Rethinking Socialism

What we want is what the people all over the world want.

We want peace, instead of bloodshed.

We want security, instead of insecurity.

We want comfort and prosperity, instead of unemployment and deprivation

We want to raise our families in decent homes instead of slums.

We want to give our children a good education.

We want democracy and freedom, instead of regimentation and authoritarianism

These are the simple things which you and I and all the people everywhere seek for ourselves and our children. Yet we don’t have them. We have undreamed-of natural resources. We have millions of trained and skilled workers running vast industrial complexes. We can produce in one day, what our fathers took years to produce. Yet we do not have prosperity. It is the capitalist system that stands in our way. Under capitalism, a handful of capitalists control all the wealth and power. They own the means of production and distribution. They own our jobs. Whoever owns all these things, controls our lives, the lives of you and me and every other person.

Capitalism works very well indeed to wage war, to kill and maim, to destroy and devastate. Capitalism is at its best when it is at its worst. That is what capitalism offers you. If that is what you want, you don’t even need to vote in favour of it. You can just stay at home and await your fate. But we in the Socialist Party believe there is an alternative. The alternative to a capitalism is socialism. We can have prosperity, peace, and liberty controlled and operated by YOU, working men and women. We want to take over the industries built by us. We want to take over the wealth produced by us. We want to, and we can, run all of society for the needs and comforts of the people, and not for the profits of the capitalist class. We are interested in production only to the extent that it provides all of society with the good and decent and comfortable things of life, that it provides them all the time, and provides us all with the opportunity to enjoy them.

Without capitalism and its markets, we can put an end to war, to poverty, to disease.  We can provide plenty for all, homes fit to live in, self-respect and human dignity. Those are the things we all want. They are the things socialism stands for. They are the things that we in the Socialist Party stand for. All that socialism sets itself to do is to achieve plenty for all, along with peace and freedom. There are jobs for all – but not within the profit-grabbing restrictions of capitalism. There can be plenty for all – but only by socialising the means of production. There is a new and full life to be built – but not by capitalist politicians.  For an economy of abundance, the means of production must become the common property of all the people. Socialism means getting the parasites off the workers' backs.  The Socialist Party has this crazy idea that workers are not machines. We think that they are human beings and entitled to the same right to live and enjoy life as the capitalist. As long as capitalism exists, the capitalist and the worker will never see eye to eye on this question. Regardless of what the capitalist may want to do, the laws of the capitalist economy drive him to regard the worker as a wealth-producing machine. As long as workers are not slaves they will fight to live as human beings. Capitalism, as Karl Marx pointed out long ago, separated the producer from his tools. The owner of the tools (plants, machinery, railroads, etc.) buys labour power (or hires workers, as we would say) to operate them. The more they produce, the higher his profit. When it is not profitable to produce, he lays off the workers.

Capitalism has made of labour power a commodity to be bought on the labour market. As with any other commodity, the cost of labour power (wages) is determined by the cost of production. The cost of production of labour power is in the main what it takes to maintain the worker at his accustomed standard of living. It is, therefore, the cost of living which determines wages under capitalism. The working class will become the owners and operators. The separation between the worker and the means of production introduced by capitalism will be ended by socialism. Until such a socialist system prevails, wage labour will remain a commodity to be bought on the market by capital.