THE TIME HAS COME

The Socialist Party is primarily concerned with analysing the capitalist system, pointing out its defects and advocating the replacing of the capitalist system by the common ownership and democratic administration of the means of production and distribution. Its success and progress will depend very largely upon the method of education and the political tactics of the Socialist Party but those in itself cannot bring about the cooperative commonwealth. Just as propaganda fails to necessarily advance socialism nor does great economic distress. These crises may point out the fact that something is wrong, but the suggestion of the remedy and the cure for these ills is quite a different problem. The socialist movement is international because it is born of and follows the development of the capitalist system, which in its operation is confined to no country, but by the momentum of modern methods of production, exchange, communication, and transportation which has crossed all frontier lines and made the entire world the focus of its activities. By this process all parts of the planet has been drawn into relations of industrial and commercial cooperation. The global brotherhood of all workers is the goal of modern socialism and it is this that inspires its advocates with zeal and ardour. 

So, what is socialism? Simply, it means the common ownership by all the people of all the means of wealth production and distribution. Socialism does not propose the shared ownership of personal possession, but of the instruments of wealth production, which, in the form of private property, enable a few capitalists to exploit vast numbers of workers, thus creating class rule and all its odious manifestations. Socialism proposes economic freedom for every human being. As nobody would possess private property in which another person would be dependent for employment, economic mastery and slavery would disappear together and competition for profit would give way to cooperation for use.

The changing economic conditions is the evolution of the social organisation and are paving the way for the transition from competitive capitalism to cooperative socialism. Socialists are simply indicating the trend of the evolution, and seeking to prepare the way for its orderly arrival. The rapid centralisation of capital and the extensive existence of corporations makes individual initiative and small businesses less and less possible. The day of small production has passed, notwithstanding, the protests of the petty trade-person. These great modern conglomerates increase in power and are the inevitable outgrowth of the competitive system. The efforts of small capitalists to destroy monopolies will prove as fruitless as the efforts of working people to resist technological change. Actually, many of these global corporations in themselves are not evil. The evil lies wholly in the private ownership, and its operation for private profit. The remedy is common ownership and for them to be run and operated for the good of all. Despite all such alleged issues as banking reform, imperialism, protectionism and free trade, etc., the Socialist Party declares that economic emancipation is the supreme question that confronts the people. 

The working class are dependent upon the capitalist class, who own the factories, the transport and the communications by virtue of their economic mastery and political power, are the ruling class and it is idle under such conditions to claim that men and women are equal citizens. No person is free in any sense if required to rely upon the arbitrary will of another for work. Such a person lives by permission of the capitalist class. Chattel slavery has disappeared as it is no longer necessary to own the worker in order to take the fruit of his or her labour. It is now only necessary to own the vast machinery which workers cannot afford to buy, and against which he cannot compete, with which we work, and without which we are helpless. We are at the mercy of the owner of the machines, our employment is precarious, and our very lives hang by a thread. The few who own the places of work rarely work in them. The many who toil in the work-places never own them. The few who own them are enabled to exploit the many who use them. The Socialist Party presses forward until it can conquer the political machinery of the State. This will mark the end of the capitalist system. The factories and all other means of production and distribution will be transferred to the people in their collective capacity, industry will be operated cooperatively, and every human being will enjoy the fruit of society’s labour. The hours of work will be reduced. Rent, interest, and profit will be no more. The sordid spirit of commercial conquest will be dead. War and its ravages will pass into history. Economic liberation will have triumphed and the emancipated sons and daughters of Mankind will glory in the triumph of socialism.