Socialism is not just the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and distribution. It means genuine equality, real freedom, and a radical transformation in all human relations. It is mankind's understanding of the environment. A socialist society can therefore only be built from below, a democratisation of all institutions down to their very roots. Socialists are alert, however, in pointing out the great distinction between "public" ownership and in reiterating the socialist demand for common ownership of all the means of production and distribution as the only cure for the evils of the competitive system. The truth is that state ownership (nationalisation) of the means of production and distribution is a political system dictating everything from the top. Without democracy, without complete political and administrative control by the producers, the centralisation of all economic power, all the means of production and distribution, in the hands of the state combined with the expansion of the means of production, signify not the development of socialism but the establishment of the tyranny of state-capitalist exploitation.
It is not only freedom for labour socialists seek but just as importantly it is also freedom from labour that socialists seek. With scientific advances, the arrival of new technology the wastes of the present system can be eliminated and two or three hours work a day would suffice to supply all the comforts and luxuries of life. This would secure for people the leisure necessary to enable them to develop their talents and skills. There can be no liberty in economic dependence. The person who is in want or in the fear of want is not free. No person is free if he or must look to the pleasure or profit of another for a living. Without independence, there can be no freedom. Freedom will become the heritage of all as soon as socialism is realized because it will guarantee to all security, independence, and prosperity. True liberty and freedom can only be attained in the cooperative commonwealth.
Capitalism cannot be overthrown, nor can a socialist society be brought into being, without the self-organised activity of the vast majority of the working class. But this in itself is not a sufficient condition for the establishment of socialism. If the class struggle escalated to a situation in which workers began to take the organisation of society into their own hands, it would seem reasonable to imagine that this would also be accompanied by a corresponding awareness, at the level of political consciousness, of the momentous implications of their actions. But while this may seem likely, it is far from inevitable. It is conceivable that workers could spontaneously take over the means of production at a time of political, social or economic crisis, only to establish a form of self-managed capitalism. The cooperative commonwealth is interpreted by the likes of Richard Wolff as a model for his “Workers Self-Directed Enterprises" or Gar Alperovitz and his pet project the “Pluralist Commonwealth”. But the goal is one of a non-market socialist society as the only working-class alternative to the existing worldwide capitalist system. The aim a socialist party must be to develop the consciousness of fellow-workers, even at the cost of being momentarily in opposition to them. Only thus will a socialist party win the trust of the masses, and accomplish the education of the widest numbers.
Socialism is coming but whether it be soon or late depends on us. Since the capitalists own the things that the workers must use in order to earn a living, the capitalists have the whip-hand and that they compel workers to sell their labour power for much less than the value of what they produce. In fact. workers usually receive in the wages paid them only just enough to buy the necessities for a poor sort of living for themselves and to provided for the raising of children so that the line of workers might not be exhausted. The workers produce the amount of wealth they receive in wages in four hours of five, depending upon the technical development of industry, but they are compelled to keep on working up to eight, ten, or twelve hours and during the hours they work over and above the time required to produce their wages they produce “surplus value” for the boss. It is natural for workers attempted to improve their standard of living by an effort to secure more of the wealth they produced and that the capitalists will always resist this effort of the workers in order to keep as much as possible of the product of industry for themselves as profits, and that, consequently, there was a class struggle between the workers and capitalists. All governments are instruments of class rule; they are controlled by the class which owned the machinery of production and that the power of government was used to uphold the system of exploitation and to suppress the efforts of the workers to win their freedom. The way to freedom for the workers is to transfer industry from private control and ownership by the capitalists to the common ownership and democratic management by the people. To accomplish this the workers must gain control of the state — the government — and change it from an instrument of capitalist oppression to a means of establishing the common ownership of industry and management by the workers. The state would subsequently lose its class character and become merely an organization for the administration of industry; that in place of being an instrument of class rule it would become a huge cooperative organization of all the workers for the common purpose of supplying themselves with food, clothing, homes to live in, education, and recreation.
No comments:
Post a Comment