In The Classroom (2004)

From the July 2004 issue of the News From Nowhere newsletter

We live in a world dominated by capitalism, and education is no exception. Recently there has been talk centering around the infiltration of capitalism into the classroom, with vouchers, corporate sponsorship, and capitalist hegemony saturating the curriculum, but few have addressed the structure of the classroom that is capitalist in nature.

The capitalist classroom functions as a preparatory marketplace that operates within the dual marketplace structure. This system of education acts to produce a raw material for capitalism proper through a series of hegemonic placement within the student. It does this through a system of exploitation not unlike Marx’s analysis of the capitalist system.

A close examination reveals the similarities to Marx’s critique and an opportunity for change. Within the classroom students come to acquire a commodity. This commodity is a certificate of completion. Once in the classroom, the student labors over a given period of time that they exchange for this certificate. A closer examination reveals an interesting fact of the capitalist classroom: that knowledge operates as labor. Here then we see the opportunity for exploitation. The educational capitalist creates the situation where the student labors on a given assessment, and all the knowledge that is not rewarded is that knowledge that is hegemonic in nature.

The fact that the capitalist classroom converts knowledge into labor is an important feature of capitalism in general; however, in the classroom this is not enough. Within education capitalism creates a system of machinery, standardized tests, that attempt to back the value of the money unit, grades, in the classroom as well as spread the problems and contradictions throughout the system through the fictitious capital grades and transcripts come to represent. This system of capitalist education creates a raw material out of the child through a multilevel system of exploitation that binds the student to the capitalism proper through dependence and cooperation. Over time the degree to which the student supports the system reveals the value inherent in them as a raw material to be shaped by capitalism proper. Those that fail are dropped out of the system of capitalism, only valuable through their failure and status as an underclass group of workers with no power to change the system. In the end, knowledge is converted to labor and the student is transformed into a raw material. Our only hope to transform this is to attack the system at its source of hegemony: the classroom.

TW (WSPUS)

100 Years of the Socialist Party of Great Britain (2004)

From the July 2004 issue of the News From Nowhere newsletter

We would like to congratulate the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB) on its 100th anniversary. The SPGB is the founding party of the World Socialist Movement of which both the SPC and WSPUS are members. It is not only a party of revolutionaries, but a party of working class intellectuals.

Formed by workers in London, the SPGB’s Principles sprang from the strands of Marxism closest to Marx. At its founding, a number of its most active members had studied Marxism under the tutelage of Marx’s daughter, Eleanor and her partner, Edward Aveling. Early issues of the Socialist Standard magazine contained interviews with Marx’s son-in- law, Paul Lafargue. Also influential was the work of William Morris and the Socialist League (which Eleanor Marx also participated in.) It is from Morris’ famous socialist utopian novel, News From Nowhere, from that book this newsletter takes its name.

But it was the founders of the SPGB, who gave the working class its most concise and liberatory vision of socialism. Building on the Socialist League’s work, they continued the socialist ideal that socialism will be not an continuation of capitalism, but a fundamentally different society. From Aveling, etc, they took a fundamental understanding of Marx’s critique of capitalism and expanded upon it to analyze new developments in the growth of capitalism.

And their analysis has been eerily correct. The SPGB was the first political grouping to understand the capitalist nature of the Bolshevik revolution. They critiqued Keynesian economics as it was developing in the 1930s, with the SPGBs main economics writer a post office worker. Again, the SPGB critiqued the development of the Labour Party’s Welfare State in post-world war 2 era. Arguing from a perspective of the liberation of the working class, rather than a political strategy, the SPGB explained why each of these methods of capitalism to control workers rebellion would fail. And in every case the SPGB’s analysis was correct.

That the SPGB has continued intact for 100 years, without major splits, without leaders, and democratically intact is another case in its favor. In this day of thuggish leftist parties and the bazillions of splits who each form their own 44th international, it is inspirational that a working class party of some size has done its work for a century. Who else can claim this?

F.N. Brill (WSP)

Why profits get priority (2004)

From the July 2004 issue of the News From Nowhere newsletter

Both supporters and opponents of the capitalist market system agree on one point — the central importance of profit to the way the system operates. So what are profits and why do they get priority?

What is Profit?

