Marx, Socialism and the Socialist Party

OUR MINIMUM DEMAND

The fundamental feature of a socialist society is that all the means of production –the factories, the offices, the mines and mills and the transport– are owned by the people and the goods that are produced, are produced for use. Under the present system, which we call capitalist, the means of production are owned by private persons or corporations and sometimes by the government and they all operate their industries not because people need the goods that they produce but because they want to make a profit. We call the present social system capitalist because men are permitted to own productive wealth and to hire and exploit wage labour.

With socialism the people will decide how many pairs of shoes, how much coal, how many houses are needed to satisfy the needs of the people and proceed to manufacture them. The productive wealth of the productive wealth of society – machinery, factories, mines – will be owned in common by the people, and goods will be produced for the use of the people. The productive forces of society will be so greatly developed and the education of the people will be such as to enable society to follow the principle: From each according to ability; to each according to need.

There are no classes under socialism – that is, there is no class that owns the wealth and no class that is exploited. Today a worker has only his labour power and he or she sells that to someone who owns machinery and gets a wage in return and the man who owns the machinery makes a profit out of the labour power. That is what socialists term exploitation of labour. We want a socialist society where all the productive wealth is owned in common and there is no exploitation. We want a social revolution; that is undeniable. By that we mean that our aim is to transfer the economic and political power from the class we call capitalists to the. When that happens, a social revolution will have occurred. The French revolution was a social revolution because the mercantile and capitalist class displaced the feudal class. The power to rule society was transferred from the landowning feudal nobility to the merchants and industrialists. There may be political revolutions that are not social revolutions. The coups that occur frequently are political revolutions because they do not change the social system. A social revolution may or may not be accompanied by violence and no one knows for certain exactly how it will occur in the future but the Socialist Party judges that a peaceful revolution is not only possible but highly likely if certain mean are taken to accomplish the ends.

“Economic determinism” is not the theory of socialism, but socialists do consider the economic factor the determining factor in the development of society. The primary concern of human beings has always been to feed, clothe and shelter themselves. As human beings lived together, certain necessities drove them to invent certain machines and with the invention of these machines production increased and with the increase in production changes occurred in the economic and social system.

Struggles arose between groups and the victors made slaves out of the vanquished. A system of slavery arose and the forces of production continued to develop. More machines were invented; the forces of production increased; society developed further and ever further and class struggles arose; slaves revolted against masters; the social system based on slavery could no longer function effectively and that social system was displaced by a new system. What is known as feudalism came into existence. He who owned land had the right to exploit the man who worked on the land and this man who worked on the land was called a serf. In comparison with the chattel slave, he was a free man but nevertheless he could not leave the land. New markets came into being; new machinery was invented; the forces of production grew and with it a new and powerful class arose – the merchant class of the Middle Ages – and it is this merchant class that constituted the beginning of modern capitalist class. We call that class the “bourgeoisie” and this class began a struggle against the feudal nobility and finally conquered and became the dominant class in society. Thus you see that, in the opinion of socialists, a class struggle has existed since time immemorial. The chattel slaves struggled against the masters, the plebeians struggled against the patricians, the serf against the feudal nobility; and today we have the fundamental struggle between the capitalists who own the wealth and the wage workers who create the wealth. And is this struggle a result of man’s will or desire? No, it is a struggle that is due fundamentally to the development of economic forces. A social system is born, develops, decays and is displaced by a new social system – all this by virtue of laws at operate independently of the will of human beings. A new social system gives birth to new ideas, to new moral concepts. Under the feudal system in the Middle Ages, for instance, the church prohibited the lending of money on interest. To lend money on interest was considered usury. But with the development of the merchant class and the capitalist system, the lending of money became an absolute necessity and obviously people would not lend money unless they could make a profit out of it. The rule of the church against usury was abolished and interest up to a certain point was permitted. Man’s ideas, man’s morals, man’s philosophies are determined fundamentally by the economic structure of society and not vice versa. The history of man is determined not by his will nor by his consciousness nor by what he thinks is right or wrong but by inexorable economic forces operating on the basis of certain laws. This idea was first introduced by Karl Marx – the Material Conception of History.

