Socialism - Sharing the common heritage of humanity

 

We live in a fearsome and threatening world with all these signs of a society gone mad. The peoples of the world go about their daily business, seeking to forget or ignore the grim dark shadows that hang over their lives. But capitalism will not allow them to forget or ignore its terrible realities. Some would deny that we live in a world of potential plenty and claim that the cause of world poverty and hunger is natural scarcity. That, in other words, some people starve simply because not enough food can be produced. Why in a world of potential plenty is so elementary a human need as food neglected for so many people?  In the present state of scientific knowledge and productive techniques, enough food could be produced adequately to feed the whole population of the world. The cause of hunger and malnutrition must be sought not in any lack of natural resources but in the way society is organised. It is this anarchical world market system of artificial scarcity and organised waste that is responsible for poverty and hunger in the world today. The law which governs production everywhere is “no profit, no production”. This means that if there is no profit to be made from producing and selling a good then that good will not be produced, even if people desperately need it. The present system of production is geared only to meeting profitable market demand. Their very real human need for food is not “effective”, to use the jargon of business, so they are badly fed and, in many cases, starving to death.

In the midst of an impoverished world, booming with wealth and productive power we possess the potential for abundance. But presently the ecological degradation of the planet helps to enhance the profit-making powers of the capitalists. Even the wealthiest capitalist nation cannot satisfy the basic needs of its working people, decent housing, adequate food and healthcare. So long as the rich continue to coin profits out of the sweat and blood of the toilers, they do not care how many are out of work, go hungry and homeless, and lack all hope for the future. Only a clique of capitalists stands in the way of abundance. The workers have to wrest control of the factories and other major means of production from the hands of the employing class and establish their own control over industry and society. Production for profit must be superseded by production according to a unified plan determined by the needs of the entire people and directed by the associated producers themselves. This is the socialist remedy for capitalist chaos and misery. Only socialism can transform our world into a secure and peaceful one.

 "The common heritage of all mankind” is a phrase applicable to the treaties about Antarctica and the Moon. These treaties declare that no state can establish territorial rights nor any individual private property rights over these areas — that, in other words, they belong to nobody. What is required is that this same principle should be extended and applied to the whole globe: all that is on the Earth should become the common heritage of all humanity. On this basis, there would be nothing to prevent the world’s people from organising the production and distribution of wealth simply and solely to satisfy their needs as individuals and as a community. Production would no longer be restricted by the law of “no profit, no production” nor any longer governed by the blind economic force which the world market represents. Instead, it would come under conscious, democratic social control and be oriented to what after all is its only rational end — satisfying human needs and wants. In these circumstances, production could be rapidly increased to levels that would ensure that every man, woman and child on this planet was adequately fed, clothed and sheltered. The mass hunger and deaths from starvation that characterise the world today would remain only as bad memories of what no doubt will be commonly agreed to have been a barbarous past. The Earth is the common storehouse of all humanity; the production of wealth solely for use not sale or profit; a world without arms — is this an unrealistic Utopia? Not at all. It is the only logical and rational way to run the world given the present high stage of development of the forces of production. Because a solution is so simple and obvious does not mean that it won’t work.

There Can Be No Peace For Workers In Capitalism.

 

All of Canada was shocked and saddened by a malicious hate crime on June 7. A Muslim family were out for a Sunday stroll, in London Ontario when they were run down by a young man driving a Dodge Ram pickup truck. Four members of the family were killed, ranging in age from a 15-year-old girl to a 74-year-old woman. The lone survivor was a 9-year-old boy who suffered serious but not life-threatening injuries. 

The driver, a 20-year-old white man, Nathaniel Veltman, was soon arrested, though the police have released few details about him. Muslims across Canada has called for Veltman to be prosecuted to, ‘The fullest extent of the law.' 

One family friend, a refugee from Syria, said, ‘I don't get it; I came to Canada to find peace.'' 

Sorry buddy, but for the working class there never was and never will be any peace under the insane and divisive apology for an economic system we live and die under.

S.P.C. Members

Banks Increases in Income. Workers increases in Unemployment

The second-quarter income figures are in for Canada's four biggest banks. The Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce saw a 321 per cent increase in net income to $1.7 billion. The Bank of Montreal had an 89 per cent increase to $1.3 billion. The Royal Bank of Canada saw a 166 per cent rise to $4 billion. The Toronto-Dominion had a 144 per cent gain to $3.7 billion. 

