All That Glistens

Book Review from the June 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Power of Gold: The History of an Obsession . By Peter L. Bernstein. John Wiley & Sons, New York.

The author is president of his own economic consulting firm and author of seven books on economics and finance. He is also well-connected with powerful establishment figures, citing for example in his foreword the "significant assistance" of such as Alan Greenspan and Milton Friedman. In addition he also acknowledges the assistance of half-a-dozen researchers. So what is the outcome of such an undertaking into a fascinating subject? There is an astounding collection of stories, anecdotes and speculations on the subject of gold that embraces Biblical legends, Greek mythology, medieval nonsense and modern received wisdom, but nowhere will you find an explanation of what determines the value of gold.

The researchers have obviously been assiduous in their set tasks of tracking down just about every reference to gold they could find in Ancient and Modern History. No expense has been spared in tracing what Moses, Job, Herodotus, St. Thomas Aquinas, Pizzo or Newton had to say on the subject. But nowhere a mention of what determines the value of gold. We can understand that Bernstein and his team of researchers would ignore the ideas of Karl Marx, because of their background and aspirations, but it is a pity one of them hadn't taken a day off from his research and spent an afternoon in a local cinema watching a rerun of The Treasure of Sierra Madre.

He would have seen the Humphrey Bogart character bemoan to the old prospector in the flophouse about how it was a pity gold was so difficult to find, and the Walter Houston character reply, "Many men search for gold, very few find it. Therein is the value of gold." It's as simple as that. The value of gold is determined, like all other commodities, by the amount of socially-necessary labour time spent in its production.

If you want a lot of colourful anecdotes about some of the crazy things people have said and done about gold, then this is the book for you. If you want to know something about the value of gold, and how is determined you would be much better employed reading the 100 or so pages of Part 1 of Marx's Capital, Volume 1. Alternatively look out for the next TV rerun of The Treasure of Sierra Madre.

The Late Richard Donnelly 

(Glasgow Branch)

A SCOTCH BROTH OF PECULIAR COMPOSITION

From the August 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

As the war nears its climax, the capitalist political representatives—and their sidekicks—are doing a lot of jockeying for place and power in what they consider will be the political set-up. In Scotland, as in England, recent events in Parliamentary by-elections have indicated clearly that the working-class electorate are not whole-heartedly enamoured of the National-cum-Labour Government. A definite swing of the pendulum "leftwards" has been observed, and a post-war continuation of that process has been envisaged. The "Commonwealth" movement has had some measure of success in stealing the thunder of the Labour and Communist Parties. This organisation, which receives the financial backing of Sir Richard Acland and other rich men, has made attempts—with varying degrees of success—to take united Parliamentary action with the other reformist organisations, the Labour Party, Communist Party and I.L.P. "Commonwealth" spokesmen have, of course, demonstrated their confusion and invincible ignorance of what the term "commonwealth" means. To them it means anything and everything, from State ownership to public utility corporations—in a word, anything but the common ownership and democratic control of the means of life.

Enchanted, apparently, by the measure of success which has attended the efforts of Acland and Co. yet again to beguile the workers, a "Scotch broth" of various "lairds," "literary men, Communist gents and Labour politicians have arisen in Scotland in the form of a "Declaration on Scottish Affairs," in which various problems are discussed and palliatives set forth. The ancient slogan, "Scottish Home Rule," is revived from its centuries-old semi-torpor, and blazoned forth to an —as yet—incredulous working class. This specious document contends initially that "Scottish conditions are not identical with English conditions," a masterly and illuminating observation! In support of this, various evidence is adduced: "Hill farming, forestry and fishing are more important than in the South"; "depopulation of the Highlands is an entirely Scottish question"; "The Scottish housing question is different in scale." The solution to these perplexing anomalies is modestly claimed to be: "A Scottish legislature and Government should be established to deal with Scottish affairs, and that Scottish representation in the Parliament of the United Kingdom should be retained."

We have heard all this before, in varying guises. Yes, my Lords and Ladies and inspired Commoners, your "fresh" Scottish fish stinks of crumbling antiquity! It was also claimed by the Irish Nationalists over long years, that the problems of the Irish workers were uniquely different from the other workers of the world. After years of bloody struggle the Irish Nationalists—to some extent—had their way, with what results? Are not poverty and unemployment inevitable accompaniments of wealth and leisure in the "Emerald Isle"? Are slums, poorhouses, pawnshops, diseases, malnutrition and the other horrible characteristics of modern society the exclusive product of Scotland, Ireland or any other country in the world?

An amusing reflection that strikes me on examining the "Home Rule" claims is the one that arises when they claim that Home Rule for Scotland will result in more work. More work for whom?—for the Lords, Dukes, ladies, authors and Labour politicians who modestly sign the declaration? No! As is usual, for the already over-worked working class of Scotland! It could be thought that, at least, it had occurred to John S. Clarke (one of the signatories) that what is wrong with the working class is not lack of work, but their divorcement from the means of wealth-production. To talk of Scottish, as opposed to English, interests is to gloss over, to ignore the basic conflict of interests that inevitably arises from the structure of capitalism. The defenders of capitalism adopt sundry devices to hide this fundamental class-antagonism, and one of the handiest ones has been for years to play on the difference of nationality and seat of government. The defence against this stratagem is, as always. the re-statement of the Socialist case and an iron confidence in the working-class ability eventually to solve their own problems without the assistance of Lairds and Lords, or leaders.

Thomas Anthony.

('Thomas Anthony' was the pen-name of longstanding SPGB Glasgow Branch member, the late Tony Mulheron. Tony joined the SPGB in 1935 and, except for a brief disagreement over the party's attitude to the Spanish Civil War, remained a member of the end of his life. A brilliant speaker and debater, his flamboyant style and wit made him a joy to listen to. Although he had only the minimum of formal education he acquired a thorough knowledge of Marxist theory, which he applied to wipe the floor with numerous left-wing opponents.

The old Workers' Open Forum in Glasgow was Tony's favourite stamping ground. This was run by a committee of working people who for many years organised regular political talks and debates and Tony was a frequent and popular lecturer there.)

‘No’ to slavery – but ‘Yes’ to our chains.

Socialists are against buying and selling things with money and for money. But, we exist in a capitalist world that requires us to do much of what we are against. In order to survive we need to buy food and such and what we sell is our labour-power – our capacity to work. Only by buying the worker’s labor power can the capitalist make profits. Workers produce more than what the capitalist pays them in wages and benefits. This is the basis of exploitation of the workers. What the workers produce over and beyond the socially necessary labour for keeping themselves and their families alive and working is surplus value. Surplus value is the only source of profits and is ripped off by the capitalists.

Our goal is to move beyond capitalism. We also use fossil fuels while pre-Civil War and people in the North wore clothes made of cotton picked by slaves. But that did not make them hypocritical when they joined the abolition movement. It just meant that they were also part of the slave economy, and they knew it. That is why they acted to change the system, not just their clothes. Also remember that the people in the North didn't "fight" slavery by buying non-conflict fair trade cotton from somewhere else to somehow stop slavery. What do most consumers know about how food is grown and processed? We know to find it on grocery shelves. But we don't know about the actual social process of production—that's not listed on the ingredients. We know price. That's the essential market information. I buy a chocolate bar. But do I know that the Ivory Coast is the world's leading cocoa exporter and supplies most of the chocolate I crave? Do I know that Nestle and Hershey's work through a web of cocoa exporters, purchasing agents, and labour contractors linked to plantations that rely on child labor? The market doesn't convey this crucial information. Not only do commodity production and market relations hide exploitation and oppressive class relations rooted in the system of production. They also distort and obscure the real social relations that bind individuals to one another. We are not free-floating consumers but are in fact part of an economic and social “matrix.”

