Socialism is our vision

Socialism replaces a capitalist system that has served its purpose and no longer meets the needs and requirements of the people. The goals of socialist society is a life free of exploitation, insecurity, poverty; an end to unemployment, hunger and homelessness, an end to all forms of discrimination, prejudice and bigotry. Socialism is the creation of a truly humane and rationally planned society that will stimulate the fullest flowering of the human personality, creativity and talent. The apologists of capitalism hold that such goals are utopian; that people are inherently selfish, greedy and evil. Others argue that these goals can be fully realised under capitalism by reforms. The Socialist Party say that such goals can be realised only through a socialist society.

Why Socialism? Capitalism’s inherent laws - to maximise profit on the backs of the working class - give rise to the class struggle. History is a continuous story of people rising up against those who exploit and oppress them, to demand what's theirs. The ideals of justice and equality have inspired peoples for centuries. Socialists say that capitalism won't be around forever. Just like previous societies weren't around forever either. Slavery gave rise to feudalism and feudalism to capitalism. So, too, capitalism gives rise to socialism. Political and economic power would be in the hands of the people. It eliminates forever the power of the capitalist class to exploit and oppress the majority, replacing their control with the participation of the people which will harmonise the interests of all, ending all the conflicts arising from exploitation of workers, ending dog-eat-dog competition. Poverty will be ended quickly with the recovery of the vast resources now wasted in poverty will be ended quickly with the recovery of the vast resources now wasted in accumulation of profits and war production. With capitalism gone, crime will also begin to disappear, for it is the vicious profit system that corrupts people and breeds crime.

By what stretch of the imagination is capitalism really successful? Is it because this wonderful system has eliminated the scourge of war? Of nationalist hatred and neo-colonial exploitation? Of racial, gender, and class inequality? Is capitalism successful in Haiti? Or the Democratic Republic of the Congo? Actually, even in the midst of staggering poverty and failures of economic policy, for a privileged few it is. And that is the problem. Even in the best of times, capitalism really only works for a minority of people. This is how capitalism works. If you happen to be a capitalist it’s a charmed life. Indeed, even when things go bad, they turn out good.    

We say that it may be possible to bring socialism through peaceful means through the ballot box. One thing is clear, there won't be socialism until the majority of the people want it. Socialism is a vision winning more and more people because it is the next inevitable step up the ladder of human civilisation. Despite endless grounds for cynicism, there are reasons to be hopeful. In cities across the country now we are witnessing a rebirth of dissident activism, as tens of thousands protest the culture of institutionalised, sanctioned brutality shown by police and the criminal justice system. In many places we see examples of spirited, courageous resistance. If the future is not guaranteed, at least the fight is on. Our vision is of democratised workplaces and communities and for an end to the top-down, authoritarian capitalism. Our vision is of a world free of the scourge of militarism that torments modern life, and instead one in which the weapons of warfare have been transformed into the proverbial plough-shares of peace and prosperity. This is a socialist vision of a society guided by the deepest values of human solidarity, equality and concern for others, one that values the community over personal gain.

Given the nature of the capitalist system, unable to offer a better life to present and future generations there is little doubt that out of present turmoil and struggle new forces will emerge to create new ideas and new forms for building working class unity. We need to be open to learning as well as teaching when we discuss politics with others. After all, we are asking people to reconsider their most basic assumptions when they think about politics, and we should be committed to doing the same. We can choose to be part of the social discourse by helping to shape it and being shaped by it.

A great many regard nationalised property, government ownership under a State Central Plan, controlled by the “vanguard” Party, as socialism, or at least as the basis for a transition to socialism and many on the Left have been complicit in this crisis of socialist thought. They  have failed to articulate a liberatory alternative an immediate demand thus offering private- and state-capitalism the ideological room to dominate.  Is it now possible to make the vision of a new socialist society more concrete? According to critics, it is not viable, and instead we must continue with half-measures and palliatives. The pragmatists argue that to define the character of the new society is premature and can only be fixed by practice alone, in the course of trying to remake society. Those who believe that there can be no change in the foreseeable future will put up with almost any degree of suffering. One important reason why socialists reject utopian schemes is simply that they are not “utopian” enough and some are actually obsolete. People demand greaterdetail about socialism.  How do we satisfy this real movement from below?  Given the direction in which the peoples’ thinking is moving, hasn’t resistance to presenting a blueprint of what socialism may be like also become obsolete? Of course our basic tenet that working class liberation must self-emancipation means that the actual details about the nature of our future society is to be decided by the liberated working class itself, not by a clique of intellectuals. Andrew Kliman, a Marxist scholar, writes: 

“All proponents of workers’ self-emancipation agree that the policies of the future economy are to be decided upon by the working people themselves, but thinking simply cannot be shoehorned into the old problematic of “who decides?”  Once again, a well-meaning attempt to posit spontaneity as the absolute opposite of vanguardist elitism ends up by placing the entire burden of working out a liberatory alternative to capitalism on the backs of the masses.  And the newly liberated masses must somehow do this from scratch, having been deprived of the ability to learn from the theoretical achievements and mistakes of prior generations.”

He points out that there are limits to what can be worked out in advance.  In part, we face limits because we are the products of this society, not the new human beings that might emerge in a free society.  But this does not imply that concretization of the vision of the new society is a task that can be foisted onto future generations.  Because there are limits to how concretely the vision of the new society can be worked out in advance, we cannot give a blueprint for the future.  He then approvingly quotes Raya Dunayevskaya, “The fact that we cannot give a blueprint does not absolve us from the task. It only makes it more difficult.” 

Capitalism has no solutions

Socialism is a form of society in which the whole community owns the means of production—the land, factories, mills, mines, transport and all the means whereby wealth is created and distributed to the community. Socialism is also the name given to the body of thought which explains why the Socialist form of society is now a necessity, the forces upon which its achievement depends, the conditions under which and the methods whereby it can be achieved. Socialism stands for common ownership. Capitalism stands for private property. Socialism is a society without classes. Capitalism is divided into classes. Socialist society are diametrically opposite to those of capitalism. We can easily understand, therefore, why landlords, employers, financiers and the like are opposed to socialism. Their very existence are at stake. They do not merely reject the theory of socialism, but fight every movement which is in any way associated with the struggle for socialism.

For many, it is clear what we are fighting against but it can be harder to picture exactly what we are fighting for. In concrete terms, how might a new society work? In what way would our lives be affected? What will socialism look like? Socialists aren’t crystal-ball gazers. We cannot predict the future with absolute certainty and so we cannot say exactly what socialism will look like. Nonetheless it is still possible to make some deductions about what socialism will look like. We can make reasonable hypotheses about the future, based on the evidence from the present and the past, although this is not an exact science (just as a geologist cannot give the date and time of the next earthquake or volcano eruption), so socialists cannot predict exactly when a revolution will break out or the specific form that it will take. By looking at capitalist society we can see the potential for what a socialist society will look like. We can see the embryo of socialism within capitalism and by examining the contradictions and barriers that capitalism – a system of private ownership and production for profit – imposes on society, we can see what the potential for a future, socialist society might be; a society where these barriers are removed, and where production is instead run on the basis of human needs.

We are frequently told that capitalism is the most efficient of all economic systems – yet if this were the case, why would factories and offices lie idle and empty, despite being able to produce an abundance of goods and services that society needs? Profit stands in the way of distribution as well as production under capitalism. There is no reason fertile land in some regions could not be used to produce food to be distributed to people living in harsher environments. The only reason it is not done is because it is not profitable to do so, and because of the enormous barrier of the nation state, which prevents a genuinely worldwide solution from being implemented. Under capitalism, wasting food is preferable to feeding those who need it most.

