What is socialism?

 

The media against socialism attempt to imprint on it the stigma of all possible folly and foolishness in order to scare people away.  They smera and slander the advocates  of socialism to the best of their ability. We call ourselves socialists  because socialism is the ideal to which mankind will aspire as mutual solidarity and an abundance of production, will free them from the fear of hunger. Socialism is the description of a social order which is founded upon the common ownership of the means of production. Socialism proposes that the usufruct of instruments of production and  land should be free to all workers.

For every one rich person, there are a great many poor. The wealth of the rich is made up entirely of surplus values produced by the poor. All profits, rents, interest, dividends, etc., are produced by the working people. They all come from the surplus over and above their own food and shelter, which workers also produce. The whole point is that socialism would not just divide up the wealth, but would increase the production in order to divide up the things that are produced.

 Capitalism is a system of production and exchange. It is a system under which individual capitalists own the means of production. The great majority of the people operate them. The capitalist runs the factory, not to provide the world with shoes and socks, but to provide himself with profits. Socialism is entirely different. The workers produce useful things instead of profits. They are no longer bought and sold.

 The way in which the goods are produced, the technique, the use of the means of production (i.e. the raw material, tools, auxiliary material) and finally the destination, for whom it is being produced, and how the goods get into the hands of the consumers, has to change.

The principal reason for the exploitation of nature, and of the miseries of the workers is the right to property which confers on the owners of the land, the raw materials and of all the means of production, the possibility to exploit the labour of others, and to organise production not for the well-being of all, but in order to guarantee a maximum profit for the owners of property. It is necessary therefore to abolish property. The means of production have become capital and their owners capitalists. Hence the powerful class divisions in the world. The class of wage earners, who to maintain their poverty-stricken existence have to produce, day in and day out, for the capitalist class, the owners of the means of production, who with the growth of the productive powers of human labour accumulate ever greater wealth.

In socialism, the means of production, land and soil, quarries and mines, raw materials, tools, machines, transport, will be transferred to the common ownership of society. They shall no longer serve individuals as a means of living of the labour of others, no longer be the means of the economic enslavement of the propertyless. Thus the commodity production of independent private producers is changed into a planned social production by the people and for the people.  Socialism will bring about the greatest possible good for all members of society,

The Socialist Party is the party of wage earners, organised for the overthrow of the wage system. It is OF, BY and FOR the working class alone and it ceases to be socialist  the very moment it pretends to represent the members of any other class. It is not at all interested in benefiting the capitalist class. This is why we are revolutionists. The capitalist class has already helped itself by appropriating the product of our brawn and brains.

Social storms cannot be forecast with the same accuracy as hurricanes and typhoons. But still, there are signs permitting us to predict the approach of those great disturbances which periodically visit humanity to redress wrongs accumulated by past centuries, to blow away prejudices. Centuries of injustice, oppression and misery has brought the winds of change.

Across the world crises becomes worse and worse. Millions driven away from the country to the ever-growing cities, are wandering about without work. In the mega-cities unheard-of misery grows up alongside all the wealth of the world being spent in an unhealthy luxury, amid the rags and destitution of the poor. Every day increases the longing for equality. The wealth they produce, the higher enjoyments of science and art which now they guarantee to the privileged few - they wish to enjoy these for themselves. They wish no longer want to be slaves  to machines,  robots themselves. A spirit of revolt spreads. Hopes of getting rid of capitalist oppression, of abolishing the rule of man by man, are agining in strength and power.