The people need a future

We the working class create the wealth of society. But we do so only for the profit of the bosses on terms dictated by them. As workers, we are forced to work long hours in conditions which endanger our physical and mental health. We have no control over what we produce, how it is produced or what it is used for. Every aspect of our lives is dominated by the need for money. At most, what we are paid allows us to consume a part of what the bosses decide it is profitable for us to produce. Even then the goods we buy often fall apart before we have paid for them. The food we eat is adulterated. 

The working class is the dispossessed class. We depend on selling our labour power to the bosses. But since labour power, as a commodity, is bought and sold like any other commodity, the bosses can refuse to buy it when it is no longer required. For the bosses who own and control the means of production, all production has a single aim: profit. Nothing is produced unless it can be sold profitably, however much it may be needed. For the sake of profit mountains of food are destroyed. Resources are denied for basic health care. The houses and cities we live in are allowed to decay. Instead resources are devoted to arms and armies so that the bosses can send us into war against rival profiteers. Resources are used to maintain and arm the police forces which defend the bosses from our anger. Nor do the bosses stint on luxuries for themselves. None of this would happen in a rationally organised society. It is the outcome of a society propelled by the lust for profit. For all these reasons the working class has no interest in the continued existence of this society.

The era of capitalism is coming to an end. The continued existence of capitalism threatens the survival of humanity. The crisis of capitalism is propelling the world towards economic and ecological catastrophe. Nationalisation is a state capitalist measure which offers no benefits whatsoever either to the workers employed there or to the working class as a whole. Nothing could be further from the truth than the idea that state capitalism equals socialism, or a step towards it. Nevertheless, the idea that state capitalism is or could be beneficial to the working class is still a powerful force holding back the class struggle. The organisation of socialist society will be based or the collective 'administration of things', not on the political power of a ruling minority over the majority. The State, which throughout history has been the organisation of ruling class power, will have been abolished.

Socialism is a struggle to replace competition by cooperation, production for profit by production for need. This will make it possible to redevelop the large areas of the world devastated by capitalism, and to institute a system of global planned production. A socialist society such as we envisage is only possible on the basis of material abundance. The potential for this has already been created by the development of capitalist industry and agriculture. Goods will be freely available and free of charge. Money will disappear. However, socialism will not be like a huge supermarket where consumers simply help themselves. Work will be done because we want it to be done and want to do it - not because we have to in order to survive. The focus of interest in our lives will shift away from passively consumption, to include the new form of productive activity. This does not mean that overnight all productive activities will become passionately interesting but a free society will strive to make them so by continually transforming the aims and methods of production.

 There will no longer be a mad scramble to exploit resources without concern for the future, or a rush to buy the latest model or the newest fashion which gives the illusion of inventiveness and innovation. The separation between work and leisure will actually disappear. People will freely associate to creatively use and transform their lives, by creatively using and transforming goods, activities and the environment, in an attempt to satisfy all our developing needs and desires. Community and communication will emerge in this common project: people will no longer be mere objects in the production process. The essence of socialism is the passionate transformation of the world and of ourselves, in the creation of a world human community.

The Socialist Party role in all this is, through our agitation and campaigns, to publicise, support and encourage today’s struggles which help spread of revolutionary ideas and a revolutionary consciousness within the working class and to escalate the class war towards achieving socialism.

Abridged and adapted from here