This will hopefully appear in the next Hat City Free Press, if I make the deadline.

When targeted by the left for her anti-worker, pro-corporate policies, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher responded, “There is no alternative.” This phrase was used so often that it soon became shortened simply to “TINA.” It was a “resistance is futile” attitude which is still quoted today. Arial Sharon, the brutal Israeli Prime Minister is known to ask his opposition, What’s the alternative? His answer is that there is no alternative to oppression, poverty, war and need. For Americans working in GM plants awaiting a pink slip and Palestinians fearing Israeli-driven and American-made Caterpillar bulldozers, there cannot be an alternative; else, the elite would be threatened.

An unfortunate fact for the minority who seek to protect their wealth and power is that Thatcher and company have been wrong. In 1848, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote that “A spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of communism.” Their philosophy has inspired generations of communists and socialists. Their names (Marx especially) have been tarnished from day one. Most recently in the modern, post-Cold War age, the mention of socialism conjures images of Joseph Stalin, the dictator whose distortion of Marxist philosophy destroyed much of the hope for the Soviet Union, even years after his death.

The truth is that true socialism looks very little like the stereotypical, Stalinist USSR. Far from being a dictatorial controlled one-party system, socialism aims to implement true democracy and liberation. In modern representative states, the exercise of democracy is performed once every few years. Under socialism it is believed that the working class has the ability to reason and rule itself; democracy would be exercised much more routinely. The entire society would be run from the bottom up. At the base of socialist belief is the idea of liberation. Capitalism as a system is designed to oppress; further, it divides the oppressed in hopes that they will not rise up against it. The economy as planned by the influence of individual profit does not provide for the needs of all, though it easily could. Capitalism has brought about the material requirements necessary to rid the world of the ills of oppression, hunger and poverty.

A socialist society would see changes on all levels. First and foremost, the class system would be abolished. On the individual scale, healthcare for all would be free and accessible. To train doctors for this universal healthcare system, education would also be free from kindergarten through the highest levels of the universities. Public transportation, homes, food and utilities would follow suite as monies wasted on the weapons of war and advertising (approximately $1.2 trillion in 2005) are redistributed. Personal liberation be achieved by allowing marriage between any consenting people regardless of gender or sexual orientation. Women would have access to birth control and abortions and will be finally liberated as they can control their bodies. Racial minorities would offer to society the pieces of their heritage which they celebrate and not fear any punishment.

Work would not be abolished, but less time would be spent on it as technology would be utilized to improve the lives of all. Working conditions would get better, and pay would be fair until it was deemed uncesseary. Workers would run their factories and establishments in the form of soviets (workers’ councils), democratically making decisions which directly affect them instead of leaving it up to the abstract layers of management and bosses. Each soviet would elect representatives for the local soviet, which in turn would elect representatives, up to the national level.

A specific, future socialist society could not be described in detail, as it would be up to those living it to shape it. The path to that future is similarly outlined. In his theory of permanent revolution, Trotsky shows that the bourgeoisie could not be trusted to institute, through reform or revolution, true democracy. Instead, the task would fall to the proletariat, the majority of people, to go through with the socialist revolution. The theory also outlines part of the failure of Stalin’s “socialism in one nation” policy by showing that a socialist state could not exist for long with the pressures of a capitalist world, leading to the need for revolution in other countries and eventually worldwide. A socialist society can not be achieved by reform, whether in the form of Democrats or Greens. A revolution must take place and develop from the bottom up. That is to say, a leader cannot declare socialism in any country; the people must unite in struggle for liberation and overthrow the government. With reform comes compromise: witness the destruction, piece by piece, of Bill Clinton’s health care plan.

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