If survival as a human species is our primary long-term
goal, then deep changes are necessary to the way we organise ourselves socially.
Socialism seeks the end to artificial scarcity of all essential commodities. Promoting the common good is the only way to
create a sustainable future that ends deprivation of the poor and the profit-seeking
of the upper-classes. Socialism replaces failed capitalism.
How has capitalism failed? The current situation is that
capitalism has failed to provide the basic needs of society; even the “social
welfare” state only manages to mitigate the misery and suffering of people. The
rich are seen as successful by virtue of being rich and the poor are seen as
unsuccessful by virtue of their poverty. This is a “Social Darwinist” view of
human achievement which makes implicit that having money with little regard to
how the money is made. Socialism begins with the assumption that lack of money
should not be associated with lack of nutrition, health care, clothing,
housing, education and the ability to pursue a productive work and social life.
Universal entitlement eliminates desperation. Unlike capitalism, socialism
supports the individual – no matter his or her background – in the pursuit of a
better life. There will no longer be any starving artists living from hand to
mouth in the garrets.
Under the economic system of capitalism, the capitalist
class owns the means of production (factories, transport, etc.) as private
property. Capitalists hire workers to produce commodities, which are socially
produced, but privately owned by the capitalists, and then sold for profit. The
state provides an infrastructure to assist the capitalist class in maximizing
profit and towards this end provides some basic necessities (such as schools, unemployment
insurance, and social security) to maintain a workforce and ward off
starvation, social chaos, and revolution.
In socialism, the means of production are not in the private
hands of the capitalists, but are socially owned and capable of producing
abundance sufficient to meet the needs of all of society. The use of money
disappears because commodities are no longer produced for a market, but for
distribution on the basis of need. Technology has reached a stage where goods
can be produced with little or no labour. This is the turning point at which we
stand today. Humanity today faces the choice: will we do away with private
property and build a future for all or will a system of private property be
preserved at the expense of human beings and the planet?
More and more people are joining the ranks of those
dispossessed by capitalism world-wide. A class that has nothing to gain from
private ownership of the means of production has to take the reins of power and
construct an economic system that can sustain a better world. In theory,
physical labour may become totally obsolete. If every house has a decentralised
energy source like solar panels and reliable energy storage, as well as an
advanced 3-D printer or molecular assembler that can produce almost physical
object imaginable from a few basic recyclable chemicals then human poverty will
essentially have been abolished. We can just spend the vast majority of our
time doing things that we enjoy, while spending only a few minutes or at most
hours a day programming our machines to fulfil our material desires. That is
the more optimistic vision.
In a less optimistic vision, only a small minority of people
will have access to such technologies as while the technology may exist, the
costs of mass distribution remain too high (at least for a time). The vast
masses, will be stuck in impoverished material conditions — dependent on
welfare, and charity — without any real prospect being able to climb the ladder
through selling their labour. Only a lucky few — who have an inimitably good
idea, or a creative skill that cannot be replicated by a robot — will have a
prospect of joining the capital-owning upper class. Not man or woman but technology
must be the slave of tomorrow's world.
Socialism says: "Let us go about the task of making
machinery provide abundance directly. Let us begin by asking, not what price
will bring profit to private owners, but how much food, clothing and shelter do
we need for the good life for men. Then let us produce for the use of men, women,
and children, in order to supply them with abundance."
Clearly this requires
social ownership of the principal means of production and distribution. This in
order to give to the exploited workers, for the first time in the long history
of mankind, the good things of life. We may make mistakes in social planning,
but we can learn by our experience. Abundance is possible when we can set our
engineers and technicians to planning for society, instead of planning, in so
far as they can plan at all, for the profits of an owning class. The
achievement of Socialism will be the result of struggle, and the successful
application of socialism requires intelligence and the capacity for
co-operative effort. The collapse of capitalism is inevitable. But there is no
inevitability about socialism or shared abundance. We may have a long stretch
of chaos, wars, dictatorships, and regimented poverty. This can be prevented
only by men who will not accept poverty in the midst of potential abundance,
and the eternal exploitation of workers.
It is not merely plenty that we want, but peace. Mankind is
divided not only into economic classes but into nations. And nations as well as
men are divided into the Haves and Have-nots. We live in an interdependent
world where not even the capitalist nations with the most resources, the United
States, the British and French or Germans, are fully self-sufficient. Yet each
nation claims absolute sovereignty, absolute sway over its citizens, and
blindly sees its economic prosperity, not in cooperation, but in shutting out
its neighbors from its own markets. Meanwhile it seeks aggressively to capture
the markets of the world, to obtain sources of raw materials outside its
borders, and a place for its capitalists to invest more profitably than at home
the surplus wealth they have acquired by the successful exploitation of the
workers who are their own fellow countrymen. Modern wars arise out of the clash
of nations for power and profit. Patriotism makes men blind and drunk so that
they cannot see that out of this struggle for power and profit there can be
neither true prosperity nor true peace. One of the hardest task for socialists,
as recent history shows, is to bring about a real unity of workers across the
lines of nation, race and creed. Yet it is only in the cooperative commonwealth
that there is hope of lasting peace.
The Socialist Party seeks a world of freedom. This we do not
have and cannot have under the shadow of war and the bondage of capitalist
exploitation. All workers live in fear of those who control their jobs. There
is, for a great many of us, a kind of haunting fear of a jobless tomorrow or an
unwanted and unrecompensed old age. These things can be ended. They can be
ended with the end of exploitation which a proper control of the means of
production makes possible. They can be ended by a society of comrades. The Tree
of Liberty today has feeble roots for itself except as it may grow in the soil
of shared abundance. It is asserted that socialism is an end to freedom, not its
beginning. Those who make that assertion define freedom only as the right to
grab all you can and keep all you have grabbed.
The Socialist Party struggles for freedom, peace, and plenty
and know that they can be realised in a cooperative commonwealth. Our goal is a
society of abundance, of free men and women who seek life rather than death by
the machinery which could produce abundance and which is so desirable that it
ought to propel people to make it practicable. Members of the Socialist Party
because of our examination of history and the achievements of our class
convinces us that socialism is feasible. For sure, workers have made mistakes
and it is far from being a perfect record but it is far better than the media
and academic intellectuals belonging to Big Business would lead you to believe.
Progress has been made in the face of tyranny and counter-revolution. The
unions and the class struggle has not fed workers only with the bread of hope
in a better tomorrow. The working class will awaken and organise itself in an orderly
and peaceful revolution. Once separated from their dupes and lackeys the owning
class are weak and ineffectual. The more peaceful the revolution the more
priceless will its boon be. This does not imply passivism for we must have the
courage to stand up against. We dare not stop with merely asking the ruling class
to grant us as a concession what is ours by right. We shall never have a true
cooperative commonwealth until men and women think of their reward as workers
who create all wealth and not any longer of their reward as owners of property
which enables them to exploit other men's labour. That is one of the reasons
why our great socialist appeal must be always to the workers with hand and
brain, white collar and blue collar, in city and country. It is they who have
so long been exploited. It is they who can and must be free. It is only by organisation
inspired by socialist principles, that we can fulfill the dreams and hopes of
the people.