The accursed capitalist system

Socialism is rule by the working people. They will decide how socialism is to work. With the abolition of capitalist exploitation there is also end of the managerial despotism inseparable from it, and representing all-powerful capital, the arbitrariness of the owners and the employers. Under capitalism the working people look on those in charge such as directors, managers and supervisors as enemies, since they direct production in the interests of the capitalists and of their profits. In socialist society those who administer enjoy the trust of the people, since they execute the decision of the entire community in the interests of everybody, not for capitalist profits.

 In a socialist society there is production is not for profit but for use, socially planned production. A socialist economy is a planned economy. In capitalist society, the capitalists own the means of production and engage in production for the sole purpose of making profits and satisfying their private interests. Therefore, though there may be planned production in a few enterprises, competition is rife and lack of co-ordination prevails among the different enterprises and economic departments as a whole. Cyclical economic crises which break out in capitalist society are the inevitable result of anarchy in production. Engels pointed out: “With the seizing of the means of production by society…Anarchy in social production is replaced by plan-conforming, conscious organisation.” Socialism has freed the workers from exploitation and has replaced work in subjection to the exploiters by free labour for oneself, for the whole of society. Labour in socialist society has a creative character, and is organised in a planned way.

Nationalisation in a capitalist class society is not socialism, nor is the “mixed economy”. Such nationalisation is simply a degree of state capitalism, with no relation to socialism. The “welfare state” is not socialist as “welfare” in a capitalist state is to improve the efficiency of that state as a profit-maker and is another form of state capitalism (aka the means test State). 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. Social production is aimed at meeting the ever increasing needs of the entire society in the interest of all the people, instead of catering to the private interests of the few. The establishment of common ownership of the means of production and the fundamental identity of the interests of the working people in socialist society make it possible for a socialist society to arrange the whole society’s labour force and means of production in a unified way. Capitalism makes the worker an appendage of the machine and stifles man’s abilities. Socialism, on the contrary, liberates labour from exploitation and gives all citizens free access to the fruits of society’s collective production. Socialism heralds a new and higher stage development of co-operation of labour, compared with preceding forms of society. Socialist co­operation is the co-operation of workers freed from exploitation, and linked with each other by relations of comradely mutual aid.

To use the word “socialism” for anything less than “from each according to ability, to each according to need” is to misuse the term. Members of the Socialist Party capably demonstrate how socialism could end poverty, unemployment and war by eliminating private ownership of the means of producing the things of life, national and international competition, and the struggle for existence by the overwhelming majority of the population in this and all other countries. They merciless expose of the evils of capitalist society, its murderous exploitation of the workers, its utter hypocrisy in human relations, and the most evident feature of its class character: the impoverishment of the masses and the enrichment of a small class of capitalists. The SPGB understands the necessity of building the movement for socialism requires the the art of socialist campaigning and agitation, to tell millions what socialism is, its relation and comparison to capitalism, and how it can be achieved. We need to reveal how thoroughly rotten capitalism is, how it is an outlived system capable of producing nothing but poverty, war and suppression of the will of the people. The Socialist Party is pledged to over-turn this accursed capitalist system, with its wars, its reaction, its vileness, brutality and savagery so that in the memory of people in future times of capitalism will remain only as a ghastly nightmare.