To
a person new to the ideas the Socialist Party holds, much of what we
advocate sounds strange and not easy to accept. Some of our views are
objected to because they seem extreme which others dismiss as being
a mere “pipe-dream” that will never come true. There inevitably
remains, to greater or lesser degree, a certain amount of “show me”
skepticism, if not outright suspicion. Everyone likes to pride
oneself upon the fact that he or she “makes up their own mind.”
But the
views which the vast majority of people believe on social issues are
thought out for them through a lifetime of absorbing ideas from
education and the media. Our minds are submitted to a process of
shaping, that makes them fit the pattern of thought that accepts
things as they are as the best possible arrangement. Did each person
sit down and think things out for themselves, decide what ideas are
right or wrong? Far from it. The ideas shared by the average worker
are compounded of misinformation, disinformation, prejudice and lack
of political education. Just as in modern society there is an
increasing tendency towards a productive specialisation in which each
man merely does one operation, apparently meaningless and without
satisfaction in itself; so too in the intellectual world of
capitalist society there has taken place the same kind of destructive
specialisation, the compartmentalisation of human knowledge into
pigeon holes. So much so that our fellow-workers end up being opposed
to their own best interests. Such an understanding of the interests
of the class as a whole we call class consciousness.
We
are living in times that require radical solutions to burning
problems, problems really of life or death. Politicians tied to a
faith in capitalism cannot give such solutions despite their
superficial “progressiveness.” Their attitude of class
collaboration, the bootlicking of capitalist politicians and of
capitalist society is the curse of the working class. They do not
have the confidence of the working class. The formula of the
reformists is the belief that capitalist society and capitalist
democracy are precisely what they are said to be by the defenders and
benefactors of capitalism, that there can be no significant
difference between the exploiters and the exploited, between the
owners of property and the property less, between those who hire and
those who are hired. To
be sure there are “the poor” and “the rich” but the
reformists always obscure the fact that such distinctions are not
what is basic to an understanding of the main problem facing the
working class. They obscure the fact that “the rich” are one
class in capitalist society and “the poor” are another, that not
only are “the poor” and “the rich” separate classes but,
also, that those separate classes will remain so long as capitalism
remains, that the interests of the two classes are in irreconcilable
conflict, that there is an incessant class struggle between the two
classes, that the toilers must press this struggle everlastingly
under capitalism. They obscure the fact that this struggle between
the workers and the owners of capital can only end successfully for
the toilers when capitalism has been replaced.
Despite
the best efforts of the media indoctrination to convince the working
class that capitalism is the best of all systems and that socialism
is bad for them, the workers are no longer swallowing the capitalist
propaganda hook, line and sinker. They are beginning to free their
minds from capitalist control. The Socialist Party is firmly
convinced that even such a small party as it, with a principles and a
case for socialism that coincides with historic development, can and
will re-make the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment