The more a person ponders the present social system, and the facts of working-class existence under capitalism, the more its realities show that the root cause of the many evils of to-day is nothing else but the class-ownership and control of the means of living. It is out of that class-ownership spring the wage-slavery, exploitation, misery and poverty, and the innumerable evils that arise from this system of production for profit.
Our chief function in life to-day is to work— and that to produce a surplus-value for an idle and parasitic class of exploiters. We work to live, but to most of us, it seems as though we live chiefly to work. Our masters, owning the means of living, own and control our lives.
Under capitalism, the means of wealth production—factories, farms, mines, media, means of communication and transportation—are owned and controlled by a small minority of the world's population. The world is run for the purpose of accumulating profits for that capitalist minority. In the pursuit of profit, the needs, feelings, hopes and dreams of the vast majority will inevitably be neglected.
In socialism, people will be free. The most basic social freedom of all is free access to the goods and services we need. Socialism means that the common store of global wealth, including all services and the widest artistic opportunities, will be free to all. There will be no money. Each will take from what is available according to their needs, just as all will give to society according to their abilities. Co-operative, democratic human freedom will prevail.
With this economic freedom from the shackles of the market will come a profound emotional freeing of people from the burden of living in fear of powers beyond them. No more bosses, no more gods, no more money-worship, no more State, leader-free and class-free humanity will be liberated to explore what we want to make of ourselves. The dreams which had previously been confined to utopian visions will be on the social agenda.
Why just fight against the attacks of austerity and cutbacks which are continual and relentless given the present way of organising society? Instead let’s work together for a totally new system, one where the resources of the planet belong to everyone rather than to a tiny class of super-rich (the one percent as they’re often called nowadays). Where production takes place to meet human needs rather than the profits of the few. Where effort is put into producing food, housing, clothing and the other things and services we need, rather than wasted on advertising, armed forces and the paraphernalia of the money system, such as credit cards, banks and insurance. Where people are free of the oppression and exploitation caused by class and state.
Don’t be satisfied with reforms. If you think the arguments above show that the present system, capitalism, does not serve the interests of the vast majority, consider supporting the Socialist Party in our fight to replace capitalism with a global socialist society.
It is all very well being ‘against austerity’ but the cruel fact is that, when capitalism is going through one of its recurring crises, there is no alternative within the system to austerity. It is not the government that is to blame but the capitalist system. In imposing austerity all that governments are doing is what is required by the way capitalism works.
Of course, austerity should be resisted to the extent that it can be – that’s what trade unions and such organisations are for – but without illusions. The most that can be achieved is a few mitigations here and there or a different distribution of the cuts, but they cannot be avoided.
This is not defeatism. It is realism. The only alternative to the present austerity is neither a change of economic policy nor a change of government. It is a change of system, from minority ownership and production for profit to common ownership and production directly to meet people’s needs, in a word, to socialism.
Socialism is, quite literally, the only realistic alternative to the present austerity. That’s what those who call themselves socialists should be advocating. Enough of ‘People’s Budgets,’ ‘Tax the Rich,’ ‘Make the Bosses Pay’ and other such reformist nostrums. Let’s campaign for socialism.
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