We need socialism

In a world of abundance, we suffer from misery. The burdens of capitalism is being dumped increasingly on the shoulders of the working class. Government after government are enacting legislation to make the working class pay for the crises within capitalism.

By socialism we understand the system of society where the production of all the means of social existence including all the necessaries and comforts of life is carried on by the organised community for its own use collectively and individually. Socialism does not mean state- ownership or management. The State of to-day, nationally or locally, is only the agent of the possessing class and the government, as the agent of the possessing class, has, in the interests of its employers, to treat the employees just as other employees are treated. We seek the establishment of a political power — in place of the present class State — which shall have for its conscious and definite aim the common ownership and control of the whole of the world’s industry, etc. The entire means of production thus being common property, there would no longer be a propertied class to make a profit. Humanity must choose between the continuation of the capitalist system which leads to destruction and the organization of labour founded on solidarity and reciprocity through the socialisation of the forces of production. Therefore socialism means the, complete supercession of the present capitalist system, of private ownership and control of land, machinery, and money. Socialism stands for the abolition of class robbery and the abolition of poverty. The battle of the working class against capitalist exploitation is necessarily a political battle. It cannot effect the passing of the means of production into the ownership of the community without acquiring political power. Socialism, is a struggle to place the management and control of industry directly in the workers through the overthrow of Capitalism and its governmental expression in the state. Socialism is not the conquest of the state by a political party: it is the conquest of society by the proletariat through industrial and political action. Socialism, in the words of Engels, is not the government of persons, but the administration of things.

The words socialist and communist are changing their meaning just as the word Christian did and ‘heretics’ were burned by the thousands for proclaiming love thy neighbor. To-day the word socialism has become a smoke-screen and transformed to make socialism mean a “first stage” in the development of communism, thus making it possible to put over policies in the name of “socialism” that would horrify Marx who placed at the very basis of his system the assertion that the proletariat, being the lowest class in society, could not emancipate itself without emancipating all mankind, and described socialism in consequence as “the society of the free and equal,” you see how deep is the degeneration of this term.  Socialism means a classless society, and a classless society means that a privileged minority are not in a position to enjoy the wealth that the majority produced. It means an end of rent, profit, and interest on stocks and bonds, an end of “surplus value,” an end of the exploitation of labour. Socialism means that the means of production are owned and controlled by society so that what is produced can be shared out according to people’s needs. For Marxists, the fundamental aim of socialism is the creation of a classless society.