Saturday, October 08, 2016

The Socialist Party is revolutionary


“Both legally and actually, the worker is the slave of the possessing class, the bourgeoisie; so much so that he is sold in the market like a commodity whose price is subject to rise and fall like that of any other commodity. If there is an increased demand for workers, their price goes up; if there is a decreased demand, the price goes down; if the demand has so decreased that a certain number of workers find no buyer of their labour-power, as ‘surplus stock’, then they have to lie in reserve, and thus earning no livelihood, they perish from starvation. …The whole difference from the old, avowed slavery, consists in that the modern worker is seemingly free; because he is not sold once and for all time, but by instalments, by the day, by the week, or by the year, and also because he is not sold by one owner to another, but is forced to sell himself; for, he is not the slave of one man, but of the whole possessing class.” Engels

Capitalism has placed upon the backs of the working class the whole burden of labour and has deprived it of all the joys of life. In all class societies, there is one class that rules (dictates) over others. Capitalism is no exception. Our goal is the complete freedom for the working class from all slavery, political, and economic.  How will this happen, revolution or reform? The Socialist Party is revolutionary in principle because it puts up a totally new principle in place of the old, not just patch capitalism. We seek to demolish the old foundation and builds upon it a new one, a better one.  We want to abolish the system which is the root and source of most of our social problems. But this will not happen by street riots or insurrection. The first condition for a peaceful worker’s movement is, that we shall have some means by which we can raise our voice and we possess that with universal suffrage – the vote. We must strive for an independent, fully conscious, socialist worker’s movement. That simply means that it is aware of its purpose, its reasons, and task in society. Whoever speaks of the Revolution speaks above all of the abolition of capitalism, the abolition of its productive and property relations and the establishment of new relations.

Humanity will enter a whole new stage of history when all of our society has been transformed, the cancerous capitalist ulcers have been eliminated, and the community of workers has been established, then socialism, completely class-free society, will have been achieved. There will no longer be the need for the state, since there will no longer be any class to suppress, and the state will be replaced with common administration by all of our society. Socialism eliminates the anarchy of capitalism and its crises, by common ownership of the means of production and collective planning of the economy controlled by the whole of the people. Socialism will be able to make full use of the labour of everyone in our society which at present is often wasteful and superfluous to the needs of society. At the same time, there will be the development and introduction of new technology. As automation and robots replace workers, workers can be transferred to other jobs–and the work day and working week for all reduced. Machines will no longer be weapons in the hands of the capitalists to grind down the working class, and workers will no longer be a mere extension of the machine, as they are under capitalism. Instead, machines will become weapons in the hands of the working class in its own struggle to revolutionize society and become compatible with nature. Work itself will change completely because the labor of the workers will no longer go to enrich capital to further enslave the working class, but to improve life today, while providing for the future, according to the conscious plan of communities. Job satisfaction will be enhanced because people will not be working themselves, or someone else, out of a job, or that they are being driven to produce for the private benefit of an employer or stock-holder, always under the scrutiny of over-seers and with the constant threat of being fired. The organisation of work will be the province of the producers themselves. Work will enrich life, instead of a miserable means to sustain existence, as it is under capitalism. It is very easy to play the role of a prophet of doom but socialists are the heralds of great social change.


“Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his error” - Cicero

No comments: