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The Castro regime in Cuba, and the ex-pats in Miami have been using a child as a public relations weapon. Both are reprehensible.
They have made Elian Gonzalez a pawn in their battles. The child's welfare is only a bargaining chip. The press has accommodated the protagonists, and given Elian a few months of fame (which he never asked for).
The apparent issue is whether he'll be better off in the U.S. with relatives, or in Cuba with his father. We are asked, and the U.S. courts are asked, to make a decision, supposedly in the interests of the child. The child, just like most children in custody battles, will lose.
The Socialist Party of Canada is not going to support either side, because it is too late for a good solution for Elian. Instead of trying to decide which of two unsatisfactory options should be forced upon the child, the Socialist Party of Canada has a completely different approach.
The best way to solve problems is to prevent them from occurring. Instead of supporting the competition between states that is inherent in class divided society, socialists work to end the existence of states by building a society in which human needs will be satisfied. That includes the need of children to a life without poverty and fear.
Socialists recognize that such a society won't happen tomorrow, but also recognize that as long as people prefer to concentrate upon the impossible task of trying to solve the billions of problems in capitalist society that are caused by capitalism, the problems will continue to arise, and the solution will never result.
We leave unsatisfactory resolutions to the problems caused by capitalism to those who want a never-ending stream of heartwrenching problems. Socialists work to end the stream of problems. The more people who choose to join us, the fewer who will be drawn into supporting the people-who-use-people to harm children like Elian Gonzalez.
The Socialist Party of Canada is certainly not going to argue with the quote, because the crumbs from the table of the rich is what the working class, worldwide, gets. In Zimbabwe, the working class gets even fewer crumbs than in Canada. It is no surprise, therefore, that there are lots of people willing to join in the farm occupations.
Land claimed by colonists in Zimbabwe, Canada, and probably every other inhabited area colonized, was stolen from the previous inhabitants, who themselves may have stolen it from others. Whether or not there were fence posts or survey markers there at the time is not relevant. Whether someone actually lived year-round on the land is also not relevant. What is relevant is that if an individual or group used the land, rivers, etc., even as nomads, and then were denied access by another individual, group, or state enforcing sole access or ownership, then the land was stolen.
The World Socialist Movement does not exclude similar primitive accumulation in Europe from that analysis. It appears that this theft was and is a global occurrence, especially prevalent beginning the rise of feudalism, and still today under capitalism.
During the era of capitalism the theft has matured and the theft of the labour of the working class has, by and large, supplanted the theft of land as the primary means of wealth accumulation for the upper class.
In Zimbabwe, President Mugabe has a serious problem. After 20 years in power, he and his ZANU-PF party may lose the coming election, and that is the most important problem any politician can face. So he has made it quite clear that he supports his followers occupying the large farms owned by whites, and killing a few of the white owners. He doesn't seem to mind the violence against the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). And he doesn't have a problem with his supporters intimidating the black workers on the white-owned farms. The Daily Telegraph published an article by David Blair noting:
Tens of thousands of black Zimbabweans are falling victim to a reign of terror enforced by a handful of fanatical supporters of President Robert Mugabe, the shock troops of his regime.If Mugabe intended to, and could, establish socialism in Zimbabwe, the World Socialist Movement would support the non-violent overthrow of the capitalist farm owners. Even if that were the case, socialists would not support the violence that Mugabe and ZANU-PF are promoting. But socialism is not on the ZANU-PF agenda. The farm occupations and widespread intimidation is an electoral fraud designed to re-elect ZANU-PF and Robert Mugabe.Beatings, intimidation, blood-curdling threats and even murder have been the daily experience of the black workers on hundreds of occupied farms.
Mugabe says he won't make any effort to end the land-grab. Socialists expect that if ZANU-PF is re-elected, things will change. Perhaps the current owners won't get the land back, but the likelihood that the average people of Zimbabwe will end up as real owners is tiny. When the state's position on the occupations changes after the election, the occupiers will leave or disappear in pools of their own blood. Getting Mugabe elected is one thing, running a capitalist country is another, and the rules of capitalism (state-capitalism perhaps, if the state confiscates the land) do not permit the common ownership that ZANU-PF and Mugabe may be letting the occupiers delude themselves into believing is imminent. The best the average Zimbabwean will get is a tiny, uneconomic bit of land.
