupt themselves. In fact, this has been the long-run tendency with such firms under capitalism today, as with the kibbutzim in Israel and the various Mennonite enterprises in North and South America. They have begun to employ wage labour and orient their production towards making profits and accumulating these as new capital.

Other Green thinkers advocate a steady-state market economy, a variant of Marx's "simple reproduction". The idea is that the surplus would be used not to reinvest in expanding production, nor in maintaining a privileged class in luxury but in improving public services while maintaining a sustainable balance with the natural environment. It's the old reformist dream of a tamed capitalism, minus the controlled expansion of the means of production an earlier generation of reformists used to envisage. But it is still a dream because it assumes that a profit-motivated market economy can be tamed, and made to serve human and/or environmental needs. History has proved that it can't be; capitalism has shown itself to be an uncontrollable economic mechanism which operates to force economic actors to make profits and accumulate them as more and more capital irrespective of the consequences. Capitalism today can be described as the profit-motivated, capital-accumulating world market economy.

Other anti-capitalists recognise capitalism as a world system and as such is the problem. It cannot be denied that capitalism has entered a particularly pernicious phase in its development – euphemistically called 'globalisation' – in undeveloped countries as large corporations viciously compete globally to secure markets and relentlessly exploit labour in countries where they reputedly earn 75 percent of their profits. But exploitation is not just confined to undeveloped countries. Working people everywhere are on the defensive against the class whose imperative is to maximise its profits and perpetuate their mastery over all working people. There can be little doubt that the wages and salaries of the majority of people in industrialised countries have stagnated or declined, working hours and job insecurity have increased and conditions of life have deteriorated. The correlation between economic growth and improving social welfare has been cut as corporations seek to introduce 'Third World' standards into the established industrialised countries. We share a common interest. The solution as being to break it up into separate capitalisms operating within national frontiers behind protective tariffs walls. This hardly justifies the description "anti-capitalist" of course, and parallels a nasty strand of nationalist thinking which has always associated capitalism with a sinister "cosmopolitan" conspiracy. Indeed, the danger is that, in the absence of being presented with a credible alternative, it is here that the "anti-capitalist" protests will find the loudest popular echo.

Finally may social activists believe that the creation and expansion of co-operatives is anti-capitalism. Many socialists have sympathised with co-ops as a valid method of coping and surviving within capitalism. Co-operatives are popular with radical workers. An initial reaction to the view that co-ops really represent an alternative to capitalism might be that they involve wage labour and the production of commodities, just as any capitalist business does, so they can hardly constitute an alternative. They also necessarily involve profit-making but not, some would claim, profit maximisation.
 In Marx’s day some such as Proudhon saw them as a way of eventually out-competing and replacing private capitalist enterprises. Others such as Lassalle wanted them to be financed by loans from the state. The theorists of the original co-operative movement saw it as a movement that would eventually out-compete and replace ordinary capitalist businesses, leading to the coming of “the Co-operative Commonwealth” which was an alternative name for socialism. What happened, instead was that rather than  transforming capitalism, it was the other way round: capitalism transformed the co-ops. This was because they had to compete with ordinary capitalist businesses on the same terms as them and so were subject to the same competitive pressures, to keep costs down and to to maximise the difference between sales revenue and costs (called “profits” in ordinary businesses, but “surplus” by the co-op).
Cooperatives operate within the context of the capitalist economy and that if they are to survive they have to play by its rules, in particular to make a profit. And, again in response to market forces, most of this profit has to be reinvested in cost-saving machinery and methods of production. In other words, they cannot be used to improve the wages of those working for them or to benefit their customers by reducing prices. That would be the road to ruin. Workers in cooperatives have in effect to organise their own exploitation for profit to be accumulated as more capital. They are not the way-out. As Marx pointed out, co-operatives ‘must reproduce everywhere in their actual organisation all the shortcomings of the prevailing system.’ And they do.

