Alienation (video)

Toward the Co-operative Commonwealth

"If you and I must fight each other to exist, we will not love each other very hard," Eugene Debs

Would you help to abolish delinquency, disease and despair from the world? Then abolish poverty which is the cause. Would you abolish poverty? Then assist us in abolishing the wages system, the cause of poverty. Capitalism is to blame. It is the sordid, cankerous ulcer of privation and dissolution; it is the hideous nightmare of despair and gloom that waxes fat on the misery of helpless. To the socialist "the wages system" is a system of slavery, the wage worker being forced by it to sell himself from period to period, for life, in a market glutted with wage workers.  So long as society maintains the present system of wage slavery, there can be no relief. This one escape is through the concerted action of the whole working class. Encourage and assist others in abolishing the wages system by joining the Socialist Party which is distinguished by only having one policy - Abolish Capitalism, NOW! We stand on a platform of no reforms. We denounce this outgrown system as incompetent and corrupt and the source of unspeakable misery and suffering to the whole working class. Why we should put the effort into building something we don't particularly want? We want a free society and not reduce the world to some uniform sameness in the name of equality; or any kind of command soviet style economy. Indeed, we should alter the old motto: “From Each according to their self-defined abilities, to each according to their self-defined Needs.”

The worker, amidst the riches which he or she has created, cannot satisfy his or her smallest necessity. Toil and drudgery in unhealthful work-places saps the vitality of life itself. "Down with the wage system!" That is the fundamental demand of the socialist movement. Cooperative association shall take the place of the wage system with its class rule. There shall be no more exploiter or exploited. Production and distribution of the produce must be regulated in the interest of the whole. We strive for the abolition of the class state, class legislation and class rule.

Although many speak of Britain as "our" country, and millions have died or have been mutilated in defence of what they called "their" country, as a matter of fact Britain does not belong to the whole of the British people, but to a comparative few. How many can point to a particular part of the map of the UK and say "this is mine"? Only a lucky few who have paid off their mortgages while the greatest portion of the country is divided among a few great landlords and landowners. In comparison with Third World nations Britain is spoken of as a wealthy country. Does that mean that its people as a whole are well off? By no means. Some are immensely rich, most get a bare living, a large number are degradingly poor. The land and the factories and the transportation - all the means of producing the nation's wealth - are owned by the capitalist class. Production is carried on not for the purpose of supplying the needs of the people but for the purpose of sale in order to realise a profit. Only those who have something to sell can get a living. Only those who can afford to buy acquire things. This is the capitalist system.  If things were produced for use, nobody would spend time in the manufacture of shoddy goods, jerry-built houses, or adulterated food.

The worker has nothing to sell but his or her labour power that is sold to an employer for so many hours a day for a certain price, that is, wages. Since one cannot separate labour power from one's body it comes to this, that workers actually sells themselves like a slave. We socialists, call it "wage slavery". Wages are determined by what it costs to keep a family. How many do you know who can regularly save out of their wages and be able to put something by for a rainy day. It is now a fact that the average person is not more than two weeks removed from penury.

Workers by their own nature are anti-capitalist due to the capital's nature to extort profits from the labour of the workers. A capitalist will only buy labour if he can make profit out of it. Just compare the value of the goods you turned out in a day when you were in the factory, and what you received for your work. The difference between the two is the employer's profit. Profit is the result of the unpaid labour of the worker. In capitalist England, the workers are continually robbed of the results of their labour. The employing class will compel the worker to work as hard and as long as he or she can, for as little money as possible. In spite of Health and Safety regulations, inhuman sweating still flourishes, whole industries in which absolutely inhuman conditions of work and pay still exist. Even through the efforts of the best organised trade unions wages never rise much higher than the cost of living. And even this is not secure. In the endeavour to produce as cheaply as possible, management continually introduces labour-saving technology, which enables them to produce more goods in less time and reduces the standard of skill required. As a result unemployment is continually on the increase and many a previously skilled worker has lost his or her trade.

The Socialist Party recognises first and foremost that labour and capital are always at odds. Whoever controls the basic means of survival controls society. There is no such thing as democracy or equality without the people having collective control of these means, both on a large scale and on a small scale, in the neighbourhood and the workshop. The way of competition offers only increasing bondage, while the way of cooperation offers real freedom. What does capitalism offer? A life-time of toil at a bare subsistence, a drab, colourless existence with always the dread fear of the sack.

The task now before us is to abolish wage slavery by the overthrow of capitalism and the construction of a socialist society. Only then will humankind become really free. Together we can form a worldwide Co-operative Commonwealth. Help us to secure for all a free, full and happy life; secure in possession of a rational, human existence, neither brutalised by toil nor debilitated by hunger, and then all the noble characteristics of humanity will have full opportunity to expand and develop. Your proper place is in the ranks of the Socialist Party, fighting for the abolition of this accursed social system which grinds us down in such a manner; which debases the character and lowers the ideals of people to such a fearful degree. Rather than promoting a policy of self-abasement, the Socialist Party advocates principles of defiant self-reliance and trust in the people's own power of self-emancipation.

Be realistic, do the impossible

We are socialists because we share a vision of a humane social system based on rational planning, meaningful work, a healthy and sustainable environment, with gender and racial equality. Under capitalism, markets manufacture scarcity. Anything that is in abundance cannot be sold on the market. As capitalism must constantly grow without limit, so too must it also relentlessly create scarcity.  Capitalism is driven to destroy abundance. We live in an interconnected world. Nobody can escape climate change, which will be a problem so long as the world capitalist market persist. Local economies are perpetually undermined by world markets. Ideas about reverting to family farming and small business economy, breaking up monopoly capital don’t recognise the real forces driving capitalism. Concentrated capital can’t be opposed by weak capital. Alternative economic forms can’t escape the net of capitalism without first overturning it. Thus, even worker-owned cooperatives must exist and make a profit within the capitalist framework, or they go under. This isn’t to say these are not worthwhile efforts, but their limits under capitalism should be recognised. Our goal is a social and economic system based on direct democracy in politics and economy and on democratically planned production. We want a system of production and distribution that is in accordance with the needs of each individual and of society as a whole, and which takes into account the regenerative capacities of the natural environment. For us in the Socialist Party socialism is not a utopian vision of a distant future.

Many ecologists are rooted in the idea that “civilisation” threatens the rest of the planet, passing over any mention of the role of capitalist production entirely. If the problem lies in the individual amoral actions of humans, divorced from economics and politics, this opens the door to blaming certain humans for the ecological crisis. Focusing on overpopulation rather than resource misdistribution and capitalist growth boils down to blaming the poor. It ignores the facts that that the average American has an enormous carbon footprint compared to those in the Global South. The military machine produces massive emissions and pollution, and much of the industrial pollution in the developing world is from production for First World consumption. Also ignored is that birth rates rise with poverty and fall with adequate social development and the empowerment of women.

“Tragedy of the Commons” is an invented fable by Garrett Hardin, a University of California professor who argued for sterilisation of “genetically defective” people and against foreign food aid because it would enable starving children in poor countries to survive, increasing overpopulation. It has been used as justification to disenfranchise indigenous people of their land and delegitimise non-capitalist social systems. It argues for enclosure and privatisation of public property on the claim that users of the commons are inherently selfish and will overuse the resource by trying to outcompete their neighbour. It has no basis or evidence in reality whatsoever. In reality, communities with common ownership of property have existed stably for thousands of years by self-regulating through common decision-making. This was true democratic, social management of resources, and it resulted in balance. It is private property in the capitalist era which has driven over-exploitation, the exact opposite of Hardin’s thesis.

