action of individuals and groups.
Carden
more money are demanding a right, not a privilege.
the main reason for doing things, we live in a dehumanised society.
Capitalist morality is the morality of the brothel. sense of purpose in their lives.
their work because it really fulfills them? How many feel any real sense of loyalty to their firm? Of course they don't, how could they? How could you feel loyal to ICI or Fords?
And as for outside work point of it all?
he has in his culture in the last fifty years - whether it be in the sense of futility of a Becket or Katka, or the emptiness of the Hollywood movie a point to their existence then. meaningfull way. They are merely cogs in a vast machine. They simply obey orders - not only in their work but in more and more other spheres of life as well. distribution of money in this society remains as grotesquely unfair as ever. (You just read the "Latest Wills" section of The Times if you think all that's been evened out.) Workers who demand But suport for the fight for higher wages should not obscure the basic truth: because money is In order to be fully happy, people need to be able to do things with other people - to work with them in a creative way, to play with them, to go on holiday with them, to make love to them, to bring up a family with them. People also need to do things with a sense of meaning, to have a But it is virtually impossible in this society for people to be happy in this way. One of its noticeable features is that people's social lives are increasingly empty and meaningless. The most important aspect of our social life is work. Yet how many people love their jobs? How many do - what are we living for? - to possess an electric toothbrush? To No wonder modern bourgeois culture is so barren, so utterly lacking in nobility and warmth. Never in the history of humanity has man presented himself with such self-hatred and cynicism as People actually think of the war - so we are told - as a time when they were happy. There was People cannot have a sense of purpose in this society because they are not involved in it in a Can a society based on the privelege of the few at the expense of the many one? We call this society a rat-race. that is admittedly a rat-race produce happy people?
live in a happy society most part is merely a question of obeying orders. Their entertainment is spoonfed to them by powerful business interests, and is designed largely to keep them in a state of sporific stupidity And the future? more important than men; personal relationships and human emotional needs sacrificed to a "modernisation" that does not even work; the people made impotent, alienated, insignificant -dwarfed by the power of the capitalists, their institutions and their beaucracy. worth growing up for.
This means our politics.has to be the living embodiment of that new world, that new way of life. It our lives. If politics makes you unhappy something's wrong, because the revolutionary movement should be the new world in miniature, and the new world should make you happy.
Young neonle have alimnsed the new world in their imanination Trotsky Does anyone challenge that description? How can a society The fact is, it doesn't. It produces neurosis, crime, violence, loneliness. Juşt watch the tele for a few evenings, and then say we live in a happy society. This society has been called The Lonely Crowd. Millions of people living together, yet being alone in the middle of it all, often passing days without really talking to another human being. Go home on the late-night tube and then say we In every field people are bamboozled, pushed around, controlled, spoonfed, sucked dry of their and vitality and originality. Their education is a regimented exam-race where the main This is what young people are invited to look forward to. No wonder they reject it. No wonder they are fighting for something better in almost every country in the world. Capitalism is doomed not only because of its economic contradictions and its injustice, not only because it cannot offer equal opportunity to its workers. It is doomed because it cannot promise its children a life that is The response to all that has to be a total one. We are out to create a new world, nothing less. is something that has to show in every sphere of our lives, just as capitalism invades every sphere of
"Apprentices must demand — no, not demand - they must take the right to strike."
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thing they are taught is to know their place. Their work is dehumanised and boring, and for the laced i the dash ef evant, ugler cities suffocated by the filth and noise of traffic; machines