 Many claim that it is only one particular model of capitalism that we should jettison. But, in the end, there is only one model of capitalism: the one we’ve got, where production is in the hands of competing enterprises which are forced to reduce costs so as to maximise profits in order to have the resources to invest in further cost-cutting. An economic system has locked us into this one particular road so we need to talk about that system. Making a profit, not satisfying needs, is the aim of production, and as measures to protect the planet add to costs they are not taken. The political and legal framework within which this economic system operates does vary, but in all of those, profits can never take third place to people and the planet. They must always come first, with the luxury consumption of the rich second, and the planet and the needs of the rest of the people third.  Re-investing money to make ever-more profit is the core feature of capitalism and this relentless pursuit of profit is one of the main reasons why capitalist economies are predicated on the need for continual expansion and economic growth – all of which is facilitated by access to cheap energy and natural resources, and inevitably results in the mass production of mostly unnecessary and highly wasteful consumer goods. To avoid the negative effects the whole profit system itself must go. It means moving beyond the idea that individual actions—like changing the type of our light bulbs and riding bikes—can save us and our planet. It also goes beyond just a change in government. That scale of change is neither suffice nor aimed at the right target which is an economic model based on resource extraction. It's going to take a grassroots movement that is already rising from the bottom up.

The Socialist Party proposes making the Earth “a common treasury for all", as Gerrard Winstanley of the Diggers put it right at the beginning of capitalism—so that they can be used, not to produce for sale on a market, not to make a profit, but purely and simply to satisfy human wants and needs in accordance with the principle of, to adapt a phrase, "from each region on the basis of its resources, to each region on the basis of its needs".

Pollution Problems In China.

On September 3, The Toronto Daily Star reported that 100,000 kilograms of dead fish have been scooped up from China's Fuhe River. The Hubei province's Environmental Department blamed the Hubei Shuanghuan Science & Technology Company. Officials said that a sampling of its drain outlet showed an ammonia density that far exceeded the national standard. Other incidents this year involving dead animals in rivers have added to public disgust and there are suspicions about the safety of drinking water. It is well known that, as China grows economically, inadequate controls on industry and lax enforcement of existing laws have worsened China's pollution problem. If this is the price we pay for capitalist development, then let's stop paying for it and opt for socialism. John Ayers.

Ecological Socialism

The Socialist Party argues that the sole driver of economic activity in  our society is the crude  imperative to capital accumulation. We recognise the inherent instability and brutality of capitalism and the limits to our ecosystem; that our planet’s resources are finite and that the ecological balance that makes all life possible on it is fragile and under threat. Today, humanity faces the unprecedented threat of an ever worsening series of catastrophes, caused by the interlocked economic and environmental crises brought about by our current economic system.

Capitalism has always been ecologically destructive, but in our lifetimes these assaults on the planet have accelerated. Ecological devastation, resulting from the insatiable need to increase profits, is not an accidental feature of capitalism: it is built into the system’s DNA and cannot be reformed away. Capitalism is increasingly demonstrating its total incompatibility with the maintenance of our ecosystem through its ruthless exploitation of ever scarcer natural resources, its pollution of the environment, the growing loss of biological and agricultural diversity and increasing climate change.

New but equally as damaging technologies such as underground coal gasification (fracking) now
threaten environments and communities around the world. The climate change crisis we
face is being driven by unsustainable energy  consumption and finding evermore damaging new ways to extract oil and gas will simply make it worse in the long run.

We do not believe that some form of ‘business as usual’ is an option.  It will be necessary to radically reorganise the industry. We will require dramatic changes in the ways in which we
generate the energy we use, the ways we build, heat and cool our homes, the ways in which we
travel and the ways in which we produce our food. It will require the restructuring of our energy
generation, transport and manufacturing industries, the rebuilding or refurbishment of millions of our homes and workplaces and the re-ordering of our land use.

Look through Green Party policy documents and it becomes obvious that a lot of faith is put into international and European organisations (e.g. the UN and the EU) in order to build a fairer world, something that is particularly naive considering how both organisations were created by capitalist countries to serve the interests of capitalist countries, and this still remains the case, with most summits and protocols aimed at controlling climate change hamstrung by the pressures of the governments involved to appease the needs of their capitalist economics – the inadequate demands of Kyoto being one example, and the shambles which was the 2009 Copenhagen summit being another. Yet these are the vehicles which the Green Party will think will save the world.

