Socialism is not some happy Utopia, which we ought to establish but a future system which we MUST attain. As the working class fights against its increasingly worsened position it comes to the realisation that the only way out is for it to collectively take what it has produced for itself. To take over the means of production, the mines, mills, factories, resources, utilities and run them for the benefit of everybody. Then we will have production for use and not for profit. Then we will end both despotism in the factory and chaos of the market. Then society will allocate its resources according to a social plan that will benefit all, a rational system of society.
According to the prices on the market, men are employed or fired, millions made or lost, wealth produced or not, countries rise or fall. Competition between buyer and buyer, between buyer and seller, between seller and seller, between the capitalists and the workers, among the capitalists themselves and among the workers, all this transforms society into a veritable jungle where each is for himself and the devil take the hindmost. Charity, love, mercy, and such ideals find little realization in the market place. The whole world lives for exchange. In a thousand ways, the lives of the workers are worn out prematurely with a wantonness and criminal irresponsibility. Simultaneously the parasitic class increases in numbers, completely divorced from the process of production, interested only in the stocks and bonds they own. Under capitalist competition there is no order, no plan, no authority in the market to control it.
In this labour market buyer and seller do not occupy equal positions. The buyer is a capitalist with wealth and reserves. As a relatively small group, the capitalist may combine their forces against the laborers, sellers of labour power, and may make impossible those combinations of labor that can strengthen the bargaining power of the sellers. The capitalist buyers have at their disposal an army of well-paid henchmen, politicians, soldiers, police, lawyers, brain-washing intellectual leaders and such as those controlling the communication and education media, the church and religious leaders who preach of “turning the other cheek,” and similar. On the side of the workers are hunger, poverty, ignorance, disease, agents provocateurs, turncoats and stool pigeons, and a thousand similar handicaps.
Under the capitalist system, the unions could not play more than a subsidiary role. They could strike for higher wages, but wages depend upon profits and not vice versa. Should higher wages ruin the profits of an employer, he can sell out and enter another line of production; his capital takes flight to other fields of investment. What can an ordinary strike accomplish when the employer shuts down, sells out, or moves away? The only action left is to take over the factories. But this again is a political task. For it is an attack against private property, capitalist property, and property is a relation backed up by all the sanction and power of the State.
Taking over all the technique prepared by capitalism, socialism begins where capitalism ends.Inside socialism, there are no longer a market, commodities, values, prices, wages. The workers, through their representatives, guide their own destinies and organise themselves so that production may be purposefully, planned, controlled and managed. The allocation of material and workers to a particular industry is made, not according to the frenetic fluctuations of the market, through bankruptcy and booms, but by social analysis of the needs of man, of the productivity of the workers, and of how much strength is needed to fulfill these needs. For the first time, society rises from the domain of necessity into the realm of freedom. Goods are no longer sold for a market, but are produced for use. There being no class struggles, there is now no need for a State, and the State withers away. The armed services are not necessary. Police disappear. The basis for crime is gone, since labour is so productive that all the wants of life easily can be obtained. The criminal is treated as a sick person and is given careful hospitalisation until he or she becomes rehabilitated and made again into a social creature. Socialism lays the basis for a new type of family life, the ending of the misery and despotism that mark many family relations. A complete emancipation of women and for children, an entirely new upbringing. In the home, as in politics, the government over persons is transformed into the administration of things.
Society has become regenerated. The precept, “from each according to his ability and to each according to his needs.” prevails. The tremendously increased productivity of mankind will have reduced to a bare minimum the amount of time necessary for each to produce the wants of life. Elimination of all toil in work will enable the worker to become an artist, to find the greatest pleasure in the objective result of his labors, to fuse into one work and recreation, and to combine his constructive relations with nature with the construction and reconstruction of himself. If work becomes a pleasure, pleasure itself is work.
According to the prices on the market, men are employed or fired, millions made or lost, wealth produced or not, countries rise or fall. Competition between buyer and buyer, between buyer and seller, between seller and seller, between the capitalists and the workers, among the capitalists themselves and among the workers, all this transforms society into a veritable jungle where each is for himself and the devil take the hindmost. Charity, love, mercy, and such ideals find little realization in the market place. The whole world lives for exchange. In a thousand ways, the lives of the workers are worn out prematurely with a wantonness and criminal irresponsibility. Simultaneously the parasitic class increases in numbers, completely divorced from the process of production, interested only in the stocks and bonds they own. Under capitalist competition there is no order, no plan, no authority in the market to control it.
In this labour market buyer and seller do not occupy equal positions. The buyer is a capitalist with wealth and reserves. As a relatively small group, the capitalist may combine their forces against the laborers, sellers of labour power, and may make impossible those combinations of labor that can strengthen the bargaining power of the sellers. The capitalist buyers have at their disposal an army of well-paid henchmen, politicians, soldiers, police, lawyers, brain-washing intellectual leaders and such as those controlling the communication and education media, the church and religious leaders who preach of “turning the other cheek,” and similar. On the side of the workers are hunger, poverty, ignorance, disease, agents provocateurs, turncoats and stool pigeons, and a thousand similar handicaps.
Under the capitalist system, the unions could not play more than a subsidiary role. They could strike for higher wages, but wages depend upon profits and not vice versa. Should higher wages ruin the profits of an employer, he can sell out and enter another line of production; his capital takes flight to other fields of investment. What can an ordinary strike accomplish when the employer shuts down, sells out, or moves away? The only action left is to take over the factories. But this again is a political task. For it is an attack against private property, capitalist property, and property is a relation backed up by all the sanction and power of the State.
Taking over all the technique prepared by capitalism, socialism begins where capitalism ends.Inside socialism, there are no longer a market, commodities, values, prices, wages. The workers, through their representatives, guide their own destinies and organise themselves so that production may be purposefully, planned, controlled and managed. The allocation of material and workers to a particular industry is made, not according to the frenetic fluctuations of the market, through bankruptcy and booms, but by social analysis of the needs of man, of the productivity of the workers, and of how much strength is needed to fulfill these needs. For the first time, society rises from the domain of necessity into the realm of freedom. Goods are no longer sold for a market, but are produced for use. There being no class struggles, there is now no need for a State, and the State withers away. The armed services are not necessary. Police disappear. The basis for crime is gone, since labour is so productive that all the wants of life easily can be obtained. The criminal is treated as a sick person and is given careful hospitalisation until he or she becomes rehabilitated and made again into a social creature. Socialism lays the basis for a new type of family life, the ending of the misery and despotism that mark many family relations. A complete emancipation of women and for children, an entirely new upbringing. In the home, as in politics, the government over persons is transformed into the administration of things.
Society has become regenerated. The precept, “from each according to his ability and to each according to his needs.” prevails. The tremendously increased productivity of mankind will have reduced to a bare minimum the amount of time necessary for each to produce the wants of life. Elimination of all toil in work will enable the worker to become an artist, to find the greatest pleasure in the objective result of his labors, to fuse into one work and recreation, and to combine his constructive relations with nature with the construction and reconstruction of himself. If work becomes a pleasure, pleasure itself is work.
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