Everything must change

SOCIALIST CONSCIOUSNESS

How can we try to avoid potential catastrophic consequences of capitalism? Are we afraid to scare people away if we tell them how it is? Isn’t this one reason why there is no action, because people are told there is a solution to their predicament? Shouldn’t people be told that if things are left unchanged, civilisation is very likely to be doomed? Isn’t it their right to know that capitalism has gone too far so humanity as we know it may not make it into the next century? Capitalist interlocking, self-serving interests have managed to institute a globalised system of war, poverty and food insecurity which has effectively turned the world into a free-for-all. People are told to pretend it will be all okay lest all hope for the future disappears. The full shock of the issues which face mankind leave us feelings of desolation, despondency and despair. But the Socialist Party holds that people’s ideas and attitudes can change. Hopelessness is not inevitable. We are also free of Utopian false hope and can realistically prepare for the future. Members of the Socialist Party are not be afraid of the truth and we do not seek to avoid reality. What we witness today is just a little taste of a possible future but it is not the full outcome. Men and women are in control of our destiny, we can make our future. We can make history. It will be in an utterly different world if we take control and determine the course of events ourselves. We owe it to our children and to our grandchildren to work together to build what is needed to be able to survive. We must maximise human well-being by re-organising our society. We require a different economic system based on a different set of values. We must look at the social relations of production and distribution through another lens to inspire us to consider the possibilities and alternatives to the present that we can shape in desirable forms.

If workers want a constant reminder of the futility of reforms as such then they could do no worse than study the history of housing reforms both before and after they were enacted by Parliament. A similar lesson could well be learnt by the reformers themselves. The high number of often well-meaning individuals who attempt to alleviate the housing problem under capitalism have taken on a job for life; one that will result in regular frustration and hopelessness. In fact, taken globally, and bearing in mind all the various housing reform bodies now in existence. the housing problem as it affects the world's working class could hardly be worse. Unable and incapable of meeting workers' housing needs capitalism forces them to either sink or swim according to the private or government dictates of housing provision. So not only do workers have to cope with the very real problems of lack of space, of repair and maintenance, of housing obsolescence and unfit habitation, they also have to cope with the constant financial pressures of mortgage and rent demands where the inability to meet the high amounts involved means repossession and subsequent homelessness. Similarly, since the end of the nineteenth century, workers have seen every housing reform supposedly enacted in their interests fail. The state has not been able to end the housing shortage, provide the wide and different housing workers require throughout their lives, nor alleviate the dangers to health and overcrowding within the decaying inner cities. In fact, the state's interference has more often than not contributed to the worsening of the problem. The reality for workers is that there is no direct access to land, materials and technical advice. The capitalist class monopolises it for themselves. Workers' access is governed by their ability to pay. In a society freed from the utter absurdity of buying and selling, of commodity production and of classes, people will be in control of their lives and the society in which they live.

Let us start by saying what we mean by ‘socialism’. We should not allow this word to be stolen from us. It ought to be re-claimed and restored to the meaning given to it by Marx. Profit is derived from unpaid labour time. Workers’ labour power is purchased on the market by the owners of capital. Put to work, on average in half the working week, it produces values sufficient to cover wages to maintain a worker and family. The value produced in the remainder of the working week constitutes surplus value, the source of profit. The commodities produced by workers’ socialised labour are privately appropriated by capitalists. They will continue to be produced so long as they can be sold for profit on the market. This factor is the cause of the alternating cycle of boom or crisis of capitalism. It is inevitable that sooner or later these social conditions will impel people to organise to end the conflict between the socialised labour process and private ownership of the decisive means of production, the big factories, mines and corporate farms by the establishment of socialism. With socialism, production takes place for people’s use.