The goals of The Socialist Party is a life free of exploitation, insecurity, poverty; an end to unemployment, hunger and homelessness; an end to all forms of discrimination, prejudice and bigotry; the extension of democracy and the creation of a truly humane and rationally planned society that will stimulate the fullest flowering of the human personality, creativity and talent. The advocates of capitalism hold that such goals are unrealistic because that human beings are inherently selfish and evil. We are confident, however, that such goals can be realised, but only through a socialist society. Since its inception capitalism has been fatally flawed. Its inherent laws - to maximise profit on the backs of the working class - give rise to the class struggle. History is a continuous story of people rising up against those who exploit and oppress them, to demand what's theirs. Socialists say that capitalism won't be around forever. Just like previous societies weren't around forever either. Slavery gave rise to feudalism and feudalism to capitalism. So, too, capitalism gives rise to socialism.

Poverty will be ended quickly with the end of unemployment and the redeployment of the vast resources now wasted in war production. There are plenty of jobs that need doing and plenty of people who can do them. Automation at the service of the working people will lead to both reduced hours of work and higher living standards, with no layoffs. Under capitalism, improvements in skill, organisation and technology are rightly feared by the worker, since they threaten jobs. Under socialism, they offer the chance to make the job more interesting and rewarding, as well as to improve living standards. Socialism provides moral incentives because the fruits of labor benefit all. No person robs others of the profits from their labour; when social goals are adopted by the majority, people will want to work for these goals. Work will seem less a burden, more and more a creative activity, where everyone is his/her neighbour's helper instead of rival. With capitalism gone, crime will also begin to disappear, for it is the vicious profit system that corrupts people and breeds crime.

There are broadly two ways in which the socialist movement strives for change. Some like ourselves are organised as parties to gain political power. Others are organised as protest movements fighting for change but with no desire to seize political power. We believe that the struggle for socialism must necessarily make use of both types of strategies in parallel for the abolition of the existing social relations. To carry through the socialist economic and social transformation requires political rule by the working class - a government of, by and for the people. Capitalists like to claim that socialism means dictatorship and capitalism means democracy. The opposite is true. Capitalism is the dictatorship of the market, a system of the rich, for the rich, by the rich. Socialism completes the democratic project by extending popular decision making to the economic sphere. Socialism is democracy. Capitalism is a system of wage slavery which turns individuals into commodities who are purchased and owned through market exchange which creates a sense of being owned and a loss of dignity.  

The Socialist Party say that it is possible to bring socialism through peaceful means, through the ballot box. One thing is clear, there won't be socialism until the majority of the people want it. Socialism is our vision for the future. It is a vision winning more and more people to because it is the logical replacement for capitalism and the next inevitable step up the ladder of human civilisation.

A very brief intro to the SPGB

Share the World, Spare the Planet

The fundamental basis of socialism is that being at the end of the long chain of exploitation workers have no alternative but to fight back. It is the working class that acts, not the revolutionary political party independently of the class. It may prepare the ground for that action by education and agitation, try to support and strengthen that action when it arrives, unite the diverse sections of the class but the emancipation must be the work of the people themselves.

The Socialist Party stands for the abolition of every form of domination and exploitation, whether based on social class, gender, race, age, sexual orientation, or any other characteristic. It is committed to the transformation of capitalism through the creation of a democratic socialist society based on compassion, empathy, and respect.  Socialism will establish a new social and economic system in which workers and community members will take responsibility for and control of their neighbourhoods, their local administrations, and the production and distribution of all goods and services. We call for common ownership and democratic control of productive resources, for a guarantee to all of the right to participate in production, and to a fair share of society's product, in accordance with individual needs. The Socialist Party stands for a fundamental transformation of the economy, focusing on production for need not profit. The Socialist Party believes that art is an integral part of daily life, and should not be treated as a commodity produced by the activity of an elite group.  All members of society should have ample opportunities for participation in art and cultural activities. From each according to ability to contribute; to each according to needs. That is the best principle that can guide the life of our society today.

Working people have no country, but rather a bond based on class. Workers throughout the world have far more in common with each other across national boundaries than with their bosses in their own countries. A socialist revolution must be a world-wide revolution that cannot survive if confined to individual countries amidst global capitalism. It is evident that the workers urgently need to burst the bounds of the nation state and organise on a world scale. The Socialist Party works to build a world in which everyone will be able to freely move across borders, to visit and to live wherever they choose. We advocate the common ownership (non-ownership) and democratic control of all our natural resources in order to conserve resources, preserve our wilderness areas, and restore environmental quality. Socialism means the protection of the earth, and the celebration of community. Sharing the means of production and distribution makes for a classless society. When people who collectively own the means of production work toward a common goal and share their products in common, when they contribute labour without wages and enjoy the fruits free of any charge, that is socialism.

The Socialist Party recognises that it has no hope in the capitalist economic system. Capitalism subordinates people’s welfare, such as the present pressing urgency to address climate change, to private, short-term and pecuniary interests. Capitalism generates large-scale unemployment, especially as technology erodes the need for labour, as is the case today. For anyone who has a rational, organisational mentality capitalism is actually an embarrassment. Socialism is now the only means of healing the rift between humanity and the environment that seeks harmony amongst people and between people and nature. Socialists intends to emancipate on a world scale and socialist ideas are weapons in the hands and brains of the exploited.

The capitalist system continues to plunder the riches of the planet at the expense of the majority merely to enrich a small wealthy elite. Our passion to destroy capitalism to free ourselves from this exploitative and to advance to a society that is democratic, co-operative and communal remains unwavering. Socialism is the only viable solution to the capitalism, replacing greed with human need. Socialism is the future and we must build towards it NOW, to join together to create a world solidarity movement, organised and structured, assertive and militant. We commit ourselves to promote popular participatory democracy, an alternative to the barbarism of capitalism and based on cooperation and not competition.

Socialism: All Power to the Imagination

Socialism Is For Tycoons?

Republican presidential hopeful, Newt Gingrich, got it right. He said,
"If we identify capitalism with rich guys looting companies, we're going to have a very hard time protecting it." (Toronto Star, Jan 21, 2012). If he just changed 'companies' to 'workers', he would be there.
The same article, though, shows just how dazed and confused the press is.Gingrich was defending himself against 'anti-capitalism charges'. That's because he attacked opponent, Mitt Romney for his leadership of a private equity firm known for plundering floundering companies and tossing workers into the streets and walking away with $250 million. Later on the article says, " Was Karl Marx correct? Is the boom and bust cycle about to go bust forever?" Something he never supported, of course. And this, "socialism is for tycoons and capitalism is for the rest of us." Go figure where that one came from. Dazed and confused! John Ayers.

Herman Gorter and Socialism (Part 3)

Part 3 and the final instalment introducing the ideas of Herman Gorter, the Dutch revolutionary and socialist. 

War

It is true that in the countries in need of capital, a great deal of national capital is imported; but much of this national capital is still national capital at war with other national capitals. And this international or foreign capital is a vanishingly small minority compared to national capital. And how is capital set in motion in all these countries? By means of the nation, which exercises power, by means of the nation as a unity, as a whole, as a power. The capital created by the wage workers is born and is mushrooming in all the powerful capitalist countries of Europe and America; and, impelled by the force of the nation, this capital flows to new territories. In the countries of Asia and Africa, the weakest from the capitalist point of view, those countries which are exploited by foreign capital, capital formed in them escapes to enrich the distant nations which rule them. But every country, with the exception of those which are too weak, are either trying to become powerful or more powerful capitalist countries or are trying to conquer the leading power position. And all nations have their own, mutually opposed interests. he powerful capitalist and industrial nations, every last one of them, want to export as much capital as possible. All of them want to seize the raw-material and food-producing countries. This is why they come into conflict; all of them want to seize the wealthiest countries. The capital-importing nations want to free themselves from the capital-exporting nations; they want to become capital exporters themselves. Therefore they come into conflict with those nations. Countries want the same thing. Therefore they come into conflict with one another. Nations still lacking a secure foundation want to become free nations, they want to be independent of the powerful capitalist nations. Therefore they come into conflict with those nations. And the subject ex-colonies want to become free and powerful countries from capitalist point of view. Therefore their interests conflict with those of their exploiters. Every nation wants supreme power, or to become powerful and independent, by means of capitalist development and the subjection of the workers to capital. Therefore the interests of each nation are opposed to the interests of every other nation. Such is the spectacle offered by the world: strong capitalist nations, weak capitalist nations, dependent nations, subject nations, nations which have yet to be founded. All, however, aspire to capitalist power. There are also impotent nations, such as Africa, which cannot do anything yet and are only the playthings and victims of looting by the powerful nations. The problems which society, that is, mankind, poses for itself, can only be resolved by mankind itself. The mind is the most powerful economic factor, even though it is not free, and that in the final accounting, in continuously changing conditions, it is the mind which forms and creates society. Capital’s expansion is proceeding at an ever more rapid pace and is assuming ever greater importance; it is caused by the ceaseless, massive growth of the productive forces. Therefore, the interests involved are always greater, more powerful and more violent; conflicts grow more numerous and become more serious. But how has capital managed to develop until today? How has it spread throughout the earth? How has it attained power on the national level? The answer is the one we have already provided: by means of conflicts, torrents of blood, and murder. Capitalism, which brings the earth science, technology, social consciousness, improved methods of labor, greater wealth and can only attain its goals by these methods: murder and war. To reach its goals, to realize its mission, to spread itself over the earth and to become international, capital splits into adverse parts which fight against each other, against the weak peoples, and against the proletariat.

