Tuesday, May 12, 2020

A social revolution is still to come


The Socialist Party keeps promoting a revolution that no one else seems to be interested in having. And since we need many more to be in favour, all we can do is persist in our campaigns of socialist education and wait. It does seem strange to us that with inequality reaching extreme heights and the wealthy can no longer to hide away behind their mansions in gated communities that a revolution would be inevitable. Alas, no. The vast majority of the population still do not consider a revolution worth having even though the planet is in a state of an emergency with a pandemic and a climate crisis. The majority don’t seek to be free, they merely struggle to be better treated slaves. The ruling class has created a cultural belief system that claims that their interests are for the good of the people, but strangely it always result in making them richer and  more powerful.  The whole world is forced into total dependency upon their system. Ahh, well. But the Socialist Party remember it will be their revolution, not ours. So we wait and agitate.

Once it was coercion that kept people in line. Now it is manipulated minds. John Keracher, a Marxist from the 20s and 30s, called the mass media the "head-fixing industry". 

The elite divert our anger against their privileges by stoking fear against external “enemies”, another foreign power or immigrants from other lands. Even this pandemic is labelled the “invisible foe”, absolving the employing, owning class of any blame. They are not responsible for the spread of the pandemic, they tell us, and are similarly the victims, as their stock and share investments swell in price. They issue semi-plausible conspiracy theories to divert attention away from their own complicity and culpability.

We are living in strange times indeed.  This crises we face raises many questions about the type of society we live under and what our expectations are, or should be, about it. Capitalism is propelling people towards the ecological abyss and environmental activists have largely made peace with capitalism, advocating profitable techno-fixes rather than any change to the economic order. Capitalism is reducing our ability to survive on this planet. People are genuinely concerned about the approaching calamities civilisation is facing. The Socialist Party, too, feels afraid. But we are not frightened of the need for social change as a solution. People are tired of being told what to do by “leaders”. People are beginning to reject their top-down “solutions”. People want to be the decision-makers themselves, which means more than the periodic input of an election which is customary disregarded by the elected government. Working people can and must speak out in their own name. We cannot rely on those who claim to speak for us. There is an alternative. We can find new ways to come together and discuss new directions for our society and the economy.

A revolution of a real kind, one where our relationship are radically changed is the Socialist Party’s agenda. Change will come. When? We cannot predict or prophesise. But soon. Surely soon.

 In the middle of this pandemic and the threat of global warming we have learned to think and work cooperatively. People have come together in voluntary associations. We are not only curing ourselves of the COVID-19 virus but we are also in the process of curing ourselves of the cancer of capitalism. The Socialist Party may be a small voice but we are saying a radical change is required, not in the far-off future but right now if we want people to possess real choices over our lives. We patiently persevere with our case for socialism until fellow-workers listen and it is eventually heard. What happens next is vital for human survival. 


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