Smash the IMF and World Bank!
A Workers' Government
The CWI fights for the coming to power of a government representing the waged, the unemployed, youth, women, the disabled, pensioners and the oppressed - a workers' government. Of course, a workers' government which began to implement its socialist policies would immediately face massive resistance from big business. In this situation the workers' government would need to rally workers and youth to its support. Through mass demonstrations and introducing workers' democratic control at all levels of society, including the armed forces, big business and the forces it would try to mobilise would become isolated and defeated. When left reforming governments have been in power before the capitalists have sabotaged the economy and organised a huge flight of capital out of the country. These governments failed to decisively abolish capitalism. A government representing working people would take the economy into democratic public ownership and would control the monopoly of foreign trade
A national review would take place of the productive resources available to the incoming workers' government involving the participation of all sections of the population. It would then start to reallocate economic resources to provide for the needs of workers in all areas of their lives. The first priority would be to provide decent clothing, housing, health care, food and other basic needs. At the same time, resources would be put into making education, retraining, music, sports and other important cultural activities available to everyone. Also, by sharing out the work, the working week could be reduced to 30 hours a week, as a medium step towards a vast reduction of working hours.
Make big business pay
All of this could be financed out of the profits, rent and interest that goes to the richest 1%, and the huge boost such a programme would give to the economy. By bringing the banks and insurance companies into public ownership and out of the profit-making business, then finances would be available for those projects that need them, rather than the banks being the personal speculating tool of the top 1%. An enormous amount of new wealth would be created by these programmes. This would allow decent wages to be paid to all workers. Socialist policies would be tailored to creating long-term stability - good long-lasting products, decent housing, etc. There would be no gains to be made from short-term profit. The environment would be seen as an asset for future generations, and would be protected. Housing would be built to last, and its value would be available to workers for longer.
Expansion of democracy
A workers' government committed to implementing socialist policies would expand democratic rights into all areas of life. This would include the rights of students, parents and school workers to participate in running the schools and colleges. It would extend workers' democratic control to the workplaces. It would take the newspapers, TV, the movie industry and the radio stations out of the hands of the tiny minority who presently control them. All areas of the media would be open to all groups in society that can prove they have support in society. With today's and tomorrow's technology, an educated and less stressed population could gain easy access to all the information they need to participate in decision making at all levels of society.
The coming to power of a workers' government committed to reorganising society along socialist lines, with the full participation of workers in the major decisions, could transform the lives of every worker, youth and senior citizen. Insecurity, fear, hunger, and discrimination based on sex, race, or sexual orientation would be ended. Although the scars inflicted on this generation by the system would not heal immediately, future generations would be spared the anguish of the present generation. By democratic accountability at every turn, and through the participation of every person in running society, a new world could be built. The collapse of the Soviet Union went some way to discrediting the idea that socialism is a viable system. There, a bureaucracy rose to power on of the back of a workers' revolution, and strangled that workers' revolution. The Bolsheviks came to power in Russia in October 1917 and enjoyed mass support from workers and peasants. This was expressed through the workers', peasants' and soldiers' councils, the Soviets, where real power lay. The Soviets were mass bodies of struggle and represented the highest form of democracy ever seen.
The revolution betrayed
However, the delay of the socialist revolution to the more economically advanced West and the defeat of a number of revolutions, led to isolation, terrible privations and the demoralisation of the small Russian working class. A counter-revolutionary bureaucracy developed around Stalin and conducted a bloody one-sided civil war against all those that represented or were associated with the socialist ideals of October. The bureaucracy consolidated itself in power and acted as a parasitic growth on the planned economy. Despite this the planned economy was able to make tremendous steps forward for a period even in the absence of workers' control and planning. The regimes established in Eastern Europe after the Second World War were made in the image of Stalinist Russia, albeit with some national peculiarities.
With its military rule, its denial of workers rights, its denial of basic democratic freedoms and its political oppression of the working class, the Soviet Union and other Stalinist states had nothing to do with the ideals of genuine democratic socialism. In a genuine socialist society the economy would be under the democratic control of workers and their communities. All political officials and managers would receive the average wage of those they represent, and they would be elected and subject to recall. Democracy is essential to a planned economy. This was the position of the Bolsheviks under Lenin and Trotsky.
In fact, the complete absence of workers' democracy eventually led to the collapse of the Soviet Union and other Stalinist states, after years of economic stagnation and decline. How could bureaucrats, by dictatorial command, develop a huge, complex economy? Only by overthrowing the bureaucracy and introducing workers' control and planning could society move forward. Unfortunately, the tremendous mass movements of workers and youth against the Stalinist regimes in the late 1980s and early 1990s were, due to an absence of a genuine socialist alternative, misdirected by those that championed a return to the market economy. The result for the mass of people in Russia and Eastern Europe has been rampant poverty, unemployment, and ethnic conflict and wars.
Socialism rooted in workers' experiences
The ideas of genuine socialism were not consigned to the dustbin of history following the collapse of Stalinism, as the ruling classes had the folly to imagine. They are the only ideas that consistently meet the real needs of working people, youth and the poor. Socialist ideas emerged from the development of working class struggles in the 19th Century when early trade unions and workers' political organisations were being formed. Giants of the workers' movement like Karl Marx and Frederick Engels gave socialism a scientific character and armed the working class with powerful ideas. Those ideas will re-emerge over the next few years as a mass force through the development of titanic workers' struggles and the anti-capitalist and anti-globalisation movements. For the majority of humanity capitalism cannot deliver the goods. Working class people will increasingly look for a viable alternative to capitalism, to the ideas of socialism, as they move into struggle.