I believe there is only one way to fully overcome the chronic economic crises, the "me-firstism" inculcated by capitalist mass-psychology, and the coming ecological meltdown that will otherwise ravage the Earth, and it is through the establishment of a socialist state with a socialist economy by the workers, accompanied by an educational system which would educate its citizens in a socially aware, cooperative culture. In this type of economy, 'the means of production' are owned by the people themselves and it functions in a rational fashion through planning. Try as I might, I cannot think of a reformist path that can accomplish this.
While it may in certain conditions be an ameliorative measure, I do not see the partial or full nationalisation of capitalist assets as necessarily a step toward radical democracy, never-mind socialism. Keynesianism consists of a counter-revolutionary series of measures to save capitalism from its inherent self-destroying profit function. I reject reformism as an ideology that holds that the most the working class can hope for is the adoption of progressive reforms (however good and helpful).
Social democrats usually confine "Politics" to election campaigns and trade unions; both are necessary areas of struggle and education, but at some point when conditions are ripe the organised working people will have to take the means of production away from the capitalists.
However socialism comes about, it will have to be very carefully and deliberately carried out by an organised working class and its allies. Because of the immense opposition to social ownership on the part of the possessing capitalist class, at all stages of the revolutionary struggle for power as well as in the challenges of the revolutionary process, the working people have to be readied to defend their gains from police surveillance, agents provocateur, and the violence of police and soldiers. We must look at the experience of interferences in nations becoming socialist, or nationalist, or merely deemed to be contrary to US "national interests". And Canada has its own internal police surveillance as well that works hand to glove with FBI and CIA covert action.
All of these unhappy realities raise the question of the need for disciplined parties in a united front for Socialism which have learned wisdom and an unflinching commitment from internal and international struggles with imperialism and capitalism.
It is true "Society" can be conceived in a variety of different ways, depending on the operative(or unformulated) sociological theory.
Let me speak more clearly, and as a Marxist, of the State, including among its different arms, first, the courts, police, prisons; second, the government, the civil service, parliament, city council; third, govt sponsored bodies like the public school system. Under capitalism the Ruling Class requires police to guard property and break strikes as well as arresting the criminal elements. Parliament or Congress with the Courts maintain corporate class rule while superbly keeping alive the fiction that anyone has the "right" to rise to the corridors of power and "serve the nation". A legal, formal right does not magically permit the worker to transcend class barriers.
My examples are meant to illustrate that the State is not neutral; "Society" as its constituted in our several countries is partisan on the side of the enemy Ruling Class.
Under socialism, the chief means of production are socially owned and controlled by means of a revolutionary socialist state. And the base of the socialist parties and the socialist state is the working-class – the majority within society. The government of the socialist state is composed of the leading, politically educated delegates of the working-class and its Movement. The citizens send their deputies to regional and central legislative bodies through free vote. This State is also partisan, but in favor of the majority.
It will defend itself from internal and external attempts at the overthrow of the Revolution. It will not tolerate the operation of parties advocating fascism, war,or hate crimes; it will not permit public political agitation intended to overthrow socialism and restore capitalism.
If the capitalist state is as I have characterized it in the foregoing discussion, a partisan possessing class stunting and distorting our creativity, our values, expropriating all in its path -- from our parliaments and judiciary to our factories and labour,-- then we must stop sabotaging our class and survival interests, and prepare for the perhaps not too distant years, when the working-class and its allies takes power.
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