Socialism is incompatible with markets for goods and services in an exchange economy.

 Capitalism is a highly developed and interdependent system of social production, with highly advanced technology and a complex division of labor. The different units of production, let's say, steel mills and computer makers, depend on each other—both as suppliers of raw materials, machines, etc., and as customers. On the other hand, the system of production is fragmented into privately owned and controlled units. So the connections between producers are not, and cannot, be consciously and directly worked out. Instead, the links among units are spontaneously arrived at through endless processes of exchange. If something sells, fine; if it doesn't, something is wrong. If earnings rise, fine; if they plummet, the capitalist responds and adjusts. There is no “before-the-fact” planning. So the market) coordinates the different components of the economy. But this happens indirectly and in a roundabout way behind the producers' backs. Each owner goes his or her own way, and then sees what happens...in the market.

Money rules in the capitalist market. Not only is money the medium by which prices are paid and goods obtained. Money is the goal of production. The units of production are organized around profit. No capitalist is in the business of making soap or lighting fixtures or cars; they're in the business of making money. The capitalist aims to come out of the process of production and exchange with more money (profit) than he started with. And somebody has to produce that wealth which under capitalism is the worker. Why do we work for capitalists? That has everything to do with market and ownership relations. The capitalist class owns the  means of production. We have no choice but to sell their labour power (our ability to work—our energy, skill, intelligence and creativity) in the labour market, or we starve. Wages enable workers to obtain the means of survival—to buy back in the market a portion of the wealth they have produced. The rest belongs to the capitalists. The most fundamental market transaction under capitalism is the sale and purchase of labour power. The exploitation of wage labour is the source of capitalist wealth and power.

Markets are NOT the source of exploitation, rather, extraction of worker surplus value by the capitalist is the source of exploitation under capitalism. The market mechanism is not the same as the exploitation of wage labor. Exploitation takes place at the point of production. But some fail to see is that the market is integral to this process. On the one hand, a pool of labourers (a labour market) is available for exploitation, because these laborers have no means of production. The labour market represents a form of coercion unique to capitalism—the worker is not forced at gunpoint, or by feudal obligation, to work—but he or she is compelled to seek work (and labourers can work only insofar as the capitalist can make profit off their labour). On the other hand, the market is the mechanism through which the capitalist carries out and completes the cycle of production and exchange: buying means of production and labour, and then realizing (converting into money form) the surplus value produced by social labour. If people say that the market will exist under socialism, does that include the market for labour power?

The market regulates capitalist production in two fundamental ways.

First, the market imposes norms (standards) of efficiency . Each capitalist is in battle with others. Each seeks a larger market share (at the expense of others), and the chief weapon in the battle is to expand production, raise productivity, and reduce cost. That means getting workers to work harder, faster, and longer. If an individual capitalist doesn't operate at a certain level of efficiency, he loses out—he can't sell at the prevailing market price—and he either raises efficiency or goes under.

Second, the market guides investment. When the market and profits are growing in a particular sector or product line, capital moves in. For instance, big returns could be gotten in telecommunications a few years back, so huge amounts of investment capital flowed in (you can see the moral of the story). But when the economy gets out of whack, the market imposes discipline and dictates reorganization: companies go under or merge, assets get sold or liquidated, workers are laid off, wage levels are pushed down—and stronger capitals and speculators move in like sharks in a feeding frenzy. This is a highly wasteful, anarchic, and oppressive process of regulation.

The market is impersonal. It isn't accountable to people. It doesn't consult with you about your needs. It doesn't care whether you lose your job, house, retirement pension, or your health coverage. If those things stand in the way of market efficiency, so be it. If you want the market—let's call it a “Market with a Human Face”—to be the organizing mechanism of the economy, you have to explain how the market can function according to market rules and yet not do the horrible things that the market does. Let's say market mechanisms are allowed to operate fairly freely in the consumer goods sector. Different enterprises are producing goods and winning or losing in the marketplace, based on what people buy.

Will the managers of these enterprises be allowed to trim the work force if earnings decline?

Will enterprises be allowed to go bankrupt if they do not make adequate profit?

Will society allow the market to “freely” set prices for goods—including items essential to people's well-being?

Will society allow production to shift to upscale goods that people with higher incomes demand—even if this comes at the expense of things that broader numbers of people need?

If you don't want the market to do those things and you want it to act according to other rules, let's say safeguarding people's basic interests, then what is the market doing that keeps it a market?

Market mechanisms do not promote meaningful work that serves the social good, and they do not promote social equality. These values are totally contrary to competition.

There is no plan for social production in the capitalist market economy. Society as a whole is not figuring what its requirements are: its social needs, the equipment and technology to carry out production, the housing requirements of the population, the resources called for to deal with an AIDS epidemic.

Instead, this is left to the market to work out (of course, the government plays a role, but the market reigns supreme). What happens is that capitalists enter different fields and product lines. Each capitalist producer decides what and how much to produce, whether to expand or cut back, whether to hire new workers and build new facilities. These decisions are guided by the capitalists' ability to sell products at profitable prices and by the expectation of finding profitable markets in the future. The capitalist produces and then sees what happens. It's a hit-and-miss, shoot- and-overshoot, trial-and-error process. In boom times, investment is expanded too much. In periods of economic slowdown, there is too little investment. Great numbers of people can no longer work, resources lie idle, and urgent social needs go unmet. All this is tremendously wasteful and destructive.

The market rewards the minimization of cost in pursuit of the maximization of profit. This is the “bottom line,” what it all comes down to in the market. The capitalists equate the “bottom line” with efficiency. But efficiency has definite class content under capitalism. It is the efficient exploitation of wage labour. It is the calculation of what is cost- efficient and profitable in a narrow and short-term sense. A factory might belch out pollution, but that cost to society is not a worry for the factory owner—you see, air is not within his boundary of ownership, not part of the cost structure that the market rewards and penalizes. The market doesn't register the long-term and social effects of economic activity. Health and pollution don't show up in the supply- demand and profit maximization framework of price and profit. That's what happens when profit is the starting and end-point.

Take the example of pharmaceutical industry. It is not profitable for the pharmaceutical industry to develop cheap drugs for diseases that affect the vast majority of humanity. The market returns are too low. So people go untreated and die of curable diseases. But it is profitable to develop “life-style” drugs and to slightly modify existing drugs to get new patents. Housing is another example. There is an obvious need for affordable and decent housing. But the market doesn't respond to social need or social demand. It only recognises monetary demand—“show me the money.” So you have the problem of homelessness; you have a public housing crisis; you have a situation where the average worker in retail in the U.S. can afford the rent for a one-bedroom apartment in only three of the largest 20 housing markets in the country. Globalization is all about the “bottom line.” In the anti-globalization movement, they call it the “race to the bottom.” The global investor scans the global market in search of low costs, high productivity, and big returns. Sweatshops, lax environmental regulations, few worker benefits—all this makes “good market sense.”

