The Radical Imagination of Socialists

 Doom and gloom predictions can be helpful: the threat of catastrophe can encourage reforms. Too often, however, it inspires an attitude of hopelessness, which all too easily turns into disdain and expectations of failure. The prevalence of negative thinking creates cynicism and pessimism. It’s rare that a week goes by without some statistical reminder of wealth and income inequality or additional evidence from climate change scientists to confirm the depressing outlook. Scientists and historians have begun to warn that we are reaching a critical juncture. Cycles of inequality and resource use are heading for a tipping point that in many past civilisations precipitated political unrest, war and finally collapse. Social inequality and exclusion have spawned anger and revolts. Sometimes, workers are pitted against workers, as what seems to be happening in some European countries, where migrant workers are portrayed as job snatchers when the real problem is the failure of capitalism.  The point is that society can never be stable or enjoy sustained when large segments of society are disempowered through political rules favouring the privileged few.

Every day and everywhere we are confronted with the extremes of capitalism. Extravagant designer-wear stores with the homeless sitting in the doorway in rags. We are often enraged the unjust nature of this world. But inequality is not a recent feature of a profit-driven economy. Modern poverty exists because of a human-made economic system – capitalism. We need to bring about change. We cannot rely on good intentions or use Band-Aids to treat the symptoms but not the sickness. We need organizations and movements to build people-power to win. Political action can be aided by social media. But it succeeds only through face-to-face relationships that have sustained every social movement in history. The working class has the numbers to create a just and fair society.  The elite who profit off or misery tell us. "This is just the way it is. Your voice is irrelevant." This is a lie. There is almost nothing we cannot change -- if we choose to and work for it. To capture political power in our society, much more of us need to let go of the idea that nothing can be done. This isn't about helping others, but about our own liberation, yet we cannot achieve it on our own. When we decline to engage in politics as many dissatisfied workers do, we increase the grip of the powerful over our lives. Our voices must be heard and our actions must be felt if we seek change.  In a society where the wealthy rule unchallenged and the planet is in jeopardy with humanity itself at risk, opting out is not an option. If we don't act now there may not be a future for civilisation.

By any standards of sanity, it is incredible that a society which possesses such enormous productive potential should devote so much of its effort to making weapons of destruction Should we, then, join the campaign to persuade the government to renounce nuclear weapons? That would be to approach the problem from the wrong end. Weapons are not produced to satisfy a government’s destructive impulses. They are produced to prosecute the armed conflicts which in turn are caused by the economic rivalries of capitalism. All of these are inseparable. What it amounts to is that weapons of war are an inevitable product of capitalist society. Those who support capitalism. yet wish that its governments would voluntarily deprive themselves of the most powerful weapons available are baying for something even more remote than the moon.

  Divisions in society are becoming ever wider. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting left behind. For example, wages paid to workers in Germany increased by 5% between 2000 and 2016, while income from investments and business activities jumped by 30%.

Some have accused the Socialist Party of turning our backs on capitalism’s day-to-day troubles. It is true that we refuse to be sidetracked from our purpose of socialist advocacy in order to promote some reform of capitalism, although throughout our existence we have heard many appeals to do so upon which we have been urged to concentrate our efforts at the expense of our socialist integrity. We have rejected these appeals because we know that such problems find their roots in capitalism's property basis To end them, we must establish a socialist society in which the world’s wealth is owned by the world. Such an objective is the only thing worth striving for. There is no need for war, just as there is no natural need for poverty or mass starvation or housing shortages or hospital waiting lists. It is because society is organised to provide profits for the few rather than satisfaction for the many that these problems face us. The working class has only to say "stop" and the entire present system of society will cease to be. We have only to take the means of wealth production and distribution into the common ownership and democratic control of the whole community to put an end to the need for fighting over markets and resources and frontiers. We need only withdraw our consent to capitalism.

Many people are incredulous when the Socialist Party declare that money and banking will have no part to play in the post-capitalist society. Money is rightly said to be the lubricating oil that enables the capitalist mechanism to move, but it is not the motive power, for the true drive is the human need for the necessities of life. In need of these necessities, workers must sell their labour-power before they can buy commodities for their subsistence, and by the social trickery they are legally robbed of full access to the social wealth which they have produced, the deception being that wages will purchase but a portion of the total wealth made by them, the surplus being split up among the employing class. In contrast to state capitalism and those who advocate the nationalisation of the financial system. Socialists stand for the complete ending of the assessment of values in terms of money. Socialist society will not produce exchange-values or spend any part of its labour force obtaining the metal gold for currency, so essential to capitalist production and payment. It will, undivided by classes, produce and distribute goods and services without money or price for use by the whole community. The market is deaf to the voices of those without money with which to express their needs. 

The socialist is a worker who refuses to be a slave, to be low, to submit and cheer the foolery of a system which spits on us. The socialist knows that to be human is to be conscious, with a potential for creativity and cooperation. We can join together and live as equals in a world where all production is for use and all life for living, not buying and selling. The socialist refuses to lie down and take it; we know that united in our millions we will be so strong that the parasite class will be forced to surrender their privilege and either share the world with us or else leave it for another place.
But socialists were not born socialists. No member of the Socialist Party emerged from the womb complaining about wage slavery and singing The Internationale. Socialists are workers who once believed that Queen Mothers were important and bosses must own the world and children must starve and capitalism is the only way for humans to exist.
Socialists are dangerous men and women who asked the question “Why?” and hit on a revolutionary answer. They are people who could see that the profit system will never meet the workers’ needs and that a sane world of production for use would and could. In short, you will never solve the problems of the poor if you allow the rich to keep the world for themselves. Only when the wealth-producing majority decide that we will all be rich, in the sense of commonly owning and democratically controlling the world we inhabit, will it all change.

What do workers need to do? To begin with, a lot of asking “Why?” When you hit on the answers you will be angry. So you should be—but anger on its own leads nowhere. What we need to do is unite, with knowledge as our weaponry and cooperation as our guarantee of victory. Why not join us? Why leave it any longer?