Socialist Ideas

 From our discussion forum

    1) Moral revolutionaries - People who see the effects of capitalism on others and around the world and are compelled to seek ways to find a just and better society for everyone.
    2) Intellectual revolutionaries - People who usually come across socialism as part of their studies while at university. They read Marx and find his analysis of capitalism to be correct. They then feel it necessary to pursue that line of study.
    3) The material revolutionaries - Those whose personal experience of capitalism compels them to act to change it. Often they will be drawn to the conclusion without any prior knowledge of socialist theory.

Of course there will exist a cross-over and interaction of these categories.

 We are active agents in changing our destiny. Revolution will happen when the material conditions force enough people to see no other alternative but to seek something new. At the moment the Socialist Party is trying to convince more people of this with a view to their joining the Party and thus help to speed up the coming of socialism, but we are relying on people's experience of capitalism's failure to meet their needs properly to convince them of the need for socialism, independently of our own activity. The activity of a socialist party is aimed at speeding this up, not creating it from nothing. Once decided democratically that we are heading for a socialist world it becomes a much simpler matter. Quite how this will happen is open to conjecture. As expressed on numerous occasions, we have no blueprint. Depriving the capitalist class of the state and its functionaries is the first objective. Once the decision is made, then it becomes a matter of organisation. Suffice it to say there will have been a period of planning and co-ordination by mass organisations in work places, in neighbourhoods, in educational establishments, in organisations with international links and in civic organisations, which will culminate in the collective and proactive decision of the people to take control over the direction of their lives immediately and for the future. The decision to turn their backs on the system that has failed them over and over in favour of one for which they are ready to work to make happen, ready to work to continue its progress and which will work for them, not against them. With ever-increasing numbers, discussion and debate will have begun to determine the direction of the path to be taken.


There are blueprints for how a kind of socialist administration could function (many fairly similar to how our own party functions.) Delegates, for instance, can be elected from within their place of work sent to a county committee then again sent to a regional one then up to a higher committee and so on. People have created these very detailed plans. I wouldn't endorse a single one and neither would any good materialist. As the exact way that we organize these things will depend entirely on the conditions at the time. To endorse something now, to say this is how it must be, is to dictate to the people in the future actually making those decisions who may be faced with material conditions which we are currently unaware of and contradict our plan. By making exact plans for the future we create dogma, it is in every way idealistic.

In human society, everything without exception depends on our common sociability — our language, our goals, our institutions, our relationships. We are in this together. Together we must produce and reproduce society in order to produce and reproduce ourselves. Antagonistic capitalist society, where for you "life under capitalism is not hell", can only survive and reproduce by milking our common sociability. It does so within a class division that arises naturally out of class ownership of the means whereby society must survive and reproduce itself. Society and our sociability are split because capital demands it. They are split to serve capital, and they must continue to be split as long as capital controls our social being because capitalist social reproduction is a necessarily self-replicating process. Our social existence is thus reproduced as split, so long as we allow capitalism to exist — so long as we allow it to wreck our lives. Capital  necessarily perverts of our sociability and creates a social hell for most of us. Once humanity at large sees capitalism for the social hell it actually is, and must continually reproduce itself to be, it will throw off its capitalist yoke. It will no longer let a class own and control the means of life for all.

Let's have a look at what socialism will be like. It will be a social system based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth, by and in the interest of the whole community. This definition was composed by the Socialist Party of Great Britain when it was formed in 1904. It has never been altered.

What will socialism be like?  It has to be pointed out that it is not possible to go into precise details, because lack of knowledge as to the conditions likely to prevail when socialism is established prevents that.  However, we know that a social system's relationships emerge from its basis.

Whatever is produced within socialism will be the best that human beings are capable of.  Homes, for example, will be designed and built with the only motive of housing human beings in the best possible style. The materials of which they are made, their facilities and location will all conform to this. They will be the best homes that society knows how to build.

