The tyranny of the wages system (1985-6)

From the Winter 1985-6 issue of the World Socialist

In any form of society wealth is created by the application of human labour-power to nature-given materials. In capitalist society, whether 'private' or state varieties, this fact is concealed by the need to procure capital to furnish machinery and equipment and to pay wages — thus the capitalist apologia that capital and labour are complementary. The relationship is one created by capitalism and, whereas the skills and energies of workers can, if allowed access to natural resources, produce all the goods and services required by human beings, a train-load of money, left over an area where seismographic tests have indicated, say, the presence of oil, will not succeed even in breaking the soil.

Capital, in the form of money, is simply congealed labour, an exchange equivalent of commodities already produced by wage labour. In its constant form (raw materials, buildings, machinery, etc.) it is, similarly, a representation of accumulated labour. It is labour-power that produces all wealth and it is in our role as wealth-producers obliged to sell ourselves on the labour market for a wage or salary that the working class is exploited. We are not, as a class, exploited as consumers or as taxpayers but as producers.

Capitalism's exploitive mechanism is the wages system. We live in a society where the means of life such as food, clothing and shelter have to be purchased with money. For the great majority of people, that money is derived from a wage packet or a salary cheque which they receive from their employer for the sale of their labour-power, their mental or physical ability to contribute to the production of wealth. It is this necessity to sell its labour-power that divides the working class from the minority of capitalists who — whether they choose to work or not — are able to live by profit or by rent or interest. Thus capitalism divides the human family into two distinct and conflicting classes: the capitalist class, which buys labour-power, and the working class, which sells labour-power. Inevitably, as in all transactions between buyer and seller, there is a conflict of interest between these two classes with one trying to sell its labour-power for as much as possible and the other trying to buy it as cheaply as possible.

The source of all wealth, as we have observed, is human labour-power applied to nature-given materials. But the wealth produced, which, under capitalism takes the form of a great aggregation of commodities, does not belong to the class that produces it but, instead, to the class whose claim to ownership of the natural resources and the means of production (themselves the product of past expenditure of labour-power) are enshrined in law and enforced, if necessary, by the coercive power of the state.

The unassailable fact that all wealth is produced by the working class demonstrates that the source of capital accumulation and of the profit, rent and interest that underwrites the affluence, power and privilege of the capitalist class is the surplus of wealth produced over and above what the working class is paid for its labours. This is in accordance with the economic laws of a market economy for though the workers do receive the value of the commodity they sell, their labour-power, nevertheless their exploitation is through the wages system.

What we get for the sale of our labour-power to our employers is a wage or salary that equates to the price currently being paid for our particular type of labour-power. Our ability to work, in capitalist society, is a commodity the price of which is determined by the same factors as govern the price of other commodities. When a particular commodity is in short supply its price tends to rise and, when it is plentiful, its price tends to fall. To say this, however, begs the question: above what does it rise and fall? The answer is its value and that value is determined by its labour cost of production or, in other words, by the amount of socially-necessary labour time required under average conditions of production to produce it from start to finish. It is value that determines the point above and below which prices fluctuate in line with supply and demand.

Since our labour-power is sold on the labour market as a commodity, its value is determined in the same way as any other commodity. In other words, the value of labour-power is determined by the amount of socially-necessary labour required to maintain us as useful, functioning units of production and enable us to provide for the next generation of wage slaves. The value of particular types of labour-power varies, then, in accordance with the amount of training or education that is required to equip workers with certain skills and these greater values are reflected in the inequality of wages.

But labour-power has a unique property: it can create value of greater quantity than the value required in its own production. It is this capacity to create surplus value that lies at the heart of the workers' exploitation and the capitalists' profit. In any given period labour-power can produce wealth greater than the equivalent of the socially-necessary labour required in its own production. Let us say that workers in a particular industry produce a value amounting to double that of the value of their own labour-power. In half of each day they would produce a value equal to the value represented by their wages for a full day. For the second half of each day they would produce a surplus over and above the value they received in the form of wages or salary. This surplus value belongs to their employer and represents his profit, after payment of rent or Interest if the employer has such obligations.

The ratio of labour-power paid for by an employer to that spent by the worker in creating surplus value determines the rate of exploitation of the worker or, as Marx called it, the rate of surplus value. "The rate of surplus value, all other circumstances remaining the same, will depend in the proportion between that part of the working day necessary to reproduce the value of the labouring power and the surplus time performed for the capitalists" (Value, Price and Profit).

This, then, is the seat of capitalist exploitation of the working class. Other conditions, such as the state of the market, the degree of working class organisation in trade unions and, even, the form of capitalist organisation, may affect or influence the rate of exploitation of the worker at particular times but such influences can themselves be cancelled out by market forces. It is the tyranny of the wages system that itself imposes on the working class their slave status. Where the wages-system exists, irrespective of what party holds political power or whether ownership of the wealth-producing machinery is vested in the state or is in private hands, capitalism exists. That is why Marx refused to support the nonsensical slogan of "a fair day's pay for a fair day's work" and urged workers to inscribe instead on their banner "ABOLITION OF THE WAGES SYSTEM".

That is why the World Socialist Movement defines Socialism as a wageless, moneyless and classless society of common ownership and production for use.

Richard Montague

(Ireland)

The threat to the Great Lakes (1985-6)

From the Winter 1985-6 issue of the World Socialist

In recent months there has been antagonism between various Canadian and American politicians concerning access to, and the use of, water from the Great Lakes, with each going to bat for the respective needs of the big-business interests they represent. A conference held in Toronto in June, 1984, solved nothing, though some ideas were voiced that could, in a sane society, be workable.

As far as we know, Samuel de Champlain was the first white man to reach the shores of the Great Lakes in 1615. Though he could not have known it, he had stumbled on to the greatest lake system in the world. Though the lakes could not have known it either, it was the portent of dreadful things to come.

Now, less than 400 years later, its watershed is home to 50 million thirsty folk, with another 100 million even thirstier people casting envious eyes northward. The fact that some US political errand boys, such  as  Governor  Scott Matheson  of Utah,  seem sincere  in  their intentions to quench this rather large thirst, can be explained by the simple word — votes. There are, however, more than Scott's electors who need it and intend by foul means or fouler, to get it; such as farmers in the mid-west who want it for increasing their profits through irrigation. Then there are western coal producers who want to take it out to use for coal slurry pipelines.

These would be new uses for the lakes which for years have been very useful to large companies in other ways — such as a dumping ground for industrial pollution. This is the way Lake Erie was killed; not killed meaning dead of course. It was alive, but with plenty of the wrong things.

It's typical that the effects of capitalism create a problem for its everyday abnormal functioning, then you have its apologists running around panicking because they have a problem.

Wasting what's not renewable

The lakes are immense, covering an area the size of Michigan, Indiana and Ohio combined. In some places, they go to the depth of 1,000 feet. They are, however, fragile, chemical-wise, and must be treated carefully. They were created after the last ice age and are not renewable; only the annual fall of rain and snow is.

Many reports have been presented to the various interested parties, but most stress the qualitative aspect not the quantitative. There is, however, a mean level that must be maintained at all times. If it isn't, shipping, the tourist industry and power generation are affected. That critical level cannot be sustained if more water is taken out than put in.

In   many  areas  of North  America,   man's  withdrawal  from  the watershed and acquirers exceeds nature's deposits. Wells are drying up, river flows are declining, yet businesses waste water continuously. Seeking to solve the problem within capitalism, they are searching for ways to recapture the finite amounts flowing through the water cycle. If they tackle this problem with the same degree of success they've had curbing pollution, the day will come when one will be able to drive from one end of the system to the other on the bed of the lake.

America uses 250 billions of gallons of fresh water a day, over half of it for irrigation, and the US General Accounting Office says that half the water used for irrigation is wasted. Yet, the working Joe wastes very little, 25 percent he drinks, the other 75 percent is used in the bathroom (baths, showers, flushing the toilet).

Of all the world's water, less than 1 per cent is available in North America. It's in the rivers, streams and underground aquifiers. The rest is salty or frozen in polar ice caps. Twenty-five percent of this 1 percent is in the Great Lakes, providing water for 200 towns and cities on its shores and other parts of the continent, keeping large factories going, providing hydro power and supporting a tourism industry generating $50 billion a year.

It seems strange (and it is) to be as concerned, as some conservationists and other sundry do-gooders are, because farm land is being gobbled up for shopping centres and condos, while underneath the water slips beyond their grasp.

A quarter of a million square miles of land above the Ogallala Aquifier, which is the world's largest reservoir of ground water, produces 25 percent of American cotton, 38 percent of the grain sorghum, 16 percent of the wheat and 15 percent of the corn. Forty percent of America's grain-fed beef is fattened and watered here. At the present rate of usage, the Ogallala Aquifier will be dry in 2024. A ten million year old resource wiped out in a few decades.

Conflicts of capitalist interest

The Chicago diversion plan is typical of the anarchy of capitalism. The Great Lakes are used for water supplies, for sewage disposal, for power generation and for navigation. Since these waters are shared by the US and Canada, it is inevitable that given the profit-oriented nature of capitalism, clashes between the ruling class in both countries will occur.

As Lake Michigan is wholly within the US, Ontario and bordering states are dependant on US Supreme Court decrees to control its outflow and as the Chicago diversion would affect levels in the entire system, the future (if any) of the system could well be decided in American courts and not by the International Joint Commission set up under the International Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909, which is made up of officials from both countries and supposedly oversees the use of the Great Lakes system.