Just as damning is their willingness to work with people who promote the status quo to the detriment of ordinary people. The Greens are looking like any other party that capitalised on the disillusionment with Labour during the course of the last decade. The fact that the Green Party is becoming a more and more desirable option for people disillusioned with mainstream politics cannot be dismissed – and in spite of their actions not meeting their promises, many on the left still call for a vote for the Greens – if only tactically. The Green Party certainly propose a lot of “nice things”, and have become the go-to protest vote for many people on the left of the status quo. However when push comes to shove, the Greens become just as much of a disappointment as the mainstream parties. In Brighton, they did a U-turn and implemented a cuts budget, whilst stoking up a dispute with the refuse workers over pay which has boiled over into further industrial action in September 2014.

The Green Party tends to attack the symptoms rather than the cause – the cause being a capitalist system that ultimately puts profit above all else. This stems from a lifestyle-activist mentality which is prevalent amongst much of the environmentalist movement (including the political party that was set up to act in their interest) that states that all would be well if we all bought organic food, made sure all our tea, coffee etc is Fair Trade, never took a holiday anywhere which would involve flying, and put on half a dozen jumpers in winter rather than put on the heating (which ironically many of the poorest trapped in fuel poverty are actually forced to do). Of course, this is not true of all Green Party members and supporters, but there are many examples found within the party where the beliefs indeed match the stereotype. A standard charge is that the Green Party is by middle class people and effectively for middle class people, and no matter how many people in the party attempt to refute this over the years, this charge has not gone away. Red Pepper wrote a piece on the Green Party in 2008, it commented on their conference in February of that year “that delegates were indeed overwhelmingly white and well-spoken; many of them boasted a Dr before their name.

The environmentalist movement has its fair share of people who distrust anything to do with modern technology and put their faith in pseudo-scientific beliefs, mistakenly believing that every scientific development since the Industrial Revolution is intrinsically part of the problem whilst happily adopting double standards when scientists warn of the imminent danger of rising greenhouse gas emissions and the resultant climate change. This is reflected in the Green Party too. For starters, this is in their present health policy: “The safety and regulation of medicines will be controlled by a single agency… The agency will cover existing synthetic medicines as well as those considered as natural or alternative medicines.”So, in other words, they are “keeping an open mind” regarding treatments where scientific evidence supporting their efficacy is sketchy to non-existent. However this is a marked improvement to what their health policy stated in 2009:
“The Green Party will set up within legislation the practice of patient empowerment, with the right of individuals… to have full and detailed knowledge as to their condition and the range of treatments available, both conventional and complementary/alternative… [The Green Party] oppose attempts to regulate complementary medicine, except by licensing and review boards made up of representatives of their respective alternative health care fields… [The Green Party will] encourage the development of a wider and more relevant range of research techniques, including methods appropriate to the assessment of complementary therapies.”

Green Party leader Natalie Bennett had stated that homeopathy has a very small and limited place in the NHS, by virtue of its placebo effect. Caroline Lucas signed an Early Day Motion backing homeopathy in 2010, although to give her credit she later withdrew her signature. However she has stated that she welcomed the recommendations by NICE to allow more “complementary” treatments on the NHS.

As can be expected from a party which has its roots in the environmental movement, the Greens are anti-nuclear power (as are many on the left in general). However the Greens often go beyond making reasonable arguments against nuclear, resorting to unverified research and scare-mongering. Their former science adviser, Chris Busby, made claims – oft repeated by environmental campaigners, of “leukaemia clusters” in north Wales – which are not peer-reviewed and have been refuted by credible scientists. Even worse still, Busby implies that the Japanese have deliberately spread radioactive waste throughout Japan after the Fukushima accident. The reason? Busby assumes that “when” clusters of childhood cancer start appearing in Fukushima, the parents of the victims will want to sue the Japanese government. To prevent this, Busby stated that the government plan to raise background levels of cancer throughout the country in order to mask any elevated incidence of cancer in Fukushima. Busby provided no evidence for this – a typical problem with conspiracy theorists, and regardless of where you stand on the nuclear debate it can only be solved by calm and rational discussion, not emotive scare-mongering, resorting to gross distortion of facts and unsubstantiated claims. Such dishonest behaviour will quickly be discredited. Unfortunately Busby is far from the only conspiracy theorist in the Green Party.


There is no such thing as overpopulation, only economic incompetence. Wired magazine recently published an article titled, "Boom! Earth's Population Could Hit 12 Billion by 2100," that uickly became viral amongst many environmentalists The chose to ignore withing the article what  statistician and sociologist Adrian Raftery of the University of Washington stated:
“A rapidly growing population with bring challenges. But I think these challenges can be met.”

