Re-Learning Socialism

Throughout the world a widespread popular perception that socialism is a coercive system persists. Generally speaking, people fear socialism and this issue is at the heart of socialism's crisis. We identify socialism first and foremost not with state ownership of the means of production, but with common ownership and the democratic control over economic, political, and social institutions and structures. The former Soviet Union was not a socialist country and was totally alien to the Marxist vision. The insistence to identify it with socialism, in contrast of all the studies to the contrary was a propaganda tool to attack Marxism and genuine socialism. The former Soviet Union and its satellite states did not by any criterion, economic or political, represent socialism.   Instead of common ownership of means of production, nationalisation of means of production was adopted. Wages and waged employment, money, exchange value, and the separation of the producing class from means of production, all remained. In fact, after the 1917 revolution, the only historically viable possibility was to maintain the capitalist relations in Russia. The socialist revolution is the abolition of the system of wage labour and the turning of means of production and distribution into common ownership. This was never done in the former Soviet Union.

We are living in extremely frightening times. Global catastrophe is a real and growing possibility.  Life is becoming more difficult for most and many of the reforms that were fought for have been rescinded.  Without a vision of a better world and the organisation that goes with it, even mass protests of working people in response to injustice will likely go nowhere.  The need for a socialist transformation of society has never been greater. We are running out of time. The first and perhaps the easiest step in creating the socialist vision is taking the blinkers off and reveal the truth of the state of our current capitalist society and promote socialism, a society that serves the well-being of humanity and nature alike, where workers participate in decision-making at work along with participation in the community.  Fundamentally, capitalism, based on the private form of ownership of the means of production, on which surplus value is extorted from the working class, imparts to the product a more and more social character. This renders the private form of ownership obsolete. The development of capital itself unwittingly created the conditions for the social ownership of these means, which in turn can put an end to class exploitation. The anarchy of the market is replaced with rational planning and democratic administration for human needs.

We must break the chains of wage slavery but our class emancipation needs no condescending saviours. The socialist revolution is no ordinary revolution. The victory of the working class in its fight to bury the capitalist class will be the last class conflict. It is the war to free the whole of mankind. Socialism is the system of society in which the land, the means of production, and distribution are held in common. Production is for use, as and when required, not for profit, exchange or sale. Each workshop is an autonomous unit working the general welfare and mutual harmony with the other workshops producing the like utility, also with those from whom the raw material is received and to whom the finished articles are transmitted. In this world of double-talk and double-think. It would be in the interests of such workers to scrutinise carefully all the terms spewed out by their bosses. 

Socialism is a class-free society in which all shall have leisure and culture, and all shall be secured from want. There is only one pathway to avert the crisis humanity is heading toward and that is by building a socialist society, a cooperative commonwealth. Identity politics will not get us there. Identity politics is all about atomisation of individuals, not their unity. Patriotism around the nationalist flag will not get us there nor will be worshipping a god. The market system will not get us there, either. Our greatest power for system change is ourselves. We no longer have the luxury to procrastinate or hope for a miracle or leader to save us. People have much more in common than most assume who are unable to see beyond the divisiveness in the world. Our common humanity provides the foundation for a global socialist movement. We need a language and campaign that reaches the heart as much as the head.  We need the vision and have to in ways that resonate with their anxieties of our fellow-workers and offer them hope for a better world.