Socialism is about removing the constraints that prevent working men and women, the actual producers of all wealth, from controlling the conditions of their own lives and work. Socialism is about how working men and women can create a truly free society in which all contribute according to their ability and receive according to their needs – a society free from exploitation, free from oppression, free from racism, from unemployment, from war, from poverty and inequality. Socialism is about freedom. Is this pie in the sky? Socialists show how it can be achieved by the collective efforts of working people themselves. Socialists argue that capitalism itself had created the force that could overthrow it and establish a classless society – the modern wage-worker. Socialism is the self-emancipation of the working class. There is no socialism without collective, democratic rule by the people who do the work and create the wealth. The claim that countries like the old Soviet Union were socialist is fraudulent.
The Great 2007 Recession should have been teaching people that something is basically wrong with the present system. History itself is driving home the utter senselessness of unemployment, hunger, and misery existing side by side with industrial and agricultural technological marvels ever built by mankind, productive capabilities adequate to fulfill every normal need of every person. Every day has been demonstrating more clearly the incompetence of our political leaders to solve our problems. Many are beginning to realise that this incompetence is not due merely to the stupidity or corruption of individual CEOs of industry and politicians the government, but that the system itself cannot work properly any longer, whoever is in charge. Some are beginning to understand that the present system of society must itself be done away with and a new system substituted - that we must have not merely honest men, reforms, and new regulatory legislation, but a revolutionary change in the whole structure of society. Such people, however, have not always clearly formulated the exact nature of the required change and, even if they have done so, they do not know what group or party to support in order to help bring the change about. The failure of the revolutionary movement to develop effectively up to the present time is clear to everyone. The Socialist Party claims to know the nature of the revolutionary change that alone can save our society from continuing and increasing disintegration. We call upon all workers, upon all who are no longer willing to suffer needless injustice, who have decided not merely to complain at but to change society, we call upon all the forces determined to bring a new social order out of the ruins of the old, to unite and muster our banner.
The aim of all political parties is the achievement of state power. This must include working control of the apparatus of state: the armed forces, the bureaucracy, police, prisons, and courts. It must also acquire the support or confidence of the majority of the population. A truly democratic society necessarily presupposes the economic and social equality of all the individuals composing it. Capitalist society, in which a small minority owns and controls the means of production, means and must mean capitalist dictatorship. The political forms of capitalist society (monarchy, democracy, military dictatorship) are only the means by which, in a given historical situation, the actual dictatorship of the controlling minority expresses itself. Our apparent political freedom, then, our freedom to vote for "the candidate of our choice," affects in no important way the question of who actually controls society and the state. Whatever real democracy exists is restricted to the individual members of the controlling minority, among whom, in a capitalist society, the real issues of power are decided. The technique for maintaining this necessary minimum of consent and confidence is so complex and extends so intimately into every social detail that it cannot be adequately summarised. Certainly one of its chief supports is the belief that the government is the freely chosen representative of the whole of society, independent of any class or group conflicts and therefore able to be fair and impartial to carry out "the will of the people."
The Socialist Party is a political party, and this means that all of its activities must have a political orientation. Our party does not rest upon the mere demand for better living-more pay, shorter hours, higher relief, better working conditions. Our conception of political action directing the Party's activities differs radically from the traditional notion of "politics." The task of a revolutionary party is to change society. The political action that matters is the kind that brings large masses of people into motion. The Socialist Party, wherever and whenever it is possible participates in local and national elections. Our electoral activities give the Party opportunities to appear openly before the people of the country, to present its aims and goals, to expose the sham issues, to highlight the real issues that face us that must be solved. Any success in elections will put Party members in a strategic position to harass the capitalist control of the state, to show publicly the real nature of government policies, to uncover their hypocrisies and deceptions.
Our social system is outworn. Our society is out of tune with the enormous progress productive processes has made. Due to this discrepancy between our productive development and our social system, we starve while we have plenty, and unless the prevailing social system is totally overhauled we shall die as a people. Catastrophe will be avoided, and happiness of all will displace misery of the many millions if the need of a drastic change will be realised by the people and they will act from that realisation. The capitalist dictatorship cannot last forever against the resistance of a workers' democracy. Wage slavery must be abolished. The profit system must end. Our technology combined with our natural resources can be made the basis of a prosperous and sustainable life, if only the people will realise the extent of the evil that the dominant system does to them, and use their strength to do away with it. The battles of the past lacked a far-reaching social outlook. To-day we set out to unite in harmony and solidarity for humanity’s revolutionary goal of a classless society and workers' democracy that labour in all countries has embraced.
A world socialist society is the only solution for the contradictions in present world-society, and even for the complete solution of the contradictions within a single nation. Only a socialist society can utilize rationally the natural resources and productive machinery of the earth in the interests of the peoples of the earth. A federated community of socialist “republics” can alone solve the conflict between the efficient development of productive forces and the restrictions of artificial national boundaries. A socialist society alone will be in a position to grant the rights of free cultural self-determination and self-development to all peoples and all individuals. Only world socialism will remove the causes of wars that under capitalism now seriously threaten to send mankind into barbarism or complete destruction.
It is well to remember that this socialization of the means of production injures only the small handful of financiers, landlords, and industrialists whose private control of the productive resources of the country is now and will continue to be the source of hunger, eviction, unemployment, and insecurity for the great bulk of the people. Indeed, not only have the majority at present no interest of ownership in the productive resources in the country; they are left with scarcely any private property even of a personal kind: their homes and small farms are mortgaged; much of their household appliances and cars are owned by corporations, through the installment system of buying on credit; their savings are controlled by banks which make profits on them; their insurance is manipulated by capitalist enterprises for the benefit of stockholders and directors. In fact, under modern conditions, socialisation of the means of production is the only way to protect and increase possessions of a personal nature. Common ownership by freeing production from subordination to the control of the capitalist elite in its own interests, and from the necessity of operating at a profit, will release the productive forces to serve the needs of men and women, and will enable production to be planned rationally in terms of actual social requirements. It will allow the utilization of every technical improvement. It will assure immediate and steadily increasing material advantages to every worker. And the leisure and educational opportunities which will accompany these material advantages, together with the removal of the deadweight of the perverted capitalist culture, will offer every individual the possibility for the fullest creative development.
This brief compass represents the chief objectives of the Socialist Party. The nature of the historical process makes detailed blueprints of the future co-operative society impossible. But it is a clear vision of the revolutionary goal.
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