 Despite systematically being proven wrong, alarmists regarding population growth continue to insist on rationing, population control, and other constrictive, totalitarian political measures to deal with the challenges that are to come as more people populate the planet. The issue of climate change in relation to growing populations humanity's impact on the environment are definitely challenges that can be overcome.

For those who believe in the concept of "overpopulation," human beings have been "overpopulating" the planet for millennia.  Most catastrophes attributed to "overpopulation" are instead the result of resource scarcity - and while sometimes such scarcity is the result of variables outside the control of governments and individuals, most of the time it is the result of  avoidable pitfalls such as our exploitative and acquisitive social system.

John P. Holdren, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, in 1977 ludicrously concluded that the United States would collapse when its population reached "280 million in 2040." America's population is now well over 300 million with nearly 3 decades to spare. Holdren would add in his now entirely discredited co-authored book titled, "Ecoscience," that:
"...if the population control measures are not initiated immediately, and effectively, all the technology man can bring to bear will not fend off the misery to come."
Holdren's "population control measures" included a despotic "planetary regime" that would have made the architects of the 3rd Reich blush.

When governments and international organizations begin demanding the population pay for the burdens of "overpopulation," it is an indictment of their own incompetence and inability to solve the basic challenges facing the societies they presume dominion and responsibility over.

Hat-tip to LU

Another Fallacy Exposed

One of the illusions mouthed by many politicians is that "we are all in this together" and there is some sort of equality existing in the wages and prices system. Here are some startling figures that disprove that particular fallacy. 'The earnings of of FTSE 100 company directors have risen by more than a fifth over the past year. Their average total earnings were £2.4 million rising to £3.3 million for chief executives, according to research from Income Data Services. Wage growth for the overall workforce, meanwhile, trails well behind inflation, rising by 0.6 per cent in the three months to July compared with the same period a year earlier. That is less than half the present rate of 1.5 per cent.' (Times, 13 October) A 20 per cent increase compared to less than 1 per cent - a strange sort of equality! RD

Not too Rough

The year 2014 has turned out to be pretty awful for most workers as the living standards of many of them has declined as their wages have not kept up with the rising cost of living. The year has however been a boom one for the capitalist class. The Boat International magazine has reported a wonderful year for the sale of super yachts. '... estimates that, in terms of length, 9,337m of superyachts were sold across the globe in the calendar year to July 2014, up from 6,716m last year, amounting to sales worth some 1.99 billion euros (£1.6 billion), up from 1.39 billion euros.' (Times, 13 October) The report goes on to mention that Roman Abramovich's 163m Eclipse, which caters for 36 guests, requires 92 crew, includes use of a submarine and costs more than $2 million a week to charter. 2014 hasn't been too rough for some! RD

Eco-Socialism or Barbarism

We are on a climate change path that, unless radically altered, will lead to an unsustainable global warming of seven degrees Fahrenheit or greater. We also face the most serious employment crisis since the Great Depression, with wages that have stagnated for four decades and economic inequality now at levels not seen since the 1920s. A few unions have supported strong climate protection policies and have actively participated in the climate protection movement; many have stood aloof; a minority have feared their members’ jobs are threatened by some climate protection measures.

Organized labor’s approach to climate change has been primarily employment-based. Unions like green jobs, but they fear the potential job losses from phasing out carbon-fueled industries. This should not be surprising because unions are organized primarily to look after the specific employment interests of workers. Even the most far-sighted trade union leaders have a very difficult job: They must represent the immediate interests of existing members, some of whom may face job losses in the transition to a low carbon economy, while keeping in mind the longer term social and ecological concerns. The AFL-CIO and most unions have failed to endorse the basic targets and timetables that climate scientists have defined as necessary to prevent devastating global warming. They have promoted an “all of the above” energy policy that supports growth rather than reduction in the fossil fuels that are responsible for global warming.

