Be Happy

 

Happiness is a condition that almost defies the definition. Millions have sought it; in fact, it might be described as mankind’s chief pursuit.

 Of those who claim to have been successful we are in grave doubt. Some have seen in the amassing of worldly goods the clearest road to happiness. Having achieved it scores of them tell us it was not worth the trouble.

Others have held that happiness consists in making the fewest possible demands on life; on limiting one’s needs to the most frugal necessities. This view is always suspect. One always wonders if they are cutting their philosophic coat according to their very material cloth.

Others speak of a middle road, perfectly level, and only mildly eventful. From its even surface one benignly surveys the unhappy rich on the surrounding heights, burdened with great possessions ; and one gazes pityingly into the valley below, where struggle the millions not so burdened.

 Philosophers, teachers, orators, and preachers, all down the ages have counted their lives well spent in telling mankind how to be happy.

Yet humanity is not happy.

First, being living beings, it is essential to happiness that primary necessities should be available for all. These prime needs are self-evidently food and shelter.  

 Food, the first physical requisite of life, is adulterated, and of doubtful quality.

What of shelter? Our civilisation cannot properly house its people. It simply refers to their sorry condition as a “housing problem,” and speaks of gradually overcoming it in some 30 or 50 years.

It is in this “market”system where lies the trouble. Obviously instead of goods being produced to supply human necessities, this can only be done through the medium of a sale. And if a sale cannot be effected the goods remain where they are and the would-be recipient goes without. Evidently, therefore, it is not sufficient for the farmer, the fisherman, the fruit-grower, the cattle-raiser, to know that hungry humanity needs their produce. The builder will not build simply because people want houses. These needs must exist, certainly, but their satisfaction depends entirely upon a sale taking place. But is this not a reasonable state of things?

We say a better system of supplying ordinary physical needs can be evolved than the one that introduces deprivation as a consequence of plenty. Than one that compels the producers of wealth to hire out their one possession—their power to labour—for the cost of their upkeep. Than one that condemns them to starve in the midst of the plenty they have created because they cannot buy back the whole of their product. We say that human society could be and should be a coherent whole. That all should take part in the necessary work of production, and that all should share in the common result. Can it be done?

Let us view our earth as a common heritage. Let all take part in the sharing the wealth from Mother Nature’s storehouse as the result of co-operative mutual effort. Let us banish slavery, poverty, ignorance and wretchedness to the limbo of forgotten things. 

Our fellow-workers cannot fail to be confused by the multitude of  disagreement between those who are all apparently claiming to be socialists. An attempt is usually made to dismiss the differences as a question not of principles but of policy and method, and of only minor importance. “We are all,” they say, “bound for the same place, but we travel by different roads.”

Yet this explanation is not by any means true, for the Socialist Party’s opposition is not concerned merely with method, but is one of basic principle. We have to reject offers to sink our differences and join forces because we travel by a different road to a different place. The success of the left would mean defeat for us, and we can get what we want only after defeating them.

If there exists this clash of aims, no good purpose is served by minimising it, or ignoring it; hence our assertion that those on the left-wing are not deserving of working-class support. We cannot prevent our opponents from calling their politics “socialism” however much they differ from our own. The importance lies not in the name but in the thing, what it is and what it does for the workers, not what it is called. The Socialist Party and the left both come before you to tell you the cause and the remedy for your poverty and insecurity. What we want you to notice is that their explanations and their remedies differ from ours as chalk does from cheese, in spite of an apparent similarity in the use of words. There are people who think that the left and the Socialist Party are both wrong, but what you ought to avoid at all costs is thinking that we can both be right. If we are right, then the left-wingers are wrong and vice versa. We ask you to examine our principles and choose between us.

Understand Socialism

 

Why is there hunger? It’s nothing to do with a lack of food.The fact there’s enough food to feed everyone has been acknowledged by the numerous  institutions and NGOs such as the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and Oxfam

 

The difference between "what is possible and what is possible in capitalism" has failed to imprint itself upon the experts who assume  food is both produced to sell and to satisfy hunger.

 

Capital must always have wage-labour and it has always been ruthless in the methods by which it has built up its armies of wage workers.

