Peoples Power

 People feel the impact of the changing world on their daily lives and search for an answer to their problems. Socialism is not merely a means of improving the immediate conditions of people but has a greater object than that; it aims at controlling the means of wealth production on behalf of the workers. Socialism may be most quickly defined as the complete democratisation of society. There is a difference between hollow rhetoric about “ freedom and liberty” and real democracy. The fact is that Big Business and the giant corporations dictate policy to the government. By ending the political, economic and financial domination by the clique of millionaire CEOs, socialism, for the first time, creates the conditions for the free expression of the people’s will. The only “liberty” which Socialism ends is the liberty of the privileged class to own industry and amass wealth at the expense of the majority. Socialism ends the “freedom" to exploit and oppress the producers by a class of privileged parasites.

Social democracy must proceed from the bottom upward, whereas the democracy of the capitalist political society is organised from above downward. Socialism does not aim at domination of the individual by an all-powerful State. It has been customary for the wage-workers to be told that they must look to the State for salvation. As socialists  we have argued that State ownership takes all control away from the workers.  It is the concept of the management of capitalism and not its overthrow. What these policies seek to do is create the idea of a “people’s capitalism”.  The motive for production would remain profit and the relations of production would remain capitalist relations. It would remain a capitalist society, with all the features of the capitalism albeit with perhaps some measures designed to soften the impact of capitalism on working class interests. Nevertheless, the political State of capitalism has no place inside socialism; therefore, measures which aim to place industries in the hands of, or under the control of, such a political State are in no sense steps towards workers freedom.  Socialism will abolish the State and substitute the full direction of society into the hands of co-operatives producing for the benefit of all. Socialist teaching is all about collective property and collective involvement of the producing class, or citizens as a whole, in the process of production and political decision making. The reduction of this idea to Statism has no part in the authentic Marxist tradition.

The struggle for socialism is the struggle for socialist consciousness. There is not a socialist in the world today who can indicate with any degree of clearness how we can bring about the co-operative commonwealth except along the lines suggested by the Socialist Party. In Socialism, States, countries, or nations, provinces and territories will exist only as geographical expressions, and have no existence as sources of governmental power, though they may be seats of administrative bodies.

The solution for the ills of present-day society is the socialist ownership of the industries  and production for the common good, instead of profits for the few. The solution is to end the private ownership of the means of production and replace it with social ownership and production planned to meet the people’s needs, that is, socialism. To enjoy the wealth created by society will be  a right given to citizens at birth and, against that, what is required of them is to contribute to society as best as they can.  When you are born you have a right to live like everybody else and socialism assumes that you have the common sense to get up and contribute something to society according to your creative ability.  There must not be any economic or political connection between people's contributions to production and their enjoyments of its fruits.

It is socialism that is our goal, a future for humanity where classes and the state will have been completely eliminated. The Socialist Party’s primary role is to education and agitation, to orient the struggle of the entire class so that it brings an overall perspective to each branch of the workers’ movement, explaining the root causes, and unite all the isolated battles into one powerful revolutionary offensive. The Socialist Party turns the anger of the workers into a political voice that calls for an end to this criminal capitalist system.