Abundance for All

 

Today’s society with its information revolution understands much better than ever before what the needs of mankind are our duty as socialists is to do something to meet them. We are now in a position where — in respect of material needs, in, respect of feeding the hungry, watering the farms, housing the homeless and so forth — the means to satisfy the requirements of every human being are now available, Nevertheless the hungry are still there, and very little effectively is being done to feed them. It’s not because the food isn't there or that it couldn’t be brought very easily to those who need it. There is no longer any need for scarcity whatever. This reverses all the basic ideas of economics — economics was always described as the science of scarcity. Now, all scarcity — and this is really the most important thing — all scarcity, all need in the world, is henceforth due to capitalism’s need to accumulate profits. The means are there, the knowledge is there, and what is needed is the will to apply it. The difficulty is not a technical difficulty.

Capitalism can offer nothing but wars, unemployment, pandemics, misery and death. Yet our high-tech production system could pour out fabulous riches. Economically the world was ready for socialism decades ago. But politically people are not yet ready for socialism. They do not yet understand that society is fully capable of feeding and housing us all. They see only their immediate ills, and hence are able of making only immediate and emergency demands. The workers must awake, and awake quickly, to the all the horrors of the capitalist system.

Socialists can see a world surrounded by plenty, fertile fields which could be producing full harvests, idle machines and closed factories that could be packing warehouses. Socialists can see no necessity for empty plates on the table for the poor or the need for the poor to be living in shacks in a shanty town. The whole possibility for a sustainable and decent future in our epoch rests on the feasibility of enormously increasing the productivity of world society, the efficient use of resources, transport and factories, the elimination of unemployment, the cessation of war, the ending of economic chaos through rational planning and the early expansion of the productive system through the intensive application of science and technology. We have the possibility of plenty, instead of the manufacture of destructive armaments. At a stroke we could abolish all weapons and spend the resources and energy on relieving the world’s wants. 

Society no longer needs to impose repetitive and meaningless (because unnecessary) drudgery upon the individual. Society can now set people free to make their own choice of occupation and vocation from a wide range of activities. Any job that is dull and repetitive can be better done by computers and automation. Socialism will encourage new constructive, rewarding and ennobling work, activities that relate people to people rather than people to things and which enhances the quality of life of our society, in which wealth is distributed by and for people, and used for the widest social benefit. 

With the emergence of the era of abundance we have the economic base for a true democracy of participation, in which men and women no longer need to feel themselves prisoners of social forces and decisions beyond their control or comprehension. Democracy, as we use the term, means a community of men and women who are able to understand, express and determine their lives as dignified human beings.

Diseases are disappearing from the vulnerability of childhood, disappearing from middle-age and increasingly disappearing from the frailty of old age. But very much more can be achieved. We could for instance stop poisoning people simply by ending the pollution we are putting into the air. We are all eating and drinking things which will bring about ill-health and premature deaths. Medical experts know the things we are doing are the wrong ones. But business has a vast elaborate advertising industry to ensure we make the wrong choices. But now people are gradually realising that we are in a world that we share general moral sense of everyone being responsible, and feeling responsible, for the whole population of the world. And that something has to be actually done. We witness the climate change campaigners, the protect the environment protesters. People all over the world now see our problems but sadly, don’t fully comprehend the cause or the solution.

Our duty as socialists therefore includes first spreading the understanding and then the changing of the world we live in. The Socialist Party seeks to see humanity realise its full potential.

CAPITALISM OR SOCIALISM

We only want world socialism

 

The Socialist Party recognises the violence inherent in the present system of exploitation and military aggression which have arisen from it. But individual acts of violence and street-battles with the police are no solution. . No sane person prefers violent to peaceful measures, and so the Socialist Party will rely upon the efficacy of a united class-conscious ballot to accomplish its end. We need urgently to go beyond the widespread disorganisation of demonstrations and protests. While a march against a particular problem may boost morale they have to evolve into opposition to all the manifestations of the ills of capitalist society. There is absolutely nothing shameful, nothing disgraceful in demonstrating against tyranny and showing to all the world that working people will no longer put up with all that they have borne for so long. What is required is to use that energy, that determination and that magnificent spirit in such a way and in such a manner as to win over all those who suffer from the persecution and the cruelties of capitalist society. What is desperately needed is a credible mass socialist movement. It is futile to expect that capitalism will crumble and fall to those who are both unorganised and confused in their objectives. Socialism will not come about by those unwilling or unable to organise themselves. We must build a movement for radical social change. The great task of abolishing the present capitalist system and inaugurating socialism and the fulfilment of the cooperative commonwealth rests with our fellow-workers. The exploited are looking for a way out of the perpetual capitalist crises and the crimes and barbarism of capitalist society.

