Change Must Come

Our planet requires a radical rethink by all of us. It requires an economic, social and environmental revolution. We need to think BIG. We do not have the luxury of waiting any longer nor of pinning our hopes on a new government. This may sound apocalyptic, but it is not hyperbole. We need to organise now.

The Socialist Party is up against the fact of life that a new generation has to be convinced afresh that socialism does, in fact, represent a more benevolent an more efficient system for people, that the socialist's idea of the withering away of the state is not a pipe-dream, but a realistic proposal for the future society of human society. The prospects for socialism will be created only when people believe these things again, and only by reasoned debate and discussion can we hope to convince them. Marx and Engels did not identify socialism with nationalisation of property. Their attitude to the state was one of unremitting hostility. Far from wishing to expand its activities, they sought to do away with it. In 1844, Marx declared that the most useful thing the state could do for society was to commit suicide. The following year, he and Engels declared ‘... if the proletarians wish to assert themselves as individuals, they must overthrow the state.’ Marx celebrated the Paris Commune of 1871 on the grounds that it was ‘a Revolution against the State itself’. And in 1884, Engels looked forward to the day when the state would end its life ‘in the Museum of Antiquities, by the side of the spinning wheel and the bronze axe’. What inspiring visions. What is wrong with the state is that it supports the ruling class, capitalism, and private property. But more so, its existence is nothing but a barrier to socialism. Socialists who seek to maintain the state are simply not socialists.

The aim of the Socialist Party is to overthrow world capitalism and replace it by world socialism,  which will end the class division of society. The future socialist society will be state-free. With private property in industry and land abolished (but, of course, not in articles of personal use), with exploitation of the toilers ended, and with the capitalist class finally defeated and all classes liquidated, there will then be no further need for the State, which is an organ of class repression. In socialism, the guiding principle will be: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” That is, the distribution of life necessities—food, clothing, shelter, education, etc.—will be free, without let or hindrance. Socialist production, carried out upon the most efficient basis and freed from the drains of capitalist exploiters, will provide such an abundance of necessary commodities that there will be plenty for all with a minimum of effort. There will then be no need for pinch-penny measuring and weighing. Social solidarity will be quite sufficient to prevent possible idlers from taking advantage of this free regime of distribution by either refusing to work or by unsocial waste.

The road to this social development can only be opened by a social revolution. This is because the question of power is involved. When the workers have conquered political power the way is clear for an orderly development of society by a process of evolution. The Socialist Party seeks to liberate ourselves and fellow-workers from patterns of thought that replicate the inequalities built into our social systems.  Because capitalism is a globally integrated system, it must exist everywhere. Contrary to the assumptions of left-liberals the social ills of capitalism is not merely a bad policy adopted by “greedy” elites.  It is, in fact, fundamental systemic flaws within the capitalist society itself. The system is called capitalism because it was forged for centuries and is presided over by those whose overarching objective is to serve the interests of owners of capital.  The bottom-line priority of those who own society’s most valuable asset, its means of production, is that society be organized around the continuous increase of wealth, especially the wealth and income of its wealthiest.  The evidence is unambiguous.