The world is ours to share

 The Socialist Party says the choices facing our fellow-workers are world socialism or a final catastrophe. We believe that world barbarism will prevail unless a socialist reorganisation of society takes place. Many would say much of the world has already been turned into barbarism. There can be no world peace without a socialist reorganisation of society.  The Socialist Party has no other goal than the realisation of socialism. Political power is for us socialists only a means. The end for which we must use this power is the fundamental transformation of the entire economic relations. Currently all wealth belongs to a private capitalists. All social wealth, the land with all its natural resources beneath and on the surface, and all factories and works must be taken out of the hands of the exploiters and taken into common property of the people. Only then does the real task begin: the reconstruction of the economy on a completely new basis.

 At the moment production in every enterprise is conducted by individual capitalists on their own initiative. What – and in which way – is to be produced, where, when and how the produced goods are to be sold is determined by the industrialist. The workers do not see to all this, they are just living machines who have to carry out their work.

In socialism this will be completely different The employing class will disappear. Then no longer production aims towards the enrichment of one individual, but of delivering to the public at large the means of satisfying all its needs. Accordingly the factories, works and the agricultural enterprises must be reorganised according to a new way of looking at things:

If production is to have the aim of securing for everyone a dignified life, plentiful food and providing other cultural means of existence, then the productivity of labour must be a great deal higher than it is now. The land must yield a far greater yields, the most advanced technology must be used in the factories etc.

If we establish a way where everybody works for everyone, for the public good and benefit, then work itself must be organised quite differently. Nowadays work in industry, in agriculture and in the office is mostly a torment and a burden for the workers. One only goes to work because one has to, because one would not otherwise get the means to live. In a socialist society, where everyone works together for their own well being, the health of the workforce and its enthusiasm for work must be given the greatest consideration at work. Short working hours that do not exceed the normal capability, healthy work-places, all methods of recuperation and a variety of work must be introduced in order that everyone enjoys doing their part. Currently the capitalist, his works foreman or supervisor stands behind the worker with his whip. Hunger drives the the people to work in the factory or in the office.

In a socialist society the industrialist with his whip ceases to exist. The workers are free and equal human beings who work for their own well-being and benefit. That means by themselves, working on their own initiative, not wasting public wealth, and delivering the most reliable and meticulous work. Every socialist concern needs of course its technical specialists who give the guidance and advice so that everything runs smoothly and the highest efficiency is achieved.

One cannot create socialism with indifferent individualists. A socialist society needs people full of passion and enthusiasm for the well-being, full of solidarity and sympathy for our fellow human beings, full of courage and tenacity in order to attempt the most difficult. We do not need, however, to wait perhaps a century or a decade until such a person develop.

Socialism replaces the capitalist system – and immediately proceeds to administer on the basis of human requirements, ending the exploiting capitalists and their yearning for profits.

If you examine the problems facing the working people today, you find, first, that they are not new, but only a new variation of old difficulties and second, you discover that they would disappear if the capitalists were out of the way.

If a person is suffering from a fatal disease and the only chance of survival is a life-saving operation submitting to this operation is intelligent and rational. Surely, we must see that society is suffering from the cancer of capitalism and understand  that palliatives cannot cure. We need to cut out the cancer or resign ourselves to the progressively worsening of the condition.  We face a capitalist system exhibiting the newest symptom of the disease, the tragic collapse of civilisation. The alternative is to submit to the life-saving operation known as social revolution.

Socialism – the Alternative to Barbarism

 

The Socialist Party has always admitted that in its heyday capitalism was a progressive force. The lure for profits in the unlimited markets of the world stimulated the capitalist class to expand and industrialise the means of production. It encouraged science and invention to make possible the mass production of an abundance of commodities. It is true that in its progressive stage capitalists still robbed the workers of the product of its labour, just as it does to day. 

THE WORKING CLASS IS PAID IN WAGES ONLY A SMALL PART OF THE VALUES IT PRODUCES. 

 But then there was historic compensation for the robbery. The technological means for ultimately abolishing poverty from the face of the earth were being perfected. This reason for putting up with exploitation no longer exists. Poverty stalks the land – but not because of any lack of technology. Capitalism’s octopus grip of production is never released except when there is profit to be made. That is how “progressive” the capitalist system has become. So the wheels of industry stop turning and remain practically motionless until the blessings of business bank-balance rewards the investors. There is plenty of wear and tear on the human machine. Steadily the worker is depleted of ones power to labor. As we gets older we are threatened with “obsolescence” and are finally supplanted by a younger worker. 