Capitalism creates a situation where large masses of the people are dissatisfied and embittered, but emboldened by hardships. The capitalist class exploits and oppresses and is the main enemy of all the people of the world. Our only hope lies in revolution—the sweeping away of this rotten system of exploitation. Until the workers get rid of the capitalist system itself, the cause of all the injustices they face, they will constantly have to take up their struggles over and over again. What all workers must understand is that their misery is due to exploitation carried on by the capitalist class. We do not, of course, therefore oppose trade union struggles or refuse to participate in them. We must go further and abolish the wage system itself.

The Socialist Party is necessarily a revolutionary party in the sense above indicated, and its basic demand is the collective ownership of the means of production and distribution and the operation of all industry in the interest of all the people. This will mean an economic democracy. Economic freedom can result only from collective ownership, and upon this vital principle the Socialist Party differs diametrically from every other party. Between private ownership and common ownership there can be no compromise. One produces for profit, the other for use. One produces billionaires and beggars, the other socially equal individuals.

The Socialist Party is the only party that is or can be truly representative of the interests of the working class, the only class essential to society and the class that is destined ultimately to succeed to political power, “not for the purpose of governing men,” in the words of Engels, but “to administer things.” The present form of government, based solely upon private property in the means of production, is wholly coercive; in socialism it will be purely administrative. The only vital function of the present government is to keep the exploited class in subjection by their exploiters. It rules  wholly in the interest of the ruling capitalist class. What is socialism? To answer in a single sentence, it means the common ownership by all the people of all the means of wealth production and distribution. The Socialist Party is not a reform party. It does not propose to modify the competitive system, but to abolish it. It stands unequivocally for the common ownership and control of all the means of wealth production and distribution — in a word, socialism.

WORLD SOCIALISM

Power to working-people

 

Our fellow-workers are afflicted with many self-destructive illusions, patriotic, religious and racial. These make them a prey of various breeds of demagogue mis-leaders. The social revolution is the hope of the oppressed people. The Socialist Party will not betray this hope. Capitalist exploitation is made possible by the fact that the capitalist class uses political power, and we demand that this power be taken into the hands of the working class by means of the class struggle and the capture of the State machine. The Socialist Party declares that its purpose is a social revolution. A social revolution means nothing more or less than adoption of a system of production, distribution, and consumption which is based on common ownership in place of the present inconsistent and anarchistic system of private ownership based on the brutal power of capital, which has out-lived its historical period. These inconsistencies in the economic system have been followed by the suffering and misery through which the world has lived during the past few years. Democracy can be fully realised only when a social revolution has abolished the inherited privileges of private property and the wage-slavery of the working class. Capitalist democracy is only dictatorship in a covert form and against it we set the social democracy of the great majority of the people. As working-people builds the new society, and ends all class domination — the state will be unnecessary. The first real democracy will then take its place, a system serving the cause of the producers and the common good of all.

 

 We cannot define the method by which the social change will occur. The methods of revolution are dependent largely upon the situation and circumstances of the time and the actions of our opponents. The form of its revolution will finally depend upon prevailing conditions. We cannot define the form of the revolution, neither can we determine the moment. The Socialist Party does not confuse revolution with violence. Bloodshed does not make any social movement revolutionary. As the party which stands for the harmony of humanity, and directing its activities toward the attainment of general happiness and well-being, the Socialist Party hopes that its victory will be accomplished by peaceful organisation.

 

The Socialist Party is aware of the fact that the success of the social revolution is guaranteed only when it occurs at a historic moment, at the moment when the minds of the people and the events have matured for it. The realisation of the system which the working class is planning depends on the stage of development of the working class organisations and institutions, organisations which form the embryo of the socialist system. The Socialist Party’s task is to educate and organise the working class so that it will become capable of carrying out this historic destiny. The Socialist Party works for the revolution when its struggles for the well-being, for the self-respect, and for the self-consciousness of working-people. We greet with pleasure every sign of revolt within the working class which represents an independent action. We insist that the political struggle — socialism — and the economic struggle — industrial unionism — are necessary for the working class, and that close and solid relations should be built up between the two to promote the best interests of the workers. Our method, and the only effective method of building up a genuine socialist party, is to base our organisation on socialist knowledge, and the clear grasp of socialist principles by each member. 

