Saturday, February 27, 2016

Quote of the Day

'The Socialist Party never asserted that Socialist Society would result from the actions of parliamentary delegates alone. It is completely illogical to imagine that Socialist understanding could grow to the point of political victory without simultaneously resulting in a growth of understanding and hence organisation to prepare for the taking over of industry. The Socialist Party in fact knows well that organisation is necessary for the running of industry in the new-born Socialist society. It holds also that a sizeable spread of political clear-sightedness will lead to the growth of such organisations, for when many workers want Socialism they will begin to organise and plan for the rebuilding of society prior to the capture of political power. We in fact stand for the principled, democratic organisation of class-conscious workers in contrast to the Industrial Unionist concept of industrial bodies built up upon the “open-house” principle.

For the present, however, Socialists have to act and co-operate with a majority of non-socialist fellow unionists. Socialist unionists will certainly oppose unsound actions and theories wherever these are found in the unions but we do not support the view that if the present unions were smashed then “genuine working class unions would arise in their place”—yet another industrial myth. The faults of the present-day unions result from the lack of understanding of their members and until their experiences lead them to realise the limitations of the day-to-day struggle, until they realise that within the framework of capitalism they cannot rise above their basic status as victims of the caprices of the world market these faults remain.'

Melvin Harris
May 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Thursday, February 25, 2016

Papua New Guinea

Resource-rich Papua New Guinea (PNG) was seen as an economic powerhouse in the Pacific Islands with a state-led focus on resource extraction initially expected to drive one of the world’s highest growth rates of 15 per cent last year. But in the wake of falling commodity prices, GDP growth has plummeted from 8.5 per cent in 2014 to a forecasted 3 per cent this year.

PNG has significant resources, including oil, gas, copper, gold, silver and timber, and the extractive industry has been worth about K150 billion (US$49.3 billion) since Independence in 1975. But corruption and low corporate taxes are among the causes of the discrepancy between extractive wealth and persistent hardship. Forty per cent of the country’s 7.3 million people live below the poverty line, 12 per cent have access to electricity and less than 5 per cent to formal sector employment.

In 2014 construction of the PNG LNG, the nation’s largest extractive project to date in the highlands region was completed. The Exxon-Mobil operated joint venture is expected to produce 6.9 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) per year for export. Of the 21,220 workers employed on the project during its peak phase in 2012, an estimated 9,000 were Papua New Guinean.

But Hetha Yawas, Chair of the Rural Women’s Empowerment Association says the benefits for many families were temporary: “The little money that was given by husbands and other men in the family [who were employed] was used to buy store food for the family. However, that was short-lived and many mothers are now facing the reality of getting back to the basics of making traditional gardens to feed their families.”


Anticipated high revenues from the LNG project fuelled ambitious plans by the government to invest in infrastructure and services, such as an announcement in 2014 of K7 billion (US$2.3 billion) for road works over five years. But the price of Brent crude fell later that year from $76 per barrel to around $30 in January this year, while the natural gas index dropped from 101.6 to 58.8 in the same period. National mining and petroleum tax revenues dropped last year from an initial estimate of K1.7 billion (US$559 million) to K300 million (US$98.6 million), triggering 20 per cent cuts in public spending on transport and education.

Monday, February 22, 2016

Read your Bible

drunken-noah

Genesis 9:20-28: Noah gets wasted

After Noah saved the entirety of land-based human and animal life, he did what pretty much any of us would do: he planted a vineyard and proceeded to get plastered, then passed out nude in his tent. Trouble is, his son Ham saw his dad naked, then went and told folks about it. Opinions vary about whether that’s all Ham did or not – some folks say that the story should be read as Ham having sex with his father or even castrating him. But whatever it was, the transgression was serious enough that drunk-ass Noah went ahead and cursed not Ham, but Ham’s son, Canaan, and all those who came after him.
eglon

Judges 3:21-25: Too fat to impale

As a kid, this was one of my favorite Bible stories because it was so violent, gruesome, disgusting, and ridiculous. Long story short, this guy Ehud was supposed to kill this king named Eglon, as per instructions from God, natch. But Eglon was so grotesquely fat, that when Ehud shoved his sword into him, he lost the blade inside the royal blubber. Eglon then voided his bowels and died, which, as a 12 year old boy, was kind of the greatest end to any story ever.

