Why Fear Socialism?

The goal of the Socialist Party is the achievement of the co-operative commonwealth, a social system based on the elimination of all classes and class differences, a system without exploitation or oppression. Today, the whole world is now chained to the capitalist system. The aim of the socialist revolution is to overthrow the capitalist class for the creation of a classless and stateless society in which the guiding principle will be ‘From each according to ability, to each according to need’. The struggle to bring about the socialist transformation of the capitalist economy will not be easy but once the working class abolishes capitalist relations of production and replaces them by non-oppressive, non-exploitive ones then the alienation characteristic of capitalism will begin to disappear. People gain control of their productive activity and the products of their labour so their antagonistic estrangement from each other and their aversion to work are overcome. Productive activity will become once again a creative, fulfilling and truly human activity. The division between work and non-work will gradually disappear and people will freely choose what to produce rather than being constrained by immediate necessities. The human species will embark upon a completely new stage of its historical development free from the oppression and exploitation of class society. The state machine is no longer necessary, and the state withers away.

In a society where each grabs what he can at the expense of the rest, naturally, it is not surprising that in a system of society where the aim is to get rich by any means, crime of every kind should flourish. Faced by the corrupt example of capitalism generally many take to lives of open crime and try to seize at the point of a gun what the capitalist “banksters” steal through exploiting the workers, by a corner on the stock exchange, or by corrupting the government. The main difference between their operations is primarily one of dimension. The mafia is an altogether legitimate child of American capitalism, and it is no accident that they are an object of admiration. But there is no place for human sharks who prey upon the vulnerable. The abolition of capitalism destroy the basis of the crimes against property, but an evolving moral code and effective educational system, will greatly diminish the “crimes of passion.” Capitalism blames crime upon the individual, instead of upon the bad social conditions which produce it. Hence its treatment of crime is essentially one of punitive prison sentences. But the failure of its prisons, with their terrible sex-starvation, graft, over-crowding, idleness, inane discipline, ferociously long sentences and general brutality, is overwhelmingly demonstrated by the rapidly mounting numbers of recidivism. Capitalist prisons are actually schools of crime. The capitalists, as is their wont, seek to justify the destructive types by asserting that they are rooted firmly in human nature. Such appeals to “human nature,” however, must be taken cautiously. Changed social conditions develop different “human natures.”

A socialist revolution is the most profound of all revolutions in history. It initiates changes more rapid and far-reaching than any in the whole experience of mankind. Millions of workers, striking off their age-old chains of slavery, will construct a society of liberty and prosperity. Socialism will inaugurate a new era for the human race, the building of a new world. The world will become a place well worth living in, and what is the most important, its joys will not be the monopoly of a privileged ruling class but the heritage of all. Anti-technology is the absurdity of capitalism in despair. We should not fear automation but see it as an emancipator from the drudgery and poverty of the past. We will control the robots; not let it enslave us as it has done under capitalism. It would be the sheerest nonsense and quite impossible not to take advantage of every labour- and time-saving device. Socialist society will know how to develop the artistic and the creative impulses of the people which will not be shackled by poverty and slavery, where the arts and sciences will not be hamstrung by the profit-making motive, where the masses are not poisoned by anti-social codes of morals and ethics, and where every assistance of the free community is given to the maximum cultivation of the intellectual and artistic powers of the masses—there we need have no fear that society will be robotized by the new technology. Life in socialist society will be varied and interesting and individual will vie with one another, as never before, to build the useful and create the beautiful. Capitalism, based upon human exploitation, stands as the great barrier to social progress. Socialism releases the productive forces strong enough to provide plenty for all.  Socialism frees humanity from the stultifying effects of the struggle for mere basic existence and opens up before it new horizons of joys and tasks. The day is not so far distant when our children or grand-children will look back with horror upon capitalism and marvel how we tolerated it so long.

Socialist society will bring to an end ignorance, strife and misery and will organise the economics of the world upon a rational and planned basis, enhancing the systematic conservation the world’s natural resources and facilitating the beautification of the world, by liquidating congested slum cities and merging the joys and conveniences of country and urban life in town planning. Capitalism, with its wars, wage slavery and poverty undermines the health of the human race and destroys its well-being. Because of the idiocy of the system, its antiquated moral codes, its exploitation, capitalism has thwarted the evolution of the human species, retarded the very evolution of mankind itself in mind and body.  For many generations Utopians have dreamed of ideal societies, understanding humanity’s capacity for a higher social life than the existing dog-eat-dog so-called civilisation we have now. But they had little conception of what was necessary for social revolution. Their Utopias were mere speculations disconnected from actual life and so fell upon deaf ears. The socialist revolution is no longer an abstraction, a mere theory for the far–off future. Today, world socialism can be a reality. Socialism will carry humanity soaring to heights of achievement far beyond the dreams of even the most hopeful Utopians. Capitalists ridicule the idea of such a revolution makes a strong and stubborn resistance but the world capitalist system is subject to inherent weaknesses and is in decay. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men cannot save it once the majority of people develop revolutionary consciousness and those toilers of the world are now organising to put a final end to their wage-slavery.