Wednesday, January 23, 2019

We end capitalism or it ends us.


If you always do what you’ve always done, you always get what you’ve always gotten

We live in divisive times, where politicians focus on our differences instead of our common humanity. The Socialist Party pushes for economic and social justice. We claim it is our birthright as human beings to have dignity and a decent standard of living. Social division will remain everywhere as long as major political parties continue to divide our populations with their hateful rhetoric and bigotry, preying on those in our societies that are most vulnerable. We have shared responsibilities for ourselves, our families, and our neighbours because we are all connected. Socialism is about society and communities taking control of their own needs and wants, putting solidarity at the core. Democracy needs to operate at all levels - local communities, regional and globally. Socialism must be a worldwide movement, not simply restricted to one country. We can't fix the problems caused by capitalism by continuing to do what we’ve always done. The people must rise. The world is at a tipping point. Another way is possible but everyone is needed. This is must be just the beginning to build a political economy that produces material dignity and freedom for all the world’s people. We will have to build a movement that challenge the hegemony of capitalist power. Trusting in reforms ensures our continued enslavement.

The Socialist Party, understanding capitalism, see in the rise and fall of production, in booms and slumps, just the normal working of capitalism—its pendulum, so to speak. And capitalism without its pendulum movement would not be capitalism. The poverty and insecurity of the workers can only be abolished when the condition on which the pendulum rests is abolished. That condition is the private ownership of the means and instruments of production. Socialism needs a high development of society's powers of industrial production on an international basis, plus a majority of socialists. The idea “to each according to his needs" requires as its basis a high level of industrial productivity, i.e., the capacity to produce wealth in abundance. It is not sufficient merely that a group of men and women should have convinced themselves that they believe in it. On the question of the incentive for work and study. Capitalism denies to vast numbers of workers the possibility of interesting themselves in these problems, but socialism would not do so. On the other hand, in socialism, all kinds of workers will be helped and given greater incentive by the knowledge that their work is for the good of the whole human society of which they are part, and in the welfare of which they share.

People have to be learning and people have to be taking action. Solidarity is a guiding principle of the Socialist Party for all the exploited people face the same enemy and the only way any of us can defeat our common oppressor is with class unity against capitalism and all its manifestations. Divided we are weak but united workers are a force to be reckoned with. Freedom only comes through self-organisation and this is what too many on the Left today fail to grasp. You can’t give someone their freedom. Nor should the reformers regard freedom as a privilege to be asked for politely. We remain exploited because capitalism exists. A democratically-expressed majority is the only way to ensure that there will be a sufficiently large number of people aware of how society will need to be run and prepared to assert it.

We must be socialists because it is in socialism that we will realise true equality and end injustices. The Socialist Party seeks a world where all distinction of nationality should disappear, and the whole human family should constitute one people. Our vision of the future is the conception of a class-free society and an end to oppression, misery, and war. Co-operation instead of competition is the aim of the Socialist Party. Humanity is divided into two classes — the employers and the employed. Our present capitalist system has been a pronounced failure. In the future things must be done unity and co-operation.

We have to name the criminal culprit in today’s world...capitalism. The profit system is changing the climate, degrading the land and the oceans, extinguishing other species, producing toxic pollution and thus creating an environmental time bomb. Capitalism’s ceaseless growth is a cancer. In contrast socialism generates the conditions for an egalitarian and environmentally sustainable planet that we know to be possible and seek to achieve. That’s not wishful thinking. For sure most people can’t quote Marx’s Capital but they fully understand that global corporate power which is shaping their lives, slashing their pay, cutting their jobs, and creating insecurity while laying waste to the environment around them. The blight of poverty is everywhere. People die before their time. What has been previously hidden has become increasingly visible. The ruling class are growing more and more nervous. Certainly, the capitalists will continue courting the reformists who are willingly compromising and maneuvering for every small advantage, competing with one another for whatever favours can be gained by the ruling class. Perhaps socialism is not yet triumphant, but its hope and dreams are still very much alive and its possibilities live on. The big message is to build in ways such that all involved are reinforced by a sense of common struggle and shared future.

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