Each capitalist seeks to outmaneuver and out-position others. They keep technical and scientific knowledge from one another through trade secrets and patents and intellectual property rights. Ideas can become private property, and the “rights to these ideas” are bought and sold—just like everything else. To win in the market is to maximise competitive advantage and gain.

We can't eat, put a roof over our heads, or work without going through the market. But when you relate to the market for a house or for a job, you are relating to other people in very definite ways. You are competing for jobs, for housing, etc. The market breeds a mind-set of “me-first,” of “look out for number one.” The market is cold and cruel. It's about “winners and losers.” And in such a world, our world, it's just not “cost-effective” to show concern for others. Of course, we do try to care about others (today, even in this world dominated by the capitalist market), and we organise on the job and in the community. But the fact remains: capitalism and market exchange pit us against each other; the system of private ownership and the market fragment and atomise people.

The situation of exploitation and market relations alienates workers from the means of production, from the goals of production, and from work itself. Work is an alienating and oppressive activity. We work for an impersonal market and we work to obtain life's rewards in the market. There's nothing intrinsically rewarding about work, nor is work about serving meaningful social purposes. We “market ourselves” for jobs, for education...even for relationships. Happiness in the market society is measured by wealth and by the acquisition of things. Okay, there is the cornucopia of products. This, however, is not a market response to consumer want. Logos and brands are not about satisfying real material and social needs, and advertising is not a public service announcement. It's all about manipulating wants, stimulating and steering demand, and fighting for market share. Yes, “we get to choose things.” But three points have to be said about that. First, it's a “sliding scale of choice” based on class position and income. Second, as I have emphasized, the market does not respond to social need. And, third, like the ritual of elections, the “illusion of choice” masks and reinforces the basic powerlessness of the great majority of society. The ideology of consumerism is part of the psychology of control exercised in the capitalist market economy.

There is no plan for social production in the capitalist market economy. Society as a whole is not figuring what its requirements are: its social needs, the resources, equipment and technology to carry out production for the requirements of the population. We are often told that the capitalist consumer market is a kind of “referendum” in which consumers “vote with their dollars”—that in the market the “best product” wins. This is an extraordinary distortion, because it is the market that shapes the consumer. What wins in the marketplace is a function of marketing. What wins is a function of the manipulation and creation of wants (It is estimated 20 to 25 percent of the U.S. labour force is engaged in selling and marketing and advertising). What wins out in the dog-eat-dog world of capital is profitability and least-cost production. We get this message from capitalist ideologues that socialism will only produce a standardised and dull selection of goods that people don't like; or that people won't be able to get what they need, because there isn't enough attention paid to distribution of products. From people who are more radical the argument that socialist planning is inappropriate to consumer want, because these wants are so varied and changing. The “preference question”—the question of the volume, assortment, and variety of consumer goods is the standard bourgeois charge is that a socialist economy can't respond to, or doesn't care about, changing wants.

 A genuine system of socialist planning cannot be ignorant or indifferent to people's needs and wants. It must safeguard people's basic interests and it does have to be responsive to changing wants. Socialism is not “more of the same”—or “less of the same”—with the private individual as the starting and end point. Socialism has to forge new relations of social life and community. Responsiveness requires “feedback mechanisms” and information flows into the planning process. It requires social interchange and social investigation at all levels. It's not a question of bureaucrats deciding from afar through a command economy, or of letting the market and price dictate what gets produced and who gets to buy it. It can be achieved by processes already in place. Trade organizations can periodically engage in consumer surveys. The distribution system keep tab on the changing pattern of tastes by what and at what speed items leave the shelves. Outlets can periodically hold public forums at which suggestions and customer grievances were aired. When new product lines were introduced, the distribution centres specifically solicit consumer reactions. Meetings can be held between agencies which handled supplies and retailers to discuss problems of marketing, volume, quality, and appropriateness of goods handled. Mobile teams were sent out regularly to make “on the spot investigations” of user needs and responses. Telephone or internet research carried out. Supply agencies can keep representatives at the plants of major suppliers to act as liaisons for user interests. Perhaps some of those suggestions may be imperfect life-styles can be so messy. But this approach to consumer and user wants helps people take off the blinkers and think about real alternatives to market/ price mechanisms of decision-making.

People's most basic needs will be met, and the new economy will strive to produce a rational variety of consumer goods. But the ‘convenience’ of having Indonesian workers cater to athletic clothing needs, or peasants in other parts of the world cater to upscale coffee sensibilities, will be no more. At the same time, people's social needs will change with the transformation of social life. There will not be the obsession with consumption, the need to define oneself on the basis of what and how much one consumes. We are saying that a goal of socialist society is to create a common (shared) material abundance.

Fact of the Day

Scotland contained the highest rates of slave ownership in proportion to the population.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/vast-scale-of-british-slave-ownership-revealed-10383768.html

It's Democracy?

 Well, Egypt finally got its democracy – you can choose who you like for President as long as we, the army aristocracy, get to vet all the candidates and reject whoever we don't like, and as long as, when you have chosen a president, we get to suspend the elected assembly and make up our own constitution. That's what will happen until the working class realizes that only a socialist revolution will do the trick. John Ayers.

It's Endemic

 In Britain, thieves are ripping up railway and telephone cables, stealing lead of church roofs, prying off manhole covers, blatantly carting away ramps for the disabled, and causing children to shiver in schools by stealing heating pipes. This is in response to a soaring demand for copper and lead as developing countries race to build skyscrapers, factories and other infrastructure. It's pointless to blame greed when it's endemic to the capitalist system. John Ayers.

Defend Fellow Workers

There are those on the Left who oppose immigration and seek strong immigration controls being imposed on foreigners seeking to live or work in the UK. They offer three reasons. Firstly, employers use them to put a downward pressure on wages by creating continuous competition on the job markets.  Likewise they add to the demand for the limited services such as school places and housing. They then add the “altruistic” motive for their opposition by saying it perpetuates economic problems on countries which the immigrants come from through a “brain drain” and reduces class conflict in those countries because workers in each country should unify to change their respective situations and better their own positions. They argue we should be put on helping other countries develop rather than helping people immigrate. This all sounds very reasonable commonsense but only when you look at a small part of the picture and leave out some important details. The problem is that people easily fall prey to extremist reactionaries when they coat themselves in moderate colours.

It really doesn't matter if there is a huge influx of immigrants. The exploitation remains the same, except now, the immigrants are designated as enemy instead of capitalism itself and capitalists continue to make increasing profit margins and continue to enrich themselves at an increasing almost exponential rate. Those profits are deprived to the working class, non-immigrants and immigrants alike, and extracted from them. Of course the capitalist class uses workers from other lands to try to maximise their profits by reducing wages, working conditions etc. But let us suppose there is no immigration...what then? The capitalist class will still continue using workers from other lands by exporting their capital and jobs to take advantage of cheaper labour. If there is no inward immigration, there will be outsourcing. Capital will seek the lowest possible price for labor regardless of the nationality of the worker. All this negative focus on workers who are guilty of nothing more than being from somewhere else and trying to have a better standard of living is sickening because the capitalist class is ignored. It's one-sided and anti-worker.

