Is Capitalism the Way to Live?

Socialism will mark a new departure in world history. A new civilisation will dawn. Socialism knows no barriers of sex or race: each individual of both sexes, of every race, and every ethnic group, receives equal care and equal chance of development. Culture will realise its immense possibilities when the latent power of the masses is released. Contrary to commonly accepted ideas it was an intensely humane and tenderly sympathetic spirit that gave birth to socialism. The widespread impression that there is something remote, cold, and inhuman about the theories of socialism, and something regimenting and enslaving about that system of society is wholly false. The precise opposite is indeed the truth. The activities of socialists spring from the compassion aroused by the horror of capitalism and human suffering.

The class struggle is a fact, but a fact much misunderstood. In a class society, part of the community, by virtue of the ownership of the means of production, has control over the whole productive process and possesses corresponding privileges, together with the control of government. The other part of the community possesses nothing but a minimum of personal goods, the ability to work, and some hard-won political rights. Conflict of interest is inevitable. Sooner or later the dominant class will be actively opposed by the dominated class. This opposition will accord with justice, morality, efficiency and sense. When the dominated class gets strong enough it will seize the power of the state. The form of government will change: the tools that society employs will in the long run determine the nature of the state. In this way a slave society emerged from a primitive classless society; and feudal society from a slave society. The advent of industrial production and the development of trade and banking forced feudalism to yield to individualistic capitalism, which has now become monopoly capitalism on the one hand or socialism on the other. It is the resistance of the dominant class to changes demanded alike by morality and efficiency that produces the conflict. The emerging class does not seek conflict. It seeks the right to emerge. 

The class struggle, then, is a right struggle. It is right that those who create goods should share in their ownership. It is wrong that one set of men, few in number, should hold all the fruits of technology over and above a bare subsistence wage granted to those who operate it. It is  right that the workers should share to the full that extension of life and culture which the wealth-producing machine has made possible. It is wrong that a small possessing class should monopolise this life-giving wealth. The struggle is right so long as classes and class privilege remain. It can be blood-less if the people understand the law of social evolution leading to the class-free society.

Equality of race, equality of sex, equality of citizens; absence of domination and exploitation already yield results. A new sense of solidarity, a new unity of interest and comradeship, are brought to the surface. Socialism or barbarism! With the whole world hard pressed by advancing chaos to make the choice of socialism that it must make for civilization to survive, if not to flower. Capitalism is objectively over-ripe for replacement by socialism, that is only another way of saying that capitalism has become reactionary, that it is an obstacle in the path of social progress, that it stands in the way of the welfare of the people upon whom it places, and must place, increasingly heavy burdens.

 Capitalism can no longer work effectively, regardless of what is done or who “cooperates” in the doing of it. It can not longer work effectively in a double sense: it cannot work effectively for the social progress of the masses, as it once did; and it cannot even work effectively for the social progress of the capitalists. If it works at all, that is, if it is maintained at all, it can only produce a continual social deterioration and recurring crises, of which climate change and military conflicts are expressions.

 Capitalism is production for profit. Socialism is called upon to redress the balance of power, to help mankind to attain to an equilibrium of the main forces of life. Power must be strictly subordinated not only to the socialisation of the means of production, but to the socialisation of man, to the restoration of the rational order of the world.

