For a new commonwealth

In recent years there has been a renewed interest and growing movement towards socialism.

The aim of the Socialist Party and the World Socialist Movement  is to replace world capitalist economy with world socialism. The capitalist system  threatens to degrade and destroy the human race. Human culture and humanity is threatened with complete annihilation. Socialist society will abolish the class division of society, i.e., simultaneously with the abolition of anarchy in production, it will abolish all forms of exploitation and oppression. Society will no longer consist of antagonistic classes in conflict with each other, but will be a united cooperative commonwealth.

We argue that the problems are no longer technological but subjective. The more insidious and dangerous basis for erroneous ideas is that of subjectively and objectively maintaining a capitalist bias. An individual may claim to be a Marxist, may learn various phrases but all the platitudes in the world cannot conceal that the practice of this type of reformist is always pro-capitalist, anti-working class. Such individuals have no real concern for the working class as a whole. To them, workers are incapable of realizing their objective interests; they are stupid, racist, sexist, absorbed in their petty concerns. Thus, workers are not a revolutionary force. Revolution must be made for them and they must be coerced into accepting a socialist society in their own interests. In other words, with the only difference being that between a “socialist” society and capitalist society, these individuals view the working class exactly as do the capitalists.

The capitalists have an interest in promoting the highest rate of exploitation possible. It is through exploitation that they maximise their profits and maximisation of profits is the basis of capitalist production. Thus, businessmen have an interest in paying the lowest wages consistent with capitalist reproduction (they cannot kill off their working class). They have an interest in a longer working day or more intensive toil, poorer working conditions (health and safety,  are all costs of production). In other words, they have an objective interest in promoting a situation that makes the life of the worker increasingly intolerable. In this fight, the capitalists have the state to assist them.

Workers, on the other hand, have the opposite point of view. They prefer higher wages and salaries to lower; safer working conditions to unsafe; a shorter working day to a longer one. Hence the two classes have conflicting interests and, as they are conflicting, they must be resolved through a fight, sometimes open, sometimes concealed, but a fight nonetheless. Workers have themselves and their labour organisations to advance their interests.

For the first time in its history mankind will take its fate into its own hands. Instead of destroying innumerable human lives and incalculable wealth in struggles between classes and nations, mankind will devote all its energy to the development and strengthening of its own collective cooperation. After abolishing private ownership of the means of production and converting these means into social property, the world socialism will replace the world market, the competitive and blind processes of capitalist production, by consciously organised and planned production for the purpose of satisfying rapidly growing social needs. With the abolition of competition and anarchy in production, devastating crises and still more devastating wars will disappear. Instead of colossal waste of productive forces and spasmodic development of society-there will be a planned utilisation of all material resources and a painless economic development on the basis of unrestricted, smooth and rapid development of productive forces. 

The abolition of private property and the disappearance of classes will do away with the exploitation of man by man. No longer can some men (the capitalists), by virtue of the fact that they own the means of production, live off (exploit) the labour of others (the working class). No longer are the workers compelled to sell their labour power to the capitalists in order to live. The workers are no longer property-less proletarians. They now own the means of production and work them in their own interests and in the interests of society. For society is now composed of workers by hand and brain, i.e. of an associated body of wealth-producers. Work will cease to be toiling for the benefit of our masters and from being merely a means of livelihood, full of want and inequality, imbued with the misery of enslaved classes, the wretched standard of life generally will disappear and the hierarchy created in the division of labour system will be abolished, together with the antagonism between mental and manual labour; and the last vestige of the social inequality of the sexes will be removed. At the same time, the organ of class domination, the State will disappear also. The State, being the embodiment of class domination, will die out in so far as classes die out, and with it all measures of coercion will expire.

