As we approach 2025, what can we wish for, if not a revolution to radically change the world? Good health for all, prosperity and peace for all would mean putting an end to this exploitation-based society, the race for profit and the trade war that is degenerating into outright war.
We can hope that the billions of euros accumulated in the coffers of the privileged few be used for hospitals, education, public transport and the preservation of the planet. We can hope for a world where workers wouldn’t have to worry about making ends meet or about their retirement. And we can dream of putting an end to war, idiotic nationalism and borders that kill. But we’ll have to put up a fight if we want to make such hopes and dreams reality. And there is nothing utopian about that!
When capitalism replaced feudal society, it increased and developed productive forces on a whole new scale. Humanity was able to accumulate an unprecedented level of knowledge and wealth and developed extraordinary means of production and communication. There are still major inequalities but we have never been more capable of feeding, housing and satisfying the needs of the world's population than we are today. Never before has humanity gone so far in its understanding of the human body and in exploring the universe.
Humanity is capable of achieving great things. For example, it wouldn’t take much more to rebuild Mayotte and get it out of poverty than it did to restore Notre-Dame de Paris or organize the Olympic Games. We are indeed entirely capable of building the equivalent of a whole city with all the modern-day comforts in just a couple of years. The problem is that it all depends on whether the capitalists can benefit from it, and that’s precisely the crux of the issue!
Those at the head of large corporations and who rule the economy are not benefactors. They are the keepers of the vast possibilities that society has developed but are absolutely incapable of putting them at the service of humanity.
They don't care about people’s needs, they are only ever interested in those who can afford to pay and focus solely on money-making products and the profit they will make.
Because they thrive on the exploitation of workers and natural resources, they can only make more profit by deepening inequalities, widening the gap between rich and poor countries and destroying the planet. They feed on international competition and the elimination of the weakest, and thus fuel hatred and war between peoples.
Capitalism has become a vast waste of resources and human intelligence. It’s time to do away with it!
The growing poverty and precariousness in which the laboring classes are held revoltingly contrast with all the potential of society. This gap is an insult to the three-quarters of humanity kept in destitution. And it is a charge against economic and political leaders.
Today, far from elevating humanity, capitalism demeans it, condemning people to live, in many regions of the world, in a state of permanent war and to survive in appalling conditions, as is the case in Gaza and also in Sudan and Haiti.
Whereas big capital is completely incapable of making existing resources available to all, workers can do so and it would be in their interest. They can wrest economic power from the bourgeoisie by putting an end to the private ownership of big firms and by seizing political power.
In 1932, as the world plunged into a terrible economic crisis and approached a new world war, Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky explained in a speech delivered in Copenhagen that “The historical task of our epoch consists in replacing the uncontrolled play of the market by reasonable planning, in disciplining the forces of production, compelling them to work together in harmony and obediently serve the needs of mankind. Only on this new social basis will man be able to stretch his weary limbs and – every man and every woman, not only a selected few – become a citizen with full power in the realm of thought. (...) Socialism will mean a leap from the realm of necessity into the realm of freedom.”
We share this same perspective. This is how our dreams of a completely different world can come to fruition. For workers to take up the fight for socialism and to overthrow capitalism is the best we can wish each other for 2025.
Nathalie Arthaud