World-threatening dangers cannot be averted by means of trifling tinkering. Capitalists are not interested in production to benefit the people of the world. They are interested only in profits. If the technology already available in the world were to be used for the purposes of construction, the entire planet could be transformed and the standards of living and level of culture raised to undreamed of heights. This is not possible under capitalism. Plenty under this system can only produce crises of over-production, recessions and lay-offs, because of the basic necessity of the capitalist class to make profits. The insanity of capitalism is that it creates inequality, poverty and unemployment and all the crises of society because it over-produces. Not, to be sure, in relation to human needs, but in relation to the market. Consequently, a garment manufacturer, instead of conducting consumer research of the number of people who need clothes, produces as much as he thinks he can sell at a profit. So does his rival. The market becomes glutted, because there are more clothes produced than the consumers can buy – not, of course, more than they need. Their motives are not the needs of men and women but: how much profit can we make?
Despite hunger in dozens of countries, crops in millions of bushels are diverted to fuel vehicles. It is also more profitable to feed livestock than starving people. This fact alone indicts capitalism as the great obstacle to human progress.
Many socialists say the alternative is world socialism or inevitable, catastrophe and that barbarism will prevail unless a socialist reorganisation of society takes place. Global warming has made socialism incalculably more necessary because the only alternative under capitalism is misery and suffering for the entire population of our planet.
The capitalists know how to destroy mankind, but not how to create harmony for humanity. Given the continued existence of capitalism, the prospects for peace and prosperity is remote. Only socialist one world can abolish scarcity and economic hardship. Capitalism has long provided the knowledge and the technology which are necessary for a socialist reorganisation of society, but it fails to provide for the simple wants and needs of working people. We want peace, instead of bloodshed and destruction. We want security instead of insecurity. We want decent homes for our families instead of slums, good healthcare for everyone and plentiful schools rather than child labour. We want comfort and prosperity, not low wages, unemployment and hunger. We want democracy and freedom instead of totalitarianism, bureaucracy and racial and religious conflict. But capitalism with its giant corporations, automation and robots and abundant natural resources, capitalism is unable to provide us with these elementary needs. It is unable to avoid wars. Capitalism produces more and more for destruction. It continues to direct more and more production into armaments production, to protect the wealth interests of the few. A constant redivision of the sources of wealth and profits takes place, with the carving up of the spoils. Unless the working class eliminate the system of profits and plunder wars will persist forever. While the capitalists are united against the workers, they are in competition against each other and against their capitalist counterparts abroad. They all try to outproduce and outsell each other on the market because the mainspring of capitalist production is profit, not human needs. As long as capitalism endures, the crises of capitalism will only be accentuated. It is a little more difficult for workers to understand this but on a world scale capitalism has reduced the standard of living and decreased the freedom of mankind. It has produced privation and totalitarianism in most of the world.
Every new discovery and invention which improved the productive technique of capitalism and made possible a saving of human labour and a refinement of the product, the benefits have not been distributed to mankind. The more advanced become the tools of our society, the more wealth becomes polarized at one end, and poverty at the other. We see the phenomenon of poverty in the midst of plenty.
Under this system of capitalism a handful of oligarchs and plutocrats control the wealth and power of the planet. They own corporations. They own the politicians because they finance the big business parties which put them into office. They have the power of life and death over all of us. Socialism, and only socialism, will create a true world society, a world without national barriers, without international rivalries, without master and slave nations and, hence, a world without war. There will not be a global government of a dominant economic elite but a worldwide administration of all the peoples that inhabit the planet. Its primary duty will be to conduct the affairs of the world with the aim of eliminating poverty, diseases, hunger and insecurity. while solving the climate crisis we all face. Its sole criterion would be the needs of the people. In abolishing classes in society, socialism will change the form and type of governments which exist today. Governments will become administrative bodies regulating production and consumption. They will not be the instruments of the capitalist class, i.e., capitalist governments whose main reason for existence is to guarantee the political as well as the economic rule of big business, their profits, their private ownership of the instruments of production, and the conduct of war in the economic and political interests of this class.
Socialism will end the root evil of modern society, i.e., the private ownership of the means of production, the factories farms and mines which produce the necessities of life. Production will become the property of society, owned in common, producing for use, for the general welfare of the people as a whole. With the abolition of the private ownership of the means of life and with it the factor of profit as the prime mover of production, the sharp divisions of society between nations and classes will disappear. Then, and only then, will society be in a position to become a social order of abundance and plenty for all, for socialism will create a new world of genuine cooperation and collaboration between the peoples of the earth.
In abolishing classes and the state socialism will at the same time destroy all forms of dictatorship, political as well as economic. The world socialism will be the freest, most democratic society the world has ever known truly representing the majority of the population.
World socialism will assess the industrial potential of the world, determine its resources, the needs of the people and plan production with the aim of increasing the standards of living of a free people, creating abundance, increasing leisure and opportunity for cultural enjoyment.
World socialism will not concern itself with profits and war, but with providing decent housing for all the people.
World socialism will provide for a multitude of schools for all the people.
World socialism will cease to regard education primarily as institutions to produce skilled labour to help operate the profit economy.
World socialism will create a system of good healthcare.
World socialism will provide worthwhile work with job satisfaction for all as this will be labour without exploitation. For the aim of socialism is not the increased exploitation and intensification of workplace, but the increasing technology, science and invention to diminish toil, to create time in which to permit all the people to enjoy the benefits of social progress.
World socialism will place at the disposal of science and the scientists all the material means to help create an ever-improving social life for mankind. Today’s society contains all the pre-conditions necessary for socialism, gigantic industrial enterprises containing machinery which could produce the goods of life in abundance. Mankind has developed a marvellous technology to create a fruitful life of abundance.
Only world socialism can place science where it properly belongs: in the service of the people.
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