‘Without struggle there is no progress; And those who profess to favour freedom, yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without digging up the ground. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters.’ - Frederick Douglas
We need to talk more about socialism. True, the Socialist Party makes it very clear that socialism is what we’re fighting for but we don’t have a lot to say about what socialism will be like - how people will live and work. The current crisis is forcing people to question capitalism and consider alternatives, alternatives they used to dismiss when it seemed like capitalism seemed capable of putting food on their tables and a roof over their heads. People understandably worry that the cure might be as bad as the disease. In particular, many workers fear that socialism will end up being the same old same old: capitalism under new management, except with a red flag. Virtually no one in the world doubts that today’s times are desperate because of the current world economic crisis with its devastating effects on hundreds of millions of workers. The Socialist Party’s first task is to educate the working class concerning its relation to the profit system as a whole, to understand the real nature of things. Poverty and hunger in the midst of plenty is the distinguishing mark of the capitalist system of production
Socialism means abolishing nations and nationalism. Nationalism is always a dead end for the working class. One working class, one world. Socialism means working collectively to build a society where sharing is based on need. Where we will abolish work for wages, money, and profit. Everyone will share society’s benefits and burdens. The Socialist Party wants a society where everybody can take part in the decisions that affect all of us, a society where the needs of all are met by all, and the development of each depends upon the development of all. Socialism is a society where people don’t rely on other people to make their decisions for them, but actually collectively participate in all of the important decisions that society needs to make.
Workers are being thrown on to the scrap-heap. More and more low-paid workers and their families are being forced into poverty and misery. Capitalism devours the people through unemployment, low wages, poverty, starvation and exceedingly low standard of living. Millions die a slow death in peacetime as a result of this system while millions die more quickly in wars by more direct means. Science is chained to the war machine, with the result that the most devastating Weapons of Mass Destruction are devised to slaughter human beings. The good that science can do to elevate the living standards of a whole world is subjected to the control of the profit-greedy capitalist classes of the great powers. Weapons of Mass Destruction are they are part of the arsenal of all countries. Such is the legacy of the profit system, and it will continue until it is ended by socialist revolution. One can see that there is no real hope for future prosperity and peace except through the abolition of capitalism. The sole hope for humanity, the hope of civilisation lies in the establishment of a socialist society of production for use, of genuine freedom and equality. Socialism alone can prevent the global slaughter. The task for our fellow-workers is to create something new. We have every reason for optimism that they will succeed. The ruling class genuinely fear a revolutionary upsurge will bring about real social and political change that would end the system of exploitation, poverty, and war for all time. Capitalism prevents us from obtaining food, water, shelter, clothing, and other needs unless we work for the capitalists and produce more than we are paid – with the excess taking the form of surplus value or profit. Capitalism turns the world’s working class into profit-producing commodities as appendages to capitalist machines.
By withholding our access to the necessities of life, the capitalists force us to do their bidding. The world’s working class today is just as enslaved by capitalism’s withholding these necessities as if we were forced to live and work in collars and chains. Under chattel slavery, workers’ bodies and minds were consumed in back-breaking toil with death coming early. Under wage slavery, dehumanising exploitation grinds down our bodies. Will you give up now to continue to be slaves, or will you fight on to prevent it?
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