A world of free access

 

The ability of the world has long since reached the point which would allow mankind to go over, in a very short time, to free distribution of the things needed to live and to enjoy life. Socialists are suggesting a world community where wealth is produced by voluntary labour and is available to all free of charge. Socialism will be a society of free access to what has been produced. There will be no money. To many, this suggestion seems fantastic.

It would be wrong to claim that socialism offers the solution to all our problems. However, enormous resources will be freed up when we rid ourselves of the waste inherent in capitalism. A new socialist society will face urgent daunting tasks to remedy the mess capitalism had bequeathed. Socialists do not assume that socialism will solve all problems at once, especially its ability in the crucial early stages. There is a need to be practical and realistic. 

 It’s doubtful that there could ever be free access to everything for everybody.   Not everyone's whim will be accommodated. Socialist communities will have to decide, through their democratic bodies and procedures, what free access will and will not cover, and how to distribute things to which free access cannot be provided. Socialists sometimes discuss free access as being possible by the technological capacity to produce material abundance but this can create an impression of socialism as being some kind of cornucopian consumer paradise. This is not so and there is a need to distance ourselves from such unfortunate connotations that "free access" conjures up over-consumption.

 "Free access" simply means an absence of any kind of quid pro quo exchange relationship that underlies access to goods and services in capitalism. While one's access to goods and services in socialism will not be linked to one's productive input this does not mean a severing of consumption and production. In socialism, of necessity, we will recognise far more clearly that we mutually depend upon each other and that we all benefit by ensuring the needs of our fellows are met. Such empathetic understanding will promote a kind of virtuous circle of sustainable development.mIn practical terms that might well mean ceasing or curtailing the production of certain kinds of goods in order to ensure the increased output of higher-priority goods.

Indeed, a socially agreed hierarchy of production goals will be a very important influence on the allocation of relatively scarce resources. A self-regulating system of stock control will reveal the availability of different factor inputs and enable decision-makers to identify those inputs which most constrain or limit the output of any given good. If the supply of a particular input is scarce in relation to the different demands placed upon it, it makes sense to be able to sort these different demands into some sort of order in which they ought to be met. This is precisely where a socially agreed hierarchy of production goals will come into play with priority in resource allocation being given to important goals such as meeting basic human needs (like providing adequate nutrition and housing) possibly at the expense of other less important goals such as the production of certain luxury goods. The less important such goals are the more likely are they to be starved of the necessary resources for their manufacture.

The point is not that we can explain in detail now just how the demand for every item will be realised in socialism. Rather, we can just set out some general principles about how free access would function and suggest that the human nature objections to it are based on a very narrow view of how human beings behave under capitalism. The combination of socialist consciousness and good old common sense will ensure that people will take what they need rather than all that is available or all they can carry. There will be no price labels, and no check-out cashiers because you won’t have to pay for anything. A society of free access will mean what it says. People will select their weekly shopping needs and take home what they’ve chosen, without anyone asking them to pay for it.

The point is not that we can explain in detail now just how the demand for every item will be realised in socialism. Rather, we can just set out some general principles about how free access would function and suggest that the human nature objections to it are based on a very narrow view of how human beings behave under capitalism. The combination of socialist consciousness and common sense will ensure that people will take what they need.

This is oor land (song)

 

Hail the Socialist Commonwealth of the World.

 "I feel only contempt for those who can take pleasure marching in rank and file to the strains of a band. Surely, such men were given their great brain by mistake; the spinal cord would have amply sufficed. This shameful stain on civilization should be wiped out as soon as possible. Heroism on command, senseless violence and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism—how passionately I despise them!"  Albert Einstein 

People are searching for answers. Our role is to provide them. The problem with being a socialist is that we view the world differently. Once one becomes a socialist it is as if a light comes on and that viewpoint or understanding colours everything we look at. And, too often, we are alone. Simply, there are too few of us right now and we have to build the movement, and make it vibrant so that we can at least have a community of like-minded people around us to share views, meet, and communicate our ideas. It is essential that more people are brought into the movement. 