Most production for the market is organised nowadays not by private individuals but by business enterprises of one sort or another. This represents a change since the times of many of the famous defenders of the market system, such as Adam Smith. The aim of these businesses, whether large or small, whether owned by shareholders or the state, is to maximise the return on the capital invested in them.

This "return" is profit . At its most basic, this profit is the difference between the money a business obtains from the sale of its products and the money it has to spend on producing them. The rate of profit is the amount of profit made over a given period, normally a year, as a percentage of the monetary value of the assets of the business at the beginning of the period.

Ongoing Competition

Profit-seeking is not a matter of the greed of those running a business but is something imposed on them from outside by the competitive pressures of the market. All the businesses in a particular branch of production are in competition with each other to sell their products. This battle will be won by those firms that can provide an equivalent good at the lowest price.

This is largely a matter of having better technology — more performance machines and better methods of production that allow the same good to be produced at a lower cost. The extent to which a business can install such machinery and adopt such methods depends on the amount of profits it makes. In this way the market forces businesses to seek the maximum profits and then to invest as much of them as they can in improving and expanding their productive capacity.

Levelling Out

At the level of the economy as a whole market forces tend to bring about an equalization of the rate of profit in all branches of production. If a higher rate is being made in one branch this will tend to attract more capital into it as a result production will increase and the extra supply will cause prices to fall — bringing the rate of profit back towards the average or 'normal' level. If, on the other hand, the rate of profit is lower than average somewhere capital will tend to flow out of that branch production will fall, the lessened supply will drive prices up and the rate of profit will tend to rise to the average level.

Adam Buick (SPGB)

Obituary: Harry Morrison “Harmo” 1912-2004 (2004)

Obituary from the June 2004 issue of the World Socialist newsletter

Born in 1912, Harry Morrison became convinced of the case for socialism as a young man, having been influenced by an older brother who had heard the case for socialism in Toronto, Ontario. Morrison first visited Boston around 1937 but soon traveled west to California.

He returned to Boston in 1939 where he met his future wife Sally Kligman at the Boston Local Headquarters. The couple married in the fall of 1939 and lived in Boston for a couple of years. In 1941 they moved to Los Angeles and made contact with the comrades there. They had a daughter, Anita, in 1942. The family moved back to Boston in 1947, and both Harry and Sally were active members of Boston Local from then on.

Morrison wrote voluminously for the organization, sometimes anonymously but usually under the pen name ‘Harmo.’ He was a very frequent contributor to The Western Socialist, and, as a member of the WS’s Editorial Committee, he also edited many articles submitted by others. He had a real gift for articulating the socialist analysis.

He enjoyed debating, and was a frequent member of the WSP group who engaged in debates with various local university debaters. He was a fine outdoor speaker as well. He was a soap box orator on Boston Common during the 1940s and 50s, and even after the WSP stopped soap boxing as an organization, Morrison continued to speak less formally to small groups along the paths near the Tremont Street side of the Common; he continued this into the 1960s, putting the case for socialism tirelessly and articulately.

For about 10 years during the 1960s and 70s, the WSP had a radio program on WCRB Boston. Morrison was among the comrades who wrote scripts for this program, He also was one of the on air readers. When the Party decided, in 1974, to publish a pamphlet in commemoration of the 300th consecutive issue of The Western Socialist, thirty or so of Morrison’s radio essays became The Perspective for World Socialism — a pamphlet which is still being distributed today. Also during this period he was a guest on another AM radio show hosted by the late Haywood Vincent and on the Adam Burak show on an FM station as well. Morrison served for many years on the NAC, as well as on the Editorial Committee. It would be hard to overestimate his contribution to the socialist movement.

Harry Morrison developed heart problems when he was in late middle age, and, at the suggestion of his doctor, ‘retired’ from active work in the WSP. After this, he used his time to write three books, The Socialism of Bernard Shaw (published by McFarland & Co. in 1989 and which we still distribute), and two others for which he was unable to find a publisher, one about Jack London and the other about the Soviet Union. Sally Morrison died in 1987. Harry continued to live in his apartment but no longer participated in Party activities during this period, concentrating, instead, on research for his books and on enjoying his family which now included two grandchildren. He would always accept an invitation to a social gathering, however, and liked to visit with comrades visiting the area, most recently with SPGB Comrades Vic Vanni and Tony McNeil who spent some time in Boston in 2002.

