The Workers Will Decide

 

We live in a society which is dominated by the principle of competition and divided into the capitalist class and working class. Just as there is struggle between workers and capitalists there is also struggle between capitalists of one country and capitalists of another. We therefore find antagonistic nation states all competing with each other to secure and expand their national economic interests and political ambitions. To do so. one state must gain at the other's expense. This leads to conflict and, when diplomatic methods have failed, to war. Humanity needs to scrap the artificial division of the world's people into social classes, national states, political units and economic blocs — to scrap the social system which is the cause of war in the modern world.

In socialism there will be no money, no buying and selling at all, nor any system of barter. Instead people will be free to go into the shopping malls and take whatever they want, without payment and without being rationed.

The world can be run in this way because we already have the technical know-how to produce more than enough of the things people want and need. But for the moment money still functions as a form of rationing. If you can't afford something, you go without. That is why people starve, why families are condemned to live in slums, and why men, women, and children throughout the world are deprived and have their lives ruined. Yet the stupid thing about it is that the money system is not the result of scarcity in the world today but it is the cause of that scarcity. All the evidence shows that food, for example, is not produced in sufficient quantities to adequately feed the world’s population not because man lacks the resources to do this but for the disgusting reason that no profits can be made out of hungry people.

Of course, socialism involves such a complete change in the way in which the world is organised that it can only be put into practice when all the factories, mines, transport systems, shops, and so on are owned by mankind and used for the benefit of the entire world population. That is why we say that in socialism unemployment will reach such massive proportions. The whole system of employment, of a class of bosses buying our energies with wages and then setting us to work for themselves, will be replaced by voluntary, co-operative effort by all members of society. At the same time one of the first priorities in a socialist world will be to get rid of the boring and repetitive tasks which today make so much work unpleasant and replace them with alternative methods.

Socialism must be a world community without frontiers. It can not be set up in one country or even in one part of the world. This means that, just as there will be no buying and selling between individuals in Socialism, so there will be no trade between different countries. Production in socialism will involve a worldwide effort to produce what is wanted and since every region will be working towards this end (and will participate in the democratic processes used to decide what is needed and in what quantities) naturally every group of people will have free access to what is produced.

Perhaps you think that mankind is 'too lazy’ or 'too greedy' to make socialism work, or you might imagine that everything we suggest conflicts with 'human nature’. But, of course, such views are just prejudices unless you have some evidence to show that humanity is unsuited to live in a socialist society. Socialists are always open to reasoned argument but all our investigations so far have led us to the conclusion that socialism is not just a good idea but also is urgently needed to solve many of the problems which now worry us.

People are social and our capacity for cooperation and adaptation allows us to envisage and build a world beyond the current economic and political system which many regard as unchangeable. Capitalism is beginning to become a dirty word again. People have begun to protest against the profit system and the effect it is having on the quality of life. An unorganised anti-capitalist rebellion can only end in disaster out of which, either the present elite reassert their control or a new ruling class would take advantage of the chaos to gain power. If we are going to get rid of capitalism, the people have to do it by a democratic structure. We need to organise ourselves collectively to create a state-free world society, one without passports and borders.