Save the planet from capitalism

 

The Apocalyptic four horsemen, hunger disease, war and death are riding across the globe, plunging our planet into catastrophe and chaos. Capitalism is destroying humanity and the planet. What we are living through is a global economic crisis of a systemic and structural character and not just one more cyclical crisis. Those who think that this crisis will be resolved through a Green New Deal, with an injection of government spending and with some regulatory measures are very mistaken. Capitalism has instigated an ecological crisis by subordinating the necessary conditions for life on this planet to the domination of the market and profit. Capitalism that threatens to put an end to the existence of life and the planet. The changes needed by the people of this world are directly contrary to the needs of capital. The profit system has only one imperative: it has to grow. Capital accumulation and market expansion are the defining features of capitalism. Without them, the system would rapidly collapse. All that contributes to profits, and to the growth of capital – that’s what counts. Environmental damage is not an accidental aberration, a “market failure.” It is the way the system operates. Competition and the thirst for profit without limits of the capitalist system are destroying the planet. Under Capitalism we are not human beings but customers. Under capitalism everything becomes a commodity: the water, the soil, the human beings and life itself. The climate crisis has humankind a  choice: to continue in the ways of capitalism and destruction, or to re-start civilisation in harmony with nature. The only choice, the only way forward, is socialism. 

 

It is necessary to develop an alternative model to that of the capitalist system. A system based on:

 

Solidarity and cooperation and not competition;

A sustainable system in harmony with our planet’s ecology rather than the looting of our natural resources; ·

A system based on cultural diversity, based on social justice and a system that restores the human condition of our societies and peoples rather than reducing them to simple consumers or commodities.

 

A question we should be asking is why, when so much food is available, are over 800 million people hungry and malnourished? Why do thousands of  children die of hunger every day? Why can’t the global food industry feed the hungry? The answer is that he global food industry is not organised to feed the hungry; it is organised to generate profits for corporations and their investors. Karl Marx wrote that, “the capitalist system works against a rational agriculture … a rational agriculture is incompatible with the capitalist system.”

 

The capitalist system puts profit ahead of human needs and has driven millions of producers off the land, undermined the earth’s productivity by  poisoning its soil, its water and the air, and condemning nearly a billion people to chronic hunger and malnutrition. The food crisis and the farm crisis are rooted in an irrational system. To feed the world, working people must sweep that system away. We are fighting for a world where all peoples are able to determine their own food producing systems and policies that provide every one of us with good quality, adequate, affordable, healthy food while able to live with dignity in a culture of their own choosing.

 

Capitalism has simply proven incapable of stopping the destruction of our planet and its peoples. Capitalism is driven by ‘short termism’ in its hunger for profits. Investment decisions are made on the basis on what will make a return in the quickest time. Such a system cannot deal with the scale of the climate crisis or make rational planned decisions about what to produce that is separate from the bottom line of profits. Socialists are well aware of the system’s rapacious nature. Faced with the argument from socialists that capitalism is the cause of climate change and socialism i.e. common ownership and democratic planning of production is the answer, many climate activists object and believe that campaigning governments to act and produce legislation to to regulate businesses is more effective than to overthrow capitalism. We reply ‘There is no time to wait for the capitalists and their governments to listen to reason’. Whether capitalism could solve the problem of climate change is an abstract question; it is clearly not doing so and there is no reason to give it the benefit of the doubt. Capitalism has simply proven incapable of stopping or limiting global warming. Socialists can expose this contradiction and win a generation of activists to the struggle for revolutionary change to ensure the survival of humanity in the face of what may be greatest threat it has ever faced.

 

The problem with capitalism is that it is built on the need for private enterprises to make money, no matter what. The need for profit clashes with the needs of the general public. In a capitalist world, each economic enterprise must act to protect what it deems its own interests. Each of the capitalist nations is loathe to weaken its economic position vis à vis the other capitalist countries. If necessary companies that do not like potential government regulations will close up shop and move their businesses elsewhere in what is known as “capital flight” or as more people know it “out-sourcing” and “off-shoring”. Thus businesses coerce governments into allowing them to harm the planet

Working for a Society Where Unions Wouldn't Be Needed

On Sept. 23 workers at Indigo books in Mississauga, Ontario voted in favour of unionization. They got a majority vote online according to the United Food and Commercial Workers Canada, Local 1006A, one of Ontario's largest private sector unions. Indigo did not respond with a comment, but the union said it can now start to negotiate a contract with the Toronto based retailer.

