YOU'VE READ THE LIE that socialism would result in the loss of individual liberty; that all power would be surrendered to the state or the government, and a harsh bureaucracy would regulate our lives and enforce blind obedience.
THE FACT IS that socialism rejects the state! Socialists hold with Karl Marx that "The existence of the state is inseparable from the existence of slavery." How then, in the name of common sense, could socialists wish to glorify the state and surrender to it? Socialism rejects nationalisation or government ownership of industry!
On the contrary - where there is socialism, there can be no State, and where there is a State, there can be no socialism!
Socialist management will rest on social democracy. All power will reside in the hands of the people. Their delegates elected democratically will have the privilege of serving, but not the power of ruling over, their constituents.
YOU'VE READ THE LIE that socialism means nationalisation, or government ownership and control of industry.
THE FACT IS that socialism rejects nationalisation or government ownership of industry!
Government ownership, government control, are long-standing feature of capitalism - viz., post offices, sanitation, transportation systems, etc. Government ownership is bureaucratic management of industries that have outgrown management by individual capitalists or combinations of capitalists.
For the workers, government ownership is merely a change of masters - it brings no solution to their problems. Socialism is not a mere change of masters. Socialism means complete control of their tools and products by the workers. It guarantees this by placing the factories, the mines, the railroads, the land - all social wealth - under social ownership and control. Not a state, not the capitalists, not a bureaucracy, but the people collectively own, control, and democratically manage the means to produce and distribute all social wealth under socialism.
Socialism has never been established in any country on Earth. Socialism would broaden and stimulate incentive, offer an equality of opportunity with abundance for all, and work with less friction than any social system ever conceived by man. Socialism would offer incentive to all. Instead of fearing the loss of their jobs as a result of improved methods of production, workers would know that every such improvement would mean more leisure and more of the good things of life. Thus, socialism would give an unprecedented impetus to incentive on the part of all the members of a free society. Socialism would offer an equality of opportunity under which each worker would become the architect of his own future. Socialism would function smoothly because socialist production would be carried on for use, and not for sale and private profit.
Capitalism keeps the workers on the ragged edge of pauperdom, by forcing them to keep their noses to the grindstone in order to eke out a bare existence. Capitalism functions so badly that increased production spells war or depression. When capitalists cannot profitably dispose of the wealth of which they despoil the workers, factories close and unemployment mounts. In order to avoid such depressions at home, capitalists seek foreign markets. The competition for such markets leads inevitably to war. The anarchy of capitalist production would be replaced by socialist cooperation, based on the principle that each worker should receive the equivalent of the full social value of his product.
Who invents and circulates these lies? The answer is: the capitalist class, its spokesmen and representatives. They have a stake, a vested interest, in the capitalist system. They could not, if they would, give a disinterested appraisal of socialism, or tell the truth about it. To learn the facts about relativity one goes to an Einstein, not to a crystal-gazer. Socialists alone are competent to give the facts and the truth about socialism.
The Socialist Party, organised in 1904, is now, and has been since its inception, the only genuine socialist organisation in the United Kingdom. Whether ones agrees or not that socialism offers the only workable solution to the grave social problems of our age, one must acknowledge that the only way to find out what socialism really is is to consult authorities on the subject, not quacks or hostile elements.
Are you one of the millions who entertain false and distorted concepts about socialism? If you are, then surely, if only in fairness to yourself, not to mention the momentous issues at stake, you will want to get the facts straight. Do this by studying the literature and program of the Socialist Party. Contact us for full information, and learn what socialism really means.
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