Monday, August 12, 2019

System Change Ahead

The fight for a social democracy, to replace capitalism is the real road to peace and security. Instead we have some who advocate the idea of a world government, a global federal state. We in the Socialist Party are for the goal of a world administration, which would eliminate the obsolete national boundaries into which the Earth is divided. We enthusiastically agree that only under a world body can decisions be made and carried out on such things as climate change, disease and world hunger be achieved. The Socialist Party is entirely for the end of the nation-state and its defence of the profit system and the sacred rights of private property.

One unified world has been socialist thinking for well over a century. One world is not merely a necessity to prevent war – it is an economic necessity for the fullest flowering of economy in a world where economy is worldwide, a world economy. But it is promoted within the context of a revolutionary change to what we produce and distribute. Surely no-one can propose a cure for conflicts and nationalism without holding an understanding about their cause. The slaughters today does not result from regrettable and avoidable misunderstandings and blunders. Two dogs do not want to fight one another over a bone; they merely want the bone.

There is no point in wasting energy trying to persuade the capitalist class each country that a united planet is in its interests. We believe in building a socialist movement to take the government out of the hands of this capitalist class in order that the great aims of both peace and security shall be achieved. Why should people anywhere entrust their fate, their very lives, to fools and liars who promised us everything and anything in the full knowledge that they could not and would not keep their promise?

Security means freedom from economic uncertainty for the working people. It means the guarantee of the many good things of life that our highly advanced technology can produce that so easily can be enjoyed by all. The guarantee that the future of the family, especially of the children, can be assured with confidence for the years ahead. Why should this security be so difficult to achieve in the world with the highest productivity of labour and the greatest production capacity? Yet families enjoy no such security. How many of us feel confident that our standard of living will continue at its their present level? How many are sure they will still be in a job a year or even six months from now? Millions of workers are already unemployed or under-employed with part-time or uber-jobs in the gig economy where contracts are not worth the paper they are written on. How can we feel free from fear under such circumstances? How it is possible to plan the life of the family, to build a home, to think of higher education for the young, when economic conditions are so uncertain and precarious?

We have no real security. The promises politicians keep making to us are fraudulent. They talk endlessly on the fine promises about what it will do, some day, to tackle the scandals of the shortage of teachers and nurses, the inadequacy of schools and hospitals. Their promises always remain promises. Yet the politicians do not hesitate to vote more and more billions of investment for armaments, for the most terrifying weapons of mass destruction. Could the bitterest critic of capitalism make a more annihilating indictment of it than that? What good is any prosperity that piles burden of misery and suffering upon the people, especially upon the shoulders of those least capable of bearing it? What good is the prosperity bought at the price of the happiness? The lives of millions of people perish like cattle in a slaughter-house, whose homes and industries and entire cities devastated and destroyed and now very civilisation itself is imperilled by climate destruction. How can any person claiming to be thoughtful rest content that this is only the prelude to the most horrible holocaust the world has ever seen, which will surely engulf whole nations and leave not one of them untouched or intact? What comfort can the plain people get from the assurance of governments that they can solve the global warming crisis? We promised policies and action that will slow down and reverse greenhouse gas emissions. The promises have remained promises. What comfort can we get from the scientific experts who assure us that it will not really destroy our species but will leave a few million of us to adjust and adapt?

Capitalism is robbing us of whatever security we have and of the possibility of achieving real and lasting security. If people are to live and prosper, capitalism must be end. All over the world, the capitalist class concentrate more and more economic power into its hands. Correspondingly, it concentrates more and more political power and control over the lives of the people. More and more, decisions are made without the knowledge of the people and against their expressed wishes. The economic power and the political influence are exercised for the profits and power of the privileged elite who possess a stranglehold over the people through their possession of the State machine.
The whole future of world depends upon working people. The working class must awaken to a realisation of its power and its ability to steer its own destiny. It could organise the economic and political life not in the interests of the employers and bureaucrats, but in its own simple interests of all the people, who want to oppress nobody, to exploit nobody, to wage war on nobody. It could organise production not for the profit of a handful of capitalists but for the use and enjoyment of all. It could build homes, instead of bombs to destroy homes; it could provide for the health and life of all, instead of supplying armies for the destruction of life. It could be a living example of well-being and democracy that no tyrant could withstand. For this, the working class needs nothing but the consciousness of its task in society and awareness of its power to perform this task. Up to now, however, the working class, has been content to leave its own fate in the hands of the pro-capitalist politicians, in return for a few miserable scraps tossed to us occasionally. We could win anything we want by our own strength and effort, but we submit to the whims and wishes of capitalist politicians. Workers needs their own political power. It cannot express it without having its own political party – a socialist party.
We in the Socialist Party have no other interests save those of the working class itself. Our aims are uncompromising socialist. We seek nothing more than to be part and parcel of the workers' movement, to give it a coherent voice to the socialist goal of international brotherhood and international emancipation.
The Socialist Party is convinced that great and stirring days are ahead. We are convinced that the working class will soon start its mighty march along the road towards socialism. We are and we remain socialists – independent socialists. We are independent of capitalism, of all capitalist governments, of all capitalist politics. We are democrats, consistent and thoroughgoing democrats, because we are consistent socialists. The working class, and we as part of it, need democracy, widening and deepening democracy, and we shall fight for it without compromise. The victory of the working class can come only by winning the battle for democracy. The enemy of the working class is at the same time the enemy of democracy. That holds for capitalism and the capitalist class. The fight for democracy cannot be fought effectively and cannot be won except as it is the fight for world socialism.
To all those who are dedicated to the fight for socialism, the Socialist Party holds open its doors. To all those who refuse to resign themselves to helplessness and hopelessness, to the barbarism of capitalism the Socialist Party is your organisation. To all those who have a confidence in a socialist future the Socialist Party extends its welcoming hand of comradeship. To those who seek the security of the future of mankind, join us in the elimination of the threat to the continued existence of our civilisation.



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