Fight for tomorrow's world today

Some people refuse to learn. Others refuse to remember. And yet others remember what they have learned only up to the moment when events call upon them to put it into practice, whereupon they begin to forget. Socialism is based upon the organisation of production for use by means of the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production, and is the abolition of all classes.

 “It would be nice to have socialism but it cannot happen" runs the argument by many people. Socialism is not a utopian ideal, a blueprint for society that exists in the minds of some people. It is a social necessity; it is a practical necessity. It is the direction that the masses of the people must take in order to save society from disintegration. To be a socialist, merely means to be conscious of this necessity, to make others conscious of it, and to work for the realisation of the goal.

How is the goal of a socialist society to be realised? Is it really impossible to realise it? One of the consequences of capitalism is that production is already carried on socially. Labour has been socialised. The only important thing that has not been socialised is the ownership and the appropriation of the products of industry. They remain private or under state control. And therein lies the root of capitalist exploitation and oppression, of the anarchy of production, of crises and wars. The seeds of socialism, sown by capitalism itself, will bloom and flourish.

 Of all the people in society, the workers suffer most intensely from the rule of capitalism. Their interests are diametrically opposed to those of the capitalists. The workers cannot rid themselves of their sufferings without abolishing the domination that the machine has over them. They can do this only if they gain control of the machine itself. In doing so, they must destroy capitalism and proceed with the complete re-organisation of society. Man would no longer be the slave of the machine. The machine would be the slave of man. Every increase in productivity would bring with it two things: an increase in the things required for the need, comfort and even luxury of all; and an increase in everyone’s leisure time, to devote to the free cultural and intellectual development of humankind. Mankind will not live primarily to work, instead we will work primarily to live.

The abolition of private ownership would remove the last barrier to the development of production. Production would be organised and aimed at satisfying the needs of society. Once the profit barrier is removed, and the huge waste of capitalism eliminated, productivity and production would reach undreamed-of peaks. All the unnatural differences between town and country would be eliminated. Even today, with all the restrictions that capitalism places upon production, there are capitalist experts who declare that industry, properly organised, can produce the necessities of life for all in a working day of four hours or less. Organised on a socialist basis, even this figure could be cut down. The State would no longer exist and be the instrument of an exploiting minority for the domination of the exploited majority. The State itself will die out for lack of any social need or function. There will be the simple administration of things, but no longer the rule of man over man.

As the necessities and comforts of life become increasingly abundant, and the differences between physical and mental work, between town and country are eliminated – the last vestiges of inequality will disappear as a matter of course. This may seem incredible to a mind thoroughly poisoned with capitalist prejudices. But why should it be incredible? Thirsty men will fight tooth and nail for a drink at a desert oasis. But if they are up to their waist in water they may have a thousand differences among themselves, but they will not even dream of fighting for a drink. A dozen men in a prison cell with only one tiny window may trample over each other in the fight to get to that tiny source of light. But outside, who would ever think of fighting for more sunshine than the next man? Announce a shortage of bread, and immediately a long line will form, with everyone racing to get there first, and a policeman on hand to “keep order.” But if everyone knew that there is an ample supply of bread today, and there will be just as large a supply tomorrow and the next day, there would be no line, no race, no conflict; nobody would try to hoard an extra loaf in order to make sure of eating the next day; and there would be no need of a policeman to back up his orders by force. If society could assure everyone of as ample and constant a supply of bread as there is of air, why would anyone need or want a greater right to buy bread than his neighbor? Bread is used here only as the simplest illustration. But the same applies to all other foods, to clothing, to shelter, to means of transportation and so on.

Efficiently using our present technology we could easily assure abundance to all. In return, society could confidently expect every citizen to contribute his or her best voluntarily. Capitalism strictly enforces the principle, “Who does not work, shall not eat.” In the midst of abundance for all and of the high cultural development that will accompany it, there is no reason to believe that  this principle will still stand. Working  to the best of one’s ability will be as natural an act as breathing, eating, clothing and sheltering oneself. Under those circumstances, it would be an mental aberration to draw on the public storehouse without contributing. What need is there for compulsion, for a machinery of force? What will there be to steal in the midst of abundance? The important thing is that there will be no need of a public coercive force to maintain the power of one class over another, to protect the property of one from the assaults of the other, to assure the continuation of oppression and exploitation.

