Social Being
Social Being is an archival project concerned with the recovery and presentation of world-socialist thought.
It brings together primary documents, organised by theme, and intended to grow over time. Editorial intervention is identified, language modernisation is minimised, and retrospective interpretation is not imposed.
Guiding Principle
It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.
— Karl Marx: A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, “Preface”.
Cooperation
Man is, if not as Aristotle contends, a political, at all events, is a social animal.
— Karl Marx: Capital, Vol. I, Ch. 13, “Co-operation”.
Lives
The writers were seamen on the Australian coast, and foundation members of the World Socialist Party of Australia (1924). Others will follow.
Writings
They are relevant for as long as the working-class (waged, salaried and self-employed) produces surplus-value (profit, interest and rent) for the capitalist-class (private, corporate and government) and rationalises it as social necessity.
They affirm the only class struggle the working-class can win, the struggle over how we want to spend our lives — not as coerced workers for capitalist wealth in a class-divided society, but as voluntary producers of our shared humanity (our social being) in the classless world we shape together.
Class Consciousness
Class-conscious humanity recognises that it must first turn the means-of-production (global resources and productive forces) into the common heritage of each under the democratic control of all, as the essential base of and for world socialism.