Social Liberation

The supposed obstacle placed by unchanging human nature in the way of work and progress is a myth. Human knowledge and understanding and with them human conduct have changed, are changing, and will continue to change. With the development, through human agency, of mankind's control of natural forces and the power of producing wealth in greater abundance the potentialities of human co-operation have been more and more understood and consciously fostered. Co-operation was never entirely absent, though in the past much of the work of human beings was individual and it was possible to think and act in terms of individual effort and personally benefit from it. Now that the productive powers of co-operative effort have reached gigantic new levels it has become a possibility for each individual to benefit enormously from the conscious reorganisation of society on a socialist basis. All that will be needed is that the individual shall intelligently appreciate the place he will occupy in the life and work of society as a whole. The worker to-day who understood nothing of political organisation might refuse to take part in an election on the plea that one vote counts for nothing in an electorate of tens of millions. So also under socialism he might lack incentive to work if he knew nothing of the part he or she plays in co-operative production and the benefit he and every other person will derive therefrom. Yet the understanding voter uses his or her vote and the understanding worker will gladly and enthusiastically play his part under socialism.

“Liberty” has ever been the cry of our rulers, but the cry for “ Liberty ” is to exploit and plunder the workers. Clear the fog from your minds and study socialism. You cannot have “Liberty” within a system that enslaves you, neither can it be benevolently bestowed upon you. It is the power which private ownership gives to a handful of men over the remaining millions of society—our class. Whether we shall work or not, and consequently whether we shall have enough to eat or not or house ourselves, depends the capitalist: and, being at work, we expect with certainly that at every opportunity our wages will be forced down, our hours extended, our pace sped up. If the capitalist pleads that he himself is in the grip of circumstances, that competition in the world market makes it necessary for him to dispense with men wherever possible, and get the utmost out. of those who remain, we know that it is just because things are privately produced, with a view to sale, that this scramble for orders is possible. Here are we, on the one hand, needing all manner of things to keep us alive and make life happy; here, on the other, are the land, the factories, the transport systems that could satisfy these needs. We could produce in such abundance that no one need go short. We do produce even now enough to give us all such a standard of life as no worker enjoys. Why aren’t we getting it? Why are multitudes of us not working at all? Why do those who are in work live so meagerly? And how is it that such an enormous part of what we make goes to the upkeep of the masters, who did not work in its making?

We know why. We don’t create goods out of nothing. We work upon raw materials, and they come from the earth, and the masters own it. We work with tools and machines in workshops; and the masters own them. Consequently, the products when they are finished belong to them too. The only condition on which we are permitted to work is that this product can be sold at a profit. A profit can only be made when the goods fetch a price which will pay wages and leave a margin for the employer. In order to compete with his rivals, the capitalist will always try to fix his price below theirs; and since he is naturally unwilling to reduce his rate of profit, he will always reduce costs when he can.

We should take those things that are indispensable to the life of the community out of private hands, and make them the common property of the workers. That done, the task of supplying food for the hungry, or houses for the homeless, will have become relatively simple. The fine details do not matter. The particular working out of each part of the plan will no doubt be best done by the workers concerned in our farms, factories, offices, and so on, as the case may be. In its general outlines, the scheme of production can be shaped by the general legislative assembly, elected, as it will be, by workers, for the supreme purpose of co-ordinating all the varied activities of social life. This new character of the legislative assembly will be the reflection of the new character of society—a community of workers with full ownership of their means of livelihood. Many means will suggest themselves by which each worker, having performed his or her share of the necessary labour, will receive what is needed from the common store. There might be depots, similar to shops, where people would make their choice of goods. If so, the actual machinery for distributing goods would not differ greatly from that of to-day : the difference—the revolution—will be in the basis of production. The goods which are made will be made for the direct and sole purpose of satisfying the needs of the makers. Society will have organised itself for co-operative production. It will be the day of the workers, taking possession of and controlling the vast instruments of wealth production which all this time we have operated for the benefit of the masters.

When the means of life are socially owned, the State, which grew up with private property, will give way to something better. Direct control by the workers, all officials being elected, responsible to those who elected them, and capable of being recalled if they prove inefficient or unscrupulous. Needless to say, under capitalism the world is turned upside-down. Instead of being ordered and driven by taskmasters appointed from above, and rewarded at the end with a fraction of the value they produce, they should be able to decide by vote their working conditions, elect their officials, and have their needs richly satisfied, that is very midsummer madness! To the revolutionary worker it is a sane and obvious thing: the righting of a world which is already upside-down. The time has gone for both the private ownership and the state ownership control of industry. It is only on the basis of common ownership and direct democratic control that we can build the free and comradely life for which we have waited too long.