 Every time the world enters a crisis, it also lets loose a great avalanche of beautiful promises for a post-crisis paradise on earth, of peace and good will. This abundance of empty promises is supposed to make up for working peoples self-sacrifice and shortages in happiness and the other necessities of life. After the pandemic ends, some are calling for the “Great Re-set”, a false slogan stirring only false hopes. Even the most starry-eyed should be disillusioned. Capitalism is far from altruistic and compassion and empathy is not how it operates. It is time for the workers to laugh in the faces of the demagogues of all political shades, with their windy promises to do this and that. Labour doesn’t need anybody to do anything for it – and furthermore nobody will do anything for labour. Labour can and must get on its own. It has the numbers, it has the industrial power. It needs only to cut the strings that keeps it dancing for the puppeteers.

What is needed is not a change of personnel at the controls but that the working peoples of the world must replace the rulers. This means the death of capitalism and the birth of socialism. Power and profit – the motive force of capitalism – will then perish. The peoples of the world will be able to produce their goods and use their resources ACCORDING TO THEIR HUMAN NEEDS. The wheels of industry has never ever ran for the people. If any one thing stands out above all else in the climate crises, it is the fundamental anarchy of the capitalist system. It is just impossible to make the profit system work in accordance with a plan. The purpose of production remains the same – how much is there in it for the controllers of commerce! Solutions to global warming  have been side-tracked or, if adopted, it has been done in such an emasculated form as not to hurt the profit motives of the bosses. The profit system, you see, recognises no plans. It has one unshakable purpose: PRIVATE GAIN.

 Economic crises have been marked by great abundance of productive resources, both capital and human – BUT UNUSED RESOURCES. That is the socialist indictment against capitalist anarchy. People starve in the midst of plenty because capitalism is geared to production for private profit. THE ONLY WAY OUT FOR THE WORKERS IS THROUGH SOCIALISM because all resources would be owned in common. But when a capitalist government proposes to go on a spending binge, the question always is: “Where will the money come from?” This again shows how capitalist economists are caught in a vicious circle. These capitalist politicians and economists – with their grandiose but futile plans – dare not face the fact that all future progress lies on the road to socialism. All of society’s problems arise from a common cause – the concentration of industrial and political power in the hands of the few against the many.  The future can be shaped by the workers in their own interests and the interest of the whole of society. To cut loose from the capitalist class, to step out into independent political action to supplant the useless capitalist class in the ownership and control of production. Modern production – which has been built up through the ages from the ingenuity of all mankind – can be released for the peaceful uses of people only by freeing it from the stranglehold of the political and industrial rulers of the world. Socialism will accomplish this next step in human progress.

The Way to Socialism

 Since it foundation the Socialist Party has studied class exploitation and its termination in a socialist society of abundance for all with production for use not profit. It has analysed the cruelty and the absurdity of unemployment, of want and suffering in the midst of plenty. We have explained the economic roots of war.

Although capitalism has provided educated workers and the technology, i.e., the machines and techniques which are necessary for a socialist reorganisation of society, it long ago ceased to provide for even the simple wants and needs of the plain people. The Socialist Party wants peace, instead of bloody destruction. We want security not anxiety. We want decent homes instead of slums for our families and good schools for our children. We want good healthcare. We want comfort and prosperity not low wages and unemployment. We want democracy and freedom instead of totalitarianism and bureaucracy. We want the end of national, racial and religious conflict.

In our modern civilisation, with its elaborate industries, intricate technologies and abundant natural resources, capitalism is incapable to provide us with these elementary needs. It is unable to avoid periodic crises and wars. It dooms working people to serfdom and poverty. Under this system of capitalism a handful of capitalists control the wealth and power of the planet. They own industry, banking, mining, transportation. The bigger, stronger and richer enterprises have swallowed up the weaker and smaller. They own our jobs. They own the democratic process and procedures because they finance the pro-big business political parties which put their servants into office. How can we hold faith in this system of capitalism?

They send our young men to war to protect their vested interests. They have the power of life and death over all of us. Capitalism intensifies competition on an international scale where giant multinational corporations engage in fierce struggle on the world market. Since all of the world is divided up into national states with national barriers or colonial countries subject to their masters, corporate the inevitable result of this great competitive struggle among the nations is war. It was this competition among nations which led to both world wars with dozens of minor and proxy wars between them. This fact alone indicts capitalism as the great obstacle to human progress. The victims starve or they pillage. They are wracked by disease. They have been located in  internment camps which they re-label refugee camps

The insanity of capitalism is that it creates inequality and poverty. Capitalists are united against the workers and their political and economic organisations, they are in competition against each other and against their capitalist counterparts abroad. Their motives are not the needs of harassed families or the struggling worker but how much profit can we make? They all try to outproduce and outsell each other on the market because the mainspring of capitalist production is profit, not human needs. The producer takes his profit from his employees. That is why we say socialism was a necessity long before the climate crises and the pandemic. The crises of capitalism are only being accentuated. The problems of capitalism exacerbated. We see the phenomenon of poverty in the midst of plenty. Every new discovery and invention which improves the productive capacity of capitalism and makes possible a saving of human labour, the benefits have not been distributed to mankind. The more advanced and refined become the technology, the more wealth becomes polarised at one end, and destitution at the other. On a world scale capitalism has reduced the standard of living and decreased the freedom of mankind. It has produced privation and totalitarianism in most of the world. Capitalism produces more and more for destruction. It has not been able to use its vast technical and material resources for constructive purposes. 

