The Socialist Vision

 

A function of the World Socialist Movement is to support any action of the working class against the capitalist class. But to participate in such a way that the workers are educated and have a better understanding of society. By socialism, we mean a system of society where the basis is production for social use carried on by the organised community for its own use collectively and individually. Socialism means a complete change in society in all its aspects. Socialism is essentially revolutionary, politically and economically, as it aims at the complete overthrow of existing economic and political conditions. Capitalism thrives on exploitation. Its logic is that of profit. Its morality is that of self-interest. Socialism, on the other hand, stresses the cooperative rather than the selfish nature of human beings by eliminating the conditions that promote the self-centered thirst for property.The primary contradiction of any capitalist order is between the social character of production and the private appropriation of surplus. Socialism resolves this contradiction through the socialisation of the ownership of the means of production. Its thrust is the development of productive forces so as to accomplish the eradication of both poverty and inequality.

Production is carried on today purely in the interest and for the profit of the class which owns the instruments of production. Socialism would substitute common ownership of these things for class ownership, and this would also involve the abolition of classes altogether. Socialism does not mean government ownership or management. The State of to-day, nationally or locally, is only the agent of the possessing class. The democratic society contemplated by Socialists is a very different thing from the class State of today.

 When society is organised for the control of its own business and has acquired the possession of its own means of production, its officers will not be the agents of a class, and production will be carried on for the use of all and not for the profit of a few.  The Socialist Party has for its conscious and definite aim the common ownership and control of the whole of the world’s industry. The entire means of production thus being common property, there would no longer be a propertied class to make a profit out of the labour of the working class. The division of society into two classes being and classes themselves would disappear.

Socialist conception of ethics is not brotherly love in the Christian sense, although it may, superficially, seem to bear some resemblance to it. Socialism does not presuppose a complete change in human nature and the entire elimination of selfishness, as has been so often asserted. Socialism only calls for enlightened selfishness. But the fact that this selfishness is enlightened, and recognises that it can serve itself only by serving the common interest, will completely change its character, so that it will cease to be the narrow selfishness of to-day, which so often defeats its own ends. Socialism is essentially international. It recognises no distinction between the various nations comprising the modern civilised world. “My country, right or wrong,” the expression of modern patriotism, is the very antithesis of Socialism.

Socialism is being attacked in every country where it is a growing force with the weapons which the reactionary knows have been dipped in the poison of untruth, but which he does not scruple to use until the average person shies away at the very notion of the cooperative commonwealth being established.

A socialist society must be based on common ownership. A regime of private ownership serves as a means for exploiting others.  Common ownership of the means of social production does not mean absolutely no form of personal property or having to borrow each other’s toothbrushes. Personal property is respected, but not ownership of property that is used to exploit others and to create wealth only for personal consumption. 

All we claim for socialism is that it is the next summit which has to be attained in man’s progress onward and upward. This summit hides from our view all that may lie beyond. The goal of socialism once has been attained, and the ground gained will never more be lost.

 What further developments in human social organisation, beyond those socialist forms which we can conceive of at the present time, maybe in store, we do not know. It is enough for us to work for our ideal — the Socialism we can foresee; in which we know must be realised the nearest approach, since man first appeared on this planet.