Socialism Is the Goal We Fight For

For too long the ideals of socialism has been placed in moth-balls. The labour and radical movements are in general disarray, striving to understand and overcome a heritage of class collaboration. Around the world there is no revolutionary socialist movement worthy of the name. But the elements exist for the development of a mass party. First of all, there is the injustice, inequality and institutionalised oppression of capitalism – a system which generates a growing dissatisfaction among the majority of working people. A better future will not come about automatically or simply because many people want it. It will only come about if we are able to draw enough people into the struggle to create it. But the effectiveness and success of that struggle are not predetermined. The global system of capitalism have adversely affected the living standard of the working class. The latest technologies in commodity production and distribution has created financial and political crises. In capitalist society, despite all the changes which may have occurred, the state remains the centre of decision serving the capitalists.

There is a class war to end wage-slavery, to end capitalism with its evils of misery and degradation. The war to end war. And until that war is ended we do not want peace—because such peace will be the peace of the beggar and the slave. Socialism can be realised only as the outcome of the class struggle of the workers. The class struggle is the motive force of history. All the political actions and judgements of a socialist party must always be directed against the capitalist class, and never be taken in collaboration with them. Every attempt to find another way, by supporting the capitalists, by conciliating them, by cooperating with them has led not toward the socialist goal but to defeat and disaster for the workers. It is by carrying the class struggle to its necessary conclusion, that is, the abolition of capitalism that the socialist society will be realised. Real socialists today rally to the ranks of the Socialist Party. The Socialist Party serves the “have-not” class, the exploited. It stands for the abolition of the profit system, the end of wars growing out of the profit system but most of, for peace and plenty for all. The purpose of the Socialist Party is to stir the apathetic, to capture the attention of the indifferent, to stimulate the faint-hearted as to indicate the way to social harmony. Socialists condemn the competitive system. Production today is left to the care of those whose sole concern is to make profit for themselves, and although life and death depend upon industry, never yet has there been any organised attempt to rationally regulate industry in the interests of the majority.

There is no room for fence-sitting in the class war. You are either for the millionaires or for the workers who are robbed. You either stand for production for sale and profit or for production for use and free access. Either revolution or reform. There is no middle way. Whether we like it or dislike it, if we are conscious, we cannot ignore the stark reality that our society is a class divided society. Until the classes, the class exploitation, the class struggles and the class instrument of oppression and coercion, that is, the state, disappear in course of development of class struggle from the arena of development of human society, the society remains as a field of intense class battle.

You either favour missiles and bombing or you refuse uncompromisingly to fight their bloody wars. The Socialist Party's peace policy starts from this basic fact of the inseparability of war from capitalism. If capitalism makes enduring peace impossible, then the system must give way to a better one, whose aim is not profit-making but the satisfaction of the needs of humanity and whose basic means of expansion thereby calls for free cooperation instead of the intensification of competition and the exploitation of labour. The socialist peace program boils down to the struggle of the workers to end capitalism.

All the arguments against socialism are variations of a single theme – its alleged impracticality.

The first argument against socialism was the theoretical assumption that capitalism had always existed and would naturally always continue to exist because it corresponded with “human nature.” Hard facts upset this naive assumption. Capitalism was shown to be but a newcomer among economic systems; it is less than five hundred years old. Moreover the decline of other systems after their rise indicated a similar fate for capitalism.

Another argument is that socialism represented a beautiful ideal but lacked a basis in reality; socialists were therefore nothing but Utopians. The working class, created by capitalism itself, has shown to have a decisive economic interest in the development of socialism, and since socialism signifies a higher level of economy and culture, leading to a class-free society, the working-class movement in this direction represents the interests of society as a whole. In addition, the worldwide industrial system established by capitalism provides a sufficient base for the enormous increase in productivity required to realise socialism. The growth of socialist sentiment is inevitable, for the development of capitalism itself impels it.