The principal characteristic of this society is commodity production on the basis of capitalist production-relations, in which the most considerable and important part of the means of production and exchange of commodities belongs to a numerically small class of persons, while the overwhelming majority of the population consists of working people, who are obliged by their economic situation either continuously or periodically to sell their labour-power, that is, to become wage-workers for the capitalists and to create, by their labour, profit for the higher classes of society. By substituting social for private ownership of the means of production , and introducing planned organisation of the process of social production, in order to ensure the well-being and all-round development of all members of society, the social revolution will abolish the division of society into classes, and thereby free all oppressed mankind, since it will put an end to every form of exploitation of one part of society by another.
The Socialist Party is not a reform party, but a revolutionary party. It does not propose to modify the capitalist system, but abolish it. An examination of its principles shows that it stands unequivocally for the common ownership and collective control of all the means of production and distribution — in a word, socialism. The total abolition of the capitalist system is our uncompromising demand, and with that as our controlling purpose, we march direct towards the goal of emancipation. That advance may be slow, but it is without side-tracks and diversions into dead-ends.
In the present society the means of manufacturing are the monopoly of the capitalists. That the working class is kept dependent on these is the ultimate cause of misery and all forms of oppression. The goal of the Socialist Party is therefore to abolish the existing mode of production (the wage system) and convert private into the common property of society. The fight is for the liberation of the working class from its present position, to create a free people with the abolition of class rule. It is not a fight for new class privileges but for equal rights and equal obligations for all. In order to free the working class from dependency, it is necessary that production become common property, at the disposition of all members of society, so that it belongs to all workers and is divided in a just manner, ending the wage system and every sort of oppression in whatever form such may reveal itself.
The Socialist Party is the friend of trades unionists. It does not believe in destroying the unions, but in moulding and adapting them to modern needs in the economic struggle. The trades unions are ours, built by our labour and created by our suffering, and we propose that they shall serve the purpose for which they were intended by rescuing them from those who would restrain and subvert them, that they may pursue unfettered their march to emancipation. We are opposed to all the existing political parties, and we are going to fight them all.
The first plank of our political platform is the socialisation of all the means and instruments of production. We recognise the class war between the property-less and the possessing class as the inevitable historic outcome of the capitalist system and of the direct economic and social antagonisms which it has engendered and fostered. Those antagonisms can only be resolved by the complete control over all the great means of production, distribution, and exchange, by the whole people, thus abolishing the class state and the wages system, and constituting a co-operative commonwealth. We want our fellow-workers to have clean air, pure water and to have sunshine; we want planned homes; we want recreation and leisure for young and old; we want vocational education for all who seek it; we want a chance for every human being to be strong and live a life of happiness. And we want everything that is necessary to give them that: playgrounds, parks, lakes, beaches, refreshing streams rivers, swimming pools, social centres, libraries and reading rooms, music, dance, song, and joy for all. There was but one way to get all of that — go after it and get it. The central core of the activity of the Socialist Party is considering ways and means of emancipation from the bonds of capitalism. No one hesitates to admit that our revolutionary task is Herculean; no one underestimates the power of opposing forces. Socialism offers a remedy for social ills. Socialists strikes at the very root of capitalism by proposing to transfer the means of production and distribution, i.e., the land, mines, factories, transport, machinery, etc., from capitalists to the whole people to be operated by them in their collective capacity for the good of all, and this it proposes to do by the ballot of a triumphant majority of awakened, class-conscious supporters. The revolution is to be complete, but it is to be achieved by the ballot. More and more are doing their own thinking and are conscious of their class interests in the economic struggle. They are organising everywhere. The movement is worldwide.
No comments:
Post a Comment