Capitalism or Socialism?

Socialism means the liberation of the whole of humanity. The Socialist Party struggles not for any class privileges, but for the abolition of classes and class-rule. We oppose not only the exploitation and oppression of wage-workers, but also every form of exploitation and oppression.

The struggle of the working-class against capitalist exploitation is necessarily a struggle for political power. To make this struggle of the workers conscious and unified is the purpose of the Socialist Party. In all lands  the interests of the working-class are identical. The vast majority of people live by, or are dependent on, the sale of labour power to industries and businesses owned or dominated by capitalists. They own no tools of production and they own no property. With the development of globalisation for the world-market the position of the workers in each country becomes increasingly dependent on that of the workers in other countries. The liberation of the working-class is, therefore, a task in which the workers of all lands are equally concerned. Being aware of this fact the Socialist Party proclaims its solidarity with the class-conscious workers of all lands.

The capitalists know and fear the working class  on the fact that more of our class are increasingly reaching the correct conclusion about the economic, political and military history. That correct conclusion being that the natural resources and the means of production now in their hands, and which are the source of their economic and political power, must be taken from them. The workers everywhere have been penetrating the lies of capitalism. Capitalism robs the toilers of what they produce and places restrictions upon the development of the productive forces themselves. The main task of all capitalist governments is the suppression and exploitation of working people. Capitalists understand and sense the revolutionising effect upon the millions of workers in the growing crisis of the capitalist system.

Instead of a profit-making apparatus to fatten a few while millions suffer privations, socialism is for the benefit of the actual producers. Socialism marks the birth of the first era of prosperity for the workers. Under capitalism everywhere wealth piles up automatically in the hands of the parasitic owners of the industries, while the masses live at the bare subsistence.

Working people will be guaranteed security, democracy, equality and peace only when our world is run on an entirely different basis than it is now; only when a socialist system replaces the present capitalist one. The new socialist system would mean that all people would collectively own the factories and farms and they would plan production and distribution for their own needs.  How can workers be possibly be “exploited” when there is no ruling, owning class, no class to get a rake-off from the worker’s production?

 Socialism abolishes the chaos and anarchy of capitalist production and social organization; it does away with the dog-eat-dog competition of capitalist industry, breeder of economic crises and war. It sets up instead a planned system of modern industry and social relationships in harmony with the world’s eco-systems. Under capitalism science is a slave to the class interests of the bourgeoisie. Thus biology justifies the mad class struggle and war; economics puts an unqualified blessing upon wage slavery; history proves that capitalism is society perfected; psychology explains away poverty on the basis of inferior beings, etc. Capitalist science is also a veritable fortress of metaphysical concepts of every kind. But socialism strikes all these fetters from science. The working class exploits no subject class. Therefore, it has no interest to degrade science into a subtle system of propaganda, but on the contrary to give it the freest possible development. Capitalist science is unplanned and anarchic, the hit-or-miss task of whoever may be. But socialism organises science. Socialist re-construction is not only a plan of economy but also  the process of the rationalisation of life.

 Religion has been a part of every system of exploitation that has afflicted humanity—chattel slavery, feudalism, capitalism. It has sanctified every war and every tyrant, no matter how murderous and reactionary. Its glib phrases about morality, brotherly love and immortality are the covers behind which the most terrible deeds in history have been done. Religion is the sworn enemy of liberty, education, science. Capitalism tries to preserve religion in order to check the rebellion of the workers. Such monstrous systems of trickery and exploitation will be totally foreign to a socialist society because there is no exploited class requiring the escapism of religion and because childish superstition is impossible in a society based upon historical materialism.

The future socialist society will be stateless. With private property abolished (but, of course, not in articles of personal use), with exploitation of the toilers ended, and with the capitalist class decisively beaten there will then be no further need for the State, which in its essence, is an organ of class repression and then in the words of Engels, the State “withers away” and be replaced by a scientific technical “administration of things.”

 In socialism the guiding principle will be: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” That is, the distribution of life necessities—food, clothing, shelter, education, etc.—will be free, without let or hindrance. Production will be carried out upon the most efficient basis and freed from the drains of capitalist exploiters, will provide such an abundance of necessary commodities that there will be plenty for all with a minimum of effort. There will then be no need for pinch-penny measuring and weighing.  Technology freed from capitalist anarchy and exploitation, will develop a high efficiency and lay the basis for genuine mass prosperity.

This social development can only be opened by revolution. Our socialist revolution revolution marks the birth of real democracy. For the first time working people become free. Under chattel slavery, feudalism and capitalism they were oppressed and enslaved, merely the forms of this slavery changing with the varying modes of exploitation. All the capitalist “democracies”  are only the dictatorship of the employers, masked with hypocritical democratic pretenses. But the social revolution, by doing away with private ownership of the social means of production and distribution and by abolishing the exploitation of the workers, destroys the very foundations of enslavement and lays the groundwork for the establishment of a true democracy in which there are neither oppressors nor oppressed.