"Its Human Nature..."

It is claimed that socialists are unrealistic who hold fantasies and dreams that things will change overnight, imagining people work together for the common good without being forced to by the carrot or the stick.  The most common claim is that a socialist society founded on equality and, cooperation is contrary to human nature and people are greedy. If you look at society today then the argument seems justified. Many people do see life as a rat-race in which the key thing is to take what you can for yourself, regardless of others.

It is curious that this claim is usually made by those who also insist that "everybody is different”. The fact is that all human nature is determined by conditions of life, education and experience.  It may seem that the. only human nature in present society is capitalist,  but that is because the capitalists  impose their views upon everybody. Often the theory of human nature is one spread by the capitalists to make the working class cynical about socialism. However, capitalism also involves people working alongside one another. Socialism does not require people to be either altruistic nor egotistic; selfish nor unselfish.

If society is run and controlled by the people, in the interests of the people, then society will encourage another side of human nature: cooperation and concern for others.  It is recognised that it will be up to the workers and their communities to organise work and to regulate their reciprocal relationships. Force can do nothing, agreement is necessary. We can’t impose socialism. It will occur through free  associations among themselves.

Socialism does not presuppose a complete change in human nature and the entire elimination of selfishness. We shouldn’t expect a miraculous transformation of human personality. Socialism only calls for enlightened self-interest, recognising that it can serve itself only by serving the common interest, which will completely change its character, so that it will cease to be the narrow selfishness of to-day, which so often defeats its own ends. The interests of each individual will, by the new circumstances, be best served by serving the common interests.

 Socialism’s first concern must be production -  we must live. Work is life and also the tie that unites men and women in society. To be sure, we possess, even today, sufficient means of production to satisfy all reasonable needs, i.e., to provide a well-being to all greater than that of today. But all this well-being must be created by labour and by the transformation of industry. There will no longer be, as is the case today, men and women condemned to long days of stupefying labour and fatigue.  People will pass from one job to another, from manual labor to study and artistic recreation. But in working, in studying, in cultivating the arts, etc, their goal will always be to make them useful. We shouldn’t lose sight of the extent and variety of socialism. There will be trial and error, even conflicts before agreement can be reached just to determine what must be produced, which needs deserve preference, and what limitations individuals should impose on their desires.  We will not immediately fall upon a perfect system but experience and agreements will tell the individual and the labour associations what society has need of at a given moment.

Thus understood, the revolution obviously can’t be the work of a party or a coalition of parties: it demands the assistance of the entire working class. Without the majority we can carry out a coup d’etat or a putsch but not a revolution. The workers have no need of chiefs: they are quite capable of charging one of their own with a particular task. Solidarity and co-operation cannot be decreed by a law, and though it can be applied by public opinion it is nevertheless necessary that public opinion be in agreement with individual sentiment.

Every strike is an act of dignity, an act of  revolt, and serves to get workers used to thinking of the boss as an enemy and to fight for what they want without waiting for grace from on high. A striker is already no longer a slave but a rebel already engaged on the path of socialism and revolution. It is up to us to help them advance along that road. When the workers demand improvements, pay increases, reductions in working hours, abolition of work rules; when they go on strike to defend their dignity or to affirm their solidarity with a colleague is fired or mistreated by bosses, we have to say to them that none of this ultimately resolves the question. We must use the occasion to advocate the need for the revolution, for the abolition of private property and government. We must do everything possible to widen and generalise the movement into making the revolution. Our programme is the social revolution and is our immediate goal while agitation among the working class are our means. We must prove to the world that socialism isn’t a utopian dream or a distant vision, but a vital and living force, destined to renew the world on the principles of well-being and human fraternity.

“Don’t tell me that some men are too lazy to work. Suppose they are too lazy to work, what do you think of a social system that produces men too lazy to work? If a man is too lazy to work don’t treat him with contempt. Don’t look down upon him with scorn as if you were a superior being. If there is a man too lazy to work there is something the matter with him, He wasn’t born right or he was perverted in this system." Eugene Debs