Letter: Socialism as a practical solution (2002)

Letter to the Editors from the October 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism as a practical solution

Dear Editors,

Socialism won’t change the human condition – did anyone even say that it would?

I am convinced of the case for socialism, but I am not utopian. I don’t believe in human perfectibility or a state of ideal political-social perfection. What I do think is that socialist economy would free up our human abilities to find solutions to our most pressing concerns. It is this freeing-up of resources, of capacity to concentrate on working for and towards what we want, rather than for a profit system for individuals that makes me know that socialist economic organisation is a better way for all of us on the planet than blindly accepting a capitalist global economy as dominant.

I think that this simple key message of abolishing money, or the need to work to earn money being replaced by working for and thinking about what we want wins the argument; it wins the argument with those who haven’t questioned capitalist organisation of society or of their parts in perpetuating it; it wins the minds of anyone who chooses to go away and think – and that is most human beings; it wins the minds of those who are fed up with the stresses imposed by working conditions geared to piling up money, or simply getting money to pay for things. For all of us concerned with the degradation of our lived-in environments by noise and air pollution and by oppressiveness of global capitalist corporations, there is the argument that removing the link between money and work will, or could leave us free to address these matters. They will not be dealt with half as effectively by any of the social-democratic parties under a capitalist organisation.

It has got to be a continuing part of Socialist Party philosophy that we seek to reach socialist organisation through peaceable, democratic, consensual ways; we must reject violence. We may feel very angry and we may well understand violence coming about as a result of frustration and feelings of powerlessness, but it is important that we do not condone violence; we must distance ourselves and dissociate ourselves with the destructive and negative.

For me, the breaking of the link between money and work would certainly enable the space and time for us to think about and address the roots of violence, ab-use (physical, sexual, emotional) in our selves as human beings.

Far from being utopian, socialism may simply be the next step for the survival of the human species.

Philip Hutchinson, 

Huddersfield