We don't need capitalism

 

We live under an age of pain, misery and corruption. Many workers don’t think of themselves as being part of a class with political power. They feel isolated and in competition with other workers—and sometimes even see them as their enemies because of their skin colour, religion, national origin and so on. Socialists look towards our fellow-workers because they hold tremendous potential power by producing all of the wealth in society.  Realisation is  growing in  the midst of the chaos of a world in crisis of the utter failure of the capitalist system to bring justice, peace and equality to the masses of working people, let alone true democracy and freedom from want. Capitalism’s inability to solve the most fundamental problems of humankind is increasingly being revealed. Capitalism is incapable of acting in any other way but in its own interests and against the interests of the rest of humanity and the planet itself. 10%, the capitalist class, enslaves the other 90%. The capitalists own and control the politicians, the media, the police and the military. It is a system that has outlived its usefulness. The profit motive is the engine that drives capitalism. And the system itself fuels this engine by consuming the wealth of the world and accumulating more of it. Where do the profits go? The wealth goes into the pockets of the 10% t of the world’s population, the capitalist class. Nothing stands in their way of the accumulation of more wealth. 

Socialism based on fulfilling human needs and wants instead of profit, is able to turn the tables, and make all efforts to prevent natural disasters from having such a devastating impact. A socialist world will be able pull all of its resources together—with no mind to profit—to minimize human suffering and look after the welfare of all survivors. What a relief and pleasure it will be to live in a world socialist society that will consider the health, safety and welfare of people and the planet first and foremost, without having to satiate the greed of private capital ever again. Capitalism has no solutions to offer for the problems it creates. In reality, the development of new technology would allow for a different kind of life. Under capitalism, the economy is organised to guarantee bigger profits for the few. Automation and robotics, for the capitalists, means a reduction of the number of jobs available and not a reduction of the length of the working day.

Marx defined socialism as “an association of free men, working with the means of production held in common, and expending their many different forms of labour-power in full self-awareness as one single social labour force.” That is, a communist society is a society without classes, a society in which production won’t be ruled by the desire for ever greater profits for a tiny ruling class but by the needs of the whole society in the greatest possible harmony with nature. Money will no longer exist. Neither will the state. There will not be a minority accumulating all the wealth while the vast majority lives in poverty, forced to work just to survive. A socialist society will allow people to live a life free from all forms of oppression, one in which the time spent at work is reduced to a minimum and “free time” is spent not merely on the reproduction of one’s labour power, i.e., on the necessities of life that enable us to return to work the next day, but on actually living our lives. The goal is to establish a democratically planned economy and a society where the slogan “Our lives are worth more than their profits” is a reality. This is what we fight for.