Reset the System

Engels denied nationalisation equalled socialism, and if it was then the German dictator Otto von Bismarck was a ‘socialist.’ There was nothing socialist about such state ownership. The Socialist Party counter-pose genuine social ownership to state-capitalism. The basis of socialist society must be the common ownership of the means of production. The machinery in factories, the transportation networks, the mines, all the communications , the land and farms must all be at the disposal of society. All these means of production must be under the control of society as a whole, and not as at present under the control of individual capitalists or capitalist corporations. What do we mean by 'society as a whole'? We mean that ownership and control is not the privilege of a class but of all the persons who make up society. In these circumstances society will be transformed into a huge working organization for cooperative production. Global production will be organised. No longer will one enterprise compete with another but will operate as one vast people's workshop. The communist method of production presupposes in addition that production is not for the market, but for use. With socialism, it is no longer the individual manufacturer or the individual peasant who produces; the work of production is effected by the gigantic cooperative as a whole. In consequence of this change, we no longer have commodities, but only products. These products are not exchanged one for another; they are neither bought nor sold. They are simply stored in the communal warehouses, and are subsequently delivered to those who need them. The essence of socialism lies in this, that the organisation shall be a cooperative organisation of all the members of society, that puts an end to exploitation, that abolishes the division of society into classes. In such conditions, money will no longer be required.  A person will take from the communal storehouse precisely as much as he needs, no more. No one will have any interest in taking more than he wants in order to sell the surplus to others, since all these others can satisfy their needs whenever they please. Money will then have no value.  Products will simply be supplied according to the needs of the people, for there will be an abundance of everything. 

 Capitalism is all about a small group of capitalists who controls everything; production has been organised, so that capitalists extract surplus value from the workers, who have been practically reduced to slavery. Here we have the exploitation of one class by another. Here there is a joint ownership of the means of production, but it is joint ownership by one class, an exploiting class. This is something very different from socialism, although it is characterized by the social nature of the organisation of production. Such an organisation of society would reduce one of the fundamental contradictions, the anarchy of production. But it would have strengthened the other fundamental contradication of capitalism, the division of society into two warring halves; the class war would be intensified. Such a society would be organised along one line only; on another line, that of class structure, it would still be rent asunder. Socialist society does not merely organize production; in addition, it frees people from oppression by others by creating the cooperative character of socialist production in every detail of organisation. With socialism, for example, there will not be elected delegates to manage factories, nor will there be persons who do one and the same kind of work throughout their lives. Under capitalism, if a man is a bootmaker, he spends his whole life in making boots; if she is a pastry-cook, she spends all her life baking cakes. Nothing of this sort happens in communist society. In socialism people receive a many-sided culture, and find themselves at home in various branches of production.

If in a socialist society there will be no classes this implies there will likewise be no State. The State is a class organization of the rulers. The State is always directed by one class against the other. A capitalist State is directed against the proletariat, whereas a workers State is directed against the bourgeoisie. In socialism there are neither landlords, nor capitalists, nor wage workers; there are simply people - comrades. If there are no classes, then there is no class war, and there are no class organisations. Consequently the State has ceased to exist. Since there is no class war, the State has become superfluous. There is no one to be held in restraint, and there is no one to impose restraint.

Who is going to work out the plans for social production? Who will distribute labour power?  How, they ask, can socialism be run without any direction? It is not difficult to answer these questions. It will be entrusted to various kinds of administrative bodies and we can suggest such United Nations departments such as FAO, ILO, and WHO. The State, therefore, has ceased to exist. There are no groups and there is no class standing above all other classes. The State will die out.

With socialism there will be the liberation of the vast quantity of human energy which is now absorbed in the class struggle. Just think how great is the waste of nervous energy, strength, and labour - upon the political struggle, upon strikes, revolts and their suppression, trials in the law-courts, police activities, the State authority, upon the daily effort of the two hostile classes. The class war now swallows up vast quantities of energy and material means. In the new system this energy will be liberated; people will no longer struggle one with another. The liberated energy will be devoted to the work of production.

Secondly, the energy and the material means which now are destroyed or wasted in competition, crises, and wars, will all be saved. If we consider how much is squandered upon wars alone, we shall realise that this amounts to an enormous quantity. How much, again, is lost to society through the struggle of sellers one with another, of buyers one with another, and of sellers with buyers. How much futile destruction results from commercial crises. How much needless outlay results from the disorganization and confusion that prevail in production. All these energies, which now run to waste, will be saved in socialist society.

