The Time for Socialism is Now . . . (2004)

From the April 2004 issue of the World Socialist newsletter

When our ancestors left the safety and security of the trees for the vagaries of the plains, they were embarking on a long, subconscious, and often painful journey to attain mastery over the earth's resources. The goal of countless millennia of sweat and endeavour, was to create a system of production so vast and efficient that it could satisfy the material needs of all mankind. The method used to achieve this goal was a series of modes of production, each succeeding the last as a natural improvement until it became obsolete and a barrier to further development and gave way to new forces and relations of production.

The primitive beings first arriving on the plains developed co-operation, speech and a culture to set those forces in motion. Their communistic way of life produced a stable, egalitarian society of harmony, but its daily search for the means of life left little time for progress. Tool refinement and the new use of materials were painfully slow and communication of ideas to outside groups was virtually non-existent. Mastery over grasses and animals heralded the age of agriculture and the division of labour so the few were able to produce all the food and the many were freed up to accelerate advances in tool technology and uses, in building, crafts and cultural institutions. This new way of life also produced wealth in the form of a surplus, creating classes of men for the first time - those who took hold of the wealth, the exploiting class, and the producers, the exploited class. Towns, cities and empires arose and with it the need for free labour to carry out the many tasks of society and to build the massive public works projects. As the great empires rose and fell, each greater and more wide-spread than the last, culminating in the Roman empire, the impediments, or fetters, as Marx says, of the slave system began to hold progress back. The break up of the final slave empire, brought the new system, the feudal system and a settled agrarian life. The exploiting aristocracy, the holders of land, had the exploited class, the peasants at their disposal, and a new mode of production was in place. As knowledge and skills developed further, and ever- increasing amounts of wealth found their expression in the growing mercantilism, the aristocrats came into conflict with these new owners of wealth. The ensuing struggle for the control of parliament in England, and the ability to maintain the laws that upheld the old system or create new laws to usher in a new era, was eventually won by the holders of capital, the bourgeoisie, and thus the capitalist mode of production came into being. The industrial revolution, establishing the factory system, and the simultaneous harnessing of science to its purpose, brought fantastic increases in productive capacity.

Each system has produced improvements in the production of the means of life, and all, except primitive communism, have brought relations of production that engendered a class system. Now that capitalism has spread almost entirely over the earth and brought an abundance of goods, we have, for the first time, arrived at a state where everyone's needs can be satisfied. Incredibly, they are not. Today, among an abundance of goods and the capacity to complete the job started by our distant ancestors, we have millions dying of starvation, the effects of malnutrition, easily curable diseases and the majority of our planet living in poverty and insecurity. There can be only one reason for this apparent contradiction. The profit system itself has become a fetter to the ultimate goal of providing for all. The profit motive stands in the way of alleviating all human misery. The profit system prevents the natural, worldwide progress that would occur if workers were free to pursue their natural abilities and share their knowledge. In short, profit bars the way to the next, higher level of production. Fellow workers, the time has come for the establishment of the social ownership of the means of production and the social distribution of the wealth produced, by, and in the interests of, all the people. The time has come to complete our journey

JA, 

Ontario