All Change for Socialism.

It’s all a bit overwhelming, isn’t it? Inequality is rising, and services are being cut to those who most need them. Our eco-system is teetering on the edge, and oil companies are controlling the climate agenda. Multinationals are booming off the labour of the poorest and racism is rife. Our current reality is an economic/political arrangement that is run by and for the richest people in the world. Effectively it is an oligarchical system of one dollar, one vote; certainly not a democracy based on one person, one vote. Power is global. The financial elite now float beyond national borders and no longer care about the common good. Hence, the ruling class make no concessions in their pursuits of power and profits where increased human misery is an acceptable price to be paid. They foster a new breed of politician who wages war on any viable notion of the welfare state.  Workers are demonised, criminalised or simply abandoned and discarded. A perpetual climate of fear and insecurity has been created. The propaganda and indoctrination we are fed are so disconnected from facts, evidence and logic that it has become laughable. Capitalism is a coercive economic system that creates persistent patterns of economic deprivation.  If capitalism makes workers’ lives miserable, for those who can’t work it is even worse. True freedom requires freedom from destitution and freedom from the demands of the employer. Capitalism ensures neither. But the ripples of dissent are very much there. All over the world people are standing up and being heard.

More and more people are identifying capitalism as the underlying cause of our social ills and crises. That’s certainly positive: the first step toward cure is a proper diagnosis. But most of what is being offered are placebos, an endless supply of ineffective remedies to “fix” or reform it, to make it “less greedy.” Getting the greed out of capitalism is impossible, and we’ll just waste precious time by trying. The faults of capitalism is integral to the way it works. Capital must expand, buy up or destroy competitors, reach into every corner of society to try to squeeze money out of it. It naturally accumulates, concentrating wealth in the hands of the few at the expense of the many. That’s not a mistake. That’s what it does. There’s no other way it works. The problem isn’t extreme capitalism, corporate capitalism, crony capitalism, vulture capitalism or greedy capitalism. It’s just capitalism. Capital has its own relentless drive, never to be satisfied, feeding ever more hungrily on the life-force of the world while leaving mountains of destruction and misery in its wake. It can’t do otherwise. Forget trying to fix it. It needs to be ended.

If we want the socialist movement to grow then we have to create opportunities where the learning process is welcome and valued. We have to celebrate the new possibilities that each new individual brings. In practical terms, this means making sure our meetings are open to newcomers, and that quieter and introverted folks are given opportunities to speak. Folks who are good at talking and writing usually have the most power, while those who have less experience and are less vocal have the least.  It means that terminology is explained when necessary, and it means not using academic jargon to sound impressive. Refusing to explain yourself contributes to a form of discrimination in which people with less formal education and access to information are marginalised.  Obsession with “correct” language plays an enormous part in making socialist ideas inaccessible to many people. Having reading the ‘right’ books and blogs there are still disagreements between activists about which terms are and aren’t appropriate. Many in the socialist movement happen to be educated enough to understand varying levels of heavy jargon. Some don’t have any conditions that prevent them from reading for hours and they have the luxury of sufficient free time in which to do this. But most people don’t have that level of luxury. People are busy, you know, surviving themselves. They don’t necessarily have laptops, broadband, and ample time in which to make use of those things. There is also an unawareness of just how much there is to read out there. It also assumes that there are 'correct' resources to be reading that are available, and that the person in question will be able to find them among thousands of conflicting resources. Multiple lifetimes are required to really get to know in-depth all the topics, multiple entire academic careers of critical analysis.  We should accept that nobody gets things right 100% of the time. They’re still learning. It means having the humility to know that all of us are, in fact, still learning.

How do we discover and implement new tactics and methods?  Perhaps we return to basics like compassion, altruism, empathy, and communication.  Perhaps we learn to listen to and heed the voices most often drowned out.  Perhaps we do the work to cultivate authentic organisations in which everyone is held accountable for their behavior.  Perhaps we start refining and honing our own face-to-face social skills such as making eye contact. Speak the language you know. Many folk lack the gift of oration that moves people, yet our own words are often good enough. Working together offers the strength that comes from the fact that we are dreaming and longing and working together for all of us to be free. Freedom requires creativity, a little skill, and a daily dose of courage. Most of all, it requires us to share our stories of our own struggles with each other. “We are the 99%.” For decades, the Left had been trying to come up with a slogan that was both inclusive and oppositional. A slogan that put a relatively complex critique of class society in populist language.

Is it possible that a different system could be built without people first imagining it? Is imagining a better economic/political system a necessary step in making it happen? For those of us who believe human beings are in control of our own destiny, or at least the rules that govern our economic and political system, it is time to come together and imagine a better system, one that promotes environmental sustainability, equality and world-wide cooperation. It seems impossible to deny, at least for any reality-based thinker, that our current global capitalist economic/political system has created, and prevents us from fixing, the mess we are in. This is due to the powerful private profit engine of capitalism, which in turn incentivises the externalisation/socialisation of as many costs as possible. The owners of capital are driven to make ever greater profits -- the system rewards those who do and punishes those who don't -- which of course leads the profit seeker to reduce costs in any way possible. To survive, capitalists must try to avoid paying for the negative consequences of whatever is the source of their profits, be it the instruments of war, environmental destruction, global warming, over-consumption or an unhealthy food system. Protecting and maximising profit gives capitalists an incentive to deny the ill effects of their products, to fund global warming deniers and to promote war. The potential for governments to pass laws that may negatively affect profits is an incentive for capitalists to do whatever it takes to make sure the political system works in their narrow, immediate interests. This is the source of what some defenders of an abstract, idealised capitalism call cronyism, but which is, in fact, a logical outcome of a system that promotes greed and private profit.

What sort of economic/political system can be imagined and then built that will save us from global warming, other forms of environmental disaster and growing inequality; one that can come about relatively peacefully so that weapons of mass destruction are turned into ploughshares rather than destroy the planet? The new system we imagine must get rid of the perverse incentives that result in war, the devastation of our environment and inequality. Instead it must encourage environmental stewardship, cooperation and equality, both of responsibility and power. These must become foundational principles of our economy as well as our political system on the individual, local, regional, and world level. This imagined system must be achievable, because it is worse than pointless to dream about something that cannot happen, it is a waste of time we do not have. And to be achievable this new system must be something that can be built by the people. For change to happen peacefully it must be popular, supported by most people around the world. That, in turn, means the new system must ultimately be more democratic, because the most popular system is one in which most people feel they have a stake. Whatever the details of this new system of economic and political democracy, millions of us need to soon begin imagining it.

This new world is one we call socialism. Let’s get together as social beings and organise our society as we would like it. Let’s have production for use not profit and at the same time remove the evils of war and environmental destruction that threaten to eliminate our species altogether. Come on! Change for socialism.