The Future We Need

Socialism is a political movement that aims to create a classless and stateless society structured upon common ownership of the means of production, free access to articles of consumption, and the end of wage labour and private property in the means of production, distribution and the land.

Committed to building a more just future, The Socialist Party challenges the taken-for-granted “truths” that support capitalism as the only common-sense possibility and that there is no alternative. Does capitalism “work”? For sure, capitalism works well for the few, accumulating wealth and power in their hands but is that what we want, or do we want a system that works for everybody? The capitalist system breeds the incentive for corruption, theft, and greed. In socialism, money would not be required to help one achieve or create, as facilities would be made available to serve everyone's needs. No more poverty - At this moment in time, tens of thousands of children die each day in 'developing' countries due to malnutrition, and preventable diseases. Every person on this planet would have the chance to live and flourish and create and benefit humanity as a whole. No more wage slavery and the need to work for the majority of our lives to pay our living costs, pay our debts, our housing costs, for food and all the things that we need to be fulfilled in our lives. No more property crimes - why would it exist in a world where there was no need for financial gain or the opportunity to profit from crime? No more wars - if all resources are available to everyone, then armed conflict would be as pointless as mugging someone for their possessions.

Schools have for decades been institutions that train and focus children on competing and gaining employment. They are not about what a child may be good at, not about promoting individual ability and creativity. A simple example would be a child who excels at art. They cannot aim to simply leave school and create art. They are encouraged to train for a career in art, so they can make a living. In a socialist society they would be fully supported and allowed to create for the sake of creation, not to earn a living. There will be the chance for all individuals to reach their potential - And this would be supported fully by the system. People would have the unrestricted opportunity to contribute to the overall advancement of Humanity as a whole. There are children alive today, who may have the ability to contribute, but will never have the opportunity because their family is poor and can't afford to fund their further education, or their training in a particular area. Socialism would remove this profoundly wasteful fact of life. Choice and opportunity would open up to everyone more than we can ever know now, people would be more free to live their lives in a more comfortable, stress free world. Imagine the time we would save from waiting in line at the banks, in the stores, at the markets. What about the time we would have to spend time with our children instead of a job, imagine the time we would have to find other ventures in life to enrich our lives and others all at a remarkable level.  The possibilities are far beyond our imagination or comprehension today. Knowledge will be made freely available. All information in society will be transparent. Education will be tailored to meet the children's interests not society's perceived interest. The idea being that given the opportunity to excel in the areas that they have a proclivity for, this type of learning will benefit society more than if learning was standardised and directed.

We are told the world is complex for socialism. Yet many things are quite simple—we live in a world where a billion people go hungry while we dump half of all food produced. Today we have the ability to reflect and draw upon the past and present and to create the best possibilities. Doing away with capitalism doesn’t mean resorting to primitivism, denying the poor their right to development, or abandoning all of our technology. There are limits to the Earth’s resources, but we can organize a productive, equitable, and sustainable social order that includes many of the comforts of modern life and the benefits of technology. In fact, getting rid of capitalism gives us the best chance of having time to organize a sustainable system of consumption before it is too late—staying hooked into capitalism may be the quickest route to social collapse.

Modern society has access to highly advanced technology and can make available food, clothing, housing and medical care for free. In socialism all of the world's resources are held as the common heritage of all people. At present, we already have enough material resources to provide a very high standard of living for all of Earth's inhabitants. Money is only important in a society when goods must be rationed. Socialism is a system in which all goods and services are freely available without the use of money, credits, barter or any other system of debt or servitude. Free access to plenty for all. We believe in a world of people cooperating, collaborating, and committing to holding each other accountable to planning and acting on what is in the best interest of everyone.  There is no possibility for true freedom until we are all free, and this will only come through a much richer and deeper conception of human freedom.

We can stick to this old system where everything for profit, where peoples’ lives are valued in monetary terms, where there is, wars, suffering, hunger and scarcity. Or we could live in abundance with a sustainable ecological system, where everyone could do what really makes him or her happy, not what the commercial consumerist world wants you to think what makes you happy. In capitalism everyone grabs for the largest slice of the pie they can get away with. No need for PROFIT anymore! Need for more and more profit destroying men, society and planet. No more environmental destruction with an end to planned obsolescence – the process of a product becoming obsolete and/or non-functional after a certain period or amount of use in a way that is planned or designed by the manufacturer. Planned obsolescence has potential benefits for a manufacturer because the product fails and the consumer is under pressure to purchase again, whether from the same manufacturer (a replacement part or a newer model), or from a competitor. The purpose of planned obsolescence is to hide the real cost per use from the consumer, and charge a higher price than they would otherwise be willing to pay (or would be unwilling to spend all at once). In socialism, technology would be made to have a vastly longer operational life span and even when required to be upgraded, would be done so without charge, making sure that everyone would have the best that technology can provide at any given time.

