The world cooperative commonwealth

Capitalism sucks. Corporations poison our environment with toxic wastes, they market products known to be defective or even lethal, and they devastate our communities through factory closures that make thousands idle. They get away with this in part because they fund politicians of all the major parties who are in positions to protect their interests. To mitigate some of the worst excesses of capitalism, reform movements have pushed for various health and welfare programmes.

The socialist revolution will not be made by the Socialist Party. The task is too complex to be accomplished by one section of the population. Planning the new economy and society generally would be far more efficient than it is now because it would include the views of everybody. The logical outcome of a party seizing the initiative in a revolution is that the role of the class becomes redundant. Why participate if a political party can accomplish it for you? When we act for ourselves we learn useful lessons for the future as well as influencing the present. If socialism is to be achieved, people will need to have confidence in their own ability to run society. When we organise constructively in the present we are training ourselves for the future. A free socialist society, the cooperative commonwealth, needs the active involvement of millions of people. And crucially that participation can only happen voluntarily. Socialism cannot be imposed on the people from above, from the outside. It has to be a voluntary, organic process. It has to be a libertarian process. When you are acting for youself, you are clearly not obeying the commands of a leader. No doubt you will be influenced by some people's arguments more than by others but you are free to decide your own course of action. Nobody is compelling you to do anything. The question is not really one of organisation or not, but rather what type of organisation: libertarian or authoritarian, for the spirit of cooperation and mutual aid is vital.

The cooperative commonwealth is realistic. We understand that most people have little interest in making a revolution next week. Or that making one will be easy. Far from it. Many are daunted by the task and search for shortcuts that only result in dead-ends. But if we are serious about achieving socialism, then we have to start about it now. It isn't going to drop from the sky. The longer we wait to begin acting for ourselves the longer it's going to be till we achieve our aim. Too many people are used to letting others run society for them. Sure they might get indignant over corruption or a particular war, but it's fair to say that their actual involvement in changing anything is pretty low. The whole point of having a minority of brainy and benevolent leaders presented by the Leninists and Trotskyists is that they will do the difficult work for you. As such it follows that you yourself don't need to change, to participate on an equal footing with everybody else, to think about why we need socialism, you don't need to get deeply involved in making it happen. This will be fatal for any revolution because the new society will face tough times. But if people have a good understanding of what they are fighting for and have made a deep personal commitment to achieving it, it's unlikely that they are going to let it go easily. The Socialist Party think that the creative capacities of the working class as a whole far outweigh the capacities of a few individual leaders. It is our view that a truly democratic society would be more efficient than it currently is, simply because it would harness everybody's ability.

Most of us have a feeling that, in most things, cooperating with others is generally better than competing against them. That feeling is a sound one. Cooperation is so fundamental to the existence of society that we don't even think of it as cooperation: it seems simply "natural" behaviour. Thus it is normal for two people to move to the side when passing on the footpath, normal to queue for admission to the theatre or sports ground, normal to hold the door open for the person entering behind you. We are an intensely social species who become aware of ourselves as individuals by interacting with our fellow human beings. From the recognition of humans as social beings flows our view on organisation. Workers join unions because they realise that they are better off cooperating with workmates rather than competing against them. All forms of production of goods and services involve cooperation — often by people thousands of kilometres apart. It is the reason why capitalism, itself, depends upon cooperation: the simplest factory couldn't operate without it. Historically, capitalism has greatly increased human cooperation by making production a national and international process. But capitalism also creates contradictions to cooperation. There is cooperation in the factory, but the factory competes against other factories in the same industry. If a single company controls an industry and imposes cooperation, it competes against producers overseas, and against other industries for resources, finance and higher profits. So capitalist cooperation is usually wasteful (duplication of efforts, destruction of losing competitors). It is also imposed from the top — not brought about by the free decision of those who do the cooperating. The real alternative to competition is the freely decided cooperation of working people: cooperation to produce the needs of all human beings, not higher profits for a minority. A major problem with capitalism is that it is based on the concentration of economic power in the hands of a small elite unaccountable to the rest of us. Economic systems are not limited to this choice, however. There is another way, referred to variously as socialism, communism, social democracy, the resource based economy, anarchism, or the cooperative commonwealth. We need a people's movement to democratise the economy.

The cooperative commonwealth is not government ownership, a welfare state, or a repressive bureaucracy. Cooperative commonwealth or socialism is a new social and economic order in which workers and consumers control production and community residents control their neighborhoods, homes, and schools.  The production of society is used for the benefit of all humanity, not for the private profit of a few. The cooperative commonwealth produces a constantly renewed future by not plundering the resources of the earth. People across the world need to cast off the systems which oppress them, and build a new world fit for all humanity. Democratic revolutions are needed to dissolve the power now exercised by the few who control great wealth and the government. By revolution we mean a radical and fundamental change in the structure and quality of economic, political, and personal relations. The building of free-access socialism requires widespread understanding and participation, and will not be achieved by an elite or a vanguard working "on behalf of" the people. The working class must implement libertarian socialism themselves. If an attempt is made to impose socialism from above by a state or a benevolent few, it'll prove just as disastrous as it did in the Soviet Union. And socialism won't result anyway. Democratic socialism is an international movement for freedom, social justice and solidarity. Its goal is to achieve a peaceful world where these basic values can be enhanced and where each individual can live a meaningful life with the full development of his or her personality and talents.

The Earth cannot withstand the onslaught of capitalist culture for very many more years. We are already close to some irreversible tipping points (if we haven’t already reached them). Only a few more years of production for profit, using cheap energy such as coal, will usher in catastrophic global changes. We will have annihilated beyond comprehension vast areas of arable land needed for growing vegetables, despoiled and polluted the supply of fresh water. We are on a march towards planetary suicide. libertarian communism/socialism is where everybody has an equal say in making decisions that affect them and where everybody is assured of equal access to the benefits of society. It's summed up in the old phrase "from each according to ability, to each according to needs." There isn't any reason to keep the wage system after a revolution. As every product is a social product - nobody produces anything in isolation any more - the products themselves ought to be socialised. It's simply not possible to ascertain the true social value of anyone's labour, and in truth not worth the effort of finding out. Everybody's contribution matters. It wouldn't matter how many surgeons we had, if we didn't have cleaners ensuring a hygienic workplace. Both contribute to society. Why discriminate in favour of one in the future society? It'll only preserve the class nature of society. We should move immediately to a system of "to each according to need". We envisage that autonomous cities and industries will federate together and co-ordinate their activities. With socialism there won't be any competitive reason not to. With voluntary co-operation there won't be any need for a centralised authority.