Socialism is a MUST

It is impossible to discuss any important political problem of our time, let alone take a part in resolving it, without a clear understanding of what socialism really signifies. It is just as impossible to get such an understanding from the writings and speeches of capitalists, their statesmen, politicians, hangers-on, apologists, or any other beneficiaries of their rule. They are quite capable of describing the notorious vices of particular aspects of capitalism but its true social significance, however, escapes them. Whoever does not know what are the real relationships between the social system of capitalism and the social system of socialism, may be ever so intelligent in fields like physics or the arts or investment banking, but in the most important field of social science, he is hopeless. Whoever knows something about these relationships, but refuses to make them the rock foundation on which to base and build his political ideas and actions, may be ever so fine a family man, so tender a poet, so graceful a writer and so eloquent an orator, but in this field of politics he is either a muddlehead, a mercenary or a plain demagogue.

 The biggest productive machine ever imagined for the creation of social wealth, has nevertheless instilled in the entire population a profound and a sense of insecurity. Everybody realises that whatever economic prosperity there is, or seems to be, is based upon the unparalleled economic destruction produced by the wars of today or by the organised economic waste of the periods of war preparations. The very preparation for war requires that a crushing economic burden be kept upon the shoulders of society, above all on those shoulders least able to carry the burden. Political or intellectual leaders one after another now repeats, as if it were an incontestable truth, that they face a fight for survival in a war against terror; and not a person has yet been found to reject or rebut that ominous formula. It should be clear why the professional supporters of capitalism are incapable of analysing and understanding socialism. Such an understanding implies a thoroughgoing indictment of capitalism which is unacceptable to those who are wedded economically or intellectually to this moribund social order.

When we speak of capitalism solving a social problem it should be self-evident that we mean solving the problem on a capitalistic basis. Capitalism has never been able to solve a social problem on any other basis. What is more, when it was able to solve such problems on that basis in the past, it is now less and less capable of solving them even on that basis today. Socialism is not a happy Utopia, which we OUGHT to establish but a future system which we inevitably MUST attain.

 Society is not as stationary but as constantly in motion. Society is made up of a net of social relations, the most decisive of which are the economic, that is, those productive relations which result in the satisfaction of our basic needs, food, clothing, shelter. The production and reproduction of life—that is the great activity of the organic world, an activity that separates the animate from inanimate matter. And in the whole animal world there goes on a struggle with nature to wring from it the necessities of life. The struggle for life becomes the struggle for the means of life. And if mankind has separated himself from the ape it is in this that mankind, under the pressure of environmental forces, in the course of  evolutionary development, became a tool-making animal and through  tools changed from a victim of environment to a controller of it. The struggle for life which had become a struggle for the means of life now more and more becomes a struggle for the means of production of the necessities of life. The development of life, then, must coincide with the development of the means (the forces) of production. Here we have the basic factor of all society, the forces of production. Freedom can only come from the materialist control by mankind of the forces of nature of which it is a part.  Just as the economic structure of society depends upon the productive forces, upon the level of technique and praxis attained, so the general social and cultural relations depend upon the economic ones.  Each change in the technique of production changes the interests involved, brings forth new economic relations which challenge the old. Soon the old controlling relations hamper the forces of production. These relations must now be burst asunder. They are burst asunder by the revolution and with the social revolution come new relations, which are no longer in conflict with the development of production, of life and of freedom. Throughout all history we can see this process at work.

Capitalism is tremendously wasteful and destructive of men, goods, power, land. The ultimate destiny of all useful goods is to be consumed. Yet under capitalism goods are not produced to be consumed, but for profit, and if a greater profit can be made by destroying the goods, the destruction takes place. While production is a social act, the appropriation of the product, under the present system, is individual. As capitalism develops, larger and larger factories are built, thousands of laborers co-operate in the production of a single article, yet the article does not belong to them but to the owner of the means of production. The labourers are merely paid wages for the use of their labour power, wages which constantly grow less and less an part of the total product as the total product ever increases. Simultaneously the owner of the industries becomes progressively more divorced from the productive process. As small partnerships become big corporations or are driven out of business by the trusts and monopolies, the original entrepreneurs and organizers become mere rentiers. The corporation also develops, becomes more and more a public utility. The state begins to take a hand, and to run the industry. The former individual owner now becomes a purely parasitic hanger-on, his dividends paid regularly by the state apparatus which he controls.

Capitalist relations throttle and destroy these productive forces. Within the factory a rigid dictatorship, a terrible “rationalisation” where the dead machine rules living labor, where the man is transformed into a cog of the machine, where labor becomes wage-slavery. Outside the factory dictatorship is replaced by economic chaos, man is ruled by prices which he cannot control, by the wild forces of the market of which he can be only the victim. It is only through the hectic fluctuations of supply and demand, it is only through the frantic rush of “successes” and bankruptcies that society “decides” and “plans” the division of its labour.

 Inasmuch as our ideas rationalise our interests, the ideas of the ruling class will be along the line of preserving their property and their right to exploit, while the ideas of the working class will follow their interests. The capitalists and their agents in the seats of government are blinded by their self interest, by the profits which they make as beneficiaries of the present system. The workers, on the other hand, having nothing to lose, are free to see that the present society must evolve into a new one; they see that nothing can free society from its convulsions save the change in the mode of production from a capitalist one, of private ownership of the means of production, to a  socialist one, where the means of production are socialised and classes are no more. As yet, the signs of recognition of class lines from among the ranks of the working class have not been numerous. But there have been some progress. Signs are pointing to a period of militant action on the part of labour.  As the working class fights against its increasingly worsened position it comes to the realisation that the only way out is for labor to take what it has produced for itself. To take over the means of production, the mines, mills, factories, farms and natural resources,  and run them for their own benefit. Then we will have production for use and not for profit. Then we will end both despotism in the factory and anarchy in the market. Then society will allocate its resources and labour power according to a social plan that will benefit all.

It is capitalism which creates the working class, which places this class before its problems, which sharpens its intelligence and gives it its science. It is capitalism that arms the workers and gives them the strength to carry out their own interests. In short, capitalism as it grows out of date creates its own grave-diggers who begin to do their work. The interest of the workers is diametrically opposed to the interest of the capitalists and exploiters of the workers who, controlling the government and the social educational agencies, strive to keep the workers down. The productive forces have created capitalist relations, capitalist relations have created classes which have opposite economic and thus opposite political and cultural interests. The capitalists want to keep the old relations of exploitation. They fight the rise of the workers. But their only alternative is to plunge society into one crisis and one war after another. The victory of the workers cannot be forever delayed. The old relations must be burst asunder. And if the capitalists, blinded by their interests, try to stop the wheels of progress they are ruthlessly pushed aside by the workers just as in the past they themselves pushed aside the feudal lords.

When the workers of the world unite to take over the rule over persons will begin to give way to an administration over things. The state, with its religion, will begin to wither away. There will be no exploitation. There will be no classes. Each will receive according to his needs and will contribute according to his ability. Society will be a free one and mankind emancipated.