Why Socialism

 

Charity and compassion, a recognition of social injustice and a desire to remove it, is not socialism. Condemnation of inequality we find in religions. Socialism is not sentimental philanthropy. Socialism is based upon capitalist society and its class antagonisms.  A movement that leaves out an understanding of the class struggle is not socialist. The Socialist Party pleads guilty to the charge that we seek  to increase  hostility to the existing capitalist system with its greedy clique of industrialists, financiers, politicians and prostituted media. Our party is class-conscious, revolutionary and uncompromising with no time and no use for what is commonly called reform. You cannot reform rottenness. The only reform of the capitalist system which is possible is its overthrow and destruction. Capitalist politics are essentially corrupt.The Socialist Party does not intend to mend this system; we propose to put end it.

 

The point we wish to make is that the capitalist system is a class system and that we live today under class rule, whatever the government, they are simply the functionaries of the ruling class and could not, even if they were so inclined, change conditions resulting from the class ownership of the means of production, that is to say, the means of life. The World Socialist Movement, the only political organisation in the world today whose declared purpose it is to abolish class rule and establish a cooperative commonwealth whose fundamental principle is the equal rights and freedom of all. Abolish capitalism, the private ownership by the few of the means whereby the great mass live, gives economic freedom. Among the capitalist parties there is no economic difference so far as the great mass of the people is concerned. They are all committed to capitalist ownership, class rule, and wage slavery. The Socialist Party is not seeking to get the votes  except upon the one condition that those who give it their support do so not only of their own will, but have intelligence enough to know what they are voting for and what a vote for socialism means to them. The Socialist Party does not by the trickery and fraud obtain votes and would scorn to stoop to that level.The Socialist Party refuses to traffic in ignorance, to build upon and exploit ignorance, so that a few may be in luxury and hold fat office as the fruit of their part in robbing and degrading their unfortunate fellow beings.

 

Our message to our fellow-workers is that the first thing necessary for you is to understand is that you are bound irrevocably to every other worker. As individual working-person you are ground into dust, you are reduced to slavery, and you are at the mercy of the masters. When you unite, however, you outnumber capitalist.If we are to emancipate ourselves from wage-slavery, we must unite upon the economic field and upon the political field, but above all things we must unite. The solidarity of the working class is the supreme demand of the hour. You are fighting them with your stomachs. We socialists want you to fight them with your brains. James Connolly once said that it is empty bellies against fat wallets.The Socialist Party holds  a vision of better and fairer days to dawn upon the earth, when mankind  shall no longer in their madness destroy the  beauty of centuries. We work towards a spirit of fraternity and an end to brotherly hatred.  The problem of poverty can only be solved by the social and economic revolution.

 

There is absolutely no reason for anyone in a planet as rich in resources as this one to go  hungry, to be homeless or to suffer lack of health-care. The desperate and hideous ills of the capitalist economic system are unnecessary. When all of society has been transformed, the problems left over from capitalism have been eliminated, and the community of producers has been established, then a completely class-free society, will have been achieved, and humanity will enter a  new stage of evolution. There will no longer be the need for the state, since there will no longer be any class to suppress, and the state will be replaced with common administration by all of society. Socialism will be able to make full use of the labour of everyone in society, while at the same time developing and introducing new technology and scientific methods to expand output. As machines can replace workers, workers will not be thrown into the streets, but will transfer to other jobs and the work day for all workers will be reduced. The nature of work itself will change completely, because the labour of the workers will no longer go to enrich capital to further enslave the working class, but to improve life.