In the society envisaged by non-market socialists, the people of the world would own the global means of production in common and would operate them communally for the benefit of humankind as a whole. Socialism in one country, or even one part of the world, is impossible. Since capitalism, today is a global society which encompasses all parts of the world, the socialist alternative to capitalism must be equally global in its scope. Socialism is as relevant to the plight of those who are starving in Africa and other parts of the world as it is to the inhabitants of London or Paris. It is true that non-market socialists have generally seen the wage workers of those advanced, industrialised areas of the world which act as the power-houses of international capitalism (Europe, North America and Japan) as the force which is likely to initiate the revolutionary change from world capitalism to world socialism.

Yet the establishment of non-market socialism can not be accomplished without the active cooperation of the majority of the population in those parts of the world that capitalism has consigned to underdevelopment. In contrast to the hopelessness and destitution which afflict the majority of the people in backward countries under world capitalism, the prospect of dignity and sufficiency which world socialism would open up for them would be overwhelmingly attractive. It is also worth mentioning that several of the non-market socialist principles closely resemble the principles of social cooperation found among hunter-gatherers and other supposedly 'backward' people. People in their social position would take much less convincing of the desirability of non-market socialism than would many of those in 'advanced' countries who are currently steeped in the values and assumptions that capitalism encourages. Socialism would be a global solution to the global problems which have accompanied the rise of world capitalism.

Democracy will have real meaning in a society where the production of goods and services is for human needs, with ownership and control of the means of production and distribution by all the people. Since the division into rich and poor will have been abolished, it will be a classless society. The precise day-to-day details of the running of this future society will be up to the people at the time, but what we can be sure of is that just as there will be free access to goods and services for everyone, without any need for money, so there will be open access to the administration of society for those interested in particular issues, such as food production, health, education, the building of houses, the environment and local matters.

Probably, there will be local administrations, perhaps in the form of councils, which will be reflected at wider levels, such as regional and global. The new democratic society will most likely involve the participation of delegates in these councils. The consequence of this is that certain delegates could be subject to recall if the electorate were dissatisfied with their activities. These factors would emphasise the genuine democracy and choice available to everyone. Humanity liberated from wage-slavery, will, at last, be free.  Society then will be one in which oppression, class-rule, and all the anomalies of the present order will have disappeared. The impetus this will give (through the reorganisation by a revolutionary class on a sane economic basis and the consequent liberation of that class) to the devotion of society to things of real worth will be tremendous. The fullest opportunity to gain and keep the health of mind and body; the development of each individual citizen's finest abilities and innate qualities will be accorded every facility; and culture and all that makes life worth living from youth to old age will, with socialism alone be the birthright of all.

"A Man's a Man For a' That" (music)

 Len Wallace of the Socialist Party of Canada and the Industrial Workers of the World performs his rendition of Robert Burns's classic call for equality

It’s Time to Move On

 

 ‘It is time for mankind to ensure itself of material abundance by establishing a free, self-managed world society of productive labour, thereby freeing its mental powers for perfecting its knowledge of nature and the universe’ Anton Pannekoek, A History of Astronomy, 1951.

We live in a world which has the potential to adequately feed, house and provide clean water and decent medical care for every single man, woman and child on Earth. The resources exist to banish material want as a problem for members of the human race. Yet millions throughout the world are malnourished, live in squalor or are actually dying of starvation or starvation-related diseases. The things that are desperately needed — food, clean water, housing, sanitation, transport, medical services and so on — can only be provided by useful labour, of which there is an abundance throughout the world. Useful production must be freed from the constraints of profit and class interests. Only useful labour applied through world cooperation in a system of common ownership can solve the problems of world poverty. World socialism could stop the dying from hunger immediately, and provide the conditions for good health and material security for all people across the Earth within a short time. World socialism will operate with one simple and ordinary human ability which is universal — the ability of every individual to cooperate with others in a world-wide community of interests.

Many people still believe that hunger is caused today by over-population and that if there were fewer people in the world, then, and only then, could they be adequately fed. This is not so. In the first place, the resources and technology exist now to feed the world’s population many times over. Second, even if the population did decrease substantially, there would still be a hunger problem, since hunger like homelessness is essentially an economic problem, a poverty problem.

