We Need Socialism

 

The Socialist Party makes clear that even if our oppressors were willing to grant them palliatives and reforms it would not end the contradictions of capitalism. Only the social revolution can release the forces of production from the exploiting power of capital, put an end to poverty, eliminate the root causes of war and unify world. Capitalism does not exist except by exploitation.  We invite all who share our aspirations, our world outlook and class commitment, to join our ranks and help us win. The Socialist Party enters the political field with a membership that will not offer any false promises. Socialism is rule by the working people. They will decide how socialism is to work. This was how Marx and Engels defined socialism. To use the word “socialism” for anything but working people’s power is to misuse the term. Nationalisation of mines, railways, steel, etc. is not socialism, nor is there any such socialist sector of a “mixed” economy. Nationalisation is simply a degree of state capitalism, with no relation to socialism. Nor is the Welfare State socialist. A “welfare” state is not socialism but a form of state capitalism. The task of the Socialist Party therefore is to help fellow-workers with the transfer of power from capitalists to working people. 

The current coronavirus pandemic has convincingly demolishing the myth of America as an affluent society. It revealed just how many live from pay-check to pay-check, how many are in debt and surviving upon credit and who now need to resort to charity to feed themselves. Even if it wished, it is simply not possible for capitalism to solve these gigantic problems. It is a sad reflection upon the present political environment in the USA that working people can become so disillusioned with political action, and can only assimilate themselves with reformism. The progressive leftists can only offer us a re-shuffling of the Democratic Party as a way out. Nevertheless, there are more clear-sighted workers who understand that the misery and suffering from this economic system can be ended by establishing socialism which would kick out the small handful of wealthy families who blocked the wheels of production, and start distributing goods to the ragged and hungry millions. The bosses are always the beneficiaries; the workers always the victims. Such is capitalism and the workers who side with the bosses and support capitalism politically and are therefore responsible for capitalism, and also responsible for the hell they get and the pain they suffer.

Hunger in the midst of plenty, is the distinguishing mark of the capitalist system of production. The Socialist Party has always contended that capitalism should be abolished because it mismanaged the means of production so that a very few – those who own the means of production – reaped great profits while the majority of the people were deprived of a secure standard of living. We would often prove this assertion by demonstrating the tremendous technology which the modern industrial machine has; how it could satisfy the needs of everyone if it were run for that purpose; and how capitalism, instead, ran the industrial machine for profits.  The Socialist Party would say, if only the people could run these industries themselves, they could produce enough to satisfy everyone’s needs. It remains the great and tragic paradox of our age – poverty in the midst of plenty. Capitalism is a social system which cannot satisfy the most elementary needs of the people, yet it squanders much of its resources on war: That is the greatest indictment of world capitalism. It is the greatest war machine in history in order to continue its tremendous accumulation of profits. Capitalism is a wasteful and inefficient system. It cannot plan on either a national or an international scale. It deprives most people of products. Socialism could plan better, provide the people with all necessities. War would be a thing of the past. Socialism could take the vast resources which are available and use them for constructive purposes. The inefficiency due to capitalist competition. The inefficiency and economic inequality due to the impossibility of constructive economic planning under capitalism – all would be things of the past. In their place could arise the new society of peace and plenty. That is why socialism is the burning need of the hour.