Our minimum demand is Utopia

URSULA LE GUIN

The Socialist Party is opposed to the system of society in which we live under because we are not comfortable knowing that there are millions of  fellow men women who suffer for the scarcity of the necessities of life. We are opposed to the ethic of the jungle. In the Bible, Cain asks the question. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” The socialist answer is plain and simple “Yes”. We say there is plenty for all. We say an injury one, is an injury to all. We socialists seek a society in which we shall produce, not for profit, but in abundance to satisfy human needs, where every man and woman will be economically free. We will be brothers and sisters, sharing the World and sparing the planet. We sweep aside the miserable prejudices and bigotry to proclaim the solidarity of all. The working class will emancipate itself and establish the socialist commonwealth. The state will be captured through the ballot box.

The Socialist Party looks towards the possibility of a different and better world. There is only one hope for the future: Socialism! Socialism alone guarantees the absence of exploitation, unemployment, hunger, poverty and war. Socialism alone guarantees true economic and political democracy. Socialism alone guarantees the freedom of the peoples of the whole world. Socialism alone guarantees victory over racism and bigotry. Socialism is the only thing worth fighting for because it is the society of true and lasting peace and freedom for all mankind. We aim at replacing the present capitalist system by socialism, understood broadly as a system where there will be social ownership of the means of production and distribution. We envisage socialism as a society where material wealth will be in the hands of those who produce it, where the exploitation of man by man will be ended, where production will be used not for private profit, where a new  relationship of fraternity will develop between peoples based on equality and independence, where individual men and women will find totally new possibilities to develop their abilities.

The first requirement for the workers in all countries of the world is to break cleanly from the capitalist class and their political parties, and any and all concepts of coalitions with their parties.  Reformists project a perspective of merely removing what they present as minor defects in the existing capitalist order of things, of patching capitalism up and making it more tolerable, instead of a perspective of fundamental change. Reformists preach reconciliation with capitalism, not class struggle against it. Capitalism promises the people  not amelioration of conditions but austerity, oppression, environmental and/or atomic destruction of mankind. Only through an irreconcilable struggle against capitalism, towards its elimination and the establishment of socialism, will the people of the world find the full freedom, equality and democracy for which they aspire.

Capitalism is the right of private property, the right of a few to own and control the means by which all must live, the right of the owners of the means of production to utilise it to exploit the rest of the community in the interest of their personal profit, the right to determine what shall be produced and how, regardless of the misery and wretchedness of those who produce it. It is  the right to exploit, the right to rob, the right to cause crises, the right to compete, and to cause conflicts.  the basic answer is the abolition of the right of private property, and instead the common ownership of the means of production, so that all may enjoy the fruit of their labour, and consume it, thus eliminating the crises, and the crises of military wars. Socialists are not out to create a bloody revolution but to work for the improvement of the conditions of the people by embracing socialisation where the whole of society is changed by the elimination of the private ownership of the entire means of production.

The time for patching up the capitalist system is over.  It must go. And in the work of abolishing it we need to co-operate together, knowing no rivalry but the rivalry of endeavour towards an end beneficial to all. The movement for democratic liberty grows and grows. It is certain to be victorious.