Poverty, exploitation, oppression, war and environmental
destruction are products of the capitalist system, a system in which a minority
ruling class profits from the work of the majority. The alternative is
socialism, a society based on people commonly owning and collectively controlling
the wealth their labour creates. Although workers create society's wealth, they
have no say over its production and distribution. The 1% — the rich capitalist ruling
class - are the ones who have the power to make decisions that affect everyone
else — the 99%. This system is geared
toward the constant accumulation of profits, no matter what social or
environmental costs may be incurred.
Ideas about reforming this system don’t take the history of
capitalism into account. The social ills we see today are not a perversion of
the system, but the consequences of the logic of the capitalist system, which
concentrates wealth and political power in ever-fewer hands. The problems are
huge and only society-wide action will resolve them. The answer to this cannot
simply be a matter of replacing people at the top. For real, lasting change to
take place, political power cannot be wielded in the autocratic way the 1% has
used it for so long. A different type of politics is needed, one where the
interests of the 99% are at the fore. Political reforms cannot put capitalism
to rights. It must be completely replaced.
Only workers themselves can put an end to the capitalist
system of exploitation. Socialism is working-class self-emancipation. Given the
huge scale of the problems that need addressing — centuries of environmental
damage; an economic system that creates
chronic social problems linked to inequality and alienation — a
democratically planned approach, using all resources available, will be vital.
Some people might call this socialism. Currently the word, ‘socialism’, is
mostly taken to mean state involvement in or control over the economy. Many
people have quite narrow views about what socialism can and cannot be. But that
is not accurate even if a number of text-books offer it as a definitive
description. Socialism places satisfying human needs and the needs of the
natural world as the primary purpose of society rather than producing profits
for the few. Socialism is the idea that each individual should have the means
to live a life of dignity, without exception. Socialists think each person
should have the means to develop to their full potential. It means a society
focused on restoring ecosystems and promoting sustainable human development. It
means a society based on ongoing, participatory democracy. It means
people-power.
In the 19th C. William Morris said:
“Socialism – a
condition where there is neither rich nor poor, neither master nor master’s
man, neither idle nor overworked, neither brain-sick brainworkers nor
heart-sick handworkers – in which all men would be living in equality of
conditions, would manage their affairs unwastefully, and with the full
consciousness that harm to one would mean harm to all.”
We can go further back into history to the 17th C.
when Gerard Winstanley wrote:
“Every tradesman shall fetch materials… from the public
store-houses to work upon without buying and selling; and when particular works
are made… the tradesmen shall bring these particular works to particular shops,
as it is now the practice, without buying and selling. And every family as they
want such things as they cannot make, they shall go to these shops and fetch
without money.”
Or we can travel even earlier into our history to the 14th
C. to the time John Ball could say:
“When Adam delved and Eve span; Who was then a Gentleman? Ah
ye good people, the matters goeth not well to pass in England, nor shall do
till everything be common, and that there be no villains nor gentlemen, but
that we are all united together, and that the lords be no greater masters than
we. What have we deserved, or why should we be thus kept in servage? We be all
come from one father and mother, Adam and Eve: whereby can they say or show
that they be greater lords than we, saving by that they cause us to win and
labour for that they dispend?”
To-day society is fundamentally anti-social. The whole
so-called social fabric rests on privilege and power, and is strained in every
direction by the inequalities that necessarily result. The welfare of each,
instead of contributing to that of all, as it should, detracts from that of
all. Wealth is made by the legal privilege to filch from labour’s pockets.
Every man who gets rich thereby makes his neighbour poor. The better off one
is, the worse off the rest are. Socialism wants to change all this. Socialism
says that what’s one man’s meat must no longer be another’s poison. Socialists
are the only people entitled to cite the eighth commandment, ‘Thou shalt not
steal’ That commandment is a socialist principle, only not as a commandment
from God, but as a condition of nature. Socialists do not order; we prophesise
and predict. We does not say unto you
‘Thou shalt not steal’ We say when all men and women have free access to the
world’s treasury they shalt not steal. Capitalism is doomed to make the lot of
the working class more unstable, insecure and miserable. Indeed, the promises
made by the supporters of capitalism have not been fulfilled for billions of
people around the world. If anything, the opposite is true.
If the working class continue to accept capitalism, then the
system will persist until it produces the "common ruin" of all. The
socialist revolution is not a given, or something that will be reached
inevitably simply through the course of history. Marx and Engels argued,
"history does nothing...it ‘wages no battles.’ It is man, real, living man
who does all that, who possesses and fights; ‘history’ is not...a person apart,
using man as a means to achieve its own aims; history is nothing but the activity
of man pursuing his aims."
Our conscious
aim must be the overthrow of the contradictory crisis-ridden class-system
of capitalism and the purposeful establishment of socialism.
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