Those in organized labor who are skeptical about climate protection efforts identify genuine problems in the policies proposed by environmentalists. They point out that the closing of coal-fired power plants, for example, will lead miners, truck drivers, and utility workers to lose their jobs—in many cases, the only well-paid union jobs in their localities. They argue that projects like the Keystone XL pipeline will provide jobs for workers who suffer from historic rates of unemployment. They maintain that a prosperous economy depends on cheap and abundant energy—so restrictions on fossil fuel energy could well lead to economic catastrophe. And they point out that restrictions on fossil fuel energy are likely to lead to rising prices for the energy to heat our houses, run our appliances, and drive our cars—price increases that will most hurt workers and the poor and further increase our society’s unjust economic inequality. But criticizing the weaknesses in mainstream climate policy proposals is not a strategy for combating climate change. Many mainstream climate protection programs—whether proposed for congressional legislation or for international agreements—embody or at least take for granted  austerity policies that will gouge workers, increase insecurity, aggravate inequality, and enrich speculators, while leaving our climate-destroying fossil fuel economy largely intact.

Nearly 12 million Americans are officially unemployed today, more than 8 million want full-time work but are only employed part-time, 2.6 million want to work and have sought work within the past year but are not currently looking for work.9 So a labor reserve of more than 20 million workers is available to go to work protecting the climate. Many unions are painting a portrait of themselves as an obstacle to climate protection. By putting workers  back to socially constructive work labor organisations can lead the struggle for a more just and sustainable economy

The Socialist Party are not the only ones who understand that capitalism cannot deliver a sound self-sustainable society. other writers too have contributed their critiques. Although we cannot  agree 100% with everything in the article the following is an extract that expresses much of our own view.

Eco-Socialism or Barbarism

“What has posterity done for me that I should do something for it?” 

The environmental crisis is different from all previously experienced crises in world history. For the first time in the history of mankind it seems probable that the human species will nearly wife itself out within a few decades. That means that the ecological crisis is not limited to certain
regions, but has a global dimension. The continuous degradation of the natural basis of life impairs the material basis of livelihood of a large part of humanity. A growing number of climate related catastrophes are generating frequent emergency disaster situations. The main cause of the destruction of nature on the one hand and that of the world-wide process of impoverishment or economic-social exclusion on the other are the same: the capitalist economic system.

The most serious defect of capitalism that is the cause of its unresolvable contradiction to sustainability is its growth dynamics. It is not just that the greedy capitalists want to have more and more. Brutal competition also compels them to try to earn and accumulate/invest more and more. “Expand or perish“ is an inexorable law of capitalism. Since no entrepreneur wants to perish, it generates a growth compulsion. Because of the ever larger investments that they are compelled to make to remain competitive, they must search for and create ever larger markets. In capitalism, all firms can make a profit only if the economy as a whole grows. The satisfactory functioning of a capitalist economy is so strongly dependent on continuous growth that even a growth rate below 2% is perceived as a crisis. But sustainability, as we have argued above, requires economic shrinking. Capitalists are willing to contribute to environmental protection
by producing more and more filters, sewage treatment plants and so on, but they can never be interested in any kind of shrinking of the economy.

Capitalists as capitalists are not interested in such growth in benefits to society; they are only interested in increasing their sales so that they can make more profit. Increase in sales can result either from selling more goods and services or from charging higher prices for less goods and services sold. But competition generally makes it very difficult for any entrepreneur to make more profit by selling less at a higher price. Long-lived and easily repairable products are therefore, generally, of little interest to entrepreneurs. Built-in obsolescence is therefore rational policy in capitalism. Any policy of drastically reducing resource consumption, which is ecologically necessary and inevitable in the long run, would, firstly, entail a massive redundancy of plants and equipment and destruction of financial capital (share value) in the mining industry. That would then, secondly, lead through a chain reaction to a general crisis in the economy. What factories, machines and workers in all other branches of the economy actually do is to transform raw materials and energy into goods and services, which are sold at a profit. If they are now allowed to process only one-fourth or one-tenth of the hitherto processed quantities of raw materials and energy, as some protagonists of sustainable development demand (Weizsäcker et
al. 1995; Schmidt-Bleek 1993), then a proportional quantity of factory and machine capacity and a corresponding part of the labour force would become superfluous. The end result of all that would be a great depression.

Competition also results in the compulsion to increasingly automate and rationalize production. A firm that does not do this will perish. That is why it is not possible to solve the problem of unemployment within the framework of a capitalist economy – not even if it is growing, let alone if it is compelled to stop growing or shrink.

