It is not enough for socialists to decry the reformists’ abandonment
of any meaningful socialist meaningful policies. Is neither enough to speak in
general terms of the need for radical and socialism. The Socialist Party must be
more specific and it is high time to spell out concretely what should be done. It
is not utopian of us to imagine what a socialist society would appear like.
Obviously, a more detailed elaboration will be clearer closer to the time but
we can still offer a vision of what socialism is.
The purpose of the Socialist Party is to achieve world
socialism in which the social ownership of the means of production shall
replace the existing capitalist system. Our world is rich in natural resources
and is capable of producing everything necessary for a good life for all. Our
planet could be truly a paradise for everybody but it is not a paradise for the
people. Folk are starving while food rots. Wars are raging with a barbarity
that shames our species. In Britain and elsewhere the social services being cut
to the bone. Why is this? The fundamental reason of all this suffering is that
the world is capitalist, ruled for and by capitalists for their profit and
interests. It is divided into rich and poor—a tiny handful of rich (1 per cent
of the population own more than half the nation’s wealth). It is a system of
exploitation where a tiny handful of people own the “means of production” (the
land, the mines, factories, the machines, etc.) and living off the sweat and toil
of other people. The problems of capitalism - exploitation, anarchy of
production, speculation and crisis, and the whole system of injustice - arise
from the self-interest of this tiny group of capitalists.
The essence of exploitation under capitalism consists in
this — that the workers, when set to work with raw materials and machinery,
produce far more in values than what is paid out by the capitalists in wages.
In short, they produce a surplus which is taken by the capitalists and for
which they are not paid. Thus they are robbed of the values they produce. This
is the source of capitalist profit. It is on this surplus, produced by the
workers, that the capitalist lives in riches and luxury. Capitalism has created
the economic conditions for socialism. Today the whole system of production is
socially interdependent, but it is controlled by private hands. In place of
private control of social production there must be social ownership if
society's problems are to be addressed.
Only socialism can solve the problems facing the people of
the world. No longer can some men (the capitalists) by virtue of the fact that
they own the means of production, live off (exploit) the labour of others (the
working class). No longer are the workers compelled to sell their labour power
to the capitalists in order to live. The workers are no longer property-less
proletarians. They now own the means of production and work them in their own
interests and in the interests of society. For society is now composed or
workers by hand and brain, i.e. of an associated body of wealth-producers.
Socialism will be a better society, one which will present
unprecedented possibilities for the improvement of peoples' lives. Because
working people will control the great wealth they produce, they will be
fundamentally able to determine their own futures. The end of exploitation of
one person by another will be a resounding liberating and transforming force. The
economy will be planned to serve human needs rather than simply profit and
luxury consumption by the rich. This will release the productive capacity of
the economy from the limitations of profit maximisation. A great expansion in
useful production and the wealth of society will become useful. Proper planning
and cooperative coordination will replace the chaos of commerce. With
socialism, goods and services will be distributed on the basis of from each
according to their ability, to each according to their needs. Workers will
manage democratically their own work places through workers' councils and
elected delegates, in place of the myriad of supervisors and overseers today.
In this way workers will be able to make their work places safe and efficient
places that can serve their own interests as well as society's with the way
cleared to achieve a decent meaningful and productive life for all working
people. Such a democratisation of industry would not work unless the mass of
the working class itself was imbued with a consciousness of its necessity,
prepared to struggle for it, and prepared to participate in its functioning. What
will not be developed under socialism are the massive government bureaucracy
and repressive state apparatus (police, prisons) which are used to control the
people and defend the privileged position of the ruling class. Socialism will
not mean government control. Today under capitalism the state serves the
interests of the capitalist class. With socialism the state will
"wither" away, and a new era of human freedom and prosperity will
arise.
Single-issue campaigns and protest movements have played an
important role in mobilising social activists and raising awareness about
issues. But protest and campaigning can only take the class struggle so far. We
can’t just keep on campaigning against things. We have to also
campaign for things. If all the aroused and the enraged can see is an
unresponsive brick wall of party bureaucracy misnamed ‘democratic centralism’
with leaders who make promises they don’t intend to carry out, they it can
easily result in demoralisation and apathy. There is a democratic instinct
among working people. They know that majority control is in their interests as
opposed to domination by unrepresentative minorities or vanguards. The healthy
rejection of leaders, opportunism and careerism should not mean a rejection of
organisation. A mass movement of workers has to have a purpose. For sure it
should defend and protect the exploited and oppressed, the targets and victims
of capitalism. But these are only defensive struggles within the system and can
only take us so far. Social movements should plan for replacing the existing
system with something radically better and be committed to the democratic
socialist transformation of society, a society where decision-making permeates
its complete essence and where the majority collectively own and control the economy.
We need peoples’ power that encourages debate and has nothing to fear from the
open and free flow of ideas and information, but everything to gain. Working
people clearly appreciate that unity is strength, especially in the face of
capitalist wealth and power. That in division lies defeat. One united movement
has a far greater chance of succeeding than one divided up into a series of
competing groups but this cannot be based upon a ‘broad church’ of
contradictory aims but has to be formed with a common goal yet providing ample
forums in which all the different ideas and strategies for changing society can
be debated and decided upon. Past experience has shown that the fight for
reforms can all too easily become an end in itself, with the aim of the
democratic socialist transformation of society relegated to celebratory
speeches and pious resolutions. The system has demonstrated that it cannot
deliver reforms and cannot even retain past gains.
