In the absence of mass movements pressing for the interests of the people, capitalism is the default society. Workers depend on the continued functioning of the capitalist economy for their livelihood. Workers' productive activities are under the control of corporate managers. Capitalists are the ruling class because their interests rule over everyone else. They rule not just from positions of power within the state, but from their control of the commanding heights of the economy upon which we all depend. Capitalism aims to reduce all human relationships to market relations, that human society should be run in every respect as if it were a business, its social relations reimagined as commercial transactions, people redesignated as human capital, society structured in the interest of capital, not people. Capital needs state power for this purpose. What is the daily experience of people living under such rule? It is the powerlessness of atomised individuals. The workers are governed by a state in service to capital. Ordinary people can limit that powerlessness only when they band together and act in solidarity through trade unions and social movements. It is such democratic organisations that the ruling class seeks to oppose and dissolve.
We are burdened today under the weight of countless tyrannies, large and small, carried out in the name of the national interest by the elite class who are largely insulated from the ill effects of their actions. We, the working class, are not so fortunate. We find ourselves badgered, bullied and browbeaten into bearing the brunt of their arrogance, paying the price for their greed, suffering the backlash for their militarism, agonising as a result of their inaction, feigning ignorance about their back-room dealings, overlooking their incompetence, turning a blind eye to their misdeeds, cowering from their heavy-handed tactics, and blindly hoping for change that never comes. This is what happens when capitalist bureaucrats run the show, and the rule of law becomes little more than a cattle prod for forcing us all to march in goose-step with the government. It’s time for a dose of reality. Wake up from the nightmare and take a good, hard look around. No one is coming to save us, except ourselves.
Today, there is a great need for a mass socialist party. Not just a party interested in implementing reforms for a kinder, gentler capitalism or jockeying for political office but an independent party that strives to be a beacon for the social struggles, organizing and protesting. We need a socialist party with the political vision for the way forward to end capitalistic profit-madness that has left the planet wallowing in environmental degradation, violence, inequality, and poverty.
The people will triumph over those who had oppressed them, to vanquish every last remnant of a system of capitalist greed and profit that knows no other way than to exploit the many for the benefit of the few. We can build a new economic foundation of the next system to succeed capitalism, socialism, created not by just thinkers who have advocated its ideas but through the struggle of people against the harsh conditions imposed on them by capital. Capitalism is no longer able to meet the needs of the people it has made dependent, and so people struggle against it in order to survive. Only collective action can countervail the power of capital. In those struggles, they overcame their individualism, discovering themselves as a "we." The consciousness of a collective "we", our social being, can overcome social problems and deliver a fair society. Community—the communal mode of production and life—is the oldest of traditions and belongs to the earliest days and the first people. A strike will teach a group of workers very quickly who their real friends and enemies are. It sounds like jargon to say so, but only because it’s so true. Independent mass social movements, organized from the ground up, led by those who endure under the present system, are the motor force of history. But motors don’t just run on their own. They need vehicles to move forward. They need a direction and a power source. They need socialist organisation and a clear sense of purpose and goals.
The Socialist Party insists on social solutions to social problems. Today, there is hope that another world—an alternative to the capitalist status quo—is possible. But beware, Another world is possible, but it may not necessarily be the one we want. The Socialist Party's perspective is rooted in the belief that change is possible. Not inevitable, but achievable. A society that accepts inequality and war has no future, at least not one any civilised people should want. The establishment of democratic social power from the ground up is the vision of socialism that the Socialist Party promotes. The class-free society of the future is one in which “the free development of each is the precondition for the free development of all.”
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