Common ownership is the solution to the poverty of the working class in Zimbabwe and everywhere else. Robert Mugabe is not likely to want that solution, and is even less likely to be able to deliver. Common ownership of the means of production (factories, land, raw resources, etc.) will require that the vast majority decide to end its own exploitation, end the creation of wealth for a small minority, and democratically and peacefully take ownership of the wealth stolen from us.
When the vast majority make that decision, then there will be no need to attack the human beings who happen to have been members of the capitalist class. The only violence will be from those opposed to the democratic will of the vast majority, and minimal self-defense measures required to protect the majority from any misguided anti-social counter-revolution by the small minority.
Robson writes that leftists "expect everyone to obey laws they like (like speech codes) but not laws they don't." Robson is, in his basic claim of a double standard, correct.
The Socialist Party of Canada has no intention of falling into the trap of acquiescing to the belief that every protester in Seattle, Washington, and in the many other Left protests around the world, is out to riot.
But, the question of a double standard is important. How can one trust the Left when it claims outrage at Rightist violence, but seems to accept Leftist violence? We should expect that in the supposedly new society for which the Left is working, the Left will continue to see no problem in accepting violence against those it portrays as opponents. If the approach it uses now works for the Left, why expect it to change? The Left and the Right both promote the "rule of law" when it is advantageous to them and are quite willing to cast it aside when it isn't.
It is important, however, not to lose sight of the systemic disenfranchisement which can sometimes be blamed for this double standard. The system itself has no problem in condoning violence when it suits the system. The system has no problem in suppressing free speech when it suits the system. The system has no problem in restricting access to the media by opponents. The system tends, in its own self-serving interests, to promote the idea that in some cases -- when it suits -- that violence and silencing opposition is just. It is doubly important not to ignore the immense power of the system's coercive and propaganda forces.
Capitalism, and any class divided society, is good at ensuring that opposing views are marginalized.
That leads people into the streets in frustration and sometimes despair. Frustration at being shut out of decision making, frustration at being denied access to the means of communicating with the community. Despair that things are getting worse and that a point of no return may be approaching. Despair that people are suffering tremendously around the world. The protesters hope, perhaps, that their actions and conviction will stir people into action. It is not always clear exactly what action they want, or how their protests relate to that action, or that the action is reasonable and practical.
They hope that the media will give them attention and a chance to state their case to a large audience. This is a crucial aspect of all recent street protest.
After over a century of protest, the Left and Right haven't accomplished enough to get past the protest stage.
Capitalism has always been flexible enough so that when the protests become too severe, too widely supported, capitalism will reform itself to maintain its vitals, by making enough of a change to deflate the protests. But capitalism has managed quite well to maintain itself, and therefore it continues to generate problems for the vast majority of humanity.
The large, and sometimes violent (no matter if the blame be laid to the protesters or the state and its coercive arms) street protests show that the working class is not completely asleep, that the class struggle, recognized or not, continues. It sends messages to both the capitalist class and to the working class. Capitalism generally seems to get the right message. It changes when absolutely necessary, and preserves itself. The working class gets mixed messages.
We, in the working class, see that there are thugs (Left, Centre, Right, drunk, and nutcase) willing to commit violence to further their cause. We see them (and others too) get beaten up and arrested. We see them hurt other human beings. We see them destroy useful goods which our class has built. We see capitalism do exactly the same things, and worse, day in and day out. We see little or no change that benefits our class or us as individuals.
The Left and the Right use the self-defense argument to justify illegal and violent action they take. Socialists are not going to suggest that self-defense is somehow wrong. Nor are socialists going to pretend that somebody has to be actually whacking you on the head with a billy club, or shooting at you, in order to make self-defense reasonable. In reality, it is much better to act in self-defense before it becomes a life-or-death situation.
But this indirect self-defense must be reasonable, it should be likely to produce satisfactory results. Street protests have failed to meet that criteria.
Socialists recognize that there are serious problems in society (which go far deeper than the Left, Centre and Right understand). Socialists recognize the importance of getting information to the people who need it to make decisions. The information uncovered by the Left and Right wings of capitalism can be useful in understanding what is really going on, and when it doesn't suit the system, it tends to be hard to find. Everyone should recognize that the media and the state and the system itself, have no interest in real change. These interests promote capitalism, perhaps slightly reorganized, but capitalism nonetheless.