In socialism no social restrictions will be imposed upon the growth of the forces of production. Private ownership in the means of production, the selfish individualist lust for profits, the artificial retention of working people in a state of ignorance and poverty which retards technical progress will have no place. Hunger and misery cannot be abolished under the capitalist system. There is only socialism able to save humanity. Socialism is the only way out of the many existential crises that faces humanity. Socialism means peace. Within the country there are no longer capitalists who profit by war, who see in war the way to secure more spheres of influence, more markets, more trade routes, more sources of natural resources and raw materials and a chance to dominate the world. Everyone loses by war not only in terms of personal suffering but also by the diversion of resources from construction and the advance to a better life.

The Socialist Party is the deadly foe of capitalism and capitalist parties. It has as its aims the establishment of a socialist society in which the means of production will not be the private property of the few, a society which will not be based upon profit but on production for people’s needs, will not be based on class division, will eradicate both wars and the class war, and abolish poverty for ever. When the working class has power it can build socialism and liberate the exploited and oppressed peoples of the world. The Tory, LibDems Labour and assorted nationalist parties appeal to you in the name of the “NATION.” One Party—the Socialist Party—appeals to you in the name of the working class. No party can serve two masters. No party can serve the robbers and the robbed at the same time. To speak of “common shared interests” is camouflage to hide their support of the robbers because the great majority of belongs to the class which is robbed. The Socialist Party is thus the only party of the workers.

Capitalism is the Poison - Socialism is the Antidote

There is a cure for the COVID-19 virus, as for all the other disasters that the disease of capitalism has brought into this world and which it is still producing but, even worse, that it will produce in the future.

 The cure is not immediate and definitive, that is clear, but it is a cure that fixes the minimum conditions for facing the environmental, human and social emergencies that capitalism will bequeath to the society that will replace it.

Socialism is the cure for this pestilence. We can guarantee our cure will work because it implies a radical change in mindset as well as in economic and social relations, exactly what this planet and this humanity so dramatically stricken with capitalism needs today.”

The idea of socialism and creating abundance is far more powerful, inspiring and empowering than the idea of eradicating poverty. Central to the meaning of socialism is common ownership. This means the resources of the world being owned in common by the entire global population.

But does it really make sense for everybody to own everything in common? Of course, some goods tend to be for personal consumption, rather than to share—clothes, for example. People ‘owning’ certain personal possessions does not contradict the principle of a society based upon common ownership

In Socialism, gangsters’ cliques will lose their socio-economic breeding grounds. Their anti-social and anti-natural survivalist tricks – “the most violent, mean and malignant passions of the human breast, the Furies of private interest” (Karl Marx) will fall into oblivion. 

Competition for possessions will give way to cooperation for life. 

Humanity will regain their lost original nature once again by demolishing their “fear of freedom” in a knowledgeable coherent relationship among themselves and with their surrounding nature, moving on to a higher phase of social progress, reaffirming equality, freedom, peace and happiness in unison, in harmony. 

“The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism” (Karl Marx).

 According to him, with the dissolution of the power of money, private exchange and private property will cease to exist; “then you can exchange love only for love, trust for trust, etc...” (Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844).

Marx and Engels held genuine socialism to be "Communismus, Socialismus, Humanismus" (German Ideology Chapter 4), 

Engels clearly set out the progression: “State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous and then dies of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of the processes of production. The state is not “abolished”, it withers away.” (Frederick Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific)  

World socialist society will do away with classes and will be organized on a three-tier system of local, regional and global councils to deal with the administration of all their respective specific responsibilities relating to life, things, relations and problems. Money will go to the museums beside bronze axes. Private property and all its paraphernalia relating to money, wages, profits, private, joint-stock, state, multi-national, transnational and corporate et al. ownerships, and all selfish private interests as against social well-being will be things of the past. Under such a global arrangement of things and affairs of life, the crimes of today will also be a thing of the past. In the event of any rarely occurring aberrations on the part of an individual member of society, the response will be educative and social correctional and compassionate counselling. Humans will have elevated themselves to a higher stage in history as a new-born humane species, leaving behind their prehistory of competition and conflict.  

Population Facts

In just 30 years, the world will look very different. Since 1950, the global population has grown from 2.5 billion to more than 7.7 billion. By 2050, however, that number is projected to reach just 9.7 billion. This is because population growth is slowing—from about 1–2 percent to 0.5 percent annually—largely because of falling birth rates and aging populations.