The only genuine opposition movement in the world to capitalist war was and is today the revolutionary organisation of the Socialist Party. Nationality is a development of capitalism. Militarism and war are inseparable from capitalism and can only be understood against the background of commercial rivalry. Socialism will have no State apparatus, no frontiers and no military machine. The understanding and unity of the world’s working class must come before a socialist transformation of society is possible. 

Nationalism is the perversion of believing in a shared identity in the interest of some local elite. To move forward the dispossessed majority across the world must now look beyond the artificial barriers of nation-states and regional blocs, to perceive a common identity and purpose. Dividing up society into more and more pieces, more separate entities create more divisions, more fears and suspicions and when the globe is totally criss-crossed with walls and fences we shall become so paranoid, afraid and suspicious of each other that we finally close our minds? The frontierless world begins with frontierless minds. The challenge is to dismantle the barriers that shackle and dehumanise us. A mind without boundaries can value the vision in which all have a home.

The Socialist Party repudiates the myth that humans are inherently anti-social and non-cooperative, and states emphatically that human nature is no barrier to a sane socialist society.

Socialism is not a fantasy world any more than any other untried idea is a fantasy. Socialists cannot draw up detailed blueprints for a society which will have to be democratically organised by the men and women who establish it. However, we can—and do—examine the possibilities which a socialist world will allow humanity to bring about and we are certain that a society where production is for need will be far better than one where production is for profit.

 ‘ All men are brethren. We denounce all political and hereditary inequalities and distinctions of castes… We believe the earth, with all its natural productions, to be the common property of all… We believe that the present state of society, which permits its idlers and schemers to monopolise the fruits of the earth and, the production of industry, and compels the working class to labour for inadequate rewards, and even condemns them to social slavery, destitution, and degradation, to be essentially unjust… We condemn national hatreds which have hitherto divided mankind… Convinced that national prejudices have been, at all ages, taken advantage of by the people’s oppressors to set them tearing the throats of each other when they should have been working together for their common good, this society repudiates the term ‘foreigner.’ We recognise our fellow-men, without regard to country, as members of one family, the human race, and citizens of one commonwealth, the world’ (Manifesto of the Fraternal Democrats, 1845).

No Gods and Precious Few Heroes (music)

 

Change the World for Ourselves

 

To the other political parties, we offer the ideal of the universal harmony between peoples. Others may have paid lip service to this ideal. The Worlds Socialist Movement has acted upon it. Socialism will be a world society, one without states or frontiers.  Our message is equally addressed to all our fellow workers iaround the world.Socialism is the only solution to the problems of wage and salary earners in the country you come from, problems which are basically the same—unemployment, struggles to keep wages up with prices, bad housing, schools and hospitals, racism, insecurity and so on — precisely because they have a common cause — the capitalist system of class monopoly of the means of existence and consequently production for profit.

Capitalism is international. Economically, it operates as a single system dominating the whole world, but, politically, it is divided into a hundred or so artificial “nation-states”. Each of these states seeks to ensure the loyalty of its subjects by inculcating into them, from the cradle to the grave, the idea that they are members of a “nation” with a common interest against those of other “nations”. Socialists reject this mistaken and dangerous idea, regarding themselves not as British, Irish, French, American or whatever but as members of the human race, as citizens of the world. The working class has in reality only one enemy: the capitalist system.

The real division in the world is not between people of supposedly different “nationalities” but between two social classes both of which are international: a class of capitalists who own and control all that is in and on the Earth and a class of people who, excluded from such ownership and control, are obliged to work for an employer in order to live. Wage earners everywhere, whatever their language, passport, skin colour, have a common interest. Socialism will see the abolition of frontiers and the dismantling of the various armed states into which the world is now divided. As classes will have been abolished, people really will become citizens of a united world.