It is said that competition is the secret to capitalist efficiency; but in reality competition leads to greater waste. For example, there is significant duplication of work between businesses performing similar functions – meaning that time and money is invested twice into the same things. Take supermarkets as an example: if food distribution were carried out by one organisation, then economies of scale would make the process cheaper and centralised planning would make it more efficient. Competition also forces companies to create needs for their particular products through advertising, the cost of which is passed onto the consumer. Trade secrets and intellectual property rights mean that the best ideas and innovations are not pursued as fully as they could be Instead of the world’s best and brightest minds being employed in tandem to produce the things that society needs, scientists, engineers, and designers are split up into different corporations and set against each other in competition, resulting in completely unnecessary duplication of effort and resources.

Socialists are often asked what will be the incentive to work in a socialist society. The incentive to work under capitalism takes the form of requiring people to work in order to earn money so that they can live their lives. This is why people demand the freedom to work – to be able to live. Socialism, by contrast, is about freedom from work. The incentive to work under socialism will be that we are working to build a society in which we will be free from the necessity of labour. This freedom could be won by the collective efforts of society to develop the economy and forces of production to such an extent that little human labour would be required to keep it moving, leaving us free to lead our lives however we like. Capitalists have a very narrow and incorrect conception of what motivates people to do things – they see it all as a question of money, despite the fact that there are many things that everyone does (hobbies etc.) which are motivated simply because we like doing them; things that develop us as people, give us a sense of purpose, and help us to form bonds with others.

Instead of alienating us from our work, socialism will gives us a real stake in the economy and in society, by giving us collective ownership over it. The work itself, not just the wages derived from it, will therefore have a more direct purpose and be clearly for our own benefit and the benefit of others around us, instead of for fat-cats in a far off boardroom.

Socialism means the end of a society in which human beings are oppressed and exploited by other human beings. It promises a system that is capable of developing the forces of production to such an extent that humans can stop destroying themselves and their planet, and instead begin to take conscious control of their own lives.

The Race To The Bottom

 Thomas Walkom writes in the Toronto Star that there has always been a tacit agreement in Canada that Canadians would welcome new immigrants as long as the government didn't use them to drive down wages. This is very shaky reasoning considering that Marx showed 150 years ago that the reserve army, including immigrants, is there to do just that, drive down wages. Walkom reports that even that agreement has been abandoned by the Harper government. Ottawa will now allow employers to pay temporary foreign workers less. Just who qualifies as a temporary worker is cause for stretching a point. By 2011, there were over 300 000 temporary foreign workers in Canada. What the government is saying, according to Walkom, is that if Canadians don't want to see jobs going to foreign workers they should quit whining and accept lower wages. Right! John Ayers.

Re-Learning Socialist Ideas

Mushrooms are valued as food and some types are considered delicacies. Many species of mushrooms are edible, but proper identification is essential to avoid illness and even death by consuming toxic toadstools. These look the same, they taste the same, but they can kill you. We’re all familiar with the fear-mongering that goes on when it comes to socialism and socialists deemed outside the “mainstream” politics. Usually politicians use the term socialism as a synonym to "dictatorship" and "totalitarianism". "Socialism" usually means "state control of the economy". But today there many countries in which there are some socialist features used and they are nor dictatorships nor totalitarian and do not have too much state control of the economy. Some on the libertarian right would say that the US has become socialist because workers in this country have 40-hour work week and a minimum wage. Most of the workers have some medical and dental benefits paid by their companies or business owners. Also all workers are guaranteed to have Social Security retirement income. The main question is still remains "How you can separate real socialism from pseudo-socialism?” The World Socialist Movement disagrees with anybody who can say that socialism has failed at the end of the 20^th century. How something what never existed can ever fail? Pseudo-socialism (Bolshevism) did fail but it is very important to know the difference between capitalism, pseudo-socialism and genuine socialism in the 21st century. There is a lot of misapprehension about socialism in the public mind, many of which are lingering relics from the past.

Socialism is the idea that each individual should have the means to live a life of dignity, without exception. Socialists think each person should have the means to develop to their full potential. It means a society focused on restoring ecosystems and promoting sustainable human development. It means a society based on ongoing, participatory democracy. It means people-power. Socialism means workers' democracy: workers make the decisions about what to produce and how to produce it. Liberated from the constraints of the profit system, creativity and innovation will explode. Nothing's too good for people.

For Marx, socialism is neither the transition to communism, nor the lower phase of communism. It is just communism, simple as that. In fact, Marx calls capitalism itself the ‘transitional point’ or ‘transitional phase’ to communism. For him socialism and communism are simply equivalent and alternative terms for the same society that he envisages for the post-capitalist epoch which he calls, in different texts, equivalently: communism, socialism, Republic of Labour, society of free and associated producers or simply Association, Cooperative Society, or (re)union of free individuals. Hence, what Marx says in one of his famous texts – Critique of the Gotha Programme – about the two stages of communism could as well apply to socialism undergoing the same two stages. To drive home our point that socialism and communism in Marx mean the same, and thereby to refute the uncritically accepted Bolshevik tradition of socialism being only the transition to communism, we can cite at least four of Marx’s texts where, referring to the future society after capital: Marx speaks exclusively of ‘socialism’ and does not mention ‘communism.’

It must be stressed that capitalist relations are not revolutionised within capitalism automatically even with all the requisite material conditions prepared by capital itself. It is the working class which is the active agent for eliminating capital and building the socialist society; the proletarian revolution is thus an act of self-emancipation: “The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves”.  Marx and Engels equally underline that “consciousness of the necessity of a profound revolution arises from the working class itself”. The starting point of the proletarian revolution is the conquest of political power by the proletariat – the rule of the “immense majority in the interest of the immense majority,” the “conquest of democracy”. This so-called ‘seizure of power’ by the proletariat does not immediately signify the victory of the revolution; it is only the “first step in the worker revolution”, which continues through a prolonged “period of revolutionary transformation” required for superseding the bourgeois social order.

Until capital totally disappears, the workers remain proletarians and the revolution continues, victorious though they are politically. “The superseding of the economical conditions of the slavery of labour by the conditions of free and associated labour can only be the progressive work of time,” and the “working class will have to pass through long struggles, through a series of historic processes transforming circumstances and men,” wrote Marx with reference to the victory of the  1871 Commune . Later he reminded Bakunin that even with the installation of proletarian rule “the classes and the old organization of society still do not disappear”. At the end of the process, with the disappearance of capital, the proletariat along with its “dictatorship” also disappears, leaving individuals as simple producers, and wage labour naturally vanishes. Classes disappear along with the state in its last form as proletarian power, and the society of free and associated producers – socialism – is inaugurated.

The outcome of the workers’ self-emancipatory revolution is the socialist society, an “associationof free individuals” – individuals neither personally dependent as in pre-capitalism nor objectively dependent as in capitalism – and there arises, for the first time, the “true” community where universally developed individuals dominate their own social relations. Correspondingly, the capitalist mode of production (CMP) yields place to the “associated mode of production” (AMP). With the disappearance of classes, there is also no state and hence no political power in the new society. We cited Marx above holding that with the victory of the proletarian revolution politics ceases to exist and socialism throws away its political cover.

