The waste of Amazon

 Footage and photographs of Amazon’s Dunfermline depot in Fife, taken by one of its workers, appear to show boxes of groceries, including crisps, tinned food and soft drinks, being earmarked as waste. They included products with intact packaging that had not passed their best-before date.

 Amazon was already facing scrutiny in the wake of a previous report by ITV News that showed large quantities of non-food products, including laptops, TVs and books, being sorted in the same manner in Dunfermline.

The secret filming in an area called the “destruction zone” showed computer equipment, power tools and even sealed face masks being placed into boxes labelled “destroy”.

“I reckon 70% of what we put into bins is sealed and in its packaging,” the worker said. “It’s stuff like Heinz tins of soups or tins of beans. Unopened bottles of water, Coke, orange squash or nutrition drinks. I’ve also thrown away in-date fancy chocolates or Easter Eggs, treats that kids would love.”

 In the UK, as employees from eight different warehouses told the broadcaster that they destroy new and unsold products as part of their jobs.

Charities call for ‘Amazon anti-waste law’ after firm denies destroying in-date food | Business | The Guardian

The dawning of socialism.

 

We want to take over the means of production peacefully. Our mission is to inform the majority of our ideas because we want to educate the majority of the people to accept our ideas.  It is impossible to use force against the masses. We can only use the power of persuasion and no other power. We attempt to educate our fellow workers to act independently on the political field and also to exhaust all possibilities of a peaceful change,   an ideal most desirable. Every socialist would subscribe to that idea. It is nonsense to think that a small party like ours can, by its agitation, create dissatisfaction. What will create dissatisfaction is the capitalist system itself. The class struggle will go on whether we agitate for it or not. We have very little influence in the labour movement but the struggle goes on right now.  The human mind is surrounded by a crust of all the ideas it has absorbed from childhood, and not until events destroy that crust is it ready to accept new ideas. It is because we want to get the confidence of the workers that we promote their interests. We are internationalists. We make no distinctions between colour and nationalities. For us internationalism is the very heart of socialism. We conceive of the world as an economic unit. No nation, no matter how wealthy or powerful, can separate itself from the rest of the world.  Socialism is a world system under which all lands and all peoples will cooperate to produce enough goods to satisfy the reasonable needs of every human being. Every region will produce that which it is best fitted to produce. If a region can produce good machinery then let it not busy itself with producing agricultural products. Let some other region best fitted for the production of agricultural products produce those products and exchange its products for the machines produced by another. Peace will come to a world cooperating in this way, which will be made possible only by socialism, which will do away with capitalist cliques fighting for colonies and markets.

We reject the idea that one nation or one people is superior to any other nation or any other people. To us all human beings are equal. The prejudices that exist are a product of the social system and not inherent in human nature. The brotherhood of man will be made possible and real under a socialist society which will do away with economic conflicts. Our party belongs to the World Socialist Movement.

Wherever we are, there we fight to the best of our abilities for liberty and democracy. Our aim to win a majority of the people to our ideas.

We plead guilty to being Marxists. We are Marxists because we believe that the economic structure of society is the determining factor in social development and that man is a product of his social environment. We are Marxists because we believe that the productive forces of society have reached a stage where it is possible to produce everything necessary to satisfy the reasonable needs of the people; because we believe that capitalist society has reached a point when the people must either progress with socialism or perish through barbarism.  

 

We proclaim to the world that if is possible to build a new social order guaranteeing every human being a decent livelihood and a chance to develop ones individuality, free from economic worries, free from the dangers of war. We say that we have reached an epoch where mankind must go forward to socialism or else back to barbarism. The strength of our ideas lies in the very fact that we are living in an unorganised society. The strength of our ideas lies in the fact that our general predictions, based upon the laws operating in society, inevitably come true. We base our activities upon a theory that has withstood the test of time and events. We still have hopes that the people will come to accept the ideas of socialism. The darkness that surrounds us can be destroyed only by the dawning of socialism.

"Deadline Glasgow—Defund Climate Chaos"

More than 160 organizations launched a campaign demanding that Wall Street and U.S. President Joe Biden cut off funding for companies and projects fueling the climate emergency.