Globalization. Sure, But Who For? (2004)

From the June 2004 issue of the World Socialist newsletter

The economic system we all live under is sometimes described as a system of production and distribution. It is certainly a system of production. In the earlier days of its long life, this system—capitalism—wasn't fully developed, didn't have either the materials or the technology to deliver anything like abundance to everyone. But since those days capitalism has developed an astonishing economic machinery a vast capacity for the production of foodstuffs and material goods, and for the worldwide distribution of these things—a stunning capacity for the worldwide movement of people and life needs. Thanks to this astonishing and probably limitless—machinery for fulfilling human needs and wants, we now have the potential to feed, clothe, and shelter the entire population of the world. And this situation embodies both paradox and promise.

The paradox lies in the conflict between capitalism's productive capacity and its perversely limited capacity for the distribution of the wealth it can create. It would be more accurate to call capitalism a system of restriction rather than distribution—a system that allows distribution only on condition that some money changes hands or promises to change hands. In the face of near-global hunger, for example, vast stores of rice (a nutritional staple for huge segments of the world population) are kept off

the market, hoarded because it cant be sold at an adequate profit. To put it another way, access to this and other foodstuffs is not just hindered but forbidden , and not on the grounds that there isn't enough to go around. (In fact, things like farm price supports are established to make sure that there wont be enough to go around—i.e., farmers receive payments from the state in exchange for producing less in order to keep prices up to an acceptable level.) The greatest productive capacity in the history of mankind is thus boxed in, hobbled, hindered, by the illogical and unnecessary system of distribution at its heart. Where, then, is the promise? The promise lies in the fact that if the caged-up giant of global productive capacities were unleashed, we could feed, clothe, house, educate, and entertain everyone on earth.

In other words, true socialism free access has become a practical possibility.

A seemingly limitless capacity for the production and distribution of goods lies ready to hand. If this capacity were used rationally, we could transform human life, the nature of cities, the structure of education, the possibilities for personal development, even the very substance of human relationships. We could rid ourselves once and for all of the phantom of scarcity, at least the illusory scarcities created by the dictates of an outdated economic system. Socialism is no longer a mere pipe dream, but a genuine human possibility.

For most human beings today, globalization means being controlled by remote and seemingly abstract economic forces deployed by self-seeking money—handlers and politicians somewhere far away. But if we free the productive power of globalization from the stranglehold of the iron fist of profit, we could transform what is now an ominous specter into the friendly giant its own nature yearns to become. (And what capitalism is doing to the physical world these days makes this transformation not just a fond wish, but a dire necessity for human survival!)

True socialism emerges at long last as a tremendous human possibility

TJ

An open letter to the workers of the world (2004)

From the May 2004 issue of the World Socialist newsletter

The world we live in is one that is fraught with contradictions. Some 800 million of our fellow humans are chronically malnourished and at least 1.2 billion will, on any one day, go without food.

At the same time, the governments of the world destroy of vast amounts of food to keep prices high. They stockpile food until it rots and pay farmers to take land out of production. Why? Because the laws of supply and demand insist that you cannot eat unless they can make money from it.

600 million people are homeless, many sleeping on the streets, yet there is no shortage of vacant buildings and certainly no shortage of building materials. Again, we find that the market not only dictates who does and does not eat, but who does and does not have a home.

Over one billion have no access to clean water, while its growing scarcity will cause many wars this coming century. Meanwhile, the technology exists to desalinate millions of gallons each day and to set up treatment plants capable of cleaning the dirtiest water. However, there is not much profit in selling something which covers five-sixth’s of the planet, so the investment never comes.

Millions of children die each year of curable diseases, we still await breakthroughs in medical science. But there are literally thousands of scientists around the world employed in weapons programs – paid by their respective governments to devise new methods of murder, including germ warfare.

The list is as endless as it is insane. At every turn we see how capitalism destroys us physically and emotionally. At every turn we come smack up against the law of our age – “can’t pay, can’t have”. At every turn we find capitalism infecting all it comes into contact with.

Capitalism has enabled some fantastic technological feats. Demands of war sparked a race for rocket technology that has explored the furthest limits of the solar system. The search for oil and other resources has plumbed the deepest oceans and map out the ocean beds. We can split the atom, map the human genome, and perform amazing organ transplants. Nothing, it seems, is beyond us. Our capabilities are awe-inspiring. Sadly, in spite of the technology at our disposal, the never-ending demand for profits means that we have entered the 21st century with us every social ill that plagued the previous century. War, hunger, poverty, disease, and homelessness are still with us, and are rooted in the way we continue to organize our society. The irony is we are already capable of solving the major problems that face us. And we have been capable of solving them for quite some time – just not within capitalism.