Similarly, with the transformation of society’s production relations, its exchange relations – with nature as well as among individuals – are also transformed. Capital, driven by the logic of accumulation, seriously damages the environment and undermines the natural powers of the earth together with those of the human producer, the “twin fountains of all wealth”. In contrast, in the new society, freed from the mad drive for accumulation and with the unique goal of satisfying human needs, individuals rationally regulate their material exchanges with nature with the “least expenditure of force and carry on these exchanges in the conditions most worthy of and in fullest conformity with their human nature”  As regards the exchange relations among individuals, here the directly social character of production is presupposed and hence the commodity form of the products of labour and, therewith, exchange value ceases to exist. “Community” here is “posited before production”.  From the very inception of the new society as it has just come out of the womb of capital – Marx’s first phase of socialism – “producers do not exchange their products and as little does labour employed on these products appear as value”.

Capitalism continues to exist in the advanced capitalist countries through all its ups and downs, and “socialism” arose in societies marked by the dominance of pre-capitalism or backward capitalism therefore according to many writers Marx’s vision has simply proved to be wrong. Now, we have argued that this “socialism”  has nothing in common with the socialism as envisaged by Marx, that is, a society of free and associated individuals. There is a simple answer here based on Marx’s materialist conception of history (often inexactly called ‘historical materialism’): the absence of the material and the subjective conditions for the advent of a society of free and associated individuals. As regards the relatively backward regions, socially and economically, this should be clear. As to the societies of advanced capitalism, it seems, it has not yet exhausted all the possibilities of its creative potential. Particularly — and this is the most important consideration — the ‘greatest productive force’ — to use Marx’s term for the working class — has not yet come to a point where its great majority can no longer accept the system confronting them and are prepared to revolt, though the necessary process might be on the way.

Adapted from this article

 

Lesser or Greater Evil

 

The political commentator Jonathan Cook on the aftermath of the UK general election wrote:

“Just like the political parties, we have been captured by the 1%. We cannot imagine a different world, a different economic system, a different media landscape, because our intellectual horizons have been so totally restricted by the media conglomerates that control our newspapers, our TV and radio stations, the films we watch, the video games we play, the music we listen to. We are so imaginatively confined we cannot even see the narrow walls within which our minds are allowed to wander.” 

The “left” vote will always gravitate to the slightly less nasty party of capital, the lesser of two evils argument. No change is really possible because we can defer the choice to demand real change indefinitely. In fact, what actually happens is the political centre of gravity gradually shifts ever more to the right. It is dangerous to send any party the message that you have our vote no matter what. A man like Blair could destroy another nation, cause suffering on a scale unimaginable to most of us, and yet still claim the moral high ground because the alternative would be even worse. It is ironic that in the present situation, peoples’ anti-austerity hopes now lie with the pro-business, Murdoch supported Scottish nationalists with a policy of cutting corporation tax.

Some say: “People must take into account the real world. Small differences between the major candidates matter greatly to the outcomes for the most vulnerable people at home and abroad. Indifference towards that is callous.”

The small differences between the major parties are of zero interest to the public at large. People who are fed up with inequality, war, and environmental destruction should not hold their noses and vote Labour or Democrat in, not even in the marginal seats or the “swing states” where some leftists advocate doing that. Voters should be encouraged to support the candidate whose platform they agree with the most. Isn’t that what people are supposed to do in a democracy? Left candidates should offer voters that option anywhere they can get on the ballot. Of course an alternative party needs to build credibility in many ways including involvement in non-electoral campaigns. The Socialist Party often advocates spoiling the ballot or abstention.

Some on the left say “vote for Labour or the Democrats but then fight like hell against them”, but it takes time  for anything resembling a “fight the like hell” sentiment to materialise,  for it to sink in that the “lesser evil” really is nevertheless still evil, not simply “flawed”, “imperfect” or “compromised”.

If the left are going to be "pragmatic" If you are recommending people to vote Labour or Democrat, you doing so in the certain knowledge that a Labour or Democrat government is going to disappoint and that as result of that disappointment workers in the long run are almost certainly going to switch their allegiance back to the right.  Given the see saw nature of capitalist politics this is what invariably happens, does it not? Why not then just short circuit the whole lengthy expostion and simply say "Vote Tory!!”, “Vote Republican!!” Because, let’s face it, that is the long term consequence of voting Labour.  You are simply preparing the ground for the return of a future Tory government or Republican president in the wake of lesser evil’s inevitable failure. 

 Even if, for the sake of argument, a Labour government or Democrat President was marginally less harsh in its anti-working class policies in the short term,  it is still in effect a vote for the for the right-wing, the “greater evil”, in the long term, given the see-saw nature of capitalist politics. Invariably the election of one capitalist party to power leads to disenchantment and the subsequent diversion of political support to some political rival, only for the whole process to repeat itself again and again. The political rival gets into power and disappoints its followers who then switch their allegiance back to other one. It is a treadmill we are talking about here and the only way to deal with a treadmill is to get the hell off it. At some point you just have to draw a line in the sand and say "enough is enough". Otherwise you are liable to find yourself sucked into a quagmire with no way out with no end in sight. 

The Socialist Party campaign is issue-based - rather than candidate-based.

Only social ownership can tap into the new sources of energy and creativity which can eliminate the alienating nature of work and the desire to do one’s bit for the common good. Capitalism itself has provided the prerequisites that are essential for replacing production for profit. People  rightly object to the despotic pseudo-socialism which developed in the old Soviet Union. Humanity today faces a stark choice: socialism or barbarism. We need no more proof of the barbarity of capitalism, the parasitical system that exploits humanity and nature alike. Its sole motor is the imperative toward profit and thus the need for constant growth. Capitalism’s need for growth exists on every level, from the individual enterprise to the system as a whole. The insatiable hunger of corporations is facilitated by imperialist expansion in search of ever greater access to natural resources. The capitalist economic system cannot tolerate limits on growth; its constant need to expand will subvert any limits that might be imposed because to do so would require setting limits upon accumulation – an unacceptable option for a system predicated upon the rule: Grow or Die.

Rights Mean Nothing To The Management

 An article in The Toronto Star, March 4, called attention to the plight of non-unionized workers. A hotel worker had her part-time hours cut back to nothing for ten months in 2009 after she spoke at a rally in support of forming a union at her workplace, Novotel, in Mississauga. About a dozen other Novotel workers have been fired, disciplined, or had their working hours cut since 2008 when they began union organization. The fact that, legally, they had a right to unionize meant nothing to the management. It's like it was two hundred years ago when unionization began. This shows that nothing has changed in capitalism, which is an excellent reason to abolish it. John Ayers.

Stringent Rules

Roper, North Carolina has a population of 617, so there are few officials – just four, in fact, including a mayor who works for free, and its annual budget is $360 311. Roper's average annual family income is $20 600 or $2 000 below the poverty level for a family of four. When they can't pay their water bills, neighbour Dorenda Gatling turns it off. Some haul buckets from their neighbour's house but to prevent that, homes are sealed with yellow police tape to prevent entry. So the homeowners are waterless and homeless. In capitalism it's 'can't pay, can't have' no matter what the consequences are. John Ayers.

Socialism isn't a fairy tale

Socialism is like the Loch Ness Monster or the Yeti, always sighted from afar but never ever proven to exist.

