No one can understand the main political questions of our time without an understanding of the state, and of its connection with classes and the class struggle.
The people who run this world are a small handful of industrialists, financiers who are multimillionaires and billionaires. They own the vast productive forces–the factories, the mines, the mills, the transportation and communication systems, and these people exploit the working class, the majority of the population, for their own private profit. The State–the police, army, courts, bureaucracy and similar institutions–is controlled by this capitalist class. Big Business consistently uses the police and the courts to break strikes and generally to put restrict the resistance of the oppressed who own little or no means of production. In short, the State is the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. We do not mean there is a dictatorship in this country of one or several men. It does mean there is a class dictatorship, usually concealed, where a tiny handful of profit-makers rules society and uses the State as their weapon to suppress working people. The capitalists do not openly admit their rule. Instead, they claim that this is a democracy where every voter takes part in running the government. The ruling class goes to great lengths to cover up their dictatorship under the mask of democracy, for it is extremely difficult for a minority of exploiters to rule by force alone. In fact, the employing owning class is no more willing to “share” power with the majority of people than it is to share the ownership of the means of production and wealth. For them to function as a capitalist class, they must exploit the working class; and to exploit the workers, who constantly resist this exploitation and oppression, they must use the state to suppress the workers.
Under the capitalist mode of production, the principal classes in society are the capitalist class and the working class, or proletariat. Their historically-determined production relations form the basis, the economic structure of capitalist society. The capitalist class owns the means of production, the workers work for this class for wages; having no means of production of their own, they are forced to sell their labour power for what they can get. They are thus an exploited class. The state is part of the superstructure (the most important part) erected on the basis of capitalist production relations to reinforce the power of the capitalists to exploit the workers.
Of course, the working class has been granted some democratic rights such as the right to vote, free speech, free press, etc. But these liberties, like everything else in capitalist society, mean one thing to the ruling class and quite another for the workers. For the capitalists, freedom of the press and free speech, as examples, mean the right to fill media with their propaganda and lies and to use them freely to debate with each other. For the capitalists, elections are a way to settle differences among themselves, while making it look like everybody has equal say. For the workers, democratic rights are the fruits of previous struggles, and we fight to preserve them for they make it easier to organise and mobilise for the day when the capitalists will be overthrown. Nevertheless, civil and human rights for the masses are primarily a sham, a mask, to cover the despotism of the capitalists. This is especially clear when democratic rights come into conflict with the most basic “freedom” of bourgeois society–the right of the capitalists to their “private property” and to exploit the labour of the workers. The ruling class decides by struggle and compromise within its own ranks, and among its paid politicians, how it will maintain its system of exploitation over the people. And, as our capitalist rulers have extended their markets overseas and the wage system of exploitation throughout the world, they have ruined and impoverished the masses of people in every other country. The capitalist state is an instrument of the minority to suppress the exploited majority.
This situation can only be reversed by socialist revolution to overthrow capitalist rule. The political bourgeois state–and all its rules and regulations aimed at enslaving the people–are abolished. The State as such will be replaced by the common administration of society by all its members. Once in power, the working class moves to socialise the ownership of the means of production-making them the common property of society–to resolve the basic contradiction of capitalism, to break down the obstacles capitalism puts in the way of progress and makes possible the rapid development of society. Socialism is a higher form of society than capitalism and is bound to replace it all over the world, just as capitalism replaced the feudal system of nobility and serfs. Since the working class and the socialist society built represent the interests of the great majority of society, the workers openly proclaim their rule and openly dictate to their former exploiters and tormentors. The majority rule of the working class cannot be exercised by deceiving the masses of people, but only by their active involvement in every part of the political life of society and raising their political consciousness. Socialism replaces capitalism where there will no longer be any classes, and, therefore, there will no longer be any need for any State. Socialism subverts the old order of dog-eat-dog, and looking out for number one philosophy. Everyone in society will share equally in mental and manual work, in producing goods and services and managing the affairs of society and the outlook of the working class places the common good above narrow, individual interests. Goods and services can be produced so abundantly that money is no longer needed to exchange them and they can be distributed to people solely according to their needs. Socialism will show that people can do away completely and forever capitalism and all other forms of class society.
The capitalists like to pretend that capitalism is eternal. The fact is, however, that for the greater part of human history mankind lived in tribal society under a system of primitive communism, a system without classes, in which acceptance of the authority of the elders did not require a special coercive force but was freely given, and questions of paramount importance were decided by the tribal assembly. In those times there was no state. Nor did the notion of male superiority exist. Women took part in decision-making on terms of full equality with men.
The immediate goal of the Socialist Party is to overthrow the capitalist class and create a new social system where we, the people, will for the first time be our own masters. Socialism is a new system and is built on the ruins of the old capitalist system. Without private property – no economic classes; without classes – no state, no special elite with an armed force at its disposal to coerce and impose its rule and will upon others in society. Socialism is when the different social classes have disappeared and a free association of equals has emerged in which association the free development of individua1 character will be the necessary condition of the free development of all. As soon as capitalist domination has been put an end to we will have disarmed bourgeoisie opposing the expropriations.
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