Over 20 years ago, the World Health Organization announced that the ability existed to feed a world population twelve times its (then) size. However, the requirements of profit everywhere act as a stumbling block not only to the full use of the productive forces, but also to the full and unhindered use of science and technology in the service of humanity.

Socialists long ago realized that the problems we face are in fact social problems, because they have their roots in the way our world is organized for the production of profit, not need.

When you think about it,you’ll be hard pressed to find any aspect of our lives that is not subordinated to the requirements of profit. And this is the case the world over.

What is to be done?

If this is the case, then what can we do about it? Real socialists believe the only way forward lies in abolishing the money/wages/profit system that we know as capitalism and establishing a world of free access to the benefits of human knowledge. Then can we assert control over our own destiny, where we can enjoy a world in which there is no waste, pollution, want or war.

Since 1904, the World Socialist Movement has been advocating the establishment of such a system: a global society based upon the common and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing the things people need to live.

We advocate a world without borders, social classes, leaders, governments and armies. A world without money or wages, exchange, buying and selling. Where people can give freely of their abilities and take according to their own self-defined needs. A global system in which each person has a free and democratic say in how their world is run.

Human nature no barrier

Many people agree that such a world should be a beautiful place to live in. But they believe that “human nature” will always be a barrier, because humans are “by nature” greedy, selfish and aggressive. It is apparent what they are describing is not innate human nature, but behavior exhibited under particular circumstances. A human behavior shaped by the kind of system people are brought up in. Nobody is born as a racist or a patriot, as a bigot or with a belief in gods. Nobody is born a murderer, a robber or a rapist, and our alleged greed for money is no more a function of the natural human thought process than were slavery or witch burning.

The ideas of working people have been usually been acquired secondhand, passed down from the ruling class above us. Because the class which owns and controls the productive process, they also control the society’s intellectual life. Anti-social behavior is influenced by social circumstances at any given time, i.e., when we are poor, depressed, lonely, angry and frustrated.

Those who produce the world’s wealth are given educations which makes free-thought difficult. Our upbringings conditions us to accept without question the ideas of our “leaders”, bosses and superiors. The education system is geared to perpetuate the rule of an elite, insofar as it never encourages children to question and take issue with the status quo.

We believe that humans are by nature cooperative. For example look when communities are faced with the disasters, our humanity shines through and we “pull together” and cooperate to get through. There are millions of cases of people donating their blood and organs to complete strangers, sacrificing their lives for others, of people giving countless hours of their free time to charitable work – all of this without financial incentive.

Today, world capitalism threatens the human race with extinction. The reason this obnoxious system survives is because we accept it. Rest assured, no gene inclines us to defend the profit system.

Socialism hasn’t been tried

Many tell us that socialism has been tried and has failed. They then point to the former Soviet Union, to China, Cuba, etc., etc. But what was passed off as socialism was in fact state capitalism. A glance at these countries reveals they never abolished the wage system. Workers were exploited to support ruling classes and and those rulers outlawed dissent. They produced only profitable to do so, traded according to the dictates of international capital and were prepared to go to war to defend their economic interests.

Moreover it was believed that socialism could be established by force and that socialism could exist in one country. The Bolsheviks maintained that the revolution could only be carried out by a minority vanguard party and that workers were unable to understand the case for change.

Since 1904, our movement has maintained that socialism, like capitalism, can only exist on a global scale. Socialism will only come about when a majority of the world’s people want it and are prepared to organize for it peacefully and democratically. No vanguard can establish socialism – as Marx said: “the

emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself”.

We can do it

Agreeing with Marx, the WSM believes that there are two classes in society – the working class and the capitalist class, each determined by its relationship to the means of living. The capitalist class own and control the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth, and live as parasites off profits, rent and interest. The working class, own little more than our ability to sell our physical and mental abilities to the highest bidder.

The working class runs the world and it is important to grasp this fact. It is we who fish the oceans and tend the forests and till the land and plantations. It is we who build the cities and railroads, the bridges and roads, the docks and airports. It is we who staff the hospitals and schools,who empty the bins and go down the sewers. It is workers who produce everything society needs and provides all of its services.