On the question, "What is socialism?" the media and our educational system rarely talks about it, and if it is ever mentioned, then it’s more often than not in a disparaging way. The basic principles of socialism are very easy to understand. Socialism involves people taking control of their own lives, shaping their own futures, and together controlling the resources that make such freedom possible. Socialism will come to nothing if it is not a movement of the great majority in the interests of the great majority. People can only become truly free through their own efforts. That’s our definition of socialism. It’s real democracy. Capitalism is incompatible with democracy and don’t go. Being a socialist is to show that there is a clear alternative, not only to the big business political parties, but the system that they represent, the capitalist system. A socialist party is to help people get from where we are to where we want to be. If socialism is to have any meaning, by its nature it must be a precise one. So what is socialism?

It is the description of a certain set of economic and social relations. A worldwide society devoid of classes, money, national boundaries and Government (as opposed to administration of items). The means of production would be held in common, with people giving voluntarily to that society whatever they were able and taking that they required to satisfy their self-defined needs. The productive forces in such a society would be so developed to meet those needs, liberated from the restrictive necessity to accrue surplus value, profit. It is not enough to take productive property into state ownership, for this merely transfers property from private to public control. All that has occurred is that private ownership has become state ownership which can be returned to the private sector and at no point is the relationship between producer and the means of production essentially changed. Marx identified two types of property, described by Paresh Chattopadhyay as "economic property" and "juridical property". The crucial element in defining society is the "economic" as this relates how one class retains whilst another class is excluded from the means of production. Whereas the "juridical" is the social factor, recognised in law, of legal individual private property rights. The former is a relationship that leaves the worker still a worker exploited by the fact of contributing involuntarily part of the value they produce as surplus value, profit. This remains the case even if the means of production are held by the state officially on behalf of the worker.

  Perhaps as an illustration to show that "...capital is not a thing, but rather a definite social production relation...which is manifested in a thing and lends this thing a specific social character..." (Marx) and show the difference between "economic" and "juridical" property.

 A productive enterprise transforms raw materials into saleable commodities: trees into furniture, iron ore into cars etc. In simplistic terms, the raw material arrives at the entrance to a factory, undergoes various processes throughout the factory and emerges from the exit as a product ready for sale. The raw material remains inert unless subjected to labour which transforms it into the finished article. It is the labour that gives the item its value. The process is enacted not to produce any particular commodity, the final product is irrelevant. It is the realisation of the acquired value of the commodity through sale that is the objective and the consequent profit it entails. For the labour is bought at a rate less than the value it creates in the product so that the eventual sale brings a greater return than that paid for labour. This is surplus value, profit, the whole purpose of the enterprise. This surplus value accrues to the holders of the productive process, those with title to the "economic" property that is the social relation for making profit.

 In classical capitalism the owners of the factory might be an individual, a family, a partnership or a group of shareholders. It is clear that in terms of the factory's raison d'etre it is irrelevant which of these are the legal owners. This is the capitalism with which Karl Marx would have been quite familiar. The twentieth century has brought forms of ownership that apparently blur such a simple distinction.

Transport the factory to the Soviet Union and the claim would be that the social relations had significantly altered. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat, having abolished private ownership in all its forms, had freed labour from its former exploitation, i.e.  it being robbed of part of the value it created. However, it had done nothing of the sort. The State fulfilled the function of owner, buying labour and accruing the surplus value created. Essentially, the factory operates in precisely the same manner, the "economic" property is unaltered. What has changed is the "juridical" property, who has legal title to the factory. Even if the Soviet authorities used all the profit for the benefit of the workers, building hospitals, schools etc., the essential element, the accumulation of surplus value, remains central. How a capitalist spends profit is irrelevant, it is still capitalism according to the "economic" property no matter how the "juridical" property is altered. In this country, miners remained bought labour after nationalisation as much as before under private ownership. The same is true of co-operatives who must realise profit or go bankrupt. The legal ownership of things, factories and machines etc., does not determine the operation of "economic" property. The only way a significant change can be made is to bring all "economic" property under the democratic control of society so it can be deployed to produce to meet need and not profit.

The consequence of this must be that the central political conflict of the twentieth century, that between Left and Right, has been a sham. It has been trumpeted as the struggle between socialism and capitalism: on the large scale in the Cold War, on the small in the numerous petty battles between Labour and Conservative Parties under various guises in many countries. The lauded recent triumph of capitalism is a hollow victory in that it was bound to win in one form or other, private or state. All operate within the same paradigm, from National Socialist to Communist Party and all liberal shades between. Socialism cannot have been defeated or proved invalid as it has never been tried. What now has proved false was always a falsehood. To want socialism is to desire moving forward beyond the present model to an original, unexplored one.

 Which brings us to the crux of the argument. Socialism, as a further stage in social development, is outside or beyond the present Left/Right dichotomy. Essentially, Socialism can be aspired to by most who presently subscribe to either prevailing trend. For example, those characterised as the radical Right can argue the state "...has housed him (the fettered individual) in soulless tower blocks, subjected him to failed educational and egalitarian experiments and narrowed to vanishing point his opportunities for self-government, self-improvement, self-help, spontaneity, diversity and individuality". There is nothing in this quotation a socialist could disagree with. The difference lies in the solution. Whereas the Right libertarian would propose the free market, the socialist must point out that such a beast is a unicorn, a magnificent creature that never has nor could have existed. The cure for the ills diagnosed is the true freeing of enterprise, productive as well as personal, from the constraints the pursuit of profit imposes of necessity. Just as inequalities of wealth cannot be taxed out of existence, so they cannot be "untaxed" away.

 What is required is one of Mankind's leaps of the imagination, a realisation by the vast majority that they have nothing to lose by choosing Socialism. Marx identified the working class as the liberators of society. In the latter part of the nineteenth century they were largely recognisable as the horny handed sons of toil. A century later the worker has become as diverse as the modes of work. However, they are still in that crucial relationship with the means of production, having to sell labour for less than its actual value. If this were not so, there could be no profit at all in the world. The suburban mortgage holder, the council house tenant, the Sub-continent villager have that relationship in common no matter how heterogeneous all other aspects of their lives might be.

It is that common element that makes Socialism a possibility. People must decide to pursue the dream and not invoke some fallen idol: Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Mao - Wilson, Callaghan, Blair! The contention is that it cannot be left for someone else to realise the dream. As Alice said (referring to the Red King), "I don't like belonging to another person's dream...I've a great mind to go and wake him and see what happens." The dream of the Red King is a nightmare whilst Alice's vision is of Wonderland, where she decides the modus operandi. Socialism is neither a fiction nor a polymorph: if ever it is anything it will be what people decide within its own defining form.

Based on and adapted from this article

The Rise And Fall Of The' Celtic Tiger '

A recent Toronto Star article divulged some interesting facts about the rise and fall of the 'Celtic Tiger', commonly known as Ireland, that spent the 1990s enjoying unprecedented economic growth. Housing prices quadrupled and unemployment fell from 17% to 4% and 'plasterers were making 2 000 Euros ($2 666 Canadian) a week and spending 200 Euros on a pair of pants'. In 2007, the housing bubble burst and the Bank of Ireland's stock plunged 75% in one year. Now Ireland has an official unemployment of 14%. No matter how well things go in the boom, the bust will follow and the bubble will burst. There is no security for the worker in capitalism. John Ayers.

