Our goal is a socialist world, a new social order based on common ownership of our resources and industry, cooperation, production for use and genuine democracy. Only socialism can turn the boundless potential of the people and their resources to the creation of a world free from tyranny, greed, poverty and exploitation. Business corporations, of a scope and size unimaginable to previous generations, treat the entire planet as their domain. They are a law unto themselves, free to roam the globe in search of cheaper labour, more exploitable resources, more pliant governments and greater profits. These empires now hold the power of life and death over every region and industry across the planet. By their dictates, our resources are plundered. Workers are their pawns in a global game of mergers, lay-offs, and relocations. These conglomerates have robbed us of our wealth and of the very power to determine our own future. Incapable of turning their technology and organisation to the needs of people, world-wide suffering and hunger are the legacies of these profiteers. The capitalist system of production, under the rule of which we live, is the production of commodities for profit instead of for use for the private gain of those who own and control the tools and means of production and distribution. Out of this system of production and sale for profit springs all the evils of misery, want, and poverty that, as a deadly menace, now confronts civilisation. The socialist option is the only alternative. The needs of people, not profit, are the driving force of a socialist society.
The Socialist Party is the party of the dispossessed and oppressed struggling to build a new world. Under capitalism, labour is a commodity. Workers are used as replaceable parts, extensions of machines—as long as they provide dividends. Employers use their power of ownership to devastate the lives of workers. Unions, despite courageous efforts, are unable to eliminate even the worst abuses of the employers’ power. The Socialist Party believes in the ability of working-people to own and manage their own productive institutions democratically. Human power and natural forces are wasted by this system, which makes “profit” the only object in business. Science and invention are diverted from their humane purposes and made instruments for the enslavement of men, women and children.
Humanity faces the danger of complete destruction. With the destruction of the environment and the consequences of climate change there has never come to socialism so plain an opportunity as that now being offered. We have reached the psychological moment when socialists may define the issues of life and death for the world. There is only one power which can save it – the power of the people. Civilisation hovers at the edge of an abyss. Socialism is the salvation. The only power that can save humanity from the peril of barbarism is the working class. It must free itself of all dependence on the possessing classes. It must cease all collaboration with the exploiters and embark on the road of class struggle, the road of socialist victory. The resources of the world must pass into the possession of working humanity. All other problems, the problems of nationality and of race and colour will be solved once society is freed from exploitation and class divisions. Every step taken will be in the direction of the co-operative commonwealth, since there is no difficulty whatever in creating wealth far in excess of our requirements, by the scientific organisation and application of the right labour of all to the satisfaction of our social needs. The motto, “From each according to ability, to each according to needs,” will cease to be an aspiration and become a reality. The problems of society will no longer be affected in any way by money values. Labour will be devoted to this or that by the desires of the community. Work that, after all possible amelioration, remains dangerous or difficult will be shared by all of the community who are fit, instead of being relegated to a class. The standard of life for each and all will be far higher than anything ever yet attained or suggested. The best possible conditions will be so obviously to the general benefit that the elevation of the level of society will be the aim of each individual as of the whole community.
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