Samuel 18:25-27: David, foreskin collector

You remember David, right? The dude who felled Goliath with a stone to the brain, then cut his head off with the giant’s own sword? Later on, David wanted to marry into the royal family, but King Saul would only give him his daughter’s hand if he brought him 100 foreskins. That part isn’t actually what makes this so crazy though, as God’s Old Testament covenant with Abraham required circumcision. What makes this story nutso is that David went above and beyond, bringing back a whopping 200 foreskins.
elisha bears

Kings 2:23-24: God sends bears

Elisha was a super smart guy, but he was also going bald. That shouldn’t have really been a problem, but you know how cruel kids can be, right? When a bunch of rebellious youths made fun of him for his thinning hair, Elisha made use of a little-known benefit of worshiping the God of the Old Testament: he cursed the kids and God came to the rescue, sending bears rushing out of the woods, which then proceeded to kill those vicious little snots.
ezekiel poo bread

Ezekiel 4:11: Poo bread

Ezekiel was tasked with planning out the siege of Jerusalem and, naturally, wanted God’s help, like you do. Thing is, God had some very specific requirements, including lying on one side for 390 days, then on his other side for 40 days. But the weirdest, most ridiculous part? God stipulated that he could only eat bread made using a fire fueled by human feces. Fortunately for Zeke, God showed that famous mercy and allowed him to use cow patties instead. Which is…better, I guess?
jesus fig tree

Matthew 21:18: Jesus, tree-murderer

The Old Testament doesn’t have a monopoly on crazy Bible stories. To wit, one time Jesus and his bros were walking around and rolled up on a fig tree with no fruit on it. To teach that tree a lesson, the Son of God proceeded to magic the tree and force it to wither away and die. Seems counterproductive if all you want is a fig, but it probably got all the surrounding trees in line.
lot sodom

Genesis 19:1-26: No angelsex

The tale of Sodom & Gomorrah is a famous one that gets bandied about frequently by all kinds of homophobic moral scolds, so it’s easy to forget how bugnuts insane it is. God’s dude Lot was hanging out in Sodom when he got visited by a couple angels. Naturally, all the guys who lived in Sodom wanted Lot to let those handsome celestial beings out so they could run a train on them. Lot refused (Good!) and then offered up his daughter to the mob (Bad! Extremely bad!). Eventually, God had enough and blew up the town, but because Lot’s wife decided to look back at the destruction, God transmogrified her into salt.
lot daughters

Genesis 19:30-38: Incest…again

The Bible starts with a single couple that go on to populate the entire Earth, so of course the book is absolutely lousy with incest. But in Lot’s case, the incest isn’t just implied, it’s clearly laid out. After leaving Sodom (and their saltmom), Lot’s daughters decide that the best way to propagate their line would be dear old dad, so they get him drunk and convince him to knock them up.
balaam donkey

Numbers 22:28-29: Talking out your ass

Balaam was walking along with his donkey, and then, wouldn’t you just know it, the donkey stopped moving on account of seeing an angel. As was probably pretty standard practice back then, Balaam started beating the brakes off the donkey, at which point God has the animal learn how to speak. It’s unclear whether this was something that happened to Balaam’s beasts of burden all the time or not, but either way, he didn’t make much of it, and just threatened kill the donkey.
jacob wrestle

Genesis 32:22-32: Jacob wrestles an angel

Jacob is my favorite Biblical character because he’s kind of a jerk. He’s a liar and a cheat, and even stole his brother’s birthright by covering himself in hair and fooling his blind old dad. But the dopest, craziest thing that Jacob ever did? That would be wrestling with an angel. Even though the angel dislocated his hip, Jacob wouldn’t let go until he squeezed a blessing out of the celestial being.
god moons moses

Exodus 33:23: God moons Moses

So, here’s the thing about God: You can’t look upon him. He’s so majestic, so wonderful, so divine that if a mere mortal would lay eyes upon him, he wouldn’t survive the ordeal. So, when God and Moses are supposed to have their first-ever face-to-face meeting, God thinks better of it, and instead, turns around and allows Moses to gaze upon his backside.