Also the on-going dismantling of the welfare state is the result of a particular kind of competition: In the context of globalization, industrial locations compete with those in other countries to woo transnational capital.

Without questioning this system, we cannot halt or even credibly protest against this “race to the bottom“. Also societal sustainability is impossible within the capitalist system

Eco-capitalism is, therefore, a misnomer, a self-contradictory term. We cannot have both ecological sustainability and the growth dynamics of capitalism. Whatever fiscal, financial or direct regulatory tools governments might choose to use – green taxes or tradable pollution certificates or depletion quotas –, a shrinking capitalist economy would mean a catastrophe for the whole society, a never-ending great depression. Moreover, no capitalist can willingly accept a low-level steady-state economy. Therefore, the state must take up the task of organizing the retreat. It must be a planned retreat, otherwise there will be terrible chaos and calamity. The
state must overrule the primacy of profit and growth compulsion. That means, an economic framework-plan must take the place of the chaos of a free market economy. Society must consciously reach an agreement on what, how much and how to produce, how much energy and
how many resources are to be allocated to what.

In order to ensure that an eco-socialist society does not become an authoritarian one, suitable forms of active popular participation at all levels must be created. Since the economic regions would be small – or of amanageable dimension – and largely self-provisioning, the political units
would also be small or of a manageable dimension. So it can be made possible that the concerned people are included in the decision-making process.

A socialist society is not only a necessity that arises from the growing scarcity of resources and the imperative of conservation of the natural basis of life, it is also desirable if we consider equality, justice, co-operation, solidarity and freedom to be highly important values. A solidary and peaceful coexistence of individuals and the peoples of the world requires an eco-socialist society, in all countries of the world

Sourced from here 

Sarkar, Saral & Bruno Kern (2008) Eco-Socialism or Barbarism – An Up-to-date Critique of Capitalism. Mainz, Cologne: Initiative Eco-Socialism. 
http://www.oekosozialismus.net/en_oekosoz_en_rz.pdf

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/10/12/if-not-now-when-labor-movement-plan-address-climate-change

All Right For Some

The British government are at present boasting that the UK is enjoying a recovery from its recent economic recession and are of course claiming it is all due to their brilliance. While it is true that many firms have made a limited recovery and a return to more profitable trading. This recovery has only benefitted the owning class. British workers are suffering the longest and severest decline in real earnings since the mid-Victorian era, according to new analysis. 'Research carried out by the TUC suggests that the UK would have to go back to the 1860s for a pay squeeze as deep and as long as the current one. This year is the seventh consecutive year of falling real earnings for UK workers, the TUC claims, a situation, it says, that has no historical precedent. The body, which represents 6 million workers, calculates that there has been an 8% fall in real earnings between 2007 and 2014. (Observer, 12 October) RD

Behind The Facade

Not far from the Hollywood studios that produce escapist films about luxury and exciting lives lurks the real world that Hollywood keeps a secret. Here is a recent description of downtown Los Angeles. 'Tents made from shopping trolleys and tarpaulin line the pavements, and dozens of disabled men and women sit around in wheelchairs. As evening approaches, the crowd outside the Christian missions that offer food and shelter evoke images of third-world refugee camps.' (Times, 6 October). Apologists for capitalism are fond of portraying it as a society of glamour and splendid opportunities but the reality is completely different. RD

For a sustainable socialist world

Driving the message home.

The environment is constantly in the news and has become a major political issue. And rightly so, because a serious crisis really does exist. The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat have all become contaminated to a greater or lesser extent. Ecology - the branch of biology that studies the relationships of living organisms to their environment - is important, as it is concerned with explaining exactly what has been happening and what is likely to happen if present trends continue. If it's not global warming and climate change, there is concern over future energy resources and rain forest depletion. The list of problems seems never-ending with the increasing human impact making serious inroads on finite resources. Hardly a day goes by when politicians, economists, environmentalists and the scientific community are not voicing their opinions and offering various explanations for the continual global degradation. The planet is now under threat of a worsening, dangerous environment for human and other forms of life. Without exception none of the solutions query the root cause of global environmental destruction. Consequently, all of the solutions are pro-market and pro-profit and the degradation continues unresolved. What is needed is an alternative solution outside of the capitalist mind-set and one that takes into consideration the ownership and control of our productive processes; in short the social ownership of the means of life. Only then will we be able to address solutions which will not only benefit all of humanity but also the global environment.