There is a common misconception of the workers becoming socialist in one part of the capitalist world but not in other parts. Those who have become socialists are everywhere a small minority, and everywhere at present the socialist idea spreads only slowly. Experience everywhere supports the view that the progress of the socialist movement will be much the same everywhere because broadly the workers’ experience of capitalism is everywhere similar. Also the movement in one country influences growth in other countries. The tempo will at some stage increase but again there is no evidence of any kind to suggest that it will quicken in Britain and hang back in U.S.A. and Russia or vice versa. On the contrary the only expectation is that the growth of the socialist movement everywhere will be accompanied by increasingly effective common international action by the socialist movement. The international socialist movement will be strong everywhere before the possibility of socialism arises, and if the election at which socialists take governmental control out of the hands of the capitalists in one country slightly precedes the elections at which the workers elsewhere do the same, the situation will present no problem of any moment The capitalists everywhere will be at the end of their rule, and will know that they are at the end of their rule, in face of the world socialists acting as one united movement.

 Capitalism being an international system spanning the world with a network of interlinked production units, ‘socialism in one country’ is not possible. So, we are talking about a world-wide socialist revolution with the same process taking place in country after country over a relatively short period of time, rather like, for instance, the overthrow of the state-capitalist regimes in East Europe in the 1990s or the so-called Arab Spring. This is not an unreasonable supposition as, already, economic and social conditions are basically the same in whatever geographical or political areas capitalism dominates. Nor is it unreasonable to suppose that, when the socialist idea catches on, it will spread in all countries. It is the opposite supposition that is unreasonable: that this will be confined to one country or that one country would be way ahead of all the others. This is not how ideas spread today. Everywhere they face the same problems that result from this, problems which can only be lastingly solved within the framework of a borderless world society based on the Earth’s natural and industrial resources having become the common heritage of all humanity.

They Have The Plant, But We Have The Power (music video)

 

Looking Forward

 What sort of world awaits the working class in the future? Will it be a brand new world free from class privilege and wage-slavery; a world of social equality, security and happiness? Our message is the only message of hope in a world that appears to be on the verge of catastrophe.

The World Socialist Movement exists to achieve a society of communal ownership. The workers are a global class. At one level they may be in conflict — when they compete as individuals for scarce jobs, for example — but at the collective level of their class, their interests are in unity. Above nationalism, above any prejudice of race or sex, working people throughout the world must assert their essential unity in the work to overthrow capitalism and establish socialism in its place.  It will be a significant step on the way, when they cease to think in terms of national or regional solutions to world problems and begin to think globally. Does capitalism deserve to continue any longer? It brings toil, misery and desolation, in peace and in war, to the mass of the people. It is time those who bear the sufferings took time to think about how those sufferings could be abolished. The only way to do so is to destroy the source from which they flow—the private ownership of the means of production. Instead, we can co-operate to provide a good life for all while avoiding damage to the environment.

 People in socialism will enjoy freedoms of decision-making and action that are denied to us under the capitalist system. With all people in harmony with their shared interests, the division of the world into rival capitalist states will be replaced by a democratic administration organised on a world, regional and local levels. 

in the socialist world, there will be no boundaries to countries. The world will become a single unit. It will not be necessary for people to fight for food or a “standard of living,” or any of the thousand and one reasons given from time to time to various nations in order to gain the support of the people in a war. In the socialist world, the people will produce food and build houses for all. The natural wealth of the world is more than enough to amply satisfy the needs of all humans, be they Asian, African, American or European. There need be no shortages. The root cause of world poverty is to make sure that the “real world” continues to be one in which human beings needlessly die and the Earth is systematically ravaged in the name of profit.

We, socialists, stand for a society based on mutual aid and solidarity, the cooperation of all people worldwide on the basis of free decision-making and participatory democracy. We believe that others share our concern for the well-being of people in our society, and for the well-being of the planet itself. We are part of a long-established independent democratic movement which seeks by persuasion and worldwide peaceful political organisation to transform our present society into one fit for humankind.

The problems of our world cannot be solved within the existing structures of production and government. Our world is divided into national areas dominated by class minorities in each country. The ruling class and their political representatives, by reason of a combination of historical circumstances, governmental, military and ideological control or influence, are able to keep the majority of the world's population in subjection and subjugation. Socialism is a new world society where the means of production are commonly owned and where governments and systems of exchange, whether barter or money, have been replaced by democratic administration at local, regional and world levels: a society where there could be decentralized co-ordination of production with free access according to to need.  We want people not to be thinking in national terms but to consider the socialist proposition of a world community without frontiers.

