We are all related

The world is changing quickly and there is a great need for people everywhere to visualize why and how it is happening. If we can see our place in the process, we can consciously and intentionally help it happen faster. Capitalism is characterized not just by inequality that’s always been a feature of class society. In 2015, the richest 1 percent of the world’s population owned as much as the remaining 99 percent combined and just 62 individuals owned more than the poorest three and a half billion people on earth. Capitalism uses a legal framework of private ownership to extract value from the labour of others. The end game is a system that hoards wealth, stifles innovation, and ultimately destroys the value created by cooperation among those who seek to do things that cannot be done alone. The Socialist Party is devoted to building a new political and economic system that is equitable and democratic. It is a challenge that brings the different peoples of the world together, to build something better together for the benefit of all people. We cannot afford not to try, nor to fail. If we can all connect the dots to see capitalism as the root cause of the problems we all face, it could give rise to a global movement powerful enough to halt the profit-driven juggernaut.

The campaigns to improve our lot under capitalism are endless. Once one form of oppression is dealt with, there’s always another left to tackle, but while engaging in that new fight, the former is bound to return because no progress is ever permanent under capitalism. Rights are won, and the next day they’re under attack. We put much of our energy into defence instead of offence. The fight against oppression is never-ending, but does that serve to focus our attention away from the larger fight; from the fight to overturn capitalism and the oppressive structures it perpetuates? We seek to reverse inequality, reduce poverty, achieve equal rights; but why must we fight so hard for basic human decency? The culture of over-work and over-competition is driving us crazy and turning us against each other. Our minds are stuck in a frame of capitalist realism where instead of challenging the very core structures that create the problems against which we fight, we target their products individually; but until the structures that create this oppression are dealt with, the fight will never be over. Racism, sexism, and the class system will always return unless the structures responsible for them are destroyed. We cannot fix the unfixable, or engage in an endless struggle for social justice in a system where justice isn’t on offer. Nor is the opposite of capitalism to be centralised state-ownership and control.

 All the while, those in control of the system get to do what they please. They make us believe we live in free societies when only they have true freedom. They set up sham democracies to make us think elected representatives will represent the will of the masses. They propagandize about the importance of a “free” media when they own the outlets through which the masses are informed, and use them to frame the discussion by distorting facts to fit their narrative and excluding stories they don’t want people to hear. They claim property ownership to be the ultimate freedom, allowing themselves to buy up vast tracts of land, while the masses have to spend a lifetime in debt just to buy a home, requiring them to submit to the wage system for the entirety of their lives in order to pay it back. Instead of placing the focus on the battles for rights and regulations that will eventually be overturned, the fight needs to be brought to the system as a whole. Instead of accepting the usual prescriptions of capitalism, let’s look beyond the horizon to formulate alternative modes of social and economic organization. These new ideas aren’t simply an update of the ideologies of old, but something new that takes inspiration from modern developments and the mass desire for a better world. Much needs to be done to open the minds of the masses to new possibilities beyond capitalism, and to redirect the energies of mass movements from remedial campaigns to political revolution, but after a long period where the pathway to such a goal was narrow, it has expanded in the post-recession era and must be seized if the oppressive structures of capitalism are to be finally overthrown. So if you want to live in a world where people come together cooperation capitalism must end.

Now imagine what kind of future most people do want. We would like to be healthy and happy, have time to pursue our passions, become skilled at doing things we love, and bestow a legacy to be remembered with admiration by our children and their children when we are long dead and gone. People enjoy leisure and developing human contact and friendships. It is in our nature to be social, to make music and art, to make love and seek pleasure. Nowhere in our DNA are we wired to indulge in the destruction of the world and our fellow human beings. Anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists all conclude that we don’t seek to dominate and oppress or to take more than our fair share. Which begs the question: Why is it that wealth and power inequality are the norm today? We have been told a great lie about capitalism — that everyone who works hard in life will be successful, make a lot of money, and have a good life. So why is it that most of us wake up in the morning and go off to jobs that make money for someone else?  Billionaires’ money get comes from the hard work of other people. They just sit back and let their stock portfolios “do the work” for them.

Imagine how the world would look if we revived the fight for beauty. We would care more for the world around us. We’d build our cities, towns, and infrastructure beautifully. We’d protect nature and the countryside, while still producing enough food. We’d care for our cultural inheritance and focus on improving our quality of life rather than striving for unsustainable levels of growth. John Muir, the environmetalist, said the fight for beauty is “not blind opposition to progress, but opposition to blind progress”. The Socialist Party is are focused on reclaiming our “common wealth” in both the economic and political sense and end the unsustainable market behavior. In the struggle for a more just society, we will be aided, not hurt, by our shared nature.