Here's Looking At You

A recent study suggests retailers can increase yearly takings by almost $100 000 by employing people whose ethnicity reflects the local community. The study by Temple University, Rutgers, and Davidson College studied the theory at over seven hundred JC Penny stores. The extra take averages out to $630 per employee (wonder if they received any of it) and brought the company $69 million a year. Altruism is a wonderful thing, especially when it brings in millions. John Ayers.

The Non-Political Party Broadcast

Revealing Socialism

FOR WORLD SOCIALISM

Common misconceptions about socialism why socialism it wouldn’t work, of how it goes against “human nature,” and that there is no incentive to work, and so on are caused by a basic misunderstanding of what socialism is. This is not surprising, given the fact that the word socialism is so loosely tossed around so much. Socialism is poorly understood. What is crucially missed is that socialism means more democracy and freedom, not less. Over a century’s worth of state propaganda regarding socialism emanating from the West and the USSR has intensely distorted the public understanding of the concept. Many associate it with state monopoly, authoritarian central planning, and a one-party police state. If socialism meant any of these things, it should justly be discarded in the waste bin of history. Socialism has traditionally meant the opposite of these things: it has meant worker freedom and worker democracy. The public as to what socialism really is, don’t generally have a clue and the ruling class media made sure of that. The education machine also does a wonderful job in mystifying the meaning of socialism.

Socialism, as commonly understood means widespread government ownership of business. This is not socialism as we see it. Socialism is not state or municipal ownership. Nor even ownership by co-operatives. “Socialism” is also used to refer to welfare state policies, and progressive taxes. Not only do these things have little to do with socialism, sadly the same concepts are peddled by both the so-called left just as much as the right. The only difference is that the former says this “socialism” might be good in moderate amounts, while the right sees it as tyranny. In any case, both sides are wrong. Socialism is not a reform, it is a revolution. We are not reformers — we are revolutionists. Let it be clearly understood that by revolution Socialists do not mean violence or bloodshed. We mean by revolutionary socialism the capture of the political powers of the nation by the working class as opposed to the capitalist class. Socialists would regard it a calamity to the cause, as well as to humanity to have a violent upheaval in society. If such should be the case it would be not the result of the teaching of socialism, but rather the result of the refusal of the rulers to accept the socialist democracy. For socialism offers a possible peaceful solution.

Socialism means as our basic tenet explains “From each according to ability, to each to each according to needs. Production has already reach undreamed heights—to satisfy everyone’s needs and there can be plenty of everything. In socialism instead of working because they have to, because they are made to by the threat of poverty and privations, people will work because they want to out of a sense of responsibility to society and because work satisfies a felt need in their own lives. Socialists seek to abolish private property.  There are two kinds of private property. There is property which is personal in nature, consumer’s goods, used for private enjoyment. Then there is the kind of private property which is not personal in nature, property in the means of production. This kind of property is not used for private enjoyment, but to produce the consumer’s goods which are. Socialism does not mean taking away the first kind of private property, e.g. your clothes, your home; it does mean taking away the second kind of private property, e.g. the factory that makes clothes, the building company that constructs houses. socialists want more people to have more personal private property than ever before. It means taking away private property in the means of production from the few so that there will be much more private property in the means of consumption for the many. More personal possessions for use and enjoyment if we want them, not private property for making profits and exploitation. That’s socialism.

Socialism, to make it clearer, is a mode of production that entails certain means and forces of production, in the form of factories, infrastructure, raw materials, tools, and such, and relations of production, which refers to the property relations between the means of production and their owners. Under capitalism, the means of production are mostly in the hands of private individuals who depend on a massive army of people who don’t own any means of production. The latter obtains their subsistence by selling their ability to do labor with the means of production owned by a capitalist. According to the property relations in capitalism, the worker does not own anything he or she produces with the means of production provided by the capitalist. They are entitled only to a wage, which must necessarily be significantly lower than the amount of value the worker creates. In short, capitalism is a system wherein production is socialised, which is to say it is carried out by masses of people, and profit, the surplus value that they create by their work, is privatised, meaning it goes to the private individuals who own the means of production.

Socialism means a full, happy and useful life. It means the opportunity to develop all your faculties and latent talents. It means that, instead of being a mere chattel bought and sold on the labour market, an appendage to a machine, a robot to produce of wealth for others, you will take your place as a human being in a free society of human beings, and a participant in its decision-making committees and councils. Your work in a socialist society will not be dependent on the caprices either of the capitalist market. When things are produced to satisfy human needs, instead of for sale and profit, involuntary redundancy and lay-offs will be an impossibility. The "demand," instead of being limited to what people can buy, will be limited only to what people can use. Nor will unemployment because of labour-saving new technology be possible in socialism. Instead of dismissing workers from jobs, the improved methods and facilities will cut hours from the working day. Full employment and jobs for all under capitalism are only possible when capitalism is preparing for, or engaged, in war. Socialism alone can give jobs for all and open wide the doorway to economic opportunity. Hours of work in socialism will be the minimum necessary to fulfill society's needs. Work is not the end and aim of man's existence; it is the means to an end. We do not live to work; we work to live. Socialism will, therefore, strive in every way to lighten the load of mankind and give the leisure to develop faculties and live a happy, healthful, useful life. By the elimination of capitalist waste and duplication caused by irrational competition, and by opening jobs at useful work to all who are currently deprived of it, we could produce an abundance for all by working four hours a day, three of four or five days a week, and thirty or forty weeks a year. People will be able to take regular sabbatical years. The so-named “gap-year” will be available for all age groups.

Socialism is, to put it in the simplest words, another way of organising society to the present system. It isn’t “redistributing” the wealth, welfare programmes, or “equal shares” for everyone. Socialist production is socialised, and the ownership of the means of production is also socialized. This means the means of production and distribution, the machines, the transport infrastructure, all belong to the people in common. Writing in the 19th century, Marx envisioned some kind of paper certificate to represent the amount of labour performs as a form of access to the common treasury, and unlike money it would not circulate. Obviously in a modern economy this kind of system for accounting of labour credit would be fraught with problems even with the power of computers. Better that we do away with any form of artificial rationing and enjoy free access to the fruits of our collective labours.

The Race To The Bottom

  The announcement in February that Target, the second largest US discount department store retailer, will be opening one hundred and thirty-five stores in Canada, starting in March 2013 brought a swift retort from the head of Walmart, Canada, Shelley Broader. She said, "When people ask me what our target strategy is, I say we have a WalMart strategy. That's about helping people save money so they can live better." That sounds a little strange from a company that pay their employees little enough to live on, let alone save. Even stranger considering how WalMart force their suppliers to fire union employees lowering their standard of living; strange, too, considering the companies they have ruined in competition, hence more grief and unemployment. Socialists do not take sides in competitions between capitalists as they are all at the same game – lowering labour costs for more profits – and the only way to end this race to the bottom is to get rid of the profit system. John Ayers.

Socialism? What Is It?

The Socialist Party and its companion parties stand alone in their consistent advocacy of the socialist solution. Their examination of society has taught them that nothing less than socialism can suffice. These parties at present form only the nucleus of the great working class movement which must finally rise to bring this program into effect. The workers cannot depend upon others to do the job for them. It is a job that requires conscious and deliberate effort on their part. It is a job which they must do themselves.

