It is the aspiration and aim of the Socialist Party that everyone should become socially conscious and effective in the class war against capitalism. Our goal is one for the working class throughout the world and it is the abolition of class-society itself. It is not a pious hope. But meanwhile, let us clarify our ideas and clearly understand our aims. Socialism means production is carried on for the social good, not for the profit of an exploiting class, not whether capitalists can sell it at a profit for themselves but produce for the needs of the people. Socialism thus revolutionizes the aim of production from production for profitable sale to production for social use. In so doing it frees humanity from the narrow limits of the capitalist economy and embarks upon a totally new era of social evolution. Socialism abolishes the chaos of capitalist production. It does away with the dog-eat-dog competition of capitalist industry, breeder of economic crises and war. It sets up instead a planned system of economy in harmony with the worldwide character of modern industry and social relationships. Only with socialism is such a planned economy possible and inevitable. A planned economy is one of the great contributions of socialism to humanity.
Capitalism robs the toilers of a large share of what they produce. It places restrictions on the development of the productive forces themselves. Under capitalism, science is a slave to the class interests of the bourgeoisie. Socialism will abolish the class division of society and it will abolish all forces of exploitation and oppression of man by man. Society will no longer consist of antagonistic classes in conflict with each other but will represent a united commonwealth of labour. For the first time in its history mankind will take its fate into its own hands. Instead of destroying innumerable human lives and incalculable wealth in struggles between classes and nations, mankind will devote all its energies to the development and strengthening of its own collective might. Socialist society will be State-free. With private property in industry and land abolished (but, of course, not in articles of personal use), with exploitation of the toilers ended, and with the capitalist class finally defeated and all classes liquidated, there will then be no further need for the State, which in its essence, is an organ of class repression. The State in the words of Engels, “wither away” and be replaced by a scientific technical “administration of things.” The guiding principle will be: “From each according to ability, to each according to needs.” That is, the distribution of life necessities—food, clothing, shelter, education, etc.—will be free, without let or hindrance. Socialist production, carried out upon the most efficient basis and freed from the drains of capitalist exploiters, will provide such an abundance of necessary commodities that there will be plenty for all with a minimum of effort. There will then be no need for pinch-penny rationing.
The Socialist Party stands for the abolition of every form of domination and oppression. We call for common ownership and democratic control of productive resources, for a guarantee to a fair share of society's product, in accordance with individual needs. we pursue the socialist transformation of society, focusing on production for need, not profit. The Socialist Party works to build world socialism in which everyone will be able to freely visit and to live wherever they choose.
Without a vision of a better world and the organisation that goes with it, even mass protests of ordinary working people in response to injustice will likely go nowhere. The Socialist Party offers a socialist vision of creating a society that serves the well-being of humanity and nature alike. The dire consequences of this system are everywhere apparent. The workers are oppressed and deprived of much that makes for physical and mental well-being. Year by year poverty destroy more lives than all the militaries in the world. To preserve their privilege and power is the most vital interest of the possessing class, while it is the most vital interest of the working class to resist oppression, improve its position. Hence there exists a conflict of interests, a class war which can know neither truce nor compromise so long as the few own and control the economic life of the many. For the masses of the people there is but an opportunity to work hard for a bare living, which is not prosperity, but slavery. If men and women were free to labour to satisfy their desires there could be neither poverty nor involuntary unemployment. But men and women are not free to labour to satisfy their desires. The working population can labour only when the capitalist class who own the industries believe they can market their product at a profit. The needs of millions are subordinated to the greed of a few. Their greed come first—the people's needs, if at all, afterwards. The Socialist Party feels there are a great many flaws with the capitalist system resulting in human suffering. Under capitalism, the few own our industries. The many do the work. The wage earners and farmers are compelled to give a large part of the product of their labor to the few. The many in the factories, mines, shops, offices and on the farms obtain but a scanty income and are able to buy back only a part of the goods that can be produced in such abundance by our mass industries.
The socialist movement owes its birth and growth to that economic development or world process which is rapidly separating a working or producing class from a possessing or capitalist class. The class that produces nothing possesses labor’s fruits, and the opportunities and enjoyments these fruits afford, while the class that does the world’s real work has increasing economic uncertainty, and physical and intellectual misery as its portion. Between the two classes, there can be no possible compromise or identity of interests. A society based upon this class division carries in itself the seeds of its own destruction. Such a society is founded in fundamental injustice. There can be no possible basis for social peace, for individual freedom, for mental and moral harmony, except in the conscious and complete triumph of the working class as the only class that has the right or power to be.