Where there is abundance for all, there will also be  ample opportunity for the intellectual development of all. Abundance for all? Freedom for all? A society without a state?
“Impossible! It can never happen. It is a utopian ideal.” our Doubting Thomases once again declare. A socialist society will show that abundance, freedom and equality are not only possible but the natural condition for the new history of the human race.

Suppose our sceptic does not join in the fight for socialism or organise and work for its victory. Will the society we live in remain just as it is, will it move forward, or will it slip backward?

 Every time the barrel weakens, a new hoop, or set of hoops, is desperately pressed around it. The capitalists complain bitterly, but actually they cannot do without this growing bureaucracy of government interference. If banking breaks down as it did in the last recession, it can no longer be restored by the “normal course of the market”; legislation and regulations are decreed. Alongside this parasitic bureaucracy grows regimentation of all sorts. The concentration of economic power has brought with it the concentration of political power. The concentration of political power is indispensable to the concentration of economic power in the hands of monopoly capitalism. Representative democratic government, even in the most democratic capitalist countries, has become more and more meaningless, more and more ineffectual. The sharper the crisis, the more urgent the problem, the less capitalism can wait for the government to intervene by the process of slow, lumbering deliberations in large representative assemblies like congress or the House of Commons or the Chamber of Deputies. In some countries, such democratic bodies never even existed. In other countries where they did exist, they are now tolerated only as formalities, their real rights and powers eliminated or reduced to zero, their actual powers being only “advisory to the executive.” In still other countries, they have been wiped out altogether. Hence, the rise of totalitarian government, of authoritarian government, of capitalist dictatorships everywhere. Hence, the decline of capitalist democracy and of democratic representative government. “Wait for Congress? Wait for parliament? No, it will be too late! The situation is urgent and desperate!” That is why we see, even in the most democratic capitalist governments, the decline in the power and activity of the representative assemblies and the rise in the power of the executive – the President or the Prime Minister; the decline of government by legislation and the rise of government by executive decree.

The growing regimentation and oppression, the violation and elimination of democratic rights and institutions affects the workers most heavily and adversely. The workers are simply reduced to the level of a new kind of slavery. In every country, the basic crisis of capitalism makes life harder for the workers to endure. The crisis therefore generates the workers’ resistance to the unendurable conditions of life. The greater this resistance, the more it disrupts the already precarious stability of capitalist production and capitalist rule. The capitalist state intervenes on the side of capitalism. To an increasing extent, wages and working conditions are determined by the government. Silent obedience to its decisions is made a “patriotic” duty not only in wartime but in peacetime.  The right to work has been converted into compulsory work under government orders or direction. The unemployed, “maintained” by the government, are at the government’s mercy; they are ordered to take any job, regardless of wages or working conditions. The unions’s power resembles Samson shorn of the long locks of his hair, weakened and impotent. By anti-union laws, government restricts  the most powerful weapon workers has in their possession, the right to strike. By all sorts of intimidation and blackmail,  the unions are induced to abandon the right to strike “voluntarily” through no-strike clauses in pay-rise or redundancy negotiations. Capitalism’s crises has reduced the wage worker to an even lower abysmal level of wage-slave.

Still the story of the alternative to socialism is not told.

Capitalism long ago took over a world divided between slaves and slave-owners. The race among the Big Powers for mastery devours more and more of the peoples and wealth of the world. The period of peace between wars becomes shorter every time. During the period of peace, to say nothing of the period of war itself, more and more of the energies, the wealth of every country are devoted to preparing for the outbreak of the coming war which capitalism makes inevitable. Capitalism devotes an ever-increasing part of its capacity to producing the means of destruction. Science and scientists are not allowed to perform the task of lightening the burdens of humanity and advancing the welfare of society; instead they are harnessed to the wagons of war. At the orders of the state, science develops weaponry that will destroy hundreds where one was killed before, bombs and missiles that will destroy whole cities where only a building was damaged before. The atomic bomb is the horrible symbol of capitalism and of what its further existence means to the existence of civilisation and humanity. Security is a memory. Peace is fleeting and war is an ever-present threat or an actual monstrous reality.

And still there remain those who say this is all inevitable. That it cannot be ended. That this is all there is to expect in life and from the future. The Socialist Party says this is not so. Things can be different. The people of the world have a viable feasible alternative to choose. Another world is indeed possible.