Evolution or Extinction

Humanity has suffered a loss of vision and direction. Life, as it is, cannot carry on in this way forever. We continue to destroy our forests, pollute our air, soil, and water, and wreak havoc upon our eco-systems. If we continue with our current practices, we may destroy ourselves. Socialists recognise the looming catastrophe, but a few of us also realise that this crisis can also be driving us toward positive change. In the midst of this nascent consciousness, the capitalists try to maintain the status quo despite the many warnings that the old ways are no longer sustainable. We still are lacking a coherent social potential movement to connect our communities and society as a whole. But the fact that people are now awakening is evidence of the emerging progress of humanity. A leader-free network is working to bring about radical change.

Capitalism is built on violence and it was created with violence. Make no mistake there is a class war. Nevertheless, the socialist movement is not here to attack but rather to transcend and include the best of what has come before and to attract that which needs to come forth for the flourishing of our human and planetary potential. Its objective is to evolve all of us, our communities, and our world so that all people are free to fulfill their highest potential. Its aim is not to destroy, but to fulfill. Socialists recognise that we have inherited enormous resources from capitalism and that many of those resources can be re-purposed now for the social good.

We as individuals have not changed much physiologically or intellectually in the past thousands of years, but our larger social body has become radically empowered. We have now been born into an extended social and scientific capacity that has never before existed on Earth. We are beginning to discover a path of collaborative action that will lead us toward an immeasurable and positive future. The crises and opportunities we face today are triggering the next stage of social evolution in which we can cooperate and re-pattern our economic and political systems. We need people who are willing to stand together, build a transformative movement for social change that unites people behind a vision of a world based the economics of production for use and not for profits. The role of the Socialist Party is to simply unlock and open doors to get people thinking more deeply about the world they live in and what is around them.

Part of the problem is that we’ve been victims of a campaign which misdirects us into believing that life-style and individual consumer choices will change things rather than organised political resistance. We so often hear that the world is running out of water and people are dying from lack of water so we need to take shorter showers. The truth is more than 90 percent of the water used by humans is used by agriculture and industry. The remaining 10 percent is split between municipalities and actual individual humans. Golf courses use as much water as human beings. An individual’s consumption compared with commercial, industrial, corporate, by agribusiness and government and military is a negligible impact on energy use, global-warming, and atmospheric pollution. Town and city waste accounts for only 3 percent of total waste production in the United States. Let us not delude ourselves that going “green” is a powerful political act, or that it’s deeply revolutionary. It’s not. Personal change doesn’t equal social change. It incorrectly assigns blame and guilt to the individual, not to the system. Our only option is to act decisively to stop the industrial capitalism.

We must not falter

FOR WORLD SOCIALISM

The biggest question for socialists is whether we can build a permanent organisation that can carry forward the political revolution in the long-term; or whether, like so many other previous attempts it quickly dissipates and disappears. There has rarely been a better opportunity to create and build an effective socialist organisation than now. The historical moment is right, with millions now understanding how rigged the economic and political system has become.  We’re at a historical turning point where it is imperative to halt and reverse climate change. Of course, socialists still have a long way to go. Many of the people now declaring themselves socialists aren’t clear about what they mean by the word and it’s safe to guess that they are merely referring to a welfare state and increased government regulation that Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn speak of. Common ownership of the means of production is not yet on their agenda. But this increased interest in socialism generally does make it clear that discontent with decades of stagnating wages and the pain caused by the 2008 economic crisis are starting to take a political form. For millions, the many problems of capitalism are no longer seen as individual problems or the result of personal mistakes but instead, the remind people that the difficulties they face are not their fault and that they deserve more than they are getting. They are looking for collective (class) solutions to social problems. They are beginning to realise that capitalism is an economic system which sacrifices workers to the logic of the capitalist market.

 The role of a socialist party is to offer a direction for this discontent and anger, to name and shame the forces and individuals that benefit from the way society is run and from how the world’s resources are distributed, the capitalists and their politician lackeys. People are stirring again. The era of "me-ism" is drawing to a close. People are awakening again. The courage, imagination and commitment required to begin the journey to a better, just and peaceful world are returning and growing stronger. Our collective voice of protest is shattering the silence once more. Now is not the time to falter. No one said the socialist revolution would be easy. We must remain engaged and engage with others. The greatest problem we have is that many of our fellow-workers can’t imagine any alternative. And that is the challenge: to invent, create and think as if we were living just after the collapse of capitalism, and how we will organise. The socialist movement must endeavor to deepen our relationships to one another, and to reinvent ways of being that are rooted in horizontal solidarity, sharing, and democracy. We cannot legitimise the power of the state through policies of begging and petitioning for reforms. In our revolution, we cannot substitute intermediaries for class participation. We begin with our needs, and from there we decide what we want. The solution is based firmly on the principle of sharing and it that which holds the key to addressing the whole spectrum of interconnected social, economic and environmental challenges we face in the critical period ahead. 

It is becoming increasingly apparent that our political and economic system is not run by the people, but controlled by the economic elite in their own private interest. The World Socialist Movement aims to build a peaceful, people-powered revolution, creating a society that benefits the many and not the few, where our world is founded on economic security and shared resources. We do not live in a world of scarcity. We do not need continuous economic growth through the conquest of nature because there is enough for everyone to live peacefully and prosperously on the planet. Greed, competition, violence should not be regarded as natural phenomena. This is the time for taking care of each other, relying on one another, for our well-being is interconnected. Socialism brings resiliency and freedom. Climate change crisis and ecological devastation forces upon us the possibilities for reshaping how we live.

We are going to win

"Our planet, our society, and we ourselves are built of star stuff."—Carl Sagan

Sometimes it is difficult to imagine alternative ways of living and organising. Capitalism is not the only system there is. It’s not inherent within us. It isn’t some inevitable expression of predefined human nature. It was developed by human beings and so human beings can change it. But in order to get there, we first have to engage in thinking about real change.

Capitalism equates wealth with success, which is then equated to virtue e.g. rich people are good, poor people are bad, therefore poverty is a moral failing of the person and that if we can’t be rich, there is something wrong with us and we deserve to suffer the consequence. We are programmed from birth to believe in the moral philosophy of competition, individualism, the virtue of material consumption, and social status determined by the wealth hierarchy. They tell us that it is people of merit who rise to the top of the system. We are told that those with the most money deserve to have power over the rest of us. Accumulation of money and property is seen as the be all and end all of life. Capitalism promotes the idea that selfishness is rational and efficient. Capitalism turns people and natural resources into commodities in order to attract more capital. That’s its sole purpose. The capitalists use a culture of indoctrination as the means of ensuring we remain submissive, docile and obedient. There is no conspiracy other than the logic of capitalist thought selling us false ideas.  We are told that as the rich get richer the rest of us will get richer too.  We are told that we can solve global poverty if rich countries give more aid to poor countries. We are told that our governments are democratic. They tell us that our media is free, honest and impartial. But we know that these are lies. Education and the news are so heavily filtered and propagandized that it bears little resemblance to any truth.

