For Everbody

Working people are in the great majority. Without them, the capitalist class wouldn’t be producing for profit – for sale on the market. What the employers sell is the product of our labour. And that’s where they get the money to hire more labourers to build more plants. That’s where they get the money to live, to live in palaces and swim in champagne. And all they return to the labourer is enough to scrape along on, a jump ahead of the finance company.

That’s the main thing about socialism. We could manage all of industry ourselves. We don't need the CEOs, the supposed business brains of an enterprise. We could use the same office force, the same supply and logistic departments, the same R and D as they use to provide plans and projects today. We could put them to work calculating the amount of our products we can reasonably get out in a year – what we need from the other industries and all. That should be fairly simple. That is why socialist democracy requires the widest participation in decision-making at all levels.

No single individual really rules either Germany or America. A CLASS rules. The capitalist class. like all previous class rule, capitalist rule is the rule of a tiny minority, based on the foundations of scarcity economy. The only way a minority has or can or ever did rule over the majority is by supplementing brute force with deception, lies and legends. When we take over the industries, our class, THE WORKING CLASS, will rule. Then we’ll have real democracy, workers’ democracy. We working people will be running things in our own interests. Any intelligent socialist would think it preposterous for the socialist transformation to be violent, since the aim of socialism is to establish an order of peace. To speak about socialists seeking violence against the capitalist regime today is ludicrous. We are presently an insignificant minority. 

Our Party members, plus our Party sympathisers, plus those who vote for us, multiplied by ten, are still an insignificant number. If every single one of us was armed with a weapon now, we could all be dispersed by few policemen or soldiers. We would be mad to think in such terms. 

The Socialist Party is an educational organisation. We seek first seek to win the minds and the hearts of the people. The Socialist Party does not hide the fact that it is the consistent enemy of capitalism and aims to replace capitalism by socialism not only because it is possible to do so but because it is absolutely necessary to the maintenance and the progressive development of society. We hold that capitalism has outlived its usefulness. We are convinced that if capitalism is allowed to continue, we will be plunged into barbarism. In a word, we hold that if humanity is to advance it must move on to socialism. Capitalism produces only when there is a profit for the owner of capital. When there is no profitable market for his product, the capitalist will not produce, no matter how great and urgent the need of the people for work, for food, for clothing and shelter, for a decent living standard, for security. While profits such as they never dreamed of before flow into the pockets of the big corporations, one after another of labour's rights are abrogated. Our wages frozen; our jobs conditions deteriorated. Every day it remains, capitalism brings us closer to barbarism. It will destroy us unless we destroy it. 

Socialism means peace, security, prosperity, freedom and equality- the things that working people have always wanted and longed for. Today socialism is an urgent necessity. Socialism is the common ownership of the means of production and distribution and their democratic organisation and management by all the people in a society free of classes, class divisions and class rule. Socialism is the democratic organisation of production for use, of production for abundance, of plenty for all, without the exploitation of man by man. Socialism is the union of the whole world disposing in common of the natural resources and wealth of our earth. It is now possible to organise our economic life to produce in abundance for all in a minimum of working time. Can socialism organise production and distribution in the interests of society as a whole, providing abundance, security and freedom for all? Yes, socialism and only socialism. Under socialism, production is organised for use, not for profit. Production is carried on in a planned, democratically-controlled way, not on the basis of whether or not the private capitalist can make a profit on the market. It is only necessary to free them from the paralysing hand of capitalism and production-for-profit in order to organise them in a rational and democratic manner. 

Where there is abundance for all, the nightmare of insecurity vanishes. There are jobs for all, and they are no longer dependent on whether or not the employer can make a bloated profit in a fat market. There is not only a high standard of living, but every industrial advance is followed by a rising standard of living and a declining working-day. Where there is abundance for all, and where no one has the economic power to exploit and oppress others, the basis of classes, class division and class conflict vanishes. The basis of a ruling state, of a government of violence and repression, with its prisons and police and army, also disappears. Police and thieves, prisons and violence are inevitable where there is economic inequality, or abundance for the few and scarcity for the many. They disappear when there is plenty for all, therefore economic equality, therefore social equality. Where there is abundance for all, and where all have equal access to the fruits of the soil and the wealth of industry, the mad conflicts and wars between nations and peoples vanish. With them vanishes the irrepressible urge that exists under capitalism for one nation to subject others, to rob it of its rights, to exploit and oppress it, to provoke and maintain the hideous national and racial antagonisms that cling to capitalism like an ineradicable bloodstain.

Where mankind is free of economic exploitation, of economic inequality, of economic insecurity, it is free for the first time to develop as a human being among fellow human beings, free to contribute to the unfolding of a new culture and a new humanity, which recalls the capitalistic war of all against all only as a sordid and horrible memory of mankind's ugly childhood. To the achievement of this noble ideal which is a burning necessity, socialism addresses itself firstly and above all to the members of the working class. This fight cannot be conducted consistently nor, in the long run, successfully, unless it becomes a conscious fight against the whole rotten foundation of capitalism and for laying the foundation of socialism. 

We in the Socialist Party are organised to make the working class conscious of its historical mission, of the great part it must play in reorganising society itself. We are part and parcel of the working class. We appear in every election campaign as the party of socialism. We do not say to the workers: "Fix your eyes so rigidly on the socialist future that you ignore the needs and battles of the day." Rather, we say: "Precisely because socialism is the future, because it is the solution of the social problem, we support every fight and every demand of labour today which strengthens the working class, which gives it a stronger position in society, which increases its self-confidence and militancy, which pits it against its mortal enemy capitalism and the capitalist class-which strengthens its independence, and which, therefore, brings it a step further along the road of struggle for the socialist future." We do not believe that a well-cast vote will solve the problems facing the working class. When we appear in elections, it is first of all with the aim of presenting our views to the widest possible sections of the working class, and with the aim of winning and recording in the elections their support for these views. What a vote for the Socialist Party, and for its candidates for means is recording yourself in favour of the socialist demands of our party. It means more than this, however. It means also recording yourself clearly as voting for your own socialist convictions.