For peace, prosperity and plenty for all!

The "spectre of communism" still haunts the world's bosses. The battle between bosses and workers rages everywhere. One class—the capitalist class—owns and controls the social necessaries, to wit: the economic resources of the world. That class, for its own protection and perpetuation in power, subjects all institutions to its own interests. On the other hand, there is a class—the working class—which is eventually to change the whole system of ownership of the means of production. Workers are beginning to realise that in the constructive work for the future they have to learn the facts of past evolutions and revolutions. And from these facts, expressed in theories, they find the guide for the course that they have to pursue in their struggle for the possession of the earth, and the goods that they alone have created. 

The Socialist Party does not oppose trade union struggles or refuse to participate in them. It is very essential to organise workers and help them to fight for their day to day struggles with their employers. Because, it is only in the course of these fights, that the workers learn about the system of capitalist exploitation and the need to abolish it. What is mistaken is to stop at that stage, limiting ourselves always to trade union struggles. We must teach them how to fight for the abolition of the wage system itself. The working class must make its stand against its own capitalist system – whose lust for profits and interest, for investments, markets, and expanded capital, for raw materials and cheap exploitable labor, can mean only exploitation. For it must be understood that distribution is always ultimately controlled by those who own and control production. Today the bosses own. Tomorrow, the workers will own production and would, therefore, be in a position to control and direct distribution in the interests of the people and society. The ownership of industry is the source of the power of the profit-seeking class. It gives them control of the opportunities of the people to secure the necessities of life. The millions of men and women who are dependent upon the wages they earn for a living are wage slaves. The power to hire and fire the workers, to give and take away the opportunity to earn a living, carries with it the power to compel the workers to work for such wages as will leave the capitalists a profit from their labour. There is no mystery about the source of profits. The capitalists do not create wealth out of the air in juggling with industry. They make profits because they purchase the labour-power of the workers for less than the value of the goods the workers produce; that is, they do not pay the workers the full value of their labour. There is no other way of making profits out of industry. The lower the wages for which the capitalists can purchase the labor-power of the workers and the longer their hours of labour or the greater the intensity, the more will be the capitalist’s profits. Naturally, the capitalists pay the lowest wages at which they can induce the workers to work. Since they are in a position to deny the workers the opportunity to earn a living if the workers do not accept their terms, they have been able to keep the wages at the point where they yield the workers a mere subsistence. The workers naturally seek to increase their wages and reduce their hours of labor. They endeavor to secure for themselves more of the wealth they produce and better working conditions. The capitalists resist. The existing industrial system is a huge profitmaking machine, which has no relation to the happiness and well-being of the people. In practice it results in drawing away from the millions of producers the bulk of the wealth they produce and in heaping this wealth in the laps of the relatively small class which owns the machinery of production, and in this process its by-products are generally insecurity, low wages, and industrial conflicts, thus making happy, healthy lives impossible for the masses of the people. If the work of reconstruction is to result in a better world, its aim must be the abolition of the wages and profit system.

Millions of workers are cold, hungry, homeless. Many more endure slum housing. Tens of millions of young workers are unemployed. Millions of young will never find work in capitalist society. Older workers are thrown out like garbage when they no longer have value to some boss. Capitalism has failed miserably to provide the basic necessities of life for hundreds of millions of workers around the world.

With socialism, goods are produced for the use of men and NOT for the profits which they bring in to bosses. Labour power is no longer regarded as a commodity to be bought and sold. It is not purchased at all, let alone purchased at the lowest possible price to keep it alive and able to produce more value. Men and women, in socialism, will work and produce useful goods. But they will produce these for their mutual needs and for their mutual development. The sufficiency of goods which men and machines can create will be given to men to develop their bodies so that their minds can grow rich in the wealth of human knowledge, aesthetic appreciation, and artistic creation. From day to day, from week to week, and from year to year, the spiral of possible individual activity will widen rather than taper, as human productive and intellectual achievements increase. Mankind, no longer fettered by the necessity of working not only for their own material maintenance but for the bosses’ even more material profits, will be freed to live more fully. The time that each must work will be small, yet the goods produced for all to enjoy will be plentiful.

The Socialist Party seeks a society whose workers run everything in the interests of the world's workers. We want a system that encourages every worker to become involved in running society; that trains everyone to act for the common good and does not indoctrinate people to "look out for number one;" that opposes placing selfish interests above the social needs. We want society to help each person grow and develop. Capitalism is the dictatorship of the bosses. They hold power through their political parties. Socialism will abolish socially useless forms of work that exist now only for capitalist profit. A socialist society will not need millions of lawyers, advertisers, or salespeople. In one stroke, it will do away with layers of needless government bureaucrats, as well as the hordes of petty supervisors and administrators who oversee and manage us for the bosses. It will free everyone to perform socially useful work, which is the source of true creativity.