Towards A New Freedom

This is an era of change. Automation and robotics are in the hands of the ruling class, and are replacing the workers and impoverishing the people. The coming social revolution must place the new technology in the hands of the people to lay the foundation for a whole new world. Abundance, created by robotics and people working for the common good rather than the profit of the few, will forever end poverty, exploitation, oppression and war. It is up to us as socialists to realise that we do have a vision to offer. Socialists ask why we have the paradox of poverty in the midst of plenty, and scarcity in the midst of abundance. For the first time in history, scarcity – with all its endemic misery, starvation, wars and pestilence – is no longer an inescapable part of human life.

Socialists at the present time are in short supply but now is the real possibility that the socialist movement can be reborn. Our numbers are small, but the potential is huge. The myth of an ever expanding economy with the trickle down of wealth to the poor is over.

Equality of distribution is possible only in two circumstances—starvation conditions and supreme abundance. The age of abundance belongs to world socialism. In this world we have vast regions of the richest and most fertile soil, material resources in inexhaustible abundance, the most marvellous productive technology , and millions of eager workers ready to apply their labour to produce in abundance for every man, woman, and child who are the victims of poverty and whose lives are an unceasing struggle all the way from youth to old age, until at last death comes. It cannot be blamed nature, but it is due entirely to the outgrown social system in which we live that ought to be abolished not only in the interest of all humanity. The Socialist Party holds that the people ought to own and control its own industries, that all things that are jointly needed and used ought to be jointly owned—that industry, the basis of our social life, instead of being the private property of a few and operated for their enrichment, ought to be the common property of all, democratically administered in the interest of all. The Socialist Party seeks to help implement the greatest social and economic change in history, to establish the universal commonwealth—the harmonious cooperation of every person with every other person on the planet. , the dawning of the better day for humanity.

Socialism, and only socialism, will create a world without master and slave, a world without national barriers, without international rivalries, and, hence, a world without war. Its primary purpose will be to conduct the affairs of the world with the aim of eliminating poverty, joblessness, hunger and general insecurity. Its sole criterion would be the needs of the people. Socialism will destroy the root evil of modern society, i.e., the private ownership of the means of production, the factories, mines, mills, machinery and land, which produce the necessities of life. With socialism, these will become the property of society, owned in common, producing for use, for the general welfare of the people as a whole. With the abolition of the private ownership of the means of life and with it the factor of profit as the prime mover of production, the sharp divisions of society between nations and classes will disappear. Then, and only then, will society be in a position to become a social order of abundance and plenty for all, for socialism will create a new world of genuine cooperation and collaboration between the peoples of the earth.

In abolishing classes in society, socialism will change the form and type of governments which exist today. Governments will become administrative bodies regulating production and consumption. They will not be the instruments of the capitalist class, i.e., capitalist governments whose main reason for existence is to guarantee the political as well as the economic rule of big business, their profits, their private ownership of the instruments of production, and the conduct of war in the economic and political interests of this class. The preoccupation of government under socialism will be to assist in the elevation of society, to improve continually the living standards of the people, to extend their leisure time and thus make it possible to heighten the cultural level of the whole world.

In abolishing classes, class government and war, socialism will at the same time destroy all forms of dictatorship, political as well as economic. World socialism will be the freest, most democratic society the world has ever known, with a world federation truly representing the majority of the population and subject to its recall. A citizen of a socialist society will look back upon the capitalist era with its wars, destruction and bloody and cruel dictatorships as we now look back upon the dawn of written history.

World socialism will assess the industrial potential of the world, determine its resources, the needs of the people and plan production with the aim of increasing the standards of living of a free people, creating abundance, increasing leisure and opportunity for cultural enjoyment. Socialism will not concern itself with profits and war, but with providing decent housing for all the people.

Socialism will provide for a multitude of schools for all the people. Socialism will no longer regard schools primarily as institutions to produce trained labour to help operate the profit economy. Socialism will create a system of health preservation in which the well-being and improvement of the people would be the paramount consideration.

Above all, socialism will provide jobs for all. But this will be work without exploitation. For the aim of socialism is not the increased exploitation and intensification of labour, but the utilisation of machinery, technology, science and invention to diminish toil, to create time in which to permit all the people to enjoy the benefits of social progress. Socialism will place at the disposal of science and the scientists all the material means to help create an ever-improving social life for mankind. Under capitalism, scientists are mere wage workers hiring out their skills to private industry. The fruits of their intelligence, learning arid research become the exclusive property of the capitalists who profit from the labours of these scientists. Thus, science has become subordinated to profits rather than to the common good of all mankind. Yet the future society depends in large measure on changing this relation of science to society. Only socialism can place science where it properly belongs: in the service of the people.

Today's modern world contains all the pre-conditions necessary for socialism. All around us we observe the technological marvels which could produce the goods of life in abundance. Man has developed robots and automated production, which make it more possible to control our natural and social environment to create a fruitful life of abundance. Mankind is at a crossroads. We can travel the road of capitalism, the path towards chaos, war, poverty and barbarism, or we can take the socialist road to freedom, peace and security, the road toward a society of plenty for all which would end the exploitation of man by man for all time.