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Wednesday, August 26, 2020

Socialism Now More Than Ever

The Socialist Party strives to explain that capitalism is incompatible with the advancement of the interests of the working class. What is meant is that the workers in their struggle can go only so far within the boundaries of the system. The socialist conception of social revolution is that it is the process by which the people go beyond the limits of capitalism in the course of their class struggle.

Capitalism has provided the trained workers and the technology, i.e., the machines, plants and techniques which are necessary for a socialist reorganization of society, it long ago ceased to provide for the simple wants and needs of the plain people. We want peace, instead of bloodshed and destruction. We want security and jobs, instead of insecurity and joblessness. We want decent homes for our families and good and plentiful schools for our children. We want comfort and prosperity, instead of slums, child labor, low wages, unemployment and starvation. We want democracy and freedom instead of totalitarianism, bureaucracy and racial and religious conflict. Despite intricate machines and abundant natural resources, capitalism is unable to provide us with these elementary wants. It is unable to avoid constant warfare. Instead it dooms us to serfdom and poverty. 

Under capitalism, an elite control the wealth and power of the country. They own industry, banking, mining, transportation. They own our jobs. They own the politicians because they finance the business parties which put these men into office. They send us to war to protect their vested interests. They have the power of life and death over all of us. The insanity of this system of capitalism is that it creates inequality, poverty and unemployment and all the crises of society because it produces too much! Not, to be sure, in relation to human needs, but in relation to the market. While the capitalists are united against the workers and their political and economic organizations, they are in competition against each other and against their capitalist counterparts abroad. They all try to outproduce and outsell each other on the market because the mainspring of capitalist production is profit, not human needs. Capitalism produces more and more for destruction. It has not been able to use its vast technical and material resources for constructive purposes.

Socialism, and only socialism, will create a true world commonwealth, a world without national barriers, without international rivalries, without masters and slaves and a world without war.  Its primary purpose will be to conduct the affairs of the world with the aim of eliminating poverty, hunger and general insecurity. Its sole criterion would be the needs of the people.

Socialism will end root problem 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. With 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. 

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. The preoccupation of the administration in socialism will be to improve continually the living standards of the people, to extend their leisure time and thus make it possible to elevate the cultural level of the whole world. In abolishing classes, the nation- state and war, socialism will at the same time destroy all forms of dictatorship, political as well as economic. World socialism will be the freest, most democratic society mankind has ever known, truly representing the majority of the population and subject to its recall. A citizen of a socialist society will look back with horror upon the capitalist era with its wars, destruction and bloody and cruel despotism.

The world cooperative commonwealth 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 for all the people. Socialism will provide for a multitude of schools for all the people. Socialism will eliminate illiteracy, which is one of the hallmarks of capitalism, and cease to regard schools primarily as institutions to produce skilled labour to help operate the profit economy. Socialism will create a system of health preservation in which the needs of the people and the improvement of the human race would be the paramount consideration. Above all, socialism will provide jobs without exploitation. For the aim of socialism is not the increased exploitation and 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.

Today’s world holds all the necessary conditions for socialism. All about we observe gigantic industrial enterprises containing technology which could produce the goods of life in abundance. Mankind has developed a marvelous machinery. The discovery and control of automation and robotics has not only made it more possible for humanity to control natural and social environment to create a fruitful life of abundance, but has made it imperative. 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, servants of the corporation. The fruits of their intelligence, learning and research become the exclusive property of the capitalists, protected by patents who profit from the efforts 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., the route to chaos, war, poverty and barbarism, or we can take the socialist path  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.

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