{"id":5045,"date":"2023-02-20T00:07:43","date_gmt":"2023-02-20T00:07:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/?p=5045"},"modified":"2023-02-20T00:07:44","modified_gmt":"2023-02-20T00:07:44","slug":"socialism-is-still-on-the-agenda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/socialism-is-still-on-the-agenda\/","title":{"rendered":"Socialism is\u00a0still on the agenda<\/a>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a nice idea, but it will never work,\u201d is a common refrain from those encountering the genuine socialist case on the streets, or reading socialist material for the first time.\u00a0And when hearing the numbers who actually adhere to socialist ideas and actively go out of their way and campaign to promote them, the response is that the \u201crevolution\u201d is highly unlikely and hardly worth campaigning for at all; that it is much simpler just to carry on reforming the present system, as the numbers in favour of this approach are huge, the odds are stacked in favour of the underdog and history shows that the gradualist method does bear fruit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the history they cite to counter the socialist case and promote their \u201cit\u2019s better to settle for crumbs\u201d line, which is what it amounts to, also reveals that most periods of massive social and political change \u2013 which is what a revolution is \u2013 have been heralded by derision, doubt and incredulity. Indeed, to the feudal peasants and their masters, tied to a society based largely on agriculture, the proposal for a capitalist system of society would also have sounded utopian, and likewise with their counterparts living in a system dependent for its part on chattel slavery if feudalism had have been advocated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was a time when the 37-hour week and universal suffrage and woman bosses would have been considered utopian, the same with the rise of atheistic beliefs. Countless ideas, mammoth changes to our way of life over the past few hundred years, were mocked and would have been preceded by scorn. So it\u2019s no big surprise that socialist ideas are similarly met with mirth and dismissed as utopian fantasies today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it’s not as if the vast majority of workers are accepting the capitalist political and social system as the \u201cbest of all possible worlds\u201d its defenders claim it to be,\u00a0You only have to look at the statistics for political abstentionism at election time, especially in the west. Right throughout Britain, in local elections, more so in the European elections, the trend is for far fewer people to actually abstain from voting and many will indeed argue it\u2019s a waste of time, that no matter who you vote for nothing changes, that \u201cthey\u2019re all damned liars and out to feather their own nests\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there is a history of protest, resistance and nonconformity that many workers are unaware of, especially in the\u00a0US, and which writers like Howard Zinn have spent a lifetime attempting to bring to wider attention. In 2003, an estimated 2 million people took to the streets of\u00a0London\u00a0to protest against the invasion of\u00a0Iraq\u00a0and at the same time there were similar massive demonstrations in other British cities and right across the world. Never had there been such unified protest and protest borne of an awareness of the dammed lies politicians spout at every opportunity and a protest borne of genuine empathy with the long-suffering people of\u00a0Iraq.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And look at the discontent out there in cyberspace, the number of popular radical websites in existence and the millions of personal blog sites pouring scorn on the current system. Cyber-protest has become so frightening for our rulers that in the\u00a0US\u00a0legislation is being mooted right now to label such cyber malcontents as terrorists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Few workers are aware of the Paris Commune of 1871 when, for a brief period of time, French workers created a system of control and administration that challenged the existing set-up.\u00a0And in Russia, in the revolutions of 1905 and 1917, workers and peasants created new systems of control and administration, with workers\u2019 councils and factory committees and which the Bolsheviks went on to destroy. In 1956, in a direct challenge to the power-hungry Kremlin, desperate to maintain its stranglehold of state capitalism on\u00a0Eastern Europe, people set up workers’ councils, and again in France\u00a0in May 1968, workplaces and universities were taken over and in many cases run in a way that is of immense inspiration to socialists. For a long time now, people across the world \u2013 i.e. more noticeably in\u00a0Israel\u00a0with the kibbutz – have set up communes, attempting to live in peace and cooperation, fed up with the rat-race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, these were a far cry from being socialist revolutions, as many claim, but they stand as significant examples of what people can do if they are determined, inspiring millions, moreover, they had their detractors back then who said they could never be pulled off.\u00a0The thing is, for a brief period of time there was a grassroots interruption to the status quo when people challenged the system head-on and gained immense confidence in their unity and determination, envisaging momentarily an alternative way of running things and with themselves, the workers, in charge. Dismiss them as much as you want \u2013 no socialist is claiming they should be held up as \u201cactually existing socialism\u201d \u2013 but the important thing to remember is that people had had a bellyful of the system, had confidence in their ability to take control of their own destiny and, in their shear desperation, made an attempt to wrest control of their lives back from their masters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Socialists share the same basic ideas as these impatient revolutionaries. We believe change is possible, that control of our lives and our planet can be wrested from the hands of our masters and that workers are more than capable, once they gain that class consciousness and confidence, to pull off the impossible. But where we differ is on the magnitude of the revolution and the preparedness of those who will bring it about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For socialists, the revolution will not just be in a few cities or countries, it will be global. And neither will it involve the \u201cmost advanced workers\u201d, as Leninists claim, and the more politically minded students, but each and every one of us. And neither will it mean the world\u2019s exploited majority settling for crumbs. No, we\u2019re after the whole damned bakery, the bricks and mortar and all the flour and the right to control and administer it as we see fit and in our own interests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Socialists recognise that for socialism to come about demands the will and cooperation of the majority of people in the world, that is the vast majority of people, old and young, in every country, becoming aware that another world is possible; becoming aware that we no longer need leaders or governments, armies and police, money and exchange systems, borders and flags. Socialism will depend upon people who have at last come to realise that only by uniting as one, across borders, putting behind us the false differences that have hitherto divided us, can we establish a system without waste and want and war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We recognise that some reforms do benefit the workers, but the truth is that here we are in the 21 century, awash with scientific know-how and technology that is capable of solving all of our immediate problems, yet we live in a world in which there is more starvation and poverty than ever before in human history, where we live in constant fear of environmental catastrophe and nuclear war while our masters and their executive in governments imperil us all as they frantically dream of ways to make that extra dollar profit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the moment our methods can only be educational and in this regard, we use every tool at our disposal to spread class consciousness, to instil in workers the belief that the world can be changed for the better and, more, that they can be the only agents of such change. We also realise we\u2019re up against a class that will go to any lengths to maintain the current system, which depends on its control largely via the consent of the majority, by keeping them like zombies through their control of the media, via their control of the educational system and with the help of religious institutions, via instilling in them false needs, false consciousness, that makes them view themselves as consumers and to believe that it is better to have than to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, socialism is a nice idea. It\u2019s a brilliant idea. And it\u2019s not utopian. If there is anything utopian it is the belief that capitalism can be depended upon for the future of humanity and our natural environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

John Bisset<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt\u2019s a nice idea, but it will never work,\u201d is a common refrain from those encountering the genuine socialist case on the streets, or reading socialist material for the first time.\u00a0And when hearing the numbers who actually adhere to socialist ideas and actively go out of their way and campaign to promote them, the response…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5046,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"magazine_newspaper_sidebar_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5045","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\/5045","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=5045"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5045\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5047,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5045\/revisions\/5047"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}