Nothing can save capitalism in the long run, because it has long since become a barrier to progress and long since prepared the conditions for its own destruction. Democracy is to socialism what reform is to revolution. No amount of democracy by itself, can possibly end the class exploitation which is the foundation of the world’s foremost system of oppression. Only socialism can do that. Capitalism restricts and limits democracy for the masses. Behind the facade of formal democratic institutions, the real power is exercised by and for the capitalist class. The capitalists, through their powerful lobbies and campaign funding, dominate the political process, insuring that candidates favourable to their interests are elected. While capitalism engenders democratic illusions, it makes their realisation impossible; it creates a contradiction between the democratic tendencies of the masses and the bourgeoisie’s need to curtail their rights. It is this contradiction which has been the motivation of the democratic struggles in our history. While the Socialist Party recognises that no amount of democracy can abolish class oppression, it also recognises that the greater the democracy, the more direct, the more open and the broader the class struggle. And the more the working class has the freedom to organize and struggle, the more it will see that its oppression stems from capitalism, not insufficient democracy.
Socialism will make possible the building of well-constructed housing for the masses of people. Under capitalism, it is more profitable to speculate in land, maintain slum housing and put capital into buildings for big business than to build decent housing for the masses. The working class will take the land and buildings once held by the banks and other such capitalist parasites; mortgages and debts will be immediately cancelled. The slums will be ripped down, and in their place, new homes and other facilities for the masses of people will be built. The working class will develop housing construction in a rational way.
Healthcare under capitalism is a nightmare for the people and big business for the drug companies, hospital corporations and others who make billions from the butchery of the people. Under socialism health care and hospitals will no longer be a means to make a profit, but a means for the working class to prevent disease and to preserve the health of the people.
Education in class society reflects and promotes the interests of the ruling class and instills in the youth the values and outlook of this class. Under capitalism, this means that education is geared to maintain the division of society into classes, the conditions of capitalist exploitation and the rule of the capitalists over the working class and masses of people. Capitalist education prepares the great majority of youth only for existence as wage-slaves and as a key part of perpetuating the capitalist system of wage-slavery distorts history to make it revolves around the “brilliant ideas” and individual heroism of great “geniuses,” Kings, Emperors, Presidents, bankers, industrialists and other representatives of the exploiting classes throughout history. Children are taught to compete against each other and that competition is what “makes this country great.” Reality is stood on its head so that it seems that capital, not labour, is the source of all progress and that the workers live by the grace of the capitalists. Education in a socialist society will serve the interests of the working class in building socialism. It will promote cooperation in place of competition, and equality between peoples and men and women. Like other aspects of culture, sports is big business under capitalism. Most people are reduced to “spectators” and decent facilities for the youth and working people as a whole are very few. Socialism will build sports as a mass activity and, not bound by the laws of private profit, will construct facilities for sports in all neighborhoods and widely-organised sports programs to provide recreation for and promote the health of the people. And sports will promote the bonds between working people, above competition among them.
In a capitalist society, many workers are drawn to religion because it represents their hopes and aspirations for a better life–projected, however, into the future and into another realm completely beyond man’s ability to understand. The bourgeoisie promotes religion to convince people that since life is miserable on this earth–and it cannot be denied that this is so under capitalism–the answer is to hope for a better life “beyond this one.” Further, religion serves capitalism by telling people that they are basically helpless before the forces of nature-and the rulers of society–and they should put their faith not in the ability of the masses of people to change the world, but in a supreme, supernatural being, or beings. And if that isn’t enough, religion can call up the image of fire and brimstone to threaten people. More, those who control major organised religions make huge fortunes from collecting large sums from their members, investing much of these sums and exploiting labor. While telling the people to wait for “pie in the sky,” these hypocritical leeches live like kings, right here and now, from the sweat and blood, hopes and fears, of the people. At the same time, in every community, hustlers of all kinds–calling themselves “men of god, prophets,” etc.–prey on workers and other poor people, promising them all kinds of miracles to ease their misery–for a nice fee (tithe), of course. Socialist society will wipe out the decadence of capitalism in all spheres.
Socialism will mean all this, and much more. But none of this will come as a “gift,” or “automatically”. The means of production from the overthrown ruling class is an act which can be accomplished almost immediately once the proletariat has won political power. And it is an act which must be carried out swiftly. To achieve this the proletariat cannot rely on armed compulsion but must rely on persuasion and education to show people that their only hope for the future lies with eliminating all vestiges of capitalism, all private ownership of means of production. Since its founding, the Socialist Party has tried to show that socialism is nothing other than people's conscious self-organisation of their own lives in all domains; that it signifies, therefore, the management of production by the producers themselves on the scale of the workplace as well as on that of the economy as a whole.
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