Workers have to make an effort to realise that the culture they have been conditioned to accept as eternal and invulnerable does not hold good for all time and all over the world and that different social circumstances will often result in different customs and conventions. At the moment they prefer not to make the effort; it is easier to reject facts and surrender to prejudice, fears, and the dog-eat-dog competition on the labour market. It is easier to try to keep out anything foreign.
A lot of the reason for these insular prejudices can be found in the fact that many workers, in their little homes, feel they have built themselves a fortress. They will defend it against all comers — and at the moment the enemy they see coming is the migrant. The tragedy is that those little homes are not castles so much as prisons. Capitalism is a massive confidence trick which convinces workers that their chains are ornaments, that their poverty is prosperity, that cheap, cramped houses are objects of pride — because they have had to be worked for. Newcomers to the UK are equally deceived—the limits of their ambitions is to get a visa on their passport into the working class with all its poverty, fears and suspicions, probably to set up their own prejudices and insularity.
Capitalism is strikingly adept at erecting barriers among its people. It divides them into nations, income groups, races — all of them inspired by false notions of economic and social interests. It is a desperately inadequate society, in which for millions of people the highest achievements is to close themselves up into the confines of a little home and a little job and a little family. These confines are self-productive; they encourage the neuroses and prejudices which fear a different skin colour, and which insist that I shall keep in my small corner while you must keep in yours.
The Socialist Party stands for social equality, for all human beings having equal access to wealth and being of equal worth. In socialism when the means of life are social property, men and women will play their part in producing society’s wealth as best they can and, no matter what their contribution, take from that wealth what they need. In socialism, it is not a question of individuals working on their own, but of people co-operating to produce wealth. So how can one man’s contribution be measured? The Socialist Party says that this society can, and should, be changed. The means for producing wealth should belong to the whole community since this is the only arrangement that will allow them to be used to satisfy human needs. Production solely for use (without buying and selling) is only possible, given modern technology, on the basis of this common ownership and democratic control. Modern technology can provide the plenty for all that will allow mankind to organise the production and distribution of wealth on the principle of: from each according to ability, to each according to need. The Socialist Party is not preaching brotherly love as the solution to social problems. We advocate a change in the basis of society, a social revolution. One of the distinguishing features of homo sapiens is the ability to think abstractly, to plan actions without reference to his immediate circumstances. Insofar as mankind has instincts these are merely biological needs like food, drink, and sex. But this tells us nothing about how these needs are met. That is a question of social organisation. But since human biology has hardly changed in millions of years while human society has, it is no good trying to explain society and social change by biology. Human nature (whatever it might be) is no barrier to socialism. Indeed socialism is, in the present circumstances, the only rational way to run society. For, with common ownership and production for use, man is in charge of his social environment and not, as under capitalism, at the mercy of economic forces.
What's the incentive to work in socialism? Work is merely the expenditure of energy. For human beings, it is both a biological and a social necessity. Human beings must somehow use up the energy that eating food generates, and if no wealth is produced society will die out. So the real question is: How is work organised? Under what conditions is it done? Under capitalism, most work is employment, done in the service of other human beings. It is done under discipline, rather than as free co-operation. It is often dull, even dangerous and degrading. And, as a class society always “respects” those on top (who don't have to work), there is a stigma attached to working. It is a sign of social inferiority to have to work. Socialists say that work can, and should, be made pleasant. Indeed, one of our strongest points against capitalism is that it forces most people to do boring work. But men and women can only control their working environment when they also control the means and instruments of work.
The shortcomings of capitalism are widely felt but little understood. To many, capitalism is competition and private enterprise. Their answer is to restrain competition through government intervention. Capitalism is based on the monopoly of the means of production by a minority. Buying and selling and the commercial jungle result from this. Workers suffer insecurity under capitalism. It is impossible to conceive of capitalism without war. The private ownership of the means of production divides the world into antagonistic classes, competing firms, rival nations and international power blocs. It is this competitive nature of capitalism which causes its wars, which are as much a part of the system as the governments, the money and the treaties which the pacifists are prepared to accept. Modern war is fought to settle the squabbles of capitalism’s master class; it does not involve the interests of the ordinary people except that it brings them nothing but suffering. Capitalism divides them into nations. The problem is not one of rich and poor nations but of rich and poor social classes. The solution to the worldwide poverty problem is the establishment of a world community in which production is geared solely to meeting human needs.
Our answer is to replace minority ownership by the common ownership of the means of production by society as a whole. Then there would be no basis for commerce or competition as there would really be a common social interest.
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