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Sunday, November 22, 2020

Capitalist Confusion or Socialist Clarity?


 We aim at replacing the present capitalist system by socialism, understood as a system where there will be common ownership of the means of production and distribution. Socialism is a society where political power is in the hands of the working people We envisage socialism as a society where the exploitation of man by man will be ended, where production will be used not for private profit, where a new relationship of fraternity will develop between peoples based on equality and independence, where individual men and women will find totally new possibilities to develop their abilities. We see the need to win the overwhelming majority of the population for the fight against capitalism and for socialism.

 

 One of the favourite arguments of the anti-socialists used to be that if everything produced in Britain was divided up equally, this would make very little difference in the standard of living of the workers. Even if this were true – and it is not – it has absolutely nothing to do with Marx’s conception of socialism. In socialist society, production is not for profit but for use. But the machinery and the products are not divided out in kind among the people. After all, to divide up the product according to work done or any other principle is to confess that there is not enough to satisfy everyone’s needs. In capitalist society a family which is able to afford as much bread as all members of the family need does not share out a loaf on any principle: every member of the family takes what he or she needs. And when production in a socialist society has risen to such a height that all citizens can take what they need without anyone going short, there is no longer the slightest point in measuring and limiting what anyone takes. When that stage is reached, the principle on which production and distribution are based becomes: from each according to ability, to each according to needs. Socialism, as Marx used the term, is when the means of production are owned by the people and therefore there is no longer any exploitation of man by man.

 

 Socialism implies much more than merely material sufficiency. From the time when the working class takes power and begins the change to socialism, a change also begins to take place in the outlook of the people. All kinds of barriers which under capitalism seemed rigid grow weaker and are finally broken down. Education and all opportunities for development are open to all equally. Class differences no longer exist. Everyone becomes an “intellectual,” while intellectuals no longer separate themselves off from physical work. Women are no longer looked on as inferior or unable to play their part in every sphere of the life of society. The barriers between ethnic groups are broken down. There are no races” in a socialist society; no one is treated as superior or inferior because of colour or nationality. Socialist society shows that it will mean the end of wars. When production and distribution in each country are organised on a socialist basis, there will be no group in any country which will have the slightest interest in conquering other countries. Democracy is not limited to voting for a representative in parliament every five years. In every factory, in every block of flats, in every aspect of life, men and women are shaping their own lives and the destiny of their country. More and more people are drawn into some sphere of public life, given responsibility for helping themselves and others. This is a much fuller, more real democracy than exists anywhere else. The difference between the town and the countryside is broken down. Vast changes also take place in the development and outlook of men and women. They will be people with an all-round development, an all-round training, people who will be able to do everything.  The self-seeking, individualist outlook bred by capitalism will have been replaced by a really social outlook, a sense of responsibility to society.

 

This  could only be regarded as Utopian by people who do not understand the materialist basis of society. Human beings have no fixed characteristics and outlook, eternally permanent. In primitive tribal society, even in those forms of it which have survived to recent times, the sense of responsibility to the tribe is very great. In later society, after the division of society into classes, the sense of social responsibility was broken down, but still showed itself in a certain feeling of responsibility to the class. In capitalist society there is the most extreme disintegration of social responsibility: the system makes “every person for oneself” the main principle of life.

 

But even under capitalism there is “solidarity” among the workers – a sense of common shared interest. This is not an idea which someone has thought of and put into the heads of workers: it is an idea which arises out of the material conditions of working-class life, the fact that they get their living in the same way, working alongside each other. Individualists, on the other hand, possess no sense of social or collective responsibility, such as the capitalist surrounded by competitors, each struggling to survive by killing each other off. These  ideas of the dominant class – the competition and rivalry instead of solidarity – tend to spread among the workers. But the fundamental basis for the outlook of any class (as distinct from individuals) is the material conditions of life, the way it gets its living. Hence it follows that the outlook of people can be changed by changing their material conditions, the way in which they get their living.



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