 It hopes the contract will address the concerns of Indigo workers for higher wages, job security and sick leave. 

This is all very upbeat because it shows not all workers have become demoralized by the capitalist’s efforts to break the power of unions and abolish workers rights in general, which we have seen in the last 30 years. 

It would be more upbeat if these same workers put the same effort in working for a society where unions wouldn't be needed.

S.P.C. Members.

Worthy Candidates For The Museum of Broken Dreams.

 

On Sept.16 the Mountain Equipment Co-operative announced that it had entered into an agreement to sell its assets to an American company, Kingswood Capital Management. 

If the deal goes through, Kingswood will operate the former member owned co-op as a private, hence for profit, company. MEC's board of directors made this decision without consulting their members, which did not please them. MEC was founded in Vancouver in 1971 and expanded across Canada to operate stores in 20 cities. It was formed to sell outdoor recreation gear and clothing to members who held a lifetime membership, which is technically a share. 

At its peak it had 5.4 million members.

 Some may consider Co-op's to be a form of Socialism, but nevertheless since they exist within capitalism they have to conform to the iron clad laws of capitalist economics. As such they had to compete with companies like Nike who were underselling them. 

To stay in business, in 2019 MEC laid of 38 per cent of their workers, (1,500 people), and cut deliveries to once a week. A Co-op director once said to me, ''We don't make a profit, we make a surplus,'' like there's a difference.

 Co-operatives are like reforms and nationalism and all other schemes to make life better within capitalism - worthy candidates for the Museum of Broken Dreams.

S.P.C.Members.

The Socialist Party - The Spirit of Rebellion

 

We, the working people, have built this society with our brains and hands, but the ruling class take everything and leave in their wake devastation and destruction. The capitalists’ government cuts back on the things we need, like education, health care and transportation to pay for their never-ending wars so that the capitalists can continue to reap their profits. The robber barons sit in their counting houses adding up their fortunes. But we, the workers, are faced with reality of survival. We scratch out a livelihood, barely able to put food on the table and pay the rent and we become more disgusted, angry, outraged, asking questions and beginning to find answers, beginning to see that it’s the whole system itself that’s rotten and sick and must be done away with, replaced by a new society – socialism – run by the working class itself, for its own benefit and the benefit of the vast majority of the people.

 

We must begin to organise and fight back. The capitalists, in their constant drive to squeeze more profits out of our labour, in their constant efforts to keep us just on the margin line of survival so they can increase new treasure on top of old, are responsible for our problems. Working people weren’t born yesterday. We know that the boss class don’t intend to give us anything since it will put a dent into their precious profits. We know that anything we force them to give up, they’ll try to take back. It’s not just a matter of fighting to survive under their system. It’s also a matter of preparing for the big battle – the socialist revolution – that will get these leeches off our backs and enable us to create a new social system.

 

To preserve their rule, the ruling class intensify their efforts to create dissension and divisions among the working class. They try to set one nationality against another, white against black. Their plan is simple: divide and rule. Our plan is also simple: unite and overthrow them.

 

 The workers’ movement must expose and put an end to this divide and conquer plot of our masters. The revolutionary workers movement must take up the fight against these poisonous attitudes injected into our class. We must recognise that the only way these attitudes can be overcome is in the course of uniting and struggling for what we all need, especially the thing we need most – revolution and socialism. We must explain in the course of this struggle that it’s the capitalist class that these attitudes spring from, that it’s the owning class and not our class that profits both materially and politically from them. We are in a class war – the employing class against the working class–and in a war it is fatal to think of enemies as friends and friends as enemies. As our awareness widens, so does our unity deepen. We are dirt poor but producing plenty of profits for the big banks, the landlords and the corporations.

 

Everywhere, the people of our class are fighting back and are beginning to see that we are not each other’s enemy, that we must lock arms and move forward against the real enemy - the source of all exploitation, oppression, discrimination and misery - the capitalist class itself who who live off our living flesh, whatever the colour of skin.