The organisation of industry on a purposeful plan will not merely save us from needless waste, in so far as large scale production is always more economical. In addition, it will be possible to improve production from the technical side, for work will be conducted in very large factories and with the aid of perfected machinery. Under capitalism, there are definite limits to the introduction of new machinery. The capitalist only introduces new machinery when he cannot procure a sufficiency of cheap labour. If he can hire an abundance of cheap labour, the capitalist will never install new machinery, since he can secure ample profit without this trouble. The capitalist finds machinery requisite only when it reduces his expenses for highly paid labour. Under capitalism, however, labour is usually cheap. The bad conditions that prevail among the working class become a hindrance to the improvement of manufacturing technique. This causal sequence is peculiarly obvious in agriculture. Here labour power has always been cheap, and for that reason, the introduction of machinery in agricultural work has been extremely slow. In communist society, our concern will not be for profit but for the workers. There every technical advance will be immediately adopted. The chains which capitalism imposed will no longer exist. Technical advances will continue to take place inside socialism, for all will now enjoy a good education, and those who under capitalism perished from want - mentally gifted workers, for instance - will be able to turn their capacities to full account. There will be no place for the parasites who do nothing and who live at others' cost. 

Socialism will signify an enormous development of productive forces. As a result, no worker in socialism will have to do as much work as of old. The working day will grow continually shorter, and people will be to an increasing extent freed from the chains imposed on them by nature. As soon as man is enabled to spend less time upon feeding and clothing himself, he will be able to devote more time to the work of mental development. Human culture will climb to heights never attained before. It will no longer be a class culture, but will become a genuinely human culture. Concurrently with the disappearance of man's tyranny over man, the tyranny of nature over man will likewise vanish. Men and women will for the first time be able to lead a life worthy of thinking beings instead of a life worthy of brute beasts.

The critics of the socialist idea have always described it as a process of sharing things out equally. They declared that the communists wanted to confiscate everything and to divide everything up; to parcel out the land, to divide up the other means of production, and to share out also all the articles of consumption. Nothing could be more absurd than this notion. Above all, such a general division is impossible. We could share out land and money, but could not share out transport systems, machinery and various other things of the sort. Furthermore, such a division, as far as practicable, would not merely do no good to anyone, but would be a backward step for mankind. It would create a vast number of petty proprietors. But we have already seen that out of petty proprietorship and the competition among petty proprietors there issues large-scale proprietorship. Thus even if it were possible to realize such an equal division, the same old cycle would be reproduced. It is why socialists are not swayed by the proponents of co-ops. Socialism is a huge cooperative commonwealth.

The idea of the co-operative commonwealth

One condition of success for socialism is that its adherents should explain its aim and its essential characteristics clearly, so that they can be understood by every one. We must do away with many misunderstandings created by our adversaries and some created by ourselves. The main idea of socialism is simple. Socialists believe that society is divided into two classes by the present form of property-holding, and that one of these classes, the wage-earning, the proletariat, is obliged to toil for the other, the capitalist, to be able to live. All this misery, all this injustice and disorder, results from the fact that one class monopolises the means of production and of life, and imposes its laws on another class and on society as a whole. All differences of class must be abolished by transferring the ownership of the means of production and of life, which is to-day a power of exploitation and oppression in the hands of a single class, from that class to the organised community. The abusive rule of the minority must be substituted by the universal co-operation of people associated in the shared and joint ownership. And that is why the essential aim of socialism is to transform capitalist property into social property.

 With socialism private ownership and production for profit will be supplanted by common ownership and production for use. Working people will work together in harmony instead of being arrayed against each other in competitive warfare. They will collectively own the means of production, and there will be work for all.

The Socialist Party aims to replace the present capitalist system, with its inherent injustice and inhumanity, by a social order from which the domination and exploitation of one class by another will be eliminated, in which economic planning will supersede unregulated private enterprise and competition. The present system is marked by glaring inequalities of wealth and opportunity, by chaotic waste and instability; and in an age of plenty it condemns the great mass of the people to poverty and insecurity. Power has become more and more concentrated into the hands of a small irresponsible minority of financiers and industrialists and to their predatory interests the majority are habitually sacrificed. When private profit is the main motivation to economic effort, capitalist society swings between periods of feverish prosperity in which the main benefits go to speculators and profiteers, and of catastrophic recession, in which the common people’s normal state of insecurity and hardship is worsened. We believe that these evils can be removed only in a planned and socialised economy in which our natural resources and principal means of production and distribution are owned, controlled and operated by the people.