Stats-Canada released its figures for May which also showed an increase -- in unemployment. 

The economy lost 68,000 jobs in May, which was the second consecutive month jobs were lost; 207,000 were in April. Another increase is that 49,700 members of the working class got so discouraged they gave up looking for work. If one includes the latter then the unemployment rate would be 10.7.

S.P.C. Members

Socialism is a planned society

 All around us we see poverty although we know we could produce abundance. The socialist revolution attains the stage where it can produce sufficient for all.  There will be no buying or selling. The revolution abolishes private ownership of the means of production and distribution, and with it goes capitalist business. Personal possession remains only in the things you use. Thus, your watch is your own, but the watch factory belongs to the people. Land, machinery, and all other public utilities will be common property, neither to be bought nor sold. Actual use will be considered the only title-not to ownership but to possession. The organisation of mines, for example, will be in charge of the coal miners, not as owners but as the operating agency. Similarly, will the railway workers run the trains and tracks, and so on. Common ownership, cooperatively managed in the interests of the community, will take the place of personal ownership privately conducted for profit. Money becomes redundant.  When the sources of supply, the land, factories, and products become common property, socialised, you can neither buy nor sell. As money is only a medium for such transactions, it loses its usefulness. You can't get anything for it.

How about shirkers and the work-shy? A rational community will find it more practical and beneficial to treat all alike, whether one happens to work at the time or not. For if you refuse to feed a man, for whatever cause, you drive him to theft and other crimes - and thus you yourself create the necessity for courts, lawyers, judge', jails, and warders, the upkeep of whom is far more burdensome.

 Socialist society will be a class-free society, in which all the means of producing wealth are owned in common. Instead of being divided into workers and employers, rich and poor, society will be an association of free people, all making their special contributions to the well-being of society, which in return will supply them with what they need in order to live full and happy lives. Such a society can be summed up in the slogan: “From each according to  ability, to each according to  needs.”

For this to be possible, socialism must be based on abundance. Production will be organised in such a way that there is plenty of everything for everybody: not only food, houses, railways, and so on, to satisfy material needs; but also schools and theatres, playing-fields, books and concerts so that people can lead full, physical and spiritual lives.

A socialist society must be global. It is not something that can be fully completed in one country, isolated from the rest of the world. On the contrary, it must eventually embrace all the peoples of the world; and in so doing it will put an end to war and because no wars can take place in a truly international society there will be no need for armies.

Because it will be a community of plenty, where there is enough for all and therefore no advantage can be obtained by theft or other forms of crime, all need for courts of justice and police will have disappeared. In other words, the State, which is the sum of all these institutions and organisations, will itself disappear. Instead of one section of society ruling and oppressing another, men will have grown accustomed to living together in society without fear and compulsion. Thus, for the first time, mankind will be united in a worldwide family.

Capitalism is not based on plenty. Though it has developed, for the first time in history, the possibility of providing enough for everybody, it has always condemned a great part of the people to live in poverty and insecurity. This is because capitalist society is a society divided into two main classes: the capitalists, or bourgeoisie; and the working class, or proletariat. The former owns the land, the factories and the machines, and all the means by which wealth is produced (the means of production), and are therefore the ruling class, though they do no productive work themselves. The latter though they do all the real productive work of society, own neither the means of production nor the wealth they create; and, therefore, are forced to sell to the capitalists their ability to work and produce. Numerically, the capitalists are an insignificant minority, while the workers constitute the vast majority of the people. The capitalist class, who decide what is to be produced, base their decisions not on what people need but upon how much profit they will make when the goods are sold in the market. Capitalist society is not a peaceful, harmonious society, but, on the contrary, nationalist in a narrow, selfish way. Just as within each capitalist country the various capitalists and groups of capitalists compete with each other in order to sell their goods at a greater profit, so capitalist countries as a whole enter into competition with other capitalist countries. This competition Inevitably leads to wars: on the one hand to enslave more backward countries; and on the other, to redivide the countries which have been enslaved between the different capitalist countries. Such wars are not in the interests of the working class, but only of the capitalists.

Under capitalism human society is condemned to a series of bitter struggles; class against class, nation against nation, and individual against individual. Inevitably, therefore, the great majority of the people, instead of being inspired by a common social purpose, are forced to struggle for their own individual and selfish interests. Moreover, since capitalism condemns the majority of people to poverty or insecurity, there is a continual waste of human talent and ability.