Our political work now must be one of preparation, linking
up with who want to fight back. We are merely making the road clearer and
easier to travel down so that working people’s efforts to transform society
have a better chance of success.
Andrew Kliman writes critically “On the anticapitalist left,
the typical view of how to transcend capitalism can be summarized as follows.
First, you change people’s consciousness, or their consciousness changes
through their participation in new forms of organization. The change in
consciousness allows us to increase our side’s political power, to the point
where we take control, either through elections or by seizing power. And once our side has political power, we can
then change the nature of the economy and the state simply by deciding to put
“people before profit” and implementing what we decide. We need the right
political forms, forms of organization, to accomplish this—and there’s a whole
lot of debate about what are the right forms of organization. But if we do have
the right forms of organization, then overcoming capitalism is a simple matter.
We decide, through these forms of organization, what should be produced and
what shouldn’t, we decide how to distribute resources and goods fairly, we
decide on other social priorities, and then we just put these decisions into
effect. This picture of social change is in the minds of almost the whole of
the anticapitalist left, from vanguardists to anarchists.” He goes on to say
“despite your intentions–in order to compete effectively, there will be a
continual stream of unintended consequences that you won’t be able to eliminate
through experimentation. A country that tries to improve the standard of living
of its workers too much will not be competitive. State-run banks that try to
pursue public policy objectives instead of maximizing profit, and worker-run
banks that try to enhance the workers’ well-being instead of maximizing profit,
will lack the funds to do so. And so on. The problem here isn’t that you’ve
made mistakes…The problem is rather that, despite your good intentions, and
despite the new priorities, new forms of organization, new forms of ownership,
new laws, and the new name you give your society, it remains capitalist. It
remains capitalist because the economic laws that govern capitalism continue to
govern your society. And they continue to govern your society because new
priorities, new forms of organization, new forms of ownership and so forth are
not enough––by themselves––to overcome the economic laws of capitalism.”
They would merely be capitalism in a different form or they
would be unviable and lead back to capitalism.
And the reason why they wouldn’t work is that these supposed
alternatives to capitalism all try to get rid of capitalism without getting rid
of its mode of production. The proposals won’t work because it tries to change
the capitalist system by eliminating its effects, but not the causes of these
effects. Changes in political and legal forms, and changes in consciousness,
are not themselves changes in the relations of production. If only they are
changed, not the relations of production, the changes will not succeed in
changing the character of the society. Capitalism is based on its mode of
production; socialism is based on the socialist mode of production. If there is
a third kind of society in between them, what is its mode of production?
We live in a world where technological achievements
unimaginable in previous societies are within our grasp. For the first time in
history we can produce enough to satisfy the needs of everyone on the planet. Yet
millions of lives are stunted by poverty, destroyed by disease and military
conflict devastate lives. New technology gifted with the wonderful power of
shortening and fulfilling human labour, offers unemployment or over-work. The
domination of commodities in our society is so pervasive that it seems to be an
inevitable, natural state of affairs. All our achievements, everything we
produce, appear as commodities. The creation of exchange values and the
circulation of commodities requires a commodity which can represent all other
commodities, through which all other commodities can be compared and money is
the universal pimp. Money can buy everything - it is the most powerful
commodity in existence. The role of money in the circulation of commodities
shapes the consciousness of human beings involved in that process. Money takes
on the value of the objects it represents, it appears to be the force which can
create value itself. Money twists our human potential, transforms our feelings
into false feelings and manufactured needs, and changes us into different
people, alienated, atomized human beings
who lives somebody else’s life — not our own life. In the capitalist system,
the worker work for money, to survive and the accumulate things. The worker
does not experience work as free life. It deeply effects the social relations
of the worker to the husband/wife, lover, children, friends, and the worker’s
well-being; the psychological damages from the stress of work can last for a
life-time.
We say we human beings being social beings have the ability
to determine and direct our own futures (within certain limits). When the
workers own the means of production, William Morris explained, they will be
able to concentrate on a beautiful artistic production. Similarly, with more
leisure, they will have more desires and so a desire for beautiful things. We
entered into a society of abundance many decades ago, but capitalists must invest
seemingly forever to secure wealth, the fruit of that abundance, for
themselves. Technology does benefit society by creating unprecedented material
abundance. This abundance, while generated by greater productivity, has to be
hidden in plain view from the people. This is the great capitalist scam: the
owners of technology convince the workers that the machines, dead labor so to
speak, not their living labor, produce wealth. The bosses have largely
convinced us that we must service the machines at low wages, not the other way
round. An abundant society is not defined by the size of your plasma television
but by the quality of life that ensues when basic needs – food, shelter, health
and conviviality – are satisfied. When the time that we devote to directly
supplying those real needs reverts back to us, when our days are filled with
the things we want to do and that immediately sustain us, and not the tasks of
the paymaster, then we can begin to truly live.
A line of thinking like this is dismissed as fanciful, as
utopian, in the sense of unattainable. But, to mention only one area, the
accelerated pace of our current drive to despoil the environment in quest for
oil and natural gas is praised as eminently practical. Where is the folly here?
Is imagining a world free of exploitation more harebrained than the headlong
pollution of our planet? What sort of society could evolve if everybody had
free access to the world’s wealth to meet his or her basic needs of food,
shelter and health?
It is necessary to persist in speaking about an abundant
society and counter the popular confusions, because there is no other way to
reverse the perspective of power – a perspective that demands sacrifice and
scarcity to keep us all subservient.
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