{"id":3747,"date":"2021-09-17T00:08:03","date_gmt":"2021-09-16T23:08:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/?p=3747"},"modified":"2021-09-17T00:08:05","modified_gmt":"2021-09-16T23:08:05","slug":"all-things-in-common","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/all-things-in-common\/","title":{"rendered":"All Things in Common"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Omnia Sunt Communia<\/em> – Thomas M\u00fcntzer<\/strong>, <\/strong>1525<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For as long as there has been human oppression there have been aspirations\u00a0of the oppressed.\u00a0History teaches us to never grow resigned, never bow down or submit, never beat a retreat.\u00a0Fear is the greatest ally of conservatives. There is a\u00a0message emanating from some in the environmentalist movement is that we are heading towards a dystopia. Some present\u00a0an essentially hopeless vision\u00a0of the future, \u00a0lacking\u00a0a meaningful sense of the future, and as a result, they cannot envision an achievable immediate possibility that may be realised.\u00a0The beauty of the age we live in is that we possess new production technology. So the question is, which model do we want to follow? Toiling under the domination of bosses and corporations, or the return to a mythical idyllic past before the arrival of industry\u00a0or seek a society of leisure and mutual cooperation.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There exists\u00a0an idea that is unfashionable these days, an idea which is ignored by the media, dismissed coldly by politicians and avoided by anyone who prefers the status quo to stay put. That\u00a0idea is\u00a0the cooperative commonwealth.\u00a0Our message to\u00a0our fellow\u00a0workers is that those who do not own the means of production are nothing but the slaves of those who do.\u00a0The forces of production long ago reached the point where they could produce the abundance necessary for the change from private ownership into social ownership. The interdependence of society has outgrown local and national bounds and is worldwide.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the working people in the world have power in their own hands we can achieve a\u00a0cooperative\u00a0commonwealth.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reformists put off the cooperative commonwealth and prolong the suffering of the world\u2019s people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The World Socialist Movement (WSM) proclaims liberty to rest upon economic democracy. The WSM of today cannot bring socialism. The cooperative commonwealth will be inaugurated by the mass action of the workers. To assert the contrary is a denial of the cardinal principle of socialism \u2013 \u201cThat the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The socialist parties of the WSM will not rest content until it has eradicated capitalism and established the socialist cooperative commonwealth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are well aware that socialism is a term little understood by the world at large, and that it is everywhere a target for denunciation by the media of the plutocracy. When analysed it means a more equitable distribution of the products of labour; cooperation instead of competition; common ownership of land and all the means of production and distribution. It proclaims the coming of the cooperative commonwealth to take the place of wage slavery. The present economic system is not only a failure but a colossal crime. It robs, it degrades, it starves; it is a foul blot upon our civilisation; it promises only an increase of the horrors which the world deplores. There is no hope for our fellow workers except for the\u00a0advocates of the cooperative commonwealth.\u00a0In socialism, with private property and\u00a0the exchange economy being at an end, money loses\u00a0its\u00a0functions would disappear\u00a0as will prices and wages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We ask our fellow workers to organise with us to end the domination of private property\u2014 with its poverty-breeding system of unplanned production \u2014 and substitute in its place the socialist co-operative commonwealth in which every worker shall have the free exercise and full benefit of his or her faculties. The\u00a0shackles\u00a0of the wage-slave and the\u00a0whip\u00a0of the master symbolise the reign of capital. Not until slave and master have both disappeared, and forever, and the equal freedom of all has been established, can we lay any proper claim to the term civilisation. The cooperative commonwealth is not a dream but entirely within the realm of the possible. This new world will not arrive without the aid of human endeavour. It means hard work. It involves courage. It presupposes earnest convictions. Its goal is industrial freedom and independence that the world has never known and can never know until cooperative labour, solving every problem and surmounting every obstacle in industrial affairs, achieves emancipation.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For many who consider themselves radical, the\u00a0post-scarcity society seems a dim and distant goal, a matter for the 22nd century perhaps, but not now. Lulled by the incessant idiotic inanities\u00a0of politicians and their meaningless agendas, these progressives\u00a0do not notice that even now, today, we are standing on the very threshold of that post-scarcity world. All we have to do is take one step\u00a0forward.\u00a0The world socialist parties of the WSM\u00a0go further than any other political organisation\u00a0and calls for\u00a0one united world, a planetary cooperative commonwealth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEach for all and all for each\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Omnia Sunt Communia – Thomas M\u00fcntzer, 1525 For as long as there has been human oppression there have been aspirations\u00a0of the oppressed.\u00a0History teaches us to never grow resigned, never bow down or submit, never beat a retreat.\u00a0Fear is the greatest ally of conservatives. There is a\u00a0message emanating from some in the environmentalist movement is that we…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3748,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"magazine_newspaper_sidebar_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3747"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3747\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3749,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3747\/revisions\/3749"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}