In our experience, the most common questions that arise when discussing socialism revolve around feasibility and motivation. Is it really possible? How will anything get done, how do you keep people motivated without money? The simplest answer to both of these is looking at the existing example that almost everyone is familiar with: the family. In most families a sharing of resources without exchange or barter is in place. The family works together to achieve their common goals and family resources are all shared. Family sizes and family structures vary greatly but the basic principles of working together and sharing are fairly universal. Extending this idea outside of the family to the community and society is our objective. People would want to do something and volunteer for a greater cause because it gives them a sense of being part of something bigger than they are

The great unspoken phrase of politics is “class war”. The media tries to present the fiction that society is without class and we are all individuals. Today’s robber barons know that PR matters and have effectively bought-off the popular opinion makers. Stylishly groomed corporate executives and financiers, who are morally no better than thieves, have become celebrities. They are flattered on reality TV shows and praised on business programmes but it is more and more untenable as actual class struggle daily intensifies. The profound fact is that the world is in the midst of class war. Class struggle is being explicitly fought out in Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa, and not to forget Australasia. Presently it is manifesting itself by the ruling class demanding austerity. It is time to remember the concept of class war so we can fight it determinedly to the finish. How can we effectively resist and fight back? And how can we organise and educate to revive and strengthen our movement

The discussion on how socialism will work is as old as the workers’ movement and many authors have interpreted it in various ways. It is easy, at the beginning of the 21st century, to be pessimistic about the future prospects of a socialism. No one, of course, can give a blueprint of how socialism is going to work. All we can do here is indicate those general features that we believe a socialist society must have in order qualify as truly socialist. Beyond generalities, however, the specifics of how to structure socialist communities must remain open for discussion and experimentation. It is important to emphasise that the principles are not the arbitrary creations of intellectuals but rather, based upon the actual political and economic structures that have arisen spontaneously whenever the working class has attempted to throw off its chains during eras of heightened revolutionary activity, such as the Paris Commune. The important thing is that a practical alternative is shown and that it is not ascribed as an unrealistic aspiration. A socialist economy would for the first time give people, as producers and users, the chance to control every step of production, take initiatives and experiment without being strangled by profit-driven competition. This would make possible an economy based on equality and in harmony with nature.  Why would people produce poor quality goods when they are producing to meet their own (and others) needs? Imagine a world in which all barriers to a decent life for all human beings had been removed; a society in which the resourcefulness of modern technology and industry was put to the task of decreasing labour and increasing leisure.

Capitalism is not simply a ‘free market economy’; it is a market economy with a particular form of class relations. Capitalist economics systematically generates both increasing concentrations of wealth and privilege and expanding deprivation. Capitalism’s profit-driven dynamic towards increasing production and markets—with its bias towards a consumption oriented society and the creation of artificial consumer ‘needs’—has inordinate environmental costs. Profit-maximizing creates incentives for capitalist firms to dump waste into the environment.

Many may think they have all the answers, but the problem is, they never asked the questions that matter. Capitalism is a global system based on wage slavery. Against exploitation we raise the banner of emancipation. The end of class society comes through revolutionary change with the abolition of wage slavery, to a society based on the principles “from each according to their ability; to each according their needs” and “the freedom of each is the condition of the freedom of all.”

Socialism rather than always the red flag, has more often than not been the flag of convenience waved by politicians of all hues. There has been hardly any other word in the economic dictionary, more elusive, more ambiguous and confusing than 'Socialism'. It has been hounded, criticized and extolled. It encompasses all types of political system, dictatorships, democracies, republics and monarchies. Everybody imagines socialism in his own way. It embraces such disparate systems as an Islamic socialism practiced by Libya and Algeria, welfare socialism of Norway or Sweden, the Baathist Socialism of Syria, the Ujamaa socialism of Tanzania’s Nyerere and so on. Roosevelt’s New Deal was called socialist to condemn it, as was Keynes" economics. In fact, Roosevelt and Keynes were about as socialist as King Edward VII who once declared at a banquet: "We are all socialists nowadays”. Socialism refers to a body of writings, ideas, beliefs and doctrines and it refers to real world political movements. It will be worthwhile to acquaint ourselves with the more important definitions of socialism.

