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.

Common Work for the Common Pot

 

Every aspect of society is undergoing upheaval. Everything that seemed “normal” yesterday is coming apart today. It is fashionable to claim that humans are innately aggressive, and that warfare is inevitable and unavoidable. To provide ideological aid to the capitalist subjugation of the worker, a large group of economists, psychologists, sociologists and journalists have been propounding a theory that the human character contains unique elements which make it especially susceptible to totalitarian movements. People are supposed to be  prone to militarism; they are said to be inherently submissive and their greatest joy is found, we are told, in blind devotion to a leader and adherence to barbarous acts of brutality. It  is a deliberate  distortion of the evolutionary historical picture of human society. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that anything contrary to the rules and ethics of capitalism is utopian or visionary. What’s absurd is to think this madhouse society is permanent and for all time. When we see the possibility of a new world that’s within our grasp, we will find the means to take the decisive action to make that new world our own.

 

We live in a highly competitive society founded upon the institution of private property. Marriage laws and family relationships reflect this basic concept of private ownership and a tremendous social pressure is transmitted through the parents. At an early age a child feels that he has to achieve something, to acquire status and to own a lot of things. Parents naturally urge children to go after the things they themselves wanted and frequently did not get. Unfortunately a great many people have no realistic prospect of getting all this stuff. In face of the continuous pressure to acquire some of these products of American culture, they may look for shortcuts – crime. It’s because they feel that they have no choice and there’s no way out that they wind uip in the blind alley of narcotic addiction or waging war with the law.

 

Marxism aims to discover and set forth the laws of evolution in social life from the earliest form of social organization to the contemporary world contest between capitalism and socialism. 

 

The Socialist Party’s vision of a future Co-operative Commonwealth, is rather too vague an idea in the minds of many of our fellow-workers who, living under present society and needing to functioning within it to survive, require to deal constantly with the concrete and the immediate. They have neither time nor inclination for speculation, and the usual cry of the Socialist Party, "Vote the Co-operative Commonwealth" lacks for them any practicality. So far as they can see, those who seek that world commonwealth, are, sadly, in a small minority at the polls. The future society comes only at the desire and with the consent of the proletariat.

 

Marxism comprises of a recognition of the class struggle, the materialistic conception of history, and the labour theory of value and surplus value. We stand uncompromisingly against capitalism and all of its institutions that prop up, apologise for, or buttress in any manner the present system, whether frankly capitalistic enterprises or cloaked as municipal or government ownership. We shall unite all our energies to destroy the present capitalist system and establish the cooperative commonwealth. We are thus headed towards happiness. Loving care must take the place of the spoliation and destruction of mankind’s environment. This is the inescapable task and responsibility of the World Socialist Movement. We know how to produce but capitalism can not produce without criminal waste. It is frightening the socially irresponsible ownership bent exclusively on profits. In the face of dogmas, of despots, and of charlatans, the socialist future belongs to reason. Our cause today is a vision of humanity crossing into a new world, a world free of exploitation, ignorance and strife. Our  vision is a vision of a country free forever from want, from race and national hatred and from sexual oppression and human exploitation. That vision is a vision of a country where the ever-expanding material and cultural needs of the people are satisfied by an ever-new technology that has freed humanity from toil. The vision is one of peace and social harmony. Today, the level of the means of production makes realising this cause possible.