Make Socialism a Mass Movement

Tory and Labour rule the same
The only difference is in the name

The current recession has depression have been teaching the  people of the world that something is basically wrong with  the present system, driving home the utter  senselessness of unemployment, hunger, and misery existing side by side with the most marvelous industrial and agricultural productive plant yet built by man, fully able to fulfill  every normal need of everybody in the world.  Every day is  demonstrating more clearly the inability of our politicians,business leaders and their economic advisers to solve our problems. Many are beginning to understand realize that this incompetence is not due merely to the stupidity or corruption of individual leaders of industry and the government, but that the system itself cannot work properly any longer, whoever is in charge. These persons are beginning to realize that the present system of society must itself be done away with and a new system substituted - that it is not merely a matter of honest men advocating reforms  but a revolutionary change in the whole structure of society.

In any class society one class rules, exploits, and oppresses the other class. The capitalist class is doing that now with the working class. The state is its instrument of rule and suppression. The capitalist state is a disguised dictatorship of the capitalist class. Through the powers of the state the capitalist class perpetuates its rule.This power is exercised in many ways. The controlling minority makes the decisions on  the possibilities of work and the conditions of work; the homes in which we live and the terms under which we live in them; the factories that will be built and the quantity of goods they will tum out; the wars to be fought. Even down to what most people wear, eat, actually what they think. The power to invest capital in industry or withdraw it, to buy, sell and mortgage land, to destroy natural resources, to run themedia, schools, and even the churches--this power is not merely economic, but political, social and cultural as well. Capitalist society, in which a small minority owns and controls the means of production, means and must mean capitalist dictatorship. Our apparent political freedom, then, our freedom to vote for "the candidate of our choice," affects in no important way the question of who actually controls society and the state. The technique for maintaining this peoples’ consent and confidence is so complex and extends into every social detail that it cannot be adequate summarized. Certainly one of its chief supports is the belief that the government is the representative of the whole of society, independent of any class or group conflicts and therefore able to be fair and impartia1 to carry out "the will of the people." This belief is instilled into every citizen from earliest years. It is the theme of classrooms, of public orators and media spokes-persons, of political campaign speeches. It reaches it culmination whenever there is a war we are called to sacrifice ourselves  for "our" country.

The working class must wrest that instrument of a capitalist dictatorship, the state, from the hands of the capitalists, must destroy its machinery of capitalist rule, and must establish in its place a proletarian dictatorship for the suppression of the capitalist class. This ‘dictatorship’ will not be a permanent one. It aims at the abolition of classes and consequently at the abolition of class rule and the state. This is the aim of socialists.

We are socialists out of conviction, because we see capitalism as harmful to the vast majority of our own and the world’s people. This system we live under, by its very nature, grinds the poor and working people, sets one group against another. We see in socialism the method of achieving a more just, more cooperative and more peaceful society. Socialists can offer an alternative which can meet basic needs of people and which is based on cooperation. Socialism offers a future free from the fears of poverty, sexism, racism, dog-eat-dog competition, joblessness, and the loneliness of old age. As our movement grows, we will be nearer to creating a society that allows each person to create and produce according to her or his ability and to obtain what she or he needs.

Utopia is imagined as a vision of a very distant future or as a dream which transcends reality. Utopia is a subject of the imagination and speculation without any connection with reality or even without any possibility of being involved in reality. As soon as a creative act is involved and the revolutionary action is involved utopia begins to merge with reality. Things which previously seemed unachievable becomes a possibility. What was impossible now becomes possible. The "I" begins to merge with "We," and personal desires with collective strivings. Socialism is now put within everyone's reach by the means of a mass movement.

We see capitalism today as a destructive system that hurts, divides and exploits the vast majority of our people for the sake of profits and power for the few. We advocate and work for socialism–that is, common ownership and collective control of the means of production (factories, fields, transport, etc.) and government. We want a system based on cooperation, where the people build together for the common good. The aim of the Socialist Party is to join with the revolutionary workers of all other countries in building world-socialism. Only a socialist society can utilize rationally the natural resources and productive machinery of the Earth in the interests of the peoples of the Earth. Only world-socialism will remove the causes of wars that under capitalism now seriously threaten to send mankind into barbarism or complete destruction. Only a  federation of socialist communities can alone solve the conflict between the efficient development of productive forces and the restrictions of artificial national boundaries.

Today, the questions of the meaning of life and mankind's goal in living have emerged again as questions of primary importance. Today, advanced industrial society is creating free time.

We have  moved rapidly toward a fully industrialized, automated world in which the ten or twenty hour working week will be standard, and where the many material satisfactions provided for everyone will be taken for granted. capitalism has prepared the industrial machinery and technology  We have no need any longer to trouble ourselves about that part of it. Our part is to get control of the political power in order to achieve socialism peacefully and systematically. In whatever way socialism comes, we must have a majority of the people in favor of it. The class-struggle and the logic of events is making socialists faster than any other kind of propaganda can, but that does not relieve us from doing our share. It is our work to clarify and educate the vast amount of vague, undeveloped socialist sentiment existing today, and crystallize and organize it into something palpable and definite. We must remember that socialism is not inevitable unless we do our part, and that promptly and wisely.

The election of a socialist to office here and there is not so important as some are apt to imagine, except for its educational effect. What kind of a benefit has socialism received from having a socialist may here and there or a socialist representative or two in the state house? Principally the publicity it gives the movement and the strength and courage imparted to us by success. These elected socialists are not able to take any practical steps in constructive socialism. What is the vital component of socialism is working class knowledge and the ensuing working class activity outside parliaments to make socialism a practical proposition.