We have managed to create a new world full of technological wonders and a potential for a bountiful abundance for all, but we still run it the old way - the capitalist way. Governments cannot fix the problems. The remedies will require a massive and new degree of cooperation. That, in turn, requires not just information networks, but basic changes in human behaviour such as our overly-attachment to nations and our approach to politics.
Capitalists are not interested in production to benefit the peoples of the world. They are interested only in profits. If the productive forces in the world were to be used for the purposes of construction, the entire planet could be transformed and the standards of living and level of culture raised to undreamed of heights. This is not possible under capitalism. It is not profitable to feed the starving people. Only the unity of the workers and a socialist world can produce that “One World” which can abolish want and oppression and war. Only a socialist world can give us peace and plenty. Look how the capitalist world totters on the brink of destruction. The capitalist political parties are as rotten and bankrupt as the system they uphold. The myriad evils of capitalism will disappear only with the destruction of capitalism and the building of socialism. We will do away with the chaos of capitalism. Democratically-elected councils of workers in every industry and district will manage the factories and public services. We, socialists, refuse to join the reformists in leading the workers into the camp of capitalism. The intensity of the class struggle is greater today than at any time since the capitalists overthrew feudalism. Now it is the working class that must overthrow capitalism. The only road is the socialist road. Vote for the Socialist party, the only party that keeps the red flag flying.
The aim of the Socialist Party is not merely to take political power and establish socialism within the United Kingdom, that would be impossible but to join with the workers of all other countries in building world socialism. A world socialist society is the only solution to the many social problems in present day society. Only a socialist society can utilize rationally the natural resources and productive machinery of the Earth in the interests of the peoples of the planet. A network of socialist communities can alone solve the conflict between the efficient development of productive forces and the restrictions of artificial national boundaries. Only world socialism will remove the causes of international wars that under capitalism now seriously threaten to send mankind into barbarism or complete destruction. With world socialism the international division of labour would be organised in a more rational, cooperative and planned way than it is now. We see one revolution as links in the chain of revolutions which will emancipate the world from capitalism and establish world socialism. This conception stands in the center of the system of ideas which binds us together.
Socialism is the only way out from the difficulties in which humanity faces. To-day’s world is still a world of economic exploitation, misery, hunger, hatred, war and fear. The old problems are joined by new ones. Our desire is to contribute to the realization of a humane human community. The Socialist Party disdaining to bow to popular fads and fallacies or to sacrifice working class interests for the sake of temporary opportunistic advantage. Against capitalist-nurtured doctrines the Socialist Party has taken its stand.
The Socialist Party does not refuse ameliorations offered by the capitalist class, but contends that the more revolutionary the workers become, the stronger they make their economic and political organizations, the more prepared and anxious will the capitalist class be to throw sops to them in order to keep them contented.
The first condition of success for socialism is that its proponents should explain its aim and its essential characteristics clearly, so that they can be understood by every one. Socialists believe that society is divided into two great classes by the present form of property-holding, and that one of these classes, the wage-earning, the proletariat, possess nothing. They can only live by their work. He can neither work, nor eat, clothe or shelter himself, without being held to ransom by the owning capitalist class.
The trade unions are based on the proposition that the workers by hand and brain, who sell their services to the capitalist class—i.e., the owners of industry—have interests which are opposed to those of that class. Trade unionists were not long in discovering that the State was not a neutral body representing the interests of the community. It constantly intervened against the workers in strikes. It passed legislation which hindered the growth of trade unionism. The object of nationalisation is not to lay the foundations of a new society. Socialists have always criticised the capitalist system because it gave rise not only to recurring economic crises, but to ever more devastating wars. The system of capitalist production leads inevitably to the alternating cycle of boom and bust and periodical crisis under capitalism. With socialism, production is planned and rational, and takes place for peoples’ use. The establishment of a socialism will mean the end to the chaos of capitalist production with its lack of planning, repeated crises, unemployment, inflation and criminal waste. Exploitation, oppression, and degradation will not exist in socialist society. Commodity production, that is, production for sale or exchange on the market, will not exist. The system of wage labor will be abolished and the guiding principle of labor will be “from each according to ability, to each according to need.” The means of production will be held communally and private property will be eliminated. With the abolition of classes and class distinctions, all social and political inequality arising from them will disappear. The conflicts of interest between workers and farmers, town and country, manual and intellectual labor will disappear. As classes will not exist, the state will not be necessary as an instrument of class rule and will wither away. To replace the system of capitalism by which the millions of the majority are compelled to sell their only commodity, labor power, for the profit of a small minority.To end exploitation of man by man, to end the present system which compels the many to work to produce wealth for a few.
The problem before society to-day is not a financial problem. It is a property problem. The banks belong to the superstructure of capitalism. Private property is the foundation. The financial crises, consumption crises, credit crises and the like are nothing more than the reflections of the fundamental economic crisis arising from the fact that the private ownership of the means of production has become an anachronism in a society where social methods of production have superseded individual methods of production. No amount of credit supply to manufacturers, no amount of currency manipulation which leaves the question of property ownership untouched, can do other than aggravate the crisis of capitalism.
The ownership question is a political as well as an economic question in society divided into owning and non-owning classes. This is the basis of the struggle of classes which many 'anti-capitalists’ appears to have forgotten. In their tirades against the financiers, the bankers won’t flinch because of this onslaught, but people may be diverted from that which matters more than all else to-day, namely, the struggle to secure the social ownership of the means of production—the prerequisite of economic and social prosperity. Social ownership must supersede the private ownership of the means of production, and can only come about through the political victory of the class without property over the class with property.
Our movement is leader-less and leader-full. Everything for everyone, nothing for ourselves.
No comments:
Post a Comment