Politicians do a disservice to their audience by manipulating the language of to conceal a political record that tells a much different story. Discerning audiences must ask difficult questions and hold those in power to account. When socialists talk about the abolition of private property, we are referring to the socialisation of the means of production—the resources and equipment that create wealth. Working people do not own this type of property—which is why we have to work to survive. The Socialist Party stands for the destruction of the present class society and holds a vision of the future of a system where useful work based on a system of cooperation would be the norm for all and where the struggle for bare subsistence would be supplanted by harmonious production of common wealth without the waste of labour or material. Such an aspiration can only be carried out by the workers themselves. The progress of socialist ideas finds different expression depending on the circumstances

Socialism is the economic organisation of society in which the means of production and distribution are owned by the whole community and democratically run by elected delegates responsible to the community, with all members of the community entitled to benefit from the this socialised production on the basis of equal rights. Socialism refers to that movement which aims to vest in society as a whole, rather than in individuals, the ownership and management of all nature-made and man-made producers goods used in production. In G.D.H. Cole’s view "Socialism means four closely connected things—a human fellowship which denies and expels distinction of class, a social system in which no one is so much richer or poorer than his neighbours as to be unable to mix with them on equal term, the common ownership and use of all the vital instruments of production and an obligation on all citizens to serve one another according to their capacities in promoting the common well-being."

The idea of a moneyless economy is not new. It was part of the vision of Thomas More in his Utopia. The Diggers also sought a world where money was redundant. An important obstacle stopping more people supporting the idea of a society based on production for use, is that they simply can’t see how a society without money or wages could work. It seems too daunting - too much of a leap of faith to make. The more we discuss it and argue why a new society needs to involve the removal of the market and money system, the less fearful it seems. In particular, the closer you look, the more examples we can find of where humans routinely behave inside capitalism in "socialistic" ways. There are plenty of examples today to indicate that free access will not lead to abuses. Let us take just three everyday examples, public libraries, water and pavements.

In public libraries people are free to sit and read books all day. However, few if any actually do so. Neither do people always take the maximum number of books out at a time. No, they use the library as they need to and feel no need to maximise their use of the institution. Some people never use the library, although it is free. In the case of water supplies, it’s clear that people do not leave taps on all day because water is often supplied freely or for a fixed charge. Similarly with pavements, we do not spend our free time walking up and down the street because it doesn’t cost us anything extra. In all such cases we use the resource as and when we need to. Why would we not expect similar results as other resources become freely available?

Production/distribution decisions inside non-market socialist society will involve complex decisions - but not much more so than happens at present. Some say there will always be trade-offs, opportunity costs, to use the technical term. Well yes, there will still have to be some trade-offs, but far fewer than at present. How will those trade-offs be calculated? Some believe we need some sort of money accounting system, presumably because this reduced everything to a simple comparable number. But we know that inside capitalism the apparent precision of a price arrived at by the invisible hand of supply and demand hides massive assumptions (need to make a profit for the owner of the productive capital) and is simply not a good measure of social need. But it doesnt even apply in capitalism anymore that buyers and sellers only look at price - they know that the immediate price on offer doesn’t always give a good indication of long-term risk. Do you buy the cheapest nuclear power station available? Or do you check on the health and safety or environmental protection controls in place. Even the smallest local authority contract now places some weight on "external" issues such as quality of product being tendered, timescale for delivery, on-going maintenance support, stability/security of provider (i.e. will they be around in 5 years’ time to service the equipment sold, or be taken to court in the event of a failure).

The need for internationalism flows from the position of the working class internationally. This in its turn has been developed by capitalism through the organisation of world economy as one single indivisible whole. The interests of the working-class of one country are the same as the interests of the workers of the other countries. Because of the division of labour established by capitalism, the basis is laid for a new international organisation of labour and planned production on a world scale. Thus, the struggle of the working class on all countries forms the basis for the movement towards socialism reflected by the statements of Marx that "the workers have no country" and therefore "Workers of the world unite".

Like no other time in history, we have the opportunity to connect using technology and to work with people all over the world to achieve our shared goals. Coming together with like-minds. Just begin to imagine the possibilities where all people had access to everything they needed to live, to think, and to contribute to the common good. Fear of change is a great tool to limit our imagination about human possibilities. The fear of change is always a problem. Anything that relates to something new or out of the basic norm, is a scary thing. It's because people are afraid of trying a new system or testing something different. If you think that socialism will never happen and do nothing, then nothing will change. The Revolution won't be on the barricades with petrol bombs, but will be fought in the hearts and minds of people around the world. The real revolution is the revolution of ideas. We need a shift in consciousness that must take place before we can ever be in a more free society. If we sit around and do nothing then, of course, we will never see socialism, but if we stand strong together, we can literally make this new world. 

You Must Be The Change.