By 2050, global fertility is expected to be 2.2 births per woman, down from 2.5 today. This rate is inching closer to the replacement rate of 2.1—the number of births per woman needed to maintain a population’s size.

Meanwhile, the world’s median age is projected to be 36 by 2050, up from the current age of 31. Europe is projected to have the oldest median age, 47 years, in 2050. Surprisingly, Latin America and the Caribbean, long known for its younger population, is expected to see the biggest shift, with its median age, currently 31, poised to increase to 41.

Many countries will face a shrinking population. For Europe, this challenge may come sooner. The region is projected to face the highest dependency ratio—the number of people of non-working age (over 65) compared with those of working age—by 2050. At 75 percent, this ratio is higher than for any other region.

In contrast, Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean are expected to have the lowest dependency ratio, 56 percent, in 2050. Not all populations are shrinking or getting older, though. Africa—the only region whose population is expected to grow more than 1 percent a year—will have the youngest median age, 25, by 2050.
 
Research shows that immigration does not reduce the capital intensity of the economy, but rather it allows firms to expand and investments to adjust, and it also promotes innovation and growth—especially when highly skilled immigrants are admitted. There is also little evidence that immigration displaces jobs or depresses wages in the receiving countries.

Yet the discussion over immigration often pays insufficient attention to the Achilles’ heel of the global North: its demographics. Fertility in these countries currently stands at 1.7 and fell below replacement—that is, the level at which a population exactly replaces itself from one generation to the next—around 1980. Consequently, the difference in births and deaths would produce population declines and substantial increases in average ages in the North, both of which could disrupt labor markets, threaten the fiscal sustainability of pension systems, and slow down economic growth, unless total net immigration offsets such declines.

The persistent historical trends mentioned have inescapable consequences in terms of population. Between 1950 and 2010, the populations of the rich regions of the North increased through net immigration, and since 1990 immigration has been the North’s primary source of population growth. In Europe, immigration accounted for 80 percent of the population growth between 2000 and 2018, while in North America, it constituted 32 percent in that same period.

The bottom line is that only net immigration can ensure population stability or growth in the aging advanced economies of the North—and this will happen only if we promote forward-looking immigration policies that allow larger numbers of immigrants and consider their long-run impact, rather than focusing only on the short-term calculations of their (mostly political) costs.

While these broad trends suggest an important role for international migration in reducing demographic disparities, one could ask whether they act systematically to slow population declines in the North. In other words, are immigrants replacing the declining number of natives across countries? A closer look suggests that they are not.

For international migration to respond to population pressures and act as an automatic demographic stabilizer, people would need to move from young countries with fast-growing populations to aging countries with slow-growing populations. Chart 1 shows the correlation between the fertility rate in 2000 and subsequent net immigration rates from 2000 to 2019 (net inflow of foreign born divided by population in 2000) across 191 countries for which data are available. The size of a country's bubble is proportional to its population in 2000. For migration to act as a demographic stabilizer across countries, there would have to be a negative correlation between these two variables across countries. The data instead shows no correlation at all, implying that countries with low fertility rates in 2000 did not experience a higher immigration rate in the following 20 years. Immigration thus did not play a role in balancing population growth across world countries.

focuses on the countries of Europe, which include some of the richest and lowest-fertility countries in the world. Even in this case, the relationship between fertility and immigration, if anything, is positive. The figure shows that several of the lowest-fertility countries (mostly in eastern and southern Europe) experienced low immigration rates. Some of these countries, such as Hungary and Poland, have recently elected governments decidedly hostile toward immigrants. It is quite clear that in the rich North, lower fertility rates do not, by themselves, facilitate higher immigration. In the region with the highest fertility rates, Africa, there is also no correlation between fertility and immigration rates.

It does not appear, therefore, that at a country level international migration is acting as a population stabilizer. This is because lacking forward-looking policies, there is no clear channel through which aging societies—which become economically stagnant and less innovative and whose citizens are likely to fear international migrants for the change they bring—will attract more immigrants. This implies that immigration will not automatically solve the demographic dilemma in the global North but that policy needs to play an active role if it is to do so. 