The capitalists and their governments have no monopoly on our skills and abilities. These belong to us. Most inventions and improvements are the result of those who do the actual work thinking up easier ways of completing a task. The result of ideas being passed down, each one improving the techniques of the previous generations. If those who work so much in a world hobbled by the profit motive, then how much more are we capable of providing in a world free from profits?

Capitalism must go

We must admit that capitalism has raised some potentials of humanity. It is now quite possible to provide a comfortable living for every human on the planet. But if we follow the capitalist trajectory, we’re in for some pretty troublesome times.

But capitalism is a barrier to the fair and needed use of the world’s productive forces. In a world of potential abundance, profit imposes widespread artificial scarcity. Billions of humans are consigned to a life of abject poverty, whilst millions more live lives filled with uncertainty.

Our ability to imagine has brought us from the days when our ancestors chipped away at the first tools. Is it really such a huge leap of the imagination to envision a social system that can take over from the capitalist order?

Do we really need leaders deciding our lives for us? Do we need governments administering our lives when what is needed is the administration of the things? Must every decision be decided by what is the most profitable? Many don’t think so and have mobilized to confront what they perceive as major problems with capitalism.

There has been a worldwide backlash against globalization, corporate power and other iniquities of capitalism. Everywhere where the world’s elite have assembled, they have been met with protests that have attracted hundreds of thousands. Demonstrations in Seattle, etc. have fueled ongoing debate on the nature of capitalism. And thousands of articles have been published that explore the alternatives offered by the anti-globalisation movement.

It is now clear is that the anti-globalisation movement cannot replace capitalism with any real alternative social system. It simply is a loose coalition of different groups, each pursuing their own agenda. Some the reform of international institutions. Others call for fairer trading conditions. All, however, fail to address the root cause of the problems of capitalism.

Capitalism cannot be reformed in the interests of the world’s billions, because reform does not address the basic contradiction between profit and need. Governments cannot be depended upon because they only act as an executive of capitalism. An expansion of democracy, while welcome, makes little difference if candidates can only offer variations on the same policies.

Capitalism must be abolished if we as a species are to thrive. No amount of reform, however great, will work. Change must be global and irreversible. It must involve all of us. We need to erase borders and frontiers; to abolish states and governments and false concepts of nationalism. We need to abolish our money systems, and with it buying, selling and exchange. And in place of this we need to establish a different global social system – a society in which there is common ownership and true democratic control of the Earth’s natural and industrial resources. A society where the everyday things we need to live in comfort are produced and distributed freely and for no other reason than that they are needed. Socialism.

It is not an utopian fantasy to suggest we can live in such a world. We certainly have the know-how. All that is missing is the will – the desire for change that can make that advance possible; a belief in ourselves as masters of our own destiny; a belief that it is possible to fashion a world in our own interests.

Socialists build that new world, by building the understanding of what Socialism will be like. And we need your help. Socialism needs your writing, organizing and artistic skills. Please join us.

JB/FNB

Blogger's Note:

A version of this article also appeared in the May 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard. I'm not altogether sure which is the original version.

Frank Girard: In Memorial (2004)

Obituary from the April 2004 issue of the World Socialist newsletter

. . . I was deeply saddened to hear last month of the passing of Frank Girard, the long time editor of the publication. Frank stopped publishing the Discussion Bulletin in July 2003 citing his age and the increasing importance of the internet, which he felt made publications like the Discussion Bulletin less and less relevant. He planned continued involvement in the socialist movement. His death at 77 is a felt loss to his many friends and comrades.

Frank worked as a machine operator and later a high school English teacher, but more important was his membership from the 1940s on in the Socialist Labor Party, the organization of followers of American socialist leader Daniel De Leon. Frank ran for political office several times in Michigan, but argued he was "running against capitalism." Unsurprisingly, he was never elected.

In the early 1980s, as part of a seemingly endless series of schisms in the SLP, Frank was expelled from the party along with much of the Grand Rapids section (in 1991 he published a short history of the party along with another former Socialist Labor Party member Ben Perry). In 1983, Frank began to publish the Discussion Bulletin.