Capitalism has certain rules that the Left, Centre and Right, might like to change, but they have no intention (or at least do not act to) end the system which inherently demands and enforces those rules. The Left and Right are huge. They accomplish little. There is a better approach than street protest. Socialists promote understanding.
Socialists do not delude ourselves that we have access to the rest of the working class comparable to capitalism's propaganda machine, but we use it as we can. That lack of access limits the ability for average people to hear what we have to say. But capitalism hasn't shut us down completely. The socialist case can still be heard by those who want to hear about a real, practical solution to the problems they face in society.
The Left and the Right, however, have done a good job in deluding people into believing that their approaches to running capitalism (sometimes they even call their approach "socialism") can solve the problems. The Left sometimes blames "capitalism", more often some particular aspect of capitalism, but never does the Left show a practical alternative. The Right is no better. The protesters are for capitalism, be it Left, Centre, or Right, have always failed to solve the problems, and there is every reason to believe that they always will, because they do not address the underlying cause.
The Left, Centre and Right have succeeded in propagating a much more important delusion, though. They have deluded most people into believing that socialism has something to do with some failed Leftist "solution". They have helped to convince people that they should not even listen to what socialists have to say. They have succeeded in demonizing understanding, preferring the superficial. They have succeeded by making capitalism the only system that most people can imagine. They have been the thought police of capitalism, limiting the debate to a single question: how can we make capitalism work better?
They have done a very good job of ensuring that few ask a much more important question: Why don't we just replace the cause of the problems -- capitalism -- with a social organization which will solve them?
It is worthwhile getting back to the "rule of law". Today that implicitly means the rule of the laws designed to maintain capitalism. So the laws do just that. As long as the majority acquiesces to capitalism, it is reasonable to ask that everyone support those rules.
There is a long history of civil disobedience which suggests, perhaps demands, that when those who oppose the laws have no other democratic way to overturn "bad" laws, that breaking them is appropriate.
That situation does not seem to apply to the recent protests in Washington and Seattle. Most of the protesters have the ability to vote for a politicians of their choice, to run capitalism. The leftist protesters apparently don't like the choices made through the electoral process. It is undemocratic to seek to overturn those results by street protest. They also have the ability to vote for a system which will solve the problems. The vast majority of them do not use that ability.
The World Socialist Movement claims that when the majority really wants to solve the problems, they will vote for the solution: socialism. Until then, those interested in democracy should be working to make this democratic solution a reality. Street protests about the failures of capitalism, and violence, do not help to build the democratic solution we call socialism.
The time, effort, and money, devoted to the Left, Centre and Right, which have not solved the problems, would, if directed to promoting understanding of social reality, put the movement for a solution into the public eye. Instead it is wasted on dead end failures including getting people beaten up and arrested in street protests, or preventing opponents from speaking their opinions.
Capitalism is winning. The protesters are losing. Socialism is necessary.
They won't mention those earning less than $31,753. They won't mention those who freeze to death in the streets of Montreal and Toronto in the winter. They may even tell us that an average family income of $14,500 for these families is quite adequate if only they would budget carefully.
StatsCan says that the average poverty rate (they call it the "low income" cutoff income) is 25% for all city residents. No part of the country appears to have been able to eliminate poverty, even though every government (or at least every political party running for government) pretends they can solve the problem. The bad news is that poverty in the cities increased by 34% between 1990 and 1995. The "good" news is that poverty outside of metropolitan areas increased by 18%. More "good" news is that only 1.3 million children younger than 15 lived substantially below average standards, and fortunately the International Year of the Child has passed with nobody getting too upset about child poverty.
If you don't want to be poor, the study shows that you should avoid being born to native parents, or fleeing poverty or persecution somewhere else. Those who've made those mistakes suffer disproportionately. Almost 56% of natives in the cities are poor, and 62% of refugees fall into that category.
This provides an "enemy" to point to. If only the natives and refugees would stop being lazy, shiftless bums starving in the cities, all would supposedly be well. Blaming the victims is always rather popular. It deflects any suggestion that "normal" people could suffer poverty. It distracts from criticism of the social system itself. It makes people worry that there are desperate people out there, which atomizes the population, keeping us afraid of our neighbours, or those on the wrong side of the tracks.
These propaganda tricks and lies try to keep us from uniting to end poverty.
The author of the study figures that labour markets improved in the last half of the 1990s, but social supports have been cut and job creation uneven across the country. Many low-skill, relatively well-paid factory jobs have disappeared. The new economy is however providing some temporary, part-time, low-wage jobs. The smile-be-happy types will tell us that therefore things are getting better (all the time). But if they have to keep getting worse before and after they get better, is there any real gain?
