Capitalist collapse or socialist revolution

For many, a socialist future seemed to be almost at hand. But truth be told, the dream has faded. Many have lost confidence in socialist ideals and find refuge in the ideas of nationalism or religion (often both). Inarticulate workers were asking important questions but the only answers they received were from the forces of reaction, not revolution. Many were more fearful of fellow workers than of their own ruling class. When presented with their own power, many workers sought to abdicate responsibility and instead surrendered control to others. The ruling class left that dirty job to their lackeys to assume. Today the socialist aspiration that drove people into revolutionary action has gone and now people never seem to look beyond a change of political regime and gaining a slightly higher living standard.

Capitalist collapse or socialist revolution, there is no alternative. Capitalism is the strangler of human progress. There is no future unless we overthrow capitalism. The choice is barbarism or socialism. There is today an almost total absence of any thought about a socialist future. There is a need to make socialists. In order to save themselves and all humanity from the chaos, workers must know the road to the socialist future and take it resolutely. We retain a confidence in the socialist future of humanity. We retain an undimmed socialist vision of the future. To hasten its realisation is the greatest privilege for a man or woman in the world today.

To the pressing question, “How shall socialism be realised?” we must then give the answer: “By the growth of a conscious working class desiring socialism.” It implies the obligation of each one of us to help bring forward the organisation and the class-wide activity of our fellow workers, to hasten the development of everything that increases the intellectual, economic and political power of our class. Socialists must teach fellow workers the political nature of the connection between their status and the economic system. One thing is clear: Socialism can’t be built unless the majority of people participate in every phase of the socialist development. The unity of mankind is an age-old dream. Must this goal then be given up as an illusion? No, answers the Socialist Party, it can be achieved, overcoming of the divisions and conflicts among peoples in this world. Universal peace and fraternity cannot become real and secure until there are no rich draining the life-blood of the poor.  

Socialism is based on the common ownership of the means of production and distribution which ends all social oppression by dissolving the hostile classes into a community of free and equal producers striving not for sectional interests, but for the common good. It is a cooperative commonwealth, liberating the individual from all economic, political and social oppression, to provide the basis, for real liberty and for the full and harmonious development of the personality, giving full scope to the growth of the creative faculties of the mind. Men and women in a socialist future will be able to recreate their personality from head-to-toe thanks to the steady reduction, and ultimately the total abolition, of all forced labour of production. The aim of the new socialist world is to bring about those conditions which will make both individual and collective creativeness the rule, rather than the exception, in human life.

Socialists demand the liberation of humanity – and of the individual within the framework of society – from alienation in all the domains of society. The aim is to obtain the real sovereignty of the masses, to destroy the division between those who are deprived of freedom and the ruling class who are not responsible to the people. The road to a harmonious and classless society has to pass through the gate of the world socialist revolution in order to eliminate the root causes of conflict between one part of mankind and another. Capitalist power can be abolished only by carrying the struggle to its conclusion on a world scale. A socialist future would guarantee the rational use of human creativity and resources.