Wealth for all

Workers who support capitalism are easily overcome by the propaganda supporting its class rule, exploitation, poverty, famine, war. Only the socialist—who is conscious to the facts of capitalism and the need to replace it with socialism understands. Socialists are not alone in hating what capitalism does to people but they are unique in their understanding of why it does and of how to end it. Capitalism is always prepared to spend a huge part of its resources on destruction, regardless of how much deprivation there is in the world. It is no coincidence that it is at its most inventive, efficient and productive in wartime, when its aim is to destroy as much, and murder as many, as it can.

To most people the word ‘poverty’ means one of two things. Either life below the breadline, such as experienced by many in this country in the last century and by millions still today in the less developed parts of the world. Or simply being badly off, of having enough to live on but not being able to afford the extra comforts which most other members of the community enjoy.

Looking at the first type of poverty, where people actually suffer sickness or death from undernourishment, we find that it has virtually disappeared from Britain. The second type however is still rife. It exists among various sections of the population, the low-paid, the unemployed, the old, the disabled.  If the first type of poverty has been wiped out, why then should the second type still be so prevalent? After all we are no longer in the dark days of the 19th century when wealth was limited and goods seemed scarce. Today our local supermarket bursts at the seams. Why in the midst of all this plenty does there still not seem to be enough to go round with fair shares for all? Why this continual inequality? If the “poor” are still with us, it’s not because there isn’t enough to go round (with today’s technology and expertise, resources, if used rationally, could be easily sufficient to satisfy all people’s needs), but because the anarchic, uncontrollable nature of the economic system under which we live does not allow for the elimination of poverty, only for unpredictable ups and downs in the production and distribution of the world’s wealth.

As an alternative to the system which produces and perpetuates poverty we have a completely different kind of society to propose, one which will do away with poverty in all its definitions. We propose a world community in which all the resources at man’s disposal are used to satisfy the needs of people, not of profits. There will be no poverty of any kind quite simply because all wealth will be owned in common and all persons will have free access to all goods. There will be no money, no employers, no wages, no frontiers. Only voluntary cooperation and economic equality In a society in which what you need will be readily available when you need it the “I want more” mentality will inevitably be absent. To achieve this change of society we need a revolution in ideas followed by a political revolution in which people by majority vote (not by minority violence) will usher out the present world system of buying and selling. This is your choice – capitalism which means reaction and chaos or a workers’ world which means a higher level of civilisation and culture. Socialism as we use the term, means a community of men and women who are able to understand, express and determine their lives as dignified human beings rather than  in which they no longer need to feel themselves prisoners of social forces and decisions beyond their control or comprehension.

The aim of the Socialist Party is to end the capitalist system of society, based on the exploitation of man by man, by means of the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalists and dismantling the capitalist state, the apparatus of force by which they rule; To establish the rule of the working people; To build a socialist society based on common ownership of the means of production, with economic life planned in the interests of the masses of the people – a society which will develop material; abundance and create a socialist society based on the principle “to each according to needs”.