Despite the misrepresentations socialists fully understand
that the history of the future will be written by choices yet to be made and
actions yet to be taken, under circumstances yet to exist. We organise for one
possible scenario that we think most probable for very plausible reasons. We
argue that our vision for the future is desirable and feasible. We work towards
a subjective shift in consciousness which would underpin a corresponding
objective shift in society. Does our hope have any future as we set about unraveling
old thought patterns and dismantling redundant mindsets and urging the adoption
of new ones by people to open up the opportunities for the transformation of
society. Since Ancient Greece philosophers have long dreamed of a time when the
entire human family would encompass the whole world, a truly single global
humanity, “citizens of the world”. Existing international bodies and movements
can offer lessons and, in some cases, even building blocks. But a centerpiece
of world socialism will be fashioning institutions beholden to the whole body
politic, rather than merely balancing the interests of competing states as
feebly attempted by the likes of the United Nations. It all may seem far-fetched
but to dismiss such a goal out-of-hand would be a failure of historical
perspective. It would be rather like an 18th C insisting that their
world map of 200,000 territories was eternally fixed and not imagining it would soon be transformed into one with a
mere 200 nation-states. Capitalism evoked a spirit of cosmopolitanism and
globalisation which socialists are now convinced can go much further and
develop into a world commonwealth. Who will change the world by harnessing both
the discontent and the aspirations to overcome the resistance of entrenched
interests? We cannot hardly expect it to be the old order, the ancient regime
of intergovernmental institutions and transnational corporations, bringing
change from above. We need to look elsewhere. History offers the clue for us to
see that what is required can only come from below – the working class.
What will it take to the ghastly cycle of poverty, hunger
and war and create a peaceful society in which humanity lives cooperatively and
harmoniously? The socialist answer is we must overthrow capitalism, a system
that inevitably generates inequality and conflict. And overthrowing it will
require a revolution. What will it take to make a revolution? The socialist
answer is the majority of people must realize that capitalism can't provide
them a decent life. Global capitalism has lurched from one crisis to another,
and the ruling class keep resorting to desperate measures to keep it afloat.
More and more people are seeing how their and their children's lives are being
degraded for the sake of profits. But we're a long way from revolution yet if
people do not succeed in replacing capitalism by socialism the prospects for
humanity and our environment, are very dismal, far worse than now. We have all
the objective conditions for the socialist revolution and socialism itself. The
hostility to socialist ideas is not as predominant present now because many
have experienced the deep failures of capitalism. Red-baiting and red-scares no
longer work as they used to. People want change and are seeking a solution.
They are looking for something radically different. We, as socialists, must
convince them about what that alternative is. It is our job to point out that
the crises of capitalism will happen over and over again and to save the
ecosystem and ourselves we must break out of the cycle of capitalist
exploitation.
Inequality has been a condition in society since the dawn of
class society. It is no secret that capitalism thrives off exploitation. It
needs people to be completely reliant on their labour power. It needs a
considerable part of the people to be impoverished and unemployed - "a
reserve army of labour," as Marx put it - in order to create a
"demand" for labour and thus make such exploitative positions
"competitive" to those who need to partake in them to merely survive.
It needs these things in order to stay intact. Capitalism is based in the
buying and selling of commodities, its lifeblood is production. And since
production in a capitalist system is not based on need, but rather on demand,
it has the tendency to produce more than it can sell. If millions of people are
unable to access basic needs such as food, clothing, shelter, and healthcare,
the commodification of those needs becomes all the more effective. When society
commodifies the bare necessities of life, they are commodifying human beings,
whose labour can be bought and sold. The apologies and philosophical
rationalisations of is a defence of wage slavery. For, if your labour is for
sale, then you are for sale. You are a slave – a wage-slave.
The world economy is a structure of cycles of expansion and
contraction. There is no doubt that in the next contracting cycle the number of
people in the world who will languish in abject poverty will rise. The malnourished
and hungry will increase while the real value of labour decrease and living
standards will lower throughout Western nations. It means more beng dragged
down into poverty as workers scramble to pay ever-climbing bills with
ever-smaller pay-checks. The think-tanks and the various NGOs working to reduce
world poverty keeps promising the world that the goal is zero poverty within a
few years. Yet, the reality of the existing political economy continues to
disprove the apologists of capitalism that ask people to keep their faith in a
system that perpetuates inequality and exacerbates social injustice. When the
issue of poverty is raised, many people rationalise this through the Malthusian
argument that there are too many people and too few resources, therefore there
will always be poor people in the world. Many of those very same educated
intellectuals have never argued that there are not sufficient resources to bail
out capitalism costing trillions of dollars. Feeding a starving child that
faces death every five seconds is not nearly as urgent for the state as
buttressing finance capitalism. If a billionaire is a philanthropist who has
given back some of the wealth she/he had appropriated through a system that
promotes capital concentration, then that billionaires becomes a hero and role-model,
rather than robber baron that she/he truly is. It must be clear now that the
dream of a better life under capitalism surely must have its expiration date
coming up.
We may not be on the eve of a revolution but imagine what
life would be like if capitalism was overthrown if we replaced it and were able
to live in a genuinely socialist society. Imagine a society of ecological
sanity, material abundance and social equality, a society where social
relations were premised on human solidarity, not capitalist exploitation and
human competition, where people are not set against each other, where
production for profit, driven by accumulation of capital, has given way to
production for use. Another world is not just possible; it is inevitable if
we are to exist in the long-term. The most poignant question you can now ask
yourself is this; “What can I do to bring to life this collective yearning for
a much better world?” The task of building the global socialist movement now
beckons all of us who care about the future and we must seek to bridge
divisions of nationality, sex and race and bring all the single issues within
an umbrella of common principles and goals to sustain the basis for unity. All
this is necessary, but not sufficient. A socialist party can only articulate
the inspiring vision of another world, it takes people and a social movement to
create one.
“I’ll let you be in my
dream if I can be in yours.” – Bob
Dylan
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