Either Socialism or Chaos

 As the Communist Manifesto puts it: “a warfare that invariably ended, either in a revolutionary change in the whole structure of society, or else in the common ruin of the contending classes.”

Capitalism has been tried and found guilty of untold crimes over generations. It has brought civilisation to the brink of extinction.  Capitalism breeds war, poverty, slums, unemployment. It regularly results in crises and recessions It breeds racial national and religious hatred, It makes a mockery of the words Peace! Security! Happiness! Brotherhood!

The safety and health of the workers is not a consideration for the capitalist owners of industry. Labour saving devices that could be blessings to humanity to eliminate drudgery and heavy work, deprive workers of their jobs. New technology in working processes are deliberately suppressed for reasons of profit. Plenty can be produced for all, an abundance of food, health-care, shelter and means of education, amusement, travel, recreation, for all the people. "Heaven on Earth" is not an idle dream. The material basis, the machinery and materials exist to produce for use and not for profit!

 Today, no matter how much is produced, none of it belongs to the people. If the products of farm and factory cannot be sold for a substantial profit they are stacked in warehouses and granaries and allowed to rot. It would be hard to explain such a crazy system to any sane rational person. A small group of owners condemn millions of workers to a mere existence wage and leave millions of to starve. We can work, to live and support our families, only when they say so. When they nod their heads factories and mines close or open up. This is free enterprise; this is the profit system; this is private ownership; this is capitalism. It has produced war and more war, hunger and want, unemployment and misery, in the midst of untold wealth. That the rich get richer and the poor get poorer is always true under capitalism. When the capitalists realize there is no profit in selling their goods, there are lay-offs and slashing of wages. Food is left to rot in the fields and granaries and storage houses, and hungry people go without in the midst of plenty. The capitalist system won’t work, for the very root of capitalism is all wrong. It is based on a contradiction, namely, that the man who owns the tools of production (the capitalist) does not work them, and the man who works them (the worker) does not own them. That is the socialist indictment against capitalist anarchy. People starve in the midst of plenty because capitalism is geared to production for profit.

There is a way out of this chaos. The working people themselves should own and operate the industries cooperatively. This would end production for profit and the waste of competing corporations. There would be planned production for the first time, increasing the output of wealth so that there would be plenty for all.

Socialism is not complicated. We mean an advanced stage of social development which will abolish private ownership of the means of production which are today the property of a small group of capitalists and used by them to exploit the labour of millions for their own private profit. By socialism we mean common ownership by the whole people of all the socially necessary means of production (land, natural resources, industries, transport, communications, etc.) and their operation through a planned economy which will guarantee an ample supply and equitable distribution of all commodities and services to all the people. The kind of planned economy we envisage would, for the first time, make possible an end to wars between nations. Because the planned economy would include all lands. The aim of the working class would be to end capitalism and all forms of exploitation everywhere. Its aim would be to create world socialism. A socialist society will plan for the public good, that would be the normal way, because all resources would be owned in common. capitalist economists – with their grandiose but futile plans – dare not face the fact that all future progress lies on the road to socialism.

"Rise like lions after slumber,
In unvanquished number,
Shake your chains to earth, like dew,
That in sleep have fallen on you,
Ye are many--they are few."

So sang the poet Shelley long ago.

 THE ONLY WAY OUT FOR THE WORKERS IS THROUGH SOCIALISM.