Socialism is the Family

Many campaigners are busy engaging in personal study, trying to separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to political action. Sometimes this takes organised forms when they join one of the hundreds of “socialistic” groups operating throughout the country. They may be working people in the same factory or office, dealing with the class struggle. Or they may be residents of the same neighborhood, discussing community events. For most people, they share ideas and beliefs without being members of any party. Very often they are the ex-supporters of the Trotskyist groups and of the Labour Party folk who have abandoned their former organisational ties preferring an informal and more malleable method of uniting. It is increasingly apparent that the era of the leadership of those “socialist” parties is over. Any attempt to maintain such a leadership runs counter to the real interest of socialist advance. Radicals are now coming face to face with their most promising opportunity which inevitably involves a re-appraisal of what socialism is. A great part of the answer will lie in asking the right questions and already we are finding surprising answers. We have witnessed the rise of leader-free social movements – or should they be seen as movements where all are leaders? There has been the growth of much deeper and wider extension of democratic consciousness by the participants of protest campaigns. There is a current within radicalism to make democracy work. There is little prospect or need today for a monolithic, mass political party formation which assumes the responsibility of leading everything, and in which the most people cannot really function. But on the debit side of things in a urbanised industrial society where people do not possess control, and which has no greater ideal than money-making and profit-taking, feeds the urge to escape the alienation by romantic retuen to the idyllic imaginary past of the mom and pop convenience store and artisans in their handicraft workshops and friendly farmers in their fields. It is an indictment of capitalism when its victims retreat into fantasies of what was and not the reality of what could be. Socialism will re-charge its vitality when whatever new party of the workers must someday arise out of the labour movement. No one can rush the crystallization of such a class expression out of the existing ferment. But the time is approaching when a realistic possibility in this direction will bring results.

“From each according to ability, to each according to need.” As long as the socialist movement unequivocally stands for that principle, and directs all its policies toward its realisation, it will be revolutionary, the living voice of the social revolution. Socialism demands that every social condition, every art and every power of science which now contribute to the healthfulness and happiness for the privileged few shall be democratised and made common to all. Human character depends on nature to a very much small degree, and upon the environment to a very much larger degree. To-day the production and the exchange of wealth are functions carried on with an anti-social object, namely, the profit of a class of non-producers. That is the fundamental wrong of capitalism. That is the source of its poverty, its inefficiency, and its inequality. Capitalism must be abolished, because it is anti-social, and denies millions of an adequate opportunity to develop their skills, talents, and powers.

 Those who make the bread of the world cannot eat the bread their hands have made. No one is poor because there is not enough for all. No child suffers hunger because there is a dearth of food. No child wears rags or goes without shoes because good clothes and shoes cannot be made in sufficient quantity to supply all. When the hungry cry out loudest, the supermarket shelves groan with their weight of food and the warehouse are filled to overflowing. There exists a near-inexhaustible reserve of productive capacity available to supply every human need. Machinery and labour and raw materials are plentiful. On the one side we have abundant natural resources and wonderful powers of production; on the other side are have a great unsatisfied need which could be easily satisfied. But capitalism does not direct our productive capacity to the social good but for private gain. If our economic activities were inspired by a social purpose, no human want would remain unsatisfied so long as there were unexhausted productive powers and opportunities. All our resources and our skills would be combined to meet the needs of every human being. If we found ourselves incapable of producing plenty for all, we should, if we were truly social, see to it that all shared in the scarcity. On the other hand, finding ourselves capable of producing infinitely more than we need, we should, if we mere truly social, see to it that all shared the advantages of our triumph as producers. We should aim to make life better, richer, happier and more beautiful for all. We should see that the result of our progress was more beauty in the homes of all and larger leisure for all to enjoy the beauty. Inspired by the ideal of social well-being, we should see that no human being performed in pain a task which might have been performed in joy; that nothing ugly was produced which might have been made beautiful; that nothing was made which was unworthy of our best power; that our work was the worthiest, and performed under the worthiest conditions, of which we were capable.

So long as the prevailing capitalist system lasts this social ideal will remain unattainable. For capitalism is essentially anti-social. Its entire structure rests upon the production of things primarily for sale to the end that a ruling class may profit, instead of upon the social principle of production for use, for social gain, for the common good and joy of all. The only reason why men who are capable of building beautiful homes – as is shown by the palaces they build for the rich – build ugly, prison-like, gloomy tenements for themselves and their wives and children to dwell in is the fact that their labor is governed, not by the desire to attain supreme usefulness, but by the desire for profit. The only reason for the adulteration of food and drink is profit and it is profit which explains the wanton destruction of the food for which men, women, and children pine for, and for lack of which they starve and die. Only in a society which produces primarily for profit and class advantage could such a condition ever exist. Socialism brings a world redeemed from the curse of production for profit.  Production for use instead of profit, for the common good instead of for the gain of a few at the cost of the many, can only be made possible through the social ownership of the resources of nature and the means of production. And so everywhere the socialist movement is striving to bring about the common ownership and democratic control and collective management of all those means of production owned and controlled by individuals, or by groups of individuals.  Collective ownership of the means of production, with democratic management, is the central demand in socialists everywhere.

This does not mean personal possessions are commandeered. On the contrary, it is quite certain that common ownership of the great social agencies of production would result in making individual and family private property far more general than it is now. Millions of people have practically no private property at all to-day. They do not own the homes in which they live. They do not own the things they produce. They do not own enough to provide the necessities of a decent existence. When sickness, accident, or other misfortune, compels them to be idle for a few weeks they are reduced to dependence upon charity as the only alternative to starvation. Even in the most prosperous times millions of people are so divorced from property of all kinds that they never have enough good food to eat, enough good clothes to wear, or decent homes in which to live. Capitalism has never provided all people with private property. Socialism, on the other hand, would make it possible for every human being to have and own all the private property which that human being could use to advantage and without imposing any disadvantage upon another human being. Collective ownership and collective control of the means of production would not give the ownership of the tools of labour to the individual worker. That was once possible, in the days when production was of necessity carried on by hand labour. It is not possible with machine production, which is only carried on by the organised division of labour of masses of workers. But collective ownership would make it impossible for the idle few to exploit the industrious many. It would make it possible for the workers themselves to exercise an effective control over the products of their labour and their distribution. It would make certain a fuller enjoyment by the producers of the wealth they produce.

 Home and family is only a microcosm of socialism where there is equal care for the collective interest of the family as a whole and for the individual interest of each member. The comfort and advantage of each individual member of the family depend on sharing things in the home and maintaining them as the common property of all family members. No one can exercise a right to the sole ownership and control of these things without injuring another of the family. On the other hand, there are many things which must be regarded as belonging to individual members, if harmony is to prevail. If there is something essential to the welfare and happiness of all the family, which would give  someone a power to rule the rest and to deny them comfort, the happiness of the family is only assured by making those things shared by all. But things which the individual needs to own and control for the attainment of personal happiness and well-being, the ownership and exclusive use of which does not subject other members of the family to any deprivation or discomfort, belongs to that individual, and the harmony of the family depend on the ability of each individual in it to secure all such things necessary to the satisfaction of his or her wants. Socialism is an attempt to realise for the larger community that rational and fair responsibility which is exemplified by the family at its best on a smaller scale.