Please remember this: the rich are our enemy

Reformists never learn. Despite all the evidence to the contrary. They still hold faith that societies can shape capitalism that can regulate itself better, to produce a kinder, more tolerable society. But if this is possible, why has it never happened up to now, at least not for any length of time? The fact is that capitalism can’t be reshaped so as to put human values before market values. It has to put profits first and its economic mechanisms impose this on any government which may have other thoughts. In order to retain power, the possessing class teaches the idea that capital and capitalism have always existed. They seek to convey the idea that capitalist class society and capitalist exploitation will continue to exist forever. In other words, it is a system of society which is natural and eternal, and there is no use, anyone, thinking of making fundamental changes in it or replacing it with any other social system. This idea is false and has been developed only to maintain the capitalist class’ economic and political control. It is a system of hideous absurdity, a destroyer of social wealth, the eliminator of human happiness, security and life itself. The wondrous productive machine which capitalism helped to create, if rationally organised, could easily supply the needs and comforts of all, proves to be a mechanism that degrades the people to poverty, wretchedness, suffering, and iniquity.

Capitalism robs us of those things which make us truly human: socialism is the re-appropriation of those powers alienated from us under class society. The worker whether the business which employs him or her is owned by foreign shareholders or not. He or she can live only by persuading some firm or other to buy the person's working ability and wherever he or she works they will receive, on a broad average, the same wage. Perhaps, at times, a glimmering of the facts gets through to the workers and sets them realising that "their" nation does not belong to them. That a very small minority in the world own almost anything that is worth owning, whilst the rest spend their waking lives in work to keep things that way. That the majority scrape along with the shabby and tawdry whilst the few can have—literally—the best. The best clothes, houses, food, holidays. The best chance of living a worthwhile life. And—final irony—they can have all this without needing to work for it. They can leave that part to the lazy, loyal working class. Why are they loyal? Because they think that they have some stake in the country of their living, which gives them a common cause with the capitalist class. And what does this stake amount to. About the biggest and most valuable thing that most workers are ever likely to own is a house. And what agonies they must go through, to get it! Every capitalist concern, whatever the nationality of its shareholders, is in business to make profit. It is, indeed, to make more profit that they invest overseas.

The Socialist Pary seeks a better world founded on common ownership, equality, and democracy, to meet all mankind’s material needs, to raise his or her personal and individual development to the greatest possible height. The Second International or the Third International traditions have come to dominate what passes for socialist thinking that they are now regarded as a refutation of the principles of socialism and cause for redefining socialism. The Socialist Party was well aware of the dangers of a concentration of economic and political power within the hands of an all-powerful state. It claimed that state ownership could only end in some form of bureaucratic despotism. State property is administered by ministerial officers, and these are, by the nature of things, a hierarchy and chain of command. State ownership is a means of controlling and regimenting workers. These officials involved in the administration of the state do so as representatives of those who control the State. So we need to remember that the State and social ownership are not the same thing. One cannot equate the state with society. The change from the one social system to the other will be the social revolution. The political state throughout history has meant the government of a few over the majority. 

 Socialism will administered by the whole community, a true democracy. Socialism will require no political state because there will be neither a privileged property class nor a downtrodden property-less class: there will be no social disorder as a result, because there will be no clash of economic interests; there will be no need to create a power to make law and maintain order. As Engels wrote, the state will wither away. Engels states that ‘man...has become master of his own social organisation’.