Friday, March 8, 2013

What do class conscious socialists want?




The way we socialists see it, the wealth of nations rightfully belongs to the producers of that wealth and that is the working class. 

There is a class struggle raging across the world right now, in real time over control of the collective product of labour, which, of course, includes ownership and control of the very means of producing wealth. Sometimes the working class manages to break off bits and pieces of their collective product from the control and ownership of the capitalist and landlord classes. This can occur if the workers in trade unions manage to achieve some semblance of dignity through attaining a better contract for better wages and working conditions. Sometimes, this happens as a political response via left politicians in government responding to workers demanding more of their product back through better funding of their health, education and welfare. It's all part and parcel of the class struggle. The point is that workers as a class resist the downward pressure of the capitalist and landlord classes on its standard of living. Otherwise, workers become broken wretches. 

So yes, we socialists support workers in their class struggle with the capitalists and landlords over the collective product of their labour. We also tell whomever will listen, that the collective product of labour rightfully belongs to the producers--the working class. 

When and if social ownership of the collective product of labour occurs, the working class who establish it, will no longer exist as a class. Instead, a free, democratically organised association of producers (formerly the workers and anyone who decides to join with them) will administer the collective product of their labour in a classless society. By definition, the State will cease to exist when a classless society is established. That's what we communist revolutionary workers call socialism*.  

*NB: This is NOT what most people on the right or left call 'socialism'.  Nevertheless, it is what Marx and Engels called socialism.