“A rat race is for rats. We’re not rats. We’re human beings.” Jimmy Reid, Scottish trade unionist
Socialism is almost globally misunderstood and misrepresented. Socialism will be a basic structural change to society, and many of the things that most people take for granted, as “just the way things have to be”, can and must be changed to establish socialism. People tend to accept as true the things they hear over and over again. But repetition doesn’t make things true. Because the truth and the facts often contradict “common knowledge”, socialists have to show that “common knowledge” is wrong. The task of capitalist ideology is to maintain the veil which keeps people from seeing that their own activities reproduce the form of their daily life, the task of socialism is to unveil the activities of daily life, to render them transparent. Is it possible to mobilise people to fight oppression without fashioning models for a socialist economy for people to fasten on to? The capitalist slogan ‘There is No Alternative’ was answered by ‘Another World is Possible’. We need to know and say much more about this other world.
The basic theme of Erich Fromm’s ’The Sane Society’ is that capitalism, because it encourages competition between individuals, pitting them against each other in a rat race for power, privilege and prestige, is a society that is incompatible with human nature. It is an “insane society”, a “sick society”. Only a society based on co-operation and community is a sane society as one which properly meets the psychological needs of human beings for a sense of belonging; not just a sense of belonging but a state of actually belonging to a real community. Only socialism can offer that. Although capitalism continually seeks to reduce us to isolated social atoms who only collide in the marketplace as buyers and sellers, the basic human need for a community still expresses itself even if in distorted and perverted forms – racism, nationalism and religion. Capitalism can try to suppress the human need for cooperation and community but will never be able to succeed. We wish to be social – that is, to live in a society formed of social beings like ourselves. Socialism means a reconstruction of society.
“Yes, I agree with the socialist arguments, but how are you going to get everyone else to?”
This is a common reaction of people when the idea of establishing socialism is put to them. Ninety-nine out of a hundred agree it would be pleasant to live in a money-free world where they have unfettered access to the things they required, where threats like war and pollution no longer existed, where work was not something they were forced to do and therefore disliked, but something they did out of choice and took pride and pleasure in. Yet, even when we have satisfied them that the world’s resources if exploited with a view to use and not to profit, could satisfy all the needs of all human beings, and when they have accepted that it is not against “human nature” for people to live together in harmony, to associate rather than to compete: then they are inclined to say that this is all very well in theory, but how are you going to convince the majority of people that socialism would be best for them?
People are thoroughly dissatisfied with all that capitalism involves (unpleasant work, rationing by wages, intolerable social and psychological pressures), but seeing no alternative they still continue to support it. Hence, whilst being increasingly aware of the fact that they are deprived, too many try to control capitalism for the benefit of humanity, to humanise it. Like all reformers, they limit themselves to attacking features that they do not like and fail to realise that those features are integral to capitalism. What they are for is more regulated capitalism. They merely want governments to intervene to try to control capitalism, to suppress its worst excesses.
People behave differently when they are in different situations because there is nothing innate about behaviour. We change when the world around us changes.
Have you ever wondered of the high numbers of people who do voluntary work, from someone in the local High Street charity shop to all those young people going on gap years, hoping to help out abroad with aid work? For sure, they receive something in return such as a better CV, self-esteem and respect from others but what is usually lacking is any cash reward.
Work and employment are not synonymous terms. We could have used the example of those who achieve job satisfaction over pay-scales or the self-employed who enjoy being their own boss. When we talk of working conditions in socialism we are not equating it with capitalist working conditions. We will see a great reduction in the working week, the introduction of automation and relationships within the factory or office changing to one of equality. Work will for the first time in history become voluntary. We do possess the technology even today to provide for practically all the needs of every person on the planet. We can even carry the burden of the idle and lazy. Unpleasant social tasks, the 3-D, the dirty, dangerous and demeaning chores, if a machine can’t do it will be shared out amongst the community, not imposed upon a person as a livelihood for the rest of his or her life.
The demand for luxuries will diminish because when everything is available to everyone, there can no longer be excuses for conspicuous consumption by proving your status by showing off your possessions. Certain things may well be shared as in the example of car pools and time-share apartments. We’ll book our weekend on the yacht and wait our turn. Look in a garden shed at all those tools which are only used occasionally. Even in capitalism, hire companies recognise we don’t need to own everything.
Socialism will not work if no-body works, society would fall apart. Part of our case is that socialism cannot be imposed but that people have to democratically decide they want socialism and are prepared to help make it work. This pre-supposes that it cannot be led by a minority but come into existence only via a mass movement who have a profound change in outlook so it is our belief that it is inconceivable that with this desire for socialist change on such a large scale it would not influence the way people behave. Ask yourself this, would having struggled so determinedly to bring socialism about, would people be so ready to jeopardise the new society they helped to create by sabotaging it?
