WHAT IS SOCIALISM?

The great are only great because we are on our knees. Let us rise!

In these turbulent times people are more and more beginning to discuss alternative, more rational, saner ways of living. Throughout the world people have been coming together calling for change – calls that are maybe vague and  undefined, but heartfelt in sincerity. A few years ago the Occupy Movement urged change and encouraged an exploration of new ways of organising society, hoping to establish an economic system with sharing and cooperation at its core. For change to be sustainable it needs to carry the support of the majority and the participation of the many.

Socialism is the collective ownership by all the people of the factories, mills, mines, railways, land and all other instruments of production and distribution. Socialism means production to satisfy human needs, not, as under capitalism, for sale and profit. Socialism means direct control and management of the industries and social services by the workers through democratic administration and economic organisation. Such a system would make possible the fullest democracy and freedom.

Socialism means a classless society. Unlike under capitalism, where a tiny minority owns the vast majority of wealth and the means of producing it, everyone would share equally in the ownership of all the means of production, and everyone able to do so would work. There wouldn't be separate classes of owners and workers. The economy would be administered by the workers themselves through industrially based, democratic "associations of free and equal producers," as Marx described it.

For individuals, socialism means an end to economic insecurity and exploitation. It means workers cease to be commodities bought and sold on the labor market and forced to work as appendages to tools owned by someone else. It means a chance to develop all individual capacities and potentials within a free community of free individuals. Socialism does not mean government or state ownership. It does not mean a state bureaucracy as in the former Soviet Union or China, with the working class oppressed by a new bureaucratic class. It does not mean a closed party-run system without democratic rights. It does not mean nationalisation, or regulatory boards, or state ownership of any kind. It means a complete end to all capitalist social relations. On the contrary, it would give power not to the state, but to the people themselves, allowing collective control of their own economic future. Far from being a state-controlled society, socialism would be a society WITHOUT A STATE. Marx once said that "the existence of the state is inseparable from the existence of slavery." Consonant with this truth, socialism would have a GOVERNMENT, but not a separate, coercive body standing above society itself -- a state. The people themselves, through the democratic associations of workers, would BE the government. In a socialist revolution, the industrially organized workers take possession of the means of production, abolish capitalist- class rule and supplant the state with an industrial government formed by "associations of free and equal producers." In the Bolshevik and Chinese revolutions, an elite "vanguard" party seized control of the state and used the state to control the means of production. Instead of establishing a classless society, the party-state bureaucracy became a new ruling class. Far from being a bureaucratically controlled system, socialism would bring democracy -- the rule of the people -- to the most vital part of our lives, the economy.

To win the struggle for socialist freedom requires enormous efforts of organisational and educational work. It requires building a political party of socialism to contest the power of the capitalist class on the political field and to educate the majority of workers about the need for socialism. As Engels once described it, socialism would be a system in "which every member of society will be enabled to participate not only in the production but also in the distribution of social wealth." A socialist political party is needed to educate the working class and to recruit workers to the socialist cause.

The workers collectively would decide what they want produced and how they want it produced. They would control their own workplaces and make the decisions governing their particular industry. With the abolition of the capitalist expropriation of the lion's share of workers' product, all workers would receive, directly or indirectly, the full value of the products they create, minus only the deductions needed to maintain and improve society's facilities of production and distribution. Socialism can only be built in a developed, industrialized society with a working-class majority. Though partly inspired by Marxism, the Bolshevik and Chinese revolutions weren't socialist in character. They occurred in pre-industrial societies. Without a majority working class and the ability to eliminate scarcity of needed goods and services, creation of a classless society was impossible. Material conditions there bred conflict and made the continuation of the class struggle inevitable in such countries.

In every plant, every office and every workplace in socialist society, the workers themselves will meet in democratic assembly to determine their own workplace policies and elect committees to administer and supervise production. To administer production at higher levels, the workers will also elect representatives to local and national councils of their respective industry, and to a central congress representing all the industries and services. This all-industry congress will ascertain what goods and services are wanted and will determine the resources needed to supply them. It will draw up the necessary plans to carry out production and allocate the resources. The congress will also arrange a just distribution of the output with the workers receiving the full social equivalent of the labor they contributed. All persons elected to posts in this economic administration, at whatever level, will be subject to rank-and-file control, and to removal whenever a majority of those who elected them find it desirable. Instead of economic despotism, socialism means economic democracy. Instead of production for sale and the profit of a few, socialism means production to satisfy the human needs and wants of all.