This plan would seriously affect water levels in the Great Lakes and the Ontario government is concerned about it, particularly because severe lowering of lake levels would kill a multi-billion dollar shipping industry, and has made it clear that it will not support diversion of waters direct or indirect.

To solve the problem of the Ogallala Aquifier being used for irrigation faster than rainfall can replenish it, it has been suggested by some mid-west Senators to pipe water from Lake Superior, 600 miles to the Missouri River Basin. This is not merely opposed by Canadians involved, but also some Americans. Ex-governor Milliken of Michigan said he would give anyone proposing such ideas a "good drenching." Milliken himself, when in office, was vociferous in his support of conservation. One wonders if the support of Milliken by the 500,000 strong Michigan Conservation Club, had any bearing on it.

Another dilemma is how to ship coal from the western minefields to the industrial areas in the mid-west where it's needed for power. It has been suggested that it be crushed, mixed with water piped from Lake Michigan and pumped through a slurry pipeline to mid-west states.

Recently, there was also talk of increasing the water flow to improve local water quality and to lower Great Lake levels, reducing erosion and flooding damage. A recent study shows that increasing the water flow to 10,000 cubic feet a second would yield "benefits" worth $3.25 million. It also found that the resulting power and navigation losses would total $40 million annually. So, the "experts" are considering an increase to 6,600 cubic feet per second instead.

In each case, the so-called solution is to use Great Lakes water with no care for the consequences. The benefits, meaning profits for businesses, would be short-term and who knows what later; but then, that is the way capitalism must function.

Whatever happens, one thing's for sure, soon big business in the US will need more water, particularly if they wish to continue wasting it at the present rate. Also, the ruling class realize the working class need it in order to continue to be in a fit state to be exploited. Some observers think that the US may start leaning on Canada to buy Canadian water by the turn of the century. It all boils down to whether or not the predicted shortage will reach beyond toilet flushing and showers to such a trickle that it threatens all human survival — capitalist as well as worker.

No concern for the future

If much of the above seems to the reader to be irresponsible to the point of folly, that's because capitalism, through the profit motive, its very death blood, can function in no other way. Profits must be acquired and quickly for a business to survive, regardless of what long-term disasters may do to those businesses in the future. Also, the need of competing sections of the capitalist class for materials for its specific requirements, which in this case means a source of power to run industry, as well as profits concerning the sale of drink, must inevitably bring them into clashes with each other, clashes the working class has no stake in.

In a socialist society, with the abolition of the profit motive, no such screwball situations could exist. Whereas water, and anything else people need, would be moved from one place to another, this would not mean lowering the levels of lakes if it's thought that would create problems. Mankind would use the technology and technical know-how available to find where water is and transport it wherever it's needed without plundering and wasting the resources on which continuing human life on this planet depends.

Ray Rawlings

(Canada)

Class-divided society breeds pollution (1985-6)

From the Winter 1985-6 issue of the World Socialist

In world capitalism, goods and services take the form of commodities, i.e., goods produced primarily for profit. They must be sold to realise dividends for private shareholders, interest for owners of government bonds and an income for members of the capitalist class generally. The unearned wealth that accrues to the owners and controllers of capital, whether private or state, comes in the form of unpaid or stolen labor. Wages only supply workers with the cost of maintenance and renewal of the abilities they sell. Wages are far less than the monetary value of the things workers produce. Investment only occurs when the workers can be fleeced in this manner. No profit, no production. To compete successfully for markets industries must minimize costs. They must produce cheaply to get buyers. One of the ways of doing this is to produce without concern for the environment and to avoid neutralizing the wastes even if they are dangerous to humanity.

Pollution and class-divided social systems co-exist, they form two sides of an equation. Exploitation by a dominant class of a subject class leads to despoiliation of the natural environment. No social interest exists, because of the absence of social cohesion in the interests of all individuals who make up the organised group.

On the other hand, in the classless phase of social evolution known as tribal or primitive society, humans were in harmony with the nature that they so urgently depended upon. With a sparse knowledge of the world, mankind was compelled to utilize every bit of vegetable and mineral substance he could apprehend. It was a food-gathering, not a money-gathering culture. Man lived in reverence of the material-elemental source of survival. And co-operation for the individual-common good was mandatory.

Environmental destruction began when this social unity for the good of all broke up into antagonistic classes of masters and slaves around 7 to 10 thousand years ago. With a ruling class, responsible only to itself in its quest for riches out of the surplus labor of its slaves, there was little concern for making resources sustainable or extensible.

The two pre-capitalist property systems, chattel slavery and feudalism, brought about deforestation, erosion, soil exhaustion, flooding, air pollution, wild-life extinction and disease. (Hughs, Ecology in Ancient Civilizations). With the coming of industrial production, in the form of capital and wage-labor, in the 18th and 19th centuries and the expansion of production this brought about, the defilement of nature increased proportionately. Vast areas of England and Europe were blackened by soot. Millions of wage slaves there and in the US suffered lung diseases, cancers, and died from industrial pollution and degraded tainted food.

Pollution control: legalizing levels of pollution

Since the wages-prices-profit system is perceived as being unchangeable, so despoilment of nature is viewed as being physically necessary or inevitable. The system's reaction is to deal with the symptoms. For instance, as birth defects double every 20 years (Toronto Star, 19/5/84), governments pay for special homes, and educational facilities for the growing number of mentally retarded, handicapped children. As the North American cancer rate rises to 18 per cent of deaths (Epstein, Politics of Cancer), which according to the World Health Organization (WHO) is 75 to 80 per cent environmentally caused, governments and industry finance medical research and care to fight the disease. Obviously, after divesting workers of the fruits of their labor and polluting their bodies, profits are healthy enough for the employing class to transfer a portion toward band-aids for social sores and propaganda about governments being oriented around the interests of all.

Pollution controls have been enacted by governments in various countries, but these are the minimum levels thought to be necessary to protect the profits of the owning class, not the health of the population. Pollution control has nothing more to do with health than war has to do with saving lives.

The Ecologist, (Nov/Dec 1979) points out that acceptable levels of potentially dangerous chemicals released ". . . are simply the minimum levels that can be achieved without compromising economic priorities". (Their emphasis, "economic" being a popular euphemism to downplay profits). It also showed that WHO's minimum standard of mercury poison in food of 0.2 to 0.5 ppm catered to the average cost of profitable production of most countries. Costs in Swedish fisheries during the 1960's for example, were higher than WHO's average. Sweden had to allow 1.00 ppm of mercury poison or else 45 per cent of its fisheries would have had to shut down. Another example from the Ecologist: "When WHO recently raised (the acceptable level of lead in drinking water) from 50 micrograms to 100 micrograms per litre, this was not the result of the sudden discovery that man was less sensitive to lead poisoning than previously thought, but to the fact that few water authorities could provide water to this standard" (their italics).

A legalized level of pollution, to make working class exploitation possible, while being biologically harmful to the useful class, is not a rigid boundary line which cannot be transgressed. The anarchy of market competition makes control merely a goal. Laws against gross desecration are about as effective as laws against bank robbery.

A small percentage of violators are caught, and fined lightly. Much of the contamination is unknown to regulatory authorities. Some businesses do not even know if their wastes are toxic. Others refuse to reveal the nature of their disposal matter for fear of imparting information to their competitors. In the US state of New Jersey, crime kings have moved into the disposal of hazardous waste business (Times/ Colonist, 17/12/80). It is very lucrative, surreptitiously dumping the stuff without neutralizing it. Up to 1979 there were thousands of dangerous dumps in the US, with no laws or funds to deal with them (New Scientist, 21/6/79).   Many   more   were   unknown,   with   businesses   sneaking truckloads of toxic effluvium, at high speed, nocturnally, to secret destinations. Oil spills are generally uncontrollable as they are incurred between national boundaries.

There are more unknown factors. Several million pollutants have been introduced into the global environment. How many break down or decay into new compounds, and what they are, is unknown. The synergic effects, where destructive chemicals, acting upon one another, combining to increase the sum of their individual potency hundreds of times more than when in isolation, is mostly unknown. The US Environmental Protection Agency studied that country's drinking water and discovered that "there may be a myriad of organic chemicals, not yet isolated and identified" (Ecologist, November/December 1979). There is the so-called safe level of poisoning for the average person* but most people are not average. And so on.

Pollution control means governments issuing permits to industries to sell "safe" pesticides, food additives and to dump toxic chemical wastes harmlessly, then, after 10 or so years of public exposure to them, banning them after discovering through further research, that they are harmful after all. Control also means governments issuing permits to pollute. Amax of Canada, Ltd, for example, sat down with the federal government and helped to write its own permit to dump toxic mine tailings into a northern British Columbia ocean inlet, which the local Nishga Indians depended on for their fish supplies (Times/Colonist, 1/3/ 83).

Control also means a Canadian government without enough money to conduct its own tests on new pesticides and additives coming on the market. Instead it accepts the reports on tests done by the manufacturers themselves. This is like sending the fox to guard the chicken coop. Consequently, one testing firm, Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories, Inc. of Northbrook, 111., falsified health tests on pesticides and drugs for 7 years, to save money (Times/Colonist, 23/6/81). Control means the Canadian government health department knowingly allowing Canada Housing, a mortgage corporation, to use carcinogenic urea formaldehyde foam insulation for government subsidized home insulation for workers (Times/Colonist, 5/9/81).

Under state capitalism too

The words "Communist," "Socialist" or "Marxist," are pseudonyms which conceal the state capitalism which exists in all "iron curtain" countries. It should come as no surprise therefore, that production for sale-profit social conditions under rigid, one-party police states degrade the environment as they do in the rest of the world.

