A SOCIETY WITHOUT A STATE

The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of working people and the few who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life. The Socialist Party pledges itself to the overthrow of the whole profit-making system and the extinction of privileged classes. The Socialist Party declares war upon the wages system. Socialism is the common ownership by all the people of the factories and offices, transportation, communications, and all other instruments of production. Socialism means production to satisfy human needs, not, as under capitalism, for sale and profit. Socialism means direct control and management of the industries and social services by the people.  Such a system would make possible the fullest democracy and freedom. It would be a society based on the most primary freedom, economic freedom. For individuals, socialism means an end to economic insecurity and exploitation. It means workers cease to be commodities bought and sold on the labor market and forced to work as appendages to tools owned by someone else. It means a chance to develop all individual capacities and potentials within a free community of free individuals.

Socialism does not mean government or state ownership. It does not mean a state bureaucracy as in the former Soviet Union or China, with the working class oppressed by a new bureaucratic class. It does not mean a one-party run system without democratic rights. It does not mean nationalisation or state capitalism of any kind. It means a complete end to all capitalist social relations. The Marxian socialism upheld by the Socialist Party, however, is completely different from the Soviet or Chinese systems, or any existing system. It has nothing to do with nationalisation, a welfare state or any kind of state ownership or control of industry whatsoever. On the contrary, it would give power not to the state, but to the people themselves, allowing collective control of their own economic future. Far from being a state-controlled society, socialism would be a society WITHOUT A STATE. Marx once said that "the existence of the state is inseparable from the existence of slavery."

The capitalist economic system lies at the root of all of modern society's major social and economic problems. Abolish strife-breeding capitalism and those problems are either eradicated or left to wither on the vine. The Socialist Party has long contended that only socialism can solve the major social and economic ills plaguing our society today. Socialism means a class-free society. Unlike under capitalism, where a tiny minority owns the vast majority of wealth and the means of producing it, everyone would share equally in the ownership of all the means of production, and everyone able to do so would work. There wouldn't be separate classes of owners and workers. The economy would be administered by the working-people themselves through democratic "associations of free and equal producers," as Marx described it. Communities collectively would decide what they wanted produced and how they wanted it produced. They would control their own workplaces and make the decisions governing their particular industry. With the abolition of the capitalist expropriation of the lion's share of workers' product, everybody would receive, directly or indirectly, the full value of the products they create, minus only the deductions needed to maintain and improve society's facilities of production and distribution. As Engels once described it, socialism would be a system in "which every member of society will be enabled to participate not only in the production but also in the distribution of social wealth." Under capitalism, improved methods and machinery of production kick workers out of jobs. With socialism, such improvements will be blessings for the simple reason that they will increase the amount of wealth producible and make possible ever higher standards of living while providing us with greater and greater leisure in which to enjoy them.

Socialism can only be built in a developed, industrialized society with a working-class majority. The Bolshevik and Chinese revolutions weren't socialist in character. They occurred in pre-industrial societies. Without a majority working class and the ability to eliminate scarcity of needed goods and services, the creation of a class-free society was impossible. Material conditions there bred conflict and made the continuation of the class struggle inevitable in such countries. In a socialist revolution, the workers take possession of the means of production, abolish capitalist class-rule and supplant the state with an administration of people formed by "associations of free and equal producers." In the Bolshevik and Chinese revolutions, an elite "vanguard" party seized control of the state and used the state to control the means of production. Instead of establishing a classless society, the party-state bureaucracy became a new ruling class.

Socialist society will be a society of secure human beings, living in peace, in harmony and solidarity. We shall produce everything we need and want in abundance under conditions best suited to our welfare, aiming for the highest quality. We shall constantly strive to improve our methods and equipment in order to reduce the hours of work. We shall provide ourselves with the best of everything: the finest educational facilities, the most modern and scientific health facilities and adequate and varied recreational facilities. We shall constantly seek to improve our socialist society. Purposeful research, expansion of the arts and culture, preservation and replacement of our natural resources, all will receive the most serious attention. It will be a society in which everyone will have the fullest opportunity to develop his or her individuality without sacrificing the blessings of cooperation. Freed from the compulsions of competition and the profit motive that presently hurl capitalist nations into war, socialism will also be a society of peace. This all may sound too good to be true. Yet the world has the productive capacity to provide a high standard of living for all, to provide security and comfort for all, to create safe workplaces and clean industries. The only thing keeping us from reaching these goals is that the workers don't own and control that productive capacity; it is owned and controlled by a few who use it solely to profit themselves.

To win the struggle for socialist freedom requires enormous organisation and educational work. It requires building a political party of socialism to contest the power of the capitalist class on the political field and to educate the majority of workers about the need for socialism. A socialist political party is needed to educate the working class and to recruit workers to the socialist cause and to engage the ruling class on the battlefield of politics in a war of ideas. Find out more about the Socialist Party and join us to help make the promise of socialism a reality.