The Partisan was the newspaper published by the Peace And Freedom Party State Central Committee and was published regularly from 1994 to 2009.
The Peace and Freedom Party, born from the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s, is committed to socialism, democracy, ecology, feminism, racial equality, and internationalism.
The opening sentence of the Party platform has provoked questions such as, “Why are you for socialism?” or “What is socialism?” The answer is not simple, because the Peace and Freedom Party is a ‘multi-tendency’ party.” People from different organizations, as well as those without other affiliation, can be members of the Peace and Freedom Party.
We asked members of the PFP to provide their definition of socialism, both to answer the question and to illustrate the range of opinions within the party and the Socialist movement in general. Below runs the first in our series, “What is Socialism?”
••••••
Socialism is a way people organize themselves to meet the needs of the many, as opposed to Capitalism, which only meets the needs of the smallest percentage: the very rich.
To socialists the question, “How do we meet the needs of the overwhelming majority of people?” is an entire field of science put into practice daily. Socialism incorporates the skills of millions (and in some countries, billions) of working people, in order to accomplish the “simple” task of meeting the needs of the majority. Capitalists use the same tactics, but towards the opposite goal: to enrich themselves, individually, at the expense of the majority.
For socialism to function, working class and oppressed communities need to understand, defend, and incorporate it as a social and political system in their daily lives. This can be called “class consciousness.” The capitalists are already class conscious; they are fully aware that they exploit (rob) us on a daily basis in order to horde more wealth than at any other time in history.
To maintain control, the capitalist class needs to keep us divided. It’s our duty, therefore, to devote ourselves to building unity, solidarity and class consciousness for socialism to win.
–written by Joe Delaplaine