The World Socialist Movement challenges the capitalist belief-system and points to another way of living. We seek to make our future and create the better world we know is possible, where there is no 'I' or 'you', but only 'we.' I am another you and you are another me. We are all one. I am in you, and you are in me. All of humanity is just one. And all 7 billion of us are all variations of the same. We are different manifestations of the same yet in our details our diversity is endless. Socialism is where no one is excluded.

The WSM sign-posts the first steps on a journey to more connected communities. We are on the side of the people who are willing to fight back. Socialists do not resign ourselves to the fate we are told is inevitable. We are people who refuse to continue as wage-slaves. We are people who know we are human beings. We understand that unless it is stopped, capitalism may kill everyone and everything on the planet. If we don’t change our direction we’re going to wind up in a world of ecological collapse and  social collapse. It’s essential for all of us to look ahead and ask, ‘What kind of world do we want to have? What’s the personal contribution we can make in bringing such a world about?’

A new world  will only arrive when people begin to want it and start to build towards it.

Dundee and Poverty

Large numbers of Dundonians live below the poverty line.

But a number of neighbourhoods in the Lochee council ward suffer more than most.

More than half of residents in some areas in the city’s north-west live in deprivation.

In Whorterbank, the situation is grave, with more than half of residents living below the worst poverty line. And almost a third of children across the Lochee area are facing impoverished conditions on a daily basis.

In addition to that, a fifth of people in the ward fare poorly when it comes to work and income — with unemployment also an issue in the majority of areas — though Gowrie Park fares better than most here with around 60% of folk in a job.

https://www.eveningtelegraph.co.uk/fp/poverty-needs-addressed-lochee/

Societies change, nothing stays the same.

Revolution is the overthrow of previous existing social system and modes with their ruling class. i.e. feudalism to capitalism, capitalism to post-capitalism. The media persist in lying that the Cuban revolt was a social revolution. It was nothing of the kind. Socialism is a post-capitalist system of society. Nothing to do with the state-capitalist, Leninist regime which existed in Cuba, most of the pseudo-'communist' regimes were post-feudal revolutions, attempts to kick-start capitalism and in the absence of sufficient home-grown capitalists, the state stepped into the breach. Socialism is not some top-down management by the state, or a replacement of one dictatorship for another, or reformed Labourite government. Those are certainly doomed to fail, as capitalism cannot be managed or reformed, but they are failures of capitalism and not socialism. Socialism is common ownership, production for use and free access. We use socialism and communism interchangeably, meaning the same thing, as Marx did.

We have been supporting the 5% parasite capitalist class through hell and back with two world wars and Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for our pains and they are picking sides for another go, as capitalism has entered its decadent phase, since the start of the last century never mind this one. We 95% do not freely produce for the free use by all but are enslaved by the wages system (rationed) to produce for sale, for the profit of a minority parasite class 5% of owners.

We have created the technological conditions for superabundance and leisure for the free access future society, but require a conscious political seizure by the immense majority of the ownership of the means of production and distribution. Abolish the wages system and establish a society of superabundance where lawyers and bankers, money, prices, etc. will not exist and no more wars over competing economic parasite interests. It is time you stopped following leaders. Everybody else should know better by now to stop clutching at the will o' the wisp capitalist or state capitalist or reformist straws.

Educate agitate and organise, as we have a cooperative commonwealth world of free access and democratic control by us all, to win. Dissolve the governments over you and their politicians. Elect yourselves for the last great emancipation, that of the wage slaves.

"The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves. We cannot, therefore, co-operate with people who openly state that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must be freed from above by philanthropic big bourgeois and petty bourgeois." Marx and Engels, 1879

The choice is socialism or barbarism.

Capitalism progressive purpose is served. It is now in its decadent phase and has been so since the start of last century. It can't resolve the problems of distribution without the twin concomitants of war (arising out of competition between rival capitalists and poverty relative or absolute, (arising out of waged slavery and exploitation at the point of production to produce profits for the parasite owning class).

Humankind has reached the ‘era of social revolution’ but the revolution is yet to begin. Capitalism has gone into its phase of global crisis cycles and anarchy leading to world wars involving capital against capital, fomenting national prejudices and pitting workers against workers to slaughter one another, destroying productive forces on all contending sides and producing misery, poverty, waste, pollution and environment destruction. This is, however, not to say that capital has come to a dead halt. Capital’s nature of exploitation, appropriation, and accumulation of surplus value continues as long as it exists.

Capital develops unevenly through concentration and centralization. And for that matter capital is still going on accumulating globally whereby one capital kills many giving rise to gigantic conglomerates. Accumulation is going through destruction and annihilation. This is reactionary. This is decadence

Productive forces have developed to the stage of both actual and potential abundance for all. But the working class consciousness and organization have remained subdued under the domination of capitalist ideas and interests – constantly and crushingly campaigned by all pervading 'right', 'left', 'centre' chronicles and ideologies.

They comprise all various belligerent factions of capital. Although they use different names and slogans on their banners, they don’t have any scientific alternative to capital’s devastatingly continued reproduction. They are mere reformists of all various hues. We have experienced enough of such things. And enough is enough! They have given capitalism a century-long anachronistic existence. Measures which were once very necessary and useful for maturation of the system have already more or less accomplished their tasks and grown old and outdated.

The material productive forces of society have come into conflict with the existing relations of production. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations have turned into their fetters or, in other words, the productive forces have outgrown the production relation. The real revolution takes place with the battle of ideas in the lead up to the post-capitalist society, to ensure the majority is a politically aware one with the consciousness.

Why settle for crumbs when we could have the whole bakery.

We have a world to win

But nothing will stop an idea which time has come.

Wee Matt

Are Cooperatives the Way?

“If cooperative production is not to remain a sham and a mare; if it is to supersede the capitalist system; if the united co-operative societies are to regulate national production upon a common plan, thus taking it under their control, and putting an end to the constant anarchy and periodical convulsions which are the fatality of Capitalist production—what else, gentlemen, would it be but Communism, ‘possible’ Communism?” – Marx

“My proposal envisages the introduction of cooperatives into existing production ... just as the Paris Commune demanded that the workers should manage cooperatively the factories closed down by the manufacturers’… [neither Marx nor he himself had] ‘ever doubted that, in the course of the transition to a wholly communist economy, widespread use would have to be made of cooperative management as an intermediate stage’ – Engels

Co-ops have been embraced by significant groups of people at different times and places. Their attraction is offering a means to consolidate small producers and take advantage of economies of scale, shared risk, and common gain. At the advent of the capitalist era, cooperatives were one of many competing solutions offered to ameliorate the plight of the emerging working class. Cooperatives were considered as intermediate steps towards socialist relations of production. Cooperatives offer advantages to both workers and consumers. Workers are thought to benefit because the profits that are expropriated by non-workers in the capitalist mode of production are shared by the workforce in a cooperative enterprise. Working conditions are necessarily improved since workplace decisions are arrived at democratically without the lash associated with the profit-mania of alienated ownership. In reality, cooperatives are largely indistinguishable from small businesses. Like small private businesses, they employ few people and rely heavily upon sweat equity for capitalization. Like other small businesses, cooperatives mostly operate on the periphery of the economy.  Most present day advocates proponents, see cooperatives as a “third way” between reformism and revolution yet without noting the steady evolution of these once “third way” institutions towards a conventional capitalist business model.

