We must remember that society as it is today does not mean that it was always so. Capitalism distorts the vision of a future society and we can only see a different system in terms of our present one. Socialists advocate a system of society where each will contribute to production and partake freely of need. Sounds too fantastic to be true ? We have heard that before but just think for a moment of the fantastic things we have come to accept as normal under capitalism. It is now quite normal for thousands of people to starve to death as food is destroyed.
Knowledge is power. Only as the workers have knowledge and intelligence can they solve the problem of their own political and industrial freedom. The capitalists have educated the workers to their advantage to-day, but for their undoing tomorrow. Education of the workers for the benefit of the capitalist class means gain and profit only for the few, the upper class of to-day. Education of the workers for the benefit of the working class means gain and profit for the working class and ultimately for the whole human race. The thing that makes for the triumph of capitalism ultimately makes for its own downfall.
The more we understand about capitalism, the less we should sacrifice our own life or anyone else’s for the benefit of any politician. We would be aware that this is a social system that operate to the benefit of a minority. That the problems of hunger, unemployment, war, are a direct result of the inadequacy of the system. The survival of capitalism rest entirely on the division of the working class. Capitalism have made us its casualties and victims.
Socialism can only be achieved by the working class and that we, the majority can now change the system to one more in harmony with the problems of the world. Unless we know ourselves we cant even begin. Until workers want and understand socialism, it is impossible. Thus only conscious, majority, political action can achieve socialism. Minority action, whether on the industrial or political fields, cannot. The way to political power lies through the ballot box. A socialist working class can use the vote to win power just as today they use it to hand over power to capitalists. A Socialist party can have only one aim: Socialism. For a socialist party to seek support on the basis of a reform programme can only lead to compromise with capitalism
Every recession is in a sense a crisis of capitalism. The necessity of government action to prop up the economic order to insure “prosperity”, formerly was promised by the working of “free” capitalist enterprise but now the need is for increasing use of government to manipulate economic forces, for state capitalism, because capitalist industry is unable to function as of old. Recurrent breakdowns of prosperity are a typical spectacle of capitalist civilization. Men, women, and children starve or agonizingly approach starvation while wheat and corn rot, vegetables perish, milk and coffee are destroyed. The wheels of industry slow down while millions of workers eager to work are condemned to unemployment. Wants go unsatisfied on an enormous and oppressive scale, although all the means exist to satisfy the wants. Even in periods of the most flourishing prosperity, when there are also millions unemployed; their wants and many wants even of employed workers are unsatisfied. Capitalism has survived many depressions: they have, in fact, been the starting points of new shoots of growth. Always, in one form or another, capitalism creates an ideology to mask and justify its predatory character: it is a necessary device of class domination. But when as it must, and the hopeless reality it disguises is revealed, the economic crisis of capitalism will become a class and political crisis, a lapse of faith in the old order and the belief in the Capitalist Dream crumbles.
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