The Discussion Bulletin was unlike many other socialist publications in that it was simply a forum for discussion. Its contents were, aside from Frank's editorial remarks and occasional contributions, entirely from its readership. It was also a model of regularity for socialist publications, appearing every two months like clockwork for twenty years. Frank's other strength was that he was genuinely committed to discussion and debate in what he called the non-market socialist sector, in which he included De Leonists, World Socialists, council and left communists, and class struggle anarchists among others. Throughout its existence the Discussion Bulletin featured, unedited, contributions from all of the above sectors. And although he never completely broke with De Leonist politics and all its incumbent weaknesses, but which had played such an important role in his life, Frank was also prepared to learn from discussion, and admit when he was wrong. Frank was a non-sectarian in the best sense of the word . . .

The cessation of publication by the Discussion Bulletin left a hole. Frank's passing leaves a much larger one.

Neil F. /Red & Black Notes

Real Therapy (2004)

A Short Story from the April 2004 issue of the World Socialist newsletter

Please, psychotherapist, I am tired of talking, talking, talking about my problems, about my narcissistic father, and about my feelings. What I want is to have more fun in my life. What I want is to take off some time to see the world. What I want is to be sitting in your chair telling you for a change what would really make a change!

For a start, it gets really depressing living in this world. You cant turn on the damn TV without hearing about more people dying in wars abroad and in our inner cities, about kids cruising their territories guns in hand waiting to blow the brains of other kids in the wrong place at the wrong time, about young women too young to even know about sex prostituting themselves or getting raped by their step-fathers. You can’t even go for a walk without smelling foul rivers too filthy to fish in and without guiltily admiring gorgeous sunsets painted by the refractions of light in poisonous gas. And that doesn’t even touch upon how depressing it is to go to work let alone just sit in traffic going to work. Who can rest from the year of working in weekly chunks of two days each, and annual chunks of two weeks each?

Who would not be sad? Who would not get anxious? Who would not feel angry? Who would not find it really hard to concentrate, to focus in class, to keep your mind on the job, who would really be brimming with joy? I mean, joy comes in little places in the modern world, doesn't it? We look for fun in our sex lives (although the stress of society reduced to couples raising the worlds children can take a toll on that sex life), in escapist movies and video games, in lucky getaways for a few hours or days from the congestion of the city and the congestion of our lives. But that is the whole point, isn't it? We try to find meaning and joy elsewhere , in a splitting off of our life, not in the entity of the life itself. And here you are teaching me to cope better with all this crap. And there what can you do, therapist? I mean, here you are trying to change my feelings, as though they were disconnected from my being. If life is depressing, violent, disturbing, imposed, ordered, priced, frightening, lonely, then why are you trying to change me, and not change how we live?

And yet, my life is not much different from yours. We live in the same city, we eat the same food, we visit the same parks, our kids go to the same schools, we read the same papers. Yet here I am sitting in front of you. I am talking to you because you got a degree in therapy. You studied psychology, social work, counseling.You are allowing me to bathe in your understanding and your empathy at a price. Would you be as empathic for free? Would you work with me to make this a better world or would you simply give advice and your listening time for the price the insurance company is willing to pay? How empathic can it really be if this is your job ?

Psychotherapist, what I really want you cant really give, can you? I want freedom. I want to feel that this neighborhood is really mine. I want a world in which there are no wars, no prices, no people bossing me around, no children dying for lack of food, no traffic jams, no junk food, no boxes they call homes, no homeless, no lack of anything for lack of money.

I don't want to think different, feel different; I want to stay just the way I am until the world is better. And when the world is better, then maybe I wont have to feel this way again.

Dr. Who, 

Chicago

The Time for Socialism is Now . . . (2004)

From the April 2004 issue of the World Socialist newsletter

When our ancestors left the safety and security of the trees for the vagaries of the plains, they were embarking on a long, subconscious, and often painful journey to attain mastery over the earth's resources. The goal of countless millennia of sweat and endeavour, was to create a system of production so vast and efficient that it could satisfy the material needs of all mankind. The method used to achieve this goal was a series of modes of production, each succeeding the last as a natural improvement until it became obsolete and a barrier to further development and gave way to new forces and relations of production.

