Creating Change (2)

All those groups who seek a just and sustainable society should and must come together to share and structure a common vision of change, where common sense and goodwill will be the norm in our relationship with each other and to the world.  Let us identify ourselves with the concept of  one humanity. We are not only fighting for the sake of our children and future generations, but also because we yearn for something better for ourselves. We are protesting the extremes of poverty and wealth that has divided us from one another in a world of plenty, where millions starve while a few live in excessive luxury. Rather than engage in an endless fight against policies of this or that government in office, we assume a position of anti-capitalism, against the entire capitalist system. It is our revolutionary ideas that unites us.

We shall ignore the intellectuals and professors who say we have no leadership or pose clear demands. Scientists and technicians have in their hands the knowledge and the wherewithal to take humanity in any direction they choose to take, but like the rest of us they are constrained by the system we live in. They are not directed by the wishes, needs and aims of society as a whole but have to follow the logic of their master, the market. Everything becomes possible when the tools are in the right hands, the hands of the producers. It becomes a matter of organisation to bring in the new society. There is plenty of work to be done to achieve the satisfaction of everyone's basic needs, but is deliberately left undone as the profit motive dictates. It takes a fundamental shift of emphasis away from the dictates of a small minority to the wishes and needs of the overwhelming majority.

 A bottom-up, proactive, participatory democracy at all levels: local, regional and world has its power at the base with delegates elected to carry forward the message and speak for the whole community. It's difficult to find other expressions away from the hierarchical ones we're so bound up in; the idea here is simply a logistical one.

To attain the the full development of creative human potential is widely recognised as being the goal of life for human beings: this is the change we need. Not achieving parity or possessions, or even getting out of poverty or beating hunger. We have to have a vision far beyond this stage, to see beyond the intellectual paucity that drives current day society to crave the material above the cerebral or philosophical, favouring or craving things above thoughts and ideas. Ending poverty, hunger, preventable or treatable diseases and enabling all to have adequate living conditions – all this goes without saying; these goals are all part of what is to be achieved in the period of social re-organisation and will be planned for in full consultation with local communities.

 Workers are forced, under capitalism, to fight the same battles over and over again without resolving issues. The political limitations of social reform which follow from the economic limitations of capitalism in general. To speak of the limitations of working class action is to lay this down only within the productive relations of capitalism. Outside this, the working class has immense power -  the power to change society. Workers already run the apparatus of production, produce goods and maintain services, but they do it for the capitalist's profit. The straightforward issue which should be kept crystal clear is that socialism is nothing less than the working class taking over the entire apparatus of production and the earth's resources and organising production solely for need. On the basis of common ownership and production for use socialism could immediately find the freedom to expand all its activities in response to need.

A reformist formula of workers collaborating with the employers in exchange for concessions including, for example, high redundancy payments, retraining schemes, housing allowances, capital injections for the setting up co-operatives, workers' delegates on boards of directors, some control of over management appointments, profit sharing schemes. These are the messages of despair which provides as much hope as would advice to the condemned man that he should help organise his own execution in exchange for an easier death. The re-organisation of capitalism  is the surest guarantee of continuance of social problems and not a working class issue.