This is how socialism will be (3/4)

Opponents of the Socialist Party say that we are dreamers. They tell us that because of human nature our fellow workers are innately greedy, selfish and evil and cannot change. Our reply. Is that this very same human nature argument was advanced against those who wished to abolish slavery and its cruelty and exploitation. Aristotle and Plato, defended slavery with the “human nature” argument. Slavery has been abolished. It is a big mistake to maintain that human nature does not change. Everything changes in Nature and in life. Everything is in a process of transformation. Movement is the universal law of everything that exists. That is the conclusion all science of our era comes: to the science of celestial bodies (astronomy), the natural and biological sciences, social and historical science, all. Everything evolves. Everything is constantly being modified. Everything changes. It is impossible to bathe twice in the same stream for water flows. We never meet the same man twice because during the interval he has grown older, his constitution and his character changed; he is no longer the same. The human species also has evolved. Even the planets themselves, the sun, the moon, the stars have not always been what they are today. If everything changes, is subject to transformation and modification, how is it possible to believe for a moment that the present system of property will always remain the same? That would be, indeed, contrary to nature. Today’s dream is tomorrow’s reality.

It has also been said that if men do not have the spur of hunger and want and of the desire to make profit they will become lazy. To argue thus is to forget the necessity for clothing, feeding and sheltering oneself. He or she who does not work neither shall eat. It is to forget too, that idleness is not the characteristic of a man in his sane senses. Laziness is a social malady, an outcome of our system, which is in itself a stimulant to laziness. It assures all riches, all the pleasures of life – in theory – to those who work the least possible, to the idle rich, to the social parasites. Laziness develops from the intolerable conditions of forced and excessive labour in unhealthy and infected factories. How can a person work with enthusiasm when he or she knows that his or her work will go to the enrichment of others? When the producers know that the products of their work will belong to them they will throw overboard the old repugnance which forced labour engenders in them. Work well regulated and apportioned will become attractive. It will become a joy and a pleasure, and this is because work is necessary for the physical and mental well-being of man. Modern science itself establishes the vital necessity for work.

In capitalist society the world is divided into states with opposed interests. The world is split up, lined with frontiers and barriers. At each moment storms are brewing. Nowhere is there security. If there is talk of peace there is also preparation for war. There is only one way to avoid new slaughter – a world revolution which will replace the struggle between nations by international co-operation. Socialism preaches solidarity among the producers and its slogan is “Workers of the world, Unite!” Humanity must choose between the capitalist system which leads to destruction and the reciprocity through the worldwide socialisation of the forces of production. Socialism will make of the earth one country single and indivisible.

Human history is also a record of perpetual change. Slavery was replaced by semi-slavery – serfdom which gave way to wage-slavery, the last form of slavery. The wage system will give way to socialism which will bring to an end the exploitation of man by man and slavery in all its forms. Everything in our lives has changed. And yet some seek to maintain a society in its old barbaric state of struggle and poverty. There is no reason whatsoever to despair of human progress. What appears to us impossible today is done tomorrow. Only a socialist society by putting the land, and technology at the service of all who work in the fields and in the factories, will guarantee real liberty to all. The state-machine will disappear together with the parasitic class whose privileges it safeguards. The producing members of society, will be free to spend their time at leisure. All the natural wealth freed from the control of the property owners, all the inexhaustible riches of science and human art will be at their disposal. Freedom will then cease to be a slogan and will become a reality, an everyday fact the property of all.