We live in a social system predicated on endless expansion. The blind, unplanned drive to accumulate that is the hallmark of capitalist production – the profit motive – has created the problem of climate change, not individuals profligate natures or overpopulation. There can be no such thing as sustainable or environmentally friendly capitalism. If the argument has been that it is capitalism that has caused the ecological crisis then the solution must be single and particular: get rid of the cause. Things won't change without a system change. Competing capitalist states cannot plan and coordinate on the global level required and that such planning could only realistically come about through a completely different way of organising production – one based not on making a profit but meeting human need. Only a society not driven by the profit motive would benefit both people and nature positively. Nothing short of totally re-modelling the world on a social, political, technological, cultural and infrastructural level within a fully democratic process carried out by those who will be affected by those decisions, with no nation states or borders and therefore no resource wars.

 Research on increasing environmental degradation has painted an alarming picture of the likely future if the profit system continues to hold sway. Voices claiming that the proper use of market forces will solve the problem can still be heard, but as time goes on the emerging facts of what is happening serve only to contradict those voices. The motor of capitalism is profit for the minority capitalist class to add to their capital, or capital accumulation. Environmental concerns, if considered at all, always come a poor second. The waste of human and other resources used in the market system is prodigious, adding to the problems and standing in the way of their solution. Earth Summits, conferences and treaties over the past decades show a consistent record of failure, unjustifiably high hopes and pitifully poor results. The Green Party and other environmental bodies propose reforms of capitalism that haven’t worked or have made very little real difference in the past. Socialists can see no reason why it should be any different in the future. There exists a vital need for a revolution that is both based on socialist principles of common ownership and production solely for needs, and environmental principles of conserving - not destroying - the wealth and amenities of the planet.

Production under socialism needs to be both co-ordinated and de-centralised. If we remove the agents for profit (corporations and governments of the capitalist system) and engage in honest democracy of the people, by the people and for the people, decisions can be made to halt damaging practices and implement methods of farming, fishing, mining, extraction, energy production, manufacturing etc. that do no harm to either man or environment. Safe working practices will be the norm. Resources can be protected and used carefully when incentive for their rape and pillage is gone. Energy usage can be reduced drastically in 1001 ways using alternative energies, building using integral insulation and energy conservation techniques, vastly reducing transport as work and societal practices change, stopping air freight of “luxury” and unnecessary goods, producing and manufacturing locally wherever feasible, etc. Local communities could have the final say on resources in their area with the possibility that sometimes the resource will be deemed off-limits and so remain untouched, and if no one is prepared to work mining or drilling to extract a particular resource then an alternative will need to be found.

There is the need for a revolt from below in support of social and ecological transformation, pointing beyond the existing system. The transition to socialism and the transition to an ecological society are one. Anyone who has heard our socialist case will know, the ‘abundance’ referred to has never referred to the open-ended consumerism encouraged by the advertisers but has rather as its target a stable and more satisfying way of life in which the scramble to get things is no longer central. With material survival removed from the casino of the marketplace by the abolition of commodity production we can expect that individuals will calm down their acquisitive desires and pursue more satisfying activities. 

Quote Of The Month

Quote of the month – as reported in the Toronto Star, August 17 - when John Larson, the former chairman of the House of Congress Democratic Caucus, was asked why the Democrats did not make minimum wage and election issue, he replied, "They think they'll raise less money from the Walmarts, the fast food industry etc." John Ayers.

Money Rules.

Recently, singer Neil Young compared Fort McMurray, Alberta, the home base of Keystone XL Pipeline to an atom bomb strike, " The fact is it looks like Hiroshima. Fort McMurray is a wasteland. The Indians up there and the native people are dying. The fuel's all over, there's fumes everywhere. You can smell it when you get to town." Young's comments came the same day that Canada's Natural Resources Minister, Joe Oliver, was in Washington talking up Canada's environmental policy and the Keystone project designed to carry Alberta Oil Sands bitumen to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast. "This is truly a disaster and America is supporting this" Young said. In short, money rules and to hell with the environment and people's lives! John Ayers.