Socialism is the abolition of the whole market economy, the wages system, money and the political state, with free access to goods and services according to individual wants. Only within this framework can people live in harmony with each other and the world around them, and have the opportunity to fulfil their human potential, as individuals and as a community. Socialism involves major changes in everyday life—in education, work, the family—as well as in the ownership and control of the means of production.
Socialism can only be established by the revolutionary transformation of society through the conscious action of the working class, democratically organised in all areas of political, economic and social activity. The working class gains the knowledge, confidence, and democratic organisation necessary to carry out the socialist revolution in the course of their struggle to assert their needs, in every sphere of social activity, against the profit-seeking needs of capital and its functionaries, the ruling class. Our task in the Socialist Party is to encourage working class struggle, with a view to the emergence of a socialist consciousness. Socialists oppose reformist movements which seek government power to modify capitalism, or which rely on the capitalist state to deal with working class problems. Many so-called socialists’ idea of socialism consists in various reforms of the capitalist system: Parliamentary legislation to secure either things that is charity towards the poor or closer supervision over them, higher taxation or taxation on a new basis to pay for the reforms and government subsidies and other encouragements to enrich capitalism, even more so. Self-styled Communists are found whose aims differ little if any from those of the most confused and vague of the reformists.
The Socialist Party has always objected to the idea of state capitalism propounded by Bolsheviks (Leninist, Stalinist, Trotskyist, or Maoist). Members of the Socialist Party do not regard ourselves as a ‘vanguard’, and we do not want to be the new leaders who will manage a new state in the name of the workers. We would have nothing of dictatorship: we believe that a public opinion can be treated which will produce a general willingness to serve the community. Our aim is socialism which is not a One-Party State affair. It is a theory of life and social organisation. It is a life in which property is held in common; in which the community produces, by conscious aim, sufficient to supply the needs of all its members; in which there is no trading, money, wages, or any direct reward for services rendered. We aim at the common storehouse, not the individual hoard. We desire that the common storehouse shall bulge with plenty and insist that none shall want.
We in the World Socialist Movement reject all independence or national liberation movements that seek only to establish new ruling classes in power and to redivide the world into different, but equally irrelevant frontiers. Socialists also oppose all wars as conflicts between rival ruling classes over capitalist interests not worth the sacrifice of a single working class life or a single drop of fellow-workers blood.
The Socialist Party understands that socialism must be built by working class people, acting in their own class interests. Socialism cannot be imposed by force or delivered as a gift from above. Working people today face a future of low wages, worsening conditions and increasing domination of our lives. To secure any sort of decent life, we need to educate ourselves about how this whole system works, and what our interests are as workers.
Recognising capitalism’s catastrophic effect on the natural environment the Socialist Party seeks to develop a future based on sustainable communities. A social revolution has to mean control of production by the producers. A social revolution has to mean production for the use of those who need it. A social revolution has to mean the classless society — a society in which the antagonisms and divisions between classes, races, and people of different national backgrounds are eliminated and people can develop among themselves civilized and cooperative relations, relations which are possible today as never before because there need no longer be any problem of scarcity of material goods and services. All the problems of scarcity which up to now have required the exploitation of various ethnic and immigrant groupings have now been outmoded by the technological advances of production. Let us produce in abundance; let us secure plenty for all; let us find pleasure in producing. It is with these thoughts we must pervade the community if we are to be able to provide, in a lavish measure, plenty for all-in material comfort, in art, in learning, in leisure. In the socialist system at which we aim all will share the productive work of the community and all will take a part in organising that work. Such a community is socialism.
Is this all utopian and far-fetched? Some may say so, but what is the alternative, apart from the continuation of the current system.
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