There is no future on the basis of capitalism in the world.
Unless we overthrow capitalism, only environmental collapse and starvation
await us. Capitalism or socialism is now a life and death issue. Revolution is
now practical politics for humanity’s survival. But if we can achieve socialism
the result is wealth for all and the good things of life for everybody. A
comfortable abode, a dining table full of wholesome food and wardrobes of
elegant clothes. There will be opportunity and means to the world. Leisure to
read and play and work. No poverty anymore with its filth and sickness and
vice. You say all this is a dream? No, no dream at all, but an immediate
possibility. By means of the vast new technology that now exists of this modern
world, we can produce wealth enough for all without any trouble whatever. There
is no doubt at all about this. Modern inventions have so increased the
productive capacity that mankind across the globe could have an abundance of
wealth by working only 3 or 4 hours a day or even a week. Socialists propose to
claim a share in this abundance for all people and not for the luxury and
privilege of the 1%. Socialists proposes to take for ourselves this vast new
technology and use it for satisfying the needs of all, instead of producing for
the profit of the few. If we owned the factories and the machinery ourselves
and all of us worked at them to produce wealth for our own use and happiness,
all the troubles of poverty would disappear at once. The only thing that lies
between us and the promise of prosperity is the private ownership of the means
of producing wealth. Therefore, what Socialism proposes to do, in order to get
wealth for all, is to take possession of the instruments of production and run
them for the use of us all.
Those people who are deprived of their right to use the
machinery they have made and to get the riches they make, shall come together in
a political party and vote the employers out of power.
These men and women
who are denied the right to use their own machinery are the men who now work
for wages, a bare living. They have nothing to lose, and everything to gain.
This is the working class. Socialism appeals to them on the ground of their
self-interests. Our appeal to our fellow workers is simple, not simplistic,
practical not impossible. We indulge in
no dreams or offer false hopes. We say to our fellow worker: “Come with us,
join our party, vote yourselves into power, use that power of the State to
capture back those means of wealth production which the capitalists have stolen
from you, and then you will get all that abundance which modern inventions
entitle you to.” We've got the abundance - we just have to transform the way we
share it out.
The mission of the Socialist Party is to muster all workers
under our banner and whose real interests lie in abolishing the private
ownership of the means of production, and also to shut out of the party the
class whose real interests lie in the preservation of the present system. It is
class war, a mighty battle of the ballots. How are we to achieve socialism? A
political Party of class-conscious workers is how. Otherwise we are going to a
capitalist Hell. Our countries and cities are huge dumping grounds full of poverty,
homelessness, joblessness, crime, illiteracy, ill-health, racism, sexism,
homophobia, domestic and random violence, addictions, ad nauseam. There is less
of everything for everybody except stress and rage. Hitlerite wannabes menace
the innocent and the vulnerable.
To many people, socialism is a call for violent action. The
ruling class would have it so; they claim for themselves the mantle of
progress, logic, truth, beauty, and knowledge. They represent the socialist as
deluded, irrational, psychotic, and hateful. But just look at these high-sounding
critics; the maniacs in the Pentagon; the perverted and distorted finance
capitalists who would see a world plunged into barbarism before they relinquish
a penny of their fabulous profits; the power-mad industrialists who calmly
grind the working class to dust beneath the wheels of automation; the
professors of knowledge who devote their lives to keeping knowledge away from
the people. Are these people sane? Socialists are infinitely more rational than
our ruling class.
There will be no need of a public coercive force to maintain
the power of one class over another, to protect the property of one from the
assaults of the other, to assure the continuation of oppression and
exploitation. There is ample opportunity for the intellectual development of
all. All perform their social duty as a matter of course. What need is there
for compulsion, for a machinery of force? To prevent burglary? What will there
be to steal in the midst of abundance? To prevent murder or rape? Such cases
will be exceedingly rare, we may be sure, and in any case they will require
medical attention or confinement for the guilty one in a secure hospital, and
not a jail. To regulate traffic? But for that and similar tasks there will be
needed, not policemen, as we know them now, but traffic wardens assigned to
perform that task. Abundance for all? Free for all to take? A society without
money? They say it is impossible. As the
necessities and comforts of life become increasingly abundant, and the differences
between physical and mental labour, between town and country are eliminated –
the need for tolerating even the last vestiges of inequality will disappear as
a matter of course. This may seem incredible to a mind thoroughly poisoned with
capitalist prejudices. But why should it be incredible? Mankind will prove that
class divisions, poverty and oppression are not unavoidable necessary parts of
life. In the socialist society we will show that abundance, freedom and
equality are not only possible but the natural condition for the new history of
humanity.
Men dying of thirst will fight for a drink at a desert
oasis. But if they are up to their hips in water they may have a thousand
differences among themselves, but they will not even dream of fighting for a
drink. A dozen men in a prison cell with only one tiny window may trample over
each other in the fight to get to that tiny source of fresh air. But outside,
whoever thinks of fighting for air to breathe, or for more air than the next
man? Announce a shortage of bread, and immediately a long line will form, with
everyone racing to get there first, and a policeman on hand to “keep order.”
But if everyone knew that there is an ample supply of bread today, and there
will be just as large a supply tomorrow and the next day, there would be no
line, no race, no conflict; nobody would try to hoard an extra loaf in order to
make sure of eating the next day; and there would be no need of a policeman to
back up his orders by force. If society could assure everyone of as ample and
constant a supply of bread as there is of air, why would anyone need or want a
greater right to buy bread than his neighbour? Bread is used here only as the
simplest illustration. But the same applies to all other foods, to clothing, to
shelter, to books, to means of transportation.
A planned organised society, efficiently utilising our
present productive equipment and the better equipment to come, could easily
assure abundance to all. In return, society could confidently expect every
citizen to contribute his or her best voluntarily.
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