World Socialist Party of the United States
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World Socialist Party of the United States
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| Founded | 1916 |
| Preceded by | Socialist Party of America |
| Headquarters | Boston, MA 02144 |
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| Ideology | |
| Political position | Far-left |
| International affiliation | World Socialist Movement |
| Colors | Red |
| Website | |
| wspus |
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The World Socialist Party of the United States (WSPUS) is a socialist political organization that was established in Detroit, Michigan as the Socialist Party of the United States in 1916 and which operated as the Socialist Educational Society in the 1920s before being renamed the Workers' Socialist Party. The organization reemerged in the 1990s and exists today as the American companion party of the World Socialist Movement.
The World Socialist Party of the United States (WSPUS) maintains that it has been unique in the history of American socialist and parties since its inception by maintaining the original conception of socialism as first propounded by 19th-century theorists such as Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Antonie Pannekoek and William Morris. Within this tradition, socialism is defined as a post-capitalist mode of production where the accumulation of capital is no longer the driving force governing production, where production is undertaken to produce goods and services directly for use.
The WSPUS defines socialism as a moneyless society based on common ownership of the means of production, production for use, and social relations involving cooperative and democratic associations as opposed to bureaucratic hierarchies and companies. Additionally, the WSPUS considers statelessness, classlessness and the abolition of wage labor as components of a socialist society – characteristics