Poland, for example, is likely the most polluted country in the world (New Scientist, 22/10/81). In Russia, the massive surface coal mining complexes ". . . are witness to the environmental devastation that has been caused. Vast tracts of forest and agricultural land have been torn up, and the pollution of local streams and rivers has been drastic." Deforestation has resulted in serious land erosion (Ecologist, June/78). The 5-year plan, rapid capital expansion (high profits) development of the USSR has left little regard for ecological conservation.

China has been desecrating its own land surface by deforesting 24 per cent of its treed area for pulp and paper profits during the 1940's (Toronto Star, 19/5/84). At this time, only 12 per cent of China has trees. The scenery along the Yellow River is a bald moonscape, and a brown smog chokes Peking, to the extent of eating the wood and stone ballustrades of the ancient imperial palace (Toronto Star, 24/5/84). That country's capitalist political dictators fear that "ultimate . . . ecological disaster" could threaten their "modernization (= more efficient exploitation of the workers) plans." China too, has begun to tinker with effects, by choking the political atmosphere with bureaucratic institutions, such as the Municipal Bureau for Preserving Cultural Relics, and laws, in a vain attempt to curb pollution.

Ecology movements trapped by the economic system

The average crusader against ecological degradation sees the private and state property system, with its money, wages and profits, as basically a static arrangement which can be improved for the masses through a gradual process of reform for the common good. Ecologists are generally unaware of the class-divided world social structure, and of their own existence as workers as part of the lower, exploited one of two antagonistic classes.

Environmentalists could be included as members of "his majesty's loyal opposition". Some of their groups receive grants from governments who are funded through taxes from some industries which are extreme polluters. The movements function, in part, as watchdogs to try to see that the system's masochistic excesses don't get out of hand and threaten, in some areas, the exploitive apple cart. Many of their victories undoubtedly meet with the approval of the polluting industries' shareholders, who may not quite make the connection between the earth's degradation and their dividends. These manipulated successes are enough to motivate the tinkerers onward. It is encouraging that they protest the debauchery of the planet, but not so happy that they are failing to stop it.

Ecologists are ill-equipped, have no answer for such defenses from the spokesmen of the owning class that more pollution should be allowed during a depression, to help to "create" jobs; or to cut costs so that "our" industries can compete on foreign markets.

If they ever came to power the ecologists would be trapped by the economics of the system. There are not as many ecological organizations as there are toxic elements and other threats to the natural surroundings, but it is likely that many reformers would favor such a state, to hopefully make their efforts effective. Advice on scrubbing unwashed vegetables and fruits to reduce pesticide residues, and ingest vitamin and mineral supplements to neutralize environmental poisons, are within the band-aid sphere of the ecology movements.

Being generally and unconsciously mired in capitalist ideology, ecology groups embrace the political "spectrum" parties, from extreme "left" to the "right" with most tending toward liberal left. Some, such as the Green Party of West Germany, Canada and the US and the Ecology Party of Britain, have organised separate parties. They too aim for a clean earth, in contradiction to the conventional thinking which they share with the rest of the working class.

A world free of pollution

Once the realities of the present sick society are perceived, putting a stop to environmental degradation and regenerating the planet becomes a matter of the conscious majority, the world's workers, taking political action to replace it with common ownership and democratic control of the means of life. Which means voluntarily co-operative production and distribution for the free consumption of all according to each individual's requirements.

There is no technological barrier to a pollution-free earth, but there is a political one, at present. Some scientists are aware that no such technological barrier exists, including chemistry Nobel prize winner Sir Derek Barton of London's Imperial College. In a lecture to the Vancouver Institute, University of B.C., he said: "The problem of pollution does not exist. We already have the knowledge to correct pollution when we find it. World problems of energy, pollution, hunger . . . and the economy are all artificial. . . crises" (Vancouver Sun, 31/10/77). He is supported by Dr Lee A. Dubridge of CalTech: "We now have enough technical knowledge to solve most of mankind's problems .. . The air of all cities would be free of all forms of man-made pollution'." (New York Herald Tribune, 25/10/ 61). (If the restrictions of the financial yardstick were out of the way). And from another source; during the observation of environment day, Environment Canada said: "We can have development without pollution. We have the technology — all we need is the will." (CFMS Radio, 5/6/80).

When mankind is in control of its social forces, the circumstances point to the human species identifying its interests with the earth on which it depends for its well-being. The ending of military competition between blocks of capital in nations, vying for markets and materials, will eliminate a large proportion of global contamination. Probably the first anti-pollution goal of the classless world democracy will be: (1) finding and neutralizing the deadly dumps of the past, and cleaning the poisonous air, water and soil; (2) modifying, as well as expanding productive and distributive processes, so that all can be provided for, with no pollution.

Free society will use scientific and technical potential that is possible today for these purposes, but which the present divided, competitive system has no call for. A few instances. Agriculture can be revolutionized to maintain fertile soil, health and strength of plants and their natural immunization against insects and disease. Insects have been used to control harmful insects; bacteria to control other bacteria and harmful insects; bacteria to break down sewage for natural fertilizer; some plants can protect other plants from insect pests; some useful plants can repel weeds, chemically, some pesticides have been developed which are harmful only to the insects which need to be controlled, and to no other biological species.

There are some small farmers in Canada's prairie provinces, who make a living with large yields of high quality grain, preserving fertile soil, using no artificial fertilizers or pesticides. Some small beef producers are raising cattle at low cost, with no feed supplements, no artificial vitamins, or drugs, even under the handicaps of present-day society. And this is only scratching the surface, in the area of agriculture alone.

The fractions of people, which is what wage-slaves are, will be transformed into enlightened somebodies. Socialist society will have something that capitalism forbids, the creative and productive potential that every human is born with. People will participate in a society of their choosing, free to express the natural urge to solve problems, express self-interest in co-operative harmony with all others, for maximum enjoyment of life.

Humanity in control of its affairs will never do what capitalism does—defecate on its doorstep.

George Jenkins

(Canada)

Central America: which way to capitalism? (1985-86)

From the Winter 1985-6 issue of the World Socialist

In the 50s and 60s the US moved to counter what it saw as a trend toward the establishment of left-wing "third-world" governments in its own backyard by installing military or client dictatorships (wherever the Marines could invent a pretext for landing), most notoriously in Guatemala where the Arbenz government, backed by an increasingly active popular movement, threatened to reproduce the Labor and Social Democratic backlash that had occurred in postwar Europe.

This preventive action, however, was not purely negative in scope but corresponded to a program of economic development which, it was claimed, would do for Latin America what the Marshall Plan had done for Europe. Since this involved increased regimentation generally, it was thought that creating or backing client dictatorships where necessary would guarantee a suitable environment for investing capital.

The "Marshall Plan" for Central America and the Caribbean had consisted, in consequence, of a series of timely strategic "surgical strikes", so that the unsuspecting workers (as in Guatemala in 1954 for instance, where they were otherwise too weak and isolated even to sustain their own radical reformism at that date) were bloodied up and hunted down before they knew what had hit them. Ever since then, US action in the area has been aimed at extending and developing its forcibly imposed discipline, invented for the sake of depressing the exchange-value of human life to otherwise un-maintainably low levels.

On the face of it, the local capitalists in certain parts of Latin America have become increasingly dissatisfied with what they have come to regard as the dead-end development policy of the multinationals; their position is, in effect, that the latter have "mismanaged" economic growth in somehow caused it to be mismanaged.

As the multinationals extended their investments, local industry nourished within a limited context of import substitution. This worked will enough as far as it went, but the focus of investment was not production: it was rather international exchange, and — like the old Mercantilist System — it was oriented toward increasing local foreign exchange reserves rather than generating new value.

As the heat from the reformist opposition became here and there became gradually more intense, it became necessary in the late 60s and early 70s for the US to fortify the bulwarks with a new variety of dictatorship whose legitimacy was virtually non-existent. The sunbelt investors from the US wanted to make one last effort to plunder the locals (capitalists with the support of workers in "mass organizations") before the wrath of the latter finally boiled over.

It was in fact the period of overhasty expansion in the 50s and 60s that brought on the faltering of growth in the late 60s and the financial crisis of the later 70s. The international debt crisis thus links up with the popular opposition in Central America, since it revolves precisely around the funding of the capitalization process. “Reformists”, in this context, are held to be those who favor minor or even major alterations in the way in which the multinationals should be allowed to do business, while those who seek to restrict they way in which capital is accumulated enjoy a reputation for being “revolutionaries”.

Guatemala and El Salvador: unstable Coffee Republics

Guatemalan capitalism as it emerged from the Fascist Decade in the 20s made its bed mostly on coffee beans (and somewhat on bananas), as in El Salvador. (The Central American states received the sobriquet of "banana republics" primarily through their association with the United Fruit Company, one of the "modernizers".) The greater social backwardness of Guatemala, however, caused it to miss out on the land-oriented paroxysms which savaged the workers and peasants of El Salvador in the 30s. The Arevalo and Arbenz regimes in Guatemala (1945-54) were on the other hand notable for setting a precedent of constitutional democracy in the region; just at the time when Labor and Social Democrats in Europe were capitalizing on working class weariness with wartime hardships. (The Costa Rican capitalist class struck early and thoroughly in the same period, abolishing the army altogether, earning themselves the nickname of "the Latin Switzerland".) Thus, despite its relatively backward social organization, Guatemala did experience an echo of Labor reformism in the postwar decade.

The coffee oligarchy of Guatemala took this very ill. By 1954 it was ready to kick over the traces and "to liberate the nation". With the Dulles boys in Washington masterminding a combined diplomatic, propaganda and military offensive, the reformers were easily outmaneuvred and overthrown in July of that year.