Many varied interpretations that have been placed upon socialism. Stalinism and Hitlerism have both been described as socialism. Labour parties frequently come forward with lengthy lists of reforms or elaborate plans for “nationalisation” and describe these as socialism. Social reform is not socialism. Neither is government ownership. Socialism has not yet been established in any country. It exists today only as an independent working class movement striving against the opposition of capitalist and labor parties alike, its energies directed without deviation towards a single goal. There are no short cuts to socialism. Workers must guard against such nonsense if they are not to be fooled by political charlatans or people who have themselves been fooled. For this reason among others the socialists stress the necessity for socialist education. The workers must understand socialism before they can serve usefully in the struggle for its attainment.  It can be achieved only through the conscious political organization of the working class. But with that organization accomplished, no obstacle can stand in the road.

Socialism may be had for the taking. Take it. The workers must ultimately turn to socialism as the only means of finding release from the problems of capitalism. Even though it were possible (which it is not) for the present system to provide considerably improved conditions for the workers, that would still be no justification in the eyes of an informed persons for its continued existence. It has solved the problem of wealth production, but it has failed to solve the problem of distribution. It divides the toil of the workers between production and a myriad of unnecessary activities related to distribution. It is wasteful and destructive of men and materials. Its conflicts over markets, trade routes and sources of raw materials breed wars that grow ever more terrible in their dimensions. It is a haven of luxury and idleness for a useless parasite class. It is a fetter on further social progress.

The Greens will not achieve anything substantial because they are concerned with dealing with the effects of pollution, not the cause, i.e. the ownership of the tools of production (the resources, the factories, the land, the transportation systems, the mercantile and banking systems, etc.) by a minority, and the need to produce commodities with a view to profit, that rides roughshod over environmental concerns and other human needs. That destruction of the planet also affects the capitalists themselves, merely highlights the insanity of the system. For a business to survive, it must show a profit quickly and maintain its profitability to compete with other companies. In such a situation, human needs, including those of the capitalists, become meaningless.

In a socialist society, with the abolition of the profit motive, very different priorities will be apparent. Whereas water, and anything else people need may be moved from one place to another, environmental and human considerations would be prime motivators. The latest technology and safe, clean practices would be demanded and care of the eco systems on which human life depends, would be possible as the drive for profit and all that entails would have disappeared.

Socialism solves the problem of distribution. Its introduction will mean the conversion of all the means of production and distribution from private or class property into the common property of all the members of society. Goods will no longer be produced for sale; they will be produced for use. The guiding principle behind the operations of industry will be the requirements of mankind, not the prospects of profit. Production under socialism will be pre-determined, and distribution effected with neither advertising nor sales staff, thus reducing wasted materials to the minimum and making possible the transfer of great numbers of workers to desired occupations.

The ending of exchange relationships will bring at the same time the ending of an exchange medium. There being neither sale nor profit associated with the production and distribution of goods, neither will there be money in any of its forms. Currency, credit and banking, whether private or “socialized”, will pass out of existence.  The advent of common property means the abolition of private or class property, which in turn means the abolition of class society together with the class struggle. The antagonistic classes of today will become merged in a people with common interests, and the former capitalists will have the opportunity of becoming useful members of society. This will not only remove the greatest of the burdens resting today on the backs of the workers, it will also further augment the available labor supply, by the inclusion of the capitalists and their former personal attendants, thus contributing to the general reduction in labor time needed to produce society’s requirements.

Since unemployment means not only idleness but also severance from the means of subsistence, such a condition could not exist under socialism. That there will be plenty of leisure time, however, is beyond question. It will be the conscious aim of society to constantly reduce the obligations of its members to production, thereby providing ever-increasing leisure time in which to enjoy the proceeds of their labor.

Wars constitute another wretched feature of capitalist society that will come to an end under socialism. Since they arise from the struggle of the capitalists over markets, etc., and since these struggles will no longer play a part in the affairs of society, they will remain only as a ghastly memory from a horrible past.

Socialism will not solve all the problems of human society. But it will solve all the basic economic difficulties that are a constant source of torture to so many of its members. The solution of a single one of these difficulties would warrant its introduction. The solution of them all renders it imperative.

Elementary Lessons Still To Be Learned.

This is how the so-called socialists around the world act. In France, journalist Gwyn Dyer predicts a big victory for 'socialist' candidate, Francois Hollande. Dyer writes, "What Hollande has actually promised is slightly less austerity than Sarkozy." (EMC , April 26, 2012). In Venezuela, that renowned 'socialist' Hugo Chavez has tried to manipulate the capitalist system to bring cheap food to the poor (yes, they are still there). According to The New York Times (April 29 2012) he has mandated the prices that the manufacturers can charge to keep prices low. The result, as expected, is that the manufacturers simply stopped production and there are shortages of even the basic food supplies in a very rich country. Lesson? What passes for socialism in the in the tiny minds of would-be leaders and the press has nothing to do with real socialism. You cannot divorce manufacturers from profit. If there is no profit, there is no production. Both are very elementary lessons for socialists. John Ayers.

Self-Management or Self-Exploitation

A co-operative is simply self-exploitation

People are suffering and hungry for a solution. People are becoming increasingly atomised, alienated, and anxious. With the financialisation of capital and globalisation it seems that power is concentrating in the hands of a few – a class – the elite capitalist class. The situation that we are in is getting worse politically, socially, and economically, and a Left that is so divided we can't get organized to oppose the powers that be. Today the Left faces the same problem that it has faced since the 1800s, which is being comprised of so many factions that there is no popular and radical force to challenge the current power structure.

Gallup in 2013 showed that 70% of workers "emotionally disconnected" and approximately 20% are "actively disengaged" meaning that they are acting out their unhappiness and, effectively, sabotaging their workplaces. Productivity and profitability are higher for cooperatives than for capitalist firms. It makes little difference whether the Mondragon group is compared with the largest 500 companies, or with small- or medium-scale industries; in both comparisons the Mondragon group is more productive and profitable. The major basis for co-operative success, and the survival of capitalistically unprofitable plants, has been superior labor productivity, higher physical volume of output per hour, higher quality of product and also economy of material use. The point is that the survival of firms is determined neither by productivity nor the volume of profit, but by the rate of profit. Firms whose rate of profit is too low are ejected from the market. But those that maintain a high rate of profit compared to their competition survive, even if they are grossly inefficient or if their profits are not exactly impressive. Co-operatives have an abysmally low rate of profit almost by default, because the owners of the co-operative are also its labourers. So they receive remuneration that is much higher than the necessary cost of reproduction of labour-power.

And that is why, while co-operatives are re-discovered as an exciting new thing in bourgeois liberal circles every decade or so (seriously, they're about as new and radical as municipalisation, which I swear I saw some lost soul advocating on RevLeft a couple of weeks ago), and a lot of them are formed, very few survive until the next cycle (and those that do tend to be held together more by political will than market forces).

A key problem of worker cooperatives is that they exist within the context of capitalism, ie the pressures of the market competition, and context of wage labour. Proponents leave unaddressed the classic criticisms of worker cooperatives, which aren’t just theoretical but based on real problems that cooperatives have encountered in practice. For sure, co-ops are a positive creation when workers occupy the workplace after abandonment by the owners that has happened in various situations and different countries in history.

But co-ops can’t “out-compete” capitalism. Corporations will always have larger capital to invest in research, technology, machinery and their willingness to cut costs through lower wages, less environmentally sounds practices, outsourcing, etc, will give them an advantage. Second, is that cooperatives are subject to market pressures to compete just the same as capitalist enterprises and this lends itself to pressures to create the same practices of corporations. For instances, in the Mondragon cooperatives there have been strikes in the past, outsourcing and low wages in production sites opened developing countries, as well as a trend towards unelected management that is more like a typical capitalist corporation. It is self-managed capitalism, because it offers no solution for changing the underlying logic of capitalism, which is production for maximum profit. There would be restrictions on the lengths to which a self-directed enterprise would go as opposed to a traditional capitalist company, but those restrictions would likely not hold up when they threaten the survival of the enterprise.