Economic democracy and workers’ self-management is absolutely central to any genuine socialist society, but they can only be permanently established by adopting a strategy aimed at dismantling the power of the capitalist state and expropriating the expropriators. In other words a political strategy, not one focused primarily on attempting to create alternative economic models within existing capitalist society. The concept of cooperatives as an alternative to both private and state ownership resurfaces over and over again.

The questions we must ask in regard to cooperatives are co-ops models of socialism within a capitalist society, possible islands of socialism in the ocean of capitalism and are they politically practical steps along the road socialism, laying down the foundations of such a society? Cooperatives certainly show that workers can run factories themselves, that democracy in the workplace is possible, and capitalists are not necessary for the organization of production but can they bring about fundamental social transformation.

Worker co-ops replace the capitalist with the democratic association of the workers - the workers become their own capitalists, they can thus arrange operations amongst themselves to the extent they wish. “By deed, instead of by argument, they have shown that production on a large scale, and in accord with the behest of modern science, may be carried on without the existence of a class of masters employing a class of hands.” And again Marx explains, “Cooperative factories provide the proof that the capitalist has become just as superfluous as a functionary in production…”

The workers’ welfare can be materially enhanced, since the profits that the capitalist would have made as a result of ownership of the firm become incomes of the 99%, which are proportionately increased as that of the share of the returns to the 1% disappears. The fact that workers control their own immediate work, itself a contribution also enhances their well-being, reducing alienation from their work. Yet these advantages have their limitations, because the pressures of competition and requirements of marketing in a private profit-driven market economy restrict their options. Co-ops operating within a capitalist, profit-driven market economy cannot operate independently of that economy. As Marx has it:

“The co-operative factories run by workers themselves are, within the old form, the first examples of the emergence of a new form, even though they naturally reproduce in all cases, in their present organization, all the defects of the existing system, and must reproduce them.”

The pressures of day-to-day competition, pressure to cut costs, trim quality, and hold wages and the number of jobs down, is relentless. Efforts involved to run the business and compete successfully enough to at least stay afloat are daunting. Running an enterprise is time consuming, energy consuming, and beset by commercial problems. It weakens more than it strengthens political aspiration for system change. Most cooperatives seek only individualistic economic gains for workers through the market system, and do not work to mobilise workers into radical class consciousness nor revolutionary class struggle. Cooperative movements from this perspective were simply an individualistic capitalist enterprise that could not bring about fundamental social change due to the absence of political mobilisation

Marx rejected Lassalle’s belief that workers’ emancipation should be brought about by a system of state-aided producer cooperatives. Based on the Gotha programme, one means of solving social problems was to demand State aid to fund the establishment of producer cooperatives under the democratic control of the mass of the working people. Marx disagreed on this point by objecting ‘that the workers’ desire to establish the conditions for cooperative production on a social scale, and first of all on a national scale, in their own country, only means that they are working to transform the present conditions of production, and it has nothing in common with the foundation of co-operative societies with state aid’. Otherwise—Marx argued— socialism would be established through State action—in stark contrast with the central idea that workers will only achieve emancipation through their own efforts. If workers were to require the support of the State for their revolutionary movement, they would thereby only reveal their ‘full consciousness that they neither rule nor are ripe for rule!’ Marx concludes that ‘as far as the present co-operative societies are concerned, they are of value only insofar as they are the independent creations of workers and not protege´s either of the governments or of the bourgeoisie’

But socialists don’t take what Marx or Engels as canon. Rosa Luxemburg subjected cooperatives to criticism in her pamphlet Reform or Revolution.

“Co-operatives,” wrote Luxemburg, “especially co-operatives in the field of production, constitute a hybrid form in the midst of capitalism. They can be described as small units of socialized production within capitalist exchange.”

The problem is that cooperatives that are established in the context of the capitalist market must compete in order to survive, and if the rate of exploitation is high among your competitors, then you must match it.

As Luxemburg put it, “in capitalist economy exchanges dominate production. As a result of competition, the complete domination of the process of production by the interests of capital—that is, pitiless exploitation—becomes a condition for the survival of each enterprise.”

She continues:

“The domination of capital over the process of production expresses itself in the following ways. Labor is intensified. The workday is lengthened or shortened, according to the situation of the market. And, depending on the requirements of the market, labor is either employed or thrown back into the street. In other words, use is made of all methods that enable an enterprise to stand up against its competitors in the market.”

Some cooperatives find small niche markets in which to survive, but the majority will either be driven out of business or be forced to copy the practices used by other employers.

In Luxemburg’s words:

‘The workers forming a co-operative in the field of production are thus faced with the contradictory necessity of governing themselves with the utmost absolutism. They are obliged to take toward themselves the role of capitalist entrepreneur—a contradiction that accounts for the usual failure of production co-operatives which either become pure capitalist enterprises or, if the workers’ interests continue to predominate, end by dissolving.”

Socialists have long argued that socialism in one country is not possible because a socialist revolution that does not spread will either be crushed from the outside or survive by being transformed from within. Socialism in one work-place is even more of a non-starter. 

And despite his sympathies for cooperatives Marx also realised that:

“the experience of the period from 1848 to 1864 has proved beyond doubt that, however excellent in principle and however useful in practice, co-operative labor, if kept within the narrow circle of the casual efforts of private workmen, will never be able to arrest the growth in geometrical progression of monopoly, to free the masses, nor even to perceptibly lighten the burden of their miseries.”

Co–ops by themselves do not challenge the system and actually may divert energy away from doing so.  Individual co–ops do not threaten the system, are likely to degenerate, and can absorb time and resources that could be used for other kinds of organizing. Marx also noted that a variety of establishment figures had become supporters of co–ops:

“It is perhaps for this very reason that plausible noblemen, philanthropic middle-class spouters, and even kept political economists have all at once turned nauseously complimentary to the very co-operative labor system they had vainly tried to nip in the bud by deriding it as the utopia of the dreamer, or stigmatizing it as the sacrilege of the socialist.”

Marx understood that the capitalist class would not stand idly by and allow themselves to pass into history. They had the power of the State behind them:

“To save the industrious masses, cooperative labour ought to be developed to national dimensions, and, consequently, to be fostered by national means. Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defence and perpetuation of their economic monopolies. So far from promoting, they will continue to lay every possible impediment in the way of the emancipation of labour. … To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.”

To liberate humanity from the misery of capitalist exploitation and make full use of society’s scientific and technical achievements to overcome material and cultural inequality cannot be done by an uncoordinated set of cooperatives – it will require the pooling and coordination of all society’s productive capacities according to a common plan of production to meet all our individual and collective needs and desires.

On their own a cooperative can easily be a capitalist enterprise owned by its workers in which, as Marx says, the workers become their own capitalist. Nor can they “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 conventional capitalist enterprises an advantage. Worker cooperatives generally are in industries which generate 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. This can be called “self-managed exploitation.”  The pitfalls of workers cooperatives are often missing from its proponents’ discussion. Their proposals for getting rid of capitalism would actually lead to a entrenchment of capitalism

As Chomsky explains it:

 “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…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.”

