A Happy New Year?

Socialists do not extend conventional
New Year greetings. We do not expect that
the next twelve months will be happy or
prosperous for the majority of the world's
population. Only relative degrees of poverty
and misery await the wealth producers of
the world in the year to come. As rational
beings, we are aware that for the majority
of the world's people, 2012 will not be a
'happy New Year' and envisage that the
coming year will see the usual newspaper
reports about corruption, injustice, failed
global summits, hunger, disease, conflict
and war and a myriad other social ills.

Don't look to us for instant solutions to
society's ills, though. You, fellow worker,
must enact the remedy or else all of us who
live by selling ourselves for wages or
salaries will continue to be affected by the
social problems that we have come to know
so well. No socialist can do your reasoning
for you. Your brain is your own. You may
either leave it to the manipulative forces of
the status quo (the schools, media, churches
and political leaders) or reclaim it for the
purpose of doing some serious thinking.

We don't need to tell you what to think
about. Your experience is far greater than
our descriptive powers will ever be. You
know what it feels like to live in a world
where your abilities are a commodity to be
bought and sold so that someone else can
make a profit from your labour. You may
be afraid of the label, 'Marxism'; you may
not like to think that you are a slave for
wages, but experience counts more than
labels.

You fear war. You fear getting the sack.
You fear getting ill and receiving
inadequate health treatment because you
can't afford the best. You don't like to be
pushed around. You don't need to be told
that your present lot is not good enough;
you are thinking that already.

We do not need to tell yon why all this
is so. But even then, you have only to read
the newspapers and they will give you
another explanation. We can tell you that
unemployment arises when commodities
cannot be sold profitably; they tell you
that it is caused by workers not working
hard enough. We say that wars are the
consequence of the fight between the rich
and the powerful over property and
markets; they say that they are caused by
the aggressiveness and lack of cooperation
of ordinary people. We say that
poverty is caused by the wage labour
system and that without it there would be
no poverty; they say that poverty exists
when people do not contribute enough to
society.

Who do you believe, them or us? Don't
trust either explanation: use your
experience to work out the answers. Are
the unemployed all lazy? Is war caused by
working men and women of different
nations falling out with one another? If so,
can you explain exactly what it is that t.he
average American worker has against the
average Iraqi or the average English
worker has against the average Afghan
worker? Is it really the brainy and
industrious people who get the palaces and
the fools who get the slums? If so, why are
the wealth-producing areas the ones which
often face the greatest urban deprivation?

We don't need to convince you that
your troubles are not caused by human
nature. You know that most of the men
and women around you are not
responsible for war, for unemployment,
for social service cuts, for mass starvation.
They say that politics is not for them, and
leave social planning to the 'experts'.

Human beings make there own social
environment and the environment makes
them. At the moment we have a world
which is unfit for humans. Profit comes
before need and class before equality.
Such a system once played a useful role
in developing the means of wealth production
to their present level, but the forces which
gave rise to capitalism no longer exist.
Today, in a world of abundant resources and
technological sophistication, nobody
need starve, nobody need be homeless.

We have made our social environment,
and now we must change it. To do that we
need ideas. First, we need experience of
capitalism. We've all got that. Second, we
need to know how the system works. It
works to produce commodities for sale on
the market with a view to profit. The
consequences of this can be seen in the
waste and shoddiness and destructiveness
of modern production. Third, we need to
know how to get rid of the present system.
That's simple: it will be removed in the
same way as it is presently kept in being -
by the political decision of the majority.
At the moment most people accept the
present system, usually because they think
there is no alternative. When the majority
of people, in all the countries of the world,
decide that this system does not suit their
needs, they be persuaded to produce things
if there were no wages, but just voluntary
cooperation? If there were no laws would
we not all kill each other? Without leaders
would we know how to stay alive? The answers
depend on you, fellow worker, upon you and
all those who are in the class which exists
by wage slavery.

The socialist case is that if you understand
what the alternative is, and if you want it,
then you will co-operate to make it work.
If you cannot conceive of a co-operative
society, then we urge you to think again.
If you think that the new society that we
stand for is a Utopia and in the next breath
you wish your friends a 'happy New Year',
you are forgetting that in a world of social
chaos, the search for genuine happiness
will be a frustrating one. The socially
blinkered may be happy in their acquiescence,
but only the struggle for socialism offers
the chance of something more than a
happy New Year; a happy society.

(Socialist View, vol.3,#13)