Our
age is one of continuous discovery, yet the problems of humanity seem
to be insurmountable. Our
age is full of contradictions. We could send
men to the moon, yet many on this world have not enough to eat.
Science
serves the ends of the capitalist system. It serves the military,
not
the community. The scientists are fettered
by the prejudices of private property and refuse to recognise that
the cause of the many social problems is capitalism itself.
The
drive for greater technical efficiency is basic to capitalism's
insatiable thirst for profits; humanity's real needs are not
considered.
Capitalism
has engulfed the whole world. Every nation is involved in world
trade and cannot escape its influence. Capitalism spreads it its own
ideology and culture. Globalisation destroys diverse communities with
their rich traditions. Today we all live very similar lives with same
social ills. We are all cogs in the machinery of capitalism, and are
exploited in the same way. Dress, diet and dialect may vary, but the
workers day-to-day worries are essentially the same. Apart from
socialism, nothing can stop capitalism. It subjugating greater
numbers of people to wage slavery. Under capitalism the privileges of
class ownership of wealth dominate community requirements, the needs
of the majority take second place. World capitalism as the dominating
system of production and distribution can never be rationally
organised in such a way that it serves the needs of the community.
Private ownership, economic exploitation and the distribution of
commodities through a marketing system with a view to making profit
from the barriers that prevent man from making the fullest possible
use of his labour, technology and natural resources. This is the
nature of the problem of poverty. Any attempt to deal with world
poverty within the framework of capitalist society is bound to fail,
since it accepts all the pre-conditions of the problem. The
priorities of capitalist society are privileged property rights and
the pursuit of profits. We must constantly draw attention to the
contradiction inherent within capitalist society. The problem of
hunger cannot be isolated from world poverty maintained year after
year by the economic barriers of capitalism. This is not a technical
problem: it is not a problem of overpopulation. It is a question of
the kind of social priorities that people choose to accept. If it is
to be capitalism, it will be production and distribution geared to
the private accumulation of wealth by a privileged minority. It will
mean economic recessions, unemployment, the curtailment of production
at a time when humanity desperately needs more wealth. It will mean
that technology will be stifled by the limitations of investment
programmes. It will mean that the price mechanism and the market will
sometimes result in the stockpiling or destruction of food whilst
people are starving. It will mean the waste involved in war and
commerce.
Socialism
will mean the free application of human labour to the earth's
resources with the most efficient utilisation and further development
of technology. It will mean a productive system built up on relations
of social equality and adjusted to the idea that man matters most.
The object of socialism is to unite humanity and to solve social
problems by building a society which can satisfy the universal need
for co-operation and material security. Socialism is the form
of society most compatible with the needs of man. Its necessity
springs from the enduring problems, the economic contradictions and
social conflicts of present-day society. Socialist society must be
based upon the common ownership and democratic control by the whole
community of the means of life.Life will be based on human
relationships of equality and co-operation. Through these
relationships, man will produce useful things, construct amenities
and establish desirable institutions.
Socialism
will resolve the conflicts which at present divide man from man.
Regardless of ethnic or cultural differences, the whole world
community will share a common interest. The building of socialism
requires a social reorganisation where the earth's resources and the
apparatus of production are held in common by the whole community.
Instead of serving sectional interests, they are made freely
accessible to society as a whole. Production will be organized at
world level with co-ordination of its differing parts down to local
levels. In socialism there will be no market, trade or barter. In the
absence of a system of exchange, money will have no function to
perform. Individuals will participate freely in production and take
what they need from what is produced. The fact that socialism will be
based on common ownership does not mean that an individual will have
no call on personal effects. It means essentially that no minority
will have control over or possession of natural resources or means of
production. Individuals will stand in relation to each other not as
economic categories, not as employers and employees or buyers and
sellers, but simply as human beings producing and consuming the
necessary things of life. Socialist society will minimise waste and
set free an immense amount of human labour. Armies and armament
industries with their squandering of men and materials will be swept
away. These will disappear together with all the wasteful appendages
of trade and commerce.
In
socialism there will be a common interest in the planning and smooth
operation of production. Work will be a part of human co-operation in
dealing with practical problems. Work will be one aspect of the
varied yet integrated life of the community. With the change in the
object of society, that is human welfare instead of profit, man will
freely develop agriculture and housing, produce useful things and
maintain services. As well as material production, man will freely
develop desirable institutions such as libraries, education
facilities, centres of art and crafts and centres of research in
science and technology. It will be a problem of social planning,
statistics and research to ascertain the requirements of the
community. Although these techniques are used for different ends,
there is already wide experience of them. With experience of
Socialist production, these planning techniques will gain in
accuracy. Once produced, goods will be transported to centres of
distribution where all will have the same right of access to what is
available according to individual need. It will be a simple matter of
collecting what is required. As well as tradition and geography, it
will be a matter of organization and practicality as to which things
will require a complex world division of labour for their production
and which things will be produced regionally.
Socialism
will establish a community of interests. The development of the
individual will enhance the lives of other men. Equality will
manifest attitudes of co-operation. The individual will enjoy the
security of being integrated with society at large. The establishment
of socialism does not call for the complete destruction and
reconstruction of society. Techniques of production and some of the
machinery of administration which can be transformed already exist.
The task is to allow their free use and development by and for the
community. With the change in the object of society from profit to
human welfare will come a change in the function of social
institutions Socialism will continue those institutions necessary to
its own organisation. For example, the Food and Agricultural
Organization and World Health Organisation could be expanded to
submit plans and execute decisions concerning world food production
and global healthcare
The
schools and universities will no longer be concerned with the
training of wage and salary workers for the needs of trade and
commerce. Education will be a social amenity for life, providing
teachers and a storehouse of all accumulated knowledge and skill.
Education will not be rigidly separated from other aspects of life.
The provision of education facilities will call for some permanent
specialists, but knowledge and skill will to a much greater extent be
passed on by those actively engaged in their practical application.
Education will be tied more closely to the whole process of living.
Socialism
will end national barriers. The human family will have freedom of
movement over the entire earth. Socialism would facilitate universal
human contact but at the same time would take care to preserve
diversity. Variety in language, music, handicrafts, art forms and
diet etc will add to all human experience. Socialism
will be democratic. World policies will be subject to the control of
the world community. The most complete information relevant to all
issues under discussion will be made fully available. Elected
delegates will carry local viewpoints to a world congress where the
broad decisions on all aspects of social policy will be made. From
that point, the social machinery would be implemented to carry out
these decisions, subject to democratic control through both local and
world bodies. Decisions affecting only local interests would be made
democratically by the local community. The
elimination of vested interests will mean that men will have no
ulterior motives influencing their decisions.
Within
present capitalist society, people and resources serve profit. On all
sides it can be seen that commerce and trade – the exchange economy
- are preventing mankind from expanding production on a scale
necessary to serve the community’s needs. Socialism will provide a
social framework that will enable humanity to get on with the job.
The initial task of producing enough goods for the whole human family
will be a huge one. We do not underestimate the problems of
organization and production involved, but to eliminate world poverty
must be one of the first tasks of socialist society. It is the
glaring contradiction of our times that wealth is socially produced
but possessed by a minority. Whereas in science, technology and in
the development of the means of production man has brilliantly
asserted his genius, in his relationships man suffers an abiding
failure. It is this failure which is expressed in war, nationalism,
racism, world hunger and poverty, unemployment, industrial chaos and
social disunity. In all history, man has never suffered such
universal frustration whilst having so close at hand the means of
building a better world.
