World in Common
Where we stand
Our purpose is to help inspire a vision for an alternative way of living where the technological and material resources for creating wealth (factories, farms, land, communications etc.) are owned in common
and
democratically controlled by the community on an ecologically
sustainable and socially harmonious
basis. Individuals will voluntarily
co-operate to produce goods and services and will freely take these
from
the stores and other such establishments, according to their
needs.
Buying and selling, money transactions,
profits and employment
for a wage or salary etc., will cease altogether, along with the very
idea of property
itself
(except for individual possessions for one’s
own use). Individuals will be able to freely develop their
creative potential and to make meaningful decisions that will allow them, at last, to take real control of their
own lives.
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Such a society requires two things. Firstly, the technological capacity
to produce enough to satisfy
everyone’s reasonable needs. This is
something we have had for a long time now. Poverty persists,
not
because we lack the productive potential to eliminate it but, rather,
because present-day society only
meets human needs if they are backed up by “purchasing power” and because more and more of that
productive potential is being squandered on socially useless activities whose only function is to keep our
money-economy going. Secondly, the achievement of this future society requires that large numbers of
people clearly understand what it will involve and support its establishment. This, however, is still far from
being the case today and is one of the reasons why we have come into existence as a conscious and
democratic organisation without leaders – to help this to happen.
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To bring about this alternative way of living we must recognise the
nature of present-day society as one in
which a tiny minority – either
through private corporations or the state – effectively own and control
the
means of producing and distributing wealth, leaving the rest of us
relatively powerless and compelled to
sell our working abilities to
this owning class, usually in return for a wage or salary. Putting our
trust in
politicians or leaders to solve the many social problems we
face today is ultimately futile since we currently
live in a global society
that is essentially organised to serve the interests of this minority only, rather
than
the population as a whole. Despite the courageous efforts of ordinary people the world over to resist the
powerful political and economic forces that work against
them, we are still faced with much the same kind
of social problems that we had over a century ago.
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To get rid of this society peacefully requires that the majority of
people – without distinction of gender,
sexuality, ethnic/cultural
identity or religion – unite for this purpose and, at the same time,
oppose those
poisonous ideologies that strive to divide, distract and
disempower us. It requires that we organise
consciously and
democratically to establish an alternative society ourselves from the
bottom up, without the
intervention of leaders or politicians and that we critically support practical attempts in the present to
empower ordinary people and strengthen their resistance to the global market and state. To that end, we call
upon anyone sympathetic to this broad objective to join with us – irrespective of differences of opinion on
matters of secondary importance – to help build a strong, inclusive, but
principled, movement for radical
change in a spirit of cooperation, friendship and solidarity.