Remaining True to Socialism

Socialism inspires hope. When the class-struggle is weak and workers’ resistance low, so is the appeal of socialism. But when apathy and despondency are dispelled, workers start expressing their anger and their hopes and dreams surface again. What seemed idealistic and utopian no longer seems so unlikely. As political action gets into full swing socialist aspirations come closer to reality. "I" begins to merge with "We." But when the revolutionary swing begins to weaken, socialism disappears from the horizon.

The Socialist Party holds aloft its ideas and rises above all compromise to be a party of truth. The facts and figures of widespread human privation and suffering; of political oppression and economic exploitation are available for all to know. They are plain to see unless you willfully close your eyes to shut them out. The Socialist Party has focused attention on the grave and real evils in the capitalist system that something needed to be done about. We now can understand that capitalism has degenerated to the point where it threatens us all with barbarism and destruction. Capitalism cannot feed the people; it cannot house them yet it can starve people; it can destroy homes. We have in capitalism a colossal concentration of wealth on the one side and poverty on the other side. We have in a world of stupendous riches unknown in all history: no abundance, no peace, no security, no full employment anywhere. Under capitalism, instead of construction, we have destruction. These social evils are not bred in the heart of mankind; they are bred by capitalism, and by nothing else. To succeed economically, the capitalist must accumulate; not that he wants to or doesn’t – he must accumulate in order to survive. To accumulate, he must be assured his profits. To profit, he must exploit labour. There is no other way. Capital always seeks to intensify exploitation. Capitalism is founded upon and cannot exist without the private ownership and control of the means of production by the few and it has brought society almost literally to the edge of a precipice, where it cannot guarantee security to the people, cannot guarantee peace to the people, cannot guarantee brotherhood to the people, cannot guarantee abundance to the people. Any social system which cannot guarantee those to the people stands condemned. The only way to replace capitalism is by socialism.

Socialism has gotten a bad name. Leninists and Labourites defined their socialism in terms of state-ownership and a command economy. They eliminated from their socialism its essence, its liberating element, its ability to unleash and mobilise all the human energies which a class-society corrupts. The Socialist Party holds firm to the principles of common ownership and collective control of the means of production by the whole people, by the producers. This is for us the fullest achievement of democracy: the assurance of material abundance for all by wiping out classes, by banishing all social fears which haunt us, so that mankind can devote itself to full free intellectual and cultural development. Capitalism cannot achieve the common good. The Socialist Party argues that workers must not cooperate with the capitalist class because the only basis upon which you can cooperate is to your disadvantage. On what basis can you cooperate with the capitalist class? By preserving intact the foundation of private property and so long as this basis remains fundamentally intact, ruling class power and domination remain intact. Capitalist competition continues leading to crises, poverty and war. The Socialist Party demands the common ownership and democratic control and management of the means of production and distribution for the benefit and welfare of the people as a whole. That is the socialist objective; nothing less than that suffices.

The world’s wealth is so enormous that there is enough to go round. It is possible for people to imagine a society where everyone can live in equality: where there was no need for exploiters and exploited, and where the means of production will be owned not by greedy individuals but by society. Why shouldn’t  workers engage in cooperation to decide what they produce, and to whom and how it is distributed? In such a cooperative society, production could be planned to fit everyone’s needs. Distribution – and everything else in society – could be organised socially. In a socialist society, there would be no need for anyone to fight anyone else. There would be more than enough for everyone, and it would be distributed not on the basis of who was the strongest but on the basis of who needed most. It is the working class who cooperate to produce the wealth, and they should take the means of production from the capitalist class, put an end to exploitation forever and run society on the lines of the famous slogan: ‘From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.’

If socialism loses its essence it ceases to be socialism and became something completely different. It becomes a reformed capitalism.