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Friday, September 15, 2017

Giving/receiving not buying/selling.


The Socialist Party proposes to end private and State ownership of the means of production and distribution and instead create a social system which will satisfy the economic needs of the community and where those means of production and distribution are owned and controlled by the whole of the people. There were no class divisions. When all those things necessary for the well-being of the community no longer belong to any individuals but are owned are owned collectively by the whole people, none are possessors and none have any advantage over others. All are in the same situation, all have the same interest. Society loses its class nature with the abolition of private property and being class-free, there can be no class interests.

Alongside this abolition of class inequality, the wage-labour system will also come to an end — that is to say, men and women will cease to work for wages. To-day, people work for wages because they do not get an opportunity of working directly for themselves. All the instruments of labour, all the raw materials, all means by which alone men and women can gain their livelihood, are in the hands and under the control of the few hence all others have no opportunity of gaining a livelihood except by placing themselves at the disposal of the owning class. In today's capitalist world we sell our labour-power to employers, whose object in buying it could be is to make a profit out of it, that is, to pay less for it than the amount we can produce. Therefore, once the private ownership of the means of living is abolished, men and women will cease to sell their labour-power for wages. But the means of production and distribution have developed so much that it has made it impossible for them to be owned by the individuals who operate them and even beyond the stage where they could be owned and controlled by the actual groups operating them. The vast and complex system of industry can only be efficiently owned and controlled as a whole and by the whole community.

Socialism does not require that people should put the interest of others before their own (altruism) but merely that they should recognise that it is in their own best interest to co-operate with others to further the common interest. To establish socialism people do not have to stop being selfish and become saints; they merely have to remove, by conscious political action, the barrier which coercive, class society represents to the free exercise of their nature as co-operative, social animals.  Socialism will be a society based on giving/receiving rather than buying/selling.

Scientists and technicians like the rest of us they are constrained by the system we live in. They are not directed by the wishes, needs and aims of society as a whole but have to follow the logic of their master, the market. Everything becomes possible when the tools are in the right hands, the hands of the producers. It becomes a matter of organisation to bring in the new society. There is plenty of work to be done to achieve the satisfaction of everyone's basic needs but is deliberately left undone as the profit motive dictates. It takes a fundamental shift in emphasis away from the dictates of a small minority to the wishes and needs of the overwhelming majority.



This requires that majority populations worldwide capture the state apparatus politically in order to restructure social decision-making and administration.  Depriving the capitalist class of the state and its functionaries are the first objective. Once the decision is made, then it becomes a matter of organisation. Suffice it to say there will have been a period of planning and co-ordination by mass organisations in work places, in neighbourhoods, in educational establishments, in organisations with international links and in civic organisations, which will culminate in the collective and proactive decision of the people to take control over the direction of their lives immediately and for the future. A totally democratic system, from the broadest possible base, representing the widest possible views will be bottom-up, proactive, participatory democracy at all levels: local, regional and world with delegates elected to carry forward the message and speak for the whole community.  With ever-increasing numbers involved, discussion and debate will determine the direction of the variety of paths to be taken. It just seems common sense to place the role of social, political, environmental and whatever other decisions firmly with the people. Why complicate what could be a perfectly simple arrangement with meaningless and pointless monetary budgets. The inputs required for allocating resources need only be manpower and materials. Why suffer a price system that only confuses and complicates every issue. Buying and selling and the exchange economy will be redundant as we shall willingly share in the work with our hands and head.

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