The cause of socialism

ABOLISH WAGE SLAVERY

Working people are waging and will continue to wage struggles on many issues, including wages, health, industrial accidents, social services, unemployment, political rights, etc. These struggles put them in direct opposition to various sectors of the ruling class– this or that capitalist, manager, government minister, municipal politician or whatever. Workers know very well who their immediate enemy is and where their immediate interests lie in such conflicts. It is not the job of the Socialist Party to substitute itself for the peoples’ protests. Its role is to point out what all these struggles have in common, to point out that the cause of these problems and the misery that workers have to endure under capitalism is one and the same, to identify the class enemy hiding behind each specific, individual enemy and to indicate the only path that will enable us to solve these problems once and for all. In opposition to those who promise “socialist” reforms as a way of eliminating the exploitation of man by man, the Socialist Party puts forward the revolutionary struggle, the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the establishment of the socialism. We defend the slogan, “The emancipation of the workers will be accomplished by the workers themselves”. This is how we carry out our tasks associalists; not as reformists, but as conscious revolutionaries who go against the tide – against the nationalists divisions between immigrant workers and indigenous workers maintained by the ruling class; against the idea that capitalism can be gradually improved until it becomes a society free from exploitation. These are the ideas that we sow and cultivate. Experience has proven that unless our ideas triumph in the working-class movement, socialist revolution is impossible.

The aspiration of Marx and Engels was a society based upon free association of completely free men and women, where no separation between ‘private and common interest’ existed: a society where ‘everyone could give himself a complete education in whatever domain he fancied’. For ‘man’s activity becomes an adverse force which subjugates him, instead of his being its master’ when there is ‘a division of labour’; everyone must then have a profession, that is a ‘determined, exclusive sphere of activity’ he has not chosen and in which ‘he is forced to remain if he does not want to lose his means of existence’. In their socialist society, on the contrary, a man would be given ‘the possibility to do this today and that tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, to go fishing in the afternoon, to do cattle breeding in the evening, to criticise after dinner’, as he chose (‘The German Ideology’.) It is clear that there is not the slightest relation between their vision and the conception of Lenin’s Soviet Union. The future world of Marx and Engels is a world where will be no exploiters or oppressors, no landlords and capitalists nor will there be any oppressed and exploited people, or any of the darkness, ignorance and backwardness resulting from the system of exploitation. In such a society the production of both material and moral values will develop and flourish mightily and will meet the varied needs of all its members. Today, our task is constantly to advance the cause of socialism so as to make it a reality as soon as possible. It is the greatest cause in human history, for it will eliminate exploitation and classes once and for all, emancipate mankind and bring humanity into a world of happiness such as it has never known before.

The aim and purpose of the Socialist Party is to replace the world capitalist economy by world socialism which will abolish the class division of society, i.e., simultaneously with the abolition of anarchy in production, it will abolish all forms of exploitation and oppression of man by man. Society will no longer consist of antagonistic classes in conflict with each other, but will present a united commonwealth of labour. For the first time in its history mankind will take its fate into its own hands. Instead of destroying innumerable human lives and incalculable wealth in struggles between classes and nations, mankind will devote all its energy to the struggle against the forces of nature, to the development and strengthening of its own collective might. After abolishing private ownership of the means of production and converting these means into social property, socialism will replace the global market, competitive and blind processes of social production, by consciously organised and planned production for the purpose of satisfying rapidly growing social needs. With the abolition of competition and anarchy in production, devastating crises and still more devastating wars will disappear. Instead of colossal waste of productive forces and spasmodic development of society-there will be a planned utilisation of all material resources and a painless economic development on the basis of unrestricted, smooth and rapid development of productive forces.

The abolition of private property and the disappearance of classes will do away with the exploitation of man by man. Work will cease to be toiling for the benefit of a class enemy: instead of being merely a means of livelihood it will become a necessity of life: want and economic inequality, the misery of enslaved classes, and a wretched standard of life generally will disappear; the hierarchy created in the division of labour system will be abolished together with the antagonism between mental and manual labour; and the last vestige of the social inequality of the sexes will be removed. At the same time, the organs of class domination, and the State in the first place, will disappear also. The State, being the embodiment of class domination, will die out in so far as classes die out, and with it all measures of coercion will expire.

The development of the productive forces of world socialism will make it possible to raise the well-being of the whole of humanity and to reduce to a minimum the time devoted to material production and, consequently, will enable culture to flourish as never before in history. This new culture of a humanity that is united for the first time in history, and has abolished all State boundaries, will, unlike capitalist culture, be based upon clear and transparent human relationships. Hence, it will bury forever all mysticism, religion, prejudice and superstition and will give a powerful impetus to the development of all-conquering, scientific knowledge. In socialism no social restrictions will be imposed upon the growth of the forces of production. Private ownership in the means of production, the selfish lust for profits, the artificial retention of the masses in a state of ignorance, poverty-which retards technical progress in capitalist society, and unproductive expenditures will have no place in a Communist society. The most expedient utilisation of the forces of nature and of the natural conditions of production in the various parts of the world, the removal of the antagonism between town and country, that under capitalism results from the low technical level of agriculture and its systematic lagging behind industry; the closest possible co-operation between science and technique, the utmost encouragement of research work and the practical application of its results on the widest possible social scale; planned organisation of scientific work; the application of the most perfect methods of statistical accounting and, planned regulation of economy; the rapid growth of social needs, which-is the most powerful internal driving force of the whole system-all these will secure the maximum productivity of social labour, which in turn will release human energy for the powerful development of science and art.

“From each according to his abilities to each according to his needs!”