Not only would the flow of immigrants into countries whose population is declining serve the purpose of avoiding depopulation, it would also help with the countries' age structures. Migrants are usually younger than natives in the receiving country. Relative to natives, a larger proportion of immigrants are of working age. Therefore, new immigrants increase the size of the labor force, countering its natural decline in the advanced economies of the North, where people are aging out of the group at a faster rate than the young are entering.

Similarly, a larger share of immigrants of working age may reduce the age dependency ratio (the number of people over 65 divided by those between 15 and 64), which is growing fast in advanced economies. In the United States, this ratio has increased from .126 in 1950 to .223 in 2018. In Japan, this ratio has risen from .09 in 1960 to .46 in 2018.

It is also increasingly difficult to sustain pay-as-you-go pension systems in these rapidly aging countries, which in only a few decades have gone from having 10 working people per retiree to just 3 or 4. More immigration, especially in rapidly aging countries, would help slow the growth of the age dependency ratio. While immigrants will eventually age, a significant inflow of young working-age people during the years of greatest native decline will allow a gradual and more manageable transition.

The fact that people migrate when they are young is also the reason that several studies find that immigrants have a positive fiscal contribution over their lifetimes (Orrenius 2017). Clearly, a positive net fiscal effect depends on the ability of immigrants to integrate into the labor market and offer sought-after skills. The potential, however, for immigrants to improve the fiscal balance of a receiving country is real. In the United States, for instance, where immigrants’ employment rates are high and a large share are highly educated, the average lifetime fiscal contribution of an immigrant who arrived in the last 10 years has been calculated at $173,000.

Immigrants also support the demographics of advanced economies because their fertility rate is higher than that of natives. In the United States, the total fertility rate of natives was 1.76 children per woman in 2017, whereas that of immigrants was 2.18. The presence of immigrants helps to keep U.S. fertility at levels closer to the replacement rate.

From the perspective of the South, policies allowing higher migration to the North would help reduce demographic pressures in high-fertility countries. While the emigration of highly educated people (the so-called brain drain) could have negative effects on sending countries, several studies show that remittances, return migration, and “brain gain” are channels of potential beneficial effects. Research shows that emigration rates are highest in intermediate-income countries and not in the poorest ones. When people are trapped in subsistence, they lack even the basic liquidity to invest in migrating or to learn about outside opportunities. Increased immigration to the North would, therefore, likely benefit intermediate-income countries whose people are more likely to take advantage of these opportunities. 

From a demographic point of view, therefore, an increase in immigration flows, especially of young people, to advanced economies in the North seems desirable. It would reduce population decline, keep the size of the labor force from shrinking, improve age dependency ratios, and produce positive fiscal gains. From a policy standpoint, this means increasing the number of immigrants allowed, reducing other constraints on immigration, and planning for future inflows.

However, in recent years, Europe and the United States have, if anything, tightened their immigration policies and shown growing skepticism toward immigrants. Interestingly, one reason for this opposition on immigration may be found in demographics itself.

There is increasing evidence that aging societies are becoming more averse to open immigration policies, and older people have systematically more negative attitudes toward immigrants than younger people (Schotte and Winkler 2014). This is paradoxical, as they are the group that stands to benefit the most from immigration: the pension system would be on a more sustainable trajectory, working immigrants do not threaten their jobs, and immigrants work in services often targeted to them, such as caregiving.

Yet the good news is that it appears that such negative attitudes are due more to generational differences than to a simple effect of “aging.” A relative lack of exposure to immigrants among the currently old generations in Europe and the United States may be the reason for such attitudes. In Europe, for instance, surveys suggest that millennials and Generation Z have more positive opinions of immigration than do older generations. As the current younger generations are exposed to more immigration, if they maintain such attitudes as they become older and see their voting power increase, they may support more open immigration policies. Then the positive demographic returns from immigration may be more fully realised.

https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2020/03/can-immigration-solve-the-demographic-dilemma-peri.htm

https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2020/03/infographic-global-population-trends-picture.htm

The end is not nigh…yet

Capitalism is tremendously wasteful and destructive of men, goods, power, land. The ultimate destiny of all useful goods is to be consumed. Yet under capitalism goods are not produced to be consumed, but for profit, and if a greater profit can be made by destroying the goods, the destruction takes place. 

