The Socialist Party propose that all resources, all land and buildings, all factories and manufacturing, mines and mills, all means of transportation and communication, should be, not private property, but the common property of all.
We propose that production be made to serve the needs of the people rather than to serve the needs of a few parasites. We hold with science that production and distribution of goods can be planned. Planned economy on the basis of common ownership without any class division is called socialism.
When the Socialist Party speak of a society organised on the basis of planned production and distribution we mean something entirely different. What we have in mind is very simple, to do away with production for profit and distribute the fruits of increased production among all the members of society, to enrich the economic and cultural life of everyone and to ease their toil with the further improvement of technology and working methods, according to the latest advances of science which have shown what immense possibilities for the satisfaction of human wants are contained in the potential achievements of automation and robotics in its future growth. It reduces human labour to the easy task of a few hours a day.
Let everybody work according to ability; let everybody receive from the common stock of goods according to needs. In socialism, there is no exploitation, no oppression, no insecurity, no poverty. Life is made humane. With this begins the great ascent of mankind. This is capable of fulfillment. Socialists are the only realists. Socialists are not against dreaming, but our dreams are real. We are practical dreamers. The socialist revolution, a socialist society, involves of necessity the self-administration of production and of society by the citizens and the producers of their own behalf and not by any self-appointed clique claiming to rule in their place. In the words of Rosa Luxemburg “Socialism by its very nature cannot be built by decree... Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly... public life gradually falls asleep, a few dozen party leaders of inexhaustible energy and boundless experience direct and rule... a dictatorship to be sure; not the dictatorship of the proletariat, however, but only the dictatorship of a handful of politicians, that is the dictatorship in the bourgeois sense…”
Once class-free society is established, the State – by definition having as its purpose class exploitation and hence by now without function – “withers away.” There exists an “administration of things.” Engels wrote to August Bebel:
“As soon as there is no longer a class of society to be held in subjection; as soon as, along with class domination and the struggle for individual existence based on the former anarchy of production, the collisions and excesses arising from them have also been removed, there is nothing more to repress which would make a special repressive force, a state, necessary.”
Capitalism is a system of commodity production (that is, the production of goods for sale and not for direct use by the producer) which is distinguished by the fact that labour power itself becomes a commodity. The major means of production and exchange which make up the capital of society are owned privately by a small minority, the capitalist class (the bourgeoisie), while the great majority of the population consists of proletarians or semi-proletarians. Because of their economic position this majority can only exist by permanently or periodically selling their labour power to the capitalists and thus creating through their work the incomes of the upper classes. Thus, fundamentally, capitalism is a system of exploitation of the working class (the proletariat) by the capitalist class.
Economic crises are due to the basic features of the capitalist system. One feature is the anarchy of production. Businessmen decide what kind of things to produce and how many to produce either individually or in small groups. Production is not planned by any coordination or cooperation. Over time, disproportions between the activities of various firms and different industries eventually occur. Disproportions in the economy affect the capitalists’ profits. When businessmen do not make the expected level of profits, they shut down production. Shutdowns, order cancellations, and bankruptcies can cause a chain reaction leading to economic paralysis, which is called a crisis. The effect of this unplanned method of production under capitalism causes either too many products or too few products on the market. No matter what the level of technology, how high the unemployment level, or how gorged the stocks of raw materials, the capitalist will sabotage production in order to make a higher profit. The level of production is determined by how much profit is to be made, not by the needs of the people who live under the capitalist system. Part of the chain reaction of the economic contraction is a falling level of working-class consumption. Another reaction is growing unemployment. However, it is the economic contraction which causes a decline in wages and working-class consumption and growing unemployment, not under-consumption by the working class that causes capitalist economic crises. If an organisation supports the line that under-consumptionism is the reason for capitalist economic crises then there is no need for revolution. All the working class has to do to solve its problems is to demand some tax relief and extra spending on the part of the capitalist state. As long as the capitalists are in control, production is based on profits, not social needs, and workers will never have cheap, abundant medical care, food, education,
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