Towards Sustainable Socialism

 Freedom, true freedom, is freedom from hunger, ignorance, violence and oppression. A united worldwide working class can bring about true freedom—freedom from capitalism—and the establishment of socialism.  Socialism would give us the freedom to live fulfilling lives. It’s feasible in the here and now and it’s humanity’s only hope. This is the only way human society can cease to be based on endless production, and instead become a society based on production for need. This system cannot be stopped by force. It is violent and ruthless beyond the capacity of any people’s resistance movement. The only way I can even imagine stopping it is through non-cooperation, denying our consent and refusing our compliance with it

In a sustainable society, the economy would be democratically controlled and organised to provide the greatest possible well-being for everyone.  The Capitalist’s profit is extracted from workers’ labour when the capitalists pay them less than the value of what they produce. The portion of the value of the product that the capitalist keeps is called surplus value. The amount of surplus value that the capitalist can keep varies with the level of organization of the workers, and with their level of privilege within the world labour pool. But the working class can never be paid the full value of their labour under capitalism because the capitalist class exists by extracting surplus value from their labour. This system cannot be reformed. It is based on the destruction of the earth and the exploitation of the people. There is no such thing as green capitalism.

 Capitalism by its very structure is designed to protect the privileges of the wealthy by any means necessary. Capitalism has outlived its usefulness. It destroys the world in order to increase profits for the wealthy. The gap between the rich and the poor has grown astronomically in the last few decades. Natural resources wherever they are found, are taken for the benefit of corporations.

Socialism turns capitalism—the private ownership of the means of production—upside-down. Socialism is an economic system that democratises production in order to fulfil the needs and wants of all on an equal basis, instead of on the accumulation of private profits for the few.

Production for need and want instead of private profit will free up resources to ensure the health and safety of workers and the preservation of our environment. It will eliminate the waste of producing inferior products designed to break down so that they have to constantly be replaced—a standard practice of capitalist production to increase profits. Instead, we can concentrate on the production of durable products that can be upgraded as technology evolves. Capitalist production pollutes and destroys the environment because protecting the planet cuts into profits. That’s why factories spew their filth into the air and poison the land, the rivers and the sea.

 Socialism will end all that. Without the profit-driven capitalist motive of production, we will be free to revolutionize production methods without sacrificing the well-being of people or the planet.

The goal will be to produce durable goods more efficiently—maximising automation while gradually shortening the working week and increasing living standards for all—so that everyone can have, not only all the necessities and wants of life, but more free time to pursue personal interests, the arts, scientific advancements.

We will be free to preserve our environment It will be a world without racism, sexism, war, crime, poverty, starvation, homelessness, ignorance, despair, abuse addiction, and pestilence. In a democratic and cooperative socialist society, the free and equal development of each individual’s talents and abilities will finally become the condition for the free and equal development of all of us.

There is only one thing that stands in the way of our road to a socialist utopia—and that is capitalism—the ownership of the means of production by a tiny, despotic, divisive, parasitic capitalist class that can only survive by oppression and coercion. Capitalism has to go!

A socialist society will be a society designed to encourage human development to its fullest while preserving and safeguarding the health and welfare of our planet for the benefit of all.

 

Ending capitalism is essential to solving the current world environmental crisis.  An alternative economy which serves the interests of the majority is necessary. Capitalist society robs us of community with each other and harmony with the planet. If workers had control of society, they would find a more humane way to decide what we need and how to produce it. The Socialist Party’s credo is "production for use, not for profit, production for need, not for greed."