Make the right choice

Capitalism is maintained and sustained by the credulity and ignorance of its victims, the working class. Not only do the workers produce capitalism's vast wealth but they are conditioned and indoctrinated by the educational process, by the media, and by politicians into believing that there is no alternative to capitalism. Of course, this does not mean that workers are content and approve of the way capitalism functions. Quite the contrary, anger, and alienation are widespread. Resistance and protests against aspects of capitalism are everywhere. The hope of solutions to the anarchy of capitalism is been repeatedly shattered. Today, more and more people see the stark realities of the wages and money system. They face the choice that they live under capitalism with its misery or move forward to socialism.

Socialism can only be brought about by overwhelming democratic consensus. It will involve the rejection of the concept of private or State ownership of society's means of life - the land and the instruments for producing and distributing all the things people need for a full and happy life. Socialism is the voluntary association of free people cooperating in creating at regional and global levels the goods and services they need and consuming those goods and services as required. The exchange market economy will disappear, freeing hundreds of millions of human beings from the demeaning servitude of functions used by our masters for our exploitation.

The common view is that socialist society would quickly grind to a halt and its people starve to death because no one would find it worth their while to grow food or indeed to make anything without the motivation of money and a wage. Here the norm for capitalism is projected as the norm for socialism, and because it does not fit. socialism is rejected as impossible. It is not easy to break the bonds of traditional thinking to comprehend a society of free people engaged in the rational pursuit of the means of everyday life for their own good without the carrot of pecuniary reward or the stick of penury.

Earth is abundant with plentiful resources; today our practice of rationing resources through monetary methods is irrelevant and counter-productive to our survival. Modern society has access to highly advanced technologies and can make available food, clothing, housing, medical care, education, and develop a limitless supply of sustainable renewable, non-polluting energy such as geothermal, solar, wind, tidal, etc. It is now possible to have everyone enjoy a very high standard of living with all of the amenities that a prosperous civilization can provide. This can be accomplished through the intelligent and humane application of science and technology. We can build anything we choose to build and fulfill any human need. It is not money that people need; rather, it is free access to the necessities of life. Money is to be irrelevant. All that would be required are the resources and the will, for we have the skills and technology. World socialism  is a system in which all goods and services are available without the use of money, credits, barter or any other system of debt or servitude. All resources become the common heritage of all of the inhabitants, not just a select few. In such a society, the measure of success would be based on the fulfillment of one's individual pursuits rather than the acquisition of wealth, property and power.

Socialism would allow people free access to the common store of wealth set aside for personal consumption, according to what they themselves judged to be their reasonable needs. Other needs would be satisfied on the same basis. Houses and flats would be rent-free, with heating, lighting and water supplied free of charge. Transport, communications, health care and education would be organised as free public services. There need be no admission charges to museums, parks, libraries and other places of entertainment and recreation.

Such free access would be a much more direct way of ensuring that people were freed from material insecurity than the impractical Basic Income Scheme or Citizens Wage. It would also involve the transformation of work. Instead of working for wages to produce profits for an employer, people will be able to co-operate to produce what they really needed. Socialism can only be voluntary. It is the co-operation of the majority in a climate of abundance. The abundance exists now Only the money system stands in the way. Co-operation exists everywhere and always has. Only we re conned and cajoled into thinking we're incapable of it. All that is needed is for people to agree that capitalism is unnecessary and undesirable. The power is in our hands. We are the workers who run society. Without us nothing moves, nothing functions, nothing gets made. If we refuse en masse to support a system of poverty, wars, and prisons, it cannot continue to operate.