The Time Is Now

You can’t compromise your way to your goal. Putting forth a vision for radical transformation of all we know is scary. We need people who are willing to stand together to build a movement for social change that unites people behind a vision of a world based on socialist principles. So we have a choice, we can stick with the known, what is comfortable, what seems to be pragmatic at this time or we can take a strong, bold stance for our highest values, goals and dreams. We have to unite, communicate, know our strengths and attack the repression and oppression that the state is imposing upon us. There’s just us. Just-us. Justice. It’s up to us to change everything. We have to change the system and we have to be radical about it. We have to have everyone we can, doing what they think best, giving everything they have.

Politicians and economists, more often than not echoing one another, speak of a new regime of higher wages, more consumption, and increased standards of living, which would result in the end of poverty. Their prophecies are always answered with a collapse of the good times are a-coming. The ballyhoo of prosperity ends in the most disastrous of recessions. The captains of industry and finance always appear bewildered by the onset of a depression, at no time do they really understand the movement of the economic forces they exploit. Their invocations to the new era of prosperity for all are quickly forgotten. Always, in one form or another, capitalism creates an ideology to disguise and justify its predatory character. It is a necessary device of class domination. But when the disguise disappears, as it must, and the hopeless reality is revealed, the economic crisis of capitalism will become a political crisis and an era of momentous social struggle and change.

Much of the ballyhoo about pending prosperity was invented by professionals who were mesmerized by the “easy money” of speculation. But the prosperity was unequally distributed, only meagerly shared by the workers. There was grinding poverty and terrible insecurity. The number of strikes decreased considerably, but the strikes that did occur were brutally suppressed. Not only that: even if prosperity had been as great as claimed, it was still woefully far behind prevailing potential of technological resources. For capitalism always restricts production and consumption, the possibilities of abundance and leisure potential in the productive forces of society. Social justice will never prevail until industrial despotism has been supplanted by global industrial democracy.

One decisive victory is all that’s needed for a new day is the reformist’s mantra. That new day, however, never ever comes as our rulers quickly learn of other ways to exploit workers. Occupy presented a danger to the entrenched oligopoly because Occupy wasn’t offering solutions like electing representatives or voting for Democrats. The overall consensus was that the system didn’t work and something new was needed. Anything can happen when enough people doubt the basic legitimacy of their government for the doors open to the possibility of real change. Despite its eventual reverses, the Occupy movement represented one of the most serious challenges to the state’s legitimacy in a long while. “Why don’t they offer any solutions?” lamented the establishment media, reflecting the fear of the elite that Occupy targeted the entire political system. If it is true that Sanders has moved the debate on economic justice and corporate control it is up to us to demand much more, such as a real democracy that allows all to have a say.

What many radicals are pursuing is not socialism. What have to show for it? Have there been reforms? In many cases, yes–even significant ones like large scale social welfare program. Has exploitation been ended, the enrichment of a few on the labor of the many? Hardly. Poverty? Scarcely. Is the economy planned to benefit the people? Have the creative powers of the masses been unleashed? Of course not. Reformists are content with class divisions, the dominance of the capitalists, a liberal-orientated government that does not challenge the existing structures.

There is no race but the human race. War, racism, sexism and all the other categories of inhumanity still practiced and profitable must end if we are to have a future as a truly human race. Scapegoating makes sense to the thoughtless or those responsible for maintaining a system that demands a social under-class in order to protect a wealthy over-class.

Human resourcefulness and natural resources are wasted by this system, which makes “profit” the only object in business. Ignorance and misery, with all concomitant evils, are perpetuated by this system, which makes human labor a commodity to be bought in the open market, and places no real value on human life. Science, technology and invention are diverted from their humane purposes and made instruments for the enslavement of men women and children. Labor, manual and mental, being the creator of all wealth and all civilization, it rightfully follows that those who perform all labor and create all wealth should enjoy the fruit of their efforts. But this is rendered impossible. The fruits of cooperative labor are appropriated by the owners of the means of production, by the owners of machines, mines, land, and the means of transportation.

The Socialist Party calls upon all citizens to unite under its banner  so that we may be ready to conquer capitalism by making use of our political liberty and by taking possession of the political power, so that we may put an end to the present barbarous struggle, by the abolition of capitalism, the restoration of the land, and of all the means of production, transportation, and distribution, to the people as a collective body, and the substitution of the cooperative commonwealth for the present state of unplanned production, industrial war, and social disorder — a commonwealth which, although it will not make every man equal physically or mentally, will give to every person the free exercise and the full benefit of his or her faculties, multiplied by all the modern factors of civilization and ultimately inaugurate the universal brotherhood of mankind. The Socialist Party will help make democracy, “the rule of the people,” a truth by ending the economic subjugation of the overwhelmingly great majority of the people.