What we need is socialism. First and foremost it is necessary that our fellow-workers realise that Bolshevism and socialism have nothing whatsoever in common. We are sometimes told that we have made no progress, that we have lived through years of futility of effort. Socialism is a great and inspiring idea, and I am sure that if we get to work instead of hankering after props and leaning-posts we can achieve that idea. Nothing less than the fate of humanity hinges upon the establishment of a socialist society. Socialism is a word that has been so misused for so long that it is worth re-stating its basic principles. Socialism means that the means of production are owned and controlled by society so that what is produced can be shared out according to people’s needs. Socialism is founded on the idea of equality. Socialists say that we are on the verge of a world of plenty. All around us are the signs that we can produce more than enough for everyone. If production is planned rationally and its products shared fairly, there is no reason why anyone should be short of anything – nor why the environment should be polluted and destroyed in the process. Socialism is production for need, not profit. Socialism is a vision of a new economy, democratically structured to answer people’s needs instead of the capitalism’s profit imperative. If you like that idea, then welcome to the movement for socialism.
In the earliest period of mankind society was based on the clan or tribe. Everything was pretty much owned and shared in common. There was no privately-owned property, no government, no rulers and ruled, no laws in the sense in which we know them today. Capitalism means a small section of the population controls production and is not answerable to the rest of the community. This small capitalist class hangs on to power only because they control the armed forces, the police and the means of mass “persuasion.” The capitalist system must be overthrown, class rule abolished and wage-slavery supplanted by cooperative industry. It is therefore a question, not of “reform,” the mask of fraud, but of revolution.
Socialism is rule by the working people. They will decide how socialism is to work. As working people, socialists have and will continue to have the duty both to initiate working people’s power. The Socialist Party is an organisation of convinced socialists, who hold that socialism can come only through the conscious and determined action of the working-class movement in this and other countries. Socialism is the name given to that form of society in which there is no such thing as a propertyless class, but in which the whole community owns the means of production—the land, factories, mills, mines, transport and all the means whereby wealth is created and distributed to the community. The basic principles of socialist society are diametrically opposite to those of capitalist society in which we live. Socialism stands for social or community property. Capitalism stands for private property. Socialism is a society without classes. Capitalism is divided into classes—the class owning property and the propertyless working class. From this the Socialist Party draws the conclusion, therefore, that the class primarily interested in the change from private property to social property is the working class. The goal of socialism as the class-free society has its starting point in the propertyless condition of the working class. The Socialist Party’s goal represents the consummation of the struggle of the working class — its emancipation from the system which gives rise to that struggle.
We, in the Socialist Party, who do have a broad blueprint for raising humanity to a higher collective and individual existence, are wary about dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s. We know that the mess that capitalism have made of all the aspects of life and they cannot be seriously tackled without first establishing a more favourable social, economic and political milieu. So we say socialism will relieve men and women of the tediousness of long tiring hours of employment and the wage-slavery of a shabby income. Thus, we say that the place NOW for all men and women is in the revolutionary world socialist movement.
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