Socialism - Our Only Future!

Socialism is not some utopian scheme. Capitalism has created the economic conditions for socialism. Today there is social production but no social ownership. Socialism will bring social ownership to social production. It is the next step in the further evolution of  human society. With socialism, the working people will take over the economic forces developed by capitalism and operate them in the interests of all.  People will control the great wealth they produce, they will be fundamentally able to determine their own futures. The end of exploitation of one person by another will be an unprecedented liberating and transforming force. Socialism will not mean government control. Government involvement in the economy is a form of state capitalism. Socialism will open the way for great changes in society. Transforming the main productive resources of society into common property will enable the working people to assume administration of the economy. Workers will be able to manage democratically their own work places through workers’ councils and elected administrators. In this way workers will be able to make their work places safe and efficient places that can well serve their own interests as well as society’s.

The Socialist Party has always used the electoral form of struggle in order to put forward the ideas of socialism and rally fellow-workers against the capitalist state. Socialism is a matter of growth but never by obtaining for it a fictitious vote. We should seek only to register the actual vote of socialism, no more and no less. In our campaigns we state our principles clearly, seeking neither to flatter nor to offend, but only to convince those who should be with us and win them to our cause through understanding its mission. No possible good can come from any kind of a political alliance, express or implied, with those who are opposed to socialism. The Socialist Party wants the votes only of those who want socialism. It holds in contempt vote-seeking for the sake of holding office. This is a party which serves the class and does not seek to substitute party power for class power. To fight for socialism is consciously to struggle for the overthrow of capitalism and its state, designed and created to maintain the economic and political dominance of the few who own capital over the many who have only their own labour power to trade for an income.

Capitalism is a system in which the means for producing the wealth (the land, the mines, factories, the machines etc.) are in private hands. It is true that in Britain a number of industries — mining, the railways, electricity — have been taken out of private hands and have been nationalised. But the first charge on the nationalised industries is compensation for the old, private shareholders. The nationalised boards are manned overwhelmingly by ex-directors of the industries concerned. In any case only 20 per cent of industry has been nationalised. The remaining 80 per cent is in private hands. Thus a tiny handful of people own these “means of production” as they are called. But they do not work them. The immense majority of the people own nothing (in the sense that they can live on what they own) but their power to work. By exploitation we mean living off the labour of other people. There have been previous forms of exploitation. In slave society, the slave-owners lived off the labour of the slaves who were their property. In feudal society, the feudal lords lived off the forced labour of the serfs. In capitalist society the worker is neither a slave nor yet a serf, i.e. forced to do free, unpaid labour for a master. But he is exploited just the same, even though the form of this exploitation is not so open and clear as was the case with the slaves and the serfs. The essence of exploitation under capitalism consists in this — that the workers, when set to work with raw materials and machinery, produce far more in values than what is paid out by the capitalists in wages, for raw materials etc. In short, they produce a surplus which belongs to the capitalists and for which they are not paid. Thus they are robbed of the values they produce. This is the source of capitalist profit. It is on this surplus, produced by the workers, that the capitalist lives in riches and luxury. Capitalism is a system in which the means for producing wealth are owned by a few who live by exploiting the workers, i.e. by robbing them of the values they produce over and above the value of their wages. It is a system of booms and slumps. From the earliest days of its existence (at the end of the eighteenth century) until today, capitalism has been marked by periodic slumps, or “economic crises” as they are called, which cause mass unemployment and untold misery for the great mass of the working people.  Capitalism is the system based on competition. There are many capitalists each producing the same kind of commodity. Each hopes to sell all that he has produced and thereby to realise a profit. He has to compete with his rivals in the attempt to sell his goods. The quantity of goods produced therefore bears no relation to the real demand. Capitalism is thus by its nature an unplanned, anarchic system. Each capitalist tries to produce as much and as cheaply as possible in order to grab as much of the market — and as much profit — as possible. To do so more effectively, to defeat their rivals, the capitalists constantly seek to cheapen production by introducing new machinery, speeding up the workers etc. Thus more and more goods are being produced. At the same time they seek to drive down the wages of the workers in order to increase their share of the wealth produced.

Socialism means but one thing, and that is the abolition of capitalism. Anything else is not Socialism, and has no right to use that name. Socialism is not the establishment of a minimum wage, not the enforcement of health and safety laws, or the imposition of price controls, not the putting down of the racists and neo-fascists. None of these, nor all of them together, are socialism. They might all be done by the government tomorrow, and still we would not have socialism. They are merely reforms of the present system, mere patches on the worn-out garment of industrial servitude. Socialism is the common ownership of the means of production. Therefore, while not opposing any reforms or improvements which may be secured under capitalism, the Socialist Party is steadfastly against taking resources and energy away from its main battle, for revolution, in order to carry on the struggle for reform. It refuses to abandon its main demand “the tools of production for the producers” in order to fritter away its time chasing immediate demands. It declines the tempting baits to lead workers into sidetracks, blind alleys and dead ends. The one demand of the Socialist Party is socialism, unadulterated and undiluted - the unconditional surrender by the capitalist class of the machinery of industry. The Socialist Party insists that it is the most humanitarian movement on earth. More so than philanthropic ventures, reform societies, and charities. It, and it alone, carries within its principle the highest humanitarian hopes and possibilities of humanity. All the other movements are based on aspiration alone. The Socialist Party stands out unique as the only one based on making the realisation of those aspirations an accomplished fact. Socialism alone will supply the basis for any permanent improvement in the condition of mankind. Capitalism may be modified with factory laws, housing regulations, family legislation, but it remains the same old capitalism.

Socialism is a society in which all the members of the community collectively determine their conditions of life and their way of living. In order to do so, they must control, collectively, the use to which machines, factories, raw materials – all the means of production – are put. Unless the means of production are effectively in the hands of the whole society there can be no question of the collective control of the conditions of life.