The primitive beings first arriving on the plains developed co-operation, speech and a culture to set those forces in motion. Their communistic way of life produced a stable, egalitarian society of harmony, but its daily search for the means of life left little time for progress. Tool refinement and the new use of materials were painfully slow and communication of ideas to outside groups was virtually non-existent. Mastery over grasses and animals heralded the age of agriculture and the division of labour so the few were able to produce all the food and the many were freed up to accelerate advances in tool technology and uses, in building, crafts and cultural institutions. This new way of life also produced wealth in the form of a surplus, creating classes of men for the first time - those who took hold of the wealth, the exploiting class, and the producers, the exploited class. Towns, cities and empires arose and with it the need for free labour to carry out the many tasks of society and to build the massive public works projects. As the great empires rose and fell, each greater and more wide-spread than the last, culminating in the Roman empire, the impediments, or fetters, as Marx says, of the slave system began to hold progress back. The break up of the final slave empire, brought the new system, the feudal system and a settled agrarian life. The exploiting aristocracy, the holders of land, had the exploited class, the peasants at their disposal, and a new mode of production was in place. As knowledge and skills developed further, and ever- increasing amounts of wealth found their expression in the growing mercantilism, the aristocrats came into conflict with these new owners of wealth. The ensuing struggle for the control of parliament in England, and the ability to maintain the laws that upheld the old system or create new laws to usher in a new era, was eventually won by the holders of capital, the bourgeoisie, and thus the capitalist mode of production came into being. The industrial revolution, establishing the factory system, and the simultaneous harnessing of science to its purpose, brought fantastic increases in productive capacity.

Each system has produced improvements in the production of the means of life, and all, except primitive communism, have brought relations of production that engendered a class system. Now that capitalism has spread almost entirely over the earth and brought an abundance of goods, we have, for the first time, arrived at a state where everyone's needs can be satisfied. Incredibly, they are not. Today, among an abundance of goods and the capacity to complete the job started by our distant ancestors, we have millions dying of starvation, the effects of malnutrition, easily curable diseases and the majority of our planet living in poverty and insecurity. There can be only one reason for this apparent contradiction. The profit system itself has become a fetter to the ultimate goal of providing for all. The profit motive stands in the way of alleviating all human misery. The profit system prevents the natural, worldwide progress that would occur if workers were free to pursue their natural abilities and share their knowledge. In short, profit bars the way to the next, higher level of production. Fellow workers, the time has come for the establishment of the social ownership of the means of production and the social distribution of the wealth produced, by, and in the interests of, all the people. The time has come to complete our journey

JA, 

Ontario

Here’s Capitalism . . . (2004)

From the March 2004 issue of the World Socialist newsletter

The area of Mid Hudson valley in upstate New York where I make my home is rural, scenic, and beautiful. There is precious little industry, so most jobs are low paying, service jobs because we do have a strip with Mc Donalds, Wal-Mart and their ilk. Recently, tourists have been coming, so restaurants, antique stores, and other services have followed. Unfortunately, we also have a quarry with enough limestone, which if extracted 24/7, would produce the makings of cement for the next 100 years. The previous owners of a now defunct cement plant were Canadian and the name ST. Lawrence Cement is still used although the company was gobbles up by a giant Swiss banking and corporate conglomerate. They plan to build an enormous new plant mile from out only sizable population center (8,000), which will be bigger than the town itself. It will spew toxic dust out of an 800 ft. stack with will create a 6 mile plume. Three schools, a hospital, and few senior residential facilities are with a mile radius.

The corporation has been floating folksy ads and passing out wads of money to churches and town boards, giving away bumper stickers and running carnivals with free hotdogs and kiddie rides. They also lie. The workers who will suffer most from this monstrosity have been convinced that it will bring jobs. There will be one job. Because the plant is so hi-tech (but not high enough to meet Swiss environment standards), only 35 workers will be needed. Thirty-four of them will be transferred from an old plant about 30 miles away which will close. There is a local opposition group (www.friendsofthehudson.com) without which the project would already be up and running. It is presently traveling through the bureaucracy of New York State, money in hand. This is truly capitalism in action.

EP, 

Upstate NY

Borders- Who needs them? (2004)

From the March 2004 issue of the World Socialist newsletter

The Spanish word for a national border is La Frontera. Often these arbitrary partitions are emphasized with different types of walls meant to keep people out. Some contemporary examples are, for instance, the now toppled Berlin W all, and the current wall Israel is in the process of building in order to divide Palestinians and Israelis.