Saturday, February 20, 2016

Homeopathy...a dead-end

Professor Paul Glasziou, a leading academic in evidence based medicine at Bond University, was the chair of a working party by the National Health and Medical Research Council which was tasked with reviewing the evidence of 176 trials of homeopathy to establish if the treatment is valid.
A total of 57 systematic reviews, containing the 176 individual studies, focused on 68 different health conditions - and found there to be no evidence homeopathy was more effective than placebo on any. The review found “no discernible convincing effects beyond placebo” and concluded “there was no reliable evidence from research in humans that homeopathy was effective for treating the range of health conditions considered".
Professor Glasziou states: “I had begun the journey with an ‘I don’t know attitude’, curious about whether this unlikely treatment could ever work… but I lost interest after looking at the 57 systematic reviews which contained 176 individual studies and finding no discernible convincing effects beyond placebo.”

Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Don't privatise the water

"More and more cities and towns are seeing that water is more efficiently and affordably delivered when it is controlled by a not-for-profit entity. Without shareholders expecting profits, public systems are less likely to cut corners on service, and excess funds are invested back into systems, not sent out of communities as dividend checks," explained the executive director of Food & Water Watch (FWW), Wenonah Hauter. "From emergency management in Michigan to failed privatization experiments across the country, corporate influence has failed U.S. water systems," he said. It was a government-appointed emergency manager in Flint who made the decision to switch the city's water supply from a safe source to a polluted river in order to cut costs. "In a failed attempt to save a few bucks," one lawyer said last month, "state-appointed officials poisoned the drinking water of an important American city, causing permanent damage to an entire generation of its children. She added. "Rather than running water systems like businesses, or worse, handing them over to corporations, we need increased federal investment in municipal water. With this federal funding, we can help avoid future infrastructure-related catastrophes."

In a new survey (pdf), the largest of its kind, FWW documents how the dominant trend in the U.S. is toward public ownership of water and sewer systems, while showing that the alternative—large, for-profit, privately owned systems—are often more expensive and less reliable. The survey of water rates of the 500 largest U.S. community water systems also found that for-profit systems, which comprise about 10 percent of the national total, charged 58 percent more than large publicly owned systems. Private systems in New York and Illinois, for example, charge twice as much as not-for-profit systems, while in Pennsylvania, private systems charge 84 percent more than their public counterparts—$323 more a year, typically.


The report explains. "Most importantly, public entities normally collect only the revenue necessary to improve and run their water systems. Privately owned utilities, however, generate profit by increasing rates. Other factors that make private water more costly for customers include: executive compensation, corporate overhead, subsidies, financing costs, rights of way, and differences in rate-making and financing practices."


Thursday, February 11, 2016

America - the frightened country

Chomsky has been commenting extensively on the 2016 US presidential elections. On the one hand, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders – who has brought income inequality on to the table – is drawing considerable support. He has managed to raise about $33 million for his campaign, shattering individual donor records. On the other, someone like Trump on the Republican side is leading in the polls.

In Chomsky’s view the apparently contradictory trends are reflections of the same phenomenon.The impact of the neoliberal programmes of the past generation almost everywhere has been to undermine democratic participation, to impose stagnation or sometimes decline on the majority of the population and to concentrate wealth very narrowly, which of course then in turn affects the political system and how it works.”

And this is seen in different ways, in different places, but some phenomena are common. In Europe, the mainstream more or less traditional parties – Social Democratic, Christian democratic – are declining. “At the edges you are getting increased activism and participation, both Left and Right. Something similar is happening here [in the US].”

An ever-growing anger among wide sections of the population and a hatred of institutions is visible. “There is plenty of anger and good reasons for it, if you look at what is happening to people.” Citing a recent study in the United States that points to increasing mortality rates of less educated, white men in the age range of 45-55 years, he says: “that just does not happen in developed societies.”

“It is a reflection of depression, hopelessness, concern that everything is lost – nothing is in our lives, nothing is in our futures, then at least show your anger.” The propaganda system in the US, in England, in continental Europe is designed to focus that anger on people who are even more deprived and miserable – such as “immigrants, ‘welfare cheats’, trade unions and all kinds of people who somehow you think are getting what you are not getting”.

