Unlock the World

We call our world civilised but it is hard to justify the term. To-day’s world tolerates hunger amid plenty. Production of things people need, and of things they would be better without, is plan-less and irresponsible, resulting in grave inequalities, where immense wealth flaunts itself amid squalor, and poverty breeds hatred and contempt. Capitalism is a social system which cannot satisfy the most elementary needs of the people, but can squander billions for war. That is the greatest indictment of capitalist ‘civilisation’.

 Socialists have always contended that capitalism should be abolished because it mismanages the means of production so that a very few – those who own the means of production – reap great profits while the rest of the people are deprived of a decent secure standard of living. We have often  demonstrated the tremendous capacities of modern industry; how it could satisfy the needs of everyone if it were run for that purpose; and how capitalism, instead, runs it for profits. Socialists explain that if only the people could run these industries for themselves, they could produce enough to satisfy everyone’s needs. Capitalism is a wasteful and inefficient system. . During crises the working masses suffer extreme want in respect of elementary necessities, their requirements are satisfied worse than at any other time. Millions of people starve because “too much" grain has been produced, people suffer from cold because “too much" coal has been produced. The working people are deprived of means of livelihood just because they have produced these means in too great a quantity. Such is the crying contradiction of the capitalist mode of production, under which, in the words of the French utopian socialist Fourier, “plenty becomes the source of poverty and want".

Upheavals often occurred under pre-capitalist modes of production, too. But they were the result od  some natural or social calamity: flood, drought, wars or epidemics sometimes laid waste entire countries, dooming population to famine and extinction. The difference, however, between these economic upheavals and capitalist crises is that the hunger and want caused by these upheavals were an outcome of the low level of development of production, the extreme shortage of products; whereas under capitalism crises are engendered by the growth of production alongside the wretched standard of living of the masses, by a relative “excess" of commodities produced. Because of the massive dynamics and productivity of capitalism at the same time as anarchy of the market exists, we face the phenomenon of poverty in the midst of plenty. For thousands of years people starved because there was not enough food. Capitalism is the only system of society in which people starve because there is too much food.

Socialism could provide people with all necessities. There would be no shortages created by the greed of a few owners of the means of production, because the people would own the means of production. We can feed the hungry, provide shelter for the homeless, and warmth for the old. There’s plenty of food in the world, the factories are there, the industrial technology is there, the scientific know-how is there, the skills of the workers are there – and the needs and wants of people are plain for all to see. The problem is that they can’t be matched up. We can produce what people need – but we don’t. With socialism, production can be organised to meet the needs of all the people and not to provide profit for a single class. It will, therefore be possible to plan production; and so to increase enormously the amount produced.

The aim of the Socialist Party is to build a society which will be classless, where all the means of producing wealth are owned in common. Instead of being divided into workers and employers, rich and poor, society will be an association of free people, all making their special contributions to the well-being of society, which in return will supply them with what they need in order to live full and happy lives. Such a society can be summed up in the slogan: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”  For this to be possible, socialism must be based on abundance. Production will be organised in such a way that there is plenty of everything for everybody: not only food, houses, railways, and so on, to satisfy material needs; but also schools and theatres, playing-fields, cultural centres, so that people can lead full, physical and spiritual lives. Socialism must embrace all the peoples of the world; and in so doing it will put an end to war. It is clear from the fore-mentioned  that many institutions which we accept today as essential will have disappeared. Because no wars can take place in a truly world society there will be no need for armies. Because it will be a community of plenty, where there is enough for all and therefore no advantage can be obtained by theft or other forms of crime, all need for courts of justice and police and prisons will have disappeared. In other words, the State, which is the sum of all these institutions and organisations, will itself disappear. Instead of one section of society ruling and oppressing another, men and women will have grown accustomed to living together in society without fear and compulsion. Thus, for the first time, mankind, united in a world-wide family of nations, will be free. Work, instead of being simply a means of earning a living, will have become the natural expression of individuals’ lives, freely given according to their abilities. Moreover, the nature of work will itself have changed. Through the development of science much of its drudgery will have disappeared and every man and woman will develop their mental and physical capacities to the full.

Everything is ripe for socialism; it is only necessary to remove its enemies, the capitalist thieves and their accomplices. The answer to  poverty and deprivation is not welfare but a new society which will have real solutions.