 

We in the Socialist Party don’t claim that hundreds of thousands of working people are lining up with ourselves. But facts are facts and exploitation is exploitation. A spirit of rebellion is being unleashed. Socialism is a society in which industry and the means of production would no longer be the private property of a parasite class, but would be held in common by the workers who operated them, for the benefit of all humanity. It has nothing to do with the “communism” of the former USSR which was actually a brutal form of bureaucratic state-capitalism. 

Carry the Red Flag Forward!

 

The Socialist Party has a freedom plan to rid the world of inequality, misery, and crime. A plan for happiness. The Socialist Party, therefore, is the deadly enemy of capitalism and capitalist parties. It has as its aim the establishment of a society in which the means of production will not be the private property of the few, a society which will not be based upon profit. When the working class has power it can build socialism, it can exercise control over their daily lives and build the future.

 

 The Labour Party is a capitalist party. It lays claim to the title of socialist ideals, but has nothing to do with socialism. Whatever associations it has had with the working class were due to its links with the trade unions, but they have even now subordinated the trade unions to its dictatorship on behalf of capitalism. There can be no real democracy unless it is workers in power. Real democracy means the mass of the population being at once voters and administrators. This is only possible under a system of common ownership of all wealth and means of production. Then all can stand on equal footing and collectively participate in the conduct of their own affairs, the running of industry and the organisation of social life. The power of the working class is not the power of politicians in Parliament, but the strength of its own self-organisation.  We want to turn communities over to the people, but without your efforts and support we cannot. Profit is the life blood of capital — the vital essence of the capitalist system — and when it shall cease to flow the system will be dead. Only when the capitalist can extract a satisfactory profit from  labour-power is the worker given a job, or allowed to work at all. Profit first; labour, life, love, liberty always secondary. The most important thing about world socialist movement is the promotion of education to shed light, to arouse the workers from their torpor and t develop their faculties for thinking, teach them their economic class interests, effect their solidarity, and imbue them with the spirit of the impending social revolution.

 

We are members of one class above all else. We face a common situation and have a common destiny. It is the sweat and toil of the working class as a whole that produces the great wealth of this world, that makes everything run. But doing all this, we are robbed of its fruits by the ruling class of capitalists who run the government and all of society in their own interests. We produce, and the very wealth we produce becomes a weapon in the hands of our enemy, more wealth for the capitalists, more chains on the working class. We produce in common and in common we are exploited. Our goals are the same, too. We want a good life for ourselves and our families and a bright future for our children. And we don’t want it at the expense of our class brothers and sisters, but for the common benefit of all working people and the advancement of humanity. We can and we will build this good life and bright future, but we must be free to do so, free of the wealthy leeches who bloat themselves on the very blood of the workers.

 

The capitalist system is incapable of dealing with the problems facing the working class as it is the cause of all problems. Our objective is the workers’ control of their communities and places of work – the factories, mines, fields, offices, transportation services and communication facilities – so that the exploitation of labour will cease and no person will get rich off the labour of another person, but all people will work for the collective benefit of humanity.

 

The world is always in the process of change. Nothing holds still–not for anybody. And for the people in the world, change is good, because it means an end to oppression and exploitation. The very air is charged with a feeling of impending change. On the other hand, people don’t have much confidence in their ability to change things. 

 

We have been played for suckers before, and we are not going to be played again. We shall help to create a world where all people will call each other sisters and brothers out of genuine love of each other.

THE SOCIALIST PARTY UNFURLS ITS BANNER

The Canadian Wealthy

 

$362,318 is the 24/7 average hourly rate the Weston family.

Since we wrote the above about Tobias Lutke, more info has come out on the same topic. 

A think tank funded by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, (Don't cha just love that title?), revealed on Sept.19 that the top 20 richest Canadians have seen their wealth increase by a combined $37 billion since the start of the pandemic. This includes Galen Weston Jr. and family, whose theft from the working class is up by $1.6 billion while his workers stock their shelves for minimum wage. 

