A World for All

 

A socialist society will be an open and informed society. In socialism it will be a routine to constantly inform people about the needs and problems in the various areas of human life worldwide. In the socialist system it is the citizens and their democratic and transparent institutions that will constantly provide information of the economic, social and human needs, as well as of the scientific and technical development of the different sectors. Given the present technology, the organisation of such information interchange and of everyone’s constant access to it is feasible even right now. Socialist society will be a society in which people enjoy a much higher level of scientific education than today. Access to learning and participation in scientific activity is not a privilege of a particular social group; it is everyone’s elementary right. Just as once basic literacy of reading and writing was the privilege of a few we shall see computer literacy even in its relatively complex and specialised applications accessible to all.

The realisation of socialism is the result of class struggle, and this struggle is as much capable of victory as it is vulnerable to defeat. Not only is socialism a possibility but also capitalist barbarism. The Socialist Party is however  optimistic about the future.  Our goals are clear and the process of the social revolution itself will provide the practical forms of their realisation. To clarify the precise meaning of socialist aims, and to show the feasibility of their realization, it must be established, for instance, that the abolition of private ownership does not mean the introduction of state ownership, and that the organization of people’s collective control over means of production is practical without waged labour power as a commodity.

Socialism is a politics that cares about the future, about our species, about our planet. What cannot be done is to prepare a detailed blueprint of production and administration in a socialist society. Our job is not to make models and utopias, but to show in what ways socialist society differs from the existing one. For example, we show the process of the withering away of the state following a workers’ revolution by explaining the material basis of the state in class society and its superfluousness as a political institution in a class-free society, and not by issuing a programme in which the party has elaborated the step-by-step dismantling of state institutions and departments.

Capitalism is not just an economic system, but also an ideological and cultural system that functions as a powerful indoctrination force. displayed daily in the rise of the corporate-controlled media that has accelerated a culture of distraction. We live in a world that appears to have descended into Dante’s version of hell, an authoritarian nightmare of uncertainty, apprehensions, anxieties, the fearmongering nationalist, anti-immigrant sentiment and bigotry  and the possibility of a civilisation abyss. The pandemic terror of rising infections, body counts and the daily risk of contamination, sickness and death cannot be separated from a broader plague of capitalism and relentlessly subjugation of workers, the elderly, the homeless, the poor, children, people of color, subjecting them to lives of despair, precarity, danger and death. The inequality, compulsory austerity, defunding of public health systems under capitalism are finally being acknowledged as the fundamental super-spreader behind the current pandemic. Capitalism cannot protect and maintain public health and safety because it pursues profits at the expense of more urgent social needs and values. This pandemic is now bringing that truth home to working people. All major political parties function as cheerleaders for capitalism under all circumstances.

 Capitalism has produced an age of uncertainty, fragmentation, despair and a dire foreboding about the future. Hope and dreams have been replaced by fear and dread. Capitalism is a toxic system that destroys lives. COVID-19 has exposed the cult of capitalism. Amid the corpses produced by capitalism and coronavirus, there are emerging signs of hope another deep longing for a collective movement of resistance to the capitalist system, a search of a new economy that benefits us all and not just a wealthy financial elite. It is a movement that refuses to accept consumerism, greed and self-interest that places profit over people, a movement attempting to reclaim a collective political vision for a more compassionate, equitable, just and inclusive society. Central to the task is the necessity to break through the corrosive belief that “there is no alternative.” We need to act en masse to bring about the end of capitalism. If a new understanding of politics and social and economic justice and equality is to be born, it is crucial to wage a war of ideas against those of the old order. 

For revolution to be re-born, it needs to resurrect the vision of socialism, re-think the politics of protest, to re-imagine the future. The issue is to breathe life again into the working class militancy.