Our need is socialism

The capitalist system causes wars, disease, famine and misery and is killing our planet. Capitalism is threatening the very future existence of the planet. It is incapable of providing for the needs of humanity or of protecting our fragile planet. By contrast, a socialist society would be able to harness the enormous potential of human talent and technique in order to build a society and economy which could meet the needs of all. Growing numbers of people are taking part in anti-capitalist demonstrations. Many people do not like the way the world is at the moment. It is not just only the arguments of socialists that are changing peoples’ outlook, it is their experience of the system we live under - capitalism. Today socialism remains the only viable alternative in an increasingly unstable and brutal world. This ensures that socialism is not a spent force but the wave of the future.

In a society where all of the means of production are socialised, blind market forces would be replaced by democratic planning. A blind system based on profit and competition will never be able to be planned beyond a certain limit. The working class exerts its power, first through its ability to shut down production—the strike weapon. But if it is to assert its collective interests on society as a whole and against the employers as a class, it must seize political power. Only after the working class has seized political power can it begin to reorganise production and distribution in such a way as to abolish the market and production for profit’s sake, and replace those relations with a purely socialised system of planning. Even on the basis of current production, measures could be taken to meet the needs of the majority. A democratic, planned economy could develop production to much greater levels than is possible under capitalism. It is simply common sense.

What does it mean to say, as Marx does, that workers must achieve political power? Needless to say, the political and business establishment won’t relinquish their wealth, power, and privilege without a fight. Socialism represents a break with the present system and depends on the active struggles of workers and their subsequent engagement with every aspect of governing society in their own interest. There is no contradiction between developing technology and production and safeguarding the planet. What is needed if we are to save the world is long-term planning that would be able to develop alternative technologies that did not harm the environment. This could only be achieved on the basis of democratic socialism. A democratically run planned economy would be able to take rational decisions on the basis of aiming to meet the needs of humanity. It would decide what technology to develop and use, what food to produce and when and where to build, while taking into consideration the need to protect and repair our planet for future generations.

There is no way you can sustain socialism without a healthy and sufficient production of goods and services for all. Socialism would be a truly democratic society. It would be necessary to draw up a series of plans, involving the whole of society, of what industry needed to produce. Capitalism today has provided the tools which could enormously aid the genuine, democratic planning of the economy. We have the Internet, market research, supermarket loyalty cards that record the shopping habits of every customer and so on. Business uses this technology to find out what it can sell. We could use it rationally instead to find out what people need and want. At every level, in communities and workplaces, committees would be set up and would elect representatives to local and regional administrations. At every level, elected delegates would be accountable and subject to instant recall. If the people who had elected them did not like what their representatives did, they could make them stand for immediate re-election and, if they wished, replace them with someone else.

Changing economic relations, the abolition of class divisions and the construction of the society based on democratic involvement and co-operation lays the basis for a change in social relations. Society would move away from hierarchies and the oppression of one group by another. Human relations would be freed from all the muck of capitalism.