There is no real or meaningful self -management insofar as it is limited to single companies operating within the market. 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 (or at least the vast majority) 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. An analogy to the problem is that a strategy of advocating worker cooperatives is akin to allowing small groups of slaves on a small number of plantations to self-manage themselves. It makes life better for some, but it doesn’t end the system of exploitation. While worker cooperatives can have some uses, the perspective cannot be described as anti-capitalist in a meaningful sense.

 The Socialist Party supports the idea that workers should run the economy, but we think it needs to go way beyond what advocates of cooperatives put forward. Our aspiration is the socialist cooperative commonwealth described thus by Marx:

“Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labour employed on the products appear here as the value of these products, as a material quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labour no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of total labor.”

If you want to open small businesses organized as cooperatives, as a strategy for survival, by all means do so but please do not declare that it's somehow a path beyond capitalism. Workers coops have persisted throughout the history of capitalist development, although today, with a few notable exceptions, they are mostly relatively small, local operations. When they are successful, they often tend to evolve in the direction of more conventional capitalist firms, hiring non-member employees as a way of expanding production rather than enlarging the full membership of the producer coop itself. While many, perhaps most, people who work as members in cooperatives continue to see them as an alternative way of life to working in a conventional capitalist firm, for most participants they are no longer part of a broad strategy for building an alternative to capitalism and are certainly not part of an organized anti-system strategy as was the case in the 19th Century cooperative movement.

The big question that has to be answered is, although, worker-owned cooperatives remain one of the central expressions a democratic egalitarian vision of an alternative way of organising economic activity , can worker coops cooperate with each other through a kind of voluntary federated structure which would facilitate coordination and joint action as suggested by mutualism that would form the basis of a new society, initially within capitalism itself and eventually replacing capitalism? The conclusion in not one of conjecture but a matter of historic record – No.

Industrial Serfdom

The business of making profits is shrouded in great mystery by the capitalists. They seek to make the workers believe that it is by magic that they make the processes of production yield them profits and build up great fortunes for them. Capitalists do not create wealth out of the air in juggling with industry. They make profits because they purchase the labour-power of the workers for less than the value of the goods the workers produce; that is, they do not pay the workers the full value of their labour. There is no other way of making profits out of industry. The power to hire and fire the workers, to give and take away the opportunity to earn a living, carries with it the power to compel the workers to work for such wages as will leave the capitalists a profit from their labour

The opposite of low wages is big profits. The lower the wages for which the capitalists can purchase the labour-power of the workers and the longer their hours of labour, the greater will be the capitalist’s profits. Naturally, the capitalists pay the lowest wages at which they can induce the workers to work. Since they are in a position to deny the workers the opportunity to earn a living if the workers do not accept their terms, they have been able to keep the wages at the point where they yield the workers a mere subsistence, or even less than a mere subsistence. The plain fact is that a numerically small group of people, the capitalists, who own the machinery of production and the natural resources of the country, have the masses at their mercy. They can take from them individually, and collectively for a time, their opportunity to earn a living. They are the industrial barons and the workers industrial serfs. We work long hours, we sacrifice our health and strength in the work of producing wealth for others, yet we do not receive in return sufficient wages to retain our vigour and vitality. We are driven into submission to accept the terms of our masters.

The social evils which we find about us are the result of our economic system and they are not  unrelated issues, that must be remedied separately. We know that businesses do not exist primarily for the purpose of supplying human needs. Their purpose is to make profits for their shareholders. If they cannot make profits for their shareholders, they go out of business. They are interested in producing wealth as a means of securing wealth for the limited number who share in their profits. The motive which drives the vast industrial machine which has grown up under capitalism is the desire for profits. The work of supplying human needs has become a mere incident to the process of realizing profits. The evils of the present social order — insecurity, low wages, and unemployment— are the product of a system in which the supreme purpose is the taking of profits. The system divides people into two classes. Anyone with an ounce of common sense will have to admit that. There are people who work for wages and those who employ wage workers. There are the people who own the industries and those who must go to the owners of industry or their representatives for the opportunity to earn a living. The ownership of industry is the source of the power of the profit-seeking class. It gives them control of the opportunities of the masses to secure the necessities of life. The millions of men and women  who are dependent upon the wages they earn for a living are economic serfs. They have not yet gained the “inalienable right to life, liberty, and happiness,” because their opportunity to earn the necessities of “life, liberty, and happiness” can be taken from them by the owners of industry, and is taken from them whenever the owners of industry are unable to make profits for themselves from the labour of the workers. This makes the capitalists who control huge corporations an oligarchy with almost unlimited power over the lives of the people. No people can be free nor achieve happiness that permits such power to exist in their midst.  The right to elect politicians is a poor consolation when the more fundamental right to earn a living is controlled by a class in society with no other interest in production than to make as large profits as possible.

The idea that socialism would be established through a series of reform measures and legislative acts has been shown to be an illusion. The struggle of the working class is a political struggle for control of the state because it must gain control of the government before it can hope to establish democracy in industry. For the working class to endeavour to take control of industry while all the repressive power of the class state remained in the hands of the capitalist class would be to invite destruction. The work the workers have to do is building a class-conscious political movement which will carry on the work of educating the workers to an understanding of the system of exploitation which now exists and the class character of the government and to organise the workers for the struggle to wrest control of the government out of the hands of the capitalist class. The Socialist Party is the medium through which this work can be done. The reconstruction of the capitalist system into a better world, a world of prosperity, and peace can only be achieved by the working class itself.

Marx says read the Socialist Standard

Why the Socialist Party?

The battle between bosses and workers rages everywhere. Capitalism has failed miserably to provide the basic necessities of life for hundreds of millions of workers around the world. Millions upon millions are hungry and homeless. Millions of youth will never find work in capitalist society. Older workers are thrown on the scrap-heap when they no longer have any value to an employer. The boss class is presently ripping up many of the reforms that workers have fought hard to gain. Like all thieves, the capitalists have no honour among themselves and are constantly falling out causing wars across the globe. The only solution is the socialist revolution, otherwise, we will suffer capitalism's ceaseless exploitation and endless wars. Capitalism means the ruination of, our families, our friends, our fellow-workers and our neighbours. Productivity has reached undreamed of heights; skills are available and so are the raw materials. We have solved the problem of carrying on agriculture, the widespread system of transportation we have organise, the wonderful machinery of production we have built, have freed us from the danger of lack of food, clothing, or houses to live in because of the inability to produce them. We have been able to supply our needs. We have solved the problem of production. We can produce all that is needed to supply the necessities of life, as well as some of the comforts of life — education and the opportunity for recreation — to all the people. And, yet, people go without. Does not this indicate the bankruptcy of a system? The ruling class would like the workers to forget these things. Only world socialism offers an alternative to the misery of capitalism.

