Who are our enemies? Who are our friends?

Capitalism is completely incapable of solving the problems of the world peoples. A capitalist system is inevitably marked by sharp social contrasts, gross inequality of opportunity. Capitalism attacks all the essential rights and liberties that have been won over many years of struggle by the working people. The wealth is produced by those who work by hand and brain, far in excess of the wages they are paid. The surplus goes to the capitalist owners or shareholders as profit. The capitalist class owns and controls the means of production, distribution and communication. The working class owns none of these, and therefore workers must sell their labour power to the capitalist for wages in order to live. The worker creates a product of value, part of which is returned to him as wage, and the rest of which is taken from him by the capitalists as profit. Thus is created the basic antagonistic contradiction between worker and capitalist, since the interest of one is, and has to be, directly opposed to the interest of the other. This most fundamental of contradictions will not end until capitalism with its private ownership and/or control of the means of production is itself ended and replaced with socialism. This is capitalist exploitation, the basis of all forms of rent and interest.

People are divorced from the process of decision-making or control in the affairs of their daily lives, livelihoods and communities. Political power must be taken out of the hands of the capitalist class and put into the hands of the people. Two courses are open. Either the present system prevails and will continue. Or steps must be taken to progress towards socialism. The economic basis of socialism is the common ownership of all the means of production and distribution. Socialism will enable the community as a whole to benefit from all increases in productivity, all advances in science and application of technological discoveries. That is why socialism has been the aim, the aim of establishing the rule of the working people in place of rule by the owners of property. Socialism is not an “improved”, “more just” version of the system of wage labour, but a wholly new mode of production. The fight for socialism is to consciously struggle for the overthrow of capitalism and the institutions of state designed and created to maintain the economic and political dominance of the few who own capital over the many who have only their own labour power. The only way to abolish the capitalist exploitation of labour is to deny the state power to the exploiting ruling class. In socialism, all means of production will be common property. There will be no classes and no class struggle. There will be no distinction between mental and manual work. Socialism will be a life of material and cultural abundance. There will be no wars, no armies, and no need for weapons of war, which will become historical curiosities.

The prospects look dire for the existing system – and for the seven billion people who live under it. Attempts to reform the system have repeatedly proved unsuccessful. We are facing a future of barbarism, if not the final destruction of the whole of humanity because of the failure of capitalism to provide even minimally satisfactory lives for the majority of the world’s population. If there is no alternative to this system, then there is no hope for mankind. But the Socialist Party says there is an alternative. People have the power to take control of the ways of creating wealth and to subordinate them to our choices and our decisions. We do not have to leave production to the blind caprice of the market and the madness of rival owners of wealth in their race to keep ahead of each other. The new technologies that are available today, far from making our lives worse, have the potential to making our lives a lot better and easier. Automation could provide us with more leisure, with more time for creativity and more chance to deliberate on where the world is going. Computers provide us with unparalleled information about the resources available to satisfy our needs and how to deploy them effectively. But this alternative cannot arise from accepting the insane logic of the market, of commercial competition. The alternative can only come from fighting against the capitalist system. We want a humane rational society and the replacement of capitalism by a new economic mechanism based on human cooperation.

With socialism, cooperation replaces competitive chaos. With socialism, the welfare of the whole and of each individual within it replaces the welfare of a privileged select class. The elimination of the profit-seeking motive makes room for the higher motive of service. The rational organisation of production and distribution of wealth welcomes science and technology as an ally and transfers the emphasis from scarcity to abundance. Seek the permanent improvement of your condition by the establishment of the cooperative industrial system, in which crises, with their frightful train of woe and misery, will be impossible. Learn from the experience of the past. Whosoever desires the object must also adopt the means necessary for its attainment. Socialists hate capitalism with our heads and with our hearts because we see in it a redundant social system holding back wonderful developments in new technology that the present state of our knowledge could turn to the well-being of the people. We see in it a social system that carries within itself slumps and wars, poverty amidst plenty. We want to end it as soon as possible. We aim at replacing the present capitalist system by socialism, where there will be common ownership of the means of production and distribution, where wealth will be in the hands of those who produce it, where the exploitation of man by man will be ended, where production will be used not for private profit, where a new relationship of fraternity will develop between people based on equality and where individual men and women will find totally new possibilities to develop their talents and skills.

The important difference between a member of the capitalist class and a worker is that the former is able to identify his own best interests. The capitalist joins with his wealthy colleagues in shaping laws to protect his business. For sure, workers are forever pointing the finger at who to blame for his or her predicament – invariably a fellow worker - but rarely do they joining with fellow workers in the ranks of a union so that they can deal as equals with their employers. They prefer to believe the slogans of the demagogues who single out the scapegoats.