Ruth B
Socialism is not just a more compassionate elected government. It's not just capitalism with its worst horrors modified by reforms. Socialism is a completely new society without classes, where human need and not profits govern production.
Capitalism is a system of obscene inequality, where wars are commonplace and oppression is rife. While thousands starve, Bush spends $350 billion annually on wars. While Howard sheds crocodile tears for tsunami victims, he forcibly deports Sri Lankan refugees back to their devastated country.
The horror of capitalism stems from class divisions: a minority of the rich and powerful (the ruling class) control the wealth and resources, while the majority (workers) are exploited in order to further enrich those at the top.
Socialism, on the other hand, is about everyone participating in the fundamental decisions about how society will be organised, with access to resources determined on the basis of need, not power and wealth.
Sounds very nice but utopian, right?
Socialism can seem impossible, especially when oppressive regimes - like Cuba, China and the old USSR - claim to be socialist. These countries all have or had monstrous governmental machines, ruling their populations with an iron fist. These repressive regimes have nothing to do with socialism; the language of Marxism simply serves as a propaganda tool to justify repression. The fact is that we live in a capitalist world without one socialist country in it.
But don't despair, revolutions happen more often than you think - and every one shows the potential for socialism.
The working class is key to this process. The nature of work under capitalism means that workers already have to co-operate to get anything done - as any production line clearly illustrates.
This is especially true when it comes to fighting for better conditions. A worker who goes on strike alone will achieve nothing other than victimisation. On the other hand, a workplace that has everyone united on strike is in a strong position. Workers therefore have a material interest in organising collectively in their workplaces.
This need for cooperation encourages democratic organising and frequently undermines the divisive prejudice fostered by the bosses in society. After all, how can you organise effectively if non-whites, women or gays are excluded?
Unfortunately, we don't see many inspiring examples of workers fighting back today, but the highpoints of struggle in the past give an inkling of exactly what is possible in the future.
Frequently without much warning, working class uprisings have given rise to rapid and explosive breakthroughs in democratic organisation and left-wing ideas. These uprisings, and the forms of organisation that spring from them, give us the best glimpses of what socialism would look like.
Glimpses of socialism
The Russian Revolution of 1905 saw for the first time an inspiring form of workers' organisation called a soviet (council). Soviets, the most democratic organisations ever seen, sprang out of the need to coordinate the struggle. They consisted of delegates elected from different workplaces. Delegates didn't stand above other workers, but worked alongside them with the same wages and conditions. They were immediately recallable and accountable at any time.
These workers' councils didn't die with the 1905 revolution - similar organisations have sprung out of revolutionary workers' struggles over the last hundred years: in Italy in 1920, Japan in 1945, Hungary in 1956, Portugal in 1974, Iran in 1979 and Poland in 1980.
The struggle for socialism and workers' control is not just abstract theory and wishful thinking then - there are examples throughout history. In every case, workers' councils have had the potential to organise not only workplaces, but the whole of society. It is this form of participatory workers' democracy that is the basis for socialism.
The best example is the Russian Revolution of 1917, when workers overthrew the capitalist government and replaced it with their own state (based on the soviets). Soon workers began to show what socialism would look like. Before Stalin's counter-revolution in the 1920s, all sexist, racist and homophobic laws were abolished; women had free, legal abortion on demand; communal cooking and childcare were introduced; all laws about sexuality were abolished; countries formerly oppressed by the Russian Empire were given autonomy.
Unfortunately, every workers' revolution has been eventually defeated. But the glimpse of how workers can begin to reorganise society points to what socialism could be.
George Orwell's description of revolutionary Barcelona in 1936 gives us one of those glimpses:
"It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle. Practically every building of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red flags ... Every shop and café had an inscription saying that it had been collectivised ... Waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the face and treated you as an equal ... revolutionary posters were everywhere ... I recognised it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for." |
