Saturday, April 27, 2019

Some refuse to learn. Some refuse to remember


A socialist is not the ordinary average person-in-the-street who is saturated with ignorance and prejudices pumped into him or her on a daily basis. The socialist thinks about social problems and comes up with explanations and the solution. In the struggle between capitalism and socialism we have a struggle between two different social systems. Socialists have no intention or desire, nor need, to abandon the fight for socialism. We fight for the workers and oppressed peoples everywhere who are sick to death of insecurity, exploitation, subjection and increasingly abominable wars, who aspire to freedom, peace and equality. We never promised that we would bring policies to their relief but only be able to help organise them into an independent movement, acting in their own interests and not of the capitalists. The only way we know how to do this is: tell the truth about capitalism and socialism; help make those we can reach conscious of the problem of society today and how to solve it, and increase the clarity of those who are already partly conscious of it. We will do everything we can do to deepen the understanding of capitalism and become rallying point of resistance. We will continue in our way even if we are alone for a time. To build the foundations for hope in the future required not only opposition to capitalism but also exposing those who falsely claim to be standing for socialism. You can spot the fake from far off, for sure. He will always say, in one way or another, that the working class must follow the leadership of somebody else; that the working class is not really suited to make decisions and need someone clever for them to follow. He teaches the workers NOT to rely on their own class strength, NOR to rely on their own class organisation. “The emancipation of the working class is the work of the working class itself,” said Karl Marx. Workers are not academic theoreticians and they are not Utopian dreamers but practical people, well capable of control themselves. You can’t replace the old order with the new society of socialism unless the people are freed from dependence on leaders and as a class.

We will try to teach the misguided and mistaken this principle better as they deserve to be answered. The voice of socialism among the left-wing is silent or reduced to a whisper. Within the Socialist Party, it remains clear and resolute. It will be heard, and it will be echoed. To declare that world capitalism is overripe for socialism is to repeat a fundamental truth. Not democracy but private ownership and profit are the basis of capitalism and the capitalist class. But while democracy is not indispensable to capitalism, it is absolutely indispensable to the working class. The world socialist movement cannot even hope to be reborn without democracy.

State-capitalism is command economy based on the state ownership of the means of production. The state owns industry and either government officials “own” the state as a bureaucracy or controls it on behalf of the government bond-owners. Socialism, on the other hand, is the common ownership of the means of production under the democratic control of the working people themselves. A vast difference. When the state is asked to take over industrial enterprises and to plan economic activities as just another capitalist state, surrounded by a competing and hostile rival trading nations, it could plan and administer enterprises only in order to strengthen itself on the world market as an international strong competitive power. Such social reforms, where they were effected, had nothing to do with socialism. If attained, they could only be maintained to the extent to which the nation became a successful economic power and could take advantage of the global capitalist market.

We will not be issuing pious platitudes about “democratic socialism” (as though there were any other kind of socialism) and promoting a list of palliatives for making capitalism operate better (if that is possible.) We ill not present a programme of class collaboration, class “peace” and surrender to the capitalist exploiters, the working class. The Socialist Party proclaims its adherence, without apologies or compromise, to the platform of class struggle, to socialist revolution, to Marx and Engels. Our immediate demands are to free humanity from war, starvation, ignorance, and misery. We seek a working class that stands erect on its feet; refusing to be forced to its knees. A working class resorting to class war. A working class fighting for socialist freedom for all mankind. The aim of the socialist movement is a just one: it expresses the legitimate aspirations of the people for political and economic freedom from exploitation and oppression. Reformists and gradualists often sneer at what they call the “utopian”, “impractical” aims of the Socialist Party. We are not impressed. The results of the “feasible” politics pursued by the reformers are all around us, poverty, hunger, disease and wars. The results of the same policies in the future will be no better. The only war to end wars is the class war of labour against capital. The Socialist Party possesses a sure vision and steadfast conviction of its eventual victory. We strive, brothers and sisters of the world for that not distant day when, over every land, one single flag, the red banner of socialist freedom, will fly high. When this day comes – and never doubt for a moment that it will come – we shall declare from the depths of our hearts: The Day has Arrived

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