The anger then is not focused on those who are really responsible – the power-hungry private sector or the huge financial institutions which are basically supported by tax payers. “But don’t look at them, look at the people who are even below you – like a mother with dependent children who lives on food stamps, she is the one who is a problem. Some of the immigrants fleeing from the destruction that the US caused in Central America and are trying to survive, so look at them – and that’s the Trump phenomenon,” says the political theorist, presenting his analysis of Trump’s ever-growing hate speeches that seem to resonate with some sections of the US’s population.

The other group that leaders like Trump seek to please are the nativists, according to. Chomsky. Therefore, they employ the rhetoric of “They are taking our country away from us.” ‘They’ being, minorities, immigrants and others. “It used to be a nice white Anglo-Saxon country but it’s gone.” That sentiment, he says, makes the US an increasingly terrified population, probably the most frightened country in the world.


http://thewire.in/2016/01/31/chomsky-interview-the-us-is-one-of-the-most-fundamentalist-countries-in-the-world-20491/

Monday, February 08, 2016

What is Socialism?

Contributions to this thread 

We envisage socialism as being established globally and almost simultaneously. As fr back as 1847 Engels wrote:
“Will it be possible for this revolution to take place in one country alone?
 No. By creating the world market, big industry has already brought all the peoples of the Earth, and especially the civilized peoples, into such close relation with one another that none is independent of what happens to the others.
Further, it has co-ordinated the social development of the civilized countries to such an extent that, in all of them, bourgeoisie and proletariat have become the decisive classes, and the struggle between them the great struggle of the day. It follows that the communist revolution will not merely be a national phenomenon but must take place simultaneously in all civilized countries – that is to say, at least in England, America, France, and Germany.
It will develop in each of these countries more or less rapidly, according as one country or the other has a more developed industry, greater wealth, a more significant mass of productive forces. Hence, it will go slowest and will meet most obstacles in Germany, most rapidly and with the fewest difficulties in England. It will have a powerful impact on the other countries of the world, and will radically alter the course of development which they have followed up to now, while greatly stepping up its pace.
It is a universal revolution and will, accordingly, have a universal range.”

Ideas are a social phenonomen and cross borders. How music genres arise and then travel the globe, or how fashions are adopted across cultures?

We will not buy off the capitalists and that somehow governments will nationalise and pay compensation to the capitalist class. Some maysay it would be immoral to do anything other but we would disagree. We are the dispossessed, we are taking back what is rightfully ours in the first place. A look at history demonstrates how the capitalist acquired their wealth. An even the argument that self-made men deserve their riches is false. Apples Steve Jobs ideas would have remained just that...thoughts in his head if it was not for the millions of workers in China building his phones etc...they made his wealth. 
"But if blood be the price of all your wealth,                             
Good God! We have paid it in full!"

Can you tell me when the Rockerfeller family, founders of Standard Oil, dirtied their hands drilling for the oil? You should study the history of that dynasty to see just how they acquired their wealth. Perhaps you may refer me to the family of Saud who "discovered" and invested his money to extract the oil under "his" land. I may be wrong but isn't Saudi Arabia the only country named after a ruling family clan? Another history for you to read about.  

It is labour that transforms natural resources into wealth. Muscle, sweat and toil and more often than not, blood. Research your mine disters in Virginia. 2010 negligence by Massey Energy was only the last example of the expendibility of the miner. CEO Blankenship was never ever a miner but an accountant.

 The importance of labour in creating all wealth was a fact recognised long before Marx and was acknowledged by Adam Smith. But why heed classical economists. Didn't Abraham Lincoln say "Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed."?

Why not study "the Enclosures" of England (a similar process took place worldwide and is still going on) Stealing common land from the poor and driving them to seek work in the cities...factory fodder...It was the Chinese worker in the Foxconn factories that created Steve Jobs and of course we all "know" that Apple pay their due in taxes, don't we?

The 19thC industrialists were rightly called "Robber Barons"

"The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from the goose.

The law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who takes things that are yours and mine."

When a so-called self-made man says hard work brought him riches, ask whose hard work?