The survey said Canada's wealthiest family, the Thomson's saw their loot raise by $8.8 billion to $50.6 billion from March to September. It also said 26 per cent of Canada's wealth is owned by the richest 1 per cent and $362,318 is the 24/7 average hourly rate the Weston family fortune grew since March 18. It would take 11 years for an average wage worker to earn $362,318.

Don't these great disparities of wealth suggest there is something extremely wrong in society?

S.P.C.Members

The Unions Function At Best.

There were no Labor Day parades on Sept. 7 due to COVID, though some unions had online events. 

However, the Toronto Star ran an article focusing how well unions had helped their members cope during these tense times. It informed us that before the virus hit the number of workers covered by a union contract in Canada had hit an all-time high of 5 million, and that union membership had rebounded to 30.2 per cent. Union members were half as likely to lose their jobs due to the pandemic as non-union workers. 

Of course this is all very well, but nevertheless it just goes to emphasize what the SPC have said from the word go, that unions function solely to at best improve life within capitalism for their members, and at worst to defend their interests during bad times like the present. Therefore whatever they do capitalism remains, and the economic crisis of this pandemic was caused by it. 

Socialists want to abolish that cause.

S.P.C.Members.

Progress to the Past?

 

A poll for pro-independence campaign group Progress Scotland found 53% support leaving the union compared with 47% against. Almost a third of Scots who voted against independence in 2014 have changed their mind and are either unsure or would vote Yes, according to a new poll.

The nationalism of the SNP has the outward appearance of a progressive movement to some sincere people but who have almost no political understanding. Deceived by the slogans and soundbites, working people will discover that they have been most cruelly misled, have been wasting their time advocating an idea which they will then have to oppose. Our fellow-workers must not fall into this trap; they must not be deceived by the progressive facade of nationalism. They must unite to expose it instead of  wasting their time and energy fostering nationalism (in whatever form), as an answer to their misery and hardships. Nationalism merely provides a camouflage for policies of reformism. Nationalism divides workers so that the workers of one nationality are struggling against the workers of another nationality for a few illusory crumbs the rulers throw out exactly for that purpose. Nationalism pits workers against each other , while their mutual exploiters and oppressors enjoy the Caribbean sun and fun on the ski-runs.

 Any nationalism implies that some people are better than others. It teaches superiority and inferiority. Left nationalists insist that their nationalism has nothing in common with the nationalism of the right and that instead their nationalism is progressive. Nationalism binds the working people to their own exploiters and ruling class. The Socialist Party says that working people’s destiny must not be tied to any capitalist grouping. The working class must  rid itself its class enemy. Class unity must be established between the oppressed and exploited regardless of nationality and race.

 The aspiration for national independence awakens chauvinistic nationalisms, intolerances, xenophobias; the awakening of old national quarrels, of hatred against the “hereditary enemy;” and racism. Foreign scapegoats of the past are again being selected as responsible for all the evils that befalls a nation.

The Socialist Party repudiates nationalism, the ideology that would divide mankind into separate distinct nations, have those nations constituted into sovereign States, whose claim is that the freedom and fulfillment of mankind are to be worked out in terms of ones national identity.  Nationalism is pervasive in the world today, especially in countries that have nothing to offer their people but romantic patriotic platitudes.

Nationalism turns worker against worker but just where does this twisted logic stop?

Should someone from Dundee be allowed to apply for a job in Dunstable if someone living in Dunstable is prepared to do it? If people from start to migrate Northwards for the cheaper housing, should they be driven back to south of Hadrians Wall telling them to go and fight for cheaper housing in the South? When British factories compete with each other to win contracts does this not usually involve bringing down wages and reducing conditions? It is the system of capitalist production that produces unemployment, homelessness, destitution and crumbling facilities and infrastructure in local communities, not workers, be they native or foreign born, indigenous or newcomers.

