The class struggle -- the conflict between the capitalists
and the workers -- is at the very heart of the capitalist system. It explains
how it works and where it is going. The workers create the wealth and the
bosses take the lion’s share. Today capitalism is on a global offensive that is
wiping out past gains. As profit margins have fallen in the system as a whole,
competition between capitalist firms and nations has become ever more vicious.
The “race to the bottom” in which capitalists try to outdo each other in
finding the cheapest labour possible is prevalent. The needs of the ruling
class to boost profit rates also dictates escalated racist and anti-immigrant
attacks across the board -- to keep the working class down through
divide-and-conquer methods. In their insatiable quest to maximize profits, the
capitalists and their state crush everything that stands in their way; they no
longer have the luxury of preserving the democratic veneer they once applied to
their system.
Socialism still offers the best hope for humanity. We aren't idealists who think people can be
made perfect. We simply think a society
run by workers themselves, freed from both bosses and bureaucrats, would be far
more democratic and liberatory than capitalism ever has been. We think that a society premised upon the
enhancement of life rather than the perpetuation of profit would stand the best
chance of putting a halt to the environmental devastation now ravishing the globe.
But we can't get there on our own. A
society that strives for basic equality and democratic participation will only
come about through the coordinated activity of many people. The emancipation of
humanity from capitalism will only come about when workers act in the offices,
factories and streets on their own behalf.
It cannot be achieved through any shortcut, though many have been tried.
Socialists are widely condemned as utopian dreamers. But
socialist society is not some dreamland. We argue that socialism is the only
solution. Only the working class, through socialist revolution, can stop this
nightmare. In order to fight most effectively, workers also have to understand
that there can be no lasting concessions from the capitalist system. To win security
and abundance for all, the working class will have to take matters into our own
hands. We must dare to struggle and dare to win!
There can be no bureaucrats in socialism. It will be a
social organization of the people by the people. Government over the people is
replaced by the administration of things.
Marx and Engels had clarified the concept of socialism in
the Communist Manifesto, where they wrote: "In place of the old bourgeois
society with its classes and class conflicts there will be an association in
which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of
all." In Capital, a society opposed to the "world of the
commodity" is described as "an association of free men, working with
the means of production held in common, and expending their many different
forms of labour-power in full self-awareness as one single social force."
From The Civil War in France, "if
united co-operative societies are to regulate national production upon a common
plan, this taking it under their own control, and putting an end to the
constant anarchy and periodical convulsions which are the fatality of
Capitalist production-what else, gentlemen, would it be but Communism,
"possible" Communism?” One
more example comes from an essay Marx wrote in 1871 entitled ‘On the
Nationalisation of Land’: "The national concentration of the means of
production is the natural base of a society in which a co-operative union of
free and equal producers consciously acts in accordance to a rational plan."
It is natural that from the outset in this sort of society
there is no room for the existence of commodities or currency which are
categories peculiar to a society founded on private property.
Socialism is thus a society in which private property is
abolished so that the means of production become the common property of
society. Individual labour power is consciously expended by an
"association of free men" as one part of society's labour power; that
is a "combination" of "large cooperative production unions"
consciously coordinates production and distribution based on a rational single
common plan – the cooperative commonwealth. Of course, to realise this society
the highest development of production, technology and industry are the
necessary preconditions.
No comments:
Post a Comment