We can go forward

Socialism proposes wealth and abundance for all and the good things of life for everybody. No poverty anymore, no more filth and disease and crime. You say all this is a dream? No, not dream at all, but an immediate possibility. By means of the vast new technology of this modern world, we can produce wealth enough for all without any trouble whatever. Modern science have so increased the productive capacity of mankind that all men and women could have abundance of wealth by working only three or four hours a day, two or three times a week.  Socialism proposes to get this abundance for each and every one of us.

In order for this to happen, we must do something. What is it we require to do? It is this: Take to ourselves these vast new inventions and robotic machinery and use them for producing new wealth for all instead of producing it for a few. Mankind would no longer be the slave of the machine. The machine will become the servant of humanity. Every increase in productivity would bring with it two things:

1. an increase in the things required for the need, comfort and even luxury of all;

2. an increase in everyone’s leisure time, to devote to the free cultural and intellectual development of humankind. Man will not live primarily to work; he will work primarily to live.

This is our practical perspective. Even today, with all the restrictions that capitalism places upon production, there are specialists and experts who declare that industry, properly organised, can produce the necessities of life for all in a working day of four hours or less and a working week of only a few days. Organised on a socialist basis, even this figure could be cut down. As the necessities and comforts of life become increasingly abundant the differences between physical and mental labour, between town and country are eliminated. A rationally planned society, efficiently using our present productive equipment and the better equipment to come, could easily assure abundance to all. In return, society could confidently expect every citizen to contribute his best voluntarily. Announce a shortage of bread, and immediately a long line will form, with everyone racing to get there first. But if everyone knew that there is an ample supply of bread today, and there will be just as large a supply tomorrow and the next day, there would be no line. In the midst of abundance for all and with the changes it will imbue within members of society development that will accompany it, there is no reason to expect people to be still poisoned with the old spirit of greed, selfishness, cheating and other evils of a class society where only the few enjoy abundance and opportunity. What will there be to steal in the midst of abundance?

The only reason we are not all sharing in these advancements now is that a few people own these great modern tools and refuse to let us work at them except when they can make a profit for themselves.  If we owned the factories, offices and mills ourselves and all of us worked at them to produce wealth for our own use and happiness, all the troubles of poverty would disappear at once. The only thing that lies between us and the free access to the fruits of our labour is this private ownership of the means of producing wealth. The men and women who are denied the right to use their own machinery are the men who now work for wages, a bare living. They have nothing to lose, and everything to gain. This is the working class. Socialism appeals to them on the ground of their self-interests, the ground on which all practical people base their appeals to others. We say to the workers: “Come with us, join our party, vote yourselves into power, use that power of government to capture back those means of wealth production which the capitalists have stolen from you, and then you will get all that abundance which modern inventions entitle you to.”

The mission of the Socialist Party is to gather together all those workers whose real interests lie in abolishing the private ownership of the means of production and distribution, and to shut out of the parties the class whose real interests lie in the preservation of the present system. We wage a war of ideas on the battlefield the ballots. Socialism, based upon the planned organisation of production for use by means of the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production, is the abolition of all classes and class differences. Many challenge us that this it is only an ideal which cannot be realised in practice. The Socialist Party declares it is a practical possibility and an urgent necessity.

Production should not be organised on the basis of the blind pull and push of the capitalist market, but in accordance with the needs of the people. Production for profit will give way to production for use. Capitalism’s motive of production was, is, and always will be profit. It is not the needs of the people that determines its production. If, however, production were carried on for use, to satisfy the needs of the people, the question immediately arises: Who is to decide what is useful and what would satisfy these needs? Will that be decided exclusively by a small board of planners? No matter how high-minded and wise they might be, they could not plan production for the needs of the people. Production for use, by its very nature, demands constant consultation of the people, constant control and direction by the people. The democratically-adopted decision of the people would have to guide the course of production and distribution. Democratic control of the means of production and distribution would have to be exercised by the people to see to it that their decision is being carried out. Production for use, aimed at satisfying the needs of society and of freeing all the people from class rule, would be impossible if production would be regulated by the autocratic, uncontrolled will of a bureaucracy. Democratic control, the continual extension of democracy, is therefore an indispensable necessity.

Socialism is not a utopian ideal, a blueprint for society that exists only in the minds of some people. It is a social necessity; it is a practical necessity. It is the direction that people must in order to satisfy their social needs, take in order to save society from disintegration and destruction. The abolition of private ownership would remove the last barrier to the development of production. Production would be organised, planned and expanded, and aimed at satisfying the needs of society. To be a socialist, merely means to be conscious of this necessity, to make others conscious of it, and to work in an organised manner for the achievement of the goal.

“Abundance for all? Freedom for all? A society without a state? Impossible!” No, it is, at long last, humanity coming to its senses. Men and women will prove that class division and oppression are not inevitable, poverty and hunger are not unavoidable and the state is not indispensable. In the socialist society we will show that abundance, freedom and equality are not only possible but the natural condition for the new history of the human race.