Socialism Will Be A Far Better World

At one time, economists and politicians were intoxicated by illusions of an ever expanding capitalism, which guaranteed full employment and a continuous rises in real wages yet still permitted growing profits and increasing dividends. The world possessed the knowledge and the technical means existed to conquer hunger and disease and to satisfy the basic social and cultural needs of our whole planet. Yet science has been subordinated to the narrow imperatives of short-term profit expectation. Humanity does not need less science or less technology. It needs more science that is in harmony with an awareness of long-term social interests, technology that is subject to conscious decision-making based on the knowledge of men and women, the collective understanding and control of the associated producers. But now, social inequalities have erupted and ecological catastrophes threatens to engulf us all. The convulsions of capitalism grow ever more chaotic. There is no viable cure and ever more reformers are resigned to failure. We are bombarded with the idea that there is no alternative, that capitalism is the natural order of things. We are told that as much as capitalism has problems, any attempts to get rid of it will make things far worse.

There are people hankering for an alternative to this system. Who want to do something meaningful for humanity with their lives. Humanity can move beyond exploitation and social division. It can move to a classless society and a world of freely associating human beings—socialism. The apologists for the status quo tell us anything that fundamentally challenges capitalism is a pipe dream and an unworkable utopia. We are told to try and make a revolution and building an economy and society that promote and serve the common good violates human nature, economic logic, and the very flow of history, that capitalism is the end point of social evolution. Capitalism is not the end of society’s development. It is actually the chief impediment to realizing the potential for a different world. Lies and slanders about socialism are repeated endlessly and become accepted as self-evident truths. We live in a world in which hundreds of thousands die each and every day of war, hunger and disease. We live on a planet whose eco-systems are threatened by the blind workings of an economic system. The question socialists pose is this one: Do we have to live this way? Socialists answer we can really radically change things for the greater good of all. If you want to understand and decide whether socialism is an idea whose time has come, first you need to know what it is: its aims and its foundations. Socialism is not a big welfare state that looks after people. It is not the old capitalist economy simply taken over by a state. Socialism is about the great majority of society, consciously transforming the economic structures, social relations, and ideas that perpetuate social and class division. It is about unleashing the creativity and initiative of those who had been on the bottom of society.

Picture a world where people consciously learn about and transform the world, where people are no longer imprisoned by the chains of tradition and ignorance, where people not only cooperatively work to produce the necessities of life, but engage in art, culture and science, where a scientific outlook inspire, where there is a diversity of opinion and far-ranging discussion over the direction and development of society but no longer stamped by social antagonism, where people interact with each other based on mutual respect, concern, and love for humanity. A world that cares about and takes care of the environment. That is socialism, a worldwide society in which all class distinctions have disappeared; all exploitation abolished; all oppressive social institutions and relations of social inequality, like racism or sexism has vanished. Socialism is a world of abundance, where people together hold all of society's resources in common. It is yet to be achieved but it is possible.

Socialism is not some sort of wishful dream or utopia but a feasible and practical choice for people to make. The productive forces of society—not just machinery, equipment, and technology but also people and their knowledge—have developed to a level that can allow humanity to overcome scarcity, to provide for people's basic material needs, and beyond that to have a large surplus left over to devote to the all-around and future development of society. These productive forces of society are highly socialized. They require millions working together to produce the things—whether we are talking about clothing or computers—that are used by people throughout society. And these productive forces are highly interconnected on a global level: raw materials and machine tools produced in one part of the world enter into the production process in other parts of the world. But these socialized productive forces are privately controlled. A capitalist class of owners appropriates the results of production as private, capitalist property. This is the fundamental problem in the world. And this is what socialism solves. Socialism brings about a radically different way of organizing production and society as a whole. The socialist revolution establishes a new economy based on social ownership of the means of production and social planning; on people cooperating to solve problems and to meet social need; and with a whole new set of economic and social priorities. A socialist revolution creates a new kind of economy. The means of production are no longer the private property of a minority of society. They are placed under society's collective control. Social production is no longer carried out without planning or social purpose but is now shaped according to consciously adopted aims and coordinated as a whole, to meet the fundamental needs and interests of the people. With socialism, people are unleashed to run and transform society. The people on the bottom of capitalist society have been locked out of the realm of producing ideas. Capitalism is a  society where a few engage in the realm of thinking, while the great majority of humanity is exploited and prevented from pursuing intellectual activity. Socialist society transforms this situation. It will enable people to take up all kinds of questions and participate in society in an all-around way.

We now have an added urgency that previous generations of socialists were never faced with – the likelihood of planetary disruption and upheaval from global warming. We can change that and another breathtakingly different world is possible but the socialist movement has to accomplish more and go further than ever before. We have to do a lot better than what we have been doing.