While production is a social act, the appropriation of the product, under the present system, is individual. As capitalism develops, larger and larger factories are the global enterprises where millions of employees co-operate in the production of a single article, yet the article does not collectively belong to them but only to the owner of the means of production. The workforce is  paid wages for the use of their labour power, wages which constantly grow relatively less and less as the total product ever increases. Simultaneously the owner of the industries becomes progressively more divorced from the productive process. As small family business becomes a big corporations or is driven out of the market-place. The owners are now the share-holders, owners of stocks, parasitic hanger-ons caring only for his dividends being paid regularly. The greater the globalisation of markets, the greater the requirement to have an industrial-military complex to defend the market interests.

The present economic relations breed the capitalist class and the working class, with opposing interests. The ideas of the ruling, employing class will be along the line of preserving their property and their right to exploit his employees, while the ideas of the working class will follow their interests and go along the path towards security and prosperity. The capitalists are blinded by their self interest as beneficiaries of the present system. The workers, on the other hand, with little to lose, are free to see that the present society must evolve into a new one. They see that nothing can free society other than the change in the mode of production from private ownership of the means of production, to where the means of production have become common property shared socially by all and classes no longer exist.


Billions of workers around the world are in dire need. Imagine a system that tells the farmer to burn his corn, to plough under his wheat while millions are starving and in want. Yet this is the policy that capitalism advocates when prices drop. It will raise the prices. At a time when millions are starving we must watch mountains of the necessities of life deliberately destroyed before our eyes. Can a crazier system possibly be imagined? Here it becomes crystal clear how capitalism throttles the productive forces and how, if mankind is to develop and to grow, capitalism must be ended.

The destitute of the world are wandering bands of people, travelling around the planet by foot, by boat. The world always had a roving population to a certain extent. But very different are the migrants of today. It is no longer a question of workers changing their jobs, nor of the adventure-thirsty seekers on the road. Now the migration is composed of those who cannot get anything to eat at home, and of families,—fathers, mothers, children—who have no home.

Capitalism creates a class which constantly grows in numbers, strength and consciousness - the working class - which bears the full burden of capitalism upon their backs and who are in a position to see that capitalism offers no more hope. It is capitalism which creates the working class, which places this class before its problems, which sharpens its intelligence and gives it its science. It is capitalism that arms the workers and gives them the strength to carry out their own interests. In short, capitalism as it grows out of date creates its own grave-diggers who begin to do their work. The interest of the workers is diametrically opposed to the interest of the capitalists and exploiters of the workers who, controlling the government strive to keep the workers down. The productive forces have created capitalist relations, capitalist relations have created classes which have opposite economic and thus opposite political and cultural interests. The capitalists want to keep the old relations of exploitation. They fight the rise of the workers. But their only alternative is to plunge society into one crisis and one war after another. The victory of the workers cannot be forever delayed. The old relations must be burst asunder.

As working people resist increasingly worsening conditions they comes to the understanding that the only way out to take what it has produced for itself. To take over the means of production, the mines, mills, factories, resources, utilities and run them for their own benefit. Then we will have production for use and not for profit. Then we will end the dictatorship of the employer and anarchy in the market. Then society will allocate its resources and labour power for the benefit of all. When the workers of the world unite to take political power and to abolish the capitalist system, then the rule over persons will give way to an administration over things. The State, along with superstitions and chauvinisms will  wither away. There will be no exploitation. There will be no classes. Each will receive according to  needs and will contribute according to  ability.

We will have establish a rational system of society where development of mankind will no longer be choked by social relations, where, therefore, society will be a free one and humanity emancipated.