Now and Then

We live in a world rife with misery and oppression in various forms. Hunger, poverty, unemployment, racial and sexual discrimination, and many forms of repression, from the restriction of the most basic democratic rights like freedom of speech and association to hideous barbarism like torture and genocide, are still the lot of the majority of the people of the world. The domination of the Great Powers, their rivalries, war or the threat of war characterise relations between countries, peoples, and nations. The gulf between the rich and the poor, between the powerful and the dispossessed, is steadily widening despite the progress of science and technology.

The dreams of the past have become real possibilities for a future that can already be foreseen, because the material conditions necessary for achieving them are growing steadily.  We can now aspire to a better life where the living conditions of all would be in keeping with society’s ability to use the wealth of nature, a society in which the weak would no longer be oppressed by the strong, a society in which one class would no longer be exploited by another. This is the meaning of the struggle for a society of abundance, a socialist society. Socialism will release all the productive energies for the common welfare of all the people. In place of profit as the driving force to production must stand the needs and enjoyments of the producers and consumers.

Capitalists have only one purpose – to accumulate more and more capital. They are therefore always looking for ways to increase the productivity of labour through new technology which leads to an ever greater division of labour. To pursue profits, the masters of Capital have no other choice today but to extend their exploitation of working people throughout the world. This spread of capitalist production has resulted in the growth of the size, cohesion, and revolt of the working class. With the abolition of capitalist exploitation, the working class  is the only class that has everything to gain and nothing to lose but its chains. Capitalism, confronted by its own contradictions, will be overthrown, just as all previous systems of class exploitation, including slavery and feudalism, have been. The working class cannot free itself without freeing all of humanity at the same time, because the ultimate goal of its struggle is not to replace the power of one class with that of another but rather to abolish all classes. This is the only way to put an end to all the social divisions and inequalities that have been part and parcel of class societies thus far. So the class-conscious worker becomes the advocate of all the oppressed. We cannot emancipate ourselves on the basis of the wage system. We  require the abolition of the existing order of property and production.

The emergence of socialism will permit a steady reduction in the human work needed to produce goods. Socialist society is based on the free association of all individuals who work together to produce the goods necessary for their collective well-being. All will work according to their capacities and their needs will be fully satisfied.  People will no longer be ruled by the division of labour and all opposition between city and countryside and between manual and intellectual work will be eliminated.  The expropriation of the capitalists and the socialization of the means of production will lead directly to the abolition of society divided into classes with opposing interests. The abolition of classes will in turn lead to the withering away of the State, and ultimately to its extinction for the State is not, and can never be, anything other than the instrument of dictatorship of one class over others.

The fundamental interests of workers are the same throughout the world. The socialist revolution in Britain is inseparable from the world-wide revolution. Workers will capture State power, dissolve the administrative and military apparatus set up by the capitalist , and establish the broadest possible democracy for all working people. What is democracy? It is the rule of the people, by the people, and for the people.

There is no room for any collaboration or compromise - of any kind with the class which holds both political and economic control which they must be dispossessed of.  Nor is there any room either for the anarchistic illusion counselling an abstention from political action, as this only helps the holders of capital, whose privileges will remain intact until political power has been taken from them. We  reject the argument  advocated by the industrial unionists and anarcho-syndicalists that the direct seizure of industry of itself without the workers capturing the State machine will be the means through which industry can be transferred from the capitalists to the workers. We can use the weapon of the vote that our forebearers fought and struggled for to dispossess the rich.