Perhaps it has been wrongly emphasised but it is labour both of the hand and the head that transforms nature into useful wealth.  Marx gives the example and talks of the conductor of an orchestra as being also vital to this process...so you and we do agree that there requires to be co-ordination and co-operation and in particular occasions someone is selected to administer affairs.   Engels also suggests that a captain of a ship is still going to be in charge and he no doubt would say a pilot of an aircraft is necessary to be the person with the final say. Even the anarchist Bakunin agrees to the competence of the cobbler to decide for him the best shoe. But are they leaders in the way you seek to explain? We say no. We are against the political power function of leadership, not against the acquired authority of those with special skills and learning being recognised as someone to heed the advice and knowledge of. Which of us would reject the surgeon’s expertise? But remember, these people have taken years to acquire the privilege of bestowing and sharing their talents, school, university, professional training...but tell me exactly where the University of Prime Ministers is? (a wit would say Eton and then Oxbridge)...But anyone with a glib tongue and a sales-persons demeanour can be elected and then impose his or her will upon others, using force if necessary, which is legitimate and legal under the law.You discuss the dawn of time when it comes to organising...Simply look at how the American First Peoples organised for war...they followed someone they respected as a war chief...not as a political chief...if he proved successful they were with him...when he failed to bring victories, they deserted him...he could not impose his leadership upon his warriors by conscription or the draft only by accomplishments.

We are for the abolition of private property and the implementation of one of the oldest customs and traditions humanity has developed for its collective survival, the principle "from each according to ability, to each according to need." , an end of the exchange economy and the introduction of free access  this means the abolition of wage and money and those working in occupations related to commerce/capitalism transferring to socially productive work. And the emphasis is on socially productive and not simply shifting  money around to benefit a small minority of people , or speculatiing which is very basic...buying cheap and selling dear...yet ignoring the fact that the value of the object is in its manufacture , not its circulation. We stand for the free common wealth...or as another put it

"Store-houses shall be built and appointed in all places, and be the common stock...And as every one works to advance the common stock, so every one shall have a free use of any commodity in the store-house, for his pleasure and comfortable livelihood without buying and selling or restraint from any." - Gerrard Winstanley in the 17th C

It may be easy dismiss the term "wage-slave" so easily...countless numbers of people follow their hobbies without payment because they enjoy it. People have their gardens and their allotments and happily tire themselves out working...but place that person on a farm and demand he or she exhaust himself for a wage by denying any other way to support him or herself and their family and that the fruits of this work is taken from him and the rewards of placing it on the market to be sold and bought then ask if that person is not a slave. Someone who well knew what it meant to be a chattel slave and a wage slave explains it thus

 "The difference between the white slave, and the black slave, is this: the latter belongs to ONE slave-holder, and the former belongs to ALL the slave-holders, collectively. The white slave has taken from his, by indirection, what the black slave had taken from him, directly, and without ceremony. Both are plundered, and by the same plunderers" - Frederick Douglass 19thC

Can you tell me a CEO who was elected by his or her work-force rather than being appointed by a board of directors acting on behalf of investors? No, they are not comparable but yes it is debatable that some CEOs may well be technically the same as wage-slaves bound by golden chains, in the sense that they can be hired and fired. However, most CEOs, the vast majority, are in the capitalist class themselves, a large proportion of their salary being in the form of stocks and shares along with their enormous basic salaries where they can afford to invest elsewhere.

Politicians are appointed and political influence and power is bought. They are part of a political party machine, who are vetted by a committee to ensure they are "suitable" candidates where upon a whole campaign is financed to get them elected with much of the cash coming from donors in various ways, some very opaque such as financing a members supposed researchers. Even i don't need to tell you that prime ministers go cap in hand and touching their forelock to such people as Rupert Murdoch for their endorsement. A politician is not a delegate but a representative. He is not elected to carry out your instructions but to act on behalf for you as he thinks fit. 

People behave differently when they are in different situations...there is nothing innate about behaviour, we change when the world around us changes. Most inventors, artists have usually died in poverty. Or they are now part of an R and D team, paid a salary and have no intellectual ownership over a new device or application. The company benefits.