What immigration restrictions and laws have historically done is not to prevent migration, but to manage and create a lower caste of workers from the migrants. In the US this was true from the restrictions on Chinese workers to Latino migrants today. The same dynamic of creating divisions in the working class also is true for internal migration from the Okies in the US to the Californian fruit fields as the John Steinbeck’s 'Grapes of Wrath' ably depicts. Or the rural Chinese moving to the new industrial centres. Capitalism destroys the small farmers and their capacity to support themselves and so people seek out wage work. In parts of the world it means moving from the country to the cities within a country but right now, this also means crossing borders.

Supporting these laws or restrictions on migration in general weakens the ability of workers to organize and helps pit different groups of workers against each-other by restricting rights and the ability to organize (for fear of deportation or so on) for part of the working class, while helping to create an illusion on common cause between native workers and their native ruling class. it is precisely because of the border controls that capitalists are able to play workers off against one another.

The basis of the exploitation is the economic system itself. Pitting workers against other workers is what it does. It creates a system of competition in order to be able to survive to detract attention from the true problem: the system.

Immigration should be free for everyone. A socialist cannot be anti-immigration because socialism eliminates borders. The working men and women have no country, no nation. People should be allowed to freely immigrate and emigrate. The world will be united, not divided into states, when there are states there is hierarchy and class struggle, and if class struggle exists there is no socialism. To the genuine socialist who favours the empowerment of the organised working class, immigration restriction is seen as a tool of the ruling class to enforce cultural norms, secure domestic institutions, and to simply express irrational xenophobia and racism. The topic of immigration and especially "illegal" immigration is the venue for the most acceptable articulation of modern racism. Our struggle is an international one, and so is our goal. Because some of our fellow workers are against immigrants doesn't mean socialists should be. We don't idealise workers. If they are acting against their interests, and this anti-immigration is not in their interests we state clearly that those workers are wrong and their actions self-defeating. We don’t pander to their prejudices for popularity. All those who have settled and work here in the UK are members of the British working class. If we define socialism as the destruction of capitalism and the state in favour of a globally united and free working class, you can't promote keeping "foreigners" out or discriminate against “foreigners” who have crossed the border.

The problem at the moment in the UK is that not enough workers are properly unionised, so they are disorganised and not challenging the bosses or fighting against the capitalist system.

Meanwhile, the alarmists are, in case you didn’t know, claiming jihadists are coming to Europe and the UK disguised as Muslim refugees and they are “hell-bent on committing atrocities.” Thus the necessity of bombing them over there so we don’t have to bomb them here. If you don’t want hordes of refugees, then don’t bomb their homes; that’s the simple truth that is lost on NATO warmongers. NATO is using the ‘concern’ about the refugee crisis it created to continue to ‘manage’ the Middle East in a way that ensures Western control of the oil. In 2011 NATO carpet bombed Libya. Now four years later, and the same Western leaders are telling us they need to ‘do’ Libya again. The EU has agreed with itself that it should still take military action against the refugees it created: According to the EU foreign policy chief, the operation will consist of three main phases – intelligence gathering, inspection and detection of smuggling boats, and destruction of the captured vessels. How much of a coincidence is it in which “terrorists” pop up in a foreign country and threaten the West just as Western governments are proposing to bomb that country. The pattern couldn’t be more obvious after so many interventions justified in like manner since 9/11.

“Arise, ye prisoners of starvation” (3/3)

“The capitalist system works against a rational agriculture … a rational agriculture is incompatible with the capitalist system.” – Marx (Capital, Volume III.)

The human and ecological crisis we face is simply not just the product of mismanaged capitalism – the result of greedy, power-hungry people at the helm of business and government. It is the inevitable by-product of the profit system. Reformists have long condemned socialism as a pipedream but at the same time rarely explained how their promises can be achieved within the constraints of capitalism. The reality, however, is that meaningful reform within capitalism is the pipedream.

We live in a world capable, in principle, of providing a diverse and healthy diet for all, and yet one quarter of its people suffer from frequent hunger and ill health generated by a diet that is poor in quantity or quality or both. Let us repeat that so it is perfectly clear. There is no shortage of food in the world today. Abundance, not scarcity, best describes the supply of food in the world today. A quarter of the world’s population eats too much food, food that is often heavy with calories and low on nutrients (colloquially called ‘junk food’). This quarter of the world’s population risks diabetes and all of the other chronic illnesses generated by obesity. Food is absolutely essential for human survival. The very least that humanity should expect from any social system is that it try to prevent starvation — and above all that it does not promote policies which deny access to food to hungry people.

Rather than asking how to increase food production, our first question should be why, when so much food is available, are over 850 million people hungry and malnourished? Why do 18,000 children die of hunger every day?  Why can’t the global food industry feed the hungry? Once more let it be clearly stated so there is no misunderstanding. The answer is the global food industry is not organised to feed the hungry; it is organied to generate profits for corporate agribusiness. The shift to industrial agriculture has driven millions of people off the land and into unemployment and poverty in the immense slums that now surround many of the world’s cities. The people who best know the land are being separated from it; their farms enclosed into gigantic outdoor factories that produce only for export. Hundreds of millions of people now must depend on food that’s grown thousands of miles away because their homeland agriculture has been transformed to meet the needs of agribusiness corporations. Industrial farming in the Third World has produced increasing amounts of food, but at the cost of driving millions off the land and into lives of chronic hunger — and at the cost of poisoning air and water, and steadily decreasing the ability of the soil to deliver the food we need. Industrial farming continues not because it is more productive, but that’s where the profit is, and profit is what counts, no matter what the effect may be on earth, air, and water — or even on hungry people.

Capitalism requires that capitalists continually shift production from goods and services that are unprofitable (and will, in due course plunge them into bankruptcy) to goods and services that are profitable. Since competition forces them to maximize short term profits, it is this focus and not that becomes the over-riding goal. If a capitalist learns that by adding more sugar to food, profits will increase both because sugar is a very cheap input  then a rational capitalist would do this, despite many studies that show a craving for sugar that borders on addiction can be established very early in children through a diet of sugar dense foods. The capitalist cannot afford to be concerned with the lifetime of obesity and connected illnesses that such a diet might generate. In short, in order to be rational, a capitalist needs to focus on profits and not the quality of life of humans unless that quality can be converted into profits. Similarly, if the market for palm oil is profitable, and the easiest way to expand its production is to cut down the rain-forests of South East Asia, then a rational capitalist would not hesitate to do this. Finally, if capitalist farmers profit from paying low wages to undocumented field workers, then any capitalist farmer who does not do this is likely to lose out to the competition.

The producers of junk food that profit from the ease with which people become quasi-addicted to sugar, fat, and salt provide consumers with lots of calories but few nutrients. Hooked on junk food and lacking the income to afford more nutritious food, people consume too many calories and not enough nutrients. This is a recipe for obesity, a weakened immune system, and ultimately illness and early death. The food industry always emphasizes the enormous choice it offers the modern consumer, but this is an illusion. First of all because most people in the world are too poor to buy any but the cheapest of foods. Second, those that have the money are confronted with a huge array of processed foods that are largely rearrangements of soya, corn, fat, sugar, and salt. Food indoctrination is so widespread that most food choices are already heavily conditioned by powerful marketing techniques of the giant supermarkets and food manufacturers.

