Socialism or apocalypse

Only a socialist world can give us peace and plenty. Look how the capitalist world totters on the brink of environmental destruction. For years capitalism has demonstrated its utter inability to make good its promises. The capitalist parties are as rotten and bankrupt as the system they uphold. They can maintain the system today only by piling additional burdens upon the people. For the future, they offer only more austerity, continued insecurity, and increasing conflict. The myriad evils of capitalism will disappear only with the destruction of capitalism and the building of socialism. The Socialist party dedicates itself to move forward to socialism. The struggle for socialism will be an arduous one but only by wresting the power from the capitalists we can begin the task of building a new society that will do away with the anarchy of capitalism. Democratically-elected committees, councils, and communes of workers in every industry and district will manage the factories and public services. Freed from the fetters of production for profit, splendidly-equipped factories with robotics and automation will pour out their products without interruption: the productive forces will leap forward to provide almost undreamed of plenty. In the fight of the workers for power and socialism, they must gain strength and unity and weld together in solidarity.  We, in the Socialist Party, refuse to join the reformists in leading the workers into the camp of capitalism. Instead, we visualise a social system that would be based on the common ownership of the means of production, the elimination of private profit in the means of production, the abolition of the wage system, the abolition of the division of society into classes. When we speak of the means of production becoming common ownership we mean that wealth which is necessary for the production of the necessities of the people, the industries, transportation, mines, and so on. We don’t the elimination of private property in personal effects. We speak of those things which are necessary for the production of the people’s needs. They shall be owned in common by all the people.

Then as classes are abolished, as exploitation is eliminated, as the conflict of class against class is eliminated, the very reason for the existence of a government begins to disappear. The State is primarily an instrument of repression of one class against another. As Engels expressed it, there will be a withering away of the government as a repressive force, as an armed force, and its replacement by purely administrative councils, whose duties will be to plan production, to supervise public works, and education, and things of this sort. The government over men and women will be replaced by the administration of things. 
There are plenty of liberals who give out phrases about reform. Socialists – real socialists – have a different job: to bring to the fore the necessity for a SOCIALIST world before man’s hopes of peace and security can be achieved. 

Throughout history, the bosses have always tried to keep workers divided, unorganized and weak, in order to intensify their exploitation and thereby grab bigger profits. Despite a bloody history of the struggle to organise and to improve conditions, reforms have not resulted in a decent, secure life for working people. Every gain is continuously threatened, if only by a plant shut-down or a re-location to another city or country.  The capitalists of today and their government will do everything they can do to preserve their profits and their privileges. As long as the ownership of land and industry is under control of the capitalist class, the economy is run solely for the maximum profit interest of the bosses, and their state power is used to protect their capitalist system. To revive trade union militancy, to end the policies of class collaboration, to defeat the anti-labor offensive of Big Business it is necessary to develop again throughout the labor movement the historical perspective of socialism. 

Revolutionary and militant workers must be guided by the slogan, 'An injury to one is an injury to all'. We must advance solidarity in all battles against the capitalist class enemy, vigorously combat all discrimination and disunity. Capitalists run things for their own profit.  That is the way capitalism operates, the only way it can operate. For the workers, automation means insecurity. Labor-saving machines are not objectionable in themselves, for in the long run, they produce more goods for people to enjoy. What is objectionable is the way in which capitalism introduces new machines, their use to increase profits at the workers’ expense, to produce worsened working conditions.  A socialist economy will use new technology, the robots, and automation, not to produce unemployment but to produce more goods in less working time setting free workers to concentrate more on science, research, education, health measures, and other social services, and to promote wider participation in cultural life and recreation. Thus, with socialism, the workers will get all the benefits of new technology.


 The main job of the Socialist Party is to kick out the capitalists and establish socialism. But that doesn’t mean we expect workers to just sit around and wait for socialism. We have to fight back now against what the capitalists try to do to us. A working class and a people that do not fight for its material needs, and for its dignity, will never get to socialism and is in danger of being reduced to bondage. We can’t make capitalism work like socialism, but we can limit some of the capitalist thievery. And in fighting back, we are organising for the most important fight of all: we are preparing to dump capitalism and establish socialism.

Workers of the World, unite! Fight for socialism! We will win!