 

We know that the future belongs to us, the workers. We know socialism is possible. We know that only the working people can bring socialism about. We need to build a society where we own the factories, the lands, —a society where we are guaranteed good housing, decent education and full healthcare. A world where there will be no borders.

 

Labour power is a commodity, the price of which is determined by its cost of production. All commodities are subject to this law. There may be temporary fluctuations in the price of a commodity due to variations in supply and demand; but these compensate one another in the long run, and a mean level can be traced through the ups and downs which is the actual cost of production.

 

Wages fluctuate because they are the price of a commodity. The demand for labour power, however, is seldom in in excess of the supply; consequently wages for any particular form of labour power are rarely above the cost of production for that form. Striking an average and taking the more highly-paid with the lowest, we say the cost of production of labour power is synonymous with the cost of living.

 

As there are always more workers than jobs, competition for them is so keen that wages can always be kept down to a point which, for the bulk of workers, represents a meagre portion of the necessaries of life. It therefore seems to them, that if the cost of necessaries were lower their lot would be improved. The same result would follow if wages were higher and commodities remained the same in price.

The workers, only seeing this much, are between a rock and a hard place. They can struggle for higher wages, or reduced prices; or both. To concentrate on price reductions is a fallacy; because cost of production determines prices. True the price at one time may be above the cost of production, but that very fact induces greater production and thereby reduces price. While some commodities are rising in price others may be falling. In the first case the capital is increased, in the second it is withdrawn. In this way the fluctuations compensate each other, and the cost of production is shown to be the real price. Hence the fallacy.

On the other hand, if the workers concentrate on wages they are met by stubborn opposition from the masters, and are powerless to effect any real improvement in their standard of living. Only by constant struggle, even, can they prevent reductions in their standard in living. On either hand they are faced with forces that are invulnerable to their puny weapons. Hence the need for them to understand socialism.

Almost hopeless as is the struggle for higher wages any agitation for reduced prices is still more so. While Capitalism lasts your social suffering whatever its form is the necessary accompaniment of your slave existence, it must continue while you tolerate that system. There is nothing to choose between deterioration as a slum dweller, an unemployed worker, or an employed one for that matter. Your choice must be between freedom or slavery.

A study of socialism will teach you that it will be just as hellish to be sweated and robbed of life under a Labour Party administered capitalism as under any Tory government. 

 

There is no way of running capitalism beneficially to the masses and without conflicts and crises. To abolish capitalism is the only way to peace, plenty, happiness and security. Socialism is the solution, common ownership of the means of life and production for use the world over. Socialism is the solution and the urgency for its establishment is now. So don’t be fooled, fellow workers. It's your votes they are after. Socialism requires your understanding. It may be a long road, that depends on you, but until you bring about socialism you have nothing to look forward to saving a fate worse than death and lots and lots of promises.

What We Want and Why

 Apologists for capitalism argue that members of the capitalist class work also. This may be true in a few instances, but not for the giant concerns which produce most of the wealth in modern society. The shareholders in these companies take no part in production at all.

And it is argued that the large shareholder with investments in dozens of different companies earns huge dividends because of the organising ability. It is impossible for one person to have the knowledge of the complicated processes involved in running one company, let alone trying to run several. The capitalist class employ workers to do their organising for them and even employ members of the working class to advise them how to invest their money.

Another argument put forward is that the capitalist class are entitled to their large profits because of the risks they take with their investments. What risk is involved in buying State bonds? And in these days of “increased” crime is the person who keeps money at home not taking a bigger risk of losing it? And what about the meagre compensation the working class receive though they risk their lives and health in such industries as mining, transport, etc.

Another aspect of the “risk” argument is that for saving money and sacrificing present pleasures the capitalist must have some recompense. To talk of  Bezos, Zuckerman or Musk foregoing pleasures because of their investments is absurd. Again to abstain from the pleasures of present spending is to indulge in the pleasure of making more money for future spending.

The capitalist class also claim that by investing their wealth they provide the working class with the means to live. Many history books have been written describing how the rising capitalist class dispossessed the majority of the population of the means to live. The capitalist class invest their money to procure profit. They buy the workers' physical and mental energies by the week or the month and after the workers have used their energies for the specified period producing wealth for the capitalist class they receive back just sufficient to enable them to live. The difference between what the worker produces and what he receives is the source of the capitalists' wealth and is the object of the whole process.

