Why we are socialists

A widespread misunderstanding and confusion exists about socialism. Socialism was often called the society of the free and equal, and democracy was defined as the rule of the people. Socialism is not some Utopian scheme. Capitalism has created the economic conditions for socialism. Today there is social production but no social ownership. Socialism will bring social ownership of social production. With socialism, the working people will take over the economic forces developed by capitalism and operate them in the interests of society. The end of exploitation of one person by another will be an unprecedented liberating and transforming force. Socialism will not mean government control. Government involvement in the economy is a form of state capitalism. When the government intervenes in the present economy, it does so to help, not hurt, capitalists. Socialism, the historic mission of that class, cannot be indefinitely postponed.

Socialism must be the aim. The aim of the Socialist Party is the abolition of class rule and class conflict, with all their evil consequences, and the development of a society in which the few shall no longer be able to enjoy a life of luxury and ease at the expense of work, want and insecurity of the majority.   This is today a thoroughly practicable idea. Science and technology has increased our productive powers that an abundance of all the good things of life for the whole population can be produced without drudgery or toil. To assure plenty, security, leisure, and freedom for all, it is necessary that the existing property system, the existing forms of economic control and distribution of wealth are taken into the hands of the producers themselves. Only by the socialised ownership and democratic control of such productive wealth, doing away with exploitation and making the satisfaction of human wants the ruling motive in production, can the ideal of a class-free society be realised. 
What is socialism? What are we actually wanting?

State capitalism (misleadingly mis-called State Socialism) is capitalism by the state and for the state.

It is capitalism by the government and for the government.
It is capitalism by the ruling classes and for the ruling classes.

Socialism rejects state ownership, rejects State capitalism. State capitalism is not socialism and never can become socialism.

The abolition of the State is a necessary precondition for the emancipation of the working class. Socialists do not blindly equate ‘the state’ and ‘society’. State property is administered by civil servant officials and they must obey the vertical hierarchy of command, at the top of which stand the government. The State and social ownership are not the same. The nature of the work process will remain unchanged, although the responsibility in the line of command will have shifted away from the individual or corporate capitalist entrepreneur towards the state as owner and administrator. The workers will presumably continue to receive a wage, to clock in every morning and clock out every evening. 

The state only exists because of the antagonism between the ruling and the ruled class and one of  the first acts of the coming revolution is the abolition of the state. Socialism will require no political state because there will be neither a privileged property class nor a downtrodden propertyless class: there will be no social disorder as a result, because there will be no clash of economic interests.

“In the last analysis state ownership is more a means of controlling and regimenting the workers than of controlling industry... The attempt of the state to control industry is therefore the attempt of the ruling class to dominate labour.” William Paul of the SLP, explained. 

State capitalism accentuates and sharpens class divisions. State capitalism regulates and directs capital and labour; it seeks to realize the Utopian peace between the classes, the suspension of the class struggle. The first task of the workers, is not to destroy, but conquer and capture the state and with the implementation of socialism, will come the dissolution of the state and the establishment of the cooperative commonwealth. Free men and women, the producers will decide in common everything concerning production and distribution instead of being the puppets of economic forces beyond their control.

We know much better today than before what the needs of mankind are — one of the great developments of modern times is this consciousness of human needs and of our duty to do something to meet them. The facts are that we are now in a position where feeding the hungry, providing housing for the homeless and so forth, satisfying the needs of every human being is possible now, but have been for decades and decades. Nevertheless the hungry are still there, and very little effectively is being done to feed them. It’s not because the food isn't there or that it couldn’t be brought very easily to those who need it. There is available enough to feed everybody.There are large tracts of good arable land which are untilled. In fact, the tragedy is if we look into the possibilities of ways of improving conditions, we see that it is not a question of doubling harvests, it is a question of getting ten-fold or more. Need need not exist. What is lacking is not that people just need things, but that they lack what is called ‘effective demand.’ An effective demand is that of a person who has got the money to pay for what he or she wants. On these strictly economic lines, hundreds of millions have starved and most people still go hungry.

There is no longer any need for material scarcity whatever. This reverses all the basic law of economics — economics was always described as the science of scarcity and it was right to do so, because before there was sufficient knowledge, there was real scarcity. Now, all scarcity — and this is really the most important thing — all scarcity, all felt need in the world, is henceforth due to human interference, human stupidity and human greed. The means are there, the knowledge is there, and what is needed is the will to apply it. The difficulty is a human difficulty and not a material difficulty.

The Socialist Party seeks a new society from which want and poverty and war have been abolished. No-where does the ruling class offer the people a way out of the nightmare of suffering that has been imposed upon it. No-where can they offer a way out.

But there is a way out. There is a way out by freeing all those who are in chains. The Socialist Party is a political organization that stands irreconcilably opposed to capitalism and works for the establishment of world socialism. We are here to prepare for the coming socialist revolution to rid this world of the capitalist system

Capitalism means profits come first.

The working class, like the capitalist class it seeks to overthrow, is an international class, bound by a common global exploitation and the task of winning liberation through socialism. A truly socialist transformation of society cannot occur in any single country only worldwide socialism, the product of revolutions in many single countries, can insure a humane civilisation freed of racism, sexism and nationalism. We support the revolution to transform it into one world socialist society

Down through the ages mankind has been inspired with the vision of a world free of war and strife, without national rivalries, without racial and national conflicts. For the Socialist Party it is not nationality nor race but principles which is its highest aim of political conduct. Nationalist and patriotic sentiment is our enemy. Our solidarity is based on the principle of class and not on race or territory. Our internationalism compels the Socialist Party to constantly oppose national or racial prejudice. The Socialist Party neither seeks to retain  existing nationalities nor to constitute new ones, because by becoming free it will abolish classes: the world will be its homeland. The socialist revolution, which will put an end to capitalism, must be international. Therefore, the workers must not think so much of their country as of their solidarity with the workers of all countries. The common interests of the propertyless class of wage-workers whose historic mission is to abolish private property at its source, the means of production, transcends all national boundaries and differences. The necessity for a world organization of society arises today out of the reality of everyday conditions. Modern means of communication and transportation have bridged the vast distances and linked the peoples of the entire planet into a close and intimate community. The universality of productive forces and technology is breaking down the differences between advanced and backward countries. The national state, always an artificial barrier against which clashed the productive forces and world division of labour, is now a total anachronism producing only reaction and barbarism.