We are the future

The world today is a place of stark and bewildering contradictions. Possessing the greatest industrial and agricultural resources in history, it cannot feed, clothe and provide a decent livelihood for millions. People toil relentlessly away just to barely to survive. Poverty exists alongside opulence. This is an irrational and unjust system. But life does not have to be this way.

The Socialist Party strives for political and economic democracy throughout the world. Our conclusion is abolish profits and take production out of the hands of those who are governed only by considerations of profit. What we mean is not taking over of a single industry by nationalisation, but of expropriating from the ruling class each and every factory, office and farm in every branch of production. It means the wresting ownership and control from the capitalist class and transferring the social wealth to the producers of that wealth, the workers, replacing economic dictatorship with economic democracy. The Socialist Party argues that all reconciliations and palliatives are temporary, and that this is a class struggle to be fought out to a finish. The system is to be preserved or the system is destroyed. High wages and full employment are desirable things but the amelioration of working conditions under the capitalist system is limited by the necessities of capitalist production. You have to accept the economic laws of capitalist production, or abolish the system. The stock market gamblers may be swilling down their champagne, but these exploiters will discover that, for them, the party will soon be and the fruits of labour will belong not to the few but to the entire human race.

Private ownership of the means of production, exchange, communication, far from being diluted by popular share ownership, is undergoing an unprecedented concentration. There is no “trickle-down” effect. Capitalism has failed miserably to provide the basic necessities of life for hundreds of millions of workers around the world. .Older workers are discarded like garbage when they no longer have value to the boss-class. Only world-wide socialism offers people an alternative to the misery of capitalism. We can eliminate exploitation and capitalist injustice, by overturning the monopoly capitalist system. We can replace capitalism with a rational and humane system – socialism. Socialism is a social system where social wealth is genuinely controlled by society and for the benefit of society; where the common good, not profits, becomes the chief concern; where the everyday working people become the rightful masters of society. A radical solution is what it will take to end the miseries of capitalism. The socialist revolution has become a historical necessity and possibility. There is no other choice today but for the working people to organise to struggle and, one day, win socialism.

Today we must look ahead to the future where socialism will be built on the powerful productive potential now stifled by capitalism. Socialism will qualitatively improve the lives of working people. Each person is faced with the choice of either enduring the suffering of poverty, war and environmental destruction or joining with others who are dissatisfied and know that a better society is possible. Women and men, young and old, and people of all nationalities must unite to survive, to be able to work, eat and live as decent human beings. If working people, and not the capitalists, controlled the resources of our society, we could improve all our lives and guarantee a decent standard of living for all.

These are the hopes and aspirations of socialists, fundamentally changing the social system. We cannot be distracted by cynical condemnations that today's ills are because of “human nature” or just the “way things are.” Capitalism, the social system under which we live, is responsible.