The Socialist Party is frequently asked why it is not in favour of, but actually opposes various forms of state or municipal ownership. Our general reason is that nationalisation will not benefit the workers.

The employing class after they have paid wages and all expenses, they expect to receive an amount greater than the total they have spent on manufacturing and selling a product. The difference between income and expenditure goes into the pockets of the owners or shareholders as profits or dividends, and this happens irrespective of whether those shareholders have or have not any business knowledge and irrespective of whether they spend the whole of their time idling and enjoying themselves, or whether they take an active interest in the concern in which their money is invested. Generally speaking, the amount of their profits depends not on their own efforts, but on the amount of capital they happen to possess.

We object to the control of the means of life being in the hands of non-workers. We object to the owners of capital being permitted to consume part of the wealth the workers have produced while they take no active part in production themselves. We hold that society can now dispense with the capitalist class, because they no longer perform any function which cannot be performed at least as well by members of the working class, by which we mean all those people who, because they do not possess property, are compelled to offer their services to those who do. We do not regard the investment of capital as a service that entitles the owner to live at the expense of those who do the work. We, therefore, advocate socialism. Society itself will set aside wealth in the form of machinery, etc., for the purpose of future production, instead of paying a privileged class for permission to use the results of the workers’ past labour, as is done at present. The capitalist class will cease to exist. This is what we mean by socialism.

On the other hand, nationalisation, or municipalisation, is when the State or some local authority assumes ownership or control instead of leaving it in the hands of any private capitalist or group of capitalists who choose to invest their money in it. They all perpetuate the very features which is essential to capitalism and which leads us to seek the abolition of the system. We know very well that it is the system itself that is the cause of the chief economic evils from which the workers suffer. Capitalism is the enemy; not big capitalists or little capitalists, not the private employer or the government bureaucrat, not high wages or low wages, not private or state capitalism, but simply capitalism. The essential feature of capitalism is reproduced in nationalisation proposals. IN ALL OF THEM THE CAPITALIST INVESTOR IS STILL GOING TO BE ALLOWED TO LIVE OFF THE PROCEEDS OF HIS INVESTMENT. The only difference—a minor one—is that he will receive interest on government or municipal bonds instead of receiving profits or dividends on ordinary company shares. He will still be able to live without working, and the system which permits this will still be the capitalist system. It is merely another reform of capitalism. We do not believe that there is any fundamental distinction so long as the wage system exists, between the relationship of a private employer to his workers and the relationship of a municipality or State to its workers. In each case, the latter sell their labour-power, and their capacity to sell it at a fair price depends on their capacity, through their trade unions to refuse to work.

The main underlying cause of the worker’s poverty is the private ownership of the means of producing material wealth. The class that lives by owning, maintains its position because it controls the political machinery and can invoke the aid of the armed forces whenever necessary. The remedy can only be the abolition of private ownership

There is a way out. The Socialist Party knows the answer.

The solution for the working class is the abolition of production for profit. Production solely for use is the answer. It needs, however, a majority of the population to take the necessary action. The Socialist Party spends time and energy promoting the socialist case because we know that unless the majority of people understand and take the necessary action, we can, by ourselves, do nothing to end the present state of affairs. Social production with private ownership can never provide for the needs of humanity. The wages system always prevents the distribution of goods, for demand is restricted by the ability to pay. Social production with common ownership is the only way in which distribution can be arranged to satisfy mankind. It is the establishment of common ownership of the means of production and distribution which the Socialist Party is striving to obtain.

Socialist Standard No. 1402 June 2021

 

JUNE 2021 PDF

• Editorial

• Pathfinders

• Letters

• Cooking the Books 1

• Apartness in Israel

• Material World

• What’s left of Labour?

• Capitalism, socialism and work

• Cultures, multi and otherwise

• The daily class struggle

• The soul of Oscar Wilde

• Cooking the Books 2

• Proper Gander

• Book reviews

• 50 Years Ago

• Party news

• Meetings

• Rear View