Why Socialism?

 “If you form the habit of going by what you hear others say about someone, or going by what others think about someone, instead of searching that thing out for yourself and seeing for yourself, you will be walking west when you think you’re going east, and you will be walking east when you think you’re going west. This generation, especially of our people, has a burden, more so than any other time in history. The most important thing we can learn to do today is think for ourselves.” – Malcolm X

We live in a deeply destructive world and the Socialist Party exists because of a trust in the potential of the working class to change that. We, the workers, have much more power than we realise. Common action has won great things for humanity in the past and now it is time again to carry that legacy forward, to take it to the next level. We do not need reforms, but a whole new system. Obama has been accused, among many things, of being “socialist” If Obama—who spent obscene amounts of money bailing out criminal financial institutions, who staffed key government positions with former Wall Street executives, and who expanded covert military operations beyond Bush—can seriously be classified as a socialist then it truly distorts socialism’s message of solidarity to the detriment of the average working person. Socialism suffers the burden of the past. The Soviet Union proclaimed itself both democratic and socialist yet it was neither. The right-wing media ridiculed the USSR’s claims to democracy, but saw fit to accept its supposed socialism to discredit the idea. From another quarter, supposedly dissident progressive academics and intellectuals, tied the public’s perception of socialism to the brutal Russian regime, declining to mention the fact the average worker was just as abused in Russia as in the United States.

The world about us is falling to pieces. The need for revolution is widely realised. Today humanity faces a global crisis stemming from the incredible rapaciousness of the capitalist system. Catastrophic climate change threatens to end life on our planet, then there is endemic endless wars plus mass poverty and hunger accompanied by a ruthless assault on working people everywhere. Capitalism will destroy the human race. It is absolutely clear that the wealthy will continue to put the drive for corporate profit ahead of everything, even our own future as a species. It is incapable of changing. Even when it recognises the danger it cannot stop doing what it does. Under capitalism, the working class is a ground-down, deeply divided mass — it is simply fodder for exploitation by the bosses in the workplace. Workers are forced to compete against each other for jobs. They are divided by nationality, ethnic background or skin colour; by skill and type of work (blue collar, white collar, etc.); by their wage and general conditions of work; and by age and gender. These divisions are skilfully exploited by the capitalist class to keep the workers disunited and turned in on each other. And, of course, through the all-pervasive mass media workers are constantly inundated with consumerist advertising, offering a fantasy view of what is desirable and never actually possible for them of acquiring. If capitalism is not overthrown, humanity is most likely doomed. The only question is the time-table of this apocalypse. The only way out is the abolition of capitalism and its replacement by socialism.

Socialism is rule by the people. Working people will decide how socialism is to work. This was how Marx and Engels defined socialism. The task of the Socialist Party therefore is to help take power from capitalists for working people to have. Marx and Engels made no attempt to proclaim in advance how a socialist society is to be developed but declared that the builders of a socialist society will be the workers and it will be they who will decide what a classless society is to be like. Capitalism is maintained by class power and will only be displaced by other class power. If the working people want power they will have to take it. It will not be given to them. We have to remember that all politics is about power. The revolutionary calls for power for the working people while the reformist hypocrite prepared to exercise power on behalf of the oppressor, and who claims to do a little good on the side. Capitalism is always shadowed by its nemesis — its gravedigger —the working class. It is the sole authentically revolutionary class. It has no interest in setting up a new system of class oppression but can only end its alienation by destroying the whole edifice of class domination.

To use the word “socialism” for anything but working people’s power is to misuse the term. Nationalisation is not socialism, nor does this constitutes a “socialist” sector of a mixed economy. Nationalisation is simply state capitalism, with no relation to socialism. Nor is the “welfare state” socialist. Socialism will certainly give high priority to health, education, the arts, science, and the social well-being of all. That is why it exists, that is its purpose. But “welfare” under capitalism is simply to improve the efficiency of the government as a creator of profit. It too is not socialism but a 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. The “Welfare State” inevitably turns into the means-testing.

The working class is essential for the operation of the social means of production but itself owns none of it. Its conditions of life make it cooperative and collectivist in outlook. Its objective interest is to collectively appropriate these means of production and establish a classless society. This makes it revolutionary — at least potentially

What truly is socialism? The socialist revolution is unlike anything ever before seen in history, something radically different. The oppressed class — the class at the very bottom of the social pile— struggles for political power in order to construct a socialist society where all forms of oppression and exploitation are eliminated.

Socialism is the greatest thing in all the world today. It seeks to undo capitalism’s many wrongs, which are becoming more severe and threatening. As we look about us today we see that the world is filled with suffering and despair. Socialism implies that the means of production are under the control of the community, and people themselves democratically shape the community in which they live. In these hard times especially does socialism show itself to be not only agreeable but necessary. The Socialist Party says there have got to be change. We say that the world is big enough for all the people that are in it, with plenty of room to spare, there is land enough to go around without crowding; that there are farms enough, or can be easily provided, to raise all we can eat, so that no child in all the world need to go hungry; that there is plenty of natural resources in the earth; that there are forests and mountains and water galore; that there are mills and mines and factories and ships and railways and the power supplied free by nature to run them all; that there are millions of men and women ready to do all the work that may be required to build homes, raise crops, bake bread – and cake too –and everything else that is necessary for everybody, and have time enough besides to build schools and hospitals to make this earth a  paradise.

Why should not just these things come to pass and why should not you not help us speed the day when they shall come to pass? Everything you can possibly think of to make this earth sweet and beautiful and to make life a blessed joy for us all is within our reach. The raw materials are at our feet; the forces to fashion them into forms of beauty and use are at our finger tips. We have but to put ourselves in harmony with nature and with one another to sing loud and clear the song of life. Socialists not only dream of the good day coming when the world shall know that men are brothers and that women are sisters to each other, but they are at work with all their hearts and all their heads and hands to make that dream come true. If you want to know what the plans of the Socialist Party are in detail attend our meetings and study their literature. If you're upset about the way things are going — then do something. Get active in the socialist movement, get involved — or get more involved. You'll feel better and — far more importantly — what you do will make a difference. Nothing is more worthwhile and more satisfying participating in the struggle for the communist future of humanity. People cannot live without hope for the future. 

The Socialist Party inspires workers with confidence that the future will be better if only they strive to make it so. The power of the socialists derives from the fact that they give a rational basis to the impulse of the masses to make a better world, an assurance that social evolution is working on their side; that the idea of socialism, of the good society of the free and equal, is not a utopian fantasy but the projection of future reality. When this idea takes hold of the people it will truly be the greatest power in the world. When you organise, you can win. Our power is in our numbers. We will use that strength to wrest our world back from the capitalist class, from the bankers and billionaires who put profits before people. Hope can inspire a bottom-up grassroots movement to make the world a better place to live and work in. No child should go hungry. Health care should be a right, not a privilege for those able to pay for it. Catastrophic climate change is a clear and present danger. The power of food production systems is concentrated in few corporate hands. But another way—a better way—is possible. Locally-produced and affordable agro-ecological food should be the backbone of a food system that increases our food sovereignty. The 'business-as-usual' model can no longer be considered an option for a well-functioning food system in the future.