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Tuesday, June 06, 2017

The hour is late. Join us now

The immediate future does not look especially bright. It will grow darker still until the workers rise to the task of removing the curse of capital from the means of production, thus clearing the way for a better, a more decent civilization. The problem of production has been solved by the working class. The task now at hand is the solution to the problem of how to so handle the means of production and dispose of the product as to best conserve the interests of all. The control of the resources of the earth and the instruments of labour must be taken from the hands of the capitalist class and these means of production dedicated to the service of the whole people under the administration and control of those who, by doing the world’s work, make any sort of civilisation possible. You workers of the world constitute the only useful part of human society. You have long fed, clothed and sheltered your masters in comfort and luxury while ekeing out a slavish existence yourselves.

To put an end to the present system of capitalism, where the first and last issue is profit and more profit is the aim of the Socialist Party. Today profit rules, not the needs of the people. Capitalism is a system where those who have ownership of the factories, the mines, the mills, the land, the machines, and so forth have everything. It’s a system where those who have no other way to make ends meet except to sell their ability to work to the bosses, must labour to enrich the capitalist and can work only so long as they do so. When the capitalist finds no further use for a worker, when he finds it unprofitable to continue paying his workers, the wage slaves are thrown out into the streets as additional figures on the unemployment lists. Under their system, democracy is for the rich, justice is for the rich, a good education is for the rich, and medical care is based on your pocket book. The Socialist Party clearly targets the capitalist system as the problem, and points to the solution, socialism, where the working class rules and completely changes society in their interests. The most important thing for people to understand is that the only way to do away with the misery and oppression which capitalism breeds is to build a united and organized movement against the capitalist class and for a socialist revolution.

We live in a world dominated by capitalism, a system which allows a small minority of capitalists to oppress and exploit the great majority of humankind. It is capitalism that brings about great inequalities in living standards with more poor people now in the world than ever before, starts murderous imperialist wars to steal the resources of less developed countries and causes the growing devastation of our natural environment.  Either we get rid of this outmoded decrepit system or it will devastate humanity. The hour is late and urgent action is necessary. The only viable way forward is revolutionary struggle to achieve socialism, a class-free and state-free society on a world scale where people do not oppress and exploit each other and where we live in harmony with our natural environment. The working class must depose the capitalist ruling class and establish socialism, a system of real, popular democracy that sets about the reconstruction of society. From the already existing capitalist-created world economy, a planned and unified world economy will be brought into being, and not merely the productive forces (as under capitalism) but also production itself will be developed to levels hitherto unknown.

As production increases producing an increasing abundance, distribution according to need comes into existence. “To each according to his need” And as the possibility of distribution according to need grows, pari passu [with equal pace], the need for the apparatus of force, the “state,” which protects the earlier form of distribution also disappears. That is to say, “the state withers away” completely. Human nature itself will have undergone a transformation; and since also, by reason of technical development and the vast extension of leisure, work itself will have become a pleasant pastime instead of a laborious task; mankind will have learned to work for society according to ability. The other half also of the slogan descriptive of communist society will thus have been translated into reality – “from each according to his ability.” And this self-acting society of associated producers will also be classless inasmuch as its members will have no differential relation to the means of production, distribution, and exchange. Property will no longer belong to the state, which is the instrument of a class, but to the community, which is now classless; and the state itself, if the term be permissible for an apparatus of the nature that it will be, will be concerned not with the government of men but the administration of things. The producers themselves, the workers, will decide what to produce and how – not “the market”. Production will be planned on the basis of what serves society, not what yields the most profit for the owing employing class.

Capitalism has nothing to offer the large majority but uncertainty for tomorrow, unemployment, environmental disasters, poverty, and war. Global warming and the environmental crisis is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity. The uncontrolled exploitation and gross waste of resources typical of capitalism is the source of this disaster. The answer is not reform, but revolution. Another world is necessary – revolution and socialism are the solution. The working class is the only revolutionary class under capitalism. It is the historical task of the working class to put an end to capitalist exploitation and oppression. Socialism is the power of the working class. This class repossesses and expropriates the people’s property from the capitalists. 


1 comment:

  1. Anonymous5:38 pm

    "Profit and more profit is the aim of the Socialist Party." Surely not :-)

    ReplyDelete