“Arise, ye prisoners of starvation” (2/3)

The issue of food is popping up everywhere and wherever you look the horrific state of food production hit the headlines but the current protests about food are just the latest crisis brought on by the way capitalism operates. Industrial food processing has gone hand in glove with the rise of capitalism, as mass production processes developed to provide cheap food to concentrated working-class, urban populations that became dependent on the market for their nutritional sustenance. At the turn of the 20^th Century Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle, the story of the meat trade in Chicago. Today, many writers are still angrily describing much the same conditions. The damaging and dangerous aspects of our food supply have arisen out of its complete subordination to the dictates of the free market. Maximisation of profits has trumped all other considerations.  Plenty has produced waste, not health; science has poisoned us instead of fed us; and technology has intensified, not alleviated, poverty. Why, in a world full of food, should anyone be hungry? We are surrounded by an unbelievable abundance of food. Walking around one of the giant supermarkets, you might sometimes wonder if anyone actually buys anything, because the shelves are kept fully replenished. Yet millions of people are not getting the food they need, not only in other places, but right here at home. And it’s because food is not produced first of all for people to sustain themselves and enjoy, but to make money. Human beings currently exist in conflict with nature because capitalism sees nature as a means to an end: profit.

Feeding billions of humans is a mass-production industry. Products that are farmed all over the world are harvested, shipped, and processed to serve millions of people in distant markets. Even mundane products like apple juice may be made from apples from China, Mexico, and Canada. But food production, like any other industry, is not really about feeding people; it is about what commodities generate the largest profit margins for a handful of enormous conglomerates who process and distribute products. This means the bigger a company is, and the more transport and logistics it does, the cheaper it is for that company to be in the business. You need to be rich to do business. The small fry have all been devoured by the big fish and these few companies control the gateways from farmers to consumers that gives them market power both over the people who grow food and the people who eat it. While there are still millions of local producers of the raw materials of food (grains, fruits, young animals, etc.), the vast majority work under direct contract to larger conglomerates who mill, ship, or process their output, or have only one buyer with whom to deal at harvest time. Raj Patel describes in ‘Stuffed and Starved’ how a kilo of coffee grown by farmers in Uganda costs 14 cents; by the time it reaches a Nestlé processing plant, it has risen to $1.64. But this is where the real magic happens: when it emerges from the plant, it will be an astounding $26.40 a kilo. Nestlé, one of the largest food conglomerates on the planet, not surprisingly sold $107 billion in food and beverages in 2008. Between the more than 2 million family farms and corporate farms in the US and the 300 million consumers, there are 7,563 wholesale purchasers, 27,915 food manufactures, and 35,650 retail wholesalers. This hourglass shape provides for large profits for those sitting in the middle: in 2004 retailers made $3.5 trillion, food processors $1.25 trillion, and the agrochemical industry $31 billion. The most famous example of the utter dominance of the few with a chokehold on grocery sales is Wal-Mart determining, with a few other giant retail supermarkets, what will make it onto your dinner plate long before you visit the store. A retail chain like Wal-Mart can and does dictate the terms of sales to producers, including price, driving the cost to retailers down, even while they increase prices.

Within agriculture they are busy researching, developing, and demonstrating feasible alternatives to the high-input and ecologically damaging system of agriculture that we now have. They're proving that is possible to grow food-grains in an ecologically sound way. But in narrow market terms, this approach would not win out over agri-business. It's actually cost-effective for agri-business to grow annual grain crops that require huge amounts of herbicides and pesticides. You manage these crops in a certain way, you get huge, standardised output, and on the cost and profit side, it works— for agri-business, not for the farmer who does the actual growing. But once you start considering the effects on ground water, soil erosion, and public health, then the social costs go way up. The problem— and this is built in to the market mechanism —is that the market doesn't register the long-term and social effects of economic activity. Health and pollution don't show up in the supply- demand and profit maximisation framework of price and profit. That's what happens when profit is the starting and end-point.

Food policy is as destructive a force in the lives of billions of people as the use of fossil fuels or military intervention. The food system does not respond to the needs of people, nor to sustainable production based on respect for the environment, but is based on a model rooted in a capitalist logic of seeking the maximum profit, optimization of costs and exploitation of the labour force in each of its productive sectors. Common goods such as water, seeds, land, which for centuries have belonged to communities, have been privatised, robbed from the people and converted into exchange currency at the mercy of the highest bidder. Governments, international institutions and NGOs have bent to the designs of the transnational corporations and have become accomplices and co- profiteers, in this unsustainable food system. Never in history has there been so much food as today. But for millions of people who spend 50-60% of their income to purchase food, a figure that can rise to 80% in the poorest countries, the price of food has made it impossible to gain access to it. The problem today is not the lack of food, but the inability to pay for it.

Socialism with its democratic planning is the only solution to feed the billions of humans on the Earth in an ecologically sustainable way. The skill and science of sustainable farming already exists. How to implement sustainable models for larger and more urban populations will be a challenge for those who will build a new society. What to grow, how, where; how to prioritise land use; irrigation; transportation; storage and processing; the uses of animals; all these questions about agriculture will have to be debated and decided by producers who are not driven by Wall Street numbers and market share. The vision of human beings’ relationship to the Earth will not be of abuser or owner, but of a steward of the natural world, able to use the collective intelligence of generations to not just consume, but live harmoniously and heal capitalism’s damage to the environment.

 Political action with the aim of achieving real change is essential. The socialists who make up the World Socialist Movement envisage free access to food and other necessities of life, which simply means that workers will be allowed to take freely of the goods and services available to them, and in which they had a hand in collectively producing. Common sense will prevent over consumption, and due to the fact that we will be allowed to work at jobs which we have a natural interest and aptitude in, the enforcement of work entailed by labor vouchers will be seen as unnecessary. Therefore, free access consumption will not be based on how many hours we work, but on the self-defined needs of the individual. Of course, if we don't collectively agree not to over consume, or if we collectively choose not to work, socialism in general and free access in particular will not work. However, since everybody in a socialist society will be working at jobs in which they have an aptitude for and personal interest in, and since work will encompass only a fraction of the time for each worker that it does under capitalism (with far more leisure time available to workers than under capitalism), the need for some medium to enforce work will be unnecessary. Give people what they need: food, medicine, clean air, pure water, trees and grass, pleasant homes to live in, some hours of work, more hours of leisure. Don’t ask who deserves it. Every human being deserves it. Socialism will be the greatest gift to humankind - the right to collectively choose our destiny without a political state or ruling class to decide for us. Food production is too important to leave in the hands of profiteers. They don’t care who starves or who gets sick.

