Capitalism - the last of the slave systems

Socialism will be the birth of a money-free society based on common ownership and democratic control of the world's resources, i.e. a non-market economy. The old sign-posts toward such a world are gone now and new ones point in a different direction. The left-wing policies, programmes and platforms bewilder the uninitiated. Grand system change has been reduced to  “bread-and-butter struggles”, with various “isms” clashing with one another.

Under the capitalist system, the constant striving for profits from investments always brings real wages down. Unless the workers engage in collective struggle to maintain their living standards they and their families would starve, and a type of class struggle, trade union struggle, develops spontaneously among the workers. This economic struggle is allowed for by the capitalist system, and is even necessary for its continuation, for how else can the workers, whom the capitalist needs to exploit, how else can they survive? The working class learn how to organise to fight collectively, and discover on whose side the police and the courts are. Trade unionism is the collective struggle of the workers against their employers for better terms in the sale of their labour power, for better conditions of life and labour. But any economic benefits gained are temporary and in the long run illusory. The struggle of the working class is not only for better terms for the sale of labour power, but also for the abolition of the social system which compels the propertyless to sell themselves to the rich. Capitalism means the degradation of vast numbers of men and women who exist under its social system. So natural and inevitable has the squalor and suffering of millions of human beings seemed that it has all been taken for granted. Capitalism is showing itself to be not only injurious to the vast majority of individuals, but a definite obstacle to the advance of mankind.

The class war in the field of economics is growing more apparent with each new dawn where a higher standard of life and more leisure is the war-cry on the one side, as against greater production and higher profit on the other.

The Socialist Party does not intend to win over our fellow-workers by sloganising. We don’t need mere malcontents,we need thinkers with a vision of the kind of world that is possible. We hold that true gains can only be had by the clarity of ideas. Our strategy is to have a vision about where we should be going and how to get there. We need to make clear the distinction between our role in the destruction of the system and our role in the reconstruction of a new system.  One weakness has been that we have paid less attention to reconstruction. The Socialist Party must encourage all struggles against oppression and exploitation, everywhere raising the class question, to promote an awareness of the truth that the only permanent solution is a socialist revolution. It is through the co­operative commonwealth of all, that women and men can attain a higher communal life and secure social happiness secured for all citizens. 

The Socialist Party is striving for a complete social revolution, in which ownership, control, and management by the capitalist class are set aside in favour of the common ownership, democratic control, and management by the whole population, all of whom shall contribute their quota to the general social service. It is impossible to stop short of complete socialisation – that is to say, of all the great means and instruments of production and distribution. This, in turn, must inevitably lead on to the equitable sharing of products among all members of the community - the co-operative commonwealth. Since there is no difficulty whatever in creating wealth far in excess of our requirements, by the scientific organisation and application of the light labour of all to the satisfaction of our social needs,  the  motto, “From each according to ability, to each according to needs,” ceases to be Utopian and becomes a reality. The problems of society, so far as they relate to daily life and sustenance, will then no longer be affected in any way by money values, but labour will be devoted to this or that branch of production in proportion to the desires of the community. Work that, after all, possible amelioration, remains dangerous or difficult will be shared by all of the community who are fit, instead of being relegated to a class. The standard of life for each and all will be far higher than anything ever yet attained.  A new ethic inevitably arises since nearly all the crimes are property crimes. Remove the incentive and the crimes will vanish. A new world will open up before humanity with the disappearance of over-work and anxiety.

The essence of revolutionary strategy is to spell out who is for us and who is against us.  We are under no illusion about the prospects for a socialist awakening being imminent in the next year or two. On the other hand, there are changes in peoples' lives which endow socialism with a fundamental reality and relevance that was not always been the case. We aim at a new society – the socialist commonwealth. Our goal is a new social system based on common ownership of our resources and industry, cooperation, production for use and genuine democracy. Only socialism can turn the boundless potential of working people and resources to the creation of a world free from tyranny, greed, poverty, and exploitation. Workers are their pawns in a global game of mergers, shutdowns, and relocations and we have been robbed of the very power to determine our own future. Under capitalism, labour is a commodity. Workers are used as replaceable parts, extensions of machines—as long as they provide dividends. Employers use their power of ownership to devastate the lives of workers through layoffs, shutdowns, and neglect of health and safety. Unions, despite their courageous efforts, have encountered difficulties eliminating even the worst abuses of the bosses power. Massive world-wide misery is the legacy of profiteering corporations that are incapable of turning their technology and organisation to the needs of people.  They have distorted the economic development of the world so fundamentally, wasting the resources, for instance, that could eliminate hunger in the world yet the world waits in need of the goods technology could produce. Profits dictate the course of humanity.

The socialist option is the only alternative. Capitalism has failed, and so have all efforts to reform it. That failure puts a campaign for the socialist alternative on the immediate agenda. The needs of people, not profit, are the driving force of a socialist society.  The Socialist Party invite all workers to join us to eradicate a social system based on exploitation, discrimination, poverty, and war. The capitalist system must be replaced by world socialism. That is the burning issue of our time, the only hope of humanity.