Subsequently, however, the coffee barons discovered they had called in the United States only to leap, by the end of the 60s, from the political frying pan into the economic fire: the US had lent its support, not to promote their tranquility, but the growth of industrial manufactures (thereby serving its own convenience) — an assist which could only finish by leaving coffee production further and further behind in the preoccupations of the state. To accomplish this, the US government pursued a policy of regional "self-enrichment" and diversification, "integrating" the region's economies (the self-styled "Central American Common Market"), encouraging import substitution and blocking the spontaneous upgrading of labor-power throughout the regional economy. This process the coffee barons at first mistook for an identification with their interests. Once the blood of the working-class and peasant corpses was good and congealed, however, Washington unceremoniously thrust them aside and the rightwing "National Liberation Movement" (MLN) — which had done the dirty work and built up a political machine in the eastern part of the country — found itself, by the early 70s, a humiliated opposition party within its own regime. And now Guatemala's generals have cut themselves into a very large slice of the profit pie indeed, to the intense annoyance of their fellow capitalists.

It is this general situation of pell-mell accumulation, rather than a supposed structural dependence of Guatemalan capital on an imperialist metropolis ruled by finance capitalists, that explains the endemic instability of Guatemala's ruling class.

The same thing could also be said for El Salvador. In the post-war years, a "modernizing" sector of the coffee exporters and other commercial interests pulled off a palace revolution and installed its own regime in place of the blood-soaked Martinez dictatorship. In this we have what there was of El Salvador's "social-democratic" period, which in the developed economies was characterized by a surge of working-class opinion in favor of more or less broad reforms. In this case, the initiative came from the capitalist class but was supported by the working-class organizations (tiny and persecuted as they were). The fact that circulating capital was mostly tied up in agriculture, that only an exiguous portion of it went to wages in industry, and that it was still mostly tied to fixed capital invested in agriculture, is what accounts for the focus of this initiative on the reform-minded section of the capitalist class rather than on a European-style labor movement.

In terms of social organization, El Salvador in fact came closer than Guatemala to being already "modernized", in that its capitalist class had systematically created Central America's most proletarianized economy — even if it was only for the sake of coffee.

But recently, since the 1979 coup, it has dawned on the coffee magnates that Washington did not offer to give them a hand out of altruism in their emaciated war against the specter of "communism". By the March 1982 elections, the struggle had clearly ceased to be a mere question of a coffee aristocracy clinging tenaciously to its privileged position. Washington at length had decided that condoning extreme right positions was now a liability and definitely cut the coffee oligarchy adrift to face the rigors of "modernization".

The coffee planters have thus acquired the stigma of the greater evil, from the vantage point of international capital. Big business in the US has not changed its tune and decided that what El Salvador needs is a good dose of old-fashioned moderation. It has on the contrary merely revised its criterion of what kind of economic development it thinks would deliver its investments the most effectively from the immediate threat of expropriation.

The structural instability of the capitalist class in both Guatemala and El Salvador demonstrates in microcosm a formative or transitional stage of economic development; and the opposition's allegation of corruption and mismanagement on the part of the governing section of the ruling class acts itself as a catalyst in bringing that transition about: nationalism will never be more than the handmaiden of profit.

The present crisis — which, in the tradition of all great social revolutions, has degenerated to the point where rival factions are now scrambling to get control of the government's budget and so gain the controlling share in shaping the state's economic policy — can thus be explained entirely in terms of profit. From a socialist point of view, its outcome cannot be a revolution resulting in the introduction of common ownership of the means of production, however democratic its ideology may be.

Nicaragua and the class of latent capitalists

The main capitalist opposition in Central America to corporate dominance over the local economy comes, not as we might naively expect, from the existing capitalist class — the official bourgeoisie (the one which is presently constituted and which acts out its role on the stage of world history). It comes chiefly from the concealed capitalist class — the one which favors state-managed capital accumulation on the pretext that this will actually benefit the working class and (what little may remain of) the peasantry.

This class of latent capitalists is none other than the self-styled revolutionary left, most prominently the Leninists, but not by any means those of them who have served as such excellent bull's-eyes for the Reagan administration's target practice. (Moscow-oriented "Communist" parties in Central America — since the massacres of the 30s — have shown themselves incapable, on the whole, of forming more than a loyal opposition bound hand and foot to the status quo, a sort of left-wing Christian Democracy.) There is, in any case, a very definite tendency for the left to nationalize the accumulation of capital conceptually, before any actual question of a transfer of power arises.

A revolution supposedly carried out on behalf of a working class which does not form even a substantial minority of the population, as in a substantial part of the "third world" today (though not so much in Central America), cannot possibly be anti-capitalist. If the workers (wage earners plus professionals and any others who work for someone else) do not make up the majority, then neither can industrial capitalism form the basis of the state. Since the first order of business of a revolution in a state which is still pre-capitalist is necessarily the establishment of a capitalist economy it is nothing if not a pro-capitalist revolution: in an historical context of undeveloped capitalist production, such movements appear as anti-liberal revolutions. One of the warts of Leninism is precisely its confusion of the concepts of "liberalism" and "capitalism".

Capitalism, regardless of its degree of development, is any social system in which the bulk of social wealth is produced for exchange on the market at a profit, conducted through the payment of wages. So long as it observes this basic condition, it may assume any form or character whatever. If this implies totally reorganizing the personnel roster of the accumulators, then so be it! If the state must step in and directly manage all phases and facets of the economy, then that's how it must be! Capital does not care what its administrators look like: it seeks only to reproduce itself in ever-growing measure through the well-known mechanisms of accumulation.

Who makes such revolutions but those who intend to accumulate capital themselves? A minority political party heading a minority working class is itself the nucleus of a potential stratum of accumulators. Capital is equally well served by either sort of lackey. The full transfer of state power to such jerry-built ruling classes is indeed rare — or more precisely, it is an extremely complex event which does not take place most of the time. It is an example of the fortunes of an ideology, not of revolutionary socialist class consciousness.

The revolution in Nicaragua is an interesting study in Leninist doubletalk. Comparing Nicaragua with Guatemala and El Salvador, we note its relatively lesser degree of advancement at the time of the Sandinista Revolution in 1979. That is to say, Nicaragua was still more backward than El Salvador, where a civil war is now underway, yet its neo-capitalist revolution has already been successfully begun, while in Guatemala class conflict has yet to break out into open civil war. What explains this disparity?

A major factor in favour of the Sandinistas, certainly, was the very identification of primitive accumulation — vested as it was in the coffee barons — with a concrete clique of individuals (the clan of the Somozas backed by the United States). More decisive, however, was the extreme disgruntlement of the Nicaraguan capitalist class as a whole.

The Sandinistas are attempting to displace the original crew of black sheep with a group that will be more interested in keeping surplus value within Nicaragua. However, "limiting the intervention of the bourgeoisie in the government" — which is their self-attributed objective — is nothing but a collection of buzzwords, since none of them is seriously proposing to limit the role of capital accumulation in formulating government policy. The question revolves entirely around who will accumulate capital, and for what reasons. The Sandinistas thus represent the left wing of the capitalist class, itching to get on with the business of totally converting over to pure state capitalism.

A member of the Sandinistas' National Direction is quoted as saying that, now that they have control of the banks, they have "surrounded the bourgeoisie" (quoted by Roger Burbach in "Nicaragua: El Curso de la revolución". Revista Mensuel/Monthly Review, July 1980). This is a highly ironic remark, in view of the fact that one group of capitalists (the nascent state capitalists) is saying that about the other (the official bourgeoisie). It also illustrates the Leninist belief that the concentration of finance capital is somehow different from the accumulation of capital in general. What is definitely not being encircled, however, is the function of capital accumulating itself. A society of continuing wage-slavery is the fatal economic issue of the Sandinista revolution, given that the institution of production for profit remains sacred.

If wages as the basis of capital accumulation (through the production of surplus value) are not abolished, via the introduction of common ownership of the means of production, it is utterly specious to distinguish '"reformism" and "the revolutionary process". It is all reformism until society no longer depends on the possession of money as a prerequisite for obtaining goods and services.

Throughout all the vicissitudes of the "revolutionary process", none of the "revolutionary" parties — even the most radical — apparently would would dream of abandoning commodity exchange and its inevitable consequence, production for profit. They confine themselves without exception to squabbling over the right to direct this process (as in El Salvador), with one position favoring total state capitalism — eventually and an opposite position favoring a minimal state presence in the economy (or so they say). An "authentically socialist perspective" (a widespread demand for common ownership and democratic control of the means of wealth production) does not figure in any of their programs.

Ron Elbert

Editorial: Society and nature (1985-6)

Editorial from the Winter 1985-6 issue of the World Socialist

In this issue of The World Socialist we raise some questions about the relationship of society to nature. These are vital issues affecting the quality of life not just for this generation but for generations to come.

The subject involves a paradox. Humanity is a part of nature which evolved as one species amongst many within the processes of organic evolution. Yet we commonly see ourselves as something separate from nature. The function of nature is perceived as providing for the means of human existence. Behind this human-centred view is the nature of human consciousness and this is simply that, we are a self-aware part of nature as a whole.

This consciousness now has its own history which is still in the making and a key part of its development has centred on accumulating knowledge of the natural world. This knowledge is now so complex and extensive that no individual could hope to master more than a sub-division of the total.

