The world is ours

Ours is a class society. The handful of capitalists who are in control of the factories, the banks, the natural resources and the government, are steadily reducing the living standards of working people and eroding our environment. Those who protest against the capitalists are still under the influence of reformism. Reformism thinks only of how to solve problems within the framework allowed by capital. Reformists are concerned for the health of capitalism. Goods are not produced to meet the needs of the people but to make profits for the bosses. If it is profitable to pollute the streams and the sea that will happen. If it is profitable to destroy food crops in a starving world to keep prices up, they will certainly be destroyed. For working people the future is less and less certain. Wages fall or remain stagnant while hours increase and working conditions deteriorate. People are homeless or living in overcrowded homes. People live in squalor so a small clique of very wealthy individuals can live in luxury.

Capitalism is a system of exploitation. The capitalist class seek to maintain its wealth and power. Profits can be made only by fiercer exploitation, cutting down the living standards, of the masses, taking away even such concessions as were previously made. A handful of capitalists control our world and make vast profits off the sweat and toil of the working people and the natural resources of the land. All the major means of production - the factories, forests, farms, fisheries and mines are in the hands of a relative few capitalists. The people at the centre of the corporations extract huge fortunes accumulated from the backs of the working class. This anarchic system wastes a great deal of social wealth. Capitalism is an obstacle to the further advancement of the material well-being of society. It is unjust, wasteful and irrational. Under capitalism, the only way to get rich is to trample over somebody else. There is only room for a few capitalists. Capitalism today means the possible collapse of civilisation.

If all the natural wealth of our planet were being utilised to provide for the needs of its people, there wouldn't be any problem. But that's not what's happening. Everything is produced in order to make a profit. When the profit system goes bust, the World’s population is left helpless. But we don't have to be helpless. We're the majority. If we get together, we can be tremendously powerful.

The material and technical resources for a socialist society unquestionably exist today. No competent researcher would doubt that insofar as it depends upon natural resources and the means of production and distribution, everybody could have a comfortable home, abundant nutritious food, ample opportunity for recreation and education, security against accident, sickness, and old age; and the sense of independence and self-respect that goes with these things. What we actually have, however, is mass misery and widespread poverty. This appalling contrast between what might be and what is arises from the nature of the economic system – capitalism. That system acts as a brake upon production so that, as the phrase goes, you have “want in the midst of plenty.” It should be added that socialism envisages planning on a world scale. National boundaries are as artificial and restrictive and socialism is in essence a global economy. Every effort to establish “planned” production under private capitalism breaks down, since the warfare between rival capitalists, in a nation and capitalist groups in different nations disrupts such efforts. 

World socialism can set free the scientists and technicians to work with adequate resources to plan for still greater efficiency in the use of our resources and thus for greater abundance of leisure as well as goods. The spectre of insecurity will be removed. The undemocratic economic domination of the few over the many will be at an end. No one can predict the cultural advances which may follow this release of the human spirit. The one way to security, to peace, to freedom, to cultural advancement is the path of socialist revolution. This is your choice – capitalist chaos or a world of civilisation and culture.

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