Instead of an economy driven by profit and greed, a rational economic system would be based on fulfilling human need with the least amount of effort. In this socialist economy, all individuals would engage in socially productive labor and all jobs would be recognized as equally valued and equally important. Socialists believe that for socialism to truly thrive we must establish democratic control of every aspect of the economy. Workers must begin by democratically controlling their immediate workplace. Instead of managers appointed by profit-driven corporate bosses or government bureaucrats, workers must exercise self-management. Decisions concerning everything from what is produced to how it is produced can be made in regular meetings in which every worker has a vote. In short, workers will exercise worker control. Once democracy is established on the most basic levels, workplaces and entire industries can federate upward using a system of instantly recallable, rotating delegates to plan for the larger economy.
On a practical level, socialists, after expropriating the owning class and all its property, would seek to abolish all unproductive toil. All individuals could then gravitate toward the work they find most rewarding. If, after all of this, ‘undesirable’ work still existed, it could be democratically divided between all able bodies. Socialism will be a society where production, distribution, and consumption is collectively and consciously run with the goal of minimising necessary labour time and maximizing leisure time, in order to allow maximal development of needs, first and foremost the need of sociality.
Socialism is the realisation of a world human community in our everyday lived experience so involving the disappearance of the distinctions that exist in today’s society between 'economics' and 'politics', 'work' and 'play', 'town' and 'country'. Direct human relations unmediated by the 'commodity' form or any equivalent exchange between separate 'enterprises' (whether mutual, self-managed, worker controlled or whatever). It is the reconciliation of individual and community.
Capitalism is an inhuman force which governs and restructures social life. Socialism is about seizing back control of society from this inhuman force and initiating social relations based on human beings and our needs. Socialism means the abolition of wage labour, property, the state, the commodity form, and exchange. Everything would be held in common, rather than public or worker ownership and everything would be free, given without anything in exchange and without any expectation of any reciprocity from the particular individual(s) involved. Socialism would be a society where we do not have money or other means of valuing goods and services, and where production, distribution, and daily life is democratically organised on the basis of our collective and individual desires and needs. Therefore the various aspects of control, power, and hierarchy we inflict on each other would be eliminated or greatly reduced.
Simply put, a socialist economy is to ensure that all people have enough of everything they need to live secure, comfortable and happy lives. Socialism doesn’t exist anywhere. It could, but it doesn’t. It is the hopeful belief of the Socialist Party that by education and rational persuasion men and women can be brought to decide on the formation of a free society. We do not aspire to be a party of permanent protest but one that seeks to accomplish our goal – socialism.
The purpose of socialist revolution is not to restore a “natural order of things”. How can the billions of people who inhabit the earth today live from hunting and fishing and gathering wild plants? It ignores the progress made by science in general and the many positive ways this progress affects man’s living conditions, even if scientific progress also has some negative effects. Despite the environmental damage and pollution, it is nevertheless true that the life expectancy today – in some of the most polluted countries of the world – is 70-plus years. It is also true that there is a steady drop in the infant mortality rate because of modern hospital rooms. We cannot return to primitive society’s way of life except at the price of a disaster worse than any of the problems that plague the world today. The purpose of socialist revolution is to provide today’s society with a form of social organisation that corresponds to the material possibilities open to us today.
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