For
the first time in history, humankind can produce such abundance that
society can be free from poverty, hunger and homelessness. The only
thing standing in the way is the capitalist system of exploitation
and wage-slavery. The struggle for education and health care is the
beginning of a revolution for a better world. We seek to liberate the
thinking of working people and unleash their energy. We will win them
to the cause for which they are already fighting with a vision of a
world of plenty. New technology provides better, cheaper and more
products with less and less labour. Society now has the capacity to
devote the energies and talents of its people to satisfying the needs
of all. The magic of robotics and automation which sprang from the
inventive genius of man, has been created the possibility of
fabulous abundance. But, alas, instead of blessing mankind, it has
become the means of enslaving it.
Each
day, increasing Artificial Intelligence is throwing people out of
their jobs. Their work has become worthless to a system that values
only what it can exploit to make a profit. People who until very
recently trusted and defended capitalist economic structure are now
searching for political direction and for solutions to their
problems. More and more, people from every walk of life and every
pocket of struggle against this system are looking for a plan for
what has to be done. The ruling class tries to keep people confused
and to keep them from fighting in their own interests. For it to
continue, capitalism must retain the faith of workers and middle
class; it must spread the impression that it still can work. We have
to counter the ruling class’s intensifying propaganda in the class
war. The day when our fellow-workers recognise that so long as
capitalism exists they are doomed to degradation and poverty amid the
greatest potential in the world – that day will have seen the dawn
of social revolution and the overthrow of capitalism. Only with the
profit system removed, can they find abundance. The arguments for
overthrowing capitalism now finds ready listeners. Conditions are
ripe for revolution.
Dramatic
changes in the way a society produces its wealth call for radical
changes in how that society is organised. The capitalist class cannot
convince the people to believe in their system while they are
destroying their hopes and dreams. The Socialist Party aspires to
inspire our fellow-workers with a society organised for the benefit
of all, built on cooperation, that puts the well-being of people
above the profits and property of a handful of billionaires. When the
property-less class which has no place under the capitalist system
takes control of all productive property and transforms it into
common property, it can reorganise production so that abundance is
distributed according to need. We endeavour to empower people with
the understanding of their role in striving for this new society and
imbue them with the confidence that it’s possible to win. We call
on you to join us in campaigning for this cause. The fight for what
people need in order to live for justice and happiness is the
revolutionary struggle today. Conditions are ripe for revolution.
The
material and technical resources for a society of free access, a
world based on the principle from each according to ability, to each
according to needs, unquestionably exist today. Surely no competent
enquirer doubts that everybody could have a comfortable and
attractive home, abundant food, decent clothing, opportunity for
recreation and education, security against accident, sickness, and
old age; and the sense of independence and self-respect that goes
with these things. The appalling contrast between what might be and
what is, arises from the nature of the economic system – capitalism
– under which we operate. A revolution in technology has occurred
and is still in process. Private possession and control over it via
intellectual ownership and patent laws provides the right to make
profit from it and to exploit the labour of those engaged in it. This
antiquated system of private ownership and profit continues to
function and acts as a brake upon production so that, as the phrase
goes, you have “want in the midst of plenty.” The Socialist Party
seeks to end immediately private ownership and control over natural
resources and over production, distribution and communication which
generations of workers applied their toil and skill to build.
Ownership and control would be vested collectively in society. It
will be the people, not the industrialists and financiers who who
will benefit. The spectre of insecurity will be removed. The despotic
domination of the few over the many will be at an end. The rational
and scientific use of natural resources and sustainable manufacturing
will mean an immediate and substantial improvement in the standard of
living of the mass of people. Capitalism can save itself only by
fiercer exploitation, cutting living standards, taking away even such
concessions as were previously made. Since capitalism must keep
pushing conditions of working and living ever lower and lower, it
must eventually undermine every vestige of democratic rights and the
means of resistance workers may have, for clearly no matter how meek,
peaceful, conservative an organisation might be, at. some point it
will try to resist the imposition of further impoverishment and
distress.
There
is only one course which can save people from capitalism –
revolution. We must make every struggle, on every battlefield, a step
towards that end, the abolition of the capitalist system of society,
based on the exploitation of man by man, and to build a socialist
society based on common ownership of the means of production, with
economic life planned in the interests of the masses of the people –
a society which will develop material; abundance and the construction
of a society based on the principle “to each according to needs”.
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