The first and fundamental contrast between socialist and capitalist society is that with socialism all the means of production and exchange—the land, factories, machines and banks—are owned in common. Thus the exploitation of one class by another is ended. Production is organised to meet the needs of the people and not to provide profit for a single class. It will therefore be possible to plan production, and so to increase enormously the amount produced.

The No-Take Zone

 It was the pace of change that made Howard Wood realize something was going badly wrong. In the 1970s, when he started scuba diving in the crystal-clear seas off the Isle of Arran, the seabed was a mass of colourful fish, shellfish and plants.

"By the late 80s you were seeing species disappear year on year — you realise that this isn't a long slow evolution of change, this is rapid," said Wood, a diver and co-founder of the Community of Arran Seabed Trust (COAST).  

He was witnessing the impact of a new type of dredger that could be used to scrape up scallops — a prized shellfish — on seabeds previously unfishable this way. And then, in 1984, the UK scrapped laws, dating to the 19th century, that had banned most trawling within 3 miles of Scotland's shores. By the early 1990s the seabed was becoming an underwater desert.

After 13 years of campaigning, in 2008 the Scottish government designated a no-take zone (NTZ, an area set where no extractive activity is allowed) in 2.67 square kilometers (1.03 square miles) of the northern side of the island. The zone was established around Lamlash Bay — a picture-postcard slice of silver sea studded with the huge rock of Holy Island. It's now totally protected from all fishing and other extraction.  

"We've seen a general increase in biodiversity compared to the areas just next to it," according to marine ecologist Bryce Stewart from York University. "We've got nearly four times the density of king scallops in the NTZ than back in 2010, and they're also much bigger, much older and much more reproductively productive. We have also seen a big increase in the number of lobsters."

Lobsters are now four times more abundant in the no-take zone compared to the areas around it. Seaweeds, corals and other forms of life have blossomed as well.

The Scottish Creel Fishermen's Federation (SCFC) COAST and others are now campaigning for a new 3-mile limit to be introduced across Scotland. That would stop inshore trawling and dredging for shellfish. But many fishermen oppose it. 

Alistair Sinclair from the SCFC is campaigning for the 3-mile limit, says people are complaining that fish are disappearing along the Scottish coast.

"That is due to trawl activity, and you can only take so much out the bank until there's nothing left in the bank." 

Reviving Scotland′s ′disappearing′ marine life with no-take zones | Global Ideas | DW | 13.07.2021

Socialism a Different System

 

The capitalists grind out their profits from the sweat and blood of the working class. In this, they are no different from the rulers of old. Both feudal lords and ancient patricians lived on the sweat of the lowly.

But capitalism, as we have pointed out, is a different system. Unlike the slave-owner, who was content to have his hundred slaves, each to serve his various whims, the capitalist must expand or die. Chattel slavery and the feudal system stayed the same or nearly the same for hundreds of years. Not so the capitalist system.

It does not matter whether the capitalist is personally greedy, or whether he wants to exchange champagne baths, for whole swimming pools of champagne, or whether he is a nice likeable old lad like the father of the rich heroine in a movie. Regardless of these things, his hired managers and superintendents must whip his thousands of slaves into ever faster production. And the bulk of the surplus value produced by these slaves must be turned into more capital, more machines – constant capital – more contradictions for the capitalist system.

Capitalism carries its own seeds of destruction. The flames of war and the stench of hunger are inseparable from this living-death. It was progressive once – and even though it sweated and tortured millions of workers it still increased the good things of the earth. Now  it is turning good into bad.

Capitalism gestated in the womb of dying feudalism. The lusty infant, in its day, pushed over kings and monarchies, fought revolutions so that the factory system might grow. Now this capitalism, grown old and evil, likewise bears a brand new system within itself. It bears new life as well as death. Factory production only needs to be free of its out-moded individual ownership to be born anew. The world working class is going to act as midwife in a forced birth. It is going to deliver the socialist future cut of the womb of the dying past.

Socialism will do many wonderful things. It will eliminate recessions, starvation and war. We know this for sure.

Capitalism is a system of production and exchange. It is a system under which individual capitalists own the means of production. The great majority of the people operate them. They represent values that the capitalist lays out so much cash for (VARIABLE CAPITAL). Their main product is SURPLUS VALUE (profit.)

