Unlocking Ideas Worth Fighting For

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.