People are increasingly grappling with fundamental questions about our national destiny. Where is Britain headed? What is happening to society? What kind of Britain is on offer and what ought it to be? Once, working people shied away from such reflections. Now these discussions are commonplace.
No one selling their labour for a living feels safe or secure. A deep unease pervades the country as declining capitalism bombards us with the everyday terrors of mass unemployment, underemployment, privatisation, worsening conditions, attacks on pensions, impoverishment, assaults on the NHS and state education.
The only remedy to this state of permanent anxiety is for workers to take radical steps. There needs to be a deliberate change of direction: putting an end to a failing system, constructing a socialist society that meets the needs of working people.
Capitalism is fundamentally flawed. Its manic adoration of private profit skews the direction of society in an anti-social fashion. Its entrenchment and defence of wealth accumulation for capitalists in every nook and cranny of society means the exclusion of workers from economic progress and political control. Its premise leads to the elevation of a profit-sucking elite which is set apart from society. The system shuns the mass of working people and condemns millions to unemployment.
After the revolution, a different Britain will emerge with a superior set of values. The prime shift will see everyone’s right to work honoured. The constricting homage to private profit will disappear. A new reverence will move centre-stage: generating social profit through the construction of a modern economy based on multi-faceted, wealth-creating industry and a planned investment in the whole population which will unleash a full flowering of the latent talent left to slumber and atrophy under capitalism.
A new Britain will introduce innovative ways of involving the whole society of workers in actually governing and running everything. The working class, representing all facets in an interlocking society, will become the political community. The discharge of political decisions will not be devolved elsewhere. A changed society will bring a marked change in our country’s relations with the world. Our armed forces will not be used to intervene as an imperialist force in other people’s internal affairs. Our military will defend the gains of the revolution inside Britain. Abroad, we will want to trade goods with the world and exchange culture.
A better life for all workers is possible, but it will have to be struggled for. We find capitalism wanting and in decline. Rather than tolerate untold riches and privilege for a few, we should seek a new arrangement, where society allows workers to prosper collectively and in a national combination of mutual support.