The Socialist Party wants a society where the people run everything in the interests of the world's people. We want a system that encourages everyone to become involved in running society for the common good and does not indoctrinate people to "look out for number one;" that opposes placing selfish interests above the social needs. We want society to help each person grow to his or her full potential. In a capitalist society, only the employing owning class are free--free to hire and fire, free to pillage and plunder, free to make our class fight for their profits. In contrast, socialism will allow no freedom to exploit workers. Instead of the principle "every man for himself" in socialism, it will be "to each according to need." Socialism will abolish the wage system and people will work because they want to, because their brothers and sisters around the world need their contribution. The measure of work will have nothing to do with what people receive. People should and will get what they need, within the limits of what everyone can produce. For the first time in history, workers will receive a fair share of society's wealth, regardless of the work they do. They will share in decision-making, including the distribution of goods and services according to society's needs. They will share shortage along with abundance. Socialism will abolish socially useless forms of work that exist now only for capitalist profit. Socialism will not need of lawyers, advertisers, or salespeople. In one stroke, it will do away with layers of needless government bureaucrats, as well as the hordes of petty supervisors and administrators who oversee and manage us for the bosses. It will free everyone to perform socially useful work, which is the source of true creativity. The socialist re-construction of society requires the active commitment of the majority. Socialism will not succeed unless people understand it, agree with it, and help to make it succeed. A society of free individuals in which all, through their own work, contribute to the liberation and enrichment of the lives of others, is the only environment in which any individual can really grow normally to stature. Business wants interchangeable docile and trained personnel for their offices and factories and voting sheep for their parties. They do not need independent, critical-minded individuals.

Ending the wage system will reduce the problems capitalism causes inside the working class. Racism, one of capitalism's greatest evils, exploits one worker to a greater degree than another. Marx said over 100 years ago that, "the worker in white skin can never be free as long as the worker in black skin remains in chains." Only an egalitarian society that ends the exploitative wage system in the context of sharp anti-racist political and ideological class struggle can eliminate racism once and for all. We oppose nationalism. Borders are artificial and exist to divide workers and keep different sets of bosses in power. Workers need no borders. Workers in one part of the world are not different from or better than workers in another. Workers should be loyal only to other workers, never to a boss. We endorse the revolutionary slogan: "Workers of the world, unite!"

We will never settle for a few reforms or a few crumbs.

“Capitalism can no more be ‘persuaded’ to limit growth than a human being can be ‘persuaded’ to stop breathing. Attempts to ‘green’ capitalism, to make it ‘ecological’, are doomed by the very nature of the system as a system of endless growth.” –Murray Bookchin

Climate change poses a major threat to the future of humanity. Today, climate change threatens life itself. Extreme weather, rising seas, ocean acidification and biodiversity collapse will undermine many of the eco-systems on which we depend. Climate change poses a significant threat to future social and economic activities. Today the single biggest threat to our climate is the group of billionaires who profit most from its pollution and, in turn, push government policies that promote more fossil fuels. Our planet is being held hostage by a handful of profiteers who wield decisive power over our governments. They seek economic boom even if it means ecological doom. Climate change compounded by the concentration of wealth and distribution of poverty is pushing natural and humans systems to a perfect storm of tipping points. There is little doubt that the docility of the world population has contributed greatly to keeping intact the increasingly unequal, barbaric and rapacious society that is global capitalism. In our struggle, the Socialist Party depend for the success of our message on people who are prepared to think.

Under the capitalist system, “production of surplus-value is the absolute law of this mode of production” (Marx, Capital). The nature of the monopoly capitalist class is to seek profits. In exploiting energy resources, the capitalists do not consider the rational use of natural resources but only seek maximum profits. Capitalism means waste. Armament expansion, war and wars are bottomless pits in consuming and squandering resources. The world, however, could be experiencing the dawn of a revolutionary transformation to becoming an ecologically literate and socially just civilisation. Imagine technology integrated with the ecosystem.

"In London," Karl Marx wrote "they can find no better use for the excretion of four and a half million human beings than to contaminate the Thames with it at heavy expense".  Marx was scathing of the capitalist economic notion that the air, rivers, seas, and soil can be treated as a "free gift of nature" to business.

The Socialist Party’s analysis of the environment under capitalism shows how saving the planet is inextricably linked to transforming our society. Exploitation, war, hunger and poverty are not problems that can be solved by the market system. Rather, they were inescapable outcomes of the system itself. This is because capitalism is dominated by corporations devoted to profit above all else. According to the Socialist Party, capitalism is an economic system profoundly at odds with a sustainable planet. The exploitation of nature is as fundamental to the profit system as the exploitation of working people. Capitalist farming is unsustainable because it inevitably starves the soil of nutrients. It is nothing less than "an art, not only of robbing the labourer, but of robbing the soil" as Marx pointed out.  As Engels later put it, “The present poisoning of the air, water, and land can only be put an end to by the fusion of town and country” under “one single vast plan.” Despite its potential cost to society in terms of increased labour time, he viewed this fusion as “no more and no less utopian than the abolition of the antithesis between capitalist and wage-workers.”

The Socialist Party is seeking ultimately to establish a “steady-state economy” or “zero-growth” society which corresponds to what Marx called “simple reproduction” – a situation where human needs were in balance with the resources needed to satisfy them. Such a society would already have decided, according to its own criteria and through its own decision-making processes, on the most appropriate way to allocate resources to meet the needs of its members. This having been done, it would only need to go on repeating this continuously from production period to production period. Production would not be ever-increasing but would be stabilized at the level required to satisfy needs. All that would be produced would be products for consumption and the products needed to replace and repair the raw materials and instruments of production used up in producing these consumer goods. The point about such a situation is that there will no longer be any imperative need to develop productivity, i.e. to cut costs in the sense of using fewer resources; nor will there be the blind pressure to do so that is exerted under capitalism through the market.

In socialism, we would not be bound to use the most labour efficient methods of production. We would be free to select our methods in accordance with a wide range of socially desirable criteria, in particular, the vital need to protect the environment. What it means is that we should construct permanent, durable means of production which you don’t constantly innovate. We would use these to produce durable equipment and machinery and durable consumer goods designed to last for a long time, designed for minimum maintenance and made from materials which if necessary can be re-cycled. In this way we would get a minimum loss of materials; once they’ve been extracted and processed they can be used over and over again. It also means that once you’ve achieved satisfactory levels of consumer goods, you don’t insist on producing more and more. Total social production could even be reduced. This will be the opposite of to-day's capitalist system’s cheap, shoddy, “throw-away” goods and built-in obsolescence, which results in a massive loss and destruction of resources.

The case for socialism starts from a concern for the suffering of humans and look for a solution to this. This makes socialists “anthropocentric” as opposed to the “ecocentrism” – Nature first – of many environmentalist activists. The plunder, looting and rape of Nature is rejected as not being in the interests of the human species, not because the interests of Nature come first. Nor do socialists say humans, as such, are a pollutant or a parasite on Nature. The materialist conception of history makes the way humans are organised to meet their material needs the basis of any society. Humans meet their material needs by transforming parts of the rest of nature into things that are useful to them; this, in fact, is what production is. So the basis of any society is its mode of production which, again, is the same thing as its relationship to the rest of nature. Humans survive by interfering in the rest of nature to change it for their own benefit. Environmentalists are wrong to see this interference as inherently destructive of nature. It might do this, but there is no reason, nothing inherent, why it has to. That humans have to interfere in nature is a fact of human existence. How humans interfere in nature, on the other hand, depends on the kind of society they live in. Capitalism differs from previous class societies in that under it production is not for direct use, not even of the ruling class, but for sale on a market. The competitive pressures to minimise costs and maximise sales, profit-seeking and blind economic growth, with all their destructive effects on the rest of nature, are built-in to capitalism. These make capitalism inherently environmentally unfriendly.

