The Socialist Party holds that the very essence of socialism is inherent in the word itself -- a SOCIAL system that, freed from economic class rule, serves the common interests of the people-as-a-whole. But while many organisations and groups profess socialist the Socialist Party is unique among them in that to reach the goal we will not use a reform ballot to put more patches on the capitalism but use the vote in a revolutionary manner to replace capitalism, a vote that seeks the mandate to outlaw the capitalist class and its the exploitive wages system.
Socialism mean the common ownership by all the people of the factories, the offices, mines, transport, land and all the other instruments of wealth-production. Socialism means the production of things to satisfy human needs, and not, as under capitalism, for sale and profit. Socialism means free access to and democratic management of the industries by the workers. For you, as an individual, socialism means a full, happy and useful life. It means the opportunity to develop all your faculties and latent talents. It means that, instead of being a mere chattel bought and sold in the labour market, an appendage to a machine, an automaton, a producer of wealth for the greed of a parasite class, you will take your place as a human being in a free society of human beings, and a participant in its councils. In a socialist society, there will be no wage system. With socialism, we will produce for use and to satisfy the needs of all the people. Under capitalism, the industries operate for one purpose-to earn a profit for their owners. Under this system, food is not grown primarily to be eaten. It is grown to be sold. Cars are not manufactured primarily to be driven. They are made to be sold. If there are enough buyers here and abroad, then the capitalists will have their factories turn out cars, TVs and everything else for which buyers can be found. But if people lack money, if the domestic and foreign markets cannot absorb them, then these factories shut down, and the country stagnates, no matter how much people need these commodities. In socialism, the factories and industries would be used to benefit all of us, not restricted to the creation of profits for the enrichment of a small group of capitalist owners.
Socialism would yield an abundance without great toil; the factories, working conditions would be the safest, the most modern, the most efficient possible, and productive beyond our wildest dreams- and without laborious toil. Our natural resources would be intelligently conserved. In all previous ages of human history, poverty for most of the people was inescapable. There was simply not enough to go around. But not so today. Automated machinery and our industrial and scientific knowledge have so vastly increased mankind's ability to produce what it needs and wants, that there is no longer any excuse whatsoever for the poverty of a single member of society. Today, we have the material possibility of abundance for everyone, and the promise of the leisure in which to enjoy it. Under capitalism, automation and computers are used to replace workers and increase profits. Instead of creating a society of abundance, capitalism uses machinery to create unemployment and poverty. Our cities are being converted largely into festering slums. But it is not automation that threatens us at all. Improved machinery is not an evil. It is a blessing. It is under capitalism that automation is used for anti-social purposes.
No doubt you have read or been told that socialism would result in the loss of individual liberty; that all power would be surrendered to the state or the government, and a harsh bureaucracy would regulate our lives and enforce blind obedience. The truth is that socialism rejects the state. Socialists hold with Karl Marx that "The existence of the state is inseparable from the existence of slavery." How then, in the name of common sense, could socialists wish to glorify the state and surrender to it? On the contrary - where there is socialism, there can be no state, and where there is a state, there can be no socialism! You have been taught that socialism means nationalisation, or government ownership and control of industry. Socialism rejects nationalisation or state ownership of industry! For the workers, an economy operated by the government is merely a change of masters - it brings no solution to their problems. Socialism is not a mere change of masters. Socialism means complete control of their tools and products by the workers. It guarantees this by placing the factories, the mines, the railroads, the land - all social wealth - under social ownership and control. Not a state, not the capitalists, not a bureaucracy, but the people collectively own, control, and democratically manage the means to produce and distribute all social wealth under socialism.
The administration and running of socialism will rest on social and industrial democracy. All power will reside in the hands of the people. Delegates - elected democratically from communities and places of work - will have the privilege of serving, but not the power of ruling over their constituents. Capitalism keeps the workers on the ragged edge of pauperdom, by forcing them to keep their noses to the grindstone in order to eke out a bare existence. Socialism would offer an equality of opportunity under which each worker would become the architect of his or her own future
The Socialist Party does not advocate violence. It seeks changes through peaceful
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