Nationalists always claims certain characteristics as exclusive to certain peoples.  With what logic may nations make such claims? Nationalism claims that the culture belonging to one nation is distinct from that belonging to any other. This may have been so in the past when even the nation was an abstract concept for the village dweller or towns folk, but the social evolution of mankind is making it less so. Increased means of communication and ease of travel have resulted in no essential difference between any one of the countries of the world. Even language is tending to become universal with English as the lingua franca that Latin once was. More people understand each other today than ever before. Codes of behaviour and ethics have grown to be international. It is only by the most artificial kind of propaganda that nationalism is kept alive.Nationalism is an unmitigated curse. It leads inevitably to chauvinism and to national aggression. It leads to a patriotism and the worship for the particular patch of dirt where a particular individual was born. It leads to racism and bigotry, to national jealousy and petty rivalries. Nationalism cloaks the intrigues and machinations of governments and capitalists.

Working people have everything to gain and nothing to lose by rejecting nationalism. 

Revolution is the Only Way

 By keeping the people in ignorance - by hoodwinking them with the bonds of superstition and prejudice - our lords and masters keep us in ignorance. Ignorance is the source of all our misery. On account of our ignorance we have been oppressed, plundered, ground down and degraded like beasts of burden. It is ignorance that makes us incessantly toil, not for ourselves, but for the profit of others. It is ignorance that makes us go to war and spill our blood and lives to secure to the power and privilege of the few. It is ignorance that prevents us from knowing ourselves and without a clear knowledge of ourselves we must ever remain the tools of others - the slaves of the ruling class. Our lords and masters are doing every thing so that our ignorance continues, in order that they may carry on with their exploitation. Since our lords and masters have very good reasons for keeping us in ignorance, we have even stronger ones for acquiring knowledge. The knowledge we want is a knowledge of ourselves: a knowledge of our own power, of our immense might and our ability to change society. Of all our follies, there is none greater than to expect that others will do for us what we ought to be doing for ourselves.

Capitalism is a system where those who have ownership of the factories, the mines, the mills, the land they sit on, the machines, and so forth have everything. It’s a system where those who have no other way to make ends meet except to sell their ability to work to the bosses to enrich the capitalist. When the capitalist finds no further use for a worker, when he finds it unprofitable to continue paying his workers, the wage-slaves are thrown out into the streets as additional statistics on the unemployment figures. Under the capitalist system, democracy is for the rich, justice is for the wealthy, a good education is for the privileged, and medical care is based on your credit rating. 

The Socialist Party firmly states it is revolutionary and stands with the working class, and that the only road out of this hell-hole is socialism, a class-free society. The only solution is to overthrow the existing system by a revolution. This is exactly why the main glue that holds the Socialist Party together is that is an organisation to turn the system right-side up, not just to fight particular problems of capitalism. It recognises that to wipe out this irrational, insane system requires not piecemeal solutions but one major thorough-going solution. 

Other groups claim that if you tried to boldly and openly educate people about socialism, you would scare people away, turn them off. “Wait until people are ready to hear this stuff,” is what they say. When all was said and done, it was like telling a person dying of thirst that he’s not ready for a drink of water–not quite yet anyway. The line of “Wait until people are ready to listen” coincides with the ruling class’ attempts to to keep revolutionary ideas away from the people by any means necessary. No matter how well-intentioned or militant-sounding might be their reason, what the gradualists seek to do is hide their reformist politics behind a smokescreen. Indeed to pay lip-service from time to time to revolution is going to be an ideal disguise.

It is indeed true that we have been preached to about the horrors of socialism, in our education, by the media, through the speeches and writings of lying politicians trying to poison our minds with anti-socialist propaganda? And what has been their purpose in doing this? It is none other than to serve the rich ruling class, the source of all exploitation and oppression. It is the same class of people who try to present their system, where the masses of people catch hell each and every day, as the best of all possible worlds. We are told it is natural for some people to lord it over other people. They tell us the best thing is to look out for Number One (yourself), and to hell with everyone else. After all, they say, that’s just been the way it always has been. Yet studies of societies of the past prove otherwise. Cooperation, collaboration, solidarity, mutual aid has been the qualities which protected people.

Working people are being screwed over in a thousand and one ways by the capitalist system. Are we to fight the capitalists individually or as a united class? The most important thing for people to understand is that the only way to do away with the misery and oppression which capitalism breeds is to build a united and organised movement against the capitalists and for revolution, clearly targeting the capitalist system as the problem, and directly pointing to the solution, socialism.

It is the task of the Socialist Party to take the struggle to biggest fight of all - against the capitalist class for control of this society.