 Socialism is not a system of society in which individuality will be crushed out by regimentation. What we seek is a proper democratic collective organisation of our economic resources such as will make possible a much greater degree of leisure and a much richer individual life for every citizen. This social and economic transformation can only be brought about by political action. Political action is not to be despised, nor is any other that will help to break down the domination of the master class and hasten the emancipation of the proletariat. It will be time enough to forswear political action when the master class no longer strive to retain their mastery of the political machine. We do not believe in change by violence. The old parties are the instruments of capitalist interests and cannot serve as agents of social reconstruction, and that whatever the superficial differences between them, they are bound to carry out policies in accordance with the dictates of Big Business interests who fund them. The Socialist Party aims at political power in order to put an end to this capitalist domination of our political life and the establishment of a planned, socialised economic order, in order to make possible the most efficient development of the national resources and the most equitable distribution of the world’s wealth.

The principles of the Socialist Party are fixed and immutable. Our object aimed at, the end to be attained, remains ever the same, that object being social and economic freedom and equality for all, and the realisation of the highest individual development and liberty conceivable for all, through the social ownership and control of all the material means of production and existence. 

The Socialist Party will not rest content until it has eradicated capitalism and the establishment of the cooperative commonwealth. Our primary function is to organise a political party, independent and class-conscious. The purpose of a Socialist Party is the realisation of socialism. We refuse to subordinate that goal to any other.

The problem is capitalism. The solution is socialism

Socialism is not some pipe-dream. Capitalism has created the economic conditions for socialism. Socialism will bring social ownership of social production. It is the next step in the further evolution of society.

The means of production – the factories, mines, mills, offices, farm fields, transportation system, media, communications, medical facilities, retailers, etc., will be transformed into common property. Private ownership of the means of production will end. The economy will be geared not to the interest of profit, but to serving human needs. This will release the productive capacity of the economy from the limitations of profit maximisation. A great expansion of useful production and the wealth of society will then become possible. Rational economic planning will replace the present anarchistic system. Coordination and planning of production will aim at building an economy that will benefit the people. Because capitalism has already developed an advanced economy, socialism’s task will be to reorient this structure towards social needs. The protection of the environment would be ensured. Socialism will uphold the principles of democratic controlled common ownership, production for the people’s needs, and the elimination of exploitation.  The elimination of private ownership of the main means of production will permit a more equitable distribution of social wealth. There will be no billionaires nor paupers. 

The capitalist system of production, under which we live, is the production of commodities for profit instead of for use for the private gain of those who own and control the means of production and distribution. Out of this system of production and sale for profit spring all monopolies (arising from and following competition) and out of it, naturally, grow an overwhelming percentage of moral evils, and the entire problem of misery, want, and poverty that, as a deadly menace, now confronts civilisation.

Socialism is human association reduced to a practical program. It recognises that life in society is constantly passing through a process of evolution. It declares that labour is the sole creator of value and that the laborer is entitled to the full social value of the things he produces. It teaches that the only way to attain the just distribution of wealth to those who produce it is through the common ownership, control, and operation of the means of production and distribution, such as lands, mines, factories, transport, communications, etc. It asserts that this production should be for use and not for sale or profit, thus doing away with all private monopoly of the means of subsistence, and all forms of graft, corruption, and extortion in every department of society, and with a vast amount of unproductive labour and an immense number of useless and harmful occupations. Socialism would conserve and not abolish private possessions. Thus homes and all personal belongings not used to produce more wealth would remain individually owned.

