Socialism - The hope of humanity

Human beings have an inherent drive to care about one other and the levels of human misery in our world today demean us all. Socialism began as a quest for community with the utopian socialists wanting to restore what industrialism was taking away. Defining socialism often required defining what it was not. It never meant mean the tyrannical rule of a bureaucratic class in the Soviet Union (or China or Cuba) but even with the fall of the old Soviet Union the identification of socialism with centrally planned, state capitalism seems as strong as ever after.  Many still view socialism as the nationalisation of major industries when the experience of nationalized industries shows that it was not a model of social enlightenment even if they do add on caveats that it is nationalization “under workers control.” The task of the Socialist Party is to open up thinking about what socialism truly is and provide the necessary revolutionary vision. Many pro-capitalist seek to prove the idea of socialism is dead or that it is impossible because of some ‘human nature’, yet, how could socialism possibly be dead, or against human nature, if they're so concerned to keep killing it off? The argument that socialism can't work is akin to the person behind the wheel of a car who refuses to change direction as he or she drives towards the cliff. Divide the workers to maintain mastery has long been the tactic of the ruling classes the world over. They stir the embers of religious bigotry long after the musty creeds have lost whatever justification they had for emerging in the first place, and they fan the flames of patriotism, of so-called nationalism, long after the disappearance of the historical basis for narrow chauvinism and provincialism. Capitalism will not change its drive for profits at the expense of our existence as a species. Socialists hold that the exploited will not let themselves be passively dragged towards the catastrophes that threaten our future and survival.

The knowledge and technical means exist to conquer hunger and disease and to satisfy the basic social and cultural needs of our whole planet. But, inequalities grow and catastrophes threaten us. The idea that self-sacrifice and sensible reforms are enough to ward off these dangers is an illusion. Reformist preaching have never prevented crises, avoided wars or contained social explosions. Resignation has always been infinitely more costly than struggle. It is delusional to imagine capitalism without economic crises, without unemployment, without poverty, without discrimination against women, young people, the aged, immigrants and national minorities, without racism or xenophobia. Capitalism cannot be judged simply by looking at the comfort of – the small elite while closing one’s eyes to the living conditions of the large majority of people. Over-population’ and the hunger and misery associated with it, are not products of nature but products of men, or rather of social relationships which preclude such a social organisation of production and of life generally as would abolish with the problem of hunger that of ‘over-population’.

The socialist movement will not advance again significantly until it regains the initiative and takes the offensive against capitalism. Our task, as socialists is simply to restate what socialism meant to the founders of our movement but  the expansion and development of the socialist movement will not be overcome unless and until we find a way to break down the misunderstanding and prejudice against socialism. We are passionately devoted to the idea that socialism cannot be realised other than by democracy. All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The socialist movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority, as stated in the Communist Manifesto. Socialism and democracy are linked together as end and means. Socialism cannot be anything else but democratic, if we understand by “democracy” the rule of the people, the majority. The socialist reorganisation of society requires a workers’ revolution. Such a revolution is unthinkable without the active participation of the majority of the working class. Nothing could be more democratic than that.

Socialists do not argue with workers when they say they want democracy and doesn’t want to be ruled by a dictatorship. Rather, we should recognise that this demand for human rights and democratic guarantees, now and in the future, is in itself progressive. The socialist task is not to deny democracy, but to expand it and make it more complete. That is the true socialist tradition. The Marxists, throughout the century-long history of our movement, have always valued and defended bourgeois democratic rights, restricted as they were; and have utilised them for the education and organisation of the workers in the struggle to establish full democracy by abolishing the capitalist rule altogether.

Marx and Engels never taught that the simple nationalisation of the forces of production signified the establishment of socialism. That’s not stated by Marx and Engels anywhere. Marxists define socialism as a classless society—with abundance, freedom and equality for all; a society in which there would be no state, not even a democratic workers’ state, to say nothing of a state in the monstrous form of a bureaucratic dictatorship of a privileged minority. The Communist Manifesto said: “In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association.” N.B. “an association”, not a state—“an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all”

Capitalism, under any kind of government—whether ‘bourgeois’ democracy or police state—under any kind of government, capitalism is a system of minority rule, and the principal beneficiaries of capitalist democracy are the small minority of exploiting capitalists; scarcely less so than the slaveowners of ancient times. To be sure, the workers have a right to vote periodically for candidates selected for them by the capitalist parties. And they can exercise the right of free speech and free press. But this formal right of free speech and free press is out-weighed rather heavily by the inconvenient circumstance that the small capitalist minority happens to enjoy a complete monopoly of ownership and control of all the big presses, and of television and radio, and of all other means of communication and information.

In the old days, some socialists used a shorthand definition of socialism - “industrial democracy” - the extension of democracy to industry, the democratic control of industry by the workers themselves, with private ownership eliminated. That socialist demand for real democracy was taken for granted. Capitalism created a top layer of people who are the owners of peoples’ lives. Socialism will end that.