Our Goal is Socialism

Economic, social and environmental problems cannot be solved under capitalism. Working for a new system is the only practical course of action. Given the global character of capitalism, it is necessary for socialists to build a world movement, where the goal of is the revolutionary destruction of capitalism and its replacement with a world socialist community. The Socialist Party seeks to bring the entire global economy under the ownership and control of all the people. A democratic economy will provide useful and satisfying jobs for all workers. It will end production for profit and will produce to meet human needs. By eliminating the profit motive, it will end waste and pollution and will make the conditions of work as safe, comfortable and gratifying as possible. The workers need a political party to spread the idea of social ownership, and to gain the support of the majority at the polls. The Socialist Party will educate and rally the majority for a revolution at the ballot box, the people's mandate for economic democracy. When this is achieved, the workers will assume control of their workplaces, and manage them democratically in a variety of ways, determined by local conditions and customs. Socialism is not state control from the top down. It's a state-free democracy from the bottom up. In practice, economic democracy means the end of the capitalist market, whose only goal is to realize the highest profit through the maximum exploitation of the working class. Labor power will no longer be a commodity to be bought and sold in the marketplace. Workers will no longer be exploited. Workers will collectively own and run the workplaces. Workers will democratically control all of our society. If the majority of workers are ready to vote for their revolutionary party, they'd certainly be ready to take over their workplaces and implement social and industrial democracy. The Socialist Party’s function is to educate and organise while providing the vehicle and mechanism for advocating fundamental change.

Production will be based on the needs and wants of all working people, taking into account environmental protection, conservation of resources and the needs of workers of other countries. Because we will be working and producing to meet our own needs and not for the profit of others, and because we will own and control the technology and use it to meet real human needs, we will be able to provide everyone a comfortable and secure livelihood working far less than we do now. The work-week will be reduced and leisure time increased for all workers. Under capitalism, almost everything that is produced is produced for profit. The needs of humanity, and the needs of all life, are subordinated to the bottom line. With capitalism, everything is turned into a commodity to be bought and sold.

All social wealth is ultimately the product of labour and labour alone. This includes the factories, technology and all other means of production, which are the product of past labour. Capitalist development has placed the modern facilities of production under the lock and key of private ownership. As a result, the working class majority suffers from growing privation and all the social ills emanating from that mal-distribution. The only solution is for the working class to organize and establish social democracy. In doing do, it can reestablish and reclaim possession of the wealth which past generations of workers created. Since this wealth was created by the collective labour of society, it rightfully belongs to all society. The fact that it today is privately owned by a few is the result of it being "legally" stolen from the working class. Society thus has the right to reclaim the property in the name of human survival, social well-being and progress.

Production and distribution will be planned to meet the needs of society. This will be a society of cooperating interests rather than conflicting material interests. People's priorities, their attitudes about life and their fellow humans, will change in an atmosphere of cooperation. The needs of the environment and consideration of all forms of life will be paramount. In our new society, we will receive the full product of our labour. Our compensation will be direct, as individual consumers of food, clothing, shelter, recreation, etc., and indirect, as social consumers of roads, schools, parks, and the repair and replacement of the tools of production that we cooperatively own. Socialism will abolish the wage system and thereby correct the imbalance between production and consumption that creates such catastrophic problems under capitalism.