As sea levels rise up – so shall we

We’ve got to reclaim control over production. We’ve got to begin that control by first consciously agreeing to abolish the profit motive, markets and the wages system. We’ve got to agree to have goods produced directly for people’s needs through voluntary cooperation.Cooperation to produce goods directly for needs is not something new. This was how people sustained their social life for thousands of years. We need to get back to it, though at a much higher technological level.

Unlike certain ecologists, socialists seek to vastly increase the volume of production. Does capitalism produce everywhere in the world enough good quality food, clothing, housing, water and sewage systems, energy, health and education services? Obviously capitalism falls a long way short of providing them for every person on the planet. What this means for production in socialism is that, to begin with, the supply of goods and services would have to be greatly increased. This in turn means that the means of energy supply, manufacture and transport will also have to be greatly increased. Think of the millions living in sub-standard housing conditions in shanty towns and you get a vivid idea of the scale of the problem. So socialism would have to go in for a colossal building programme. Before you can produce this enormous quantity of materials for building and all the components for the required manufactured goods you first have to produce increased means of production. Production for needs on a world scale is going to involve a vast increase in every part of the useful structure of world production: mining, manufacture, the chemical industry and transportation. The concept of world production is very important here because what socialism must do can only be achieved through the largest possible scale of production using a worldwide division of labour. We've got to add care of the environment to the list of needs.

Socialism will have a number of advantages in dealing with these problems.

Firstly, the really great difference will be that instead of functioning in a dehumanised way as objects of exploitation within the wages system generating profit and capital accumulation for their exploiters, people will be freely cooperating with each other to do what was necessary for the community. The whole method of organisation would be through democratic control. People will decide what must be done and they will be free to get on with it solely for the benefit of everyone.

Secondly, socialism will remove vast amounts of waste. That capitalism is a society of waste was put very well by Marx:

  “The capitalist mode of production, while on the one hand enforcing economy in each individual business, begets by its anarchical system of competition, the most outrageous squandering of labour power and of the social means of production, not to mention the creation of a vast number of employments, at present indispensable, but in themselves superfluous.”(Capital,Volume I. chapter 17. section 4).

The waste in terms of mining, manufacture, transport and energy supply that goes into the war machine and to servicing activities like shopping malls could be diverted into useful production, reducing the amount by which total production would need to be increased.

A third important advantage that socialism would enjoy would be the freedom to select and use production methods strictly on their merits. It would not matter that a desirable method might use more labour than an undesirable one. The selection and use of production methods will be free to take into account a broad range of needs, including the enjoyment of work itself, care of the environment, conservation of materials, social safety and animal welfare.

The fourth advantage that socialism would enjoy is that it will be free to use the planet as a single productive unit. This will follow from the establishment of a common interest amongst all peoples, and it will tend to make for a safer and more rational use of the Earth’s resources.

We've got to increase world food production as an urgent priority to stop people from dying. Equally urgent is the need to house all people to a decent standard of comfort. On the basis of a number of reasonable assumptions—that population numbers reach some sort of stable level; that the means of production are not subject to constant innovation: that people make a sensible decision about the limits to consumption—a point will eventually be reached where we can say enough is enough. At this point production will begin to fall sharply.

When this position is reached it will have important consequences for planning, decision-making and organisation. We need urgent world action to stop people from dying, but once this was done and large-scale projects like irrigation schemes were completed, this would allow local communities more latitude to make their own arrangements about local food production for local needs.

A practical long-term scenario is a society of zero growth with a fixed structure of means of production producing stable levels of goods for stable numbers of people; a conservation society which could work with a minimum loss of natural materials through things like recycling: a society where, because people will live in cooperation with each other, they will also be able to work in cooperation and harmony with the natural systems of the planet, and where the focus of social life will be mainly with the local community.

 All the technologies needed for the solution are already there. They need only to be used. Only capitalism and capitalists, aided by subservient politicians, are preventing their deployment. The socialist solution is a sustainable steady state economy where humanity live in peace with each other and in harmony with the rest of nature.