What we want and what to do about it

Socialism will then be based on:

1. The abolition of wage labour.
2. The elimination of classes.
3. The disappearance of the state.
4. Full socialist development of the productive forces in the context of world communism.
5. From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.
6.  The abolition of the private ownership of the means of production.
7.  Elimination of competition and production for exchange value and its replacement by democratic planning and production for use.
8.  Workers’ and people’s management of the economy and society.
9.  The creation of mass forms of democracy and free associations. 

Throughout history, the bosses have always tried to keep workers divided, unorganised and weak, in order to intensify their exploitation and thereby grab bigger profits. Society contains many contradictions which have arisen as a result of the fact that production has a social character under capitalism while ownership of the means of production is in private hands. The struggle to resolve all of these contradictions is a part of the socialist revolution. Only through socialism, the common ownership and democratic control of the means of producing wealth, can the people be freed from misery, we declare ourselves a socialist movement, and undertake to conduct propaganda among the people to win them to the need to establish socialism. After the working class has overthrown the capitalists we will establish socialism which will mean the rule of the workers. It will put an end to the exploitation of man by man. It will bring freedom to all those oppressed by capital and open up a new period of history. Socialism represents an enormous historical advance over capitalism. The enormous waste of capitalism will be abolished. There will be no more billions in profits squandered by the competition of rival capitalists.

Socialism is the future of humanity, a radically new society where classes and the state will have been completely eliminated. It is possible to do away with classes and the state since these only exist during a specific period of society’s development. Humanity has not always been divided into classes. In the primitive communal societies, all the members cooperated together to assure their survival. Everything created and valued by men, all wealth has been produced as a result of human labour being applied to the materials supplied by nature. The way human labour has been used through the ages has depended both on the tools available and on the way men have been organised—the social order. Different social orders, like slavery, capitalism, and socialism correspond to different levels of man’s development in. harnessing the materials for his own use.

But as mankind progressed, as the productive forces – the way in which man made his living – developed and it became possible to accumulate wealth, society was split into antagonistic classes. Since that time all of human history has been the history of class struggle; the struggle between slave and slave owner, between serf and feudal lord, between worker and capitalist.

The state is simply an instrument by which one class dominates another. It became a necessity when society split into classes. Just as the ancient slave state served the slave owners to suppress the countless slave rebellions, so too the modern capitalist state is a tool of the propertied class to maintain its dictatorship over the working class. In all the former societies, the state was an instrument for the domination of a minority of exploiters over the vast majority of working people. Socialism means, above all else, that political power has been taken out of the hands of the capitalists and their representatives and placed in the hands of the people.  It means that this political power is used immediately to place the economy in common ownership, taking it out of the hands of unelected capitalists. Industry will be run on democratic lines owned as a whole by the people. Together with this, the workers in particular factories and other public institutions will have their say in the control of those establishments. From the present day organisation of production for private profit, the aim will be changed to production for use, production of what is wanted and needed by the people. Work will become more interesting and more meaningful to millions as its results will go entirely into benefits for the people. As more goods are produced, so working hours will be shortened. Industry will have a completely different purpose under socialism, to serve the people. Priority will be given to improving working conditions, expanding the social services, education and the care for the sick, the aged and the young. The present enormous wastage by which the same goods are sold by different competing companies, which spend millions on advertising to convince you that their product is best, will be replaced by real variety in goods. Choice will be more real and less of an illusion.

Socialism will solve the problem of the poverty of the many by abolishing a system of society based upon the ownership of the means of production by the wealthy few; it will solve the problem of unemployment by abolishing the classes of employers and employed; it will solve the problems of competitive trade by abolishing trade. The wealth of the rich, their ownership and control of our means of life, this is the cause of poverty and unemployment. When world socialism is realised, classes and class inequalities will have been eliminated. The state and its instruments of repression will have ceased to exist; the class antagonisms that necessitated their existence will have ended. There will be no rich and no poor and all members of society will contribute to the common good.  The tremendous abundance of social wealth will allow for the application of the principle: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Each person will contribute to society according to his capacities, while society, in turn, provides for his needs. The differences between workers and farmers, town and country, and manual and intellectual work will have disappeared. Each individual will develop to his full potential. Life for the people will become secure, with the knowledge that there will be new freedoms added to those already won: the freedom to work; to have the proper facilities to bring up a family; to have equal opportunity with all other people in education, training and the like; the freedom to live in peace and friendship with other peoples; the freedom to develop one’s abilities and talents; the freedom to have holidays and leisure-time.  It will release the creative energies of the mass of the people, making it possible to build an industrial base that will be able to meet their needs in food, clothing, and shelter, and will open vast horizons of cultural and educational possibilities for millions. Mankind will be freed from worry about basic material needs as we know them today and will be able to meet new ones of which we as yet have no conception. Different classes will, in fact, cease to exist, as all people make their contribution to the productive life of society. The oppressive functions of the state as we know them will become redundant and will wither away as they fall out of use. What will remain will be only a democratic administration of production in the hands of the people. Men and women will be able to develop their own personality and talents to the full. With the harnessing of science and technology to industry, boring and repetitive work will be eliminated. Work for all will become as it is today for only a very small minority—interesting and satisfying. The essential difference between town and country will be ended, as housing, travel and cultural facilities become available to all people. The boundaries between mental and physical labour will be removed as all people receive the freedom and means by which to exercise their potential, their talents and abilities. But things do not stop there. There will never be a time when man has solved all problems and then sits down to live like a cabbage. What happens is that the problems change. They become more worthy of our time and attention. Life for all will be plentiful, secure, happy and interesting. Stop voting for the parties of want and destitution, stop and consider why social problems exist. The cause is in the organisation of capitalism itself.