The "Deadline Glasgow—Defund Climate Chaos" campaign is spearheaded by the Stop the Money Pipeline coalition, which targets asset managers, banks, and insurers for their roles in climate destruction.

Anyone who supports the campaign's demands can sign a petition "calling on all financial institutions and the U.S. government to end their support for companies engaged in climate destruction and human rights abuses by the start of the Glasgow climate talks."

COP 26, scheduled to start on October 31 in Glasgow, will be "the most important climate talks since the Paris agreement," the petition says. 

The petition points out that over the past year, "many financial institutions―from banks to insurance companies; asset managers to pension funds―have made new climate commitments, such as 'net-zero' emissions by 2050."

"Yet, at the same time they are providing loans, insurance, and billions in investment capital to corporations expanding the fossil fuel industry and deforesting the Amazon and other tropical forests―companies that are guilty of human rights abuses and violations of Indigenous sovereignty," the campaigners continue.

They also highlight that "major new fossil fuel projects, such as Line 3, the TransMountain pipeline, the Formosa plastics plant, and major deforestation projects, could not get off the ground without the support of the financial sector and the U.S. government."

'Deadline Glasgow': As Climate Summit Looms, Campaign Targets Complicity of Banks and Biden | Common Dreams News

There is a dawn of hope

 

Socialism in one country alone is impossible. It is unthinkable from many points of view.

 

It is unthinkable that capitalism will force the workers of Britain to become socialists, and not have the same effect on the workers of other countries. When the British worker is ready for socialism,  fellow workers in the other capitalist countries will also be ready. Workers of all countries are faced with the same problems, the solution to which is the same—socialism.

 

Having gained political power in their respective countries, socialists will together plan the working of the new society. Obviously, it will be in their interests to do this in an efficient, orderly fashion. For instance, it will be necessary for them to ascertain, roughly, what things are required, and in what quantities. Then the necessary steps to fulfil these requirements can be taken. The required number of workers will be able to set to work on their different jobs.

 

As countries are dependent on one another for different articles, it will be necessary for Socialists of different countries to co-operate.

We are unable to oblige our correspond when he asks us to prophesy the date of the socialist revolution.

We would, however, remind our reader that, nowadays, movements often grow quickly. For example, the Nazi and Bolshevik movements within a few years grew from a small divided minority into the largest party in their countries. Similarly, we believe that once the socialist movement has got a firm footing, it will grow rapidly.

Socialism is needed

 

Socialist ownership of the means of production will be the elimination of the capitalist economic system, the abolition of private ownership of the means of production and the eradication of exploitation of man by man. In socialist society the means of production have ceased to be capital, that is, to be a means of exploitation. In a socialist society, there are no longer classes with a monopoly of property in the means of production arid classes deprived of property in the means of production. In the socialist system the means of production are social property, that is, they belong collectively to the people. In the capitalist economic system, the means of production are the private property of the capitalists and landowners and consequently, the products of labour also belong to the capitalists and landowners. In the socialist system, the exploitation of man by man has been abolished, and that the purpose of production is the maximum satisfaction of the growing material and cultural needs of the whole of society. Capitalist production is for the purpose of securing the maximum capitalist profit through the exploitation, ruin and enslavement of the working people. 

Socialist production develops in a planned way and without interruption guaranteed freedom from crises of overproduction and unemployment. Capitalist production develops without a plan. The growth of production runs up against the proletarian condition of the working people and the relative reduction of their purchasing power. This inevitably brings crises of overproduction, growing unemployment and impoverishment of the masses. Social property is the foundation of the socialist system. Social ownership under socialism extends to the means of production. Socialism only abolishes the despicable character of acquisition characteristic of capitalism, whereby the worker only exists for the purpose of increasing capital. Socialist relations of production are characterised by the emancipation of the working people from exploitation and the establishment of comradely co-operation and mutual aid. Socialist ownership of the means of production gives rise to mutual relations between people engaged in the production process which are quite different from those obtaining under capitalism. Private property in the means of production inevitably divides people, gives rise to relations of domination and subordination and to the exploitation of some people by others, evokes antagonism of interests, class struggle and competition. On the other hand, social ownership of the means of production unites people, ensures a genuine community of interests and comradely cooperation.

