Wake Up, Rise Up

This is an era of revolutionary change. New technology is replacing human labour with Artificial Intelligence, robots and automation. This system offers unemployment, hunger, homelessness, welfare cuts and the plague of crime and drugs. Capitalism, I mean the system that exists on the basis of your unpaid labour. You as a worker produce commodities to be exchanged on the market. You produce not only enough to pay your own wage, but also an added value, a surplus value, over and above the cost of your maintenance. Surplus labour is your unpaid wage. It is called “profit. ” And that’s what capitalism is all about. Capitalism is the all-embracing social cause of every form of oppression and exploitation today.

We all face two choices – either accept repression and oppression or set out to overthrow this system. We are an organisation built on people opposed to this exploitative system. Our party is based on the revolutionary potential of those who have to fight this system in order to live. In order for the society working people will create to be just and equitable, it must embody socialist ideas.

 SOCIALISM MEANS EXPANDING DEMOCRACY NOT ONLY IN THE POLITICAL SENSE BUT IN AN ECONOMIC SENSE – freedom from want. . Our compass for where we are finally headed should have socialism as its destination. Capitalism is destructive of every interest of the working people or general welfare.

While capitalism creates all the material conditions for the proletarian revolution, the socialist revolution does not solely flow out of the daily development of capitalism. Socialism requires that the people be conscious of revolution and of their planned activity, direction and organization–the subjective factor. We are the people. We are the majority. If we go out and organise, we will change this world. Socialism, based upon the planned organisation of production for use by means of the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production, is the abolition of all classes and class differences. Production would not be organised on the basis of the blind push and pull of the capitalist market, but in accordance with the needs of the people. Production for profit would give way to production for use. Capitalism produces missiles and bombs for the destruction of homes just as readily as it constructs homes. It produces luxurious palaces while millions live in slums. Its motive of production was, is, and always will be profit. It is not the needs of the people that dictate its production.

If, however, production were carried on for use, to satisfy the needs of the people, the question immediately arises: Who is to determine what is useful and what would satisfy these needs? Will that be decided exclusively by a small board of government planners? No matter how high-minded and wise they might be, they could not plan production for the needs of the people. Production for use, by its very nature, demands constant consultation of the people, constant control and direction by the people. The democratically-adopted decision of the people would have to guide the course of production and distribution. Democratic control of the means of production and distribution would have to be exercised by the people to see to it that their decision is being carried out.

Socialism is not a utopian ideal, a blueprint for society that exists in the minds of some people. It is a social necessity; it is a practical necessity. It is the direction that the masses of the people must take in order to save society from disintegration, in order to satisfy their social needs. To be a socialist, merely means to be conscious of this necessity, to make others conscious of it, and to work in an organised manner for the realisation of the goal. The workers cannot rid themselves of their sufferings without abolishing the domination that the machine has over them. They can do this only if they gain control of the machine itself. In doing so, they must destroy capitalism and proceed with the complete reorganisation of society. The abolition of private ownership would remove the last barrier to the development of production. Production would be organised and aimed at satisfying the needs of society.

Mankind would no longer be the slave of the machine. The machine would serve mankind. Every increase in productivity would bring with it two things: an increase in the things required for the need, comfort and even luxury of all; and an increase in everyone’s leisure time, to devote to the free cultural and intellectual development of humankind. Men and women will not live primarily to work; they will work primarily to live. Industry, properly organised, can produce the necessities of life for all in a working day of four hours or less. Organised on a socialist basis, even this figure could be cut down. As the necessities and comforts of life become increasingly abundant, and the differences between physical and mental labour, between town and country are eliminated – the need for tolerating even the last vestiges of inequality will disappear as a matter of course. A rationally organised society, efficiently utilising our present productive equipment and the better equipment to come, could easily assure abundance to all. In return, society could confidently expect every citizen to contribute his or her best voluntarily. There is abundance for all. There is ample opportunity for the intellectual development of all