For a new commonwealth

In recent years there has been a renewed interest and growing movement towards socialism.

The aim of the Socialist Party and the World Socialist Movement  is to replace world capitalist economy with world socialism. The capitalist system  threatens to degrade and destroy the human race. Human culture and humanity is threatened with complete annihilation. Socialist society will abolish the class division of society, i.e., simultaneously with the abolition of anarchy in production, it will abolish all forms of exploitation and oppression. Society will no longer consist of antagonistic classes in conflict with each other, but will be a united cooperative commonwealth.

We argue that the problems are no longer technological but subjective. The more insidious and dangerous basis for erroneous ideas is that of subjectively and objectively maintaining a capitalist bias. An individual may claim to be a Marxist, may learn various phrases but all the platitudes in the world cannot conceal that the practice of this type of reformist is always pro-capitalist, anti-working class. Such individuals have no real concern for the working class as a whole. To them, workers are incapable of realizing their objective interests; they are stupid, racist, sexist, absorbed in their petty concerns. Thus, workers are not a revolutionary force. Revolution must be made for them and they must be coerced into accepting a socialist society in their own interests. In other words, with the only difference being that between a “socialist” society and capitalist society, these individuals view the working class exactly as do the capitalists.

The capitalists have an interest in promoting the highest rate of exploitation possible. It is through exploitation that they maximise their profits and maximisation of profits is the basis of capitalist production. Thus, businessmen have an interest in paying the lowest wages consistent with capitalist reproduction (they cannot kill off their working class). They have an interest in a longer working day or more intensive toil, poorer working conditions (health and safety,  are all costs of production). In other words, they have an objective interest in promoting a situation that makes the life of the worker increasingly intolerable. In this fight, the capitalists have the state to assist them.

Workers, on the other hand, have the opposite point of view. They prefer higher wages and salaries to lower; safer working conditions to unsafe; a shorter working day to a longer one. Hence the two classes have conflicting interests and, as they are conflicting, they must be resolved through a fight, sometimes open, sometimes concealed, but a fight nonetheless. Workers have themselves and their labour organisations to advance their interests.

For the first time in its history mankind will take its fate into its own hands. Instead of destroying innumerable human lives and incalculable wealth in struggles between classes and nations, mankind will devote all its energy to the development and strengthening of its own collective cooperation. After abolishing private ownership of the means of production and converting these means into social property, the world socialism will replace the world market, the competitive and blind processes of capitalist production, by consciously organised and planned production for the purpose of satisfying rapidly growing social needs. With the abolition of competition and anarchy in production, devastating crises and still more devastating wars will disappear. Instead of colossal waste of productive forces and spasmodic development of society-there will be a planned utilisation of all material resources and a painless economic development on the basis of unrestricted, smooth and rapid development of productive forces. 

The abolition of private property and the disappearance of classes will do away with the exploitation of man by man. No longer can some men (the capitalists), by virtue of the fact that they own the means of production, live off (exploit) the labour of others (the working class). No longer are the workers compelled to sell their labour power to the capitalists in order to live. The workers are no longer property-less proletarians. They now own the means of production and work them in their own interests and in the interests of society. For society is now composed of workers by hand and brain, i.e. of an associated body of wealth-producers. Work will cease to be toiling for the benefit of our masters and from being merely a means of livelihood, full of want and inequality, imbued with the misery of enslaved classes, the wretched standard of life generally will disappear and the hierarchy created in the division of labour system will be abolished, together with the antagonism between mental and manual labour; and the last vestige of the social inequality of the sexes will be removed. At the same time, the organ of class domination, the State will disappear also. The State, being the embodiment of class domination, will die out in so far as classes die out, and with it all measures of coercion will expire.

In socialism no social restrictions will be imposed upon the growth of the forces of production. Private ownership in the means of production, the selfish individualist lust for profits, the artificial retention of working people in a state of ignorance and poverty which retards technical progress will have no place. Hunger and misery cannot be abolished under the capitalist system. There is only socialism able to save humanity. Socialism is the only way out of the many existential crises that faces humanity. Socialism means peace. Within the country there are no longer capitalists who profit by war, who see in war the way to secure more spheres of influence, more markets, more trade routes, more sources of natural resources and raw materials and a chance to dominate the world. Everyone loses by war not only in terms of personal suffering but also by the diversion of resources from construction and the advance to a better life.

The Socialist Party is the deadly foe of capitalism and capitalist parties. It has as its aims the establishment of a socialist society in which the means of production will not be the private property of the few, a society which will not be based upon profit but on production for people’s needs, will not be based on class division, will eradicate both wars and the class war, and abolish poverty for ever. When the working class has power it can build socialism and liberate the exploited and oppressed peoples of the world. The Tory, LibDems Labour and assorted nationalist parties appeal to you in the name of the “NATION.” One Party—the Socialist Party—appeals to you in the name of the working class. No party can serve two masters. No party can serve the robbers and the robbed at the same time. To speak of “common shared interests” is camouflage to hide their support of the robbers because the great majority of belongs to the class which is robbed. The Socialist Party is thus the only party of the workers.