Under capitalism working people are haunted by insecurity, by fear for their future and the future of their children. We are never free from fear, it seems. In socialism with shared abundance, this nightmare will disappear and we will be from free. Humanity will get an opportunity to show what it is really made of. The class society, which divides people into separate and antagonistic groups of the privileged and the deprived will end. With the end of classes and their conflicting interests there will be no more “politics”, because political parties are essentially expressions of the class struggle. That is not to say there won’t be discussions and debates. Differences of opinion will arise but they will not be based on separate class interests.
People will not fear their neighbour lest they be taken advantage of, nor be ashamed of altruism, free from all self-interest. With socialism and without money everybody will be able to live comfortably. There will be no more private property (other than personal possessions for personal use). Consequently there can be no more crimes against private property. which are 90% or more of all the crimes committed today—and no need of all this huge apparatus for the prevention, detection, prosecution, and punishment of crimes against property. No need of jails and prisons, policemen, judges, probation officers, lawyers, bureaucrats; no need for security guards, bailiffs, and prison wardens. In the class-free society of the future there will be no State. The Socialist Party advocates a society in which there will be no classes and no state. The State as the instrument of class rule and is not a neutral, impartial representative of all the people, as it is represented to be and as, unfortunately, many people think it is. The State, in its essential features, is the instrument of one class for the suppression of another. That’s the character of the State. In socialism there will be no class to repress. All will be free and equal. The state itself will wither away. The government of men will be replaced by the administration of things.
Socialism presupposes the abundant availability of material goods to ensure full satisfaction of human needs. A planned socialist economy on a world scale will end to the destruction and waste of capitalist production. It will mean the scientific, technological, economic and human resources devoted to the profit system will be redirected to socially useful purposes. It is this economic advance which will lay the material basis for the transition to a completely class-free society. Society now has the capability of satisfying the needs of all. What the Socialist Party proposes is wealth for all where everybody shares in the access to the good things of life. No poverty anymore. By means of the vast new technology of this modern world, we can produce wealth enough for all without any trouble. There is no doubt at all about this. Socialism proposes to get this abundance for all. In order to get this abundance for all, we must do something. We are not getting it now. What shall we do to get it? Socialism proposes something very definite to do. It is this: Take to ourselves the vast new inventions and use them for producing the needs of all instead of producing for the benefit of a few. If we collectively owned these ourselves to produce for our own use and happiness, all the troubles of poverty would disappear. The only thing that lies between us and a bountiful life is the private ownership of the means of producing wealth.
This is the practical first step. It is of no use to talk about what we propose to get nor even what we propose to do to get it, unless we know just how to do it. And we know just how. And this is how: We propose that all those people who are deprived of their right to use the machinery they have made and to get the riches they make, shall come together in a political party. We indulge in no dreams or false hopes. We say to the worker, now destitute: “Come with us, join our party, vote yourselves into power, use that power to capture back those means of wealth production which the capitalists have stolen from you, and then you will get all that abundance which modern inventions entitle you to.”
The great present mission of the Socialist Party is to gather together all those workers whose real interests lie in abolishing the private ownership of the means of production.
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