There Is A Way Foward

All States represent the rule of one class over another, but for the first time in history. And its purpose is to enforce exploitation, to allow one class to live parasitically off another, but socialism is to end all exploitation and create the community of working people, without class distinction. When all of society has been transformed, with the ulcers of capitalism have been eliminated, and the community of workers has been established, then socialism, completely class-free society, will have been achieved, and humanity will enter a whole new stage of history. Socialism is a tremendous advance over capitalism. Socialism eliminates the anarchy of capitalism and its crises, by common ownership of the means of production and collective planning of the economy controlled by society as a whole. This removes the tremendous barriers to production that capitalist relations have erected. Unemployment will be ended, because socialism will be able to make full use of the labour of everyone in society, while at the same time developing and introducing new techniques and scientific methods to expand output. As new technology can replace workers, workers will not be thrown into the streets, but transferred to other jobs–according to an overall plan–and gradually the work day for all workers will be reduced. The nature of work itself will change completely, because the labour of the workers will no longer go to enrich capital to further enslave the working class, but to improve life today, while providing for the future, according to a conscious plan. The pride that workers have in their work will be unhindered by any sense that they are working themselves, or someone else, out of a job, or that they are being driven to produce for the private benefit of an employer, under the orders of his or her foremen and the constant threat of being fired. Machines will no longer be weapons in the hands of the capitalists to grind down the working class, and workers will no longer be a mere extension of the machine, as they are under capitalism. Instead machines will become weapons in the hands of the working class in its own struggle to transform society. The organisation of work will be the province of the producers themselves. All this will unleash the stored-up knowledge of humanity, based on its direct experience in production, and inspire workers to make new breakthroughs in improving production. Work itself will become a joy and enrichment of the worker’s life, instead of a miserable means to sustain existence, as it is under capitalism. With the ownership of the means of production in its hands, the working class will take up the ending of all inequalities between nationalities as a crucial part of building socialism. Discrimination in work and all areas of society will be wiped out. This it will fully accomplish under socialism, as a key part of strengthening its rule, continuing to revolutionise society. Working people will have a variety of organisations and decision-making to involve the majority of people in the process of running and remaking society. 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 slums will be ripped down, and in their place new homes and other facilities for the masses of people will be built. Health care 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 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 revolve 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 socialist society will serve the interests of the working class in building socialism, suppressing the forces of capitalism and continuing the revolutionary struggle to transform all of society and achieve communism. It will put reality back on its feet and expose this bourgeois propaganda. It will instill in the youth the understanding that the labouring people throughout history have been the backbone of society and the source of its development. It will promote cooperation in place of competition, and equality between nationalities, between countries and peoples, and between men and women, in place of the bourgeois garbage that one nation should be over another, that men are superior and women inferior, etc. In place of the bourgeois view of history that presents it as a jumble of unrelated events, stemming from the personalities of “great men,” it will teach the youth that history is determined by the struggle between classes and will enable them to determine the class outlook of all ideas. Socialist education will stress the living link between theory and practice, between knowing and doing, and will help develop workers who are capable of combining mental and manual labour. In short, socialist education will be a crucial part of raising new generations that can carry forward the revolutionary role of the working class.

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 labour. 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 (donation), of course.

Socialist society will eliminate all use of religion to exploit and oppress the people. And the Party of the working class will lead a consistent political and ideological struggle to arm the masses of people with the understanding that they are the true force that changes the world and that they can conquer nature. The outlook of the working class is scientific–it recognises that the causes of things lie in the living struggle of opposing forces, in nature and society. While at any time there are things that are not yet known, there is nothing unknowable, there is nothing that is not bound by the laws of nature and society and nothing in the universe which cannot be harnessed and transformed in the interests of the people, once the basic laws governing it have been discovered and grasped by the masses of people. The working class, once it becomes conscious of all this, has no need for belief in supernatural beings or forces of any kind.

The capitalist class spreads its culture, not only through the educational system, but through its vast mass media–its newspapers, magazines, television, radio and movies, and other forms. Bourgeois culture, which reflects the outlook of the capitalists, is decadent. It glorifies parasites–whether bank president, gangster or pimp–and those who do the dirty work of the bourgeoisie in suppressing the people, like cops. It promotes cynicism, despair, and the lie that the masses of people are at fault for all the problems of society–since these can hardly be covered up. It tries to demoralise people with the idea that they are the helpless pawn of mysterious and sinister forces. In all its forms it aims at deflecting the anger of the people away from the ruling class back onto themselves–hate people of another nationality, or the other sex, hate yourself, hate people in general, hate anything but the ruling class itself.

Socialist society will wipe out the decadence of capitalism in all spheres. Capitalist society, which is based on the robbery of the working class by the bourgeoisie, breeds crime on all levels. The capitalists themselves are the greatest criminals and murderers of all time, and there is no way they can eliminate crime. Socialist society will eliminate crime, along with eliminating the criminal capitalist class. Those who, in capitalist society, are forced into crime for survival, because they cannot find work–at least not at a living wage–will no longer have the need to do so.

If all this seems like a mere dream now, it is only because the apologists of capital have so greatly distorted possibilities. Socialism will mean all this, and much more. But none of this will come as a “gift,” or “automatically”.

In the slave system, it was considered “natural” for one group of people, the slave-owners, to own other people, the slaves. In capitalist society, this idea is regarded as criminal and absurd, because the bourgeoisie has no need for slaves as private property (at least not in its own country). But it has every need for wage-slaves, proletarians. So it presents as “natural” the kind of society where a small group, the capitalists, own the means of production and on that basis force the great majority of society to work to enrich them. The slave-owners and the capitalists have one fundamental thing in common–they are both exploiters, and they both regard it as the correct and perfect order of things for a small group of parasites to live off the majority of labouring people. They differ only in the form in which they exploit and therefore in their view of how society should be organised to ensure this exploitation. When humanity has advanced to communism, society as a whole will consciously reject the idea that any one group should privately own the means of production. Then wage-slavery, based on the ownership of capital as private property, will be seen as just as criminal and absurd as ancient slavery, based on the ownership of other people as private property. The working class, by its own nature as a class, has no interest in promoting private gain at the expense of others and every interest in promoting cooperation. For only in this way can it emancipate itself and all humanity.

The working class can emancipate itself only by emancipating all humanity. The division of the world into nations will be replaced by the world community of people. 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. The advance of the proletariat, the greatest and most powerful class in history, to communism, to the elimination of class society, is inevitable.