The discovery of the processes, principles and natural laws through which natural elements interact have been applied as practical techniques of production. This has been humanity's increasing ability to control and manipulate the natural forces of the environment. Since the Renaissance and particularly since the industrial revolution the application of science-based knowledge has gained a rapid momentum. In principle this has been held to be a great advantage and so much has this been the case that in the 19th Century the work of science was invested with high optimism. It was popularly equated with “progress".

But since that time, applied science has also been regarded as a social menace. Given examples include the fact that applied physics has led to the nuclear arms race so that we now live under the threat of self-destruction. Hundreds of millions of people have been killed during this century using the technical methods of modern war. The science of botany and genetic control has resulted in new agricultural techniques, but have these been used for the benefit of humanity? On the contrary, there are more people suffering malnutrition and dying from hunger today than ever in the past. Similarly in the work of energy supply, despite there now being a wide range of technical options for establishing a safe and adequate world energy system, people still die from the cold and hundreds of millions still rely on gathering firewood. The energy production methods in use pose an increasing threat to the environment. Although there have been some undoubted gains, our developed knowledge of the natural world has not led to a better society nor to a better relationship between society and nature. The story of applied science in modern society is a story of waste, destruction and increasing dangers.

Thus, the hopes invested in accumulating knowledge have eroded, leaving the scarred remains of disillusion and pessimism. The mood now is different, but it is a superficial response to blame our present problems on science or our greater understanding of the workings of the natural world. It can be admitted that previous optimism was unsoundly based but behind our problems lies the fact that science has been subject to a different kind of investment - capital investment. Applied science in the form of technology operates as invested capital. The consequences of this have meant that control of the natural world for the benefit of humanity has been subverted by the uncontrolled and anti-social objectives of invested capital and the militarism which has been part of this.

Our understanding of the way capitalism uses the earth and its resources is blurred by a popular misconception. In the ordinary way we may see ourselves simply as useful producers with a useful job of work to do. We think of the environment simply as the natural world. We are aware of land, seas, forests, river valleys and deserts. We are also aware of useful resources such as coal, oil or natural gas and such metals as iron ore, copper or tin deposits. All these features of the natural environment present themselves in our minds as useful means of providing for life. But in the property form in which present society operates we are not simply useful producers and natural resources are not used simply for the reproduction and enjoyment of life. In reality, what we think of as our useful work is economic activity. We are waged or salaried workers functioning as invested capital working on natural materials for the production of commodities for sale on the market with a view to profit.

A farming enterprise cannot view land simply as land, a useful resource for the production of food. In the eye of agribusiness, land and farm labour are the natural elements of invested capital operating for profit and further capital accumulation. Similarly, forests, seas, oil, coal, natural gas resources, iron ore, tin or copper deposits are all taken over as part of the class monopoly of the means of life to be worked upon by wage labour for profit.

As capitalism has spread across the world to become the dominant economic system, including the state capitalist countries such as Russia and China, so has the entire planet come to exist in an economic form as providing for the elements of capital. Rival capitalist nations struggle over control of resources, exploitable populations, and the various trade routes on land and seas. They adopt military strategies for maintaining economic and political control or influence over the various parts of the planet, Most recently, British and Argentine capital was at war over the profit potential of the South Atlantic and the Antarctic, with the Falkland Islands as the strategic gateway to them.

The interests of capital dominate in every branch of knowledge. Capital finances the institutions of education and research. This determines the direction of applied science and technology. Vested capitalist interests control the world’s air waves, the media and the centres of world information. As a consequence, within the prevailing boundaries of thought acceptable to capitalist interests there exists a wide gap between the way nature is perceived and the reality of its economic existence. But we cannot clarify this view of nature by looking outwards at the natural world. The way we use nature and the relationship of society to it is determined by the social relationships between people themselves. It. is in the nature of social organisation that we find the relationship of society to nature.

Society cannot consciously regulate the impact of its activity on the natural world unless it can first consciously regulate its own productive activity. The present inability of society to control its destructive effects on the environment results from the inherently uncontrollable operation of the economic laws of the production-for-profit system which arise from the class monopoly of the means of life. It is awareness of this and the political action to change society which must follow from it which is the important advance in ideas and action represented by the movement for World Socialism.

What is lacking in the present state of human knowledge will not arise from any further focus on the wider natural world. Our existing understanding of this is far beyond what is required for a proper care of the environment. The material in this issue of The World Socialist shows that care of the environment is not primarily a practical or technical problem. It is a problem arising from the prevailing social relationships of capitalist production. By freeing labour from its exploitation by capital, socialism will also free the natural environment from its exploitation by capital. With a direct relationship of work activity to needs, socialism will be free to work with methods which ensure care of the environment. With co-operation based on the common ownership of the means of life socialism would aim at an equilibrium within the balance of natural systems without altering them in any destructive way.

Hiroshima, August 1945 (1985-6)

From the Winter 1985-6 issue of the World Socialist

Forty years ago the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in Japan. The following poem was written by a member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain shortly after he heard the news of the bombing.

Like a blast from hell the atom bomb came,
And a city in ruins was hurled;
On wings of fear, it thundered its name,
Through a shocked and war torn world;
This atomic force with transmutable breath,
Its first warning sign we see,
Garden of plenty, or desert of death;
What is this world to be?
The challenge is vital, and urgent the hour;
When this Capitalist era must pass,
And workers control this atomic power,
So misused by the ruling class;
This nuclear power from the atom was wrought,
It evolved in the womb of time,
Born of the labour of man's social thought,
Its baptism, Fire, blood and crime;
Dark is the future if our governments command
This scientific genie of might,
Secret diplomacy knows no remand,
From chaos and abysmal night;
The Capitalist powers are still planning our fate,
And with their lies seek to stifle our fears,
Turning worker against worker, in blind bonds of hate,
For their new orgy of blood sweat and tears;
A Socialist world, no other solution,
Presents itself to mankind;
The workers must strive for a world revolution,
And cast off those fetters that bind;
This atomic force with transmutable breath,
For good or for ill must abide,
Garden of plenty or desert of death?
The workers themselves must decide.

Walter Atkinson (Britain)

D. H. Lawrence and the abolition of money (1985-6)

From the Winter 1985-6 issue of the World Socialist

The novelist and poet, D. H. Lawrence, who died in 1930, was born one hundred years ago, on 11 September, 1885. He was not a socialist and did not profess to be one, but there can be no doubt that he possessed some excellent ideas about what was wrong with the money-wages-profit system and what sort of society would be fitter for humans to live in.

Certain rather foolish literary gentlemen and superficial Leftists have described Lawrence as a fascist. There is no evidence to support this claim, and we would argue that it is a label mainly put about by Stalinists who resented Lawrence for having been a non-conservative who was totally opposed to the state-capitalist dictatorship of the Russian Empire. In the 1930s to have taken up such a position, even if you were in favour of social transformation, meant that the so-called Communists would call you a fascist in the hope of discrediting you. In the case of D. H. Lawrence, who wrote explicitly about why he opposed fascism, the label struck and the smear has no doubt led many people to dismiss the social and political context of his poetry. To do so is to dismiss some of the most forcefully revolutionary poems ever written in English, a selection of which we publish below. They were written in 1929 and are taken from the second volume of Lawrence's selected poems published by Heinemann (the book is deceptively called Pansies, but we can assure you that it is not about flowers).

Why did Lawrence take up some of the ideas expressed in these poems? Reading them, one might think that he was acquainted with the Socialist Party of Great Britain, but there is no evidence to show that he was. More likely, Lawrence picked up the socialist content of his thinking as a result of visiting the home of his girlfriend until 1912, Louise Burrows, whose father was a committed socialist who possessed the socialist writings of William Morris and spent his time talking with Lawrence about the case for socialism whenever the young writer visited his house. The connection between William Morris and D. H. Lawrence is rarely made, and shallow critics would have it that the former was a romantic revolutionary while the latter was a fascistic reactionary (both utterly mistaken observations): in fact, it will be seen from the poems published here that Lawrence too shared a passion to change the insane society of capitalism, and that, if anything, his poetry was more expressive in its simplicity. Moreover, it is known that he had read Morris' News From Nowhere, and was inspired by its depiction of a socialist society. 

Money-Madness

Money is our madness, our vast collective madness.

And of course, if the multitude is mad

The individual carries his own grain of insanity around with him.

I doubt if any man living hands out a pound note without a pang;

And a real tremor, if he hands out a ten-pound note.

We quail, money makes us quail.

It has got us down, we grovel before it in strange terror.

And no wonder, for money has a fearful cruel power among men.

But it is not money we are terrified of,

it is the collective money - madness of mankind.

For mankind says with one voice: How much is he worth ?

Has he no money? Then let him eat dirt, and go cold -

And if I have no money, they will give me a little bread,

So I do not die,

but they will make me eat dirt for it .

I shall have to eat dirt, I shall have to eat dirt

if I have no money

It is that I am afraid of.

And that fear can become a delirium.

It is fear of my money-mad fellow-man.

We must have some money

To save us from eating dirt.

And this is wrong.

Bread should be free,

shelter should be free,

fire should be free

to all and anybody, all and anybody, all over the world.

We must regain our sanity about money

before we start killing one another about it .

It’s one thing or the other.

Kill Money

Kill money, put money out of existence .

It is a perverted instinct, a hidden thought

which rots the brain, the blood , the bones, the stones , the soul.

Make up your mind about it all:

that society must establish itself upon a different principle

from the one we’ve got now.

We must have the courage of mutual trust.

We must have the modesty of simple living.

And the individual must have his house, food and fire all free—like a bird.

O! Start A Revolution

O! start a revolution, somebody!

not to get the money

but to lose it forever.

