Letters: A few questions
Dear Editors,
Perhaps you could briefly deal with a few questions and criticisms that often arise when I introduce people to socialist politics. They include things like:
Isn’t abundance impossible, especially when there’s an environmental crisis to avert?
How can you convince the majority that socialism is necessary when now they are so complacent and conservative?
What do you do when dictatorships like China dis-enable free speech, voting, etc.?
Won’t the state crush this emerging socialist movement before it’s too strong?
Will a socialist economy be better than the price mechanism in allocating resources efficiently or is democracy in such detail impossible?
ALLEN CULLEN, London, N.17
REPLY
1. The establishment of socialism presupposes the existence of a potential for abundance to enable free access to work. We believe that this has been a possibility for some considerable time now. We also argue that this could be achieved on a sustainable, non-polluting basis. Estimates of the number of people who could be fed and clothed adequately vary. Colin Clark estimates that using currently available methods the world could support 27 billion people (that is, five times the present world population).
The current environmental crisis is not caused by population growth nor by industrialism but by capitalism’s need to produce for profit at almost any cost. Thus people go hungry while food rots in warehouses or is physically destroyed, because the poor do not represent “effective demand”. The Earth’s life-support systems are stressed almost to breaking point because the cost of implementing known solutions might render an undertaking (state-owned or private) less competitive and therefore less profitable on the world market.
Only socialism can ensure that the world’s resources are used rationally to fulfill human needs without causing environmental degradation.
2. If we were to rely only on the efforts of a small minority of socialists to convince the majority of the need for socialism it might well be considered an impossible task. However, aiding us in our task is the experience workers all over the world have of capitalism and its inability to satisfy their needs. Far from being complacent millions of workers are actively engaged in attempts at combatting its evil effects either through their work, through trade unions or through voluntary and charitable organisations. Unfortunately, these efforts are misdirected at trying to deal with effects rather than tackling the cause. Nevertheless some people are beginning to see that most of the problems of capitalism are world problems and as such require world solutions.
A vigorous, growing world socialist movement would be better placed to put forward at every opportunity the case for abolishing capitalism and establishing socialism—removing the cause rather than tinkering with the effects.
3. Resistance to dictatorship exists even under the most repressive regimes. Dictatorships do not extinguish ideas about having things organised differently—nor can they as recent events in China show. For much of the 19th century socialist ideas were repressed in Europe but it did not prevent the ideas of Marx and Engels spreading. In the forty years following the publication of the Communist Manifesto in 1848 this stirring call to revolution was translated into more than half a dozen languages despite fierce opposition and repression by the ruling class at the time
The development of glasnost (“openness”) in Russia today shows a growing recognition among the Russian ruling class that the free discussion of choices between various courses of action is a more efficient way of running capitalism than the imposition of administrative Diktat. Capitalism works best when it has the support of the vast majority. Pressure on the South African regime to include black workers in the political process by extending the franchise to them is coming increasingly from the capitalist class within South Africa itself.
4. What is meant by “too strong “? If the ruling class, through their control of the state, were intent on crushing the emerging socialist movement the time to do it would be now. By the time the socialist movement had grown strong enough to be of significance it would already be too late for the ruling class to crush it by dictatorial means.
5. Socialism will mean free access by all to the goods and services necessary for life. Capitalism, on the other hand, rations access by money and the price mechanism. This is an extremely inefficient and wasteful system. Time, effort and resources are spent on a whole range of activities (buying and selling, banking, insurance and so on) which the establishment of free access will make redundant. Effort is needlessly duplicated by enterprises competing for a limited market. In addition, the waste of resources dedicated to armaments and preparation for war, necessary under this system to defend minority class privilege and plunder, could go a long way to remove poverty. In his book The Hunger Machine Jon Bennett tells us that:
“The money required to provide adequate food, water, education, health care and housing for each individual on earth would be about US$ 21 million a year. This is as much as the world spends on arms every two weeks“. (His emphasis)
The abilities of millions currently engaged in these wasteful activities would be freed to undertake useful work, giving of their ability and taking according to their need.
Not only is this eminently possible but it is also urgently necessary if we are to live useful and fulfilling lives in a co-operative and peaceful world community.
EDITORS