Let Us Be One

A number of the constituent parties of the World Socialist Movement have adopted the ‘One World, One People’ logo, sometimes in a slightly varied form, as their emblem.

The graphic representation shows a woman and a man, depicted as both black and white, hand in hand, in unity and harmony, with the world globe behind them

What it signifies is much more than a mere slogan.

1. No identity politics

Socialism incorporates the liberation of women as part of its project of human emancipation. A political organisation whose object is socialism cannot permit sexism within its membership. For a political party to be credible, it must embody the attitudes, values and practices that it seeks to build in society at large. The World Socialist Movement heartily endorses Eleanor Marx’s position:

“It is a truism, and therefore it is constantly repeated, that no social movement is worth much until it has enlisted the sympathies, aesthetic and practical, of women. The Socialists are constantly preaching this obvious doctrine. They are constantly appealing to women, not on the basis of woman’s rights as against man’s, but of the rights of men, women, and their children of the working classes as against the capitalists. That is the essential difference that marks off the women’s rights movement on the one hand, and the socialist movement of men and women together on the other.” 

2. There is no race except the human race

Socialists hold that the emancipation of the working class will involve the emancipation of all mankind without distinction of race or nationality. Humanity is one species, so claims of skin tones reflecting ‘superiority’ only reveal ignorance.

President Lyndon Johnson once said, “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”

3. One family

"We must learn to live together as brothers and sisters or perish as fools and buffoons" Martin Luther King explained, echoing the sentiments of Robert Burns poetic words

“It's coming yet for a' that,

That Man to Man, the world o'er,

Shall brothers be for a' that.”

4. A world with no borders.

Nor any state or government. The world is a “global village”. Each region may have its own unique traditions and distinct customs, but they are part of a greater system of society that is world-wide. Diversity of cultures shall be a celebration of the imagination and inventiveness of humankind.

Socialism cannot be a cooperative oasis in the desert of capitalism, but a global system of society that will replace capitalism.

“The poor have no country, in all lands, they suffer from the same evils, and they, therefore, realise that the barriers put up by the powers that be the more thoroughly to enslave the people must fall’,  stated the International Working Men’s Association.

As Marx emphasised:

"The nationality of the toilers is neither French nor English nor German; it is toil, free slavery, sale of the self. His government is neither French nor English nor German; it is Capital. His native air is neither French nor German nor English; it is the air of the factory. The land which belongs to him is neither French nor English nor German; it is a few feet under the ground."

 Capitalism always has been, is now, and always will be different competing interests along national, religious and ethnic lines. But all such differences are artificially created.

Only world socialism can finally put an end to this sordid fight for resources that, in order to present a semblance of legitimacy, sings national anthems and salutes flags.

As the Indian author, Arundhati Roy, points out:

“Flags are bits of coloured cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people’s brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead. When independent-thinking people (and here I do not include the corporate media) begin to rally under flags, when writers, painters, musicians, film makers suspend their judgment and blindly yoke their art to the service of the ‘Nation,’ it’s time for all of us to sit up and worry”

The World Socialist Movement does not put forward any detailed blueprints of the future. Our task is to organise and mobilise our fellow-workers for the dismantling of the profit system which robs them of the fruits of their labour. That is our only purpose.

We advocate common ownership, which can be defined as a situation in which no person or group has the right to exclusively control productive resources. When we transfer to all members of the society the power to direct and manage production, there will be no one excluded from the opportunity of controlling and benefiting from  access and use of the means of production. The very concept of property becomes meaningless. We are all members of the same humanity and share an interest in working together to establish a world without frontiers, in which the resources of the planet will be the common heritage of all its peoples and used for the benefit of all. 

The only way to meet the needs of the world’s population is on the basis of ‘from each according to ability, to each according to need’, freed of private ownership by the few and their rule of ‘no profit, no production’, this is the only framework within which problems such as global warming, growing inequality and constant conflicts can be ended for good.

There will be no possibility for any elite group to subject another to subjugation. Men and women can be free to arrange their personal lives according to their individual choice.

We can share with Frederick Douglass, the ex-slave, when he observed:

“...to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason.”