Socialism will allow for us to carry on production for use in the most modern production laboratories we can possibly create, utilizing the safest and most productive methods. The more we collectively produce, the more we shall collectively enjoy. All of us will be useful producers, working but a fraction of the time we are forced to work today. But we shall not only be useful producers, we shall all share equitably in the wealth we produce, and our compensation will literally dwarf anything we can imagine today.

In socialist society there will be neither involuntary unemployment nor poverty. The young will be educated not only to prepare them to participate in social production but also to enable them to expand their interests and develop their individual interests and talents. The aged will be cared for, and not by any such demeaning methods as are used today. We shall provide all their material needs and create a social atmosphere in which they can live lives that are culturally and intellectually satisfying. It will not be charity, but their rightful share as former contributors to production.

Under capitalism, improved methods and machinery of production kick workers out of jobs. Under socialism, such improvements will be blessings for the simple reason that they will increase the amount of wealth producible and make possible ever higher standards of living, while providing us with greater and greater leisure in which to enjoy them.

In socialism, we shall produce everything we need and want in abundance under conditions best suited to our welfare, aiming for the highest quality. We shall constantly strive to improve our methods and equipment in order to reduce the hours of work. We shall provide ourselves with the best of everything: the finest educational facilities, the most modern and scientific health facilities and adequate and varied recreational facilities. We shall constantly seek to improve our socialist society. Purposeful research, expansion of the arts and culture, preservation and replacement of our natural resources, all will receive the most serious attention. It will be a society in which everyone will have the fullest opportunity to develop his or her individuality without sacrificing the blessings of cooperation.

Freed from the compulsions of competition and the profit motive that presently throw capitalist nations into war, socialism will also be a society of peace. In short, socialist society will be a society of secure human beings, living in peace, in harmony and human brotherhood.

This all may sound too good to be true. Yet the world has the productive capacity to provide a high standard of living for all, to provide security and comfort for all, to create safe workplaces and clean industries, and to help other nations reach these same goals. The only thing keeping us from reaching these goals is that the workers don't own and control that productive capacity; it is owned and controlled by a few who use it solely to profit themselves. Organising to bring the industries under the ownership of all the people, to build a socialist society of peace, plenty and freedom, is the only real alternative workers have.

The capitalist economic system lies at the root of all of modern society's major social and economic problems. Socialism was born in response to the grave social problems generated by capitalism's uses of technology. Socialism grew out of the disruption of society capitalism caused. It was the pitiless and inhumane uses to which capitalism put the technology at its disposal to exploit human labor that made the socialist movement necessary. Socialism is not an idea that fell from the skies, but a natural response to the material conditions and social relations that took shape as the capitalist system of production developed.

At the same time, however, the socialist movement has always recognized the tremendous material possibilities technological advances offer for eliminating the poverty, misery and suffering it has engendered -- not of its own accord, but as a direct result of the capitalist system of private ownership of the productive forces created by human labor and ingenuity. The whole purpose of the socialist movement, therefore, is to solve the grave social problems resulting from the march of technology monopolised by a numerically insignificant capitalist class so that the magnificent possibilities modern advances in technology hold out may benefit all of humanity. Accordingly, the socialist movement also sees in so-called post-industrial technology the productive instrument for the attainment of its goal.
Whatever good there is in modern methods of production, whatever their potential for making the world a better place, for eliminating arduous toil, hunger and poverty, that potential is wiped out by a single, dominating fact. The one fact that overwhelms and nullifies the promise of all progress is private ownership of the means of production and distribution.

Socialists don't deny that the world is changing. They were the first to point out that capitalism cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. But the nature, pace and purpose of such changes are not determined by society: they are governed by the whims and needs of that tiny minority that owns and controls the means of producing and distributing wealth. That is one of the two constants in capitalist society, no matter how many changes come along. The other is that the majority -- the working class -- has no say in the process. Capitalists hire and fire to suit their needs. As long as that division exists class divisions will continue. As long as class divisions continue the class struggle will exist.