Social change not small change

Many devote their lives to battle against frightful odds to right the wrongs of the world but for the most part they are people with little vision —merely ordinary men and women who are pained by horrible injustice and oppression they see. Often commentators will label them the “lunatic fringe” by which they mean who believe in social justice and want to put it into effect. They are for peace, not war; they are not for obedience and subservience to corporations and governments. Sadly, not theirs is the socialist vision of a classless society. They limit their ambitions to reforms and adjustments to the system. These limitations are inherent in a struggle unguided by a vision of a different type of society. The Socialist Party task is to break them off from ideological and political submission to capitalism.

Society is divided into two great classes by the present form of property-holding, and that one of these classes, the wage-earning, the workers, are obliged to work for the other, the capitalist, in order to be able to live.

Socialism is a system of society in which the land, the means of production, and distribution are held in common. Production is for use, as and when required, not for profit, exchange or sale. The organisation of production and distribution is the responsibility of by those who do the work and of the communities they serve working for the general welfare and mutual harmony of all. Socialism is a classless order of society in where everybody shall have leisure and be secured from want. There can be no socialism until the majority of people desire socialism and turn their thoughts and actions towards it. Socialism can never arise and flourish save by the active co-operation of the majority and by their common will. Force may overthrow governments, and set up governments, but even governments cannot long remain, unless they obtain the acquiescence of the governed. Observation of life around us teaches, that where violence has no place in human relations everything is settled in the best possible way, in the best interests of all concerned. But where violence intervenes, injustice, oppression and exploitation invariably triumph. We want to bring about a society in which men and women will consider each other as brothers and sisters and by mutual support will achieve the greatest well-being and freedom as well as physical and intellectual development for all.

 In every discussion on the aims and objects of the World Socialist Movement someone is sure to bring up the objection that difficulties would arise out of the inability of the common people to understand the complexity of the social system they will be called upon to administer, which would result in its failure. This objection seems rather tenuous since the majority of those who at the present day are entrusted with the work of organising and administering the capitalist system are unaware of every development of the system outside of their own particular sphere. Socialist organisation  will preserve the effectiveness gained from capitalism whilst jettisoning the waste capitalist competition entails. It is not at all necessary that everyone, or even a very large number, of those engaged in labour should be able to understand and explain the multifarious processes of production, and that they should all be qualified to follow commodities through all their stages, from  raw material up to the final  finished product. It is only necessary that each worker should perform with due skill his or her own allotted task. The few required to be the co-ordinators organising industry may be left to the work of adjusting and interlocking the parts and even this apparently formidable challenge may be reduced to the routine work of a clerical and statistical staff on computers.

The World Socialist Movement has constantly based itself on class struggle and revolution. The World Socialist Movement has never compromised, it has never been opportunistic, or embraced reformism. Perhaps no movement in the world has had its eyes so clearly on the final goal of abolishing capitalism as it has. We see the state as a tool of bourgeois control and decide that for the worker to make any demands on it at all is a waste of time! We see the government simply as an administrating committee for the capitalist class and think of engaging it in politics as a waste of time! While the capitalist system prevails earning partial improvements is a waste to time! We want nothing from it at all. Our goal is the abolition of capitalism. We understand that without the abolition of capitalism, no amount of reform will bring emancipation.