A New Politics for the USA

While Americans are being swamped in the Democratic Party debates leading up to the 2020 election year with an endless stream of empty discussions "on the issues", the World Socialist Party of the United States (WSPUS) as always will be putting this question before as many workers as possible. What is socialism and how can it be established? The platform of the WSPUS is neither a bundle of promises nor a package of slogans. It's a plan for mobilizing the working people. Anything short of a revolutionary change is a formula for leaving control of society right where it is, in the grip of the ruling-class hands. And no matter how that control may be "modified" the ruling power of society is left where it is now.

 The tremendous productive potential of the economy will continue to be used for private gain and corporate profit. It will be used, as it is today, to exploit workers on the job, to rape the environment for profit, and to amass mountains of wealth for the few. It will keep pitting worker against worker, race against race, and sex against sex, fighting over scraps while the capitalist class reaps the harvest of society's labor. A small ruling class will continue to use its monopoly over the means of life to shape the entire course of the world.

If control of society remains where it is now, governments will remain an instrument for advancing the ends of a ruling minority against the rest of us. It will continue to serve capitalist interests at home and commercial interests abroad. The repression and lies which have become regular orders of government business will grow more drastic and dangerous. The system will head toward ever-worsening crises, more conflicts and the inevitable threat of climate change. To change this course the political and economic power of society must be transferred from the small ruling class to the working majority. In essence, this is what socialism is all about. Socialism does not mean control by the state, or domination by a party, or the regulation of capitalist rule, or more reforms and bureaucracy. It means the transfer of power over all social institutions and operations to the people themselves. 

Such a revolutionary change can only come through the direct activity of the workers themselves. They must break with the illusion that they have to endure capitalism forever, or are powerless to change society. Through their conscious political and economic organization, they can not only overturn class-ruled society, but, in the same process, build a better one in its place. Politically workers must draw together in a party that stands for their own collective interests. For too long workers have relied on capitalist politicians to speak for them. They must build their own political organization, to challenge the domination of the capitalist class and help all workers realize how socialism serves their needs, and how it can be won. But a political party by itself is not enough. Socialism means more than a change in ideas, or a different set of political figures in government. It means that the masses of working people must build the new forms of socialist structures. They must unite all workers, native-born or newcomers. The economy would be run on democratic socialist principles for use instead of profit.