Capitalism is a failure

We work because we need money to buy the things we need to live. In a socialist society, we would be provided for, but we would still work as we would wish to contribute to society. The socialist transformation of society does not mean ‘self-management’ or the nationalisation of the economy. Socialism requires the conscious abolition by the working class of capitalist social relations: wage labour, commodity production, national frontiers. It means the creation of a world community in which all activity is oriented towards the full satisfaction of human needs. Socialists believe is that it is the working class that constitutes the only force in society that has either the interest or the capacity to eliminate capitalism while synthesising its achievements into a new, higher form of human society. A rational, planned use of resources, the achievement of a stable and sustainable human population, a living plan for the human species, will be key components of the socialist future.

Capitalism has largely created an abundance. For example, world agriculture produces more than enough to feed the world population - but much of the world population can't afford to buy the food and therefore lives in a permanent state of semi-starvation. There is thus a contradiction between demand (in terms of hungry people) and market demand (hungry people who can afford food). Every year more and more and more farms go out of business because there's no market for their products. Capitalism had exhausted its progressive role in building the foundation for the future society and was now an obstacle to human progress. Our failure to destroy it has now let it evolve to such a point where it has now become a threat to the survival of human civilisation, perhaps even the human species. Unless the working class successfully manage to build a new society this is exactly what will happen. This is not simply a matter of hundreds, thousands, and millions but billions of human beings dying in a most horrible fashion. Not only is civilisation threatened, the worse-case scenario of capitalist decomposition could possibly threaten the future of the human species, perhaps even the entire ecosystem of the planet. We can already see the beginnings of this process happening today. An apocalypse is not far away and the only question remaining is whether socialist revolution, still remains a feasible alternative. Civilisation is being torn apart by murderous internecine conflicts that leaves entire countries, even whole geographic regions, in ruins. Storms, drought, disease, starvation, pollution of air, land and water creates a nightmare world where capitalist civilisation finally dies at its own making, sinks and disappears into an abyss.

In implementing the long-standing socialist principle of “From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”, socialist society breaks the link between work done and consumption. Rather than being “allotted” what to consume, people would be able to take from the common store of wealth set aside for individual consumption what they judged they needed to live and enjoy life, irrespective of what they had contributed to production. Every able-bodied person would be expected to contribute something, but we don’t share the bleak view that, in this event, not enough would be produced to satisfy people’s needs (that “demand would exceed supply”, as it is put it) - and that therefore, not just profits, but the wages system too would have to be retained as a means of both obliging people to work and of limiting their consumption. Socialists aim to end buying and selling, exchange value, prices, pay for work and the pursuit of a monetary surplus by enterprises.

"From each according to their ability" means in practice the abolition of work/wage labour and that means productive activity cease to be a separate domain of life, something that people do under constraint, determined by their situation in class relations. "To each according to their need” means the abolition of commodity. So we don't buy things and also don't produce commodities but products, services, etc fulfilling the needs of individuals and of society. Our class is global and so should be our solidarity. We oppose all nationalist movements, whether openly conservative or supposedly progressive and ‘anti-imperialist’ in nature as both are based on the unity of workers with their rulers. We never take sides in wars between states or would-be states, instead always supporting fraternisation and the working class acting in its own interest.

The Socialist Party looks forward to a time when solidarity and mutual aid rather than greed,  and individualism inform the way we relate to one another.  As class-conscious workers we value class solidarity, recognising that capitalist society is divided into propertied and non-propertied classes, and that the propertied classes use their ownership and control of the means of production to force us, the non-propertied classes, to work for wages. We are aware then that the wage system does not function in our interests. The wage system has always functioned by coercion and that the primary function of the state is to enable the perpetuation of the wage system and class society to permit some to prosper while others to suffer misery. The capitalist views the worker as an object whose value is our exploitability. As members of the Socialist Party we want to abolish capitalism, class society and the wage system. We envision worldwide confederation of democratically controlled and self-managed communities and workplaces that facilitate economic and social justice by virtue of the fact in the first instance that they provide for the ability of each to control the product of our labour.  We anticipate that the guiding principle of production and distribution will be, “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.” 

Rather than seeking to dominate the world, as members of the World Socialist Movement we seek the ability to control the course of our own lives, and for everyone else on the planet to have the same control. We are against all forms of capitalism whether private, state or self-managed. In its place, we want a class-free, state-free and money-free society based on solidarity and co-operation .