The Socialist Party, being the mouthpiece of the needs and aspirations of the proletariat, takes as its aim the emancipation by means of the class struggle of the whole working population from the yoke of capitalist society. To this end, the Socialist Party, closely linked to the working-class movement of the whole world, is carrying on the struggle for the total transformation of the social order. Our fellow workers will take possession of the means of production (land, mines, factories, means of communication), which in the hands of the capitalists are the means of exploiting and oppressing the working masses, and will make them into social property. By suppressing the division of society into classes, the working class will put an end to the exploitation of man by man and will make it possible for all men and women to enjoy the fruits of their own labour and be the expression of the will of the interests of the working population in town and country. The economic bankruptcy of capitalist society confronts the working class with the necessity of the immediate struggle for socialism. The victory of the working class, the destruction of the economic and social bases of the possessing classes, the putting into practice of the principles of the planned socialist economy – all these will lead to the creation of the class-free society, where there will be no exploited or exploiters, nor class struggles, and all the efforts of society will be deployed to the common good. Society will then determine for itself the forms of its confederations and its organisational structure. The victory of socialism means the emancipation of all humanity. Socialism will create free mankind socialism of abundance and joy, socialism that makes real the pursuit of happiness, economically more advanced than capitalism - a cornucopia.

Unite for Socialism

 

There’s no doubt that capitalism has improved material conditions in general and raised the standard of living for many people throughout the world. The point, though, is that it has also produced distinctive problems of a kind that never existed before, even in more prosperous economies. The basic principle of the capitalist system is the isolation of individuals and their naked exposure to market imperatives. It means eliminating everything that stands between people and dependence on the market, everything that makes them autonomous from the market. And when social life is driven by market imperatives, it’s also subject to the cycles and crises of the market. For example, dispossessed workers, who depend on selling their labor-power for a wage, have nothing to fall back on when the market doesn’t need them. It’s not hard to see how capitalism has created new social problems, and right from the beginning, the state has had to deal with them. From the earliest days of capitalism, the state has had to deal with growing numbers of dispossessed people, people with no property, no access to the means of subsistence, no customary rights, no social or communal supports. The state has had to deal with them not just out of humanitarian concern but out of fear of social disorder, even social disintegration. We see the destruction of communal networks — village communities, and so on — which traditionally gave people some kind of support in times of need. In the earliest days of capitalism, in England for instance, this meant among other things the loss of customary rights to the use of common land, in the famous process of enclosure. It also meant a change in communal values and changes in the way the law was applied. It meant new legal definitions of property in which any traditional commitment to a basic right of subsistence was replaced by the imperatives of profit. As capitalism developed into its industrial form, there were also measures, like changes in the system of relief for the poor, designed to uproot people from their local communities, to increase the mobility of labour.  It means the privatization of just about everything. It means what some people have called a whole new process of enclosure. In agricultural economies, for instance, it can mean outright dispossession of small landholders, or it can mean the imposition of economic policies that force producers to abandon strategies of self-sufficiency in favor of export-oriented strategies, the production of single cash crops, and so on. It also means, as it did in the early days of capitalism, the break up of various social networks which people have relied on for support.

 But even the most neo-liberal laissez-faire have needed at least a minimum safety net. If nothing else, they have to maintain a reserve army of workers, keeping them alive through moments in the economic cycle when they’re not needed so that they’re available when capital does need them. From the beginning of capitalism, the state has had to step in just to maintain social order or even to prevent revolution.  The threat of revolution, the threat of social disintegration in the long years of depression, and so on. Those threats, of course, led to the modern welfare state  committed to some kind of provision for various social needs, like health care or housing, which the capitalist market doesn’t supply, or at least not in ways that are affordable for everyone. There are still societies where even that minimal provision is still an aspiration and not a reality. Today reformists  have retreated from the welfare state. Even Scandinavian countries have been in retreat. Even the most secure gains, like universal education or old-age pensions or public health care systems like Britain’s National Health Service, have been subject to pressures for privatisation and so-called market choice.

