Man is a god to man

ALL THINGS ARE HELD IN COMMON

People will be guaranteed security, democracy, equality and peace only when our world is run on an entirely different basis than it is now; only when a socialist system replaces the present capitalist one. Anti-socialists charge us with fomenting the class war as though we had invented it! It is not by shutting our eyes to the war which divides and exhausts humanity that we shall arrive at the desired peace. The war of every moment is threefold:

War between the proletariat and the capitalist for their respective shares in the produce; on one side, wages, on the other, profits; each side exerting itself to carry off a maximum. Man becomes a wolf for his fellow-man. It is a question of eating one’s brother or being eaten by him.

War between workers and workers for the sharing of wages.

War between capitalists and capitalists for the sharing of profits.

General insecurity has become the normal condition of society. More and more has capitalist society proved its failure to produce anything from a superabundance of riches; of means of consumption and happiness, but misery, suffering, ruin and death! The solution of the social problem is to be found in the problem itself, such as I have just given in a short exposition. The greatest socio-economic evil of today consists in the ever more complete divorce of the two factors in production, labour and property or capital, and consequently the remedy can be found only in their unification. Under what form ought this unification to be effected? It is only collectively that the workers can and ought to possess the means of wealth (mines, railways, factories, etc.) socially operated. Capitalist evolution itself supplies the necessary elements, material and intellectual, of this appropriation and of this production by and for society now become a vast co-operative commonwealth. This economic expropriation—which would allow to the expropriated full participation in the benefits accruing from social appropriation—must be preceded by a political expropriation.

The state–the police, army, courts, bureaucracy and similar institutions–is set up and controlled by this capitalist class. These big businessmen–the bourgeoisie,–consistently use the police, army and courts to break workers’ strikes and generally to put down the rebellions of the poor who own little or no means of production. The police and military are never called out against the bankers and CEOs. In short, this state is a bourgeois dictatorship. This does not mean there is a dictatorship in this country of one or several men. It does mean there is a class dictatorship, where a tiny handful of profit-makers rules society and uses the state as their machine to suppress the working people. Most people do not think of their country as a dictatorship because the relationship of different classes is usually concealed. The monopoly capitalists do not openly admit their rule. Instead they claim that this is a democracy where everyone shares power and takes part in running the government. In fact, the bourgeoisie is no more willing to “share” power with the majority of people than it is to share the ownership of the means of production and the wealth that comes from this. For them to function as a capitalist class, they must exploit the working class; and to exploit the workers, who constantly resist this exploitation and oppression, they must use the state to suppress the workers. The ruling class goes to great lengths to cover up their dictatorship under the mask of democracy, for it is extremely difficult for a minority of exploiters to rule by force alone.

Of course the ruling class has been forced to grant the workers some democratic rights such as the right to vote, free speech, free press, etc. But these freedoms, like everything else in capitalist society, have their class content: they mean one thing to the ruling class and quite another for the workers. For the capitalists, freedom of the press and free speech, as examples, mean the right to fill the air-waves and daily newspapers with their propaganda and lies and to use them freely to debate with each other. For the capitalists, elections are a way to settle differences among themselves, while making it look like everybody has equal say. For the working class, democratic rights are the fruits of previous struggles, and we fight to preserve them for they make it easier to organize and mobilize for the day when the capitalists will be overthrown. Nevertheless democratic rights for the masses are primarily a sham, a mask, to cover the real dictatorship of the capitalists. This becomes especially clear when democratic rights come into conflict with the most basic “freedom” of bourgeois society–the right of the capitalists to their “private property” and to exploit the labor of the workers. In the final analysis all their talk about democracy boils down to one thing. The ruling class decides by struggle and compromise within its own ranks, and among its paid politicians, how it will maintain its system of exploitation over the people. Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich–that is the democracy of capitalist society. This situation can only be reversed by socialist revolution to overthrow capitalist rule.

There will be an end to all class distinction and consequently an end to the class-war. All the members of society are at once and with equal title co-owners and co-producers. The State, in the oppressive sense of the word, will cease to exist, it being nothing more than a means of maintaining artificially, by force, order that a system of society, founded on the antagonism of interests would naturally give birth to. The government of men gives place to the administration of things. It is the reign of social peace and harmony. Commercial production of exchange-values with an end to realising profit will disappear, and be replaced by the co-operative production of use-values for consumption with a view to satisfying social wants. In place of robbing and exploiting one another, we will all help one another. Homo homini Deus, “Man is a god to man”.

When everyone in society can share equally in mental and manual work, in producing goods and services and managing the affairs of society; when the outlook of the working class, putting the common good above narrow, individual interests, has become second nature to members of society; when goods and services can be produced so abundantly that money is no longer needed to exchange them and they can be distributed to people solely according to their needs; then society will have reached socialism. Classes will have been completely eliminated, and the state as such will be replaced by the common administration of society by all its members. As this happens, throughout the world, mankind will have scaled a great mountain and will look out on a whole new horizon.