Capitalism murders, oppresses and enslaves the weak peoples, it makes war against itself, it makes war break out among its members—individuals as well as nations—it continuously frees itself of its weakest members by means of destruction, war and murder, and, at the same time, it murders the proletarians and uses them as murderers. It prospers in an extraordinary. It wades through a sea of blood to reach its goals, and perpetual war is proof of this. Never before have conflict and war formed the means of capitalism’s development to such a degree as they do today. For the development of capitalism, no other way and no other road besides those which have been employed for centuries will be discovered today. Now that the accumulation of capital has become so engorged in all countries, and is growing at a rapid and even unprecedented rate; now that the will to expansion has grown enormously; now that the internationalization of capital has begun to break through all national borders, even though it is only in its nascent state; now that the nations, the national governments, the armed nations are the principle supports and driving forces possessed by the capitalists, or which they are trying to possess, throughout the world, to serve as the basis of and for the increase of their capital or to preserve their exclusive rule over the entire earth now there can be no other way. Today, like yesterday, development takes place by way of war. Wherever the struggle between interests has become most intense and wherever expansion has become most necessary, war will never end. Capitalism grows and spreads throughout the world by means of the force employed by nations. Each nation and each national capital all have different interests. The only way to settle this conflict of interests is an arms race and then war.  For the opposed capitalist interests of the nations impels them towards war. Every nation buries itself under a mountain of weaponry. The whole earth bristles with armaments. And this stockpiling of weapons is accompanied by an extraordinary pacifist hypocrisy. Every country’s parliament is besieged with demands for expenditures on weapons more powerful than any previously produced. And all the members of the bourgeois parties, whether friends or enemies of peace, will grant their approval.

The reformists are all for world peace, for disarmament and for arms control agreements. Those who aspire to peace, to disarmament and to arms control, and who propagandize for these goals, must prove that these objectives can be realized. Anyone who preaches peace and disarmament will have to show proof that peace and disarmament are possible and that the interests of nations and national capitals are all identical. If they cannot prove this, then it will be certain that disarmament and peace are still impossible. And they cannot prove it. They have not been able to prove it even once, not even approximately. This is our conclusion. What we have just said should be enough. And this proof must be undertaken not with vain phrases, with desires and hopes or vague slogans, but with precision, with examples and facts; these people must show us what means of development other than conflict exists under capitalism and what principle besides power. The peoples of the earth are very diverse, all of them live in different conditions and have very different powers as well; all of them ardently desire power and all of them have divergent interests, they are in a permanent state of disequilibrium both within their own borders and in respect to other peoples. The supporters of peace, disarmament and arms control must show us how these peoples can coexist harmoniously and without conflict. They must tell us precisely and with documentation derived from political and economic practice, how they imagine the organization of the world and the distribution of wealth. Which parts of the world should Britain, Germany, Russia, France, America and China have? Which parts to exploit, how much power and which sphere of influence? According to what principles should the world be divided? And who will be the judge, and who will be the referee? How can trust be established between the two great powers and all the others, in such a way that it will not be necessary to resort to ever more powerful weaponry? All of this is revealed to be impossible as soon as one concretely faces the issues. Until today no one has been able to even point towards the road which could lead to disarmament, to conflict-free development, to the division of the world which could please every State and to harmonious equilibrium. Until today, under capitalist rule, power is the sole principle allowing the division of the earth and the development of capitalism. Under capitalism, in its contemporary form, there is no means other than brute force for the purpose of expansion, growth and globalization. Might makes right. It is violence and force which decide. They speak of free trade. But how is trade born in primitive countries like those of Africa? By means of violence, murder and war. Only murder compels the weak populations to produce rubber and other similar commodities. But trade is far from being the most important goal. One of the most important goals is the export of capital in order to create new capital. Another is the construction of ports and factories. How are the foundations created for capitalist production, the rule of capital and the enslavement of indigenous populations? By means of violence and expropriation.

Whoever thinks that capitalism can change proves how little they know about the soul and psyche of capitalism. It is the nature of capitalism to form surplus value in such a way that it constantly increases. Surplus value which, in a constantly increasing fashion, forms more surplus value again. Therefore: expansion, extension. This is the nature of our society. All that is capitalist must therefore obey this tendency. Capital only exists thanks to private ownership of the means of production. And since they are possessed by only a few, capital bears within itself, necessarily, conflict. Conflict between individuals and between the groups in which individuals are united: nations. Therefore, he who obeys the nature of capital, must also obey the principle of private property, and must implement it. The direction of capital’s economy and politics is in the hands of magnates of industry and high finance. They are not afraid of war but use it for their own ends: the exploitation of the world and the enslavement of the earth’s inhabitants in order to turn them into proletarians. War allows them, over the long term, to carry out this exploitation. It is their best and most forceful instrument, which never fails. It puts the earth and the workers in their power. And that is why these magnates of high finance and industry represent the power which allows capitalism to attain its goals and which makes capital always fertile and everywhere in conformance with its nature. They are the managers and producers of capital’s power of expansion, and all the other capitalists, as well as all the other classes which live off of this capitalism and its surplus value, can do nothing but follow and obey them. These oligarchs and plutocrats of high finance and the big corporations, do not govern the world by virtue of their political and economic power, but because they fully and perfectly represent the nature of capitalism. Capital’s power of expansion, concentrated and organised, resides in the gigantic masses of capital of these invisible forces. They themselves obey this power of expansion and the nature of their capital. And all the men who live off of surplus value obey them.

War once again proves that all individuals, those of the capitalist classes and those who obey them, pushed forward by the instinct for self-preservation and by the social instincts which tend to preserve the society in which they live and with which they form a single whole, will not refuse to sacrifice their blood and their money if what is at stake is the further extension of capitalism, the sole basis of their existence, through conflict. Even if the capitalists wanted disarmament, peace and arms control, they would not be able to realize their desire. Capitalism has its own laws which are consequences of its very nature. Its principle laws are conflict and expansion. If capital could, without war, share out among its various units the colonies, spheres of influence and States like China, it would not need any expenditures on armies and navies and would be able to devote all its forces to the looting and exploitation of these countries. Only then would capital be able to grow on a stupendous scale. The impossible goal of the pacifist movement is, behind all their fine words, the enslavement of the working class, and the subjection and exploitation of the weak peoples. Just as social legislation and a growing interest in the plight of the workers are the other side of the coin of an ever more violent exploitation, of ever more intensive labor and an ever more embittered class struggle, the pacifist movement and the movement for disarmament are the other side of the coin of war-mongering.

