The future is socialism

A better world is possible.  People around the world have always sought a future without war, exploitation, inequality, and poverty. They have sought a system in which they control their own lives and determine their own destinies.  The Socialist Party is dedicated to the establishment of socialism. Only socialism has the solutions to the problems of capitalism that we all face. The working class confronts a vicious and amoral enemy: the capitalist class and we are misled as to our real interests, blinded by the propaganda of fear and the politics of scapegoating. Every movement for progress is challenged by the power of the ruling class and their paid hacks in the media. Our world is threatened by the ravages of capital expansion and accumulation. All this is normal to the functioning of the capitalist system. We can’t and won’t let this continue. We need real solutions, real democracy, and real unity and not the empty promises of the bosses and their politicians. We, the workers, need to take political power from the hands of the wealthy few.  We need socialism.

The capitalist class owns the factories, the banks, and transportation, the means of production and distribution. Workers sell their ability to work in order to acquire the necessities of life. Capitalists buy the workers ability to labour, but pay them only a portion of the wealth they create. Because the capitalists own the means of production, they are able to keep the surplus wealth created by workers above and beyond the cost of paying workers wages and other costs of production — unpaid labor that the capitalists appropriate and use to achieve ever-greater profits. This surplus is the source of profit. These profits are turned into capital which capitalists use to further exploit the sources of all wealth — nature and the working class.

Capitalists are compelled by competition to seek to maximise profits. The capitalist class as a whole can do that only by extracting a greater surplus from the unpaid labour of workers, by increasing exploitation what capitalists often call increasing productivity. Under capitalism, economic development happens only if it is profitable to the individual capitalists, not for any social need or good. The profit drive is inherent in capitalism, and underlies or exacerbates all major social ills of our times. With the rapid advance of technology and productivity, new forms of capitalist ownership have developed to maximise profit and exploit new markets.

Capitalism's vested interests use the most potent weapon to divide workers – racism, nationalism, religion, and sexism – poisoned ideologies. The capitalists use this power to ensure the continued economic and political dominance of their class. It is a classic divide-and-conquer tactic. Spreading division within the working class weakens all movements and struggles. 

Workers always seek to solve the chronic ills they face. The working class is compelled to resist increased exploitation. The class struggle starts with the fight for wages, hours, benefits, working conditions, job security, and jobs. But it also includes an endless variety of other forms of fighting specific battles: resisting speed-up, picketing and strike action. When workers struggle against the capitalist class or any part of it on any issue with the aim of improving or defending their lives, it is part of the class struggle. This class struggle takes place in the work-place where commodities are produced and distributed. This is the economic side of the class struggle. The class struggle also has a political side. It exists in the realm of ideology, that is, between social and political ideas that justify the political and economic policies of the contending classes. There is no limit to the range of issues that are part of the class struggle. The class struggle reaches full class and socialist consciousness only when the mass political party is built under working-class leadership in order to win power and construct socialism. The class struggle in an immediate sense pits workers against a particular company at the point of production and against the capitalist class as a whole in broader social and economic struggles. The aim of the class struggle is the winning of power in order to construct socialism.

The working class is the only force capable of the struggle for full social progress and socialism. Capitalism's dependence on the working class to create all wealth gives it a strategic role in the production process and great potential power. The Communist Manifesto declared: Workers of the World Unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains. From the smallest of class struggles to the largest, unity is the key to victory. This is the guiding principle of all unions and workers' movements: in unity is strength. Class-conscious organisation is the weapon of the working class.

Socialism is an economic system where the economy commonly owned and democraatically controlled, where the destructive competition of capitalism is replaced by its planned administration. Socialism doesn't mean nationalisation. Socialism will eliminate the waste of the capitalist system and the private/state appropriation of profit. Capitalism uses technological improvements to further exploit the working class; socialism uses technological improvements to increase productivity, to shorten working hours and to improve working conditions. Our planet has vast natural resources and productive industrial plants, extremely advanced technology and science, a huge reservoir of skilled workers with a tradition of initiative, innovation, and creativity. In a socialist society, the millions of people now unemployed, homeless, and under-employed could create more wealth for all to share to improve the lives of the majority.

 We see socialist society as a commonwealth of all working people, and where national and racial enmity and prejudice will be things of the past. A society where the essentials of life will be plentiful and readily available to all and the repressive apparatus of government will wither away leaving purely administrative functions. Social production and distribution of wealth would be according to the principles of the motto, “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.” We shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.