Society cannot be changed by the mere desire of a small group to change it. It must, in the first instance, be ripe for a change and in the second instance the masses of men must understand the necessity for a change. We have now reached a point in the development of society where mankind must take control of social forces and determine the operation of those social forces. Up to now, man has been subjected to social forces that he did not understand and could not cope with. What man must do now is to become master of his own destiny. If man does not do so, then barbarism, the destruction of all liberties and of all culture will inevitably follow.

Look at our social system and you can see for yourselves how the class struggle operates the worker against the employer. Why is our society subjected to this struggle? Because each social group wants a larger share of the income that society produces. In comparison to the number of wage workers, our party constitutes a small group; the class struggle goes on without us. We have not as yet achieved an influence which can permit us to play a decisive role in that struggle. The struggle between the worker on the one hand, anxious to get a higher wage, and the employer on the other hand, anxious to make more profit, is a struggle that will go on regardless of the desire or the intention of any man. There are some employers who are willing to give higher wages but they are prevented by the law of competition under capitalism. By and large the employers are anxious to make more and more profits and, because of that, the class struggle must necessarily continue.

Throughout history there have been men who dreamed of changing society. They saw the poverty, the oppression, the persecution and hatred that prevailed in the world. There are some people who claim that the human being is essentially bad and no attempt to change his nature can succeed. But when one considers that in spite of the meanness and violence that prevail in society, there are millions of decent human beings, one must come to the conclusion that the human being is essentially good. Marx presented the proposition that to change man, you must change the social system. It is impossible to have a society where love between human beings prevails, unless you have a society where the struggle for economic existence is done away with. Under the present social system, mean, petty and violent struggles prevail in all classes. There are struggles in the form of bitter competition between business men; there are struggles between the small business men and the chain stores; there are struggles between workers. Everywhere in society struggle prevails. Marx concluded that before man can develop to a point where the relationship between one human being and another will be on a decent basis, society will have to be altered. Marx formulated the following proposition: that the ideas, the philosophies, the religions and the morals of a certain epoch are determined fundamentally by the prevailing social system; change the social system and the ethics and morals will also change. Marx accepted two fundamental principles: one, the necessity of convincing the majority of the people to accept the ideas of socialism, and two, the necessity of capturing the State so that we can begin building the socialist society by firstly displacing the rule of the capitalist class.

Socialism is a world system under which all peoples will cooperate to produce enough goods to satisfy the reasonable needs of every human being. Every region will produce that which it is best fitted to produce. If a place can produce good machinery then let it not busy itself with producing agricultural products. Let some other location best fitted for the production of agricultural products produce those products and exchange its products for the machines produced by another. Peace will come to a world cooperating in this way, which will be made possible only by socialism.  We reject the idea that one nationality or people is superior to any other. To us all human beings are equal. The prejudices that exist are a product of the social system and not inherent in human nature. The brotherhood of man will be made possible and real under a socialist society which will do away with economic conflicts.

The misery, the suffering and the death of millions of fellow human beings are not abstractions to the Socialist Party. We feel them keenly and we react to them and we try to create a world where poverty, disease and war will not be the lot of mankind. Our studies have led us to certain conclusions and we have come together into a political party to propagate those conclusions. We proclaim that it is possible to build a new social system guaranteeing every human being a decent livelihood and a chance to develop his or her individuality, free from economic worries, free from the dangers of war. We say that we have reached an epoch where mankind must go forward to socialism or degenerate into barbarism. The strength of our ideas lies in the fact that our general predictions, based upon the laws operating in society, have come true. The Socialist Party base its case upon ideas that has withstood the test of time and events. We still hold hope that people will come to accept the ideas of socialism. We ask you to understand these ideas because we think they will ultimately enter the minds and the hearts of our fellow workers who will then struggle for their realisation because there is no road to peace and plenty other than the road of socialism.

SOCIAL EVOLUTION