Capitalism: The Real Enemy

 

Economic, social and environmental problems cannot be solved under capitalism. Working for a new system is the only practical course of action.

What is fair about the conservative mantra, "A fair day's wages for a fair day’s work..."? What is fair about a pickpocket economic system wherein capitalist profit derives from labour that the capitalist does not pay for? Socialism will harbour no such paradox as poverty in the midst of plenty. This is because workers will have united on both the political and industrial fields to inaugurate social control and worker administration of all industries and services, thus ending capitalism and wage slavery. What is more, it follows that in so doing they, the workers, will have also dumped into the garbage-bin of history the very thing that they are today struggling to get more of! MONEY. No more money? Are socialists mad? Not so. How, then, will a money-free society make available goods that are necessary for life and well-being? 

Disregarding a possible need for rationing in the immediate aftermath of a socialist political victory, the Socialist Party of Great Britain and its companion parties of the World Socialist Movement advocate free access.   We believe that deprived of the minority ownership of the means of production, the drudgery of work (and even within such a system, our natural creativity shapes our workday into as pleasurable and challenging an endeavour as possible) will be replaced by harmony between our product and our relationship to it. In short, we will all want to work as much as possible because the distinction between work and art (or free time) will have been eradicated. 

Today we have no problem with one-quarter of the workforce engaged in socially necessary products and services while the remaining three-quarters either produce unnecessary services such as accounting, banking, ticketing or policing, or are unemployed, or are being massacred in wars, or are dying of illnesses secondary to malnutrition. If a relatively small percent of workers' labour is able to maintain the millions of unemployed, "socially unnecessary" workers, starving workers, or murdering workers, then it will hardly be such a bad thing if all of humanity, now liberated of wage labour forever, sustains an ongoing percent (perhaps even half of the population at a time would be a realistic figure for all we know) whatever class they were in before. In fact, laziness, as Paul Lafargue once argued, should be the ethic replacing the current workaholism. We want socialism to be free, don't we?  Socialism will not be founded on the principle of "who does not work, neither shall he eat", also known by the distorted Marxist principle to make it "from each according to ability, to each according to work", a principle used to justify big salaries for civil servant bureaucrats,  a principle that says nothing about the needs of those who are unable to work -- the sick, the disabled, the old, the young. 

Capitalism has already solved -- potentially, at least -- the problem of scarcity, so that rationing would not be needed in a Socialist society. But, to be realistic, Socialism may be confronted by serious problems from time to time -- earthquakes, epidemics, crop failures, etc. -- which would put temporary and unusual pressure on a system based on 'free access.' Then, there may be local situations where some form of rationing might be necessary on a temporary basis. In such a situation, if the Socialist principle of "to each according to their needs" applied, priority would be given to those most in need, and -- if their need was less not necessarily to those who work hardest. 

Our goal seeks to bring the entire economy under the ownership and control of all the people. A democratic economy will provide useful and satisfying jobs for all workers. It will end production for-profit and will produce to meet human needs. By eliminating the profit motive, will end waste and pollution and will make the conditions of work as safe, comfortable and gratifying as possible. the workers will need a political party to spread the idea of social ownership, and to gain the support of the majority at the polls. When this is achieved, the workers will assume control of their workplaces, and manage them democratically. Socialism is not state control from the top down. It's a state-free democracy from the bottom up. A workers' political party with a single demand -- The Workplaces to the Workers! -- will educate and rally the majority for a revolution at the ballot box, the people's mandate for economic democracy.

Create a good society for the World. Replace bosses' economic dictatorship with a peoples' economic democracy