Socialism cannot be established in one country. Even under capitalism, the Nation-State has become too small a framework for capital’s expansion. The World Socialist Movement does not defend national sovereignty or promote separatism. Our criticisms of capitalism are precisely that it has divided the world into competing nation-states whose conflicts mean trade wars and armed conflicts. Nationalism in one country begets its echo in others. What we want is not national independence but world socialism without frontiers.

War is completely unnecessary. We are living in a world that has enough resources to provide plenty for all, to eliminate world poverty, ignorance and disease, and to provide an adequate and comfortable life for everyone on the planet. Yet under capitalism resources are squandered on armaments, of individual as well as of mass destruction, and, as now, in actual war. Even in times of peace – as the armed truce between wars is called – capitalism's pursuit of profit pollutes and plunders the planet and upsets the balance of nature with potentially devastating consequences. The economic law “no profit, no production” applies implacably, resulting in millions dying of hunger and related diseases every year simply because it is not profitable to produce the food to feed them and, in fact, often while the food that could feed them is destroyed so as to maintain prices and profits.

The World Socialist Movement opposes war and capitalism which breeds it: 

 · We place on record our horror that capitalism has once again provoked the orgy of death and destruction known as war.

· We extend the hand of friendship to our fellow workers who our political masters have designated as targets for destruction.

· We pledge to do all within our means to bring the slaughter to an immediate end.

· We pledge ourselves to continue to work for the establishment of a world socialist society of peace and cooperation.

· We call upon fellow workers everywhere to join in the struggle for World Socialism.

One World, One People, For World Socialism!

Blackleg Miner (music)

 Len Wallace, member of the Socialist Party of Canada and the Industrial Worker

s of the World

Capitalism - It’s Crazy

 

The immense destruction, impoverishment and inflation caused by the Ukraine war in Europe have resulted in the dislocation of the world market. The dawning understanding of the inflationary process eating into the living standards of workers is preparing the ground for a new social explosion. The impending economic recession can only accelerate their outbreak. Inflation is now again coming to the fore. Unrestrained prices will become the main means in the hands of the capitalists not only for gouging the consumers but for slashing the real wages of the workers. Even where workers succeed in their struggles for wage increases, they will find that these gains are swiftly nullified by the unchecked ascent in the cost of living. Without a rising scale of wages to cope with the soaring cost of living labour will suffer falling living standards. Expansion of capital, carried on by the drive for greater profits, the motive and aim of all capitalist production, promotes reckless speculation, heading the world straight to a crisis of far-reaching dimensions and explosive consequences.

Social antagonisms are developing sharply. Uncertainty and anxiety concerning the future arise repeatedly. World socialist revolution alone can prevent the regression of humanity into global war. Only a socialist solution is a just one. Only the working class, by taking destiny into its own hands, can avoid incalculable catastrophes and spare humanity.  Capitalism is by its very nature a rotting organism. It aggravates every feature of capitalist anarchy. It ensures an impassable abyss between a tiny minority of the rich and the mass of the people

Today’s environmental problems spring from capitalism’s reckless pursuit of the accumulation of capital without regard for human welfare or nature’s limit. Catastrophic pollution has been going on for decades after decades.

The situation cries out for a truly socialist solution. For the Socialist Party, there cannot be the slightest doubt that the period of capitalist crisis is precisely the time, above all others, to present the socialist solution, to raise the issue of socialism, to speak and act in terms of socialism and to fight for the socialist transformation of the economic, social and political system.

“Instead of the conservative motto, ‘A fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work,’ they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, ‘Abolition of the wages system’.” this is the authentic voice of Marxists.

Production for profit must be supplanted 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 anarchy, insecurity and misery. The capitalist system is wracked by financial crises, recessions and colossal welfare and social problems. If one did not foresee a socialist solution to all of these problems, it would be easy to lose one’s mental balance in the midst of such contradictory and bewildering facts. The media like to make fun of us “crazy” socialists But the real “crazies” are those running this insane asylum of capitalism.

If it wisnae for the union (song)