“Arouse, ye slaves!
Declare war, not on the capitalist, but on the capitalist system” – Eugene Debs
Many sneer at socialism as unattainable. But we in the
Socialist Party maintain socialism is practical. Is it necessary to prove that
socialism is not dead? We need only see what is going on all over the world today.
Socialist ideas are everywhere. Socialism is not an academic and Utopian
conception, it is ripening and developing in closest touch with reality.
The objective of socialism is a free individual in a free
society, the well-being of each assured by the well-being of all. Socialism is
that social system under which the necessaries of production are owned,
controlled, and administered by the people, for the people. Class rule is at an
end. Socialism is rule by the working people. They will decide how socialism is
to work. To use the word “socialism” for anything but working people’s power is
to misuse the term. Nationalisation of mines, railways, steel, etc. is not
socialism, nor does this constitutes “the socialist sector of a mixed economy”.
Nationalisation is state capitalism, with no relation to socialism. Nor is the
“welfare state” socialist. Many good men and women have viewed the sufferings
of the working class and have attempted to make reforms which would ease the
misery of the masses. But these reforms have inevitably failed, not because the
intentions of those who proposed them were not good, but because they did not
fit in with the force dominant in social and industrial life –capitalism. Socialism will certainly give high priority
to health, education, art, science, and the social well-being of all its
members. That is why it exists, that is the purpose of its economy. But
“welfare” in a capitalist state, to improve the efficiency of that state as a
profit-maker, is not socialism but another form of state capitalism. It can be
an improvement on capitalism with no welfare, just as a 40-hour week is an
improvement on a 60-hour week. But it is not socialism. Socialism is the
society of the free and equal. It is simply a question of capitalism or
socialism, of despotism or democracy?
Socialism is the only remedy. Its philosophy of cooperation
is rational, humane, and all-embracing. The trend is toward the cooperative
commonwealth. It is the hope of the world. Capitalism is the breeder of
selfishness and greed. Capitalism has spawned a brood of vices. In the wage system you and your children, and
your children’s children, if capitalism should prevail, are condemned to
slavery and there is no possible hope unless by throwing over the capitalist
and voting for socialism. What you must do is to organise your class and assert
your class interests just as the capitalists do to rob you. What we want is not
to reform the capitalist system. We want to get rid of it. What is wanted is
not a reform of the capitalist system, but its entire abolition. Socialism is
not a reform, it is a revolution. The working class must get rid of the whole
brood of masters and exploiters, and put themselves in possession and control
of the means of production. As soon as capital shall cease to govern,
wage-labour and the rest of slavery will be abolished. Freedom and equality
will then be no longer empty and cheap phrases, but will have a real meaning;
when all people are really free and equal they will honour and advance one
another. It is therefore a question not of “reform,’ the mask of fraud, but of
revolution. The capitalist system must be overthrown, class-rule abolished and
wage-slavery supplanted by the cooperative commonwealth.
We are educating, we are agitating, we are organising. If all
the working class were to use their eyes to see; their ears to hear; their
brains to think, how soon this Earth would be transformed. No sane person could
be satisfied with the present system. Socialism struggles for the emancipation of
all in every stratum of society, fighting against all exploitations and all
oppressions. It is the defender of all the exploited and all the oppressed. To
let the working class speak clearly is the mission of the socialist movement of
the world
“The rich man is he who, being young, has the rights of old age; being
old, the lucky chances of youth; vicious, the respect of good people; a coward,
the command of the stout-hearted; doing nothing, the fruits of labour.” - Victor Hugo
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