O! start a revolution, somebody!

not to install the working classes

but to abolish the working classes forever

and have a world of men.

Wages

The wages of work is cash.

The wages of cash is want more cash.

The wages of want more cash is vicious competition.

The wages of vicious completion is - the world we live in .

The work-cash-want circle is the viciousest circle

that ever turned men into fiends.

Earning a wage is a prison occupation

and a wage - earner is a sort of gaol-bird

Earning a salary is a prison overseer’s job,

a gaoler instead of a gaol-bird.

Living on your income is strolling grandly outside the prison

in terror lest you have to go in .And since the work-prison covers

almost every scrap of living earth, you stroll up and down

on a narrow beat, about the same as a prisoner taking his exercise .

This is called universal freedom.

WHY?

Why have money?

Why have a financial system to strangle us all in its octopus arms?

Why have industry?

Why have the industrial system?

Why have machines, that we only have to serve?

Why have a soviet, that only wants to screw us all in as parts of the machine?

Why have working classes at all, as if men only embodied jobs?

Why not have men as men, and the work as merely part of the game of life?

True, we’ve got all these things

industrial and financial systems, machines and soviets, working

classes.

But why go on having them, if they belittle us ?

Why should we be belittled any longer?

How Beastly The Bourgeois Is

How beastly the bourgeois is

especially the male of the species -

Presentable, eminently presentable -

shall I make you a present of him ?

Isn’t he handsome? isn’t he healthy? Isn’t he a fine specimen?

doesn’t he look the fresh clean englishman, outside ?

Isn’t if god’s own image? tramping his thirty miles a day

after partridges, or a little rubber ball ?

wouldn’t you like to be like that, well off, and quite the thing ?

Oh, but wait !

Let him meet a new emotion, let him be faced with another man’s

need,

let him come home to a bit of moral difficulty, let life face him with

a new demand on his understanding

and then watch him go soggy, like a wet meringue .

Watch him turn into a mess, either a fool or a bully.

Just watch the display of him, confronted with a new demand on his intelligence,

a new life-demand.

How beastly the bourgeois is

especially the male of the species -

Nicely groomed like a mushroom

standing there so sleek and erect and eyeable -

and like a fungus, living on the remains of bygone life

sucking his life out of the dead leaves of greater life than his own .

And even so, he’s stale, he’s been there too long .

Touch him, and you’ll find he’s all gone inside

just like an old mushroom, all wormy inside, and hollow

under a smooth skin and an upright appearance.

Full of seething, wormy, hollow feelings

rather nasty -

How beastly the bourgeois is!

Standing in their thousands, these appearances, in damp England

what a pity they can’t all be kicked over

like sickening toadstools, and left to melt back, swiftly

into the soil of England.

The Mosquito Knows

The mosquito knows full well, small as he is

he’s a beast of prey.

But after all

he only takes his bellyful,

he doesn’t put my blood in the bank.

Capitalism, socialism and ecology (1985-6)

From the Winter 1985-6 issue of the World Socialist

In 1871 a German biologist, Ernst Haeckel, coined the word "ecology". It derives from the Greek word "Oikos" meaning "house" or "habitat" and can be defined as the study of relationships between organisms and their environment or natural habitat.

Ecology is closely related to the subject oL economics, the latter springing from the same root means literally ""the management of a household". However, the significance of this association is not simply a matter of etymological interest. Undoubtedly this is what Sunderlal Bahunga, a prominent figure in the Indian Chipko movement, had in mind when he replied to a reporter who had asked him how he could resolve the conflict between ecology and economic development. His answer was succinct and to the point: for him there was no such conflict since ecology was in fact just "long-term economics".

And yet if we look at the world around us today we cannot fail to notice the extent to which nature is being ravaged in the name of short-term economic gain. It is all too clear that the prevailing economic system of capitalist competition is quite incapable of seriously taking into account the long-term considerations with which ecology is vitally concerned. Only where the system's immediate objective of profit maximisation is threatened does it become expedient to act upon such considerations. Some might say that this does not really matter when all is said and done. The technological conquest of nature, they suggest, has somehow enabled man to become independent of it. In Small is Beautiful E.F. Schumacher quotes a representative voice from this school of thought, that of Eugene Rabinowitch, editor-in-chief of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists:

The only animals whose disappearance may threaten the biological viability of man on earth are the bacteria normally inhabiting our bodies. For the rest, there is no evidence that mankind could not survive even as the only species on earth! If economical ways could be developed for synthesising food from inorganic materials - which is likely to happen sooner or later - man will even be able to become independent of plants on which he now depends as sources of his food.

But whatever the technical merits (or otherwise) of such a claim, for the foreseeable future it is safe to assume that mankind will continue to rely heavily on agriculture - that is to say, on the natural processes harnessed by agriculture - for its food.

The charge of "technological triumphalism" is one that has sometimes been levelled at Marxism. Yet it was Engels who produced one of the most cogent rebuttals of precisely this point of view, when addressing himself to the question of man's relationship with nature:

Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human conquests over nature. For each such conquest takes its revenge on us. Each of them, it is true, has in the first place the consequences on which we counted, but in the second and third places it has quite different unforeseen effects which only too often cancel out the first. The people who in Mesopotamia, Greece, Asia Minor, and elsewhere, destroyed the forests to obtain cultivatable land, never dreamed that they were laying the basis for the present devastated condition of those countries, by removing along with the forests the collecting centres and reservoirs of moisture . . .

Thus at every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature - but that we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to know and correctly apply its laws. ("The part played by labour in the transition from Ape to Man" Dialectics of Nature, 1940, pp.291-2).

As an apology for an ecological perspective this could hardly be bettered. But before examining what such a perspective entails for harnessing nature for the production of food, let us look briefly at the view that it is the pressure of population as such that has caused the environment to deteriorate.

MALTHUS AND NEO-MALTHUS: BOTH WRONG
In 1798 the Rev Thomas Malthus published the first edition of An Essay on the Principle of Population in which he outlined his "law of population":

Assuming then, my postulate as granted, I say that the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man. Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence only increases in arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with numbers will show the immensity of the first power in comparison with the second.

According to Malthus, since population cannot be sustained beyond a level that the means of subsistence can provide for, it is held in check, though the way in which it is held in check is rather more complicated than in the case of plants and animals. Here he suggested that social attitudes might play a role as a "preventive" check inasmuch as people might feel compelled by economic circumstances to exercise restraint in reproduction. Whether they would exercise restraint, Malthus doubted, though he placed greater importance on this in subsequent editions of his Essay. But in so doing, he contradicted the broad thrust of his argument, embodying as it did, a strong belief in biological determinism.

Beyond prevention, "positive checks" in the form of war, famine and disease work to ensure that the population is "kept to its necessary level". In other words, argued Malthus, the sheer pressure of population growth as it comes up against the limits of subsistence "constantly tends to subject the lower classes of society to distress and prevent any great melioration of their condition". He suggested that if this were more widely understood, the "lower classes" might come to accept their poverty with greater forbearance and "less irritation at the government and the higher classes of society".

Malthus' theory was effectively demolished by the developments that came after him. The population of Britain grew rapidly but the productive forces grew even more so as the Industrial Revolution unfolded. What made possible this rapid population growth was the decline in mortality as a result in the long-term rise in general living standards, particularly in the form of improved diet and sanitation. Moreover as the death rate declined so the birth rate began to fall, eventually causing population growth itself to slow down.

However, whilst population growth was "checked" this occurred well within the Malthusian limits of bare subsistence. Indeed far from it being a case of the stork relentlessly following the plough, the gap between the two has considerably widened in historical terms with the stork lagging well behind, thus exploding the Malthusian dogma that the "indefinitely greater" power of reproduction would reduce any such gap to the merest sliver. The fact that the population of Britain is several times larger today than it was when Malthus was alive only highlights all the more, the tremendous growth of the forces of production that has occurred since then - something which Malthus' grim fatalism could not anticipate.

But whilst such growth is undeniable, equally undeniable is the fact that it has been accompanied by an increasing disruption of the "balance of nature". Though mankind is not the only species to modify nature for its own purposes the sheer scale of its impact makes it unique and, according to some, poses the threat of irreversibly undermining nature's capacity to provide food for mankind in the future. Technological progress may well have pushed back the Malthusian limits to the point of irrelevance but, goes the argument, the environmental consequences of such progress are such that those limits threaten to close in again like a noose around mankind's neck.

In this rather more sophisticated form, Malthusian ideas have acquired a certain plausibility. Nevertheless, this neo-Malthusian model has in common with its famous forerunner a major weakness inasmuch as it consistently overlooks the social context in which it makes its gloomy prognoses. According to Colin Tudge in The Famine Business:

Many societies in the past - in sixteenth century England or fourth century Rome — have believed that their societies had outgrown their resources. In truth they had merely come against the limitations of their agricultural techniques - or, more accurately, against the limitations of the policies that those techniques subserved. To some extent the present world situation is similar. We have not exceeded physical capacity but have merely begun to expose the flaws in policies not designed to feed all the people.

FOOD CHAINS AND BIOTIC PYRAMIDS
In nature, the various plant and animal organisms are intricately interlinked by relationships of mutual dependence on one another and their physical environment. These living communities together with the environmental conditions in which they occur, constitute an ecosystem. This can be a single drop of water containing myriads of micro-organisms or, at the other extreme, the total envelope of life around the earth, the global ecosystem or biosphere. Necessarily, every ecosystem tends towards a "steady state" of dynamic balance which means that by altering any one part of it every other part is thereby affected, a new equilibrium being reached through a complex network of inter-locking cycles through which energy and nutrients flow.