Have you thought of the numbers of people who do voluntary work, from the little old lady in your local charity shop to those on gap-years helping out abroad on aid work. For sure, they receive something in return... self-esteem and respect from peers but what is usually lacking is any cash reward. Work and employment are not synonymous terms. We could have used the example of those who achieve job satisfaction over pay-scales or and the self-employed who enjoy being their own boss. When we talk of working conditions in socialism we are not equating it with capitalist working conditions. We will see a great reduction in the working week, the introduction of automation and relationships within the factory or office changing to one of equality. Work will for the first time in history become voluntary. We do possess the technology even today to provide for practically all the needs of every person on the planet. We can even carry the burden of the idle and lazy. Unpleasant social tasks, the 3-D, dirty dangerous and demeaning, if a machine can't do it will be shared out amongst the community, not imposed upon a person as a livelihood for the rest of his or her life.

But the demand for luxuries will diminish because when everything is available to everyone, there can no longer be excuses for conspicuous consumption...to prove your status by showing of your possessions. Certain things may well be shared as in the example of car-pools and time- share apartments...We'll book our weekend on the yacht and wait our turn. Look in your shed at all those tools which are only used occasionally. Even in capitalism, hire-companies recognise we don't need to own everything.

Socialism will not work if no-body works, society would fall apart. Part of our case is that socialism cannot be imposed but that people have to democratically decide they want socialism and are prepared to help make it work. This pre-supposes that it cannot be led by a minority but come into existence only via a mass movement who have a profound change in outlook so it is our belief that it is inconceivable that with this desire for socialist change on such a large scale it would not influence the way people behave. Ask yourself this, would having struggled so determinedly to bring socialism about, would people be so ready to jeopardise the new society they helped to create by sabotaging it?

According to William Morris a socialist from the 19th C it is even more lovely to use your own two hands, some simple tools ...and create your own lovely things. He was a person who took pride in the handicraft traditions of earlier ages rather than what we would do these days, buy a flat pack from IKEA...use an Allen key and think we built our book-case ourselves. We will always appreciate nice things and socialism is not about doing away with personal possessions.

We have been brought up to accept the status quo as practically sacred...natural and something that has always been and will always be, but social systems change, peoples' ideas change, our concepts of how we want to live changes, our world-view changes, we acquire more and more knowledge and gain more and more actual experience. Socialists are anti-capitalists but, believe me, we understand the benefits it has provided society over its life, but we simply have come to understand that it is now out-lived its own usefulness and we should now proceed to the next level, a higher civilisation called socialism.

Maybe we are dreamers as John Lennon and many others have said both for and against us but as Lennon also said, we are not the only ones and some day we hope you will join us.
In socialism we can support free-riders or to put it more positively, we don't need everybody to pitch in. We can let the poets and the painters, the writers and the musicians, all the arts in fact, have all the time they require to bring culture and their individual expression to this world...if they so wished. The pessimists think over-population is a problem but every person in the world is an extra pair of hands and an additional brain. We don't condemn individuals to a life on the road-gang as capitalism does. More and more division of labour will dissolve (not entirely disappear, for sure) Marx said a free person should be able to “hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.” He foresaw that the separation of town and country merging into one.

What we propose is that the whole system of money and exchange, buying and selling, profit-making and wage-earning be entirely abolished and that instead, that instead community as a whole should organise and administer the productions of goods for use only, and the free distribution of these goods to all members of the community according to each person’s needs.

Since money would not exist, and wealth could not, therefore, be measured in terms of money, no person could say that he or she owned a share of such-and-such value in the people’s means of production.

The main features of the World Commonwealth are really quite simple, so I’ll proceed to sum them up for you in a few sentences.

Firstly, the new social system must be world-wide. It must be a World Commonwealth. The world must be regarded as one country and humanity as one people.
Secondly, all the people will co-operate to produce and distribute all the goods and services which are needed by mankind, each person willingly and freely, taking part in the way he or she feels they can do best.
Thirdly, all goods and services will be produced for use only, and having been produced, will be distributed, free, directly to the people so that each person’s needs are fully satisfied.
Fourthly, the land, factories, machines, mines, roads, railways, ships, and all those things which mankind needs to carry on producing the means of life, will belong to the whole people .