The three-part adaptation was an adaptation from here

Fact of the Day Parochial Scots (2)

 Two-thirds of Scottish voters want to see immigration reduced. Scottish public opinion on immigration is less negative or hostile than in Britain as a whole. But not by much.

Herman Gorter and Socialism (Part 2)

Part 2 of a 3-part adaptation of the writings of Herman Gorter, a Dutch socialist and activist revolutionary of the early 20^th century 

Against nationalism and for socialism.

The worker is nationalist in a passive way, just as he passively receives his wages. But the workers, in their overwhelming majority, nevertheless make their living from national capital. National capital is indeed their enemy, but it is an enemy which feeds them. Thus, even though the worker is only passively nationalist, as long as he is not really a socialist, he is and must necessarily be . . . nationalist. Because the nation, national capital, is the foundation of his existence. And therefore, as long as he or she is not a socialist, he or she must believe that the interest of national capital is in his or her interest and that he or she must defend it against its enemies, since capital’s well-being is his or her own well-being as well. The worker’s nationalism consists of a tangle of numerous feelings and instincts, for the most part of the lower sort, which are related to and structured around the instinct of self-preservation. It is composed, above all, of the instinct of preserving life by means of work and wages. And the feelings of homeland, of the hearth and home, of family, of tradition, of customs, of comradeship, of relationships, of people, of class, and of party are joined to this sense of self-preservation and are fused with it. In addition, these feelings refer directly to the ego and are strictly connected, therefore, to the instinct of self-preservation. In everyday life these instincts exist in a latent state and are more or less dormant, but manifest themselves with great force when danger threatens or seems to threaten—precisely as a result of this intimate connection with the instinct of self-preservation. These instincts explode in a firestorm of passion and hatred for the enemy, of fanatical love for one’s own country, when the drive for self-preservation is joined with the social instincts of community with one’s compatriots, the class comrades of the same nationality. A high level of consciousness is required so that, at any given moment, and in fact at every moment, this instinct and these feelings can be continuously overcome and so that the class struggle is not set aside in favor of war on behalf of the nation. The worker must become aware of the fact that nationalism, under the rule of capitalism, is doing him much more harm than good. He must become aware of the harmful phenomena and the benefits involved, and he must place them on the scale. And this awareness and this knowledge must be of such a nature, and must have penetrated into his consciousness so completely, that he is capable of not merely overcoming, but also replacing nationalist instincts. This is an extraordinarily difficult task and requires much effort. For the achievement of such a goal, it is indispensable for the working class and for each worker to have a high degree of understanding and knowledge of globalisation. Capitalism confronts the worker in his factory, in the office and in the State. It is, therefore, a national phenomenon. Globalisation confronts the worker in the State’s foreign policy, in high finance, in the transnational corporations, in the global arms race and world politics.

Revolution has become only theory, but reform has become practice. Despite the finest and most sincere propaganda, despite the fine words, the workers movement now aspire only to improve living conditions and only want to do so on a national scale. Governments and capitalists made a certain number of concessions. Improvement in the standard of living became the goal. The revolutionary dimension forgotten. Instead the call was workers of the nation, unite for reforms! The reform, the movement, is everything. And unite with the bourgeoisie, too, or with part of it, and you will attain even more reforms. This doctrine took root. A class which has been hearing for years that the bourgeoisie must be trusted, can no longer fight the bourgeoisie. Revolutionary ideas quickly faded away in the minds of these workers and they no longer thought about anything but reforms. Along with the reforms arrived the middle-men to achieve them.  Philanthropists, moral philosophers, ambitious bourgeoisie, men unburdened by any conscience, con-men rising out of the masses. Many of them were weak and well-intentioned at the same time, and knew nothing of socialism or its theory. People who deceived themselves, career politicians who turned socialism into a business, a profitable industry and a way to make a living. For all of them, the revolution is evil or impossible, or too distant. For them, reform is possible, within reach, good and advantageous. The socialist old guard are on the verge of disappearing. The struggle for reforms was made the norm and daily routine, revolution transformed into a purely sentimental question referring to a very distant future. The pragmatic reformists no longer paid any attention to the counsels of the socialists, who were unable to bring about the revolution. The people, completely enthralled by the desire for immediate improvements and not by a desire for revolution, were encouraged to persist in this condition by their leaders. The masses abandoned everything into the hands of their leaders and became complacent and indolent. And as the masses became less active and less conscious of their goals, their leaders saw themselves as the real bearers of the movement. And these leaders began to believe that the proletarian action of the workers consisted primarily of tactics and compromises skillfully conducted by leaders, and that the workers must be satisfied with voting correctly, paying their dues to the trade union local, and now and then participating in a trade union struggle or a demonstration. These leaders became more and more convinced that the masses comprised a passive mass which had to be led and that they were themselves the active force. As always, the slaves have not noticed the increasing power of their masters. As always, they have not developed their own power to oppose the power of their masters.

But now with the recessions with all available money required for capital expansion, minor reforms themselves become impossible.  The more reforms were promised by the reformists, the more demoralized the masses become by the failure to deliver them. For nothing is more demoralizing and destructive than making false promises to the masses while nothing is achieved and the masses continue to credulously expect results. The working class are being tamed by a few ambitious, ignorant or weak-minded leaders with noble words telling them to form alliances with their rulers, fooling them into doing the bidding of their rulers. Reformism that is responsible for the fact that the workers, who are already undoubtedly too concerned with minor issues, are becoming even more focused on trivial pursuit of minor reforms, that caused the workers, already so nationalistic, to become even more nationalistic. They went for reforms alone, and it was precisely because they no longer sought revolution that they brought weakness, downfall and division upon themselves. They concerned themselves only with national issues, and it was precisely because of this that they became nationalists. They concerned themselves only with reform within the nation. The workers turned their gaze towards their leaders, towards parliament, and remained totally passive themselves. Salvation would now only come from leaders and legislation. Workers of every country were kept busy with the beautiful projects which the reformists had set so alluringly before their eyes. They were busy with workers welfare benefit schemes, with the proposals for tax reform and electoral laws.

Despite all the promises and all the pacts made with the bourgeoisie, despite all the tricks played on the workers and all the efforts of the permanent trade union officials and party deputies to monopolize all activity from the top down, as the effects of the Great Recession bites deeper the people are realizing they can indeed fight back. Now the people are beginning to act for themselves, their time has come. The masses are finally awakening. This means that they are beginning to act without leaders, or at least without their leaders playing a significant role as in the Occupy Movement. Action has come from the people themselves. This means that we are taking a step forward to our goal. Since the victory of socialism is a process composed of a long series of battles, no single struggle can completely and instantly defeat capitalism. No single struggle can instantly destroy it. Every struggle is nothing but an attempt to destroy capitalism and a contribution to bringing about the victory of socialism. Every victory won over capitalism  will be a victory of socialism. And in these struggles the working class will rise to the highest form of organization, the highest degree of class consciousness and the greatest self confidence. The struggle does not have to overthrow capitalism all at once, that is not possible. But it must weaken capitalism in such a way that it will one day it can be defeated. If one does not want to defeat capitalism then one absolutely renounces victory and lacks the will to win. What our time calls for, for the working class, is that they become conscious of their own power. It is a matter of becoming socialist, it is time to really act in a socialist manner. The people must cease to be ignorant, cowardly, indifferent or passive. They must no longer be craven. Now is the time for the people to display a more powerful character than ever before.

The capitalists of every country have hurled themselves upon the world’s peoples. The left nationalists counsels the working class not to unite across national borders for collective action, and counsels each national proletariat to allow itself to be separately emasculated for the benefit of their nations’ capitalists. Against the international capital which is fighting to spread itself over the face of the earth, we want to oppose the united international working class. We want the international unity for an International of action and struggle. This is the only way the proletariat can win. Capital is assuming forms which were to some extent foreseen but not actually experienced by Marx. This is the era of the corporation and of globalisation, and high finance rules the world economy. The abundance and concentration of capital lead every State, in one single act of world conquest, to fight against the world proletariat. Workers must take the stage, both nationally and internationally; only the masses can stand in the way of the enormous new powers of the trusts and world capital. We must advance from the passive struggle to the active struggle, from the undemanding struggle through representatives to the leaderless struggle, or a struggle whose leaders are in the background. Working people must be in the front ranks as they represented the future of the movement. It must take a large step towards decisive action against the most powerful capitalism, against the most powerful social force which has ever existed: world capital. From the struggle on a national scale waged by its representatives, the proletariat must advance, alone and trusting only in its own powers, to the great international struggle.

