World Socialist Party (US)

What We Stand For

Many people subscribe to the self-defeating philosophy that "socialism" means whatever anyone or any group calling itself socialist declares it means. We maintain that it describes just one very specific goal, that there are certain constant elements of the class struggle which continually generate the potential for a majority interested in the immediate replacement of production for profit with production for use, and that these elements can be codified as a set of principles. These principles we advocate as the basis of organizing for socialism.

In our view, creating a worldwide system of production for the satisfaction of human needs, individual and social, rather than for private profit, requires a majority that is socialist in attitude and commitment. Events since the beginning of the World Socialist Movement (going back as far as 1904) have demonstrated the validity of this judgment. Socialists are committed to one overriding goal: direct, immediate abolition of capitalism, and the establishment of a truly democratic, socialist form of society — through the ballot. Accordingly, membership in any of the companion parties of socialism requires a general understanding of and agreement with the basic principles of scientific socialism. But of course, thinking is no crime, and there is always room for differences of opinion in a socialist party. In contrast to principles, relatively few in number, there are a multiplicity of matters upon which socialists may have all kinds of conflicting views.

The following statements deal with the areas of most general confusion to people who seek to get a better understanding of what socialism means. If you agree with these statements, you are a socialist and belong with us.

1) To establish socialism, the working class throughout the world must gain control of the powers of government through their political organizations.

It is by virtue of its control of state power that the capitalist class is able to perpetuate its system. State power means control of the main avenues of “education” and propaganda, either directly or indirectly. It also means control of the armed forces that frequently and efficiently crush working class attempts at violent opposition to the effects of capitalism. Moreover, the police and the armed forces are often used to combat workers during strikes and industrial disputes with employers. In a modern, highly developed capitalist society the only way to oust the capitalist class from ownership and control of the means of production is to first strip it of its control over the state. Once this has been accomplished, the state will be converted from a coercive government over people to an administration over things and community affairs. The World Socialist Party, therefore, advocates the ballot as the means of abolishing capitalism and establishing socialism. Socialism can only be established democratically; means cannot be separated from ends.

2) The present, capitalist, society, even with “repair” and reform, cannot function in the interests of the working class, who make up the majority of the population in most of the world today.

Indeed, by its very nature, capitalism requires continual “reform.” But reforms cannot alter the basic exploitative relationship of wage labor and capital, or production for profit. Whatever the intentions of reformers, reforms function only to make capitalism run more smoothly and to make present day society more palatable to the working class by holding out false hopes of a fundamental change or radical improvement. In the long run, reforms benefit the owning, capitalist, class rather than the class that produces the wealth. The World Socialist Party does not advocate reforms of capitalism — only socialism.

3) The World Socialist Party does not support, directly or indirectly, any political party other than our companion parties in the World Socialist Movement.

We can only oppose those parties that one way or another support the present system. Our main purpose is to make socialists, not to advocate the use of the ballot for anything short of socialism.

4) The form of society once in effect in the Soviet Union, and still more or less in effect in China and Cuba now, was not and is not socialism or communism.

It was or remains a dictatorial, bureaucratic form of state capitalism. In those countries, as in the United States, goods and services were and are produced primarily for profit and not primarily for use. Nationalization and government “ownership” of industry in no way alters the basic relationship of wage labor and capital. The bureaucratic class that controls this form of the state remains a parasitical, surplus value eating class.

5) Trade unionism is the institution by which wage and salary workers attempt by various means to sell their working abilities, their mental and physical energies, at the best possible price and to improve their working conditions.

Workers without such organizations have no reliable economic weapons with which to resist the attempts of employers to beat down their standards. But unions necessarily work within the framework of capitalism and are useful, therefore, only to a limited extent. They cannot alter the fundamental relationship between wage labor and capital. They can only react to capital’s fiat, particularly in the case of long-term issues like automation or unemployment. Every wage or salary increase, in fact, only spurs employers and investors to accelerate the replacement of humans by machines in the workplace. If anything, instead of foolishly selling themselves short by demanding “a fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work,” workers would do far better to follow Marx’s advice and simply abolish employment altogether.

6) The World Socialist Party rejects the theory of leadership.

Neither “great” individuals nor self-appointed “vanguards” can bring the world one day closer to socialism. The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself. Educators to explain socialism, yes! Administration to carry out the will of the majority of the membership, yes! But leaders or “vanguards,” never!

7) The socialist point of view rests solidly on the materialist conception of history.

a way of looking at things that focuses on how human communities meet their actual survival needs by producing what they need to live (their economic systems, in other words). Out of this process the human brain weaves its ideas, which eventually exert their own influence on the cycle, causing it to become more and more complex as society evolves.

This approach, known as historical materialism, is a scientific method for helping us understand how and why capitalism does what it does.

8) Socialists hold that materialist explanations of human society and the rest of nature supersede supernatural ones.

A religious perspective won't necessarily prevent anyone from striving to abolish capitalism and its evils, and the ethical elements of religious teachings may even be what first make many people aware of the injustices of a class-divided society. But they don't in themselves lead to an understanding of the causes of such injustices. (More often than not, religious institutions themselves justify and commit them.) The world socialist perspective is in any case essentially post-religious, because the case for socialism hinges on the scientific use of evidence. Socialists therefore look on supernatural explanations as obsolete.