“Arise, ye prisoners of starvation” (1/3)

Food and its production is one of the most important issues of the anti-capitalist movement. The lack of access to sufficient quantities of food to satisfy minimum human need the quality of the food we consume and its impact on our health, and the control of the world’s food resources, have all been the focus of attention for many. Even in the developed world with supposedly ‘adequate’ levels of nutrition, the food we eat has become a major cause of ill health and early death, especially among the poorest in society who consume the foods with the least nutritional quality. Capitalist food production and Big Business lie at the heart of these issues. Human and animal welfare violations are shocking with food products devoid of nutrients. The extent of corporate power frightening. The world's population is larger than ever before - but so is world food production. Indeed the surplus potentially available is greater than it has ever been. Some claim that the equivalent of twice the minimum nutritional level for everyone in the world is already being produced. And with world transport and storage better than ever, it should be easy to overcome any local shortages, or even out shortfalls in one year with stocks accumulated in good time (and we have known how to do this since Old Testament times)

It is clear now that climate change and the increase in extreme weather events such as flooding, and drought – will impact on food production. Global warming is becoming an issue for food production on a global scale. While climate change is likely to increase world hunger, it is not the cause. The problem is capitalism. The motivation for big business to produce food is profit, not to provide for people. Despite the great strides the progress of technology and increased food production, this system cannot provide the most basic necessities for the world’s population. Advances in nutrition and agricultural science could allow us to produce abundant, healthy, safe, and tasty food for everyone. Humanity could produce an enormous variety of foods, both to guarantee food security against pests, disease, and climate change through agricultural diversity, but also to keep meals appetising. In short, the knowledge, technology, and collective potential to completely transform the way the world eats exists now. What doesn’t exist is a social structure that allows for a rational and balanced approach to food production, distribution, preparation, and consumption.

People cannot fill their bellies and go hungry or feed their families. It is not a question of there being too many people or not enough food available. We currently grows enough food to feed 10 billion. Hunger and malnutrition today is a result of structural and political conditions, not the inability to grow enough food. Our food production and distribution is not planned but is at the behest of the anarchy of the market and the exchange economy. This dysfunctional relationship with food is regularly lamented but the reasons are rarely explained. Today, capitalism is unable to feed the world. The future, under capitalism tomorrow, will mean this will get worse. Socialism is the only solution to stopping and reversing climate change – and for providing everyone with the necessities of life.

Many people want to do something about food and the closely related problem of the environment. But virtually all the proposals are limited to tinkering with the existing system or appealing to the good will and reason of the rich and powerful. This is utopian. In a system driven by and defined by commodity production and money, what matters to the capitalists is not food quality or the benefits to human health, but maximising profits. The solution is not to be found in blaming individuals for their “personal choices,” or in changing this or that aspect of the status quo. The solution can only come from abolishing the dysfunctional system of capitalism itself.

A central problem in the food system is one of exploitation of small producers and landless labourers by the more powerful corporations. The market control they seek is through the domination of supply chains and processing. It is here that they believe ‘value adding’ and product differentiation can be achieved. The development of large transnational firms has given rise to a system of production whereby their size and dominance have provided them with an ability to structure the food market. In the food chain, close linkages between large-scale farmers, manufacturers and retailers are used to regulate competition. The key players in the industry are the manufacturers and the retailers who dominate the individual sectors and in doing so attempt to determine the prices and profits in the industry as a whole. Most of these companies operate as dominant firms in their respective market sectors. That provides them with the opportunities to establish prices and profits within the supply chain and ensure governments introduce rules which benefit them and help them dominate small producers. Free-market ideology suggests that prices are determined by the interaction of demand and supply. In the food industry nothing could be further from the truth. Farmers receiving subsidies provide manufacturers and retailers with the ability to purchase low-priced raw materials and sell them at high prices to consumers. A system of import tariffs and subsidies from governments provides subsidies throughout the industry. Dwayne Andreas, the boss of Archer Daniels Midland - one of the global giants - said in 1995, "There isn't one grain of anything in the world that is sold in a free market. Not one! The only place you see a free market is in the speeches of politicians."

To reiterate, there is currently the ability to produce enough food to adequately feed the world’s population plus extra. The primary problem facing the developing world is the distribution of food and its control. There exists the concern that current farming techniques, factory-produced meat, and fertiliser-reliant techniques for crop production are unsustainable in terms of wasting the earth’s resources and damaging the environment. Certainly we should seek methods of production which are sustainable, but that does not rule out all industrial or intensified forms of agriculture. For sure, a move away from monoculture farming heavily dependent upon chemical fertilisers and herbicides is necessary. Local food movements have sprung up but capitalism has created the conditions in which commodities can be transported around the world. Specialisation in production can be beneficial and can be more efficient for many products but again monoculture farming encourages the spread of disease and increases chemical use. The debate between localisation and globalisation in food production needs to start from considerations of satisfying human need rather than a value judgement on the benefits or otherwise of rival systems. Any rational food production system would certainly lead to higher levels of localised production, certainly to greater diversity in the food we consume and certainly not a world in which millions starve while food is left to rot. Nor would a rational food production system see millions being made ill from the poor quality of the food produced or a world in which the food produced was determined by the needs of big business to maximise profits. But equally it would almost certainly involve the continuation of some forms of large-scale agricultural production and not solely organic and international trade in food, but at a level which is sustainable, rational and aimed at satisfying the needs of all.

"The global food system is broken," say Oxfam. They are right. But what makes it this way, what stands between production and consumption. Our answer is capitalism and the drive for profit. What we need is to take control of the food system. Change will only come when those in power running the system for the purpose of profit are dethroned. This will enable us to deal with the wasteful and wilful system of buying and selling. Socialists look forward to a world of plenty.

United States of Anger!

A snippet in The Toronto Star recently focused on the United States of Anger. In 2011 there were one thousand and eighteen hate groups operating there, an increase of four hundred and eleven in that year. There was a thirty-five per cent increase in prosecutions of hate crimes during the first three years of Obama's administration, according to the justice department. That's what we like about capitalism – it brings people together in peace and harmony! John Ayers.

It Makes One Wonder.

 Actress Halle Berry has been ordered to pay ex-husband, Gabriel Aubrey $240 000 a year to support their four-year old daughter…"in the comfortable surroundings she has become accustomed to." How many starving children would that feed. It makes one wonder if there isn't something wrong with the system under which we live! John Ayers.

We Need Socialism

THE CLASS STRUGGLE

“I’m not against capitalism; I just think it should be regulated and controlled more” is an opinion shared by many. Capitalism, no matter how much legislation is passed to rein it in, is intolerable; it must be dismantled. Here’s why:

The hallmark of capitalism is that the means of production are privately owned by some individuals, while others do not have this ownership. In other words, some own the means of production others are using. So it’s a system in which the ones using the means of production must sell their labor to these owners in order to have a relatively decent life.  The owners can then make a profit from other people’s work by just owning. This happens when the value of the worker’s pay is less than the value that was added thru his/her work in the paid hours. That creates a profit for the owner of the means of production who did not create the value, but still gets paid in the form of profit. This profit is hence capital for future investments and more profits. So, the capitalist is making money simply by just owning, not adding or creating value. Since a capitalist economy is based on the need for growth and profits for the investors and owners, this method of exploitation – profiting on other people’s hard work – is of course used by more or less all of them. This exploitation is in other words just a logical result caused by the capitalist system. Economists who support capitalism may well proclaim how rational and efficient it is, but in fact it is a fundamentally irrational system, perhaps the most irrational in the whole of history. This is the situation: technical progress is greater than ever, but people are working harder and harder and longer and longer. We are not enemies of technology, but we are against the capitalist application of technology which means we see the productivity of labour rise, but that is not done for the benefit of society, nor in order to shorten labour time and the proportion of our life we spend at work. On the contrary, that is getting longer and more intensified.

The financial elite have the overwhelming power in society. They control all the resources and possess the influence and power in the economy, yet we’ve never voted for them. Wealth and power is concentrated in the hands of a non-elected minority who make huge decisions that affect the entire society and our lives. This is undemocratic. Capitalism is a global system, and people should co-operate and organise society in common.

