Think – and act – for yourselves (2018)

From the April 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

The cult of leadership is essential for the preservation of capitalism. ‘Bad leadership’ is a convenient excuse that something other than capitalism caused a government’s failure to deliver, or a reform that doesn’t meet expectations. And always there are new leaders, promising the never-never land.

The market and other forces of the system are uncontrollable by any government; political leaders can’t stop depressions, wars or the arms race; the system cannot be humanised or controlled. All they can do is try to run the system in the interests of their masters, the dominant class. And in the process, betray their naive and trusting followers. The majority are capable of informing themselves and taking the necessary political action to establish common (not state) ownership and democratic control of the means for distributing wealth, by and in the interest of society as a whole. Every individual will then stand in equal relationship to the means of production. There will be no more use for the coercive state because division into classes of rulers and ruled will be ended. It will be replaced by social administration, predominantly local, but involving regional and global administration also. A war-less, wage-less, money-less system of conscious, voluntary co-operation and free access according to individually and democratically determined requirements.

The removal of the present artificial restrictions on production and the elimination of capitalism’s waste, combined with global materials and energy of which there is no real shortage, will make an abundant, harmonious and meaningful life for all.