The Socialist Party and Socialism

 Private ownership of the means of production and distribution of  wealth has caused society to split into two distinct classes with conflicting interests, the small possessing class of capitalists or exploiters of the labour force of others and the ever-increasing large dispossessed class of wage-workers. The capitalists’ ownership of the means of production, is responsible for the insecurity of subsistence, the poverty, misery, and degradation of the ever-growing majority of our people. Either we adopt socialism, the common ownership of the means of production for the common good and welfare, or the result could possibly be the destruction of civilisation.

 The Socialist Party declares its object to be the establishment of a system of cooperative production and distribution through the restoration to the people of all the means of production and distribution, to be administered by organised society in the interest of the whole people, and the complete emancipation of society from the domination of capitalism. Wage-workers should sever connection with all capitalist and reform parties. The control of political power by the working class will be tantamount to the abolition of capitalism. The workers have never yet developed or made use of their political power. They have played the game of their masters for the benefit of the master class - and now many of them, disgusted with their own blind and stupid performance, are renouncing politics and refusing to see any difference between the capitalist parties financed by the ruling class to perpetuate class rule and the Socialist Party organised by the workers themselves as a means of wresting the control of government and of industry from the capitalists and making the working class the ruling class of the nation and the world. The solidarity of labour connecting us with millions of class conscious fellow workers throughout the world will lead to world socialism, the unity of humanity.

The means of production will be for the common benefit of all. There will be an end to all exploitation. Wealth will be the property of the people and not of individual capitalists. The resources of society will be shared and distributed according to the needs of the people, not to satisfy a few capitalists’ hunger for profits as is the case today.

Socialism will be a planned economy. Workers will participate directly in running the country from top to bottom. This planning will guarantee the well-being of all the people and guide the process of socialist economic construction. Gone will be the anarchy of capitalist production. Gone, too, its resultant economic crises which today bring so much misery to workers. Unemployment and inflation will be things of the past, unknown under socialism. We will eliminate the terrible waste of human resources as is the case today with a million unemployed. It will be impossible for idle parasites to live off the backs of the workers as the capitalists  do today. Through planning we shall build up and modernize the factories and other productive facilities and eliminate backward and backbreaking labour. We will construct new houses and medical, cultural and sports facilities for the working people. The quality of everyday life will improve vastly. Socialism means tremendous progress.

 Socialism is the future of humanity, a radically new society where classes and the state will have been completely eliminated. The state is simply an instrument by which one class dominates another. It became a necessity when society split into classes. Just as the ancient slave state served the slave owners to suppress the countless slave rebellions, so too the modern capitalist state is a tool of the bourgeoisie to maintain its dictatorship over the working class. In abolishing classes in society, socialism will change the form and type of governments which exist today. Governments will become administrative bodies regulating production and consumption. They will not be the instruments of the capitalist class, i.e., capitalist governments whose main reason for existence is to guarantee the political as well as the economic rule of big business, their profits, their private ownership of the instruments of production, and the conduct of war in the economic and political interests of this class. 

With socialism there will be no rich and no poor, and all members of society will contribute to the common good. All social inequalities will have been banished. Socialism, and only socialism, will create a world without national barriers a world  without master and slave. 

Socialism will end the root evil of modern society, i.e., the private ownership of the means of production, the factories, mines, mills, machinery and land, which produce the necessities of life. 

In socialism, these instruments of production will become the property of society, owned in common, producing for use, for the general welfare of the people as a whole. With the abolition of the private ownership of the means of life and with it the factor of profit as the prime mover of production, the sharp divisions of society between nations and classes will disappear. Then, and only then, will society be in a position to become a social order of abundance and plenty for all, for socialism will create a new world of genuine cooperation and collaboration between the peoples of the earth. The preoccupation of socialism will be to assist in the elevation of society, to improve continually the living standards of the people, to extend their leisure time and thus make it possible to heighten the cultural level of the whole world. Socialism will eliminate all forms of dictatorship, political as well as economic. World socialism will be the freest, most democratic society the world has ever known, truly representing the majority of the population. A citizen of a socialist society will look back upon the capitalist era with its wars, destruction and bloody and cruel dictatorships as we now look back upon the brutality of slave and serf societies.

A world socialist administration will assess the industrial potential of the world, determine its resources, the needs of the people and plan production with the aim of increasing the standards of living of a free people, creating abundance, increasing leisure and opportunity for cultural enjoyment. Socialism will not concern itself with profits and war, but with providing decent housing, a multitude of schools and colleges, an integrated healthcare structure for all the people as its  paramount consideration. 

Above all, work will be without exploitation. For the aim of socialism is not the increase intensification of labour, but the utilization of machinery, technology, science and invention to diminish toil, to create time in which to permit all the people to enjoy the benefits of social progress. The modern world contains all the pre-conditions necessary for socialism. All about us we observe gigantic industrial establishments containing machinery which could produce the goods of life in abundance. Mankind has developed marvellous technology. Socialism will place at the disposal of science and the scientists all the material means to help create an ever-improving social life for mankind. Under capitalism, scientists are mere wage workers hiring out their skills to private industry. The fruits of their intelligence, learning arid research become the exclusive property of the capitalists who profit from the talent of these scientists. Thus, science has become subordinated to profits rather than to the common good of all mankind. Yet the future society depends in large measure on changing this relation of science to society. Only socialism can place science where it properly belongs: in the service of the people.

Humanity is at a crossroads. We can travel the road of capitalism, i.e., we can travel the road of chaos, war, poverty and barbarism, or we can choose to take the socialist road toward true freedom, peace and security, the road toward a society of plenty for all which would end the exploitation of man by man for all time.