Human beings are both a part and a product of nature and humans have a unique significance in nature since they are the only life-form capable of reflective thought and so of conscious intervention to change the environment. It is absurd to regard human intervention in nature as some outside disturbing force, since humans are precisely that part of nature which has evolved that consciously intervenes in the rest of nature; it is our nature to do so. True, that at the present time, the form human intervention in the rest of Nature takes is upsetting natural balances and cycles, but the point is that humans, unlike other life-forms, are capable of changing their behaviour. In this sense the human species is the brain and voice of Nature i.e. Nature become self-conscious. But to fulfil this role humans must change the social system, change from capitalism to a community where each contributes to the whole to the best of his or her ability and takes from the common fund of produce what he or she needs.

Naomi Klein is also dismissive of capitalist solutions. Geo-engineering – deflecting the sun's rays with space-based mirrors, for example – is "magical thinking". Emission-trading schemes are a shell game, easily exploited by profiteers and frauds. Then there are the "philanthro-capitalists" – Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett – all of whom have, at various times, promised to use their billions to help save the planet but thus far delivered little. The only alternative, then, is to throw the whole system out and begin again. Replace the profit motive with the justice motive. It sounds radical, she says, and it is. But we have our backs up against the climate wall. There is no time for tinkering, no room for compromise. "People are angry," she says. "The system is failing them on multiple levels. If ever there was a moment for transformative change, it's now."

On this point, the Socialist Party and she can agree. 

ENOUGH! OUR PATIENCE HAS ENDED

 

‘Without struggle there is no progress; And those who profess to favour freedom, yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without digging up the ground. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters.’ - Frederick Douglas

We need to talk more about socialism. True, the Socialist Party makes it very clear that socialism is what we’re fighting for but we don’t have a lot to say about what socialism will be like - how people will live and work. The current crisis is forcing people to question capitalism and consider alternatives, alternatives they used to dismiss when it seemed like capitalism seemed capable of putting food on their tables and a roof over their heads. People understandably worry that the cure might be as bad as the disease. In particular, many workers fear that socialism will end up being the same old same old: capitalism under new management, except with a red flag. Virtually no one in the world doubts that today’s times are desperate because of the current world economic crisis with its devastating effects on hundreds of millions of workers. The Socialist Party’s first task is to educate the working class concerning its relation to the profit system as a whole, to understand the real nature of things. Poverty and hunger in the midst of plenty is the distinguishing mark of the capitalist system of production

Socialism means abolishing nations and nationalism. Nationalism is always a dead end for the working class. One working class, one world. Socialism means working collectively to build a society where sharing is based on need. Where we will abolish work for wages, money, and profit. Everyone will share society’s benefits and burdens. The Socialist Party wants a society where everybody can take part in the decisions that affect all of us, a society where the needs of all are met by all, and the development of each depends upon the development of all. Socialism is a society where people don’t rely on other people to make their decisions for them, but actually collectively participate in all of the important decisions that society needs to make.

Workers are being thrown on to the scrap-heap. More and more low-paid workers and their families are being forced into poverty and misery. Capitalism devours the people through unemployment, low wages, poverty, starvation and exceedingly low standard of living. Millions die a slow death in peacetime as a result of this system while millions die more quickly in wars by more direct means. Science is chained to the war machine, with the result that the most devastating Weapons of Mass Destruction are devised to slaughter human beings. The good that science can do to elevate the living standards of a whole world is subjected to the control of the profit-greedy capitalist classes of the great powers. Weapons of Mass Destruction are they are part of the arsenal of all countries. Such is the legacy of the profit system, and it will continue until it is ended by socialist revolution. One can see that there is no real hope for future prosperity and peace except through the abolition of capitalism. The sole hope for humanity, the hope of civilisation lies in the establishment of a socialist society of production for use, of genuine freedom and equality. Socialism alone can prevent the global slaughter. The task for our fellow-workers is to create something new. We have every reason for optimism that they will succeed. The ruling class genuinely fear a revolutionary upsurge will bring about real social and political change that would end the system of exploitation, poverty, and war for all time. Capitalism prevents us from obtaining food, water, shelter, clothing, and other needs unless we work for the capitalists and produce more than we are paid – with the excess taking the form of surplus value or profit. Capitalism turns the world’s working class into profit-producing commodities as appendages to capitalist machines. 

By withholding our access to the necessities of life, the capitalists force us to do their bidding. The world’s working class today is just as enslaved by capitalism’s withholding these necessities as if we were forced to live and work in collars and chains. Under chattel slavery, workers’ bodies and minds were consumed in back-breaking toil with death coming early. Under wage slavery, dehumanising exploitation grinds down our bodies. Will you give up now to continue to be slaves, or will you fight on to prevent it?

Why join the Socialist Party?

No worker should join the Socialist Party without carefully considering and understanding our case for socialism. When we say our party is “revolutionary” we mean, on the one hand, that its aim is revolutionary and on the other hand that we believe in the revolutionary method. We do not believe that the masses can be delivered from poverty, unemployment, degradation, war, by any reform of the capitalist system under which we live. That system must be abolished, wage slavery must be done away with altogether. The workers must own and control the machinery of production. We do not believe that the workers can cure their ills by reforming capitalism. Under capitalism the general trend is toward greater misery for the workers. Doubt and discredit are being thrown upon the entire socialist movement, confusing the workers with disillusionment and cynicism. Nobody outside an insane asylum any longer believes that the Left is going to put an end to the capitalist system and usher in the cooperative commonwealth. Nor can their platforms of “soak-the-rich” be considered radical. The fact of the matter is that the policies of taxing big incomes, big corporations and inheritance does not “soak” the rich at all and have long since had to accept as a price for keeping the capitalist system on its feet. The Left immediate demands are fake solution of capitalism’s problems. It is not necessary to dwell upon the conservatism which has now come to characterise the Left.

We, in the Socialist Party, however, defend the assertions of our Declaration of Principles as the basis of the liberation of our fellow-workers. We are nowhere infallible and we make no claim to finality but we do declare to be in possession of the clearest, straightest Marxian thinking. We of the Socialist Party thus claim to have some of the answers to the question of political and economic freedom in the modern world. We offer a sign-post on the road to genuine social democracy, a direction for our fellow-workers to take. In presenting this course we are championing the interests of humanity. Only the workers themselves, united and organised, will be able really to solve the problems which the present age creates and to free themselves from poverty and insecurity and the frustration of spirit to which they are subjected to.

Capitalists make their profits by paying the worker in wages a smaller value than he or she creates by labouring. The capitalist thus gets what Marx calls surplus value. It is the only way profit can be created. Under modern conditions, expensive plants and equipment are increased, but the work is done with fewer workers. Thus they must be exploited ever more fiercely in order that surplus value – profit – may be squeezed out of their labour, the only possible source of profit. The working class, however, has demonstrated a remarkable tenacity in clinging to their trade unions. Whatever may happen to this or that union or any number of unions, the workers do not wish to abandon the union movement but to broaden it, increase its militancy, etc. So long as capitalism endures, organisation of some kind on the job to deal with the boss is indispensable. Instinctively the masses fight to defend the unions, the right to strike, etc. Nevertheless, the trade union organization as such, while drawn into battles with their employers and government, are not the medium of revolutionary action. The unions are after all primarily economic rather than political.

Reformism and gradualism mean ruin for the workers’ movement. The idea of running a capitalist and a socialist, a profit and non-profit, system side-by-side is crazy. It is like trying to ride  two horses going in opposite directions. Why? Because capitalism must drive the standard of living lower all the time. If any trade union no matter how weak or meek they will offer resistance. The workers cannot save themselves or their movement by being humble and cautious. We cannot use the capitalist state to bring improvements. We can only begin to build a new society on new foundations. Workers cannot obtain plenty and security, deliverance from misery and war, by trying to reform the capitalist economic system. We have to abolish it. And we cannot abolish it except by a social revolution. Abundance and security can be had but first workers must become convinced that capitalism cannot be reformed and should be abolished.

The material and technological resources for such a society, unquestionably exist that everybody could have a comfortable and attractive home, abundant food, decent clothing, opportunity for recreation and education, security against accident, sickness, and old age; and the sense of independence and self-respect that goes with these things. What we actually have, however, is widespread poverty and mass unemployment. This appalling contrast between what might be and what is does not arise from the nature of the economic system – capitalism – under which we operate. It is impossible for this antiquated system of private ownership and profit to supply the needs of the population today. The system acts, obviously as a brake upon production so that, as the phrase goes, you have “want in the midst of plenty.” The removal of the brake of private ownership which shuts down factories, ploughs under crops and stultifies the scientist and technician, and putting in its place the social, that is, scientific, use of natural resources and the productive plant, will mean an immediate and substantial improvement in the standard of living of all. The spectre of insecurity will be removed. The despotic domination of the few over the many will be at an end. No one can predict the advances which may follow this release of the human spirit when liberty, equality, and fraternity are truly realised under the modern conditions.

Profits can be made only by fiercer exploitation, cutting down the living standards and taking away even such concessions as were previously made. Since capitalism must keep pushing the standard lower and lower, it must seek to destroy every means of resistance. To maintain their system, the capitalists will resort to patriotism and nationalism. The idea that it is “our” country – i.e. everybody’s alike, that there is such a thing as nation or community to which we all belong and which protects us, is cultivated by the ruling class for the purpose of hiding the fact of class cleavage and of exploitation for the purpose of making the worker think that he is working for “his” country rather than for the capitalists. We call upon the workers throughout the world to determine where their allegiance belongs, country or class.

This is your choice – capitalism and chaos or a world for the workers which means a higher civilization. There exists no more appropriate way to carry forward the revolution than mustering under the banner of the Socialist Party. Only if capitalism is destroyed can the creative energies of mankind be expressed. 

We need socialists

The working class must make its stand against the capitalist system – whose lust for profits and interest, for investments, markets and expanded capital, for raw materials and cheap exploitable labour, can mean only exploitation and abject wage-slavery. With socialism, there will be no wages at all. There will be no prices or market values. In socialism, men and women will receive a share of what has been produced by the common social labour. Goods are produced for the use and NOT for the profits which they bring to bosses. Labour power is no longer regarded as a commodity to be bought and sold. It is not purchased at all, let alone purchased at the lowest possible price to keep it alive and able to produce more value. Men and women, in socialism, will work and produce useful goods. But they will produce these for their mutual needs and for their mutual development. The sufficiency of goods which workers and machines can create will be given to everyone to develop their bodies so that their minds can grow rich in the wealth of human knowledge, aesthetic appreciation, and artistic creation.

Under capitalism, the worker, at the end of the week (or month), receives wages which simply go to refurbish him or her for another Monday. Saturday and Sunday are the days of rest (if you’re lucky and don’t have to work those days, too), when you try to feel as strong and able to work as you did the Monday before. And so it goes on for the worker under capitalism – a continuous cycle, a downward spiral (broken only by unemployment), with the worker never quite recovering strength from the week before, but always forced to go to work on Monday, anyway. Under capitalist economics, the workers are reduced to a “resource” and a “cost item” to be kept to the absolute minimum through speed-ups, wage-cuts and lay-offs. Under capitalism, workers have no control over what is produced and how. All that is decided by how much profit some capitalist will gain. As long as profit for the few is the basis of the capitalist economic system will continue to go from crisis to deeper crisis, with more misery for the masses of people. If any one thing stands out above all else, it is the fundamental anarchy of the capitalist system. It is just impossible to make the profit system work for the benefit of all. The purpose of production remains the same – how much is there in it for the owners of industry. The profit system has one unshakable purpose: PRIVATE GAIN.

Socialism will change all this. Socialism enables the people to decide how to organize itself and the resources of society to meet the needs of the people. Mankind, no longer fettered by the necessity of working not only for their own material maintenance but for the bosses’ even more material profits, will be freed to live more fully. The time that each must work will be small, yet the goods produced for all to enjoy will be plentiful. Freed from the capitalist system means being freed from wage labour, price, and profit. That is why, instead of the conservative motto, “A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work,” workers must inscribe on their banner the REVOLUTIONARY watchword: “Abolition of the wage system!” Socialism is the ONLY answer. Capitalism has outlived its day and the world is ready for a new economic system. Capitalism brings nothing but enslavement for the overwhelming majority of the people. It brings wealth and power only to the employing class. What is required is the building of a movement of all the working people to fight for a new and better life against capitalism which guarantees only new wars, world poverty, mass unemployment and intense misery to billions of people.

Society can be changed, but only if working people abandon reforms and commit themselves to real change from below. The Socialist Party is the embryo of a mass movement which can transform society. We need you to join. 

