For our families and for our friends

What do we all want? We want to be all that we can be. And we want this not only for ourselves. But also for our families and our loved ones. We want everybody to be able to develop all of their potential but there are two points to bear in mind.

 First, how can we possibly develop all our potential if we are hungry, in bad health, poorly educated, or dominated by others?

Secondly, no-body is identical so we need to self-define our own wishes and needs as we all differ for everyone else.

 The aim of socialism is individuality, not uniformity. Our goal cannot be a society in which some people are able to develop their capabilities and others are not. We are interdependent and all members of a human family. The full development of all human potential for all is our goal. Satisfaction of communal needs and purposes focuses upon the importance of basing our productive activity upon the recognition of our common humanity and our needs as members of the human family. As long we look at one another as competitors or as customers, relating to others through an exchange relationships i.e., as enemies or as means to our own ends (and, thus, trying to get the best deal possible for ourselves), we shall remain alienated, atomised, and apart, human beings - fragmented. Socialism, if it is to be at all attractive, must promise to remedy those defects and nurture the development of each of us as the necessary condition of the full development of all.  For socialists the concept of solidarity is central. It is because we are a human being in a human society that we have the right to the opportunity to develop all our potential. Common ownership of the means of production (rather than private or sectional ownership), production for the purpose of satisfying needs (rather than for the purpose of exchange) and democratic decision-making within associations of the producers. Socialism wants to create a society in which each citizen actively and responsibly participated in all decisions because he or she has convictions and not opinions formed by media manipulation. We have created a widespread system of communication. Yet people are misinformed and indoctrinated rather than informed about political and social reality.

These are the core elements of socialism that people need to build. Our loyalty must be to the human race. Socialism is rooted in the conviction of the unity of mankind and the solidarity of all. If we believe in people, our choice is very clear: the only path is socialism. We fight any kind of worship of the state or the nation. The aim of socialism is the abolition of national sovereignty, the abolition of any kind of armed forces, and the establishment of a world commonwealth. Socialism is opposed to war and violence in all and any forms. We consider any attempt to solve political and social problems by force and violence not only as futile. Socialism stands for the principle of human relations based on free cooperation of all men for the common good. It follows not only that each member of society feels responsible for his fellow citizens, but for all citizens of the world. The injustice which lets two-thirds of the human race live in abysmal poverty must be removed

Think about this capitalist world of ours. Its very essence is to expand the market, to accumulate capital, to generate more and more surplus value in the form of commodities which must be sold, constantly trying to create new needs in order to make real that surplus value in the form of money. A spiral of growing production, growing needs and growing consumption. Everyone knows that the high levels of consumption achieved in certain parts of the world cannot be copied in other parts of the world. Very simply, the Earth cannot sustain this -- as we can already see with the clear evidence of climate change. However the people in the developing regions of the globe are well aware of the standards of consumption from the media. Are they to accept that they are not entitled to the fruits of civilisation? Are they expected to be deprived of their “fair share” of the benefits of ever advancing technology? Are the poor to be denied the opportunity to catch up with the relatively more affluent in regards to the standard of living and quality of life? Socialism wants material comfort for everybody on the planet.

Capital concentration led to the formation of giant enterprises, managed by hierarchically organised bureaucracies. Large agglomerations  of workers work together, part of a vast organised production machine  which, in order to run at all, must run smoothly, without friction,  without interruption. The individual worker becomes a cog in this machine; their function and activities are determined by the whole structure of the organization in which they work. In the large corporations, legal ownership of the means of production has become separated from the management and has lost importance. They are run by bureaucratic management, which does not own the enterprise legally, but socially. The CEOs while they do not own the enterprise legally, controls it factually; it is responsible (in an effective way) neither to the stockholders nor to those who work in the company. In fact, while the most important fields of production are in the hands of the large corporations, these corporations are practically ruled by their top employees. The giant corporations which control the economic— and to a large degree the political— destiny of the country, constitute the very opposite of the democratic process; they represent power without control by those submitted to it. When mankind is transformed into a thing, and managed like a thing, the managers themselves become things; and things have no will, no vision, no plan. The democratic process becomes transformed into a ritual. Whether it is a stockholders meeting of a multinational or a political election the individual has lost almost all influence to determine decisions and to participate actively in the making of decisions. Even the voice of the unions has been muted as they too have developed into bureaucratic machines in which individual members has very little to say and many of the union chiefs are managerial bureaucrats, just as industrial chiefs are.

While our economic system has enriched mankind materially, it has impoverished it “spiritually”. As a result, the average person feels insecure, lonely, depressed, and suffers from a lack of joy in the midst of plenty. Life does not make sense. It is meaninglessness. The capitalist system offers innumerable avenues of escape, ranging from television to tranquilisers to soulless consumerism, which permit  people to forget that they are losing what is really valuable important in life. Capitalism puts things (capital) higher than life (labour). All production must be directed by the principle of its social usefulness, and not by that of its material profit for some individuals or corporations. Socialism stands for freedom from fear and want. But freedom is not only from, but also freedom to; freedom to participate actively and responsibly in all decisions concerning the citizen and the community, and also the freedom to develop the individual's human potential to the fullest possible degree. The way in which someone spends most of his or her energy, in work as well as in leisure, must be meaningful and interesting. It must stimulate the intellect as well as artistic powers.

The Socialist Party is different from other political parties not only in its objectives, but in its very structure and in its way of functioning. It must also become the emotional and social home for all its members who are united by the solidarity of the common concern humankind and the future. The Socialist Party has developed an extensive educational campaign among fellow workers, who can be expected to have an understanding for socialist criticism and socialist ideals. The Socialist Party strives to gain the allegiance of an ever- increasing number of people who, through the party, make their voices heard throughout the whole world. Its only weapons are its ideas. It rejects the ideas of achieving its goals by force or by the establishment of any kind of dictatorship. We appeal to the true needs of those citizens will give it who have seen through the fictions and delusions which fill the minds of people today. We appeal to everybody to recognize his or her responsibility for their own life, that of their children, and that of the wider human family. People have a deep longing for something they can work for, and have confidence and optimism in. The weakness of present system is that it offers no ideals and that possesses no vision— except more of the same. We in the Socialist Party are not ashamed to confess that we are committed to a vision of a new society, and hold the hope that our fellow workers will eventually share in this vision and then join us in the attempt to realise it. Socialism is not only an economic and political movement; it is a human project.