Co-ops do not eliminate owners. What happens is that ownership changed hands. And whereas previously a company might have had a few influential shareholders, it now has a few hundred (or thousand) But private property has not been abolished. Socialists aim to abolish the social structures that allow for the division between the rich and the poor - private ownership, money, markets etc. Socialists advocate the socialisation of the means of production, not the dilution of ownership of the same. "Capitalist" isn't a needlessly obtuse term of abuse for people we don't like, it denotes people who own capital, the means of production under capitalism. The owners of a co-operative are collective capitalists. The problem is that what exploits us isn't the bosses, but capital. As long as the purpose of productive units is to produce value, workers will be enslaved to the production of value, regardless if there are an enterprise’s owners. Coops aren’t an alternative way to socialism because they still produce value. Both capital and value are social relationships. By making them the owners, workers do not abolish the relation of ownership, nor do they abolish the anarchy of the market etc. etc.

Many cooperatives face the same issues as small business owners face. Often worker cooperatives are in the service, food or other specialty industries with lower profit margins and because they are smaller and do not have the advantages of scale which larger companies do, workers are often are forced to work long hours at lower wages to stay afloat. I’ve heard this called by some “self-managed exploitation.” As well, many cooperatives such as these in part remain afloat because they produce niche products like radical books or vegan/specialty food products that don’t really compete with the major corporations that dominate their industry.

There will be a tendency of worker cooperatives to see their needs and interests as an entity apart from and/or above other workers. After all, as cooperatives exist within a market system, their interests are to compete with other companies and expand their market share. This is a key and important difference between workers cooperatives, where the means of producing goods and services are owned by a specific group of workers competing with other cooperatives and capitalist companies through a market system and the deeper and post-capitalist goal of a socialized economy whereby all the means of producing goods and services are seen as belonging to society as a whole and while directly operated and run by the workers at each entity would be federated and coordinated in a horizontal manner to produce products and services based on need.

Even sympathetic observers such as Noam Chomsky understands the limitations:

“Worker ownership within a state capitalist, semi-market system is better than private ownership but it has inherent problems. Markets have well-known inherent inefficiencies. They’re very destructive. … [what is needed is to] dismantle the system of production for profit rather than production for use. That means dismantling at least large parts of market systems. Take the most advanced case: Mondragon. It’s worker owned, it’s not worker managed, although the management does come from the workforce often, but it’s in a market system and they still exploit workers in South America, and they do things that are harmful to the society as a whole and they have no choice. If you’re in a system where you must make profit in order to survive. You are compelled to ignore negative externalities, effects on others.”

Cooperatives that exist under a market economy inevitably replicate the problems of capitalism although it makes life better for some, but it doesn’t end the system of exploitation. They reproduce capital and prioritises sectional interests of pockets of workers of the class interests over the working class as a whole. Socialists regularly use the term “wage slavery.” What is meant by this is that workers under capitalism are not ‘slaves’ to a particular boss, but through the system of wages they are compelled to work for employers as a class in order to survive. This is why anti-capitalist labour radical such as the the IWW believe that an end to capitalism required a struggle to organise workers eventually leading to workers to taking control of their workplaces and what they called the “abolition of the wage system.” Men and women will never be free from exploitation and oppression until all work is voluntary and access to all goods and services is free. This is a practical proposition now. Tinkering with administrative forms is of no use. Buying and selling must be abolished. The wage packet—the permission to live—must be abolished. It is true that our masters live off the fat of the land in luxury, but even if they adopted the austere puritanical lifestyle of a monk we should still be slaves.

The most crucial error of Richard Woolf and Gar Alperovitz models is that the essential features of capitalism are retained, yet they believe capitalism can be guided by "workers' management" towards humane and liberating ends. The market is to remain, but not, apparently, its laws. It should be obvious that if any enterprise produces to sell, and pays its bills out of its revenue, it will be subject to the same basic market laws as any other enterprise. Of course, at the moment these laws are observed and interpreted by management, which then makes the decisions and' imposes them on the other workers in the interests of the shareholders. But it should have occurred to Woolf and Alperovitz that these same laws might have the same force whoever does the managing and even if the shareholders, so to speak, are the workers. This is a suggestion which proponents of a “new economy” ought at least to consider. "Capitalism without capitalists" could never in fact come about. Should the working-class reach a level of understanding where they could pressurise the owning class out of existence, they would long since have passed the stage where they would have abolished the wages system and established socialism. They argue for some sort of “self-managed capitalism” that could only exist on paper.

Even if we consider "capitalism without capitalists" in our imaginations, we can see it would be no improvement on capitalism with capitalists. Workers collectively administering their own exploitation is not an objective socialists should aim for. Those groups demanding "workers' management," "workers' participation" and "workers' control" (though their various adherents distinguish very loudly between these three) will probably be used by capitalism, as in Yugoslavia, to give workers the impression that the enterprise they work for in some way belongs to them. If all employees can be drawn into the process of management, and can be given the illusion of an identity of interests between workers and employers, this helps to muffle the class struggle and enhance the process of exploitation.

The basic contradiction of capitalism is that between socialised production and class monopoly of the means of production, which manifests itself as working class discontent with its general conditions of life, not just its work experiences under capitalism. If this was better understood it would be realised that socialism is not just concerned with emancipating workers as workers (i.e. wealth-producers) but as human beings (i.e. as men and women). It would also give them a clearer conception of socialist society. Socialism aims not to establish "workers power” or “workers control” but the abolition of all classes including the working class. It is misleading to speak of socialism as workers ownership and control of production. In socialist society there would simply be people, free and equal men and women forming a classless community. So it would be more accurate to define socialism/communism in terms of the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production by and in the interest of the whole people.

Frequently defenders of co-operatives will resort to the argument that they are at least a stepping stone towards socialism. But socialism is the movement against capitalism in all its forms. Co-operatives are just as much a "transitional form" as joint-stock companies are. And I don't think anyone is naive enough to claim, in 2014, that joint-stock companies are "socialist" in any way. Marx didn't say that stock companies are "socialist" in any way. He said they are an association, and cease to be individual property, which is an antithesis to old form. However, they remain trapped in capitalism. There can be no transition from one thing to something else that is in complete opposition to it. The task of socialism is not a change in management, but a social transformation of all institutions and structures of society. If there are cooperatives exchanging their products, there's self-managed capitalism and not socialism. You say you like the idea of not having a CEO or boss, but you will still have a market dictate and can be just as cruel – never mind the inequality. Cooperative labour will of course be a pillar of socialism, but not in the context of competitive markets. It is impossible to have a nice sort of capitalism. Capitalist firms are brutal not because their owners are bad people, whatever that means, but because they need to be brutal to their workers in order to prop up the falling rate of profit. If they can't do that, they are ejected from the market, it's that simple. Socialists are not opposed to "Big Business” per se but business, period. If co-operatives are to supersede capitalism, their production has to be regulated by a general plan determined by society as a whole, which means that they cease being co-operatives because co-operatives are distinguished by their status as autonomous business entities.

