World Socialist Party of the United States

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The World Socialist Party of the United States (WSPUS) was founded in 1916. Originally it was called the Workers Socialist Party. It is a member of the World Socialist Movement, an international movement that began with the founding of the Socialist Party of Great Britain in 1904.

The World Socialist Party of the United States maintains that, since its inception, it has been unique in the history of American labor and socialist parties inasmuch as it has stood alone in maintaining what it contends to be the original conception of socialism first propounded by its 19th Century theorists, such as Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and William Morris.

They condemn other parties that call themselves socialist as actually capitalist and reformist. For instance, they criticize the Socialist Party USA for policies such as advocating full employment. The WSPUS also contends that nationalization simply renders capital the private property of the state and criticizes the Socialist Alliance for advocating it.

They advocate the abolition of all employment which they argue is a modern form of slavery, and its replacement by a society of voluntary labor that produces wealth for the community to enjoy without the need for buying and selling - free access.

This is the conception of socialism as a truly democratic society without any classes at all, in which humanity has done away with all features of capitalism, including employment, money, and the state itself.

Unlike anarchists, however, the World Socialist Party advocates a political revolution because it argues that as the state is the "executive committee" of the capitalist class, it must be captured by the working class to keep the former from using it against the will of the latter. It also condemns the reformist nature of much anarchist activism.

While it shares many perspectives with the Deleonists - particularly in the Socialist Labor Party - the WSPUS has frequently clashed with them, over such issues as the Russian Revolution, the role of unions in revolution and labor-time vouchers in socialism.

The WSPUS maintains that the revolution must be carried out by a willing majority organized without leaders, capturing the state by means of delegates elected solely to carry out the wishes of the majority to destroy the state by replacing it immediately with democratic control of the means of production across the entire country, and indeed the entire planet.

It has stood against all wars fought since its inception on the grounds that they always represent the economic interests of the owning class, and never those of the working class. Unlike much of the left, it does not take sides in wars, e.g. not calling for a victory for the Vietnamese against America.

It has opposed the traditional radical opposition to the (usually Republican) incumbent presidents (e.g., anti-Nixonism, anti-Reaganism, or anti-Bushism) arguing that the enemy of the working class is the entire exploitative social system based on ownership of the means of the production, not the presidents elected to run that system efficiently, as such opposition fosters the illusion of "better presidents" rather than an understanding of, and opposition to, the entire economic system based on an owning minority employing a non-owning majority to produce its profits.

Its critics maintain that its purism is both utopian and impractical. Its capacity to criticise the compromises of others, they suggest, stems from never parttaking of any activity themselves.