COVID-19 - Wanted, A Prescription For Socialism

You don’t need the Socialist Party to tell you that coronavirus will change the world. Nor do you need politicians bought and paid for telling you that things will be fine in the end. The failures of the capitalist system and governments have been exposed. Many understand that there can be no “back-to-normal.”

The ultimate argument for capitalism has always been that at least it works while socialism remains untried and untested. Unfortunately, it is quite untrue. Profit, the feather-nesting for which capitalism exists, is irreconcilable with social well-being or simple efficiency. Whatever capitalism does is done with atrocious inefficiency. Can socialism do better? The cause of all the chronic dilemmas and idiocies of capitalism is organic: its structure on the class ownership of the means of production. There can be no hope of solutions or efficiency until this fetter is broken. Given its replacement by common ownership, social cohesion and planning of the environment we want become possible for the first time. Socialism is a world-wide community with common interests. Where the land, and all the means of production will be owned by mankind as a whole, with democratic control. Where the sole motive for production will be the satisfaction of your needs. Simply put — bread will be baked because people want to eat it — just that. Money will play not part at all in this society because there will be no need for money. Decisions by the community will be taken on their merits. The wages system will be abolished along with all the other stupid trappings of the present system. Socialism will be a system of co-operation; where each will give according to ability and take according to need. Mankind with its knowledge, harnessed to the riches of the earth, is capable of producing abundance. Why be satisfied with a world of shortages?

We should recognise that unless we get to the root causes of this pandemic, it’s going to recur, perhaps even in a worse form. Those who benefit from the capitalist system will re-create circumstances for a new pandemic.The pandemic can be a catalyst for change. In this unprecedented moment in history, many fear for the future but while we are going through a traumatic period of time, we should see this crisis as an opportunity to go forward to a new sort of society. We are living when events could engender a sense of reawakening of people-power. If we want to disrupt the inequalities that we are witnessing today that requires free access to the necessities of life as an indisputable human right for the benefit of all. That vision will become more and more a likely in the future. 

In times of of crisis and emergencies people reveal their true character and revert to their deep sense of community. Mankind is by nature a social animal. We need to be sociable; much of the disturbed behaviour one witnesses today is born of the fact that people have to compete to survive but it is in fact against our nature. Human nature is humanity’s hope, not its harbinger of doom.

Every part of our daily lives is restricted and determined by cost consideration and ultimately decided by the overall effect on the profits of the system as a whole. Whether it be houses, hospitals, health, or education, where the money is coming from is always the first question. Human need must come second in a society that lives on profits. The only possible solution is to change society. Socialism means a way of life where the whole world and its resources will be held in common by all mankind. A class-free world community with production solely for use and free access according to need. No longer will wages, markets and profits blight and restrict our lives. People will co-operate to produce an abundance — and then enjoy it.

We seek a system of society where every single person will be able to take freely from the store of social wealth whatever he or she needs. Such a system — which we call “free access” — means quite simply what it says: there will be no restrictions (such as are imposed today by the size of your wage-packet) on the amount of goods or services which any individual consumes, enjoys or uses. We maintain that an abundance of wealth, which such a system implies, could quite easily be produced if production were motived by the desire to satisfy people’s needs, not by profit as at present. Profit acts as a barrier to production, since if a thing cannot be sold at a profit, it will quite simply not be produced, no matter how many people would like it. And we have all read in the newspapers of fruit and so on, which has already been produced, actually being destroyed in order to keep prices up and to serve the interests of profit. Again, think of all the people (cashiers, ticket collectors, in short all those whose work is concerned with money) who do not produce socially useful wealth; under a system of free access their abilities, and those of countless others too, including those unemployed at present, could be put to producing goods which people really need. What we stand for, then, in this election as at all times, is a world-wide system of society where there is no money, no government, no war, and where the production of wealth for use alone, is democratically controlled by everybody.

We make no apology for introducing ideas such as these into this debate over the COVID-19 pandemic. We wish to change the system fundamentally, since this is the only way to solve the problems which both you and ourselves suffer from.