 

Provision of social services is precarious not just because of changing political fashions but for a more fundamental reason, and that’s because it’s in constant tension with the imperative of capitalism, the power of the market.  Capitalism has throughout meant, and still means, the degradation  of vast numbers of the men and women who exist under its social system. In the greatest and richest of countries and  cities people pass their lives in wretchedness and misery. The revolts  against intolerable suffering almost invariably failed to secure improved conditions, or, where accidental success was achieved, it meant only that the victors placed the vanquished under the yoke from which they had freed themselves.  Capitalism has shown itself to be not only injurious to the vast majority of individuals, but a definite obstacle to the advance of mankind. The problems of life which now, manifestly, lie immediately ahead of us, cannot possibly be solved so long as we  bow down before the fetishism of money, and imagine that to produce articles of exchange for profit is the highest end and aim of mankind in society.

When all, peoples had reached the understanding of socialism and  embraced the ideas of the  cooperative commonwealth of all, can humanity  attain a higher communal life and fraternal interconnection. Every step will be in the direction of the co-operative commonwealth. Since there is no difficulty whatever in creating wealth far in excess of our requirements, by the scientific organisation and application of the light labour of all to the satisfaction of our social needs, then the  motto, “From each according to ability, to each according to needs,” ceases to be Utopian and becomes a reality.

For such delights in life as we can now foresee to be possibly attainable for all has never yet been experienced, even by the fortunate few. When the beauties and bounties of nature  can be entered upon and enjoyed with none of the degrading drawbacks due to the dire poverty; when work is but the useful and pleasing expression of zeal for the community and regard for the individual, toil and exhaustion being wholly unknown; when, throughout the longer, fuller and more active life which mankind will then be heirs to, the minds of all will be more completely cultivated than those of the most gifted have ever yet been.

“Do You Want Your Boss To Continue Laughing At You?”

Hot on the heels of the discovery of the graves at Kamloops, B.C. came the finding of 751 more in Saskatchewan, which will be dealt with in detail in the upcoming edition of Imagine. 

This is beyond racism; it's genocide and here in dear sweet Canada.

Also, we have the murder of the Muslim family in London, Ontario; allegations of racism in the teacher’s union and in various police forces; Annamae Paul of the Green Party spoke of harassment in Parliament, because she is black, female and Jewish; plus there has been a 50 per cent increase in anti-Semitic incidents in Canada during the last year; not a pretty picture. 

Some have said ''Racism is alive and well in Canada,'' but they are wrong; "Racism is alive and sick in Canada,'' extremely sick.

 Politicians may rant about and pass anti-discrimination laws, while they uphold the system that causes worker friction. 

Capitalism divides the working class against each other. From birth we are taught to hate and fear this person or that because he/she is black or white, a jew or a gentile, a catholic or a protestant, a Hindu or a Muslim, fat, thin, old, young and so on and so forth. There are millions of specific differences which should mean sod-all to any rational person, but they all have a common denominator: at a given time and place this person or persons just happens to have a superficial difference to everyone else who is hanging around, therefore he/she or they must be at best shunned, beaten, or at worse killed. Sometimes there is plenty of the latter in wars when the working class kill each other in their bosses’ interests. 

While they're doing that their bosses are counting their profits and laughing at what idiots the working class are. I ask any non-socialist who may read this: ''Do you want your boss to continue laughing at you?''

S.P.C. Members.

Band-Aid Capitalist Solutions

On June 22 hundreds of Toronto city staff, police and private security guys smashed their way into Trinity Bellwoods Park to force out two dozen homeless people who were camped there. Hundreds of protesters formed a shield where the homeless had been staying. 

This was the latest incident by the city to clear the homeless out of the parks. Their arguments were health, safety and fear of fires getting out of control. Fences had been erected around the encampment which the police eventually broke down to drove everyone out. No one was badly hurt, though criminal charges were laid against three people. 

The city offered indoor spaces in shelters but was told they had no intention of going into hotel sites set up during the pandemic. 

One homeless person said, ''I want a permanent place to call home not a spot in a shelter which is a band-aid solution.'' 

But that’s all capitalism ever does -- give band-aid solutions – to homelessness, to poverty, climate crisis, pollution, the lot. Those are the rules it plays by

S.P.C. Members. 

