In view of the current general election in which we are fielding a candidate in the Islington South and Finsbury constituency in London, and to give an idea of our approach to election campaigning generally, we publish below the speech given by our candidate in Swansea in last month's local elections to an open forum which was also addressed by the local Alliance and Green Party candidates.
We realise that in elections there is usually a strong emphasis on the candidate and his personality. However, our campaign has not followed that trend. Our concern is not to put across our candidate — myself — as somehow better than the other candidates. I'm not.
Our concern is to put forward our view of the society we live in and of how we can all peacefully work together to change that society for the better. We do not believe that it is particular politicians that are to blame for the problems that face us. but rather an unjust and irrational way of organising our society. So what we put forward is not a new set of leaders (there are already too many of those) but instead an alternative way of organising our community.
Local issues in their context
We also realise that, this being a local election. the other parties will be fighting it on local issues. Again our way is to go beyond this, because local issues when looked at closely are always part of wider issues and of wider causes. Swansea is not an island but part of a far wider society and the solutions of local issues are to be found in alternative ways of organising that wider society.
The stark reality of life today is that human needs and environmental needs come a poor second to the demands of money. The main motive for work activity today is primarily to make money and profits. The things we need are not produced, in the first instance, to satisfy our needs. They are produced for someone else's profit. And that is the only way that goods and services can be produced, for the means of producing wealth — the factories and the farms — are owned by a small minority of the population. Production can only take place in their interests. The factor which the owning minority will inevitably use in deciding whether production takes place is "how much will it cost?"
If they can afford to make something — if they will make money instead of losing money — then production will go ahead. But if profits are not made then production is stopped, regardless of human need for goods and services and regardless of the obvious consequence of higher unemployment.
The services in this area — health, housing and transport — can only be run to the extent that the amount of money available will permit them to run. Local provisions for care of the environment and for curbing pollution are only enacted as far as the profit system will allow.
The cut-back in the emergency unit of Singleton Hospital demonstrates this. There is clearly a vast human demand for this service. Yet it has been reduced in the ceaseless attempt to save money. A second, more recent example is the case of the Parc Beck allotments on the edge of the Uplands Ward. A recent letter in the Evening Post sums up the situation better than I can. G. Carr of Glanmor Road talks of the pleasure he has experienced growing food and making friends on his allotment. He also notes the variety of bird life on the allotments. Despite all this the allotments are to be sold off for development. The title to his letter — "Really Sick as Money Wins Again" — sums it up very well.
The solution: common ownership and free access
So what then is the solution? Well, we've nothing against the individual members of the owning minority. Most of them are in their positions through birth and they only remain in their wealthy positions because the majority — us — allow them to stay there. So what we're asking for is a new outlook from the majority, an outlook that challenges the assumptions we are brought up on: that those with power and wealth deserve what they have. That those without a lot of money should have to work either for those that have or for a coercive state bureaucracy that seeks to dominate our behaviour in all aspects of life. That we owe obedience to a nation that doesn't belong to us. That it is somehow fair and just, rational and natural, that the world is divided into employers and employees, those who buy people's labour power and those who have to sell it. We wish to challenge all these assumptions.
Instead of having a divided society — between those who possess and those who don't possess — why not organise society so that the whole idea of ownership, private or state, is redundant; where the means of producing our wealth are treated as objects and devices to be used for the common good and not for the interests of an owning minority or for the state; where the products of the factories and farms are treated as the common store of the whole community. A community where the aim is not the profit of a company or the state but the satisfaction of people's needs.
What this would mean in effect is a society without money or any other form of exchange, for in a society of common ownership how can you exchange money for something that already belongs to you? Remember that money itself is of no use. It is only pieces of paper and bits of metal. You can't fill up your petrol tank with money, or build houses with it. or make a meal out of it.
It is only in a property society where there is buying and selling — trading between owners that money has any use. As soon as we decide to treat the wealth of our society as belonging to a common store then money completely loses its purpose and becomes redundant. We instead have a system of free access where we all take freely from the common store according to our self-determined needs.
This also means that instead of being compelled to work for wages for an employer in activities that are sometimes anti-social, often boring and rarely satisfying, we rather choose work according to what suits ourselves best and what the community needs — not what some boss tells us to do to make a profit.
What I'm putting forward is a society that is based on co-operation and not, as it is at present, on competition. Where you have a system of property and buying and selling, you have an atmosphere of aggression. People compete with each other over jobs, wage levels, housing; there is a constant haggling over what is being bought and sold with each side trying to improve their own position.
At a higher level companies compete with each other for markets and profits. And at a still higher level states and nations compete — and often go to war — with each other to decide basically which country owns what, which country has access to important raw materials and which country can exploit an untapped market for goods or a cheap source of human labour. By taking away property and establishing communal ownership of the world's resources we can take away the source of all this conflict.
A co-operative society could work
A lot of people will initially claim that such a view of the future is utopian and impractical. That perhaps we don't take account of human nature which is of course lazy, greedy and uncaring.
Our answer to this point of concern is that we should be careful not to confuse human behaviour with human nature. It is surely not surprising that with our competitive society people sometimes do act in a selfish and anti-social manner. In a society that values everything by its monetary value — people included — it is not likely that you will achieve a harmonious society. The mentality created by the profit system creates people isolated from each other, people who regard other human beings as a means to satisfy their own ends. This. I think, is not a genuine example of human nature, but a perverted one. It is human nature responding to an economic system that thrives on greed and aggression. We do not ask people to change for the better. What we say is that instead of letting society control us and our behaviour, let us take control of our society and make it work for our benefit.
Some of the most perverse crimes in the world do not happen through human choice but because of the demands of the profit system. By United Nations figures 40,000 people die of starvation or of diseases related to malnutrition every day. At the same time many tons of foodstuffs are stored or even destroyed if they can't be sold. The people who desperately need the food don't receive it because they have no money in their pockets — they don't constitute a market for food.
Moving nearer home, there are many thousands of people in Swansea who are living in sub-standard accommodation — some are even homeless — yet if we look around the city you'll see lots of houses, sometimes newly built, that stand empty because people who require accommodation cannot afford to buy the property. And despite the fact that there is socially useful work that needs to be done in Swansea, much is left undone because it costs too much or because there is no profit in it for anyone. And the people who could work to improve things in the city don't get the chance to do so they are forced instead to struggle to live on state unemployment benefit.
This is not merely an irrational way of organising things but wholly unjust. The cooperative society that we argue is within our grasp is something that we call socialism. But it is clearly not to be confused with what the Labour Party advocates, which is merely a reformed version of our present society with the main emphasis on state ownership rather than private ownership. Likewise we regard the Soviet Union and its empire as being quite alien to the free access and common ownership that we stand for.
Act now to reject the profit system
The alternative of the co-operative society cannot be brought about by leaders, even elected ones. It can only be established when a majority of people refuse to give their consent to the present state of affairs and act to end it. And that refusal to give consent to the profit system starts at grass roots level.
One of the best ways of showing your disapproval for the present system of society is to stop voting for political parties that support it. And to start voting for a political party that advocates a complete change in the way we organise our affairs. In this election — in the Uplands Ward — you have that opportunity.
The Socialist Party is standing for people to say no to a society of private and state ownership and production for profit — and yes to a society of common ownership and production for people not profit. You have your chance. Don't waste it.
Gareth Thomas
For the record the result was: Dilley (Con) 2125, Richards (Lab) 1431, Ford (Alliance) 963, Howells (Green) 241, Thomas (Soc) 50.
No comments:
Post a Comment