Socialism, and only socialism, will create a true global community, a world without national barriers, without international rivalries, without master and slave nations and, hence, a world without war.  Socialism’s primary duty will be to conduct the affairs of the world with the aim of eliminating poverty, joblessness, hunger and general insecurity. Its sole criterion would be the needs of the people. Socialism will end the root evil of modern society, i.e., the private and state ownership of the means of production, the factories, mines, mills, machinery and land, which produce the necessities of life. socialism, these instruments of production will become the property of society, owned in common, producing for use, for the general welfare of the people as a whole. With the abolition of the private property of the means of life and with it the factor of profit as the prime mover of production, the sharp divisions of society between nations and classes will disappear. Then, and only then, will society be in a position to become a social order of abundance and plenty for all, for socialism will create a new world of genuine cooperation and collaboration between the peoples of the earth.

In abolishing classes in society, socialism will change the form and type of administrations which exist today. They will not be the instruments of the capitalist class, i.e., capitalist governments whose main reason for existence is to guarantee the political as well as the economic rule of Big Business, their profits, their private ownership of the instruments of production, and the conduct of war in the economic and political interests of this class. The preoccupation of socialism will be to assist in the elevation of society, to improve continually the living standards of the people, to extend their leisure time and thus make it possible to heighten the cultural level of the whole world. In abolishing classes, class rule and war, socialism will at the same time destroy all forms of dictatorship, political as well as economic. World socialism will be the freest, most democratic society the world has ever known, truly representing the majority of the population and subject to its recall. A citizen of a socialist society will look back upon the capitalist era with its wars, destruction and bloody and cruel dictatorships as we now look back upon the dawn of written history. A socialist world will assess the industrial potential of the world, determine its resources, the needs of the people and plan production with the aim of increasing the standards of living of a free people, creating abundance, increasing leisure and opportunity for cultural enjoyment. Socialism will not concern itself with profits and war, but with providing decent life for all the people. Socialism will create a system of health-care in which the physical and psychological needs of the people

The aim of socialism is not the increased exploitation and intensification of labor, but the utilisation of machinery, technology, science and invention to diminish toil, to create time in which to permit all the people to enjoy the benefits of social progress. Our modern world contains all the pre-conditions necessary for socialism. All about us we can see the enormous industrial enterprises containing automation and robotic machinery which could produce the goods of life in abundance. Mankind has developed a marvellous technology to create a fruitful life of abundance. Socialism will place at the disposal of science and the scientists all the material means to help create an ever-improving social life for mankind. Under capitalism, scientists are mere wage workers hiring out their skills to private industry. The fruits of their intelligence, learning arid research become the exclusive property of the capitalists who profit from the labors of these scientists. Thus, science has become subordinated to profits rather than to the common good of all mankind. Yet the future society depends in large measure on changing this relation of science to society. Only socialism can place science where it properly belongs: in the service of the people.

We can go down the road of capitalism, the path of chaos, war, poverty and barbarism, or we can take the socialist route toward true freedom, peace and security, towards a society of plenty for all which would end the exploitation of man by man for all time.

NEW YEAR GREETINGS

 

Friends and comrades a guid New Year tae ane an’ a’. 

 

On behalf of all members and supporters of the World Socialist Movement, we send our greetings to the world’s working people for the New Year 2021, wishing them success in their struggle against capitalism in the coming year.

 

With the media filled with gloom and doom, we must present our view of New Year’s 2021 as one filled with optimism and enthusiasm for a revolutionary future.  One might well ask, what is there to be optimistic about? Certainly for the capitalist system 2021 doesn’t promise anything better than 2020 did. We are, after all, still in the midst of the worst pandemic of recent decades. The most important thing is socialism still promises a better times ahead. For every act of aggression, oppression and repression by the capitalists, there has been examples of rebellion, resistance and revolution on the part of the people. For every effort to divide our struggle, there were new steps taken toward unity.

Socialist Standard No. 1397 January 2021

 

No. 1397 January 2021 PDF

• Editorial

• Pathfinders

• Cooking the Books

• The Pace of Change

• Material World

• The Myths of Nationalism

• Copyrights expire, humanity gains

• Candles In The Wind

• Development to what?

• What is going on in Belarus?

• Proper Gander

• Book reviews

• 50 years ago

• Poland’s Pro-Choice Protests

• Rear View