What is Socialism? What are the facts? What are the distortions?

Societies are not eternal but are mortal. Like the people who compose them, they are born, mature, decline, and eventually die. The history of capitalist society shows it is no exception. It too has gone from birth through maturity to decline and is now approaching its final days of life. Capitalism is in its death-throes because of a serious malady. It is no longer a progressive system from which humanity can benefit. Immense social wants are being left unsatisfied. Capitalism is plainly damned for its inefficiencies. More and more nails are being hammered into its coffin. And capitalism has brought forth its gravediggers. The very workers whom the system employs to carry on production. Unable to secure comfortable lives within capitalist society, they will be compelled to recognise that their well-being and aspirations require the construction of a new form of society. Once people have reached a revolutionary frame of mind, they will quickly discover a number of important truths: They will learn that they are endowed with the power of the vote.

The productivity of an average American worker has reached an all-time high. You should be rolling in clover, should you not? Actually, you've never had it so bad, isn’t that right? Low wages, declining work-benefits, climbing unemployment.

Socialism is the common ownership by all the people of the factories, mills, mines, means of transport, land 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 workers through a democratic administration based on both geographic nd economic organisation. All authority will rest with the people. All persons elected to be a delegate for any post, from the lowest to the highest will be directly accountable and recallable at any time that a majority of those who elected them decide it is necessary. Such a system would make possible the fullest democracy and freedom. It would be a society based on the most primary freedom - economic freedom and independence. Socialism means an end to economic insecurity and exploitation. It means workers cease to be commodities bought and sold on the labour market and forced to work as appendages to the machinery owned by someone else. It means a chance to develop all individual capacities and potentials within a free community of free individuals. It means a class-free society.

What socialism is not is government or state-ownership. It does not mean "nationalisation," state capitalism of any kind. It does not mean a state bureaucracy as formerly in the U.S.S.R., with the working class oppressed by a new bureaucratic class. It does not mean a one-party or one-leader system without democratic rights.  It means a complete end to all capitalist social relations.

To win the struggle for socialist freedom requires enormous efforts of organisational 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. It requires building industrial union organisations to unite all workers in a class-conscious One Big Union, and to prepare them to take, hold, and operate the tools of production. In socialism, production and distribution will be socially controlled. There will, accordingly, be no further need for the tricky means of exchange and money, required by the capitalist system of private control over production and distribution.

Whether or not socialism will be achieved depends on you. Don't look so surprised. You're a very important individual. You have a political and economic power that, intelligently used, can make short work of peacefully abolishing capitalism and establishing a socially-owned economy administered by the working citizens for the benefit of all. Is the information you will receive worth the little effort involved? Well, isn't the possibility of winning a real and secure prosperity for your family and your fellowmen worth even a lot of effort on your part?