Nobody will be employed by another person - nobody will sell his or her labour-power or work for wages. Everyone, in fact, will work for themselves, which means for the whole of society. Work will be a co-operative effort, freely given because people will realise that wealth can only be produced by working - unless wealth is produced society will die. Yet it will not only be a reluctance to commit social suicide that will keep us working under socialism. Men and women will be free - free from the fetters of wage slavery, free from the fears of unemployment, free from economic servitude and insecurity. Nobody will be found doing a job they hate but tolerate because its pays them well.  Nobody will waste their time learning how to kill scientifically. Everyone will be set free to do useful work, making things which will add to society's welfare, things which will make human life a little better, a little happier. This is an enormous incentive to work. It is the greatest incentive for co-operative effort and that is how socialism will operate.

Socialism will be free of the anomalies and stupidities which are now so common. Nobody will starve in one part of the world whilst food is being stockpiled or destroyed in another. Nobody will go cold because they can't afford to heat their homes. These anomalies arise because capitalism produces wealth to sell. Socialism will produce for people's satisfaction; the only barriers to that satisfaction will be physical. Bad weather, a ruined harvest or some other natural calamity may cause a breakdown in supplies. If this happens society will take steps to deal with the situation, unhampered by the commercial and monetary considerations of capitalism. Human interests will be the only consideration.

Socialism will be free of war - the cause of war will no longer exist. This means that there will be no armed forces with their dreadfully destructive weapons. It means that the people who are in the armed forces, together with the rest of the enormous social effort which is channelled into them, will be able to serve useful, humane purposes instead of destroying and terrorising.

Capitalism has its own laws, built upon its basic property rights. There is an intricate system to administer these laws - the courts with their judges, magistrates, lawyers and so on, supported, by the organisations which train people to take on such tasks. At the end of the process there is the police force to prevent people breaking these laws and, it they do, to hand them over to the penal institutions. None of these things will exist in a socialist world.

This is not to say that socialism will be a hotbed of crime. Remember that it will be a social system established by the conscious action of the overwhelming majority who will have set it up because they have decided that it is in their interests to do so. Such people will have appreciated that the interests of every individual are inextricably bound to those of the rest of society. They will realise the importance of social effort and co-operation and will act and work accordingly. This will be the power and the force which will induce people to behave socially and to work co-operatively. Socialism will not have a coercive state machine and a comprehensive legal system to enforce conformity. Order and welfare will depend upon mankind's appreciation of its own interests and will be the stronger for it.

When production is only for human use there will be a great development of society's productivity. First of all, an enormous number of jobs which are vital to capitalism will become redundant. Capitalism wastes human effort and has a vast army of bankers, accountants, salesmen, those in the armed forces, and many, many others who produce absolutely nothing. Socialism will have no use for such jobs because its wealth will not be produced for sale.

Because socialism will be free of the commercial necessities which hamper production under capitalism, we shall be able to turn our whole attention to satisfying human needs, to making our lives happier, fuller, easier. When that happens society will be able to support itself for the first time in the style to which it is entitled.

This will also apply on a world-wide scale. Capitalism has covered the world with frontiers and has fostered patriotism and race hatred, none of which has any scientific basis. Frontiers are purely artificial and are often altered at international conferences. Many workers are proud of their nationality although in logic they cannot take pride in something over which they have no control. Their patriotism leads them to fall in with the racial theories which capitalism's apologists use to excuse the failings of their social system. Socialism will have none of this. No frontiers, no racial barriers or prejudices. The world will be one with only human beings freely working together for their mutual benefit.

Socialism will end the wasteful, fearsome, insecure world we know today. Socialism will set men free to live their lives to the full. It will remove poverty and replace it with plenty. It will abolish war and bring a world of peace. It will end fear and hatred and give us security and brotherhood. Socialism will be a world worth living for.  We will all, undoubtedly, be "better off" for it........