Capitalism has now outrun its usefulness to human development. Having fulfilled its purpose, it now hampers the power of the productive forces which could be at our command. Humanity can have the world in which wealth is turned out in a cornucopia of abundance, freely available to everyone the world in which human interests come first in everything. What prevents this is the continuation of the social relationships of capitalism. To change them needs a social revolution. This revolution will be the first conscious one, by and in the interests of the majority, in human history. To bring about the change to socialism by a democratic political act needs a working class who are informed and aware about capitalism and about how socialism will abolish the problems we suffer under today.
Capitalism rests on exchange, the means of production are private property and the owning class draw a profit from them by selling what is produced at the highest price competition permits. People who possess nothing sell their labour as dear as competition permits and get wages which allow them to buy what they need to live. It is clear that such a system cannot exist with abundance since this suppresses profit. In fact, only products and services which have some value can be sold. But only scarce products keep their value and sell at a profit. Abundant products have no value: they are given and taken; they are not sold.
It is thus a truism to say that abundance does not exist: it will never exist in a capitalist society since production is not motivated by the desire to satisfy consumption but by that of realising a profit. When this profit becomes impossible, production stops. It is then said that there is a crisis, even if many consumers lack the bare necessities. The magnificent scientific achievements of new technology and automation have made abundance appear in all the industrialised countries, upsetting their economies from top to bottom since these can only function with a “scarcity" of products and services. This obviously requires explanation: At the present time, money is almost as indispensable to existence as air to the lungs. But money doesn’t fall from heaven; it is production as a whole which distributes it in the form of wages and profits. The pursuit of money being thus at the centre of our concerns, we do not grow corn to have corn, but to have money; for if we don’t gain any money then we don’t sow any more corn. Similarly, all other agricultural, commercial and industrial enterprises are only viable to the extent that they succeed in bringing into their tills more money than they pay out. When abundance appears, workers are sacked since there is no more work to give them. But they then don’t buy the products and these, remaining at the charge of the producers, make their profits disappear: he who can't buy ruins him who wants to sell! People then complain about “overproduction", for this is what everything that cannot be sold is called. But chronic overproduction, is that not abundance? So goods are not produced in abundance quite simply because they would not be able to be sold. The exchange economy must be replaced by an economy in which wealth is no longer produced to be exchanged but is produced instead simply in order to be distributed to human beings to satisfy their needs. This new economic system can be called the distribution economy. Under this system the means for producing wealth are to cease to be the private property of individuals and to become the common heritage of all the members of society; the wages system was to be redundant. From the moment when production has become the property of society as a whole, the economic process can no longer be carried out by a series of exchanges (which imply individual or group property of the products exchanged) but only by allocation (or distribution.)
The Socialist Party favours a system of free access, of goods being freely available for people to take according to need from the abundance which is technologically possible now but which will only become socially possible once capitalism has been replaced by socialism. With common ownership and economic democracy, a socialist society would produce things to satisfy human needs and not to make a profit. Anyone who believes that capitalism can ever be made to work more humanely is being both naive and idealistic. In socialism there will be no waste or want as production will be solely to satisfy human needs and desires. n socialism, the maxim “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs” will transform the character and quality of human existence. People will be able to choose the sort of work they most enjoy and be creative to the best of their ability. People will be glad to give their best and take the best of everyone else. in socialism work will become the ultimate form of art. In socialism we will be building houses, for instance, with a mind to safety, comfort and elegance rather than as now when houses are knocked together with maximum scrimping to lower costs and thereby increase profit. Price and profit dictate in capitalism what pleasure and purpose will dictate in socialism. In socialism, there will be an abundance of everything pleasant. In return for his or her work, everyone in socialism will have free access to all that is produced, to all services and all entertainments. People will take according to their needs, or more accurately their self-determined needs. As socialism will be a propertyless, money-free society people will no longer have cause to be greedy or acquisitive. Greed, like envy and theft, is an axiom of capitalism.
Apart from the unshackled use of industrial technology on the earth’s resources, people in socialism will also be able to benefit from the work of millions of men and women who had previously been employed in socially useless work under capitalism. The multitudes for instance, who were being trained by their governments in the savagery of war, or who were building death-machines, or who were stockbrokers, insurance men or bank employees—the list is extensive. Plus those who, under capitalism, were involved in absolutely no work whatsoever, like the unemployed, tramps and, of course, the aristocracy. For the same reasons that people will be producing such an abundance, production will enjoy paramount efficiency, and, for the greater part of their time, people will be able to do exactly as they please. In socialism, education will be voluntarily undertaken by children and adults because it will be a fascinating and useful pursuit. People will attend schools and colleges to cultivate their interests and refine their thoughts. They will, not, as now, attend to be inculcated from childhood with an orthodox framework of thought, nor will they attend to apprentice themselves as a better caste of wage-slave. Again, on a similar issue, in socialism, science will be used to assist humanity in its pleasure, safety and welfare. It will not be used to invent something like the nuclear bomb.
In socialism, the natural beauty of the earth will be uncontaminated by industrial toxic waste. The earth is polluted in this way now as it is a cheaper and therefore more profitable - means of disposal than others. The interests of the whole community will be catered for under socialism and not the interests of a profit-hungry minority. Socialist society will be void of instability and insecurity. People involved in administration will have the same standing as everyone else, and no reason to try and usurp power. Even if one or two maniacs wanted to, there would be no unemployment or poverty on the back of which anyone could ride to power. People in socialism will have no use for leaders. The terrifying threat of war will be unknown in socialism because there will be no artificial national boundaries, and no governments to squabble over international markets.
Socialism is yet unborn. We will not see the birth of it until workers choose to consummate their experience and knowledge to obtain socialist consciousness and the necessary gestation period of education, agitation and organisation have been gone through.
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