A Challenge to Dare

For as long as anyone can remember, the various ruling classes have paraded one political representative after another before the people promising a lifetime of “peace with prosperity.” while they have subjected hundreds of millions to the agony of pillage and plunder from one end of the globe to another. Today,  their whole system of legalized robbery is once again caught in a desperate and deepening economic and political crisis nd we get the same promises of “peace and prosperity” but for tomorrow. But the whole history of humanity, as well as the present reality, shows that there is another path – the path which the subjugated can take. Revolution is the only means to break free of the chains of exploitation and degradation.

Socialist revolution is the most radical break with oppression and exploitation in history. Society will no longer proceed in chaos, but according to the planned fulfillment of genuine human needs. The establishment of a socialist, planned economy will be based on the needs of the people, replacing replace the world capitalist system with world socialism. Exploitation, and oppression will not exist. Commodity production, that is, production for sale or exchange on the market, will not exist. Private property will not exist The system of wage labour will not exist and the means of production will be held communally.With the abolition of classes, the State will not exist.  What should be  clear to every class-conscious worker seeking a radical way forward out of the misery and madness of capitalism, is that our new world will be built upon the guiding principle of  “from each according to ability, to each according to need.”

In order for revolution to be thoroughgoing it must be initiated by the one force in society that has no stake whatsoever in preserving the present order and compromising the basic interests of the masses of people. This force is  the working class. Itself exploited, labouring collectively with highly developed means of production but deprived of all ownership of these means of production, having no means to live except to sell its ability to labuor and at the bottom of society, the proletariat cannot abolish its own exploitation and oppression without abolishing them finally from society altogether. The revolution by the proletariat  fulfills its interests as a class and the historic mission of not of replacing one group of exploiters with another, not bringing into being and fortifying a new system of degradation and plunder, but advancing society to a whole new epoch – socialism – where class distinctions and their basis, as well as all the evils flowing from them, will be finally eliminated.

Two roads lie open ahead for the working class. One is the  worn and hell-bound path of the red, white and blue. The other road, is the  revolutionary road. It is said that our ideas are impractical. That is true. From the standpoint of old institutions, interests and their beneficiaries; the new is always impractical; for our goal is the self-emancipation of the working class. The first essential feature of socialism is that the of production are taken from private ownership and used for society as, a whole. In socialist society, where production is not for profit but for use, a plan of production is possible.

Is this Utopian? It could only be regarded as Utopian by people who do not understand the materialist basis of Marxism. Human beings have no fixed characteristics and outlook, eternally permanent. In primitive tribal society, even in those forms of it which have survived to recent times, the sense of responsibility to the tribe is very great. In later society, after the division of society into classes, the sense of social responsibility was broken down, but still showed itself in a certain feeling of responsibility to the class. In capitalist society there is the most extreme disintegation of social responsibility: the system makes “every man for himself” the main principle of life. But even within capitalist society there is what is known as “solidarity” among the workers – the sense of a common interest, a common responsibility. This is not an idea which someone has thought of and put into the heads of workers: it is an idea which arises out of the material conditions of working-class life, the fact that they get their living in the same way, working alongside each other.  Of course, the ideas of the dominant class – the competition and rivalry instead of solidarity – tend to spread among the workers, especially among those who are picked out by the employers for special advancement of any kind. But the fundamental basis for the outlook of any class (as distinct from individuals) is the material conditions of life, the way it gets its living. Hence it follows that the outlook of people can be changed by changing their material conditions, the way in which they get their living. When, therefore,  the material basis in a new future society is socialist production and distribution, when the way in which all the people get their living is by working for society as a whole, then the sense of social responsibility so to speak develops naturally; people no longer need to be convinced that the social principle is right. It is not a question of an abstract moral duty having to establish itself over the instinctive desires of “human nature;” human nature itself is transformed by practice, by custom.

In such a world socialist system the further advance that man could make defies the imagination. With all economic life planned globally,  mankind would indeed take giant step forward. No new division into classes because in a socialist society there is nothing to give rise to it. With vast productive forces available to humanity only a couple of hours’ work a day is necessary to produce an abundance and free men and women from drudgery.