Through the many global agencies that exist today, we know better than ever before what the needs of mankind are. What is more the means to relieve these needs for every human being are now at hand now and has been available for a number of decades. The means are there, the knowledge is there, and what is needed is the will to apply it. The difficulty is a political difficulty and not a technical difficulty. All scarcity in the world is due to capitalism. We have in the world to-day a number of palpable material evils — starvation, disease, slavery, and war — evils which in previous times were accepted as a part of the natural world or as the actions of the gods, but which now continue solely because we live under out-of-date political and economic system. There is no longer any reason why everyone should not have enough to eat and dwell in respectable homes. There is no reason why anyone should do more than three or four hours of disagreeable or monotonous work a day, or why they should be forced, by economic pressure, to do even that. War, in a period of potential plenty and ease for all, is sheer folly. Our world has had far more than enough of the futility of war. The greater part of disease in the world to-day is due directly or indirectly to unhealthy diets and living conditions. All these are plainly remediable and preventable social ills and science if properly applied can sweep all off the face of the planet.
Everybody should and could have a comfortable and attractive home, nutritious wholesome food, opportunities for recreation and education, plus security against accident, sickness, and old age; and the sense of independence and self-respect that goes with these things. What we actually have, however, is widespread inequality, injustice and insecurity. This appalling contrast between what might be and what is arises from the nature of the economic system – capitalism. The system acts, obviously as a brake upon production so that, as the phrase goes, you have “poverty in the midst of plenty:”
Our duty is first understand and then to change of the world we live in. We must understand society before we can understand people. Human nature is not fixed and constant. It can be and is being moulded by society. Everybody knows by now that all our misery and disappointment, our fear of the future, is not due to any fault or weakness of people but simply and solely to the competitive structure of capitalism. In order to plan for still greater efficiency in the use of our resources we envisage global planning. National borders are as artificial and restrictive and socialism must in essence be a world economy. Every effort to establish “planned” production under private capitalism breaks down, since the warfare between rival capitalists, in a nation and capitalist groups in different nations disrupts such efforts.
The burden of capitalist crises always falls heaviest on the toilers. They are taught that their masters can do no wrong but the workers must pay the price when things go awry. The capitalist system is a fraud. The present economic system uses its elaborate and complex manufacturing capacity which is to a great extent spent in the production and distribution of luxury goods, throwaway gadgets, waste, planned obsolescence, military equipment – in short, in what economists and sociologists used to call “unproductive” goods and services and what socialists call useless commodities and consumerism.
The goal of the Socialist Party is the achievement of socialism, a new social system based on the elimination of all classes and class differences, the most progressive, revolutionary and rational system in human history, a system without exploitation or oppression, when people work voluntarily with the enormous development of the productive forces and the production of abundant social wealth, to accomplish the the principle, “From each according to ability, to each according to need.”
Permanent plenty is no longer a Utopian dream, and with it awaits the arrival of permanent peace. We must look to producing more active and harmonious ways of living, individually and socially. Socialism brings power and liberation. The Socialist Party prepares for peace and happiness, where industry, health and education is to maintain the bodies and minds of the people and end for all time the perpetuation of wage-slavery. We must form a fully organised world socialist party so that we can take possession of the world. Let the workers form one great world-wide union, and let there be a globe-encircling revolution to gain for the workers true liberty and happiness. With socialism the state machine, an instrument of class domination, is no longer necessary.
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