A New Human Horizon

 

The market works. But just not for us. It works for the handful of people who own industry or land. Most of them are doing well and getting richer. For them, the present system works, through our hard work.

For us, the workers, it doesn’t. The real value of wages has shrunk. Housing is becoming more unaffordable for many, rents are rising and benefits are being cut. Unemployment is at staggering proportions, especially among young people.

The truth is being revealed across the world: that the system is run in the interests of those who own it. For governments, repaying debts to those who got wealthy from our work is more important than us receiving education or health care.

For us, the future won’t work so long as we depend on an economy based on the market with private or state ownership of the means of living.

In our workplaces we co-operate. We don’t charge our colleagues for our time: we work together. It’s just that we work together for our employers. If we owned the land and all the places of work ourselves, we could work together to make all the things we need, without buying and selling and without an employing class.

The alternative is voting for parties that support the market system: parties that inevitably have to accept the existence of poverty and unemployment.

While we build a movement to bring about a better future, it’s important that we use trade unions to defend ourselves and get the best deal we possibly can under the present system. We must ensure democratic control of trade unions, and not follow charlatans and adventurers to glorious defeat. We should rely on ourselves, not leaders.

If we want to transcend the defensive position forced upon us by the pressures of the profit system then a vision beyond capitalism has to be on the agenda.

That future we call socialism, a future where we would have common and democratic ownership of the resources of the world. A future that will work if the majority of us want it and are prepared to work for it using democratic struggle to create a world of common wealth.

The monster of war has raised its ugly head again, and once more the workers have been called upon to take up arms and risk their lives in their masters’ quarrels. The usual flimsy pretexts are broadcast.  The Western Powers claim to be concerned to defeat the pernicious intrigues of Russia.  It is an old oft-repeated story; littered with indecision, broken promises, duplicity and intrigues. So it will continue until those who do the work of the world realise that only when privilege in all forms, and class ownership of the means of living, have been abolished will it be possible for the people of the world to give in harmony.

The hypocritical blustering of the warmongers is matched by the feeble and contradictory protests of the alleged anti-war and peace committees. The rival slogans of “national sovereignty,” “international rights,” “restoring peace,” etc., only thinly disguised the sordid motives of the different ruling class groups. War is caused by commercial rivalries that are necessarily engendered by world capitalism. Each country builds up armed forces to maintain its position in the capitalist world, and no group which believes it has a vital interest at stake will be deterred from using its armed forces by United Nations resolutions. Capitalism is an exploiting system under which the workers—the mass of the population—produce the goods that are sold to provide the profit out of which the owners of the means of production and distribution accumulate their riches. Profit, the surplus left over after the expenses of production and distribution have been met, is the mainspring of the system. In order to obtain this profit goods have to be sold at home and abroad. This necessitates markets, trade routes and sources of supply. It is over these that capitalists quarrel and finally plunge into war. So it is today. All this points to the necessity of international working-class action to abolish the cause of war. Unfortunately, the workers are still at loggerheads internationally and are prey to all sorts of emotional upsurges that do not bring them any fundamental relief. They will only unite when they understand the cause of and remedy for war as well as for the other evils they suffer. Only when the workers do understand and unite against capitalism in all the countries of the world for the purpose of achieving socialism, the ownership in common of all that is in and on the earth will war vanish from the human horizon.