The cooperative commonwealth is our goal. In order to be understood socialist philosophy must be studied. If you wish to oppose its ideas, study it. No person has a right to be a socialist or to criticise it without understanding the subject.  The problem before us is how are the land and the tools of production to be removed from private ownership to social ownership, while at the same time distribution (at first of the necessaries of life, and later on of the full products of wealth) is secured on an equable basis for all wealth producers?

The Socialist Party aims at the complete emancipation of labour from the yoke of capital. This emancipation can be achieved by the transfer to social ownership of all the means and objects of production, a transfer which will entail:

a) the abolition of the present commodity production (i.e., the purchase and sale of products on the market) and

b) its replacement by a new system of social production according to a previously drawn-up plan with a view to satisfying the requirements both of society as a whole and of each one of its members. 

This socialist revolution will give rise to the most radical changes in all social relationships. It will introduce consciousness where there now reigns blind economic necessity by simplifying and giving purpose to all social relationships. it will at the same time provide each citizen with the real economic possibility of participating directly in the discussion and decision of all social matters.

This direct participation of citizens in the management of social affairs presupposes the abolition of the present system of political representation and its replacement by direct popular decision making. The emancipation of the workers must be the matter of the workers themselves, as the interests of labour in general are diametrically opposed to the interests of the exploiters, and as, therefore, the higher classes will always hinder the above described re-organisation of the social relationships, the necessary preliminary condition for this reorganisation is the capture of political power by the working class in each of the countries concerned. Only this temporary domination of the working class can paralyse the efforts of counter-revolution and put an end to the existence of classes and their struggle.

CAPITALISM IS THE ROOT OF OUR SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC PROBLEMS.

Democratic control over the means of production and the establishment of socialism is the only solution to unending war and the destruction of our environment. The profit motive is incompatible with safeguarding the world’s resources. So long as it is profitable, environmental destruction is perfectly ’logical’ under capitalism which forces governments to exploit their resources dangerously for short term gain. Humanity’s problem is not limited resources but the waste of resources which is an essential part of the process of capital accumulation. There is destruction of indigenous people and their sustainable ways of life; hijacking of fertile land for cash cropping and clearance of forest for cattle ranching. The diverse environment movement has been valuable in highlighting and researching many of these specific problems. They are advancing the view that sustainable life systems living in harmony with nature are a real alternative but fail to place the blame upon the exploitative system of capitalism.

And it is the only road to the reversal of the possible descent into barbarism. Common ownership and democratic control over society is the goal of the Socialist Party and, practically speaking, the only thing that will save the world. This cannot be reformed into being. Supporting radical sounding or so-called socialist candidates of capitalist parties muddies the truth that the system of capitalism itself is the real enemy of the working class. Socialism is not about fighting for reforms or demands. Reformism is not socialism. Capitalism is no longer expanding and progressive. It is a retreating and increasingly reactionary social system. 

The workers who produce the wealth have no decisive voice in operating the economy. They do not have the most elementary of all rights—democratic control over their means of livelihood. We are living under a system which is more and more clearly revealed as the enemy of humanity. It has vast productive potential, but only means poverty and oppression for the masses. It brings deprivation to working people. It imposes draconian cuts in living standards on the already poor, simply in the interest of still greater profits for the capitalist class. Capitalism is responsible for the damage to the environment.  Its armaments industry cynically profits from a series of local wars of unparalleled destructiveness. The root cause of all this is capitalism’s quest for profit, which takes precedence over any human well-being. Capitalism threatens the future of humanity. Capitalism cannot be reformed. It has undergone many changes in its history, but these have simply meant finding new ways to exploit working people. The only solution is to end it and build a new social system. 

Socialism aims at controlling the means of wealth production on behalf of working people. Only they fully know the needs and demands of the processes of wealth production. Socialism is the only democratic solution to the many problems humanity faces. It has been the custom for people to be told that they must look to the State for salvation that their hope lay in government  regulation. Socialism was often seen as economic growth minus capitalist crises, and state control was seen as a definition of socialism. The laws of capitalist expansion was thus taken on board, rather than seeing socialism as a qualitatively different.

Working people must speak and act like one. In this lies its future.