Some have ventured to argue that the growth of socialism has
been hampered by the lack of imagination. The arguments for better wages and conditions
haven’t changed all that much from the 19th century. What is actually missing
in today’s wage campaigns is a broader vision of the value of leisure. Where
today is the grassroots demand for the right to be lazy as advocated by Karl
Marx’s son-in-law, Paul Lafargue? In these days of an ability to provide the
material needs of all, where are the great opportunities for people to realize
their own potential rather than be consumers of mass culture. For socialists,
all workers should have time to think about matters unrelated to meeting their
basic needs and to more fully enjoy their lives outside of work. It was Marx,
himself, who declared:
“In communist
society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become
accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production
and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow,
to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening,
criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter,
fisherman, herdsman or critic.”
This vision of a more civic-minded, pleasurable, and humane
existence for all working people is one that the socialist movement must once
again revitalize and reinvigorate. This is not an issue we can ignore too much
longer. Perhaps there has never before been a time when we need the vision of a
true socialist movement more than today as the world teeters on environmental
extinction for humanity. The threat of anthropogenic environmental catastrophe
has posed the question of how eco-friendly technologies might be widely
produced and propagated. The Socialist Party believed that this can only occur
within socialist relations of production.
Too many have seen socialism as goods fairly equitably
divided and work equitably divided. The level of appeal has been a mixture of
economic goods and material gains in a milieu of reformist social democratic-liberal
sentiment. This has been good but not good enough. Too few see it as the
opportunity to play football, frolic on the beach, dance the night away, simply
relax on one’s back beneath the shade of a trees, breathing in the scent of
flowers or enjoy the intoxication joys of a novel and of music. Socialists
envisioned socialism as the means of achieving higher levels of being. The
issue of new technology and automation is bursting with positive possibilities.
The goal of socialism is abundance but not for the purpose of creating a
spectator culture of consumers, but by providing the greatest number of goods
for the greatest number of people it, to
recover old pleasures of living and to discover new ones. When the very material
basis of our society change and improve, consequently, so will our free-time
and leisure. Education and learning will be made fun for students of all ages
and levels, otherwise it will be considered irrelevant to their lives, breeding
excessive laziness and a general scorn for education. Learning will become a
pleasure that students look forward to, and not a burden that must be endured. It
is likely that parents and teachers will often be one and the same, rather than
two separate divisions of people for students to deal with for freed from the
dictate of working hours parents can take a much more active interest in their
children's educational upbringing. Parents will grow to be valued sources of
guidance and support. Education will be a lifelong commitment to learning new
information and techniques. Regular returns to higher education will be
continual and take on a new meaning, just like work will take on a new meaning.
Students of all ages will emerge independent thinkers, not docile wage slaves.
Learning new things and benefitting society with this knowledge will be the
driving force of life, and not simply "making a living."
There is no final blueprint for socialism. But only under
socialism will fully democratic debate over the use of society’s wealth be
possible and the satisfaction of people’s basic needs assured. The idea of socialism
is no longer a pure, innocent ideal it once was. Its appeal has been tarnished
by the authoritarian, statist regimes that have ruled in its name. To-day in
the name of socialism, socialists work towards a society characterized by
equality, solidarity, and participation, not be orchestrated from above by a Big
Brother state, but will occur from below in the workplaces and neighborhoods of civil society through
cooperative, voluntary relationships that people will develop to render life
meaningful. There will be different roles conforming to the varied talents
citizens bring to different pursuits, “from each according to ability.”
Socialism cannot guarantee human happiness but promises the
possibility of human fulfillment where misery and suffering is not imposed upon
our lives over which we have no control.
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