Within capitalism, there are two movements which are fused into one. One is the movement of expansion of ever more powerful forms of production throughout the world. This movement is highly advanced and is constantly growing at an ever faster pace. The other movement is the spread of national capital and the fusion of national capitals in international capital. The tendency of these two combined movements led capitalism to become world capitalism. National capital is merging into a single capital and the entire earth subjected to international world capital. It is true that international trusts have been formed by national corporations, but these national capitals frequently continue to act like enemies and competitors towards each other, each desiring the lion’s share for itself. It is true that gigantic trusts composed of national capitals have also gone on to form international bodies; they are fighting, however, against the gigantic trusts of the other countries. It is true that, even in the weakest and smallest States, a great deal of foreign capital has penetrated; but in all these States there is a strong aspiration to found their own industries, and foreign capital represents a small minority interest.

Inviting The P.M. To Show Support?

Our local country paper out in the sticks here reported on hospital CEO's Salaries. The CEO of Toronto Sunnybrook receives $750 000 per year including bonuses like, health club membership, parking, transit passes, and car allowances up to $1 500 per month. Meanwhile the average Joe, earning some $40 000 has to pay his own way for everything. Makes sense?
Of course, as we all know, don't expect capitalism to be fair or just. That's the big mistake of the Left Wing. The locking out of the workers at the Caterpillar plant in London, Ont. shows that. The workers held a rally on January 22nd. Prime Minister Harper was invited to show his support for the workers but was a no show. London mayor, Tom Fontana said, "We need you down here to support the workers. Get your ass down here!" (Toronto Star, Jan 22, 2012) Nice sentiment but it's going to take more than that. Caterpillar just reported record profits. John Ayers.

Herman Gorter and Socialism (Part 1)

The following and subsequent Parts 2 and 3 is an abridged re-working of some of the writings of Herman Gorter, an early 20^th Century Dutch revolutionary socialist. 

Part 1

The Socialist Task

The brutal power of capital steam-rollers over the weak. The capitalists seek money and power. All the peoples of the world, all the individuals, all people are forced to submit to it. Humanity’s happiness and independence are disappearing. Mankind is being transformed into things. No longer individuals, but things which are subjects of capital. They are pulled and dragged by the furious omnipotence of capital and are transformed into the appendices of machines. In the world of the capitalists the frantic greed for money, for power and for hedonistic pleasure increases. Corruption and boundless luxury are on the rise. Madness and mental illnesses become more common.

Among the working class the intensity and exploitation of labour increases. The intensity of the class struggle increases. And so does the power of the employers, the governments, the multinationals and corporations. Against all these powers, the power of the workers is diminished, the burdens which weigh them down get heavier and their lives become more fraught with hardship. The trade union struggle is more difficult, the parliamentary struggle becomes more problematic. Social welfare legislation has come to an end. Rather than the beauty of local customs there are no longer any differences between Russian, German, French and English culture. The differences that once existed have been leveled by capital.

The rich are themselves poor slaves: in effect, they are not the masters of their destiny. They must do what they do not want to do and are afraid to do. The crushing power of capital, master of destiny, pushes them forward. Capital launches them, insane with rage, one against the other. Like beasts that do not know what they are doing they try to tear each other and the world apart.  But they must act this way because capital, in its latest phase of its expansion, wants them to. The workers futilely attempt to resist. They join together and fight for their emancipation, in vain. They are dragged along with everyone else. They are, for the most part, weak, without understanding, without clarity. When the trade unions and the workers’ political parties seek improvements, they are nothing but associations of slaves who want improvements in their servitude. How many workers are really fighting for their general emancipation? Few enough. Very few. The trade union movement, which fights only for small gains, and which obtains no satisfaction except thanks to small concessions on the part of the employers and by means of contracts signed with the latter, considerably reinforce this process. The capitalists and the workers are the puppets of material forces which are infinitely greater than themselves. The process of production, more powerful and more terrible than ever, dominates them entirely.

Great art is dead. Great painting is dead. The great poetry of all countries is dead. Great prose is dead. Great architecture is dead. Music is nothing but the shadow of its former self. What survives is without heart, without love. Art now ranges from the hard, cruel capitalist sensations to the soft and maudlin petit bourgeois sensations, and to a cowardly mysticism. It no longer contains a single elevated or universal thought. In its desperation, in its individualism, it has gone to the extreme and has often deviated into madness.  Any higher culture, ardor of the soul and the spirit, moral beauty, is suppressed to a very low level by consumerism. Culture among the workers, culture in the sense of the fight for freedom is a very rare, almost non-existent phenomenon. Science remains aloof from society and is like a plant that can live without soil and water. Workers do not participate in scientific culture.

There are moments in the class struggle when only the antagonism between capital and labour can be taken into consideration; then, whoever treats this antagonism as of secondary importance and, considering all the chances and difficulties, ends up abstaining from action and from the struggle, would betray the cause of the proletariat. There are moments when defeat is preferable to avoiding danger. There are moments when retreating from an imminent threat guarantees a future defeat, and there are moments when everything must be sacrificed to guarantee the future. There are moments when one has to fight in spite of all difficulties. And we are currently living through just such a moment. Capitalism is for the first time coming forward with all its forces, with its supreme force, to conquer the world by destroying the environment, threaten the continued survival of the human species by unrestrained global warming and climate change. This is the moment when the people must show that it has recognized this necessity. This is the moment to declare and to begin the struggle because once one has started to bow one’s head, the struggle becomes infinitely more difficult. Yet the masses do not understand this. They bows their head for lack of sense, for lowly desires of small advantages which it will not be able to obtain, and for cowardice. The workers kow-tow like the slaves they are. We make no effort to fight for freedom and the consequences for the world may well be irreversible. How can the world’s population renounce their own interest in such a fashion and put itself at the service of the 1%? The international working class acts in such a way from ignorance. The working class as a whole and the individual worker need a higher level of consciousness if they want to take action.

Demand the Impossible

“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. But then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.” Ursula Le Guin, novelist

When the Socialist Party declares that it stands for abolition of capitalism and that we advocate ending wages, prices and money, people think we are being unrealistic. Even people engaged in protest movements, people who concede that the current economic system is flawed, voice their critiques of it but always seem to add, “But it’s all we have.”  For all of its ability to analyse, the Left has become rooted in “what is” and have forgotten to envision “what could be”. People no longer remember the past that show us how we can live in other ways in the future.

Socialist ideas allows us to imagine possibilities outside of what exists today. The only way we know we can challenge the divine right of kings is by being able to imagine a world where rulers do not even exist. Socialism offers social justice movements a process to explore creating a new world. When we free our imaginations, we question everything. The Socialist Party talk about a world without crime and prisons; a world without violence; a world where everyone has food, clothing, shelter, education; a world free of racism and sexism.  We are talking about a world that doesn’t currently exist but that doesn’t mean we cannot bring its existence about.

We are not fighting for single-issues —we are fighting against a world system of oppression and so our response must be all-encompassing. We should not assume and try to replicate the trappings of the current social system which will never protect those who are exploited. We cannot simply continue the present mind-set. The Socialist Party seeks to reshape the world, to create a just place for all to live in. That is the reason why the Socialist Party carry the title “socialist” proudly; it binds us to the visionary liberators who want to abolish wage slavery and connects us to building new futures. 