 

We are not opposed to private ownership of possessions, but to private property in the means of life. The basis of production is to be cooperative in socialism. But no one person or one institution shall have private property in the means of production. There will be economic as well as political freedom. In this country we still have the ballot. A revolution can be brought about by this method. For this purpose we wish to organise the people. The Socialist party as the party of the exploited. The working class in a word, constituting a great majority of the people and in fact THE PEOPLE, and the Socialist Party demands that all the industries shall be taken over by the workers who shall operate them for the benefit of the whole people. Private ownership and competition have had their day. The Socialist Party stands for common ownership and co-operation.  Capitalism is industrial despotism. Socialism is industrial democracy. The other parties all stand for private ownership and competition. The Socialist Party alone stands for social ownership. The other parties uphold the wage system; the Socialist Party demands its end. The workers who have made the world and who support the world, are preparing to take possession of the world. This is the meaning of socialism and is what the Socialist Party stands for.

Rally, ye workers!

 Nothing whatever is gained by subterfuge or misstatement.The Socialist Party believes that revolutionary world socialism is possible.  The State serves the interests of a tiny, disproportionately wealthy group we can call the capitalist class. Force is the weapon of the oppressor. The State holds the monopoly the use of violence. A violent uprising by ourselves is its fervent hope as that allows the State to exercise more authoritarian control.

We must build something new to replace it. We must construct socialism a voluntarist society. We have the power. We are the scientists and the engineers, the doctors and the nurses; we are the builders and the architects, the mechanics and the farmers; we are the soldiers who kill and die for their enrichment, we are the police officers who enforce their unlawful rules; we are the people who build and work in their factories, we are the office workers who administer their system, the shop workers, the programmers, the writers, the artists, the teachers. We possess all the technology we need and we are the experts. It is our world not theirs. Without us the capitalist class are utterly incapable of controlling anyone or anything.

We must create, not destroy. We must liberate science, technology, art and knowledge. We must build alternative decentralised systems, enabling humanity to live as free beings. We must support each other. We can live in harmony because we are capable of respecting each other equally, without reservation. A socialist society would be a society without rulers, not a society without rules.

There is no black and no white, no right-wing nor any leftists, there is no gay and no straight. These are just some of the divisions forced upon us by the capitalist class to keep us divided. With socialism the people as a whole own the means of production. There will be no private ownership of the means of production, nor will the state be the owner. State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution.  Conversion into state property deprives the productive forces of their character as capital. The workers remain wage-earners, proletarians. The capitalist relationship is not abolished; it is rather pushed to an extreme.

The Socialist Party has no reason to conceal its aims or camouflage its revolutionary position. We have nothing to hide from the American people, for our party has no interests separate and apart from their interests. Our programme can be realised only through the consent and participation of the popular masses. They must first be convinced of its correctness and educated in its spirit. Our efforts are to bring about the overthrow of the wage system. We striving for the cooperative commonwealth. The Socialist Party is termed “impossibilists” believe very little can be gained by socialists trying to administer the capitalists’ political machinery; that this machinery is especially adapted to fit the necessity of the capitalistic or ruling class. It is one great machine, regulated from the head down, and the liberal officials are powerless to do more than the machine permits, and the machine permits practically nothing.

The Socialist Party holds that what working people gain under capitalism at one point they lose at another and this process must go on until the workers learn the lesson that the source of their trouble is inherent in the wage system, and that the remedy is not in putting temporary bandaid patches on this system, but to its final overthrow and the establishment of the cooperative commonwealth. Impossibilists takes very little stock of programs demanding nationalisation or municipal ownership, etc., believing at the best that these programs are palliative, tending but to put off the day of reckoning and prolong the general misery. The Socialist Party believes firmly in the revolutionary working class movement not to be put off with temporary concessions and reforms. As Tolstoy says, the master class will do any and everything but “get off the backs” of the working class. Reformism is going to be another system of exploitation easily grafted on on the old tree. Socialists tackle the roots of the problems and bring about a new world, the overthrow of the master class and the establishment of an entirely new principle in production.