Understand today - Visualise tomorrow

ROBOTS FOR SOCIALISM

Down through the ages, the imagination of mankind has been fired with the great vision of a world free of war and strife, without national rivalries, without racial and religious strife. The ideal of the “Brotherhood of Man” has inspired struggles against inequality and oppression, appearing again and again 

The technology exists to produce all that we need for a peaceful, orderly world and the true flowering of the human intellect and spirit. Our goal is to re-organise society. Our vision is of a new, cooperative society of equality, and of a people awakening. The revolution we need is possible. We invite all who see that there is a problem and are ready to do something about it to join with us. Only by engaging the hearts and minds of people can we win this social revolution. Our task is teaching people about the nature of this capitalist system and what kind of political organisation we need. We seek to transform people into conscious thinkers who become aware of themselves as indispensable makers of history and participate in the liberation of humanity.

Social revolutions come about can ultimately be traced to the economy. Everyone knows the economy is undergoing a profound change. This change is fundamental and irreversible; it is so great it is causing great change in every aspect of life. The content of the change in the economy is the replacement of human labour by new and ever expanding technologies such as automation. All the necessities of life must be paid for with money. We make money by going to work. If the robots do the work, then how will we get the food, housing, and clothing we need? If there is going to be production without wages, then there must be distribution without money. We must guarantee that the changes result in a better life for the people. We must guarantee the high-tech revolution provides for the common good through common ownership.

The worker's commodity is what he or she sells, their ability to work, is. Like a chair or an automobile, our ability to work is worth the cost of its production. Like the chair or automobile, its cost of production is determined by how much labour went into producing it. The secret of profit is this: Labour produces more than it costs to create. Every worker knows, even if he or she can’t explain it, that labour cranks out more value than it consumes. So a system evolved in which everyone bought and sold. The capitalist buys the elements of production, the worker buys the elements of life. The worker sells his or her ability to produce, the capitalist sells the produce. Every employer understands that the surest way to increase profits is to have the worker produce more for the same amount of wages. Every advance in machinery made the workers more productive and made more of them unemployed in a mad scramble to increase profit by cutting labour costs. Today the machinery are no longer mere labour-saving but labour-replacing. Robots force the worker out of the factory. Expanding sections of the working class are permanently unneeded. The new mode of production no longer needed a reserve army of unemployed. It is now clear that a new society must be built.

The mission of the Socialist Party is so to organise the mechanism of production that wealth can be abundantly produced as to free mankind from want and the fear of want, from the brute’s necessity of a life of arduous toil in the production of the brute’s mere necessaries of life. Socialist philosophy has made this clear. The Socialist Party is a is a revolutionary political party of the working class. We do not believe that the social or political maladjustments can be remedied by mere reforms in the manner of exploiting labour, but only by the complete abolition of the system of labour exploitation. When the workers awake to their class position they can by the conquest of the political machinery, recast society as they wish.  We, of the Socialist Party, have no other aim than to give the workers the knowledge that will enable them to act. Because we think that conditions are ripe for Socialism now, and only knowledge is lacking, we are not prepared under any circumstances whatever to divert the workers' attention from the main object; we do not aid the capitalist class, nor do we seek their aid, because we consider these things will not serve any useful purpose; we do not endeavour to interest the workers in the administration, nor in the reform of the capitalist system, because we regard the one as a purely capitalist question, and the other as a means of prolonging the system which we are bent on destroying; we do not formulate immediate demands, because we know that the capitalists will not yield one jot of their position unless they are compelled, by circumstances, or unless the yielding is conceived by them in their own interests. Reforms of the latter type will be introduced by the capitalists and imposed by them, irrespective of our wishes; and when we are strong enough to challenge them we shall formulate the only demand worth making, the final demand. All who are prepared to fight for this are invited to unite with us for that purpose.