Socialism need not be a dream

There’s probably no bigger crime in politics than to imagine a world without war, inequality, a world without frontiers and without classes. It is dismissed as a utopian dream. To advocate the socialist vision of a world beyond capitalism, where the human needs of all prevail over the private profits of a few, is to be thought of as a crank.. But these days there is now a new openness to socialist ideas. People are disappointed and demoralised by the reality of growing wealth inequality and the increasing misery. There has been a decline of living standards, and mounting insecurity for working people. The destruction of the environment and global-warming have dashed the hopes for the future for many people. Now there are millions of others who want something better from life. Socialism is no longer taboo.

Some on the Left promote a kinder, more equitable version of capitalism, one in which the existence of elite wealth is taxed to pay for free health care and education, to provide affordable housing. This is the policy of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Of course, it isn’t socialism  but basically a modernised version of the New Deal. This isn’t the socialism of Karl Marx or Eugene Debs. There’s no  actual anti-capitalist revolution on the Justice Democrats agenda, no common ownership and democratic control of industry and production, placing the decision-making powers into the hands of the working people themselves. It is a gentler more humane model of capitalism that has long existed in parts of Europe, where the welfare system provides free education and health care, and businesses are obliged to offer benefits like longer vacations, paid family leave so to stabilize capitalist economies. This is not workers appropriating the wealth they produce but workers being incorporated into a partnership with capitalists, sharing a seat at the board-room table so that employers and the government can feel safe at the price of paying a bit more in tax and passing a few worker-friendly laws. As of the second quarter of 2019, the wealth of the 1% was estimated by the Federal Reserve Board to be $34.72 trillion. If their wealth remains unchanged during the next ten years, using the estimate of Sander’s wealth tax coming to $4.35 trillion, their wealth will be reduced by less than 13% to $30.37 trillion. By contrast, the wealthiest 1% hold real estate valued at $4 trillion with home mortgages of $440 billion. The property tax at 1% comes to $40 billion which represents 0.115% of their total wealth. The 1% will continue holding a substantial sum and be in a position to exercise much power. We will still have our billionaires even though the “socialist” Sander’s has stated “I don’t think that billionaires should exist.”

Such reformism is not enough to save society. The rule of capital is toxic no matter how much honey is used to make it palatable. Capitalists, Wall Street and the corporate media consider a return to even the New Deal policies that Sanders espouses irreconcilable with their drive for profits. The present system with its unfolding climate crisis is leading us into the abyss. There is not much time to get organised politically, to take hold of  the reins of society from the populist demagogues, the planet polluters, the militarists, and Wall Street CEOs who have brought society to the brink of disaster.

To save society and the planet, we don’t need billionaires named Bezos or Buffet to bless us with their philanthropy, as long as we recognise the sanctity of their extreme wealth. Actually, the whole of the capitalist class are unnecessary to civilization’s survival, they are a brake on human development. The first bold steps towards a new society is the creation of a mass independent socialist party. The sooner the capitalist profit system can be relegated to history’s proverbial dustbin, the sooner our species can discover what it actually means to be fully human, fully alive. The choice of a socialist future, or no future, hangs in the balance

Adapted from here
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/11/25/no-billionaires-no-fascists-no-warmongers-to-the-socialist-future/

And here

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/11/25/most-people-pay-a-higher-wealth-tax-than-the-wealthy/