The capitalist runs the factory, not to provide the world with shoes and suspenders, but to provide himself with profits. This leads to fiercer exploitation of the mass of workers on the one side; and a sharper aggravation of the capitalists’ own problems on the other, it leads to economic crashes, depressions and wars.

Socialism is an entirely different system. The workers run the factories themselves. By doing so, they produce useful things instead of profits. They put an end to their own status as commodities. They are no longer bought and sold. They no longer have a “value” as they do under capitalism. And their aim is no longer to produce a surplus value above their own wages. Everything they produce is now theirs, and all the world’s.

They produce with an eye to what is needed. They elect a planning board to administer production so they, don’t waste time and energy producing more than the world can use. Thus there are no unsold surpluses except for those they intend to have – if they need to build up a reserve. Thus no scramble for markets to dump the surplus, as under capitalism.

They can expand production without catastrophe – without throwing millions on the street to starve, without breeding wars to take up the products of expansion, as the capitalists do.

They can decide just where and what they want to expand, where expansion is needed and desirable. They can decide just how many workers shall be detailed to make new machinery and better equipment, just how many can be spared from the production of immediate consumers’ needs. There will be a planned expansion, with no bubbles.

But all this is only a beginning. The elimination of war and depression alone would give every human being at least 100 per cent more of the material goods of life. But it will do far more than that. It will reverse humanity’s present plunge downwards to austerity, and turn it into abundance. All the things that can already be made so easily, will be within everyone’s reach. Still newer products will be made. Newer needs will be felt. In a short time, material needs will not seem so important. People will require more beauty in their lives. New needs will arise. They will be satisfied. But there will be no terrible decline again. For when we come to the top of the hill, we can throw up new heights to climb. We will become masters of their own destiny.

Economic Exploitation

The capitalist makes nothing out of idle factories or rusting machinery. New wealth, including machinery itself, can only be created by labour. And it is a portion of this newly created wealth that the capitalist keeps for himself. It is legal and just that he should do this under a capitalist system with capitalist laws.

He pays dollar for dollar for everything he gets. He buys according to the labour worked up in things. He buys labour-power in the same manner. Then he sets his labourers to work. And he sells the things workers produce dollar for dollar according to the total labour worked up in them. He has paid the workers the value of their labour-power, or enough for them to live on. But of course not the value of what they have produced.

The source of all capitalist wealth – rent, interest, dividends – “profit” – is the surplus the workers produce over and above what they get paid – the difference between the wages and the product. This is called by Karl Marx “surplus value.”

The appropriation by rulers of the surplus product was not invented by capitalism. Assuredly the ancient slaves produced surplus-value, say the capitalists’ professors. “And of course the serfs of the middle ages did.” Each of these serfs worked about four days on his own miserable land and two days on his lord’s. He had to perform unpaid labour and so create surplus value. The capitalist professors acknowledge that.

“But today” they exclaim – “Why today the worker is paid wages for every day and every hour in the day. He works for himself, not for the capitalist!”

If these wise gentlemen saw thirty brand new cars an hour whiz down the assembly line as they felt their muscles get sore, they might think otherwise. But it is quite true that we work for so much an hour in the plant. The hourly wage conceals the systematic robbery of the workers by the capitalist and helps to give it legal justification.

It is very obvious that the feudal serf was performing unpaid labour a couple days a week. There he was working on the lord’s estate without wages – without a return of any kind.

The wages system seems to give a return for all work performed. We look back upon the feudal serf system and think the serfs were an awful gullible bunch of fools. It’s so clear to ‘us now that they were just making the lords rich all the time, working on their land for nothing, as they did.

We are working part of every day and part of every hour and minute for nothing, regardless of the testimony of time- cards and professors. We are working part of the time “for ourselves” and part of the time for the company. Suppose we are producing new value at the rate of two dollars an hour, and get paid just one dollar an hour – then we are working just half the time for ourselves and a half for our “lord” – the company. All the man-made wonders of the world are monuments of surplus-value. Capital itself is that part of the surplus-value which is put back into production. It is the surplus-labour of the past that is turned into new machinery to exploit new labourers. The harder the workers labour, the more they produce, the more surplus they produce – then the more capital they produce. Capital is dead labour that lives “vampire-like on living labour.” And under capitalism, the completed surplus-labour – the dead labour – returns to haunt the living labourer in the form of a machine that makes him work faster, produces more surplus for the boss while he produces himself an early grave.

