Sunday, March 01, 2020

The Socialist Party and the Socialist Revolution

The Socialist Party’s goal is socialist revolution – the abolition of capitalist private property, the abolition of all exploitation of man by man, the common ownership of the means of production and their planned use for the benefit of the whole of society, leading to abundance and universal brotherhood.

 The Socialist Party does not put forward this goal as a mere Utopian vision of what would ideally make people happy, but as a practical attainment made necessary by the actual conditions of modern society because only within a socialist economy can the contradictions of modern capitalist society be solved and the great modern forces of production be fully utilised. The aim of socialism is profoundly in accord with the sentiment for democracy and liberty – is, indeed, the only aim in which this sentiment can find fulfilment. The word ‘socialism’ is more than the name merely for a new system of economic relationship

Socialism means a society without class antagonisms, in which the people themselves control their means of life and use them for their own happiness.

 Socialism is not inevitable. What has been termed its ‘inevitability’ consists in this, that only through socialism can human progress continue. But there is not and cannot be any absolute deterministic inevitability in human affairs, since man makes his own history and chooses what to do. The meaning of scientific socialism is not that it tells us that socialism will come regardless, but that it explains to us where we stand, what course lies open to us, what is the road to choose. Ideas cannot be produced to order; they must achieve their own growth in the minds and hearts of men. Fostered and allowed to grow, they will truly and adequately express the experiences and aspirations of the people, the arguments, conflicts, sentiments and conclusions of people on the move for a better way of life.

No comments: