The Next Revolution

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 18^th 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