Socialism isn't Capitalism

 

All human beings, just by virtue of being human, are entitled to certain basic conditions of freedom and dignity. Under the capitalist system, basic goods and services are produced for and obtained from the market. But above all, it’s a system in which the main economic actors, workers and employers, are dependent on the market. Market dependence is the essence of the system. This unique way of organising material life has had a relatively short history. Other societies have had markets, but only in capitalism is dependence on the market the fundamental condition of life. This means that a wide range of human activity is subject to the market and determined by its requirements in a way that was never true before. Workers who supply our goods and services are market-dependent because they generally live by selling their labour-power for a wage. In other words, labour-power has become a commodity. Capitalists depend on the market to purchase labour-power and capital goods and to sell what the workers produce. 

But do workers in capitalism really get paid for all the work that they do? What are they actually paid for? They’re paid for their labour-power for a certain period of time, not for what they actually produce during that time. Whatever the workers produce belongs to the capitalist, and the capitalist appropriates the difference between what the workers are paid and what their products or services will fetch on the market. So capitalists appropriate the surpluses produced by workers in the form of profit. Capitalists have to compete with other capitalists in the same market. Competition is, in fact, the driving force of capitalism — even if capitalists often do their best to avoid it, by means, for example, of monopolies. But the social conditions that, in any given market, determine success in price competition is beyond the control of individual capitalists.

Since their profits depend on a favourable cost/price ratio, the obvious strategy for capitalists is to cut their own costs. This means above all constant pressure to cut the costs of labour. This requires constant pressure on wages, which workers constantly have to resist. It also requires constant improvements in labour productivity. That means finding the organisational and technical means of extracting as much surplus as possible from workers within a fixed period of time, at the lowest possible cost. To keep this process going requires regular investment, the reinvestment of surpluses. Investment requires constant capital accumulation. So there’s a constant need to maximize profit. The point is that this requirement is imposed on capitalists, regardless of their own personal needs and wants. Even the most modest and socially responsible capitalist is subject to these pressures and is forced to accumulate by maximising profit, just to stay in business. CEOs like corporate social responsibility. But capitalism itself puts severe limits on that. The need to adopt maximising strategies is a basic feature of the system and not just a function of irresponsibility or greed — although it’s certainly true that a system based on market principles will inevitably place a premium on wealth and encourage a culture of greed.

The need constantly to improve the productivity of labour generates constant improvements in technology for what’s conventionally called economic growth. But it also has contradictory effects. Capitalism is prone to constant fluctuations, not only short-term “business cycles” but also constant crises of overcapacity and overproduction and a tendency to long-term downturn and stagnation - the capitalist crises.

There’s a huge disparity between the productive capacities created by capitalism and what it actually delivers. Production is determined not by what’s needed but by what makes the most profit. Everyone, for instance, needs decent housing, but good and affordable housing for everyone isn’t profitable for private capital. There may be a huge demand for such housing, but it’s not what the economists call “effective demand,” the kind of demand with real money behind it. If capital is invested in housing, it’s most likely to be high-cost homes for people with money. That’s the whole point of capitalism.

Where production is skewed to the maximisation of profit, a society can have massive productive capacities. It can have enough to feed, clothe, and house its whole population to a very high standard. But it can still have massive poverty, homelessness, and inadequate health care. You only have to look at the United States, where there are some of the highest rates of poverty in the developed world and where tens of millions have no access to affordable health care. With its emphasis on profit maximisation and capital accumulation, it’s necessarily a wasteful and destructive system of production. It consumes vast amounts of resources, and it acts on the short-term requirements of profit rather than the long-term needs of a sustainable environment. Capitalists answer not to the will of the people but to the demands of the market and profit. There’s no such thing as capitalism governed by popular power, no capitalism in which the will of the people takes precedence over the imperatives of profit and accumulation, no capitalism in which the requirements of profit maximisation doesn’t dictate the most basic conditions of life. The essential condition for the very existence of capitalism is that the most basic conditions of life have been commodified, turned into commodities subject to the dictates of profit and the “law”’ of the market.

Workers aren’t legally dependent on capitalists. They’re not slaves or serfs. They’re not in conditions of debt bondage or peonage. They’re obliged to work for capital not because they’re compelled by the capitalist’s superior force, but because they need to sell their labour-power for a wage just to get access to the means of subsistence. Marx called this exploitation.