Cooperation, solidarity and altruism are essential and fundamental elements of our nature, but these things are being suppressed to a large extent in capitalism. In) today’s societies things like greed and consumption are being encouraged. In fact, capitalism requires corporations to only think about the "bottom line". If they don’t, they’re out of business, and corporations that do think profits and greed replace them. A society like this will of course produce a lot of greedy individuals. Capitalism encourages greed and tries to manipulate us into mindless consumption. Corporations spend huge amounts of money on advertising almost everywhere we look, whether it’s TV, radio, internet or newspapers. This propagandistic capitalist system is a highly unnatural phenomenon; it’s been a part of human history for an extremely small amount of time, yet it affects us, many of us in a huge way. Capitalism demoralises humans. The profit-hungry billionaires love “private property.” They love that while the majority of humanity has to sell their labour, renting out their ability to work to someone else in order to survive, they, the superrich, get to “own” the banks, factories, natural resources, and other “commanding heights” of the economy. They are happy that they can live off the work done by those who aren’t lucky enough to be among their small ruling segment of humanity. The billionaires and their governments want people to support and fight in their wars. They also want people to happily accept their massive cutbacks and layoffs. If the people are to do this, the last thing they need to hear is the truth. The ruling class own the media to push its interpretation of the world.

A system that’s undemocratic, tyrannical and exploitative shouldn’t just be fixed or regulated, it should be dismantled. Capitalism must be abolished and replaced by a libertarian socialist society in which the communities and the economic institutions are run democratically by the participants; a society where the people participate in the decision-making and are in control of their own work, life and destiny; a system of cooperative communities that benefit everyone and focus on people’s needs instead of short term profits. It can only come when the majority of people want it. Creating a socialist society is perfectly do-able. We’ve seen examples of socialism working very well all over the place throughout history.

The Socialist Party is anti-capitalist and our aim is to show that all the problems facing people today, such as poverty and unemployment are consequences of the socio-economic system and not of the success of failure of this or that economic policy of particular governments. We live in an age of extraordinary progress. We have more computer power in our smartphone than in the Apollo space programme and we can reach billions of people instantly via the internet. Remember "The Jetsons" cartoon series? It portrayed technologies in the sixties that seemed magical at the time such as videophones, talking alarm clocks, flat screen TVs, a kind of internet connection and even robots to clean your house. All are reality today. Thanks to the decoding of the human genome we are at the verge of medical breakthroughs that can even further extend our life expectancy and we only just begun exploring the human brain to find answers to Alzheimer's and dementia. Science can provide us a new, green, industrial revolution where we no longer burn fossil fuels for our transportation or use oil derivatives for materials. We can develop new green and clean forms of energy and materials with the help of scientists.  

 But think about inequality, or climate change or the fact that still around 800 million people go to bed hungry every day. In order to solve the threat of climate change, hunger and other challenges, we don’t only need scientists and their tireless efforts to help our society to further advance but we require a majority of people who are committed to pushing the boundaries even further in a political social revolution. Because science alone cannot change the world. Only people can. 

Capitalism's Sickness!

In "Rich-Poor Divide in Toronto Hospitals", (Toronto Star, June 13) reporter, Carol Goar, highlights the findings of a recent survey. There are two – "The first is that very low income people are using the parts of the health care system that are in its greatest crisis; the second is that to reduce hospital use, people need the ability to pay for healthy food, buy medicine, and live in a healthy place where they can receive home care." In other words, if you do not have the money you will not get the health care you need. Another example of capitalism's sickness! John Ayers.

Understanding Capitalism

When looking at all of our social problems, from miserable working conditions to poverty to environmental destruction to crime to discrimination to democracy -- when looking at all of this, we struggle with a reason why it must happen. And then it occurs, almost as clear as daylight that this happens because we are not in control of our own world. The farms and the factories, the police departments and the parliaments, the army and the navy, all of it is for the glory, the power, and the benefit of a very few. The only thing that guarantees this is possession of society's productive forces. It is because the wealthy own all of the land and all of the productive instruments that they may cause these problems. It is because the capitalist is given a choice that discrimination occurs; it is because the capitalist is given a profit incentive that environmental destruction occurs; it is because the capitalist cannot profit by well-satisfied working class that unemployment occurs. Our goal is to make revolution, overthrow the capitalist system and build socialism. Reformists projects the idea that the capitalist state can be a shield for the rights of the people against the reality itself which proves that the capitalist state is a class state, serving the employing and promotes attacks upon the working class. Reformists provide an alibi to capitalism that fosters illusions and serve its perpetuation with the claim that the capitalist system can be tamed and could be a benefit to working people. A humanised capitalism is impossible to exist. If our definition of capitalism/socialism is just private/public ownership then we're overlooking so many necessary factors in the economy, namely and most importantly the mode of production.

"But, the transformation — either into joint-stock companies and trusts, or into State-ownership — does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. In the joint-stock companies and trusts, this is obvious. And the modern State, again, is only the organization that bourgeois society takes on in order to support the external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well of the workers as of individual capitalists. The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine — the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is, rather, brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State-ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution."

Does commodity production, wage labour, the law of value, commodity production for profit, etc, cease to exist freely once that state takes ownership of the means of production? Of course not. Marx and Engels for many people are simply old fashioned and out of date, full of complicated, boring theory with long words which in practice is waste of time and we need something new. How wrong they are. Marx’s ideas can be understood by anyone who takes the trouble to study them. They are not mechanical or needlessly abstract, but contain important truths about history and human society. They are not old fashioned because they explain the world today. They are not boring because they are about revolution. The conclusion Marx and Engels drew was that practice and real action – not just ideas – were the key to the future.

Few people own anything at all, except clothes, furniture and possibly a house. What can you expect from a human being who is starving or freezing to death? In a single word, you can expect desperation. For the capitalist, this is good. It makes the worker accept lower and lower wages -- it makes the individual obedient while watching their children suffer undernourishment.

If the economy of a society is corrupted, then no institution can escape this taint. The oligarchs and the plutocrats determine the hours of work, the rates of wages, the prices of products, whether a factory shall function or stand idle, whether a field shall be harvest or its crops left to rot.  Every politician has been bought and paid for by campaign donations in order to gain votes in an electoral system, must spread their master’s message on the media. Political leaders may be voted upon by the masses, but they are presented to the public by the powerful wealthy interests, and the owners of media. They have a system of checks and balances to ensure the right type of politician is elected.

We are alienated from society. We do not control the elected officials. We do not have the right to dictate the terms of our working conditions. We do not have the right to make or pass laws or to veto or reject those passed against us. It is because we have no control over the economy that we need to live that we become so powerless in the face of such great poverty. And we are alienated, not just from society's productive instruments, but from the very act of genuine life in society itself! Anything wedo, from the organization of our workplace to interacting with others once weleave work, is done in an artificial consumerist society -- we are responsible for producing everything that we experience, but none of it is done by our own will or direction. We are the puppets in the dream of a capitalist, but for us it is a nightmare. If we don't overthrow capitalism, we don't have a chance of saving the world ecologically. All over the world, the struggle of the working class goes on. Socialist ideas hold out the hope of a totally different, exciting future and explain how to make it a reality.

