Wednesday, August 07, 2019

Capitalism offers no future

There are fools who still tell us that since workers has not revolted against capitalism so far, we cannot expect them to revolt in the future. Our aim is to replace capitalism with “an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”

In a revolution, the power and wealth of society change hands. They are transferred from one class to another. In our time, there are two fundamental classes in society, the working class and the capitalist class. The minority class owns the wealth, profits from it, keeps down the standard of living of the majority class which has no wealth. In order to protect its wealth from competitors and to secure new sources, the capitalist class is compelled periodically to go to war. The workers are propagandised and cajoled to fight the war in behalf of “their country” – whose wealth is owned by the ruling class. If the enormous wealthy of society, controlled by the few, were controlled by the majority of the people under a government representing the majority, poverty could be eliminated, an end could be made to the mass murder of war, and mankind could live in peace and plenty. This kind of revolution would be necessary on a world scale.

In the 19th C and for but a short time after, the idea of socialism was fairly agreed upon. The “dream of socialism,” as it was often called, taught that socialism meant a society without classes, without the exploitation of man by man, without a production system operating for the purpose of producing profits for a few. Socialists capably demonstrated how a socialist society could end poverty, unemployment and war by eliminating private ownership of the means of producing the things of life, national and international competition. They mercilessly campaigned for socialism exposing the evils of capitalist society, its brutal exploitation of the workers, its utter hypocrisy in impoverishing of the majority for the enrichment of a few capitalists. Later this socialist propaganda and agitation largely disappeared other than from small principled parties such as the Socialist Party. The paid propagandists of big business, college professors, economics and intellectuals of every variety have failed to convince the Socialist Party that capitalism is a wonderful society and socialism goal remains a mere utopia. The necessity of rebuilding the socialist movement now requires the re-establishing of the task of socialist persuasion and education, to tell what socialism is and how it can be achieved. 

The Socialist Party describes the capitalist system and reveals how thoroughly rotten it is, how it is an outlived system capable of producing nothing but unemployment, poverty, war, the suppression of the will of the people. The importance of the Socialist Party is that it points a way out of this foul system and shows why socialism is necessary. Once it is explained clearly to people, socialism does prove to be one of the most reasonable ideas in the world. The movement for socialist democracy advances against capitalist tyranny. 

The Socialist Party believes working people ought to own and control its industries. It believes that all things that are jointly needed and used ought to be jointly owned instead of being the private property of the few and operated for their enrichment and that it ought to be the common property of all, democratically administered in the interest of all. It is difficult to deny the desirability of such a society because socialism does make sense, and the need for it remains more pressing than ever for working people and oppressed of the world. This way the socialist alternative will begin to appear realistic to millions of workers.

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