Wednesday, October 02, 2019

A New World to Strive For

Our age is one of continuous discovery, yet the problems of humanity still remain. New technology serves the ends of the capitalist system. It serves the military. Yet continues to satisfy people's needs and instead intensifies exploitation. 

The Socialist Party must campaign for uniting and working for socialism. The object of the Socialist Party is to unite humanity and to solve social problems by building a society which can satisfy the universal need for co-operation and security. Socialism is concerned with the quality of life. In association with others, the individual will develop oneself as a social being. With enlightenment and knowledge, mankind will replace the ignorance, false illusions and prejudice from which it suffers in our own day. Socialism is the form of society most compatible with the needs of humanity. Its necessity springs from the enduring problems, the economic contradictions and social conflicts of present-day society. 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 organised at world level with co-ordination of its differing parts down to local levels. 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

Under capitalism science and technology have flowered mainly to serve the interest of capitalist profit-making. This is the great contradiction. Mankind has the know-how to end the threat of environmental destruction. Capitalism cannot avoid a continuing ferment of discontent, albeit generally expressed in negative ways, through hate, violence, cynicism and even despair. Paradoxically, this may help draw attention about where man's true interests lie. 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 mankind matters most. The greatest challenge facing humanity is the need to increase the production of wealth on an enormous scale, but this cannot be done within present capitalist society. People and resources serve profit. On all sides it can be seen that commerce, trade and vested interests are preventing man from expanding production on a scale necessary to serve the community’s needs. Socialism will provide a social framework that will enable man and woman 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 organisation and production involved, but to eliminate world poverty must be one of the first tasks of socialist society. With the end of the market system, people in socialism would enjoy great advantages in solving the problems of pollution and environmental degradation. Socialism would also be able to save on resources by eventually reducing production levels. By concentrating on the real needs of people socialism would be able to stop vast numbers of wasteful and destructive jobs that are only necessary in a profit system. With the end of economic competition, socialism would not be bound to use the least costly methods of production, many of which are destructive of the environment

Those who suffer most from the inequalities of capitalism must do their own thinking. The responsibility for creating a better world rests with them. They must consider the socialist argument in the reality of their everyday experience. Time and again they have shown that they can cooperate together in causes other than the solution of their own problems. We invite activists in the climate movement to join with us now in building a better world. We must build on the concern and indignation and broaden our horizons. We should not place our trust and faith in governments; that is a sure recipe for disaster and disillusion. We must not make pathetic appeals to governments to do something on our behalf. We must take the world into our own hands.

What socialists try to explain is the futility of the climate activists in demanding in their protests for governments to “do something”, given that it is these very governments, at the behest of the capitalist corporations who have caused the global warming crisis to begin with. So if there are no demands for the end of capitalism then it will end up a failure. Hopefully, many in the climate movement will come to understand that the institution of capitalism is culpable and will begin to work for its abolition.

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