Change is Coming and Time Is Running Out

Many of us being born presently right now will be alive in 2100. They will live in the conditions we are creating for them today, a world where it will likely be impossible to feed all of the projected 9 billion people on the planet by 2050, water wars will replace the wars for oil (the US military already plan for water war scenarios), major coastal cities will have long since flooded, and droughts and wildfires will have become year-round events. The Arctic and much of the Antarctica ice-sheets will have melted. Scientists warn that around a quarter of the Earth could end up in a permanent state of drought if the planet warms by two degrees Celsius by 2050. Climate change doesn't simply affect "the planet", it affects every one of us, along with every other species on Earth. Climate change has become a more immediate threat. The impacts are upon us now –  wildfires and super-storms, wars brought on by drought, mass migrations, and deaths.

Capitalism constantly and incessant lurches from boom to slump and is incapable of anything else, and so long as it continues the working class cannot hope for security and freedom from want. Let us spell out the position. Under capitalism, the great majority are called the working class because they own nothing of the means of production and distribution and so are forced to sell their labour-power to those who do. The wage they get is a commodity price: workers can never be better off than that. But because capitalism produces only for sale and profit, stability is impossible for it. Investment in industry reflects the state of trade. In bad times production is reduced or stops, and the workers are out of work. There is nothing a government can do to change this.

We live in a routinely delusional world. In a mass-consumption capitalist society, there’s the delusion that if we only buy more, newer, better products we all will be happier — a claim repeated endlessly in commercial propaganda (commonly known as advertising and marketing).

Capitalism has repeatedly demonstrated that it has failed humanity and has no solutions for problems that are confronting society. The truth is that capitalism continues to bring humanity closer to the abyss, as long as we do not question the race for profits. Capitalism cannot do without growth in markets and capital expansion. Humanity is heading for disaster because of the interests of a wealthy minority are being imposed upon the majority of the population. Therefore the future is socialism.

We, the workers, face formidable opponents. The capitalist class has resources, money, and tools that can thwart our efforts. But this is nothing new.  Throughout our history, we have faced difficult odds and often we have prevailed. We outnumber our enemy when we work together. Collectively, we have greater wisdom than individually.

The Socialist Party is disinclined to speculate about how such an economy might operate but we can sketch with a broad brush some general aspects of it. Socialism is an economic system based upon conscious planning of production by associated producers (nowhere have we said by the state), made possible by the abolition of private property of the means of production. As soon as that private property is completely abolished, goods produced cease to be commodities. Exchange value disappears. Production becomes production for use, for the satisfaction of needs, determined by a conscious choice of the associated producers themselves. Social relations will be based on the abolition of wage-labour and the end of exploitation of the workers.  The wonders of technology not for the few, but for the benefit of mankind as a whole. Common ownership of the means of production and distribution ends all exploitation by dissolving the hostile classes into a community of free and equal producers striving not for sectional interests, but for the common good. The socialist commonwealth, liberates the individual from all economic, political and social oppression, providing the basis for real liberty and for the harmonious development of the personality. Socialism can only come about through a successful overthrow of capitalism by a self-organised working class.