The trouble with the economic system we've lived with for the past three centuries - capitalism - is that the better it works, the more it destroys the world - it has consistently delivered on creating a more unequal society.  All the technology developed by capitalism has not provided clean water for 1.2 billion people or food for the 841 million who are seriously malnourished. Under capitalism it is the blind forces of profiteering that are in the driving seat. Governments bow down before the rule of capital. Nowhere is this clearer than on the issue of the environment.  In the 300 years or so of its existence capitalism has transformed the planet over and over again and capitalism is threatening the very existence of the planet. Capitalism has enormously developed the productive forces but it is controlled by the unplanned and blind play of those very productive forces. It is a system where the only driving force is the need to maximise profits. Capitalism is incapable of fully harnessing the science and technology it has brought into being. It is incapable of providing for the needs of humanity or of protecting our fragile planet.

The world is rightfully ours, but like the word “socialism” it’s been stolen from us. “Socialism” is used as a catch-all term meaning any form of government intervention in the market whatsoever. Socialism does NOT mean a state-run economy, let alone Soviet-style tyranny. Socialists aren’t striving to simply tinker around with capitalism and inflate the power of the government to regulate it. What we socialists really dream of is … socialism. Socialism, is not capitalism under control of the state (like the late USSR’s command economy of central planning), or government intervening in the market with nationalisation. On the contrary, it consists of a completely different system of ownership – common ownership.

If you want to imagine socialism, imagine every company, factory, office, and level of government functioning as cooperatives. The administration of production and would be delegated evenly among everyone, in the form of committees, councils or cooperatives. That’s it. There’s no other blueprint. We’re not advocating equal pay for everyone, or everyone living in the same kinds of houses or driving the same kinds of cars, or everyone wearing the same drab clothes, or everyone giving up their possessions and sharing each other’s toothbrushes, etc. (These are all misconceptions of socialism that we’ve heard over the years.) Socialism means economic democracy.

One of the biggest intellectual blunders of our time is the insistence that the resounding historical example of socialism is Russia (or Cuba and China, or more recently, Chavez’s Venezuela). Indeed, the sole reason for the popularisation of this idea was that it acted as mutual propaganda for both sides in the Cold War. The US rulers were able to brand the USSR as Marxist and radical (i.e. un-American) and ruling elites was able to brand themselves as being the populist “leaders of the people.” Both perceptions were patently false. The popular perspective about collective ownership and direct democracy is still clouded by these Cold War absurdities but they still affects the average person’s world-view. Declaring that one is a Marxist, or even that one has read Marx, is still considered political suicide almost everywhere in America. “Socialist” remains a dirty word; it’s used as an insult as we witness when Fox TV accuses Obama of being such.

The workers who first built the trade unions in the 19th century, and emblazoned on their banners words like “Peace, Education, Solidarity” and so on, just like the many workplace activists of today, did so out dedication to the workers’ cause, solidarity and vision of something better, not  just to get themselves a wage rise. Is it possible to understand why masses struggle just on the basis of urgent material need? Could any long strike be sustained solely on the calculation that the prospective wage-rise would more than compensate for the sacrifices made? Is it not essential that those who struggle believe that they are on the side of right, or at the very least that their opponent deserves defeat? Isn’t it undeniable that every truly significant social struggle is sustained by a "spiritual" component which is every bit as essential as cold calculation of what is to be gained and what can be lost? Human life is in fact impossible without ideals. There is no such thing as a direct relation between person and person or of a person to Nature, that isn’t mediated by ideals. Ideals take the form of words and signs, objects and actions vested with meaning by social and historical experiences, and internalised in our social practice with them. Knowing and using these ideals is essential not only for political practice, but even for day-to-day existence.

“We will need writers who can remember freedom.” – Ursula Le Guin

Fact of the Day - Parochial Scots

About a third of Scots never move away from the area where they grew up. In the west of Scotland, 34% of people have lived in the same area all their life, more than any other region.

Socialist Principles

The reason very few of us can imagine a system that’s sustainable and fair is due to our education, which has been tuned to perpetuate the dominant economy of permanent growth. It’s ridiculous to think that we can’t create a sustainable ecological sound system. However, it’s also about how we can go from the present destructive profit system to one that is just.

 Even though we all live in a capitalist economy, few people seem to understand what this means. The situation is even worse for socialism which seems to be a label thrown onto random policies without any understanding whatsoever.

The easiest way to understand this is to imagine a factory and ask yourself “who owns it?” In capitalism, it is owned by its shareholders. Shareholders are a group of individuals (or just one person) who provide money to set up a business and receive a share of the profits in return (they hold a share of the business, hence their name). So the car factory is owned by the people who provide money (also known as capital). It should be obvious from this that pretty much every country on Earth is capitalist. Capitalism is an economic system in which the person or body owning capital—productive resources like raw material and labour—has the power to make decisions as to the use of these resources and who benefits from them. The capitalist is in control, not the workers, not the community members, not the government. It is a system in which capitalists seek to gain for themselves the highest possible return on their investment.  What most people think of as socialism is really state capitalism (where the state owns everything). This confusion came from the fact that places like the Soviet Union called themselves socialist when they really weren’t (if this sounds strange remember that they also called themselves “democratic” when they definitely were not). A key difference between the two systems is that capitalism is individualistic while socialism is collectivist. That is to say, capitalism views the world on an individual level and aims to get the best outcome for an individual. Socialism on the other hand views the world on a group level and aims to get the best outcome for society as a whole. It is paradoxical, then, that we see capitalism and democracy as best buddies when in reality they are driven by opposing principles: Democracy is about the wide dispersion of power so that everyone has a voice. But capitalism, merely left to its own devices, inevitably concentrates wealth and therefore power, so “capital’s” voice carries vastly more weight than citizens’. What if, from now on, every time we read or hear someone use the terms capitalism or socialism, we simply ask: How do you define it? At least, we’d be igniting conversation that takes us beyond slogans.

 Most socialist parties aren’t actually socialist. For example the French Socialist Party has no intention of removing ownership from shareholders to workers. Every major political party in the world is capitalist. It should also be clear how ridiculous the claim that Obama is a socialist or how little sense Margaret Thatcher’s much repeated quote “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money” is. No matter how high you raise taxes or how many regulations you impose, as long as businesses are still owned by private individuals, it is not socialism. Socialism is not Robin Hood economics (taking from the rich to give to the poor) rather it is only way the workers own the business. 99% of the times someone is called a socialist they probably aren’t and a large number of “anti-capitalist” protesters are no such thing.

Is it possible, today or in some future time, to maintain a system of nation-states, which could manage a market economy in such a way as to either suppress the accumulation of capital or, given continued capital accumulation, resist domination by big capital or a return to capitalism, as so-called "market socialists" maintain? And is such a project possible without thoroughgoing political repression? And is there any reason to suppose that life under such a regime would be better than what we have now?  The answer is negative. 

Is it possible to envisage a world in which production is planned and regulated on a world scale by a state which outlaws the accumulation of capital, financial markets and so on.  In what way would such a situation differ from that which pertained in the Eastern Europe and China and so on? Is such a situation possible? Would it not be the height of utopianism to suppose that astate-ownership system could succeed today where it failed last century?

The average person are unable to see any alternative to the profit system. The view of the capitalist as the individual owner of an enterprise has long been out of date. Many thousands of individual owners of capitalist enterprises remain, but this is not the general way in which the enterprises are now owned. Marx had this to say about the capitalist: "As a capitalist he is only capital personified. His is the soul of capital." (Capital, Vol. 1, p. 233); "...capitalist - who are actually but the personification of capital." (Vol. 3, p. 261); "Capital comes more and more to the fore as a social power whose agent is the capitalist." (Vol. 3, p. 259); and "These (capitalists) are the trustees of bourgeois society, but they all pocket the proceeds of the trusteeship." (Vol. 3, p. 261). It is capital which is the fundamental thing. Capital is, as Marx continually stressed, a social relationship; on the basis of this social relationship the capitalist can put on a wide variety of disguises. The management of each enterprise is becoming increasingly the effective controller of its own production. Private ownership includes joint stock companies (corporations) and syndicalistic workers councils and co-operatives as well as the government bureaucracies. Nor can the workers own the means of production when the state owns them.

