According to the media magnates, the “old fashioned radical”
ideas of the socialist movement are “out-dated” and “obsolete” because we now
live in a “Welfare State”, even if it is an ever weakening one. But the
Socialist Party point out that in the process of capital accumulation by the
capitalists, wealth is constantly accumulated at one end and poverty is
accumulated at the other. “This,” Marx said, “is an absolute and general law of
capitalist accumulation.” (Capital, Vol. 1) In capitalist society part of the
workers’ labour that is plundered by the capitalists as surplus value, the
source of all profit under capitalism. A parent’s feeling that their children
won’t live as well as they have – under capitalism – is true. They won’t. That
part of the capitalist dream is gone for now. And the ability of even the
children of the “middle-class” suburbs, and of the country as a whole, to reach
or surpass the income levels and status of their parents through a college
education is rapidly being closed off by mounting fees and student debt. No
longer is there guaranteed the road to the highly illusory “upward mobility.”
Wherever there is capitalism, there is unemployment. The
official unemployment rates actually show only the tip of the iceberg about the
true picture of joblessness under capitalism. Today there is a whole stratum of
jobless who are permanently unemployed and who will never hold a productive job
under capitalism. It is another example of how the Great Recession today is
fundamentally deeper and more extensive than the Great Depression. The trend in
this crisis is for more and more workers and poor to be forced into the ranks
of the permanently unemployed. For black and other minority youth (and
increasingly for white youth as well) this means that they may never know what
a steady job and steady income mean as they hop from one lousy McDonald’s job
to another. For older workers in dying declining industries many will also be
forced onto welfare. Though the capitalist system has created increasing permanently
unemployed and the deepening stagnation is driving more and more workers into
its ranks, the employing class are ruthlessly cutting off the funds that keep
them alive. Capitalism tears at and destroys the social fabric in which we
live. The impact of the economic crisis on the family is profound, gnawing at
people’s standard of living and taking a relentless toll and the family is
under attack by the capitalist system as never before in our history. Unable to
direct their anger at the real source of their desperation and destitution, the
capitalists, many people inevitably lash out at anybody available, including
their nearest and dearest. People go berserk, grab guns and say “I hate this
world” as they randomly kill strangers. Demagogues are whipping up Christian
and Islamic fundamentalism, pitting people against people, feeding on the
desperation and fears of people.
For all the suffering borne by people, we have not seen any
mass resistance of significance. A strange situation indeed – accelerating destitution
and deprivation on the one hand and relative docility on the other. This is the deepest capitalist economic crisis
ever and the number of strikes is actually almost the lowest in decades.
Disoriented, the vast majority of workers are still dazed by the full brunt of
the capitalist crisis. People have not taken to the streets in droves (with a
few notable exceptions), but they are in fact awakening to political life by
the millions and tens of millions. Unlike any time in the last thirty years,
the vast majority are open to political ideas, listening intently to all shades
of political opinion. In every pub and club, in every living room, a great
debate on every question is raging and discussions on politics are no longer
taboo topic at the dining table. That the people will at some time soon vote
with their feet is certain. They are trying to decide now what they are going
to “vote” for. Soon there will be action but for a revolution to be any good,
you have to be FOR something. We should be, without hesitation or
embarrassment, Utopia, and demand the impossible.
We analyse the sources of surplus value, class exploitation
and its termination in a socialist society of abundance for all with production
for use not profit. We fret over the cruelty and the absurdity of unemployment,
of want and suffering in the midst of plenty. We probe the economic and
political roots of war and question how to eradicate them. We wish to establish an economic order internationally
where the antagonism between classes vanishes and the hostility of one nation
to another will come to an end. We seek the human future of associated labour
in which the free development of each is a condition for the free development
of all. People want clarity and want to study. We want to teach. But above all,
we ourselves also learn.
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| FOR WORLD SOCIALISM |
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