In the process of evolution life on earth was built in a series of layers or "trophic levels" which together form the "biotic pyramid". At the base of this pyramid are organisms called "autotrophs". Autotrophs "fix" minerals from rock and nitrogen from the air to form a nutrient reservoir that is greatly enlarged by the decomposition of organic material returned to the soil. These nutrients are absorbed through the roots of plants with the aid of water. Green plants trap less than 1 per cent of the sun's energy falling on the earth and use it to build energy-rich compounds in a process called photosynthesis. Some of these compounds are combined with nutrients from the soil to form other, more complex compounds such as protein. The total amount of chemical energy stored in plants far exceeds human nutritional requirements and could theoretically support a population 280 times greater^ttan the present one. However, the great bulk of plant matter is unsuitable for human consumption. Autotrophs and plants are respectively known as primary and secondary food producers. Above them come the various levels of food consumers.

The primary consumers or herbivores eat plants and are in turn eaten by carnivores or secondary consumers. These may be eaten by other carnivores or tertiary consumers and so on. Thus food is passed from one trophic level to the next along a food chain.

It is worth noting however that as we move up a food chain, only a small fraction of the energy input at one level, as represented by the food consumed by an organism, is made available to the next level when that organism is itself consumed. The remainder of this energy is "lost" in maintaining the organism's existence. In other words, for a certain mass of organisms to survive at one level there must be a substantially larger mass of organisms at the level beneath it; hence the idea of a biotic pyramid. The total mass of organisms that an ecosystem can support is called the "biomass" which is determined by a combination of environmental factors such as climate and soil that impinge most crucially at the level of food producers.

The implications of this telescoping of the food supply along a food chain are potentially significant. One might suppose that mankind could increase its food supply by changing its dietary habits, by eating less meat and more grain, for example. Altogether some 650 million tonnes of grain representing a third of the world's output are currently fed to livestock each year. But on average, every 7 calories of grain fed to livestock produces only 1 calorie of animal product, beef production being the least efficient form of conversion. On the other hand, it could also be argued that the production of animal products for human consumption is justified insofar as animals are able to transform otherwise inedible or unutilised plants and grasses into valuable food for humans.

In reality, however, food chains such as that connecting cereals, cattle and man present only part of the picture of an ecosystem. To begin with, nutrient flows are not linear and ever-ascending as the concept of a biotic pyramid might suggest. Rather, such flows can be described as cyclical. The waste products of organisms and, on their death, their bodies are broken down by other organisms known as decomposers that are similarly arranged in layers that form, as it were, an inverted pyramid. This decaying organic material called humus is progressively broken down into simple elements that are once again taken up through the roots of plants as was earlier pointed out. In this way nutrients are continuously recycled within the ecosystem.

Furthermore, as we saw in the case of the food chain connecting cereals, cattle and man, some species - in this instance, man - may have a highly diverse or changeable diet that entails consuming food from several different levels within the biotic pyramid. Such species are, in other words, omnivorous. More realistically, nature can be said to support not so much a host of separate food chains as a complex web of relationships through which checks are applied on the population of a species whereby its outer limits are determined by the population size of other species that constitute its food supply.

THE RISKS OF AGRICULTURE
Agriculture is essentially a process by which the stored energy of photosynthesis is appropriated by man. This has meant in the first place, the selection and cultivation of certain crops at the expense of other species and secondly, the development of these cultivated varieties with a view to increasing their yield. According to Norman Myers:

Mankind has used around 3000 plants for food during the course of history. Yet Earth contains at least another 75,000 edible plants. Only about 150 have ever been cultivated on a large scale, and fewer than 20 now produce 90 per cent of our food. We are using the same limited number of plant species that have served mankind for millennia. (Guardian, 3 February 1983).

In nature, an ecosystem tends to develop successionally, that is, from a simple "pioneer" stage towards the maximum complexity that the physical conditions of a particular area can accommodate. The final stage in this process of "ecological succession" is called the "climax community". This contains a highly diverse range of species whose populations fluctuate little over time. A climax community is, in other words, a relatively stable and balanced ecosystem.

With the introduction of agriculture the tendency is for an ecosystem to shift backwards along the line of ecological succession as many natural forms of vegetation are replaced by a few cultivated varieties. Thus, generally speaking, agriculture has had a destabilising impact on the environment by reducing its complexity and hence its capacity to adapt to ecological disturbances. Up to a point this is unavoidable. There is bound to be a degree of tension between the needs of agriculture and the maintenance of environmental integrity. Inasmuch as food is an absolute necessity for mankind there can be no question as to which of these ought to take priority over the other. What can be questioned, however, is the foolish belief that the production of food can take place without regard to the environmental consequences of this for ultimately the harmonisation of agriculture with nature, the achievement of a workable compromise between them, is vital to the maintenance of a productive and lasting agriculture itself.

The reduction in the complexity of an ecosystem amounts to a severe rupture of the intricate food web that sustains a diverse community of plants and animals. As a result more and more species begin to disappear from the ecosystem. However, as this happens other species begin to expand to fill the ecological niche opened up for them, to emerge as pests able to exploit the simplified landscape around them. Weeds, for example, compete with crops for nutrients in the soil. But in some cases the too efficient removal of weeds can prove counter-productive in that herbivorous insects can be driven to feed on the crop itself as the only available food supply. Thus what began as a problem of too many weeds can end up as a problem of pest infestation. This interplay of ecological factors is apparent at the top end of a food chain as well. In Sierra Leone, for example, farmers discovered that their crops were being increasingly damaged by small vervet monkeys whose numbers had swelled considerably. On investigation it was found that the reason for this was the decline in the population of leopards whose habitat was being destroyed by the clearance of forests for agriculture. In short, the self-regulating function of the ecosystem was beginning to break down and to veer towards greater instability.

On a global basis this alteration in the natural balance is taking place on a massive and unprecedented scale:

According to the results of an investigation published by the University of Hamburg in December 1975, 50,000 species will be eradicated or seriously threatened in the coming twenty-five years. At the other end of the scale 240 species of insects, including mites and ticks, are increasing at an alarming rate. (W. Van Dieren and M.G.W. Hummelinck, Nature's Price, 1979, p.4).

The conventional response to the growth of pests has been to attack them with chemical pesticides. These can bring about rapid and dramatic improvements in the available food supply in the short-term by cutting losses both on land and in storage. In a single year - in 1973 - the value of crop loss due to pests amounted to a staggering $75 billion. Clearly the selective use of chemical pesticides on a world basis in a socialist society could help in the transformation of hunger into a thing of the past.

But pesticides have their drawbacks too. In particular, they tend to decimate the predators of pests more effectively than the pests themselves. The reason for this lies in the fact that the herbivorous insects that eat crops are more numerous than the carnivorous insects that prey upon them, being at a lower level in the biotic pyramid. This being the case there is a greater likelihood of genetic variation among such insects that would lead them to acquire resistance to a pesticide.

Furthermore, there is a tendency for pesticides like DDT which remain toxic over long periods to become more and more concentrated as it is passed up the food chain. Because of this, "DDT is banned in most industrialised countries but its overall use is still increasing and the effects are spread globally by wind and water" (S. Croall and W. Rankin, Ecology for Beginners, 1981, p.59). Thus, as is so often the case in capitalism, legislative attempts to overcome a particular problem are undermined by the competitive pressure that drives others to perpetrate that problem which cannot by its very nature be contained within boundaries of the nation state.

In the long run biological methods of pest control such as the introduction into an environment of the traditional - or novel -predators of pests, is very often the soundest approach. But once again the competitive thrust of capitalism, ever attentive to the opportunity for short-term gain, militates against the wisdom of an ecological perspective:

The results of biological control may take some years to show whereas an insecticide acts immediately. Control has to be applied over a whole region (preferably an island) rather than just one farm . . . And it may not be too cynical to suggest that there is less commercial interest in biological than in chemical control because it is, in ideal cases, done once and for all rather than every year. (N.W. Pirie, Food Resources, Conventional and Novel, 1967, p.71).

THE KEY ROLE OF NITROGEN
In the 19th century the agricultural chemist, Justus Von Liebig, formulated his famous "law of the minimum" which states that plant growth is limited by the availability of whatever nutrient is scarcest. There are 16 basic elements that are absolutely essential to the growth of plants and can be divided into 3 groups. The first consists of Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen which are derived from air and water. Nitrogen, Potassium and Calcium form another group called the major plant nutrients in that they are required in large quantities whilst the remaining ten elements make up the final group, the minor nutrients. These basic elements can be combined in different ways to form a vast number of compounds which in turn are used to build even more complex molecules such as protein as we earlier saw.

The most common limiting factor in agriculture is nitrogen, a crucial constituent of protein. Though most of the earth's atmosphere consists of nitrogen it is of no use to plants in this form; it has to be "fixed" - that is, combined with other elements - in the form of compounds such as nitrate, that can be absorbed through the roots of plants.

There are several sources from which plants obtain a supply of fixed nitrogen. A certain amount of it derives from atmospheric fixation as a result of lightning but the great bulk of it is produced by biological and, to an increasing extent, industrial fixation processes.

As far as the process of biological fixation is concerned, two broad sets of micro-organisms in the soil make nitrogen available to plants. The first set are the nitrogen-fixing micro-organisms that form part of the population of autotrophs. Some of these micro-organisms such as the blue-green algae are "free-living", whilst others live in symbiotic association with the roots of leguminous plants and certain tropical grasses. The significance of this latter group of nitrogen-fixing micro¬organisms is that by planting the sort of crops with which they are associated the fertility of the soil can be enhanced rather than depleted as is normally the case.

At the opposite end of the nutrient cycle are a second set of micro¬organisms that make nitrogen available to plants. These are called nitrifying bacteria in that they convert the amino acids that make up the protein in decomposing humus (which is, in fact, the major source of nitrogen in the soil) into nitrate. An important characteristic of nitrifying bacteria is that they are aerobic, that is, they must have oxygen in order to live. Moreover the concentration of nitrates they release into the soil water is very low so that the plants themselves have to expend energy to pull in these nitrates - a process that requires plant roots have access to oxygen as well. To ensure enough oxygen is available the soil must be sufficiently porous to let in air and in this respect, humus plays a vital role by maintaining soil structure. Furthermore, a good soil structure allows rainwater to penetrate deeper into the soil where it can be better retained.

A final and increasingly significant source of fixed nitrogen is artificial fertiliser, a by-product of oil-refining technology.

Nitrogen is, of course, also removed from the soil in a number of ways. The activities of nitrifying bacteria are offset by those of other bacteria called denitrifying bacteria which convert nitrate into nitrogen gas, some of which may be utilised by nitrogen fixing bacteria, some of which escapes into the atmosphere. Denitrifying bacteria are anaerobic, however, that is, they can only function in the absence of oxygen. In other words, the poorer the soil structure, the greater the loss of nitrogen from it. This once again underlines the importance of humus to the soil.

Furthermore nitrates being soluble in water can be lost by leaching, by being brought up to the surface and washed away by rain. This is particularly a problem in the humid Tropics where the luxuriant vegetation belies the poor fertility of the soil in which it grows. Because of the high temperatures, humus decomposes very rapidly whilst the heavy rainfall can cause serious leaching. Tropical plants have adapted to these conditions in that they are able to absorb nutrients rapidly whilst at the same time providing a canopy of leaves that protects the soil from the elements. The destruction of tropical forests soon leads to a loss of fertility which imposes severe constraints on the type of agriculture that can be practised in these areas.

The most obvious way in which nitrogen is removed from the soil is of course the harvesting of crops. To make good this loss of nitrogen, human and animal wastes can be returned to the soil but the tendency of capitalist agriculture has been to dispense with this practice. Marx, who had studied the work of Von Liebig, Schonbein and other agricultural chemists was strongly critical of this tendency which, he argued, sprang from the dynamic thrust of capitalist development:

Capitalist production, by collecting the population in great centres, and causing an ever-increasing preponderance of town population on the one hand, concentrates the historical motive power of society; on the other hand, it disturbs the circulation of matter between man and the soil, i.e., prevents the return to the soil of its elements consumed by man in the form of food and clothing; it therefore violates the conditions necessary to lasting fertility of the soil. By this action it destroys at the same time the health of the town labourer and the intellectual life of the rural labourer. (Capital, Vol 1, FLPH, p.505).

But Marx, of course, was writing at a time when artificial fertilisers were unknown. At that time most of the land in Europe was fertilised with sodium nitrate which was to be found in large natural deposits on the coast of Chile, though organic feritiliser such as guano was also used to . some extent. However, by the turn of the century, these deposits appeared to be reaching exhaustion and it became imperative that alternative sources of fertiliser should be found. This was the stimulus that led to the discovery of a technique for manufacturing fertiliser, known as the Haber Bosch process, by which most of the nitrogen-based fertilisers are produced today.

SOIL EROSION AND THE PROFIT MOTIVE
Nevertheless, the impact of artificial fertilisers has by no means been an entirely unmixed blessing. The steady increase in yields, fuelled in part by the soaring use of these fertilisers as a substitute for organic fertilisers, has served to obscure the long-term decline in soil structure and to blunt efforts to halt this. Lester Brown and Edward Wolf in a report on Soil Erosion: Quiet Crisis in the World Economy published by the Worldwatch Institute in 1984 pointed to:

the severity of soil erosion and its implications for future agricultural production worldwide. Between 1977 and 1982, 1.7 billion tonnes of soil were lost each year in the US; 44 per cent of American farmland is now losing soil faster than it is being replaced, mainly by it being washed and blown away. Crop monoculture is largely to blame, and productivity has been maintained only by massive doses of fertilisers which have so far succeeded in masking the enormity of the losses (from summary of report in Guardian, 9 May 1985).

According to a report to the American Congress, an estimated $1,200 million worth of fertilisers would have been needed in 1978 simply to replace the nutrients lost through soil erosion in that year (The Ecologist, July/Aug/Sept 1980). Moreover as soil structure deteriorates with the loss of humus so the application of chemical fertilisers becomes less efficient, more and more of it being lost through leaching and run-off leading to serious pollution of waterways. Indeed, there is overwhelming evidence to suggest that the application of such fertilisers is subject to the law of diminishing returns. US agriculture, for example, has to use 5 times as much fertiliser today as it did in 1947 to produce the same amount of crop. (S. Croall and W. Rankin, Ecology for Beginners, p.55). Such long-term costs of chemically-fertilised agriculture have recently prompted some interest in certain aspects of organic farming. Not that this is likely to bring about any significant shift in farming methods under present conditions of capitalism, however. For a study carried out by the US Department of Agriculture in 1981 found that, whilst organic farms were 2.5 times more productive per unit of energy consumed than conventional farms, they were also less profitable. This was "largely due to the rotation system under which as much as 60 per cent of the land must be planted with nitrogen-fixing legumes at any one time". (New Scientist, 19 March 1983). Furthermore, they are likely to incur higher labour costs in that more labour is involved in such tasks as the hauling and spreading of compost or manure or in handweeding in the case of certain crops. For the individual farmer under competitive pressure to maximise his return on the resources at his disposal - be it land or labour - it is difficult indeed to adopt more ecologically prudent methods of farming where this demands a degree of resistance to such pressure.

Marx writing in 1867, had already commented on the destructive impact of profit-motivated agriculture on the environment:

Moreover, all progress in capitalistic agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the labourer, but of robbing the soil; all progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for a given time, is a progress towards ruining the lasting sources of that fertility. The more a country starts its development on the foundation of modern industry, like the United States, for example, the more rapid is this process of destruction. Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology, and the combination together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all wealth - the soil and the labourer. (Capital, Vol I, pp.506-7).

In 1948 Marx's warning was echoed by William Vogt, Chief of the Conservation Section of the Pan-American Union:

One of the most ruinous limiting factors is the capitalistic system - and this is one of the gravest criticisms that can be leveled against it. The methods of free competition and the application of the profit motive have been disastrous to the land . . .
Throughout virtually the entire world, land is not used to produce the crop best adapted to it on a permanent basis but to produce as much cash as possible, as cheaply as possible, and as quickly as possible - the same system exalted by the manufacturer, (quoted in J.A. Barnett, The Human Species, 1971, p.208).

Since then the situation has deteriorated alarmingly. It is quite true that output has grown substantially in the meantime. In the period 1960-80, for example, whilst world population increased by 48 per cent, total cereal production rose by no less than 75 per cent (though a greater proportion of it was diverted into livestock feed than ever before). But, as Lester Brown and Edward Wolf put it in their Worldwatch Institute report on soil erosion, this impressive growth in production has been achieved by a process of more or less "mining" the soil, "converting a renewable resource into a non-renewable one". Almost everywhere, the land is being impoverished; its fertility flushed down the world's rivers, borne away by its winds or simply buried under an expanding carpet of concrete. In all some 25 billion tonnes of fertile topsoil are lost each year throughout the world because of excessive erosion associated mainly with agriculture.

SOCIALISM AND ECOLOGY
How might socialist society approach the problem of maintaining soil fertility? Firstly, with regard to chemical fertilisers, there are today enormous regional disparities in the use of such fertilisers. Built into this pattern is a tremendous waste of agricultural potential:

A ton of fertiliser applied in a previously unfertilized area (i.e. most of the underdeveloped world) can produce up to ten extra tons of grain, whereas an extra ton spread in the developed world will not produce more than a maximum of three extra tons because of the law of diminishing returns. While one ton more of fertiliser matters only marginally to those countries that already have the best yields, it matters vitally to those who are still far from self-sufficient in food production. (S. George, How the Other Half Dies, 1980, p.302).

In other words, even without any increase in the global use of chemical fertilisers, food production could be significantly expanded were such a resource to be more rationally distributed. In socialist society, free of the constraints of the marketplace, it would of course be entirely feasible to allocate resources in such a way as to ensure their most productive use. Underpinning this freedom would be the unity of common purpose, a unity forged in the basic structure of a society in which all had free and equal access to the wealth that society produced.

Secondly, socialist society would obviously want to halt and reverse the long-term decline in soil fertility by improving the humus content of the soil. Not only would this make for the more efficient absorption of chemical fertilisers but would help contain further topsoil loss as a result of erosion. Whilst this would involve more labour intensive work which would require a larger agricultural workforce it should be borne in mind that one of the greatest productive advantages of socialism over capitalism is that it would release a tremendous amount of labour for socially productive work. At least half of the workforce today are engaged in activities that, although vital to the operation of a modern capitalist economy would have no purpose in a society where production was directly and solely geared to the satisfaction of human needs.

Thirdly, and most importantly, as a society freed from the profit motive and competitive pressures "to produce as much cash as possible, as cheaply as possible, and as quickly as possible", socialism will be able to adopt agricultural methods which achieve a working compromise with nature (for, as explained, all agriculture unavoidably upsets the pre¬existing ecosystem to a greater or lesser extent) respecting the long-term considerations which ecological science teaches are vitally important.

Robin Cox (Britain)