Manifesto for a decent future

Imagine if instead of fighting one another to defend the interests of our masters, we began to protect the people and the planet against our common threats: profiteering, poverty war, and nationalism. This is not some ridiculous utopian dream but simply recognising the greater good rather than the petty political or economic divisions. Imagining the world without hunger, conflict or disease isn't impossible.  The future of humanity needn't be about the power-hungry and war-mongering elite. Socialism is not the absence of rules, it is just the absence of rulers. This dysfunctional society stems directly from the capitalist economic system. Socialism focuses on reclaiming earth's resources for the people – all the people. It will replace the money-based exchange economies with a production for use world economy, restoring our damaged natural environment to the best of our ability by developing and using clean renewable energy sources, redesigning cities, transport, industrial systems, and agriculture so that they efficiently and ecologically provide for the needs of all people. If you want a better world, you have to rise up from your knees and make it so. Police, prisons and the military would no longer be necessary when goods, services, healthcare, and education are freely available to all people. There is no such thing as a fixed human nature where people are pre-programmed attitudes, values and behaviour by their DNA. It can be changed, it has been changed multiple times before.

 Socialism proposes a system that brings out the best in every individual. We should be the generation that finally brings down capitalism and creates a decent, sustainable world. There is no reason to be confused about what we want. We want the ruling class off our backs. We don’t want to be exploited or alienated. We don’t want to be wage-slaves. We want to be a free self-governing people, organised and administered by a net-work of inter-linked and connected workers councils, community assemblies. We can reorder our social lives through these social forms, in varying mixes and degrees. Socialist  revolution means rearranging ourselves socially. To establish the society we want means building a world based on mutual aid.

We all have dreams. For most of us, those dreams are often quite simple. They are common to individuals and communities all around the world. People just want a future where their families don’t just survive but thrive.  For far too many people in far too many places, such simple dreams never seem to be fulfilled. No matter how hard they work they are missing out on the opportunity to benefit from the ever increasing technological miracles. In fact, they suffer and are being left behind.  The Socialist Party has to send clear messages that if the planet is well managed, we can provide not just enough to get by but a place where individuals and communities can build a future. It should be clear to all workers that the working class, if they are to escape from the misery of capitalism, must first understand their class position, and must then build up a socialist political party for the purpose of capturing the powers of government in order to introduce socialism. This is the only solution of the economic problems of the working class. All else will leave them wage-slaves still.

I am not interested in politics,” is a statement that is made with monotonous regularity.  Needless to say the General Election wasn’t nonsense to the capitalist class, who were once again confirmed by it in their position in society. Socialism requires that there is a majority of workers who understand and want it. That consciousness immunises a socialist against the deceits and the assurances which bolster the politics of capitalism. 

 The Socialist Party has no blood on our hands, having never once supported a war for capitalist interests. Every war since has been exposed and opposed, even when our comrades were thrown into prison cells for their principles. We have never collaborated with any capitalist government, unlike the tacticians of the Left who have accepted our view that the Labour Party is anti-working-class until election times when they have consistently told workers to vote Labour. Never once have we made any concessions to racist or nationalist sentiments, and from our inception declared against racism and sexism in all their forms. We have not lied about the possibility of reforming capitalism so as to make it tolerable to live under.

Whilst never opposing reforms which might alleviate the lives of the wealth-producing majority, we have consistently and. at the risk of unpopularity, stood firmly against reformism and the illusion that capitalism can somehow be made decent. We have kept alive the socialist vision of common ownership never once confusing that with the state-capitalist proposal for placing the profit system under new management of nationalisation. We have stood out not for fair wages but for the abolition of wage labour; not for more money for the poor but for the abolition of money and thereby the end of poverty; not for the welfare crumbs but free and equal access for all to the abundant resources of this rich and fruitful planet. And we have never flinched from advocating revolution as our goal. Ours has never been to ask the bosses for a share of the loaf; only when conscious and democratically organized workers take the means of life will the world be ours. The Socialist Party has every reason to be proud of itself. That we have survived is an achievement. It has not been without effort and personal costs to those who have stuck to their commitments. here is far too much work to be done for us to bathe in the lethargic complacency of nostalgic self-congratulation. We are a movement, not a monument.

Armed with understanding, the workers can build a new society that will be well worth while living in. The building of this new society must and can only be the work of the workers themselves; they cannot expect help from above, for privilege will hang on until it is shaken from its perch. In this new society there will be no privileged idlers; unless they have physical disabilities, each will play his or her part according to his or her ability. The citizens of the socialist community will work voluntarily because they are doing a job they love, for the benefit of society as a whole—i.e., in the long run, for themselves. All labour in the socialist society will be essential and useful. There will be no need to try to stop people from doing wasteful and unessential things, like pouring luxuries into the lap of already overfed and jaded parasites. The future belongs to the workers, and the capitalists are already trembling at the vision.