The coming year promises to be a busy one for the Socialist Party. The worsening of workers' conditions means that much must be done to explain how to end capitalism. However, discontent does not necessarily translate into support for the revolutionary socialist option. While there are many reasons for this, one of the most important is that at the present time the socialist alternative does not appear practical to many. If more fellow-workers are to be won to the cause of socialism it is clear that we must greatly advance in our ability to explain the advantages and feasibility of socialism and how we can achieve it.
For too many, the word “socialism” is closely associated with the former USSR and it satellite states in Eastern Europe. While these state-capitalist regimes were never socialist – for socialism means that the workers hold power, not a handful of privileged bureaucrats – we never stop hearing that these countries typify socialism. As a result, many workers remain sceptical about whether genuine working class rule can ever be established.
It is clear we must expose these distortions of what socialism is and reveal to working people what real socialism is. We must make a start because the study, debate, and discussion of these issues are essential if the socialist movement is to win over workers in the battle of ideas against the stereotype disinformation from pro-capitalist intellectuals and academics. Working people are looking for a change. But they remain to be convinced that socialism can provide them with the better life and improved well-being that they seek. A new generation will come to our movement and dedicate their lives to it will not be willing to squander their energy on little things and little aims. They will be motivated by nothing less than the vision of a new world.
Socialism will bring about the transformation of human activity. There will exist freedom from labour to an ever-increasing extent as the new technology of robotics and automation advances productivity and reduces the amount of labour time required from the individual. In the socialist society, when there will be plenty for all and where there is abundance, people will have no further use for money. Wages will become obsolete. Prices for goods redundant. In socialism, all will share in the benefits of abundance, not merely a favoured few at the top. Our socialist society of universal abundance will be regulated by the standard, “From each according to ability—to each according to needs.” Today people are haunted by insecurity, undermined by fear for their future and the future of their children. They are never free from the anxiety that something bad will happen, to be deprived of an education and proper food and clothing for oneself and one's family. In the socialist society of shared abundance, this nightmare will be lifted. They will be free from fear, and this greatly affects their attitude toward life and their enjoyment of it. Humanity will get a chance to show what it is really made of. In the new society, everybody will be an artist and every artist will be a worker. The separation between manual and intellectual labour will be broken down. The division between specialised knowledge of single subjects and ignorance on the rest will be eliminated. People will not fear to love their neighbour lest they are taken advantage of, nor be ashamed of disinterested friendship, free from all self-interest and calculation. There will be powerful impulses to give things to each other, and the only possible way of giving will be by doing, by making. There will be no chance to “buy” a present for anybody—because nothing will be for sale; and besides, everybody will be free to take anything he needs from the superabundant general store of material things rolling from the assembly lines. Presents, to mean anything, will have to be made and such gifts will be really treasured and displayed on special occasions. Everybody will be able to live comfortably and to travel freely, without passports or visas. Why shouldn’t we, with all our abundance, travel around to explore the diversity of our planet. There will be no more private property, except for some personal effects. Consequently, there will be no more crimes against private property—which are 90% or more of all the crimes committed today—and no need of all these huge apparatuses for the prevention, detection, prosecution, and punishment of crimes against property. No need for police, judges, lawyers, prisons, jailers.
With the end of classes and their conflicting interests there will be no more “politics”, because politics is essentially an expression of the class struggle; and no more parties, as we know them now. There will be differences and debates, we must assume, but they will not be based on separate class interests. The people will turn their attention then to that most important problem of all—the problem of the free development of the human personality. In the class-free society of the future there will be no state. The state will wither away for the state is the most concentrated expression of violence. Where there is violence, there is no freedom. The society of the free and equal will have no need and no room for violence and will not tolerate it in any form. People will recover some of the virtues of our older hunter-gatherer society, which was based on solidarity and cooperation, and improve them and develop them to a higher degree.
Perhaps it will be our misfortune not to be privileged to live in the socialist society of the future, It is our destiny and our mission is to clear the way for its establishment. No matter whether we personally see the dawn of socialism or not, no matter what our personal fate may be, the cause for which we fight has social evolution on its side to bring all mankind a new epoch. It is enough for us to do our part to hasten on the day. That’s what we’re here for. That’s all the incentive we need. And the confidence that we are right and that our cause will prevail, is all the reward we need.
No comments:
Post a Comment