Suppose that the new social system were to start tomorrow; the great mass of people having already learnt what it means, and having taken the necessary action to bring it about.

Everybody would carry on with their usual duties for the time being, except all those whose duties being of an unnecessary nature to the new system, were rendered idle, for example, bank clerks, salesmen, accountants, advertising and insurance agents etc. These people would, in time, be fitted into productive occupations for which they considered themselves suitable wirh appropriate re-training if necessary.

When people first hear of how radically different society is being proposed, with all work being voluntary, and free access to whatever we need, most immediately view this as bizarre and impossible. Unsurprising, given that we have spent our entire lives being brainwashed and conditioned by the education system, by the media, by politicians and employers, into swallowing capitalism’s propaganda that this is the natural way of things. For those who can get beyond the initial shock of first hearing about moneyless real socialism, by simply comparing what both the present and new system offer the majority of us, it should be obvious that outdated capitalism must be scrapped and replaced with the real socialist alternative.

Although money will disappear in socialism this does not mean that there will no longer be any need to make choices, evaluations and calculations. Our argument is that these evaluations and calculations, including those conceding the non-monetary "cost" of objects in terms of the effort and materials used to produce them, will be done directly in kind, without any general unit of account or measurement, neither money nor labour-time. Wealth will produced and distributed in its natural form of useful things, of objects that can serve to satisfy some human need or other. Not being produced for sale on a market, items of wealth will not acquire an exchange-value in addition to their use value. In socialism their value, in the normal non-economic sense of the word, will not be their selling price nor the time needed to produce them but their usefulness. It is for this that they will be appreciated, evaluated, wanted… and produced. So estimates of what is likely to be needed over a given period will be expressed as physical quantities of definite types and sorts of objects. Decisions apart from purely personal ones of preference will be made after weighing the real advantages and disadvantages and real costs of alternatives in particular circumstances. The belief that without money nothing can work is flawed. The truth is that production is carried out by people not money. Problems are solved by human beings, not money.




Monday, February 01, 2016

Meet your Meat

97 per cent of the world's soya crop is fed to livestock. It would take 40 million tons of food to eliminate the most extreme cases of world hunger, yet nearly 20 times that amount of grain is fed to farmed animals every year in order to produce meat. In a world where an estimated 850 people do not have enough to eat, it is criminally wasteful to feed perfectly edible food to animals on farms in order to produce a burger rather than feeding it directly to people, especially when you consider that it takes roughly six pounds of grain to produce one pound of pork. As long as a single child goes hungry, this kind of waste is unconscionable.

Countries around the globe are bulldozing huge swathes of land in order to make room for more factory farms to house all the additional chickens, cows and other animals as well as for the huge quantities of crops needed to feed them. But when you eat plant foods directly, instead of indirectly eating bushels and bushels of grain and soya that have been funnelled through animals first, you need a lot less land.

Vegfam, a charity which funds sustainable plant-food projects, estimates that a 10-acre farm can support 60 people by growing soybeans, 24 people by growing wheat or 10 people by growing maize, but only two by raising cattle. What's more, Dutch scientists predict that 2.7 billion hectares of land currently used for cattle grazing would be freed up by global vegetarianism, along with 100 million hectares of land currently used to grow crops for livestock.


Factory-farmed animals are disease-ridden as a result of being crammed by the thousands into filthy sheds, which are a breeding ground for new strains of dangerous bacteria and viruses. Pigs, chickens and other animals on factory farms are fed a steady diet of drugs to keep them alive in these unsanitary, stressful conditions, increasing the chance that drug-resistant superbugs will develop. A senior officer with the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation called the intensive industrial farming of livestock an “opportunity for emerging disease”, while the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared that “much of antibiotic use in animals is unnecessary and inappropriate and makes everyone less safe”. Sure, the overprescribing of antibiotics for humans plays a part in antibiotic resistance. But eliminating the factory farms from which many antibiotic-resistant bacteria emerge would make it more likely that we could continue to count on antibiotics to cure serious illnesses.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/five-things-would-happen-if-everyone-stopped-eating-meat-a6844811.html