Why be a socialist?

FOR A WORLD OF FREE ACCESS

 “From each according to his abilities to each according to his needs!”

We live in a world where war and the threat of war, hunger and poverty, racial and sexual discrimination, plus many forms of repression, including the most barbaric, such as torture and genocide, are the lot of the majority of the earth’s inhabitants. We are living under the yoke of capitalism.

The aim of the World Socialist Movement is to replace world capitalist economy by a world system of socialism. A socialist society is mankind’s only way out, for it alone can abolish the contradictions of the capitalist system which threaten to degrade and destroy the human race.  For the first time in its history mankind will take its fate into its own hands. Instead of destroying innumerable human lives and incalculable wealth in struggles between classes and nations, mankind will devote all its energy to the struggle against the forces of nature, to the development and strengthening of its own collective might. Socialism will abolish the class division of society, i.e., simultaneously with the abolition of anarchy in production, it will abolish all forms of exploitation and oppression of man by man. Society will no longer consist of antagonistic classes in conflict with each other, but will present a united commonwealth of labour.

By abolishing private ownership of the means of production and converting these means into social property, the world socialsim will end the forces of the world market competition and its blind processes of social production, by consciously organised and planned production for the purpose of satisfying rapidly growing social needs. With the abolition of capitalism devastating crises and still more devastating wars will disappear. Instead of colossal waste of productive forces and spasmodic development of society-there will be a planned utilisation of all material resources and a painless economic development on the basis of unrestricted, smooth and rapid development of productive forces.

Work will cease to be toiling for the benefit of a class enemy: instead of being merely a means of livelihood it will become a worthwhile communal co-operation to produce the necessities of life.   Culture will become the acquirement of all and  a great field will be opened for the harmonious development of all the talents inherent in humanity. Private ownership in the means of production and its lust for profits, retards technical progress. The closest possible co-operation between science and technique, the utmost encouragement of research work and the practical application of its results on the widest possible social scale; planned organisation, statistical accounting and the scientific regulation of economy will secure the maximum productivity of social labour, which in turn will release human energy for the powerful development of science and art. The development of the productive forces of world society will make it possible to raise the well-being of the whole of humanity and to reduce to a minimum the time devoted to material production and, consequently, will enable culture to flourish as never before in history. This new culture of a humanity that is united for the first time in history, and has abolished all State boundaries, will, unlike capitalist culture, be based upon clear and transparent human relationships. Hence, it will bury forever all mysticism, religion, prejudice and superstition. The social relationships between people will be above-board and principled. Labor will be conscious and enthusiastic as the way of life rather than only as a means of survival. The forces of production will be unleashed and there will be high standards of social wealth. There will be broad and profound advances made in the fields of education, art, culture and science, as the masses of people are free to pursue these endeavors.

Socialism may not be the “utopia” many have describe. But we can be assured that there will no longer be the struggle between opposing classes. Want and economic inequality, the misery of enslaved classes, and a wretched standard of life  will disappear. The hierarchy created in the division of labour system will be abolished together with the antagonism between mental and manual labour; and the last vestige of the social inequality of the sexes will be removed. At the same time,  the State will disappear also,  being the embodiment of class domination. It will die out in so far as classes die out, and with it all measures of coercion will expire. The State is nothing other than the instrument of the dictatorship of one class over the others. Freedom in capitalist society means freedom for the worker to sell him or herself into slavery, and freedom for the capitalist to exploit the worker. The difference between socialists and  anarchists must not be formulated by saying that the socuialist wishes to maintain the existence of the State but the anarchists wished to annihilate it. The real dispute has always been how the State is to be annihilated. The socialist view is that the suture will see the rise of a free association, a society wherein neither class nor government shall exist. The creation of a society without government is the aim of the socialist movemen to be accomplished by “destruction of bourgeois supremacy; conquest of political power by the proletariat.” [Communist Manifesto] Marx elaborates later in 1872 “What all socialists understand by anarchism is this: as soon as the goal of the proletarian movement, the abolition of classes, shall have been reached, the power of the State whose function it is to keep the great majority of the producers beneath the yoke of a small minority of exploiters, will disappear, and governmental functions will be transformed into simple administrative functions.” Here lies the fundamental difference between Marx and Bakunin - socialists hold that the working class must seize political power in order to destroy the class division of society and the existence of the State will become impossible owing to the annihilation of its foundations. The capitalist class seizes possession of the state apparatus and makes it the instrument of its exploitative interests in a manner which is apparent to every worker, who must now recognize that the conquest of political power is in his or her own most immediate personal interest. The blatant seizure of the state by the capitalist class directly compels every worker to strive for the conquest of political power as the only means of putting an end to his or her own exploitation.

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.

The goal of the World Socialist Movement is socialism, and to be part of the liberation of all humanity from the chains of exploitation and oppression. The emancipation of the workers will be accomplished by the workers themselves. They will achieve it through socialist revolution.  Workers everywhere are arriving at almost identical decisions as to tactics and organisation. Workers offer a solution of their own - socialism, the organization of production, the conscious control of the economy not by and for the benefit of capitalist corporations but by and for society as a whole. Socialism is not a remote ideal, an 'ultimate aim' but our 'immediate’ demand. For the time being the World Socialist Movement stands alone in its clear conscious goal - the entire transformation of human society.