LITMIR.BIZ

      ISBN 978-5-0056-0987-8

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      Socialist party manifesto

      “Everything new is well-forgotten old”

      We are socialists for we are convinced that means of production (and social relations as well) all over the world shall be developed to such an extent that:

      – humans will no longer need to spend their energy and intellectual faculties on the creation of means of production and material goods;

      – against this background, there will be a relation of equality established between members of society concerning both the means of production and the material goods produced by such means (the relation of private property will disappear);

      – the era of socialism will come and the principle “From each according to his ability, and to each according to his needs” will be implemented; greed and pride will be seen as just another relic of the past, just like we see cannibalism nowadays;

      – members of society will be engaged in creative activities in accordance with their personal preferences.

      This belief is based on our worldview. We are materialists and by matter, we imply the definition given by V. Lenin: “Matter is a philosophical category denoting the objective reality which is given to man by his sensations, and which is copied, photographed, and reflected by our sensations while existing independently of them.” Among other things, this definition declares the primary nature of the objective reality and the secondary nature of consciousness in everything, including social relations.

      Being materialists, we perceive the world around us exactly as it is described by modern science, precisely as follows:

      – our Universe emerged as a result of the Big Bang about 14 billion years ago. The early Universe was a highly homogeneous medium which, in accordance with the Standard Model of particle physics, consisted of fundamental particles and had an unusually high energy density;

      – the Milky Way galaxy, the Sun, and our home planet Earth are 13.2, 4.6, and 4.5 billion years old, respectively;

      – life (primitive and single-celled) originated on Earth about 4 billion years ago;

      – the first land plants capable of photosynthetic activity (when plants use solar energy, absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and water with mineral nutrients through their roots to produce organic compounds and release oxygen) evolved 420 million years ago, increasing the oxygen level in the Earth atmosphere and contributing to the formation of hydrocarbon fuel deposits;

      – mammals of the order Primates, ancestors of modern humans, appeared on Earth 90 million years ago;

      – the extinct species of the genus Homo of this order began to make stone tools 3.5 million years ago and use fire 1.5 million years ago;

      – modern humans, belonging to the species Homo sapiens of the genus Homo, first evolved in Africa around 400—250 thousand years ago as a result of evolution of the genus Homo of order Primates of class Mammalia.

      As we can see, everything in the world around us is constantly changing, progressing from simple structures to complex ones, evolving. The general laws of motion both of the external world and of human society and human thought are studied by the science called dialectics. These laws were first formulated and studied by G. Hegel with respect to the development of human mind. Then F. Engels specified that these laws derive from the history of nature and human society and apply both to such history and human mind itself. We are adherents of dialectics, and therefore, in contrast with mechanistic materialists, we call ourselves dialectical materialists.

      Naturally, our worldview is not the only one. We recognize the diversity of worldviews, including those that oppose ours, declaring the primary nature of consciousness and the secondary nature of the world around us. Religious beliefs are the most common among them. In total, there are 12 major religions in the world. Virtually all of these religions include an explanation for life on Earth and for almost each of them it means a miraculous, divine creation of the world, however, there are different opinions on the date of the creation. For example, Christians calculated creation as having occurred in the time frame from about 5509 BC to 3491 BC, depending on the biblical sources and calculation methods, whereas according to Hinduism, the universe was created by Brahma 155.5 trillion years ago. Nowadays, according to various studies, the number of people who believe in God can be estimated at 84—89% of the adult population of the planet.

      The divine voice is conveyed mainly via the prophets (there were 9 of them), bearers of the divine revelation. The revelations set out the rules for the righteous behavior of believers during their life, provide a list of forbidden deeds and explain what will happen to sinners and faithful people after their death. The biographies of the prophets clearly declare how a faithful man or woman should act in certain life situations.

      We believe that the moral and ethical rules of community life preached by the clergy were formed back in the days of the primitive communal system. With the advent of writing, they were written down by the high priests as God’s commandments that must be obeyed by all members of society. These commandments survived the change of several social and economic models and for the most part will continue to be relevant under socialism.

      Our idea of the establishment of socialism and social relations under this system is described in the preamble. We see “the development of means of production all over the world to such an extent that humans will no longer need to spend their energy and intellectual faculties on the creation of means of production and material goods” as a necessary condition for the transition from the current capitalist system to a socialist one.

      However, K. Marx would consider such a situation impossible since it contradicts his labor theory of value. Under this theory, there can be no surplus value (surplus product) without human labor, implying that the means of production, at best, can only reproduce themselves. To deal with this, let us first recall the procedure for determining the proportions by K. Marx when exchanging two products of labor differing in properties – wheat for a hoe (in the original “iron”). It should be noted that both parties to the exchange of goods enter into this transaction because each of them produced them with their own hands, using their own instruments of labor, and consider themselves entitled to dispose of the results of their labor at their discretion; they are the owners of these goods. Thus, there is a relation of private property between the two owners regarding the material goods that are to be exchanged. As F. Engels said, “His property in the product was based upon his own labor.”