Compromising with co-ops and building from the ground up (and all other such nonsense that utopian liberals who want to call themselves socialist preach) has led to nothing but dead ends. It didn't work in France with Louis Blanc, it didn't work in Algeria under Ben Bella or in Tito’s Yugoslavia. It didn't work anywhere, and it won't work, ever. The idea is to change the way people live and work together. Not to replace the system we have now with co-op's then call it a day and quit. Co-operatives are simply another form of private property. They aren't changing the system.

To sum up, the economics Woolf and Alperovitz support is simply the dead-end of self-managed capitalism, which is every bit as reactionary as private or state capitalism. The communist society we are fighting for can only be established by the complete destruction of ALL private property, money, wages and markets - whatever their form. We don't want to own or manage our own misery. Socialists stand for a society based on the abolition of remuneration in the form of wages and democratic control and an economy based on the destruction of the wage system, and a de-linking of the value of labor in production from the distribution of society’s wealth to its members. It is simply not possible anyway to measure an individual’s contribution to production, our production is largely social. The contribution of an individual is very difficult to isolate from the contributions of countless others that make work possible. Any such attribution can only be arbitrary. Having co-workers judge each other’s work would turn gossip and in-fighting at work presently from an annoyance into a system of power over wages. The assets of a co-op do not cease being capital when votes are taken on how they are used within a society of generalised commodity production and wage labour. That is to say there remains an imperative to accumulate with all the drive to minimise the labour time taken to do a task this requires, even in a co-op.

Complex problems have simple solution

Governments agree that it is an imminent environmental crisis yet they are unwilling to act in an effective manner that shows that they have taken the facts on board. Inaction is attractive when polluters do not care about the impacted and refuse to accept the fact that ultimately everyone on planet Earth is vulnerable. Politicians commit large amounts of money climate research yet pays scant attention to its science. Negotiations to tackle climate change have remained largely political lip-service. There is no longer any talk of binding commitment to emissions reduction by nations and instead proposals for vague voluntary self-monitoring action. The further away the target dates for measures are, the easier it is for political leaders to agree to such plans. The nearer the implementation of these dates is, the less enthusiastic support for them. The urgency of the climate crisis demands that the world decarbonises urgently. No one can predict the outcome of the December Paris climate summit, but few expect the measures it may endorse to be tough enough to keep future increases in global temperatures below two degrees Celsius, the maximum amount most scientists believe the planet can absorb without incurring climate disasters far beyond anything seen to date. We cannot allow politicians to intentionally refuse to act now and shift responsibility for action to generations yet unborn. No. We must not allow that.

The World Bank and the International Energy Agency as well as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have acknowledged that substantial percentage of known reserves of fossil fuels must not be burned, that is, they must be left underground if catastrophic temperature increase is to be avoided. This reality now makes it urgent for nations to close their fossil shops and for corporations to shift their attention to clean energy and other forms of production. A large-scale wind, water and solar energy system can reliably supply the world’s needs, significantly benefitting climate, air quality, water quality, ecology and energy security. Is that what we see? No. The obstacles are political, not technical. Rather than work on urgent transition from fossil fuels, nations and corporations are embarking on more extreme and reckless modes of exploration and extraction of fossil fuels, including fracking and deep seas drilling. Rather than shifting to safer and cleaner energy forms, many countries, including many on the African continent, are celebrating new oil and gas finds. They are delirious with joy and getting set to enjoy the pyrrhic bounties that the sector promises. Without the new finds, it was already estimated that the value of fossils to be left underground topped 22 trillion dollars. Those fuels -- oil, natural gas, and coal -- will, of course, continue to dominate the energy landscape for years to come, adding billions of tons of heat-trapping carbon to the atmosphere. Not surprisingly, the oil states and those energy corporations continue to dream of a future in which they will play a dominant role. The fact that such fossils to be left underground are often referred to as stranded resources suggests that corporations and governments will don the garb of saviour to rescue the resources from being stranded!

False solutions such as agro-fuels (ethanol) and REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) have already had serious negative impacts on our peoples. Geo-engineering experiments have failed spectacularly, and even if they were to succeed, all scenarios reviewed by scientists and by the ETC (Erosion, Technology and Concentration) Group show that Africa would suffer severe negative impacts from such moves. As one highly regarded physicist told a recent meeting, “geo-engineering experiments have shown that it is totally useless.” It is a silver bullet that permits polluters to keep polluting and cannot deliver on its promise to suck released carbon from the atmosphere. The climate crisis can be tackled by working with nature and not against it. We have to halt activities that have known negative impacts, including dependence on industrial agriculture and its litany of artificial and chemical inputs. We have to say yes to life and no to mining. It may be inconveniencing, but the pleasures and so-called easy life of today cannot justify a knowing condemnation of the planet and peoples to unacceptable future. We must all stand up, speak and act against climate crimes.

Individual mass movements must all coalesce in the global space to demand the urgent change of this present mode of production and halt the intentional crimes to the environment.  “The cost of doing business.” That’s what corporations call it then they claim a deduction from their taxes for the damage they’ve done to people and the planet. It’s a cost of doing business all right; a cost to us, of doing business with them the way we currently do it, and it’s just one of the reasons so many people are calling for a whole new system.

BP’s Deepwater Horizon kept spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico for 87 days while the media was warned off and the company told the public lies. BP was been found guilty of gross negligence and misconduct. They’ve been slapped with $42 billion in fines and damages. But the BP not only threatening politicians they’ll pull out of the Gulf entirely if their fines aren’t reduced, they’re claiming a lot of that money back, thanks to a tax loophole that will enable BP to claim as much as 80 percent of the damages they've paid out so far as an ordinary business expense.

It’s not just BP either. Car makers, chemical companies, mine owners and those notorious banksters routinely deduct part of their court ordered payouts from their taxes. Which means that means we the people who sustain the damage, are also the ones subsidizing the damages. Big Business has too much power and that’s dangerous for people and the planet. That is why some of us are seeking an alternative system: not just renewable energy, not nationalization of energy companies but an entirely new social and economic system. Some in the green movement offer a utopia of small is beautiful with local businesses and co-ops. It is utopian because capitalism grows anew out of all commodity production; a utopia of small businesses can only be the prelude to the return of competitive cut-throat capitalism.

There’s a revolution going on right now. Don’t take the detours and don’t accept the delays. Right now, we live in terrible times. Horrific wars in the Middle East seem endless, with atrocities committed by all the participants. The future of our planet is in doubt because of the destructive, wasteful and polluting logic of capitalism. In most societies, sexism, racism and xenophobia are widespread, and prospects for many cannot but be worrying and depressing. The Socialist Party does not believe we are born racist or sexist – we are made so by the social conditions we live in. We are confident in our ability to persuade the majority.

The Socialist Party is are not in the business of falsifying reality. We are not a religious sect that seeks to isolate its members from reality. There are no capitalist solutions to climate change. We reject the idea that national interest can be fully defeated under capitalism. On the contrary, we argue that the system relies on divide and rule, that commercial rivalries are the natural by-products of the prevailing economic order. No amount of carbon taxation or emission capping agreements will succeed. A wind, water and solar energy plan gives the world a new, clean, efficient energy system rather than an old, dirty, inefficient one. Is it feasible to transform the world’s energy systems? Could it be accomplished in a short time? Only through socialism is the answer. We are revolutionaries not reformists. We are for revolutionary change as the only way to combat climate change. Capitalism is no friend of the Earth; its need for economic expansion makes it the enemy of the people.