Socialism - The Rational Way of Living

Mankind is moving towards a showdown with all the forces of the old order. The new challenges of the new technological revolution is undermining the entire structure and old established relations. Nobody outside an insane asylum any longer believes that the Labour Party or their Leftist apologists are going to put an end to the capitalist system and usher in the cooperative commonwealth.

Socialism is not a religion but a method of understanding and changing the world. It is the complete democratisation of society, not merely its political forms. Socialism too often has been is widely identified with a command economy and a police state and not with democratic control by the people over all facets of life. In socialism, states, territories, or provinces will exist only as geographical expressions, and have no existence as sources of governmental power, though they may be seats of administrative bodies. The political territorial nation-state of capitalist society will have no place or function inside a socialist society. Therefore, measures which aim to place industry in the hands of, or under the control of, such a political state are in no sense steps towards that ideal. To use the word “socialism” for anything but working people’s power is to misuse the term. Nationalisation of mines, railways, steel, etc. in a capitalist class society is not socialism, nor does this constitutes “the socialist sector of a mixed economy”. Such nationalisation in a capitalist society is simply a degree of state capitalism, with no relation to socialism. Socialism is rule by the working people. They will decide how socialism is to work. Socialism will certainly give high priority to health, education, art, science, and the social well-being of all its members but the welfare state is not socialism in action but to improve the efficiency of that state as a profit-maker, a form of state capitalism.

Many people today across the world are involved in issues and struggles to improve their conditions or stop injustices that they face. These struggles involve not just political activists but many different people, ordinary working people. These various struggles are important and can make a big difference for people. While reforms are important, we believe that no amount of reform of the present system can offer any lasting improvements, security or stability for the masses or fundamentally alter their position in society. While socialists as individuals fight for the immediate amelioration of the people’s misery, the Socialist Party fights for the long-term interests of the people and keep in mind that the goal is revolution. By revolution, we mean the overthrow of the capitalist ruling class and the basic economic system of society. We believe a revolution is necessary because the social problems of this are all the product of the capitalist system itself. The basic nature of capitalism is that while the vast majority of people work and produce the wealth of society, a handful of capitalists control all the wealth – the factories, mines, transport and the fields, and all the profits that are produced. These capitalists prosper at the expense of the vast majority of the people, and their constant drive for profit and more profit results in only more problems and suffering for the people. They will try to milk everything they can from working people to enrich or protect their own interests. Through education and in helping to sum up the experience of the day-to-day struggle, The Socialist Party is showing the nature of the system and the need for fundamental change. Our goal is the establishment of socialism, where classes are eliminated altogether.

The band-aid patches and piecemeal remedies of the reformers do no good. Reformists see socialism as something which comes ‘from above’. It is to be achieved, on workers’ behalf, by an enlightened minority –politicians and party cadres. ‘Leave it to us,’ they say and working people are expected to play a purely passive role, just looking on while others transform society for them. Only workers can liberate themselves. No one can do it for them. In Marx’s words, socialism is ‘the self-emancipation of the working class’

Capitalism organises workers collectively. Each and every day we work together co-operatively on a massive scale. Capitalism has in fact given workers tremendous collective power, power which runs factories, hospitals, schools, transport systems. This power creates all the things that we need as human beings but the capitalist class controls and uses this power for its own ends and its own profit. Our work is to organise on the basis of social co-operation to run society in the interests of the people themselves, to use their tremendous economic power to act collectively. That is socialism, people collectively running society. Our co-operative power would be controlled, not by a ruling class in the search for ever greater profits, but democratically and for the fulfilment of human need. With capitalism the underlying purpose, of production is the amassing of profits for capital; in the new, free society its sole purpose will be to meet the needs of humankind. In the place of the present anarchy, waste and inefficiency, production will be planned. This planning, contrary to the type now commonly envisaged by would-be-advisers of capital, requires common ownership of the economy. We would see our wealth as part of mankind’s common heritage. Reason and human solidarity will prevail.