Understanding Wage Slavery

END EXPLOITATION 

The majority of people are disillusioned and have deep questions about the prospects of life under capitalism. Our aim is to create an independent, mass workers movement for socialism.  Building up a mass workers’ movement for socialism does not mean that every person must be an expert on Marxist economics but only to be clear on the basic principles of socialism. People make revolution out of necessity, not out of a theory, but out of a practical, understanding of the need for revolution. The working class must emancipate itself. No one can do it for them. The Socialist Party are not made up “social workers” who try to patch up the problems of capitalism and make life “better” for the workers, but  instead are workers organising with fellow workers to fight for our interests. We want the workers to take possession of the means of production and abolish the wage system. The Socialist Party’s task is to explain every aspect of the worker’s situation, every aspect of their exploitation without exception. Our propaganda must reach out to the majority and explain why socialism is the only solution. We must start from the appearance of things and patiently explain again and again why capitalism is the source of the workers’ misery. Capitalist society is built around the idea that some people should profit off of others. We think that this is why there are so many people living in poverty right now at the same time that there are a few people with incredible wealth. Part of why capitalism continues to exist is that we can’t get a lot of what we need and want unless we have money. Most of us can’t get money unless we work for someone else. This means our bosses have a lot of control over our lives. If we lose our jobs and can’t find new ones, we risk losing our homes, losing access to health care, let alone being able to spend money on the things we enjoy. Bosses know that if they fire us we won’t have an income anymore. Many bosses use this to push people around on the job. We basically give up our democratic rights on the job. We don’t have a right to free speech at work, for instance. The boss can tell us what to say and what not to say. We think that’s wrong too

We are not utopians. The struggle for reforms is a labour of Sisyphus. Every gain extracted from capitalists and their state they will try to take back. Capitalism cannot be reformed. It must be destroyed. We think that all people should have their basic needs met – people should have enough food, and safe secure homes, access to medical care, access to entertainment and the arts, and so on. We think it’s terrible that our society wastes so many resources on the lifestyles of a few super rich people while so many poor people go without the bare necessities. We think if we did away with capitalism this wastefulness would go away and there would be plenty for everyone. We want to replace capitalism with a world that is more democratic. The very essence of capitalism is slavery: the enslavement of workers by the capitalist class. Today, all workers suffer under capitalist slavery: either wage slavery or physical, chattel slavery. There are currently more than 35.8 million people physically enslaved as chattel. Approximately 95% of the 6.4 billion persons now living suffer under capitalist wage slavery: 6.175 billion. When you read the word slavery, it may seem as though it couldn't possibly be that people are literally slaves today--slavery seems like an outmoded form of life from previous centuries. Whatever we feel, slavery is very much a fact of life for all people in the world today. A person is a slave if he has lost control over his life and is dominated by someone or something--whether he is aware of this or not. Wage slavery is the condition in which a person must sell his or her labor-power, submitting to the authority of an employer, in order to merely subsist.

A capitalist slave is:

1.      Forced to work at a "job" owned by a capitalist (owner of jobs, the means of production, and the profit from the jobs) through necessity or through mental or physical threat

2.      Owned or controlled by a capitalist "employer" (wages, hours, working conditions)

3.      Dehumanised, treated as a commodity: a faceless entity filling a slot, a hired hand

4.      At the mercy of the capitalist: the capitalist can--and now does so with a vengeance--destroy jobs by "staff reduction," mechanize jobs (e.g. robots welding automobiles), or take jobs to a cheaper labor location

5.      Without a voice as to how much profit the capitalist can make from the worker's labor and cannot bargain for higher wages or safe working conditions

6.      Unable to support himself and his family when he cannot find a job

7.      Reduced to poverty or destitution or death by an ever-reduced job "market"

Just as plantation owners in the American South and the capitalists who made millions from the international slave trade in earlier decades of our history brainwashed most Americans into believing that chattel slavery was a "fact of nature." In the same vein, capitalists have programmed most contemporary people into believing that the evils of capitalist slavery are necessary to the smooth running of society. The capitalist system of greed, selfishness, subjugation, and exploitation has camouflaged itself the illusion of equal opportunity for all and has seduced people into ignoring its contradictions, injustices, and malevolence. Just as the world attempts to rid itself of chattel and debt slavery with the realization that slavery is not "natural"—but in fact evil and unnatural-- workers throughout the world must now free themselves from capitalist slavery. We must replace capitalism with a socialist cooperative commonwealth society that ensures that all people can live free from slavery of any kind and assure that every person has the means whereby they can sustain themselves and lead a free and productive life.

To overthrow capitalism, we must work hard to understand just what has led to our enslavement and what kinds of actions will be necessary to free ourselves from these insidious chains of servitude. We first need to understand the basics of our present economic situation. You have already endured the subjugation of a "boss" or "director" or "committee," and you know that the coercion, even if masked as "job description," "supervisor evaluation," or "company directive" can be as repressive as if there were literal chains fastened around your arms and feet.  Under the "wage slave" system you don't receive the full compensation for your work. By the very nature of the employer-employee relationship, you get less compensation than you should, because the employer takes excessive profits. Let's take a look at how this happens by examining a very simple example of an exchange:

The raw material to produce a sack of ground wheat, let's say, costs $1.00. The means of production for this job costs $1.00. The owner of the means of production (the capitalist) pays you $1.00 for your labour-power. The capitalist sells the sack of ground wheat for $8.00. Your labour has turned $1.00 dollar of wheat plus $1.00 in production costs plus $1.00 for your labour-power, into a commodity which is sold for $8.00. The profit is $5.00. The owner of the means of production (the capitalist) makes 5 times more in profit than you do in wages, plus he owns and can sell the means of production whenever he wants. And he can select cheaper labour as he pleases. A wage slave can't quit an oppressive job to find a less slave-like job, because in our present society, almost all jobs involve wage-slavery. So the options are obey and stay, die of starvation, or become a vagrant, which is illegal. Yet another reason why to oppose capitalism is because this economic institution acts as a parasite. Every worker, no matter how much they must produce to feed themselves, must produce extra to feed their boss, employer, or group of stockholders. The income is split between the costs of industry, the employer, and the employee. Fourth, fifth, and sixth cuts are taken out by the state, the middleman, and the final distributor. Each one of these groups take their toll on the product but contribute nothing. They simply stamp it as approved, living off of the proceeds from the sales without producing or creating. If there is an initial displeasure with capitalism, it is this: the many who work receive very little, while those few who do not labour receive the greatest income. In a single word, we socialists have called this exploitation, justified solely by legal possession.

The ravages of wage slavery are becoming clear for all to see and feel. We either overthrow this new slavery or we will continue as slaves. We must realise that our economic situation at present--a very few obscenely rich people owning companies and corporations and having illegally seized state and federal political power--is one which we can and must change. Our current economic and political circumstances are not written in stone; humans have lived under very different political and economic conditions throughout our history. We must begin to overthrow this present state of affairs where all workers suffer under capitalist wage-slavery. The political system and the economic situation should be directed toward the welfare of all, not just a few. We can bring about these changes; it is not impossible. We must first make all workers aware of our present plight and then begin in all possible ways to overthrow the new slavery, producing material changes leading to political freedom and economic equality of opportunity through building the cooperative socialist commonwealth