Marx showed that the fundamental condition for wage labour is that a section of the population is entirely cut off from ownership of the means of production and will starve unless it agrees to sell its labour power to the owners of the means of production. The threat of hunger and privation is a very powerful material incentive to toil for others. It is well known, Marx provided no explicit model for an alternative to capitalism, no "recipes for cook-shops of the future," is his phrase. He was a "scientific" socialist. Although there were sufficient data available to him to ground his critique of capitalism, there was little upon which to draw regarding alternative economic institutions.

With socialism, there will be no wages at all and there will be no prices. Goods will be produced for the use of men and NOT for the profits which they bring in to bosses. Labour power will no longer be regarded as a commodity to be bought and sold. It will not be 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. Men and women 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. 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! Marx wrote:

“Empirically, communism is only possible as the act of the dominant peoples "all at once" and simultaneously, which presupposes the universal development of productive forces and the world intercourse bound up with communism” He was talking about socialist/communist revolution happening simultaneously in the advanced capitalist countries. Today, we would have to talk about this happening globally since capitalism is now a global system of production.

Socialism is about radical democracy. To stress "democratic" is fundamental to our principles for no system would deserve the name socialism at all if it isn't democratic. When that democratic system is achieved, the people will determine how it will be run. What structure they will then choose will not be the condition for democracy, but what they will be using the democracy for. The democracy is in the processing of choosing itself, not in the specific choices. It would give people democratic control over political as well as economic matters, rather than the system we have now that concentrates the control of these areas into the hands of a small group of people at the top of the socio-economic ladder. It means giving you control over your workplace rather than in the hands of some board of trustees, the stock holders, or the bosses who are only interested in profit and not your livelihood. Socialism means collective ownership, and democratic control by the people, of the factories, farms, mines, mills, and all other industries and services, a classless, moneyless, wageless, stateless commonwealth based on common ownership and democratic of the means of wealth production. Socialism is, simply, power to the people. People will manage a certain amount directly, but find it necessary to manage the rest indirectly, that is, to delegate responsibilities to various local and regional elected committees. By default, the workers should manage all workplace matters until such time that the general public overrides a workers' decision. If the general public takes an affirmative step to declare that something other than the workers' choice is more convenient, more healthy, more ethical or more aesthetic, that decision should be a higher power than workers' self-management.

There are a lot of misconceptions out there about what socialism is or is not about. So a little explanation is always helpful. Words have histories. Socialism before the twenties in the United States represented the ruling philosophy of Eugene V. Debs. It had a fair amount of popularity among workers. Then came the Bolshevik Revolution and socialism became conflated with Russian “communism”--and the media made sure that socialism was marginalised. Capitalism, on the other hand, was rarely used, "free enterprise" being the preferred term. Any word ending in "ism" was considered a term used primarily by intellectuals and therefore suspect. The term "free enterprise" contains two words both with positive connotations, "free" and "enterprise." No suggestion in here that making profits is the sole criterion for success. Maybe we need a replacement term for socialism-- how about "community" or something like that? Socialism after is just an inclusive economy that wants well-being for the entire community.  

People and Planet Instead Of Profit

We're closer to apocalyptic disasters than ever before. It is no secret that our planet is in deep trouble and that capitalism is to blame. Every problem we face as human beings is either caused  by the normal operation of our money-and-profit system (i.e. "capitalism"), or exacerbated by it. In fact: it is the natural, normal operation of our private property system that causes, or worsens, each and every social problem we face. Thus, if we really want to eradicate these problems, we must begin to work towards organising our society in a manner that reflects the reality of who and what we are: brothers and sisters in the one human family.  Just knowing this won’t get us very far. Words are cheap. We have to transform this knowledge into action to change the system.

Imagine ALL humans living in peace and in accordance to Nature. Technology, energy and world resources can sustain our world populations: rid the world of hunger, drastically lessen disease and provide for all its inhabitants. Imagine for a moment a society without money. Imagine a world without the pressure of bills or the stress of budgeting and all that goes with our present system. It all sounds impossible to achieve but a possible world of peace and prosperity is worth thinking about. It would be a dramatically new and different society, offering a way of life we can only dream of under our present system.

The moment we realise that a society based on money and profit, has become counterproductive we have made a break-through. The moment we realise that the apex of our development as a species is far higher than that which presently characterises us, we have already made an advance. When we ask why our global society, and its economy, is controlled by just a small group, (whether that elite is the tiny corporate ruling class of capitalists, or totalitarian bureaucrats of "The Party") and not by everyone, together, engaging in cooperatively in economic activity as one human family to satisfy human need and want, we have raised our consciousness. 

Calling for the abolition of money as such, i.e. while leaving everything else unchanged and even the isolated slogan "abolition of money" could misleadingly suggest this would lead to chaos. To be clear we should say that what we want is to see set up a system for producing and distributing wealth which doesn't require money. Which would be one based on the means of life being owned in common, social ownership – communism/socialism in its proper sense. If the means for producing what we need are owned in common so would be the product and the "problem" would then be not to sell it but how to share it ought: giving and taking would replace buying and selling and so money would simply become redundant and disappear.

A society based on exchange is one in which relations between individuals are indirect. Exchange and money go hand-in-hand because you need a medium that represents the abstract form of the worth of those goods, which can persist between exchanges between private producers, is universally recognized as nothing other than the bearer of value. Exchange is nothing if not the ability of A to sell to F to get money to then buy something from B, who sold something to E to get something from D, who bought something from F and sold something to A, etc. Exchange is the negation of A having to have what B wants in order to trade one use-value for another. Where this process becomes the dominant social form, where labour and the means of production themselves take the form of commodities, i.e. items produced to be exchanged, money must also be omnipresent and developed to its final form, as universal medium, as pure representation of value. Only at this point do we see the development of the highest form of value: capital.

To abolish capital is to abolish exchange and money because it is to abolish the ability to buy and sell human labour, the product of human labour, and to abolish human labour as private labour, asserting directly and consciously social labour as the new form of labour, hence freely associated producers. Exactly the "automatic" nature of money indicates its dominance over us, the dominance of a thing, a social product of human activity, over human beings.

The word "exchange" implies that one thing is given in return for something else. This can only happen when the two things are separately owned. In other words, where there's some form of private property. Money implies exchange and exchange implies the sectional or private ownership (if I exchange my apple for your orange we are really exchanging property title to these things). Therefore money is incompatible with common ownership and hence socialism. So, exchange is essentially an exchange of ownership titles. With communism (in its proper sense of the common ownership by all of the means of production and their products) this doesn't arise. So, abolishing exchange does not mean that everyone has to consume only what they produce (an impossibility anyway since all production demands a degree, often a high degree, of cooperation and so is a collective effort). What it means is that the means of production and the products are there to be used and taken. That's why there will be no need for money in communism. It is possible to say that the only exchange that would take place in communism/socialism would be to take "according to needs" in exchange for giving "according to ability".

Socialists don't agree that you can't abolish exchange, or, rather, that exchange is an eternal feature of human existence (as taught in economics textbooks). Exchange is not the simple use of some product that you didn't produce yourself. Nobody produces anything themself or ever has - production has always been cooperative and a collective effort; it's only ownership that's been individual. As the word itself implies exchange is the handing over of something in return for something else. Which implies that the things being exchanged are owned by those exchanging them. In other words, that private property exists. So, exchange is the exchange of property titles and a feature only of societies based on private property. In a communist society (in the proper sense of the word as one where the means of production and the products are the common property of all) what is produced is commonly owned and there won't be - can't be - any exchange. Once things have been produced they don't have to be exchanged for something else. Some way does have to be found of sharing them out or of giving people access to them, but that's distribution not exchange.

