Capitalism continues to exist not only by force but also by the power of ideas. These ideas are instilled into people from the day they start thinking to the day they die. The schools and colleges, the newspapers, magazines and books, all the media, the church pulpits, are all the ways by which the thoughts of people are shaped. They are used by the class that controls them to argue that the society we live in is fundamentally correct and the natural one. By and large, the working class accepts these ideas. If it did not, capitalism could not be kept alive for very long. Because we are stuffed full of these ideas, workers will usually accept the division of wealth to different classes as fit and proper. Some of us are made to toil, others are made to prosper. Why complain if you have not the talent to make money and become rich? Don’t the wealthy provide you with a job? Wanting to change the natural order is only the politics of envy”
Marx always describes socialist society as a society of associated producers. Socialism is an economic system based upon conscious planning of production by associated producers (not by the State), made possible by the abolition of private property of the means of production. As soon as that private property is completely abolished, goods produced cease to be commodities. Value and exchange value disappear. Production becomes production for use, for the satisfaction of needs, determined by the conscious choice of the mass of the associated producers themselves. This a post-capitalist society. Humanity will be organised into a free federation of communities where work will have transformed itself into meaningful labour, making possible the development of each and every individual’s human personality. The State, the division of labour between manual and intellectual labour, the separation of town and countryside, will have withered away. The socialist future in a classless society of democratically self-administering associated producers.
It is a welcome sign of the times that a serious exchange of radical opinion is now under way concerning what is socialism and how can it be achieved. The first step in a class analysis is to understand the antagonism of the two basic classes: capitalist and worker. The capitalist class owns and controls the means of production, distribution and communication. The working class owns none of these, and therefore, workers must sell their labour power to the capitalist for wages in order to live. The worker creates a product of value, part of which is returned to him as wage, and the rest of which is taken from him by the capitalists as profit. Thus is created the basic antagonistic contradiction between worker and capitalist, since the interest of one is, and has to be, directly opposed to the interest of the other. This most fundamental of contradictions will not end until capitalism with its private ownership and/or control of the means of production is itself ended and replaced with socialism.
Racism, like nationalism and sexism, is the product of class divided society. It is an ideology which serves to divide the oppressed classes and strengthen the oppressors. Capitalism is the basic cause of war in modern times. Capitalism controls the entire globe and war result from the struggles of the elites to divide and re-divide the world. The way forward for workers is through the establishment of socialism. Socialism puts an end to wars and the dangers of war because inside socialism there are no capitalists who are interested in war profits and the conquest of new markets and possession of raw materials. The solution is to end the private ownership of the means of production and replace it with social ownership and production planned to meet the people’s needs, that is, socialism. Socialist planned economy abolishes anarchy of the market and thereby puts an end to depressions and unemployment. Instead of production for profit, there is production for the benefit of the people. Social ownership ends the exploitation of man by man because it is through private ownership of the factories and workshops, mills and mines, and farm-lands that the wealthy minority exploit the great mass of the people. Socialism does not destroy democracy but, on the contrary, enormously extends democratic liberties. There can be no real democracy – no rule by the people as a whole –while the means of production are owned and controlled by a small minority, the capitalist class. Socialism, for the first time, creates the conditions for the free expression of the people’s will. The only “liberty” which socialism ends is the liberty of the privileged class to own industry and amass wealth at the expense of the great majority. Socialism ends all exploitation and oppression of the producers by a privileged parasitical class. Socialism does not “worship” the State and with socialism the State “withers away”. Future society will be one of world-wide co-operation for the common good of all people, a peaceful, free world instead of one torn by rivalries, prejudices and war.
The aim of the Socialist Party is the ownership by the people of the World’s natural resources and the means of production and distribution. Socialism is a thorough-going social transformation and it can be achieved only by the majority of the people agreeing to and desiring it.
"Why should it just be the bankers, politicians and the idle rich who get all the best things? As a militant trade union we demand a standard of living for our members that enables them to share in the fine wines and fine times that the likes of David Cameron and his Old Etonian mates take for granted." – Bob Crow, RMT, Gen.Sec
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