It is socialists who are the good samaritans

From capitalism to socialism; that is the way society is headed. It represents the main line of evolution of the humanity towards the next higher social stage. The World’s objective conditions are more than ripe for revolution. The industrial base and productive capacity for socialism is already at hand. The great problem now before the workers is for us to get the political power. Once in control, we will have advantages which will greatly speed the tempo of technological development. 

Socialism will put a stop to the whole series of capitalist waste. The socialist system will greatly increase the productive forces and production itself by liquidating the contradiction between the modes of production and exchange, it does away with economic crises, with all their waste and loss. There will be no capitalist class to demand its profit before production and distribution take place. By taking over the ownership of industry and the land, working people will put a sudden stop to the manifold forms of robbing the workers and farmers on the basis of private ownership of the social means of livelihood. All forms of capitalist interest, rent and profit will be abolished. Capitalists, mortgage holders, landowners and investors perform no useful function in society. Their rake-off from industry and the land is sheer robbery. 

To further social progress the task is to abolish this class of parasites. Socialism will wipe out great wastes, inherent in the unplanned, competitive capitalist system. It will liquidate the hundreds of useless and parasitic occupations, such as wholesalers and retailers, jobbers, and the entire management level of “middlemen,” the real estate sharks, stock brokers, advertising specialists, salesmen, lawyers, government bureaucrats, police, clerics, and sundry capitalist quacks, fakers, and grifters. It will turn to useful social purposes the immense values consumed by these socially useless elements.

The capitalist class, with their policies of mass poverty, exploitation and war, are a menace to the humanity. Ending the gigantic robbery which is the very base of the capitalist system will at once release vast resources and natural wealth for useful social ends. Unemployment, with its misery and suffering, will become a thing of the past. The many millions who now walk the streets unemployed will have fruitful work to do, to the benefit of all society. With the limitations of the capitalist market removed, the road will be opened to virtually unlimited expansion of industry and mass consumption. 

Socialism will result in an enormous increase in industrial and agricultural efficiency. The socialist system of planned production, based upon social ownership of industry and the land, is incomparably more efficient than the anarchic capitalist system founded upon private property, competition and the exploitation of the workers. Socialism will also conserve the natural resources of the planet which are now being ruthlessly wasted in the mad capitalist race for profits and will have as one of its principal aims the careful preservation of all the natural resources.

Socialist industry will be operated upon the basis of a planned economy. The aim of the whole industrial machine will be to achieve the highest possible standards for the producing masses, not the welfare of a few capitalists. Production will be scientifically calculated in advance. The needs of the people and the possibilities of the industries will be carefully studied and met. With a thoroughly organised industrial system the carrying out of the production plans will be easy and natural. A socialist society without a planned economy is unthinkable, even as it is unthinkable that a capitalist society should work on the basis of scientific planning. In building socialism the workers will secure mastery over industrial techniques.

War, with its ghastly bill of agonies and suffering, will end. It is characteristic of capitalism to justify all the robbery and misery and terrors of its system by seeking to create the impression that they are caused by basic traits in human nature, or even by “acts of god.” Preventable disasters are made to appear almost as natural phenomena over which mankind has no control, like tornadoes and earthquakes. The same general attitude is taken with regard to war. War is put forth as arising out of the very nature of humanity. Man is pictured as a war-like animal, and therefore capitalism escapes responsibility. War becomes more or less inevitable. This is all nonsense.

 Mankind is by nature a gregarious and friendly species. We do not make war because we dislikes others of our own species, differing in language, religion, geographical location, etc. Our wars have always arisen out of struggles over the very material things of wealth and power. This is true, whether since we have been living in a tribal, slave, feudal or capitalist economy. We have obscured the true reason for wars with an intense religious garb or with nationalist slogans about making the world safe for democracy. The cause of modern war is, the expansionist policies of the capitalist nations to rob each other in the world struggle for markets, raw materials and territory. In a society in which there is no private property in industry and land, in which no exploitation of the workers takes place and where plenty is produced for all, there can be no grounds for war. The interests of a socialist society are fundamentally opposed to the murderous and unnatural struggle of international war. It will not be christianity which will bring peace and goodwill on Earth but socialists creating a unified, organised world where the economic system will be one great organisation. The raw materials and natural resources  of the world will be at the disposition of the peoples of the world.