We Choose Socialism

Capitalism might be defined as the institutionalisation of the profit-motive. Anti-capitalist radicals too often focus almost exclusively on the struggle between capital and labor, to the neglect of the very serious struggles among capitalists themselves. These latter struggles account for a lot of what happens under capitalism. If a capitalist enterprise doesn't make a profit, it disappears, vanishes, goes out of existence. It either goes bankrupt or else is gobbled up by a larger, more profitable company. From the point of view of the corporation, the need to turn a profit, and as big a profit as possible, is absolute. It is the first requirement for survival. Turning a profit means expanding, finding new markets, making new products. This is necessary because of the pressures of other corporations, all of which are trying to do the same thing. We are living through one of the most intense periods of the concentration of capital (mergers or the big fish gobbling up the little fish) in the history of capitalism. These mergers have been triggered by pressures on the rate of profit throughout the world. This tendency to merge is inherent to the system, stemming from the competition among firms to stay profitable (and therefore to stay in existence), and, needless to say, from pressures from below, from the working class, which also puts a squeeze on profits. So corporations get bigger and bigger. The idea that we can go backward, to a capitalism made up of millions of small-scale proprietors, is completely unrealistic. Yet this assumption underlies much of populist protest and agitation. These populists do not direct their anger against capitalism itself, but only against giant corporations. The idea that any of these firms could, if they were only so inclined (that is, if only they were run by nicer people), start behaving in more generous and responsible ways, is a total illusion. Those advocating for 'socially responsible corporations' are acting rather naively, even irresponsibly. The one hundred or so giant corporations that produce the bulk of the world's coal, oil, and natural gas, the burning of which is warming the earth, are not just thieves and murderers but are rapidly becoming guilty of genocide, ecocide, and possibly even planetcide. It is not just that these companies have been producing these products in response to demand. It is that they have conspired to create the demand in the first place, and then conspired further to keep the world dependent on fossil fuels. These are enormously rich and powerful corporations, which spend millions in propaganda and in lobbying legislators the world over, to defeat efforts to deal with the problem of global warming.

Capitalism is a system of theft, Marx proving that profit came from unpaid wages (surplus-value) rather than from the sale of the product. Under capitalism there is no such thing as a fair day's pay; it is structurally impossible; the system is inherently unfair, being based on the siphoning off, through force, of part of the wealth created by the direct producers. Since capitalism is inherently a system of theft, and since capitalists, as a class, do regularly and systematically resort to lying, brutality, torture, oppression, murder, and war to defend their scam, capitalists are not merely greedy, they are outright criminals. Many progressives seek reforms and legislation to make corporations socially responsible. It is assumed that corporations could, if only they weren't so greedy, be more generous and responsible. This assumption, however, misjudges the nature of the beast. Corporations, by their very nature, are inherently irresponsible. They could not survive, for example, if they had to absorb all the external costs of their operations. They could not possibly make a profit. Being able to externalize many of the costs of production is almost a definition of capitalism, as a system of competing, profit-based, corporations, supported by nation-states. Nor could they survive very long if they raised wages very much, or spent money on safety because other corporations wouldn't and would, therefore, drive them out of business. We need to keep this struggle among capitalists in mind when looking at sweatshops, unsafe mines, and toxic workplaces, and not limit our criticisms to the cruelty and greed of capitalists, but direct it to the system itself. Even when we do see the occasional business that 'does right by its employees', as they like to claim, with 'decent' wages, pension plans, profit-sharing, sick leave, good vacations, maternity leave, grievance procedures, eight hour days, and so forth, we have to remember that this is still based on wage-slavery, on the expropriation of wealth from the direct producers, and is thus an unjust set up. Furthermore, such beneficial policies came into being originally in the context of a strong labor movement, which raised the standards for all workers, even those in nonunion workplaces. Now that unions are practically gone, benefits like these have been disappearing rapidly. In short, the campaign for 'socially responsible corporations' is ridiculous, totally reformist, and completely unable to solve the social and ecological crises that are overwhelming humanity.

If we look at world history over the course of the past several centuries, it is hard to miss the fact that democracy has been advancing. The notion that people have the right to rule themselves is a near universal idea at present, and it shows no signs of weakening. Democracy has not only extended itself geographically, but it has deepened internally. This extension of democracy to the economic realm is far from complete. Democratic rights in the work-place have rarely been granted without a fight. Economic Democracy is essentially off-limits under capitalism. Yet, economic democracy is far better positioned than capitalism to avoid ecological crises. We can aim for healthy, equitable, sustainable development, not the mindless consumption that fails to make people happy. Economic democracy can be a “no-growth economy,” whereas capitalism cannot be. Actually, “no-growth” is a misnomer. Productivity increases under economic democracy can be translated into ending poverty for once and for all, after which growth will be mostly in free time, not consumption without having to worry about provoking a over-production recession. We shall use the new-found bounty of nature quite differently than the way the rich use it today and will map out for ourselves a plan of life quite otherwise than theirs. What work there still remains to be done will be as widely shared as possible – three hour shifts, or a fifteen-hour week.

Most human communities throughout history have had to be in order to survive. They have had to provide a certain quantity of essential material things for themselves in order to live -- food, shelter, clothing, tools, and transportation. Needs are socially defined. An item which is considered unnecessary in one culture may be considered quite essential by the average person in another culture. Beyond bare necessities of nourishment and shelter from cold, human needs are almost completely culturally defined, and vary considerably, historically and across cultures. And why shouldn't they? Why shouldn't different peoples have different tastes and different ways of satisfying their needs? And why shouldn't our needs expand as we become richer? Why shouldn't we try to enrich our lives as much as we can?

However, we suffer 'culture of consumerism' a product of capitalism itself. Under the incessant drive to sell, sell, sell, corporations strive mightily to create needs and bring into being a demand for their products and services. Advertising is an enormous industry, incessantly pressuring us to buy. Many other social pressures also get us to buy commodities, such as status through conspicuous consumption. The average person is a victim of this consumerism run amok, not its cause. This might be called a false materialism, or a materialism that has run amok. We call it call 'commodification' or 'commercialism', or. We shop until we drop and they profit. It is capitalism which has promoted a whole set of irrational priorities. Some capitalists value profit more than life itself such as the tobacco industry. It's the profit-making system of capitalism functioning at its normal best. The normal way is profit-making, by exploiting wage-slaves and defending all the institutions needed to perpetuate this exploitation, through murder and war if need be. It is this system of exploitation that has to be undone.

Many of these needs we have might not be considered necessary in another society, but are essential in this one. We are locked into them. We have to have a car, for example, to commute to work and drive to a supermarket miles away (in the absence of work closer to home, public transportation, or corner grocery stores). We need our own home, in the absence of communal or cooperative housing. We need a refrigerator since much of the available food needs to be kept cold. We need machines to wash our clothes. We need to cook our food on. And so forth. Capitalism has rebuilt in a very haphazard and irrational way almost the entire human material world, and in the process has locked us into a multitude of needs which cannot be abolished just by wishing. We will have to change practically the entire social fabric and then re-define and rebuild what it means to live really well and enjoy a high-quality life. We have umpteen urgent material needs that are not being met -- the simple need for food, clothing, and shelter (for billions of people), the need for nutritious food (for most of us in the developed countries), the need for clean air and water, the need for an unpolluted environment, the need for meaningful work, the need for neighbors, the need for safe and nontoxic workplaces, the need for time to play the need for parks and green spaces. The list of our unmet material needs is long.

Capitalists have not only erected the social institutions they need, but have brought into being an entire cultural apparatus to support their practices, and even worse, have shaped our very personalities and character structures to fit the prerequisites of a profit driven system. The disappearance of all other values, leaving just commercial ones, is thus a result, not a cause. The privilege of the profit-makers is inherent to the system and deeply embedded.  Private ownership of the means of production and distribution has to be abolished, as well as classes, and the state itself, and all of these replaced with cooperative, democratic social forms.

Adapted from here