Although he dropped some of the more flowery philosophical language, Karl Marx never abandoned his view that money should be abolished through the establishment of a society based on common ownership and production directly for human need. Workers, black, white, male, female, heterosexual, homosexual, employed, unemployed; the normal operation of the economic system of capitalism is the cause of almost every problem you've got. Under capitalism, literally everything is for sale including human beings. Those members of the ruling class who are even less scrupulous than the rest of this class see no moral difficulty in holding people in slavery, if profit can be made through such an endeavor. In a system that glorifies, and indeed requires, profitmaking, it is little surprise that many persons take this ethic fully and pathologically to heart and act accordingly.

 One of the key problems with the profit system, is that it is based on competition. Because it is based on competition, companies must keep costs low, so competitors do not undersell them. What do you think the largest cost of doing business is? That's right - labour. In other words, our wages, what our employers pay us. So each and every employer - including yours - has an irresistible compulsion to keep wages as low as possible. Moreover, capitalism encourages corporations and business owners to try and earn as much profit as possible, no matter what. The less the corporation pays you, the more profit it earns for itself. These are the two principal reasons your wages are low. As you know, politicians go around in endless circles discussing this problem, when its cause is extremely straightforward--the normal, natural, and routine operation of capitalism. Fortunately, the solution to this pernicious problem is equally straightforward—the abolition of wage slavery. With socialism there are no wages and instead free access to goods and services based on need! We, the people, are not stupid. Under capitalism we have only partial democracy:  we have political democracy, in that we vote for our political representatives but we do NOT have economic democracy. Which means that we have no control whatsoever over issues of jobs, working conditions such as hours, intensity of work, frequency of work and similar issues. We have few rights, and we do what the "boss" orders us to, or we lose our job, which means we lose our income. Which means we lose our ability to survive as human beings. All of which means that we are, effectively, slaves.

It has long known that this planet already produces enough food to feed everyone on it. Hungry or otherwise ill-fed persons do not receive the food they need primarily because even food is seen as, and reduced to, a "commodity" under capitalism, and like every other such commodity, is grown, created, manufactured, processed, distributed, and sold not to feed people, but to produce profit for the tiny group of people who own food-related corporations and other businesses, from the largest agribusiness concern to the smallest corner-shop. In other words, under capitalism the food industry is an industry like any other. It operates by the same rules, and for the same reasons. Understand this reality, and you understand exactly why hungry people go hungry in a world of obvious abundance, in Africa, Asia, the United States, and elsewhere. Access to food is the first order of the day for any decent and moral society. Indeed, the entire capitalist system works just like this; its very operation is predicated upon the routine practice of denying people what they need, unless profit can be made. This is the case, whether the needed resource is food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, transportation, education, entertainment, or anything else. The fact that the emperor has no clothes, meaning the fact that this is a blatantly immoral, socially and economically illogical way to treat our brothers and sisters in the human family, goes unnoticed or unreported. Whatever one says about it, it is certainly not a method of social interaction that is rooted in real community. As Erich Fromm has pointed out, under modern capitalism the values and behaviours of the marketplace become and are the de facto values and behaviors of the larger society. Without question, capitalism brings with it and engenders across and throughout society its own severe set of social values, and corresponding social environment. As you might guess, this social environment is not one of cooperation and mutual aid, but of compulsive and institutionalized greed, corruption, and impersonality, as well as pathological individualism on one side of the coin, and on the other, superfluous poverty, misery, and desperation, manifold addictions, and artificial scarcity and want. All which is underscored and in good measure fueled by the grinding necessity for economic survival by any means necessary. Given these realities, wouldn't it be foolish and naive of us not to expect the full range of human aberration, certainly including all manner of criminal and anti-social activity? Thus, actions such as robbery and even murder, moral transgressions as well as legal infractions are and will remain an over-arching fact of life in capitalist society.

The disgusting and unforgiveable reality is that untold numbers of people around the globe, have no health care. The single reason is simply that it can't afford it. And remember, under capitalism, if you cannot afford a product or service, you simply won't get it--no matter what it is, how badly you need it, or how immoral it would be to deny it to you. Food, clothing, shelter, health care, transportation, anything and everything; if a corporate owner or other businessperson can't make a profit on your need, they will not fill that need. Sorry, buddy; tough luck. “Can’t Pay – Can’t Have.” This is the iron law of capitalism. In contrast, socialism would distribute goods and services based on need, as capitalism most decidedly does not do. Thus, every person would receive free access to health care, as they would receive free access to everything else. Walk into the clinic, get your health care. No payment of a fee, no stress of receiving a medical bill or losing insurance cover. Furthermore, we would actually require less health treatment, since the elimination of capitalism would eliminate so many of our present physical and psychological maladies that are caused by capitalism in the first place. Under a system like capitalism, that is so viciously and ruthlessly opposed to fully, properly, and consistently meeting human need, and that presents such a wide and obvious disparity between its character and method of operation, and the genuine physical, psychological, and emotional requirements of the human species, why would we expect that individuals would not lapse into this or that mental or psychological abnormality? Would not develop this or that mental illness behavior? The reality is that human beings require a social and economic support system, and capitalism simply does not provide it, save in perhaps a fashion that is unpredictable, unreliable, piecemeal, and wholly dependent on rickety impersonal mechanisms. Compare the behaviour of people and its effect on others, of our modern-day society, with that in society where individuals would be inculcated from birth with the principle of solidarity and sharing and which would act with sensitivity toward their fellow human beings at all times. It doesn't take much how radically it would differ from modern capitalist society.

Because capitalism is an economic system that operates in a fast, aggressive, and predatory manner, to accumulate as much profit as possible with little thought given to much of anything else, whether the health of the environment, worker or consumer safety, or anything else. In contrast, development, industrial production, and economic activity generally in a cooperative social system would never have permitted such an assault on our environment. Unlike capitalism, the initial development of our many processes of production inside socialism would have included environmental impact as a core consideration. Under capitalism, by contrast, such concerns are of secondary or even tertiary importance, relegated in consideration or perhaps to be worried about or worked out "later"--taking a clear backseat to profit maximisation. We're not asserting that the corporate ruling class pays no attention at all to concerns such as the environment. In the modern age they have finally come to pay some attention. But it is simple economic reality that the reason they do so is because they are continually forced by the government, and by fear of litigation by consumer or environmental groups, or the government, itself; moreover, corporations generally do the minimum necessary to satisfy government regulation or avoid litigation. One of the reasons they take this approach is that addressing environmental concerns represents significant cost, and one of the fundamental rules of success under capitalism is to keep costs down, indeed to cut them to the bone, whether those be the costs of paying workers, or the cost of maintaining the natural environment. Thus, as with every other problem we're suffering today, we need look no further for the root cause of our environmental degradation, generally, or global warming, specifically, than the normal operation of capitalism. In socialism there would be no money or profit to worry about, and the only factors to be "maximized" would be those such as safety, the well-being of the environment, and the health and self-actualization of people.

Politicians are only able to tinker around the edges of the economy; they cannot effect any sort of dramatic and permanent change. We all know this. Clearly, in the modern age the important questions--the ones that affect our lives most profoundly--are the economic questions, not the political ones. Yet, our power as citizens is still based on the long-outdated notion of political power and control, NOT economic power and control! This must be changed, to bring our power as citizens in line with the present-day character, nature, and reality of the modern, global economy. In fact, the extension of power and control from the political to the economic is exactly what we will have in a socialist society! It is part of the very definition of this radically new, powerful, and liberating kind of system!

Establish a society that is informed by cooperation, brotherhood, and love, and a consequent sensitive regard of all toward all, underscored by a decent and generous sharing of resources. Such a society is called a Cooperative Society. The only solution which is permanent, comprehensive, and realistic is the replacement of capitalism with a classless, moneyless, cooperative commonwealth. Establish a society that is informed by cooperation and a consequent sensitive regard respect of all toward all, underscored by a decent and generous sharing of resources. Such a society is socialism.