Friday, June 10, 2016

Defend humanity everywhere


The whole thing about nationalism is its stupidity where because of  some accident of birth which  gives us our language, accent or local customs, we become resolved to exclude and reject anybody else, not sharing  those traits. Of course, every human being on earth today enjoys community. We all love to sing together. We all love to dance together. We are human. This doesn’t mean that we spurn those who are different. We enjoy differences. That makes us human. The things we should be rejecting are nationalism and racism. Instead of spending a great deal of our time pointing out how people may differ in small ways such as in the type of clothes or food they eat we expose how detrimental the buying and selling system of capitalism really is for us, creating such desperation that leads men and women to suicide.

Scapegoating of foreigners is never done on the level of interfering with governments or rich businessmen. Quite the contrary, it has always been directed against migrant workers, refugees, workers, and the poor. It is exactly this that exposes its class nature. In an environment of economic scarcity, hardship, and poverty, questions about who is poorer and  needier, among the poor, are directly and indirectly attempting to hide a more important and more crucial question, which is why do native-born and migrant in-comer have to live in poverty and hardship, at all? In the meantime, projects for constructing designer-label shopping malls and sky-high expensive apartment buildings are always ongoing. Few question the poverty and scarcity that allows and drives the development of racism and xenophobia. As a result, it is the indigenous poor and the new-comer who pay the price. The media commands how people understand and interpret reality to a large extent. Thus, the short-sighted biased explanations contribute, in one way or the other, to diverting people’s focus away from the real problems. They create a culture of misinformation rather than win people over  from the xenophobic racist and sectarian discourses and ignore the real issues that people face and the shared experience both are facing and have faced in the past, in their struggle against exploitation and survival under oppression, exploitation, wars, and social injustices.

The worldwide growth of poverty is disastrous, leading to catastrophe. There is widespread malnutrition involving insufficient consumption of vitamins and minerals. Women and children especially have these deficiencies. “Socialism or barbarism” - this is not a question of the future; the barbarism has already started on a huge scale. Humanity is facing frightful threats to its physical survival. People are saying it is already too late and doomsday is now unavoidable. Socialists, however, believe that mankind is not yet doomed. This is not wishful thinking but based on the fact that the present perverse and corrupt social system need not remain. The problems to be solved in this case are not a technical, natural or cultural ones but a social economic one. In order for this solution to prevail, power needs to be in the hands of the toilers willing to let solidarity, cooperation and generosity prevail by democratic means over short-sighted and irresponsible capital accumulation and market growth. It is not a question of awareness. The capitalists and corporations are not stupid. Many are fully aware of, for instance, the ecological damage. They try to take them into consideration, include them in their economic planning and projections, but under the pressure of competition, they are forced to act in such a way that the overall threat remains. Industry and technology are not independent entities but tools of the social class who apply them and bend them to their interests as they see fit, rather than directing their benefit to the democratically established interests of the great majority of human beings. What socialism is all about is placing the organisation and structure of society to be subjected to democratically determined, conscious control of communities rather than a class -  the freedom of people to decide in a democratic way which priorities to apply to production and how to produce and distribute our collective wealth.

Socialism is when people decide their own fate in a free manner. Only the democratically organised self-activity of everybody can achieve that. The task of socialists today is basic socialist education and propaganda. Humanity cannot be saved without substituting for this present society a fundamentally different society. You can call it anything you want to, the label makes no difference, but its contents have to be specified, the contents of socialism as it will be accepted by the majority. The image of socialism can only be one of radical emancipation and radical protection of the environment. Socialism will be accepted only if it is considered radically emancipatory on a world scale without exception. Whoever commits crimes against human rights under whatever pretext in whatever country should be condemned by the socialists of this world. Socialists struggle against any condition in which human beings are despised, alienated, exploited, oppressed or denied basic human dignity.


We make no predictions about the future. Everything remains open. But understand that you cannot be happier than if you have dedicated your life to defend humanity everywhere in the world. There is no better way than to devote your life to this great cause. That’s why the future is with socialism. 

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