The Socialist Party is to-day the one democratic party of the worker whose object is to remove the cause of class struggles, class antagonisms, and social evils inherent in the capitalist system. The Socialist Party declares that the capitalist system has outgrown its historical function, and has become utterly incapable of meeting the problems now confronting society. We denounce this outgrown system as incompetent and corrupt and the source of unspeakable misery and suffering to the whole working class. We propose to transfer the industries of the world from private ownership and autocratic, cruelly inefficient management to common ownership and democratic control.
The overwhelming majority of the people are being forced under a yoke of bondage by this soulless industrial despotism. It is this capitalist system that is responsible for the increasing burden of armaments, the poverty, slums, child labor, much of the mental illness, crime and prostitution, and much of the disease that afflicts mankind. Under this system, the working class is exposed to poisonous conditions, to frightful and needless perils to life and limb, preyed upon incessantly for the benefit of the controlling oligarchy of wealth. Under it also, the working class are doomed to ignorance, drudging toil and darkened lives. The Socialist Party declares that sufferance under these conditions is no longer possible, and our Party was founded with the purpose to end them all. We declare them to be the product of the present system in which industry is carried on for private greed, instead of for the welfare of society. We declare, furthermore, that for these evils there will be and can be no remedy and no substantial relief except through socialism where industry will be carried on for the common good.
The Socialist Party is the political expression of the economic interests of the workers. In the face of the economic and political aggressions of the capitalist class, the only reliance left the workers is that of their economic organisations and their political power. By the class conscious use of these, they may resist successfully the capitalist class, break the fetters of wage slavery, and fit themselves for the future society, which is to displace the capitalist system. The Socialist Party appreciates the full significance of class organisation and urges the wage-earners to organise for economic and political action, and we pledge ourselves to support our fellow-workers in their struggles for economic and socal justice. The Socialist Party is the party of revolution.
We, the Socialist Party make our appeal to the people as the only political movement standing for the principles by which the liberty of the individual may become a fact; as the only political organisation that is democratic, and that has for its purpose the democratising of the whole society. Capitalism is the enemy. The private ownership of the means of employment grounds society is economic slavery. Capitalism renders intellectual and political tyranny inevitable.
As a socialist party, we pledge our fidelity to the principles of internationalism, as embodied in the united thought and action of socialists of all the world. The interests of the world’s workers are separated by no national boundaries. The condition of the most exploited and oppressed workers, in the most remote places of the earth, inevitably tends to drag down all the workers of the world to the same level. The tendency of the competitive wage system is to make labour’s lowest condition the measure or rule of its universal condition. Industry and finance are no longer national but international in both organisations and results. The chief significance of national boundaries, and of the so-called patriotisms which the ruling class of each nation is seeking to revive, is the power which these give to capitalism to keep the workers of the world from uniting, and to throw them against each other in the struggles of contending capitalist interests for the control of the yet unexploited markets of the world, or the remaining sources of profit. The socialist movement therefore is a world-movement. It knows of no conflicts between the workers of one nation and the workers of another. It stands for the freedom of the workers of all nations; and, in so standing, it makes for the full freedom of all humanity.
The Socialist Party came into being with the proposition of deliberately organizing society for the common good of all. Socialism means that all those things upon which the people in common depend shall by the people in common be owned and administered. It means that the tools of employment shall belong to the creators and users; that all production shall be for the direct use of the producers; that the making of goods for profit shall come to an end; that we shall all be workers together, and that opportunities shall be open and equal to all men and women. To that end the workers may seize every possible advantage that may strengthen them to gain complete control of the powers of government, and thereby the sooner establish the co-operative commonwealth, the Socialist Party pledges itself to watch and work in both the economic and the political struggle for each successive immediate interest of the working class.
We lay upon every Socialist Party candidate elected to office the first duty of striving to procure whatever is for the workers’ most immediate interest, and whatever will lessen the economic and political powers of the capitalist and increase the like powers of the worker. But, in so doing, we are using these remedial measures as means to one great end — the Co-operative Commonwealth. Such measures of relief as we may be able to force from capitalism are but a preparation of the workers to lay hold of the whole system of industry, and thus come into their rightful inheritance. To this end we pledge ourselves, as the party of the working class, to use all political power, as fast as it shall be entrusted to us by our fellow-workers, for their ultimate and complete emancipation.
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