Poverty is unnecessary, and can be eliminated but not under capitalism. Isn't it time to stop blaming the problems on everything except the cause, and always pretending that the upswing is permanent?
The Socialist Party of Canada has always said that no political party can end poverty under capitalism. People keep voting for those who've proven us right. Why keep voting for failures?
Why wait to see what the 2000 figures say in 2005. Why not recognize that the ups and downs won't stop, and any poverty is too much. Work to end the cause -- capitalism -- and build the solution: socialism.
Have the critics and their immediate solutions solved the problems? In the 95 years they have been claiming the World Socialist Movement is wrong, have they have solved the worst of the problems so that socialism is therefore no longer necessary?
Lets look at one problem, which we socialists consider quite important, quite urgent, and which we agree cannot wait for ideological niceties. Lets consider the case of 3 children, aged 11 and 12 who where blown up in a minefield this month. To put it into perspective, note that the 11 year old girl didn't die quickly, but rather bled to death, screaming, while the child's parents watched from the edge of the minefield.
To some, there is a more important perspective -- that it occurred in a foreign country with a name they might not be able to pronounce: Bosnia-Herzegovina -- which somehow makes it less important, less significant, which somehow makes the little girl less human.
To socialists, it doesn't matter where it happened, or what the little girl's ethnic origin happened to be. It matters that a little girl was blown up and died an agonizing death because people believe that such problems can be resolved under capitalism, or can never be solved.
Three more children are dead. This may seem insignificant to some, given the number of children who die of capitalism every day. But to socialists these unnecessary deaths are part of the reason we work to create socialism.
The critics, with their immediate non-solutions have failed. They have not even been able to end war, something that almost everyone agrees is a horror that should be consigned to history. Generations of people have opposed wars, but the immediate non-solutions have distracted them from actually ending the cause of war. Immediate non-solutions have permitted capitalism to kill, maim, and destroy millions of lives.
The critics offer endless excuses for their failure. They offer endless new non-solutions. But year after year the problems compound. Some old problems are replaced by new problems, but that can hardly be considered a victory, or even progress. Progress would mean that any resolved problems (which tend to be resolved more by accident or technology than by the supposed solutions of reformers) are not being replaced by new problems. But new problems keep cropping up.
Have the supposed "immediate" solutions ended war or poverty? They haven't even come close. Technology has partly addressed poverty, but nonetheless one in 5 people live poverty that most Canadians can barely imagine. War continues.
The reformers with their immediate non-solutions may crow about the land mines treaty, but that didn't help Ema Alic and her playmates. Land mines are still, we understand, in production. The amount of money being spent for land mine clearance is so far from enough that it is only a cruel "joke".
The supposed immediate solutions do not work because they do not address the root cause of the problems. It is like putting bandaids on what is left of the limbs of children blown up by land mines, and telling the child to go and play in the field of mines again, somehow imagining that they won't get blown up again.
Such fantasies, including the fantasies of those who claim they have immediate solutions, should be offensive to every thinking human being. But instead, people are offended by socialists who claim that the root cause must be eliminated if we are to ever solve the problems and create a society worth living in.
People are offended by socialists who claim that it is better to work for a real solution which prevents the problems, than to forever be swamped by the problems which capitalism must generate.
People are offended by socialists who claim that capitalism has proven its inability to deal with the problems faced by the vast majority in every country on the planet. People are offended by socialists who claim that reforms to capitalism (sometimes incorrectly called "socialism" or "communism") can never solve the problems caused by capitalism.
People are offended by socialists who claim that capitalism is the cause of the problems.
Socialists can be offended too. We are offended that after more than two centuries of capitalism, 11-year-old children are blown up while they play. We are offended that racism, poverty and war remain, when the ability to end them has long existed.
Socialists don't offer immediate solutions because it is clear that there are no immediate solutions. However the socialist approach, misunderstood by most, will enable solutions whenever the working class decides to end the cause of the problems. It needn't take long to solve the problems, but every day that socialism is delayed by the slavish devotion to "immediate solutions" (reforms), more little children will be killed by capitalism.
The ideology of leaders, reforms, acquiescence and apathy is key to not solving the problems. The socialist ideology of understanding society and addressing the root causes of problems is the solution.