Under Capitalism and capitalist law, this is just the way things should be. “To them, that hath shall be given.” Under Capitalism, the capitalists have every right to all their riches. They have every right to own the means of production even though the whole world should starve. The surplus product belongs to the capitalist. The working class can only take this surplus by rooting out capitalism itself, by changing the laws of society and establishing socialism.

The wealth of the rich is made up entirely of surplus values produced by the poor. All profits, rents, interest, dividends, etc., are produced by the working people. They all come from the surplus over and above their own food, clothing and shelter, which workers also produce.

For one rich man, there are many poor. And so, the argument is often heard that none of us would be much better off if all the wealth in the world were divided “evenly.” The whole point is that socialism would not just divide up the wealth, but would increase the production in order to divide up the things that are produced.

The Socialist Party has never abandoned its aim

 

Undoubtedly we live in a world of great and rapid change—but one thing has not changed, even for the prosperous worker—the dependence on the capitalist for a livelihood, who allows us to live only while our work keeps the employer in opulence. Capitalism poisons human relationships and isolates people, causing immense unseen misery.

The Socialist Party hold that capitalism cannot be improved for the workers. We see no evidence at all to prove the unsoundness of our case. People are now looking for something to be pro and were tired of being just anti.  Only common ownership of the means of production can solve the workers' problems. World society can no longer advance under the capitalist system. National boundaries are like a strait-jacket. The only hope is to end capitalism and build a socialist society. With socialism, the rule of a privileged minority is ended forever. The national resources, transportation system, mines, mills and factories pass into the hands of the people. A planned economy is introduced. The necessity for piling up profits for a wealthy few no longer cripples and binds the production system. Rational boundary lines no longer tie down industry. The new rule for society is production at the greatest possible capacity for the use of the people.

How can there be equality between rich and poor, between exploiters and exploited, between those who control the state and all the main means of production including the news media and those who have nothing but their labour-power to sell to make their living? There cannot be equality between the exploiters and exploited. There is freedom for the rich to exploit and further enrich themselves while the only freedom for the poor is “freedom” to be exploited and thank their lucky stars that the rich are so generous as to provide them such wonderful rights to be exploited and be always at their mercy. The working people should not be confused by the empty bravado of the rich. The rich flaunt their democracy saying people have “freedom of speech” and that there is “freedom of the press”, etc.

 This is hardly true. Freedom of speech and press for whom and for what? Freedom of speech insofar as there is no danger to the profits of the rich and once their profits are endangered, then the real beast, the true nature of this democracy, is exposed as the most brutal dictatorship. And the question of freedom of the press is a real joke. The rich monopolise the entire news media and only print the material which serves their interests but still they call it “freedom of the press”. Any honest journalist knows and will admit openly that all the content of the news media is censored according to the interests of the rich. There is freedom of the press for the rich as there is democracy for the rich. Our enemies are the capitalist class, and capitalist henchmen of every kind and stripe. They know that if the workers understood socialism they would flock to its standard and enrol themselves into its membership by hundreds of thousands. Therefore, every power which the capitalists control is directed to slandering the movement, misrepresenting its principles, lying about its methods, and vilifying it. With assumed regard for human welfare, the capitalists, with their lick-spittle apologists have insidiously cultivated the belief that socialism means the violent destruction of human society. 

The capitalists calculatingly and cold-bloodedly took, and still take, the advantage of the disposition among the working people to adopt ready-made opinions in preference to forming their own opinions. 

The Socialist Party is dedicated to the great goal of guiding the working class out of the blind alley of capitalism and into the planned society of socialism and as a guide that can show the workers the way out of the misery, despair and bloodshed of capitalism into the better world of socialism. The road to socialism is the road to peace and plenty. The Socialist Party believes in the international solidarity of the working class. The interests of the workers extend across all frontiers. We defend the workers of other lands against oppression and against despotism.

 Although many workers may have never heard about the Socialist Party, we are not a new party.  The Socialist Party will give the only genuine answers to the most vital problems facing the workers. “But you can’t change human nature!” Everyone who has argued for socialism has heard this which is supposed to be an annihilating answer to “impractical” socialists. 

But people do change. The human being is a much more flexible creature than our capitalist-minded friends would have us think. It would be possible to list thousands of facts from history, anthropology, sociology and psychology to prove that human beings have changed their habits of thinking and acting over the years. 

Our policies are based on the principles worked out by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels over a century ago.