The border that divides the U.S.A. and Mexico also contains sections of wall and fence at different points along La Frontera. In spite of those walls and numerous trigger-happy law enforcement agencies that patrol them, thousands of Latinos risk life and limb each year to cross into the US.

The compulsion is simple. It hinges on economics and the struggle to survive. If the economic tables were turned, US citizens would do the same thing. Human beings will, after all, brave many dangers in order to make a better life for themselves and their loved ones.

Each year, however, hundreds are killed trying to make this arduous journey. Some are shot to death, but many more die from exposure trying to cross the desert lands in the region.

A recent news story in Primer Impacto showed the section of the wall in Tijuana Mexico. It had coffins nailed to it, and each coffin had the number of people who had perished for each year inscribed on the lid, 340 in 2002, 400 in 2003. A sad reminder of mans' inhumanity to man.

We often hear of illegals supposedly taking jobs from native-born workers, or that they steal medical and educational services at tax payers expense. Sometimes we even hear the idea being tossed about of amnesty for illegals. These are preposterous notions, for why should any person be denied the right to be able to work, to be educated, or have access to medical services? By what right or reason can amnesty be granted a human being of this earth who is a natural component of it anyway?

Only the system that puts profits before human life creates these arbitrary partitions and all of their life- threatening lunacies.

We could easily do away with these boundaries though, by abolishing the capitalist system that gives rise and legitimacy to them, and replacing it with socialism. The democratic ownership and administration of the means of production and the free access to all goods and services would mean an end to nation states, borders, poverty, war, and pollution. It would amount to a true amnesty for everyone on the planet. People could then travel and live anywhere they wanted without having to risk their life to do it. Such travel would only be motivated by the individual desire, however, and would not be coerced by an inhumane anti-human economic system.

Lets work for a world without borders.

Gulf Coast Red (TX)

Chicken Little Politics? (2004)

From the March 2004 issue of the World Socialist newsletter

I am addicted to reading political journals of all stripes, left, right and center, as well as socialist. As I came to the positions of the World Socialist Movement, I began reading left newspapers with a new understanding. I now see a nearly constant hysterical pitch- Doom is coming! Fascism! Economic Collapse!! Environmental Degradation!!! Repent sinners, the end is near, join our vanguard, coalition and/or the affinity group and save the world through action, action, action . . .

But is the left (which is distinct from socialism) advocating practical action or perpetual motion? There have been plenty of perpetual motion machines invented, and they are as successful as the left has been, doomed to entropy. In racing around posing countless reforms, transitional demands, desperate for any contact with the working class, the left has forgotten what it is they thought they wanted in the first place.

Instead of seeing that the revolution will come from a profound change in social consciousness, they substitute adrenaline headlines to try and scare folks into party activities, which aim for reforms, which they think will slowly raise consciousness. But the problem is that working for reforms can succeed only if we don’t talk about, or at best downplay, talking about the “s” word.

A friend of mine in my union is active in a post-trotskyist group that does many good union activities in the US and Canada. They teach workers how to take back their unions, fight the boss on the shop floor, etc. For 30 years they done very good, practical, day-to-day union work. My friend has told me that some founders, after all these years of working for these reforms for the workers, have confessed to him they are disappointed that they never, ever, get to talk about their ‘socialism’.

Likewise the doddering Communist Party USA acts as the loyal left wing of the Democratic Party. Both parties are active in much practical work, have lots of followers. But when the need for socialism gets left behind, what is the practical consequence? You maintain capitalism and the problems you are trying to stop.

Throughout the 100 years of the existence of the World Socialist Movement, we have refused to play the game of chicken little politics. In the 1930s, when the left from Social-democrats to anarchists were hysterically calling that the economy was about to collapse, and that would be the end of capitalism, we said no, while the economy may or may not collapse, that doesn’t mean that capitalism will. Then and now we will tell you that there may or may not be fascism around the bend, and environmental collapse may occur or maybe the lions will sleep with the lambs.

We’re socialists, not fortune tellers, what we do know is that capitalism is based on the exploitation of workers. As workers understand that, become conscious, we will have the ability to create a new world free of the inhuman demands of a system driven by profits.

Eugene Debs once said, “It's better to ask for what you want and not get it, than ask for what you don’t want and get it.” If you really want socialism, join the World Socialist Party. Ask for what you do want.

F.N. Brill