Monday, November 09, 2020

It is Time for Change

 


What lies ahead?

Reimagining the world. Only that.’

 Arundhati Roy

 We oppose all wars with all our might. The Socialist Party is determinedly against any war between peoples. No matter where they may find themselves, the socialist’s role is to carry on proclaiming that there is but one war of emancipation: the one waged in every country by the oppressed against the oppressor, by the exploited against the exploiter. Our task is to summon our fellow wage- slaves to revolt against their masters. To every soldier from every country convinced that he is fighting for justice and freedom, we must explain that their heroism and their valour will serve only to perpetuate hatred, tyranny and misery. To their mothers, daughters wives and sweethearts we will show who bears the real responsibility for the carnage and their grief and bereavement. There has been enough bloodshed, enough destruction.


Socialism is our principle aim. The goal of pacifism is a society without war, but under exactly the same form of production, in the same political, social and economic conditions as at present. The goal of socialist is the class-free society, that is, a society without exploitation, the society in which the demand for the complete abolition of private property in the means of production will be realised. A socialist society provides the condition for permanent peace. War must be made impossible by destroying its deepest and best hidden roots. The continued existence of the capitalist system of exploitation, brings with it new wars, new international conflicts, recurring economic crises, and the unavoidable impoverishment of working people, unending slaughter and killing of all kinds by war or in peace, killing of those us who belong to the overwhelming majority of mankind—the working class—by those who belong to a  small minority which, the idle exploiting class. They stand for bloody terror and oppression. It is the same everywhere. How can it be otherwise?


For the Socialist Party our aim is not the improvement of condition but the change in position of the working class.  We will not work with the capitalists and but against them. Reformists believe that the cause of war is rooted in mankind – that is, in “human nature.” Greed, malice, jealousy, hate – these factors, says the reformers, make war inevitable. 


The welfare of the working class is diametrically opposed to that of the ruling class. Where they erect walls and fences it is our interest to bring them down. Where they prepare for wars, it is our interest to build the fraternal collaboration of all peoples in a world federation. Only world revolution can obliterate the root-cause of war, capitalism.To save humanity from being plunged into wars of mutual extermination workers must face up to the task of creating socialism.


Socialism means to administer the affairs of society on the basis of human requirements, suppressing the exploiting capitalists and their yearning for profits. If you examine the problems facing the working people today, you find, first, that they are not new, but only another phase of the difficulties as old as capitalism itself; and second, you discover that they would disappear if the capitalists were out of the way. Workers are in poverty while warehouses are bursting with goods and produce. Human society can reorganise itself for the peaceful development of the bounty of nature and of the ingenuity of mankind. Once our fellow-workers conceive the function of production is to provide the basic needs of the population and to achieve a higher level of civilisation and culture for the people, they can take a broom and sweep away the capitalist state. Who is better able to organise society for production than the producers? Who knows machinery better than the operators? Who knows mining better than the miners? Who knows land better than farmers? Who knows the problems of education better than teachers? Who is more competent to represent a factory than choosing its administration from shop-floor, workers, technicians, engineers and other specialized workers indispensable to industry, all have the knowledge required to be shared for production. They would be elected to sit on representative bodies. Manual and brain workers could thus run and control every department and phase of industry, public service, education and the whole of community life, both locally and on a wider scale. Will the working class make mistakes? Perhaps but all the blunders that the workers could possibly make in the course of building the socialist society will be like a drop in the ocean of major crimes against humanity committed by capitalism in peace and in war. The capitalist system can no longer handle the things which it has itself created, unemployment insecurity hunger, mass discontent 


When working people rise up from their passivity and acquiescence and start to intervene in events and decide them – that is the time of revolution.



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