To the people belongs the world

There is an alternative to the system we live under. Capitalism is not eternal and just as it succeeded feudalism, capitalism can be replaced socialism. Many in the mass media defend the capitalist system. Their aim is to discredit socialism, claiming it is no longer relevant. This means that Socialist Party must redouble its efforts to show that socialism is indeed a valid and necessary option. By using our traditional institutions and rights, we can transform Parliament into the effective instrument of the people’s will to end the rule of capitalists. Basing itself therefore on the interests of the working class and the oppressed toilers, the Socialist Party is not a mere parliamentary party, capturing and using the State machine for the exercise of its own class power for the building of socialism. When the working class has power it can build socialism  and, for the first time in history give the majority of the population, equality of opportunity, control over their daily lives and power to build the future. We can change capitalist democracy, dominated by wealth and privilege, into social democracy. Real democracy means the people being at once voters and administrators, collectively participating in the conduct of their own affairs, the running of industry and the organisation of social life. Working class power is the essential condition for far-reaching social change. It is possible to have a better world if we ourselves make it possible. Parliament is an instrument of capitalist class rule. This holds true regardless of the incumbent in Downing Street. To say otherwise is a denial of all historical fact. Whichever party is set to treat the ill they use the same medicine, only varying the manner of administering it and the dosage. Were their motives of the highest, and they are not, it would make no difference. Parties that claim to serve the interests of the working class are being increasingly shown up for the frauds that they are.

The Socialist Party is the enemy of capitalism and capitalist parties. It has as its aim the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of a society in which the means of production will not be the private property of the few, a society which will not be based upon profit, will not be based on class division, will eradicate wars and abolish poverty forever. Socialist society will be very different from the society we know.  In the first place socialism will be a classless society, in which all the means of producing wealth are owned in common. Instead of being divided into workers and employers, rich and poor, society will be an association of free people, all making their special contributions to the well-being of society, which in return will supply them with what they need in order to live full and happy lives. Such a society can be summed up in the slogan: “From each according to ability, to each according to needs.” For this to be possible, socialism must be based on abundance. Production will be organised in such a way that there is plenty of everything for everybody: not only food, houses and so on, to satisfy material needs; but also schools and theatres and playing-fieldsso that people can lead full, physical and culturally rich lives. 

Socialism will be a worldwide society. It is not something which can be fully completed in one country, isolated from the rest of the world. On the contrary it must embrace all the peoples of the world; and in so doing it will put an end to war.  It is obvious that by the time such a stage of human development has been reached many institutions which we accept today as essential, such as policemen and prisons, employers and workers, armies and civil servants, will have disappeared. Because no wars can take place in a truly international society there will be no need for armies. Because it will be a community of plenty, where there is enough for all and therefore no advantage can be obtained by theft or other forms of crime, all need for courts of justice and police will have disappeared. In other words, the State, which is the sum of all these institutions and organisations, will itself disappear. Instead of one section of society ruling and oppressing another, men will have grown accustomed to living together in society without fear and compulsion. Thus, for the first time, mankind, united in a world-wide family of nations, will be free to devote all its creative energies to completing the mastery of nature. Such a society implies tremendous changes in people themselves; not only in their economic position, but also in their whole moral and intellectual outlook. For instance, work, instead of being simply a means of earning a living, will have become the natural expression of men’s lives, freely given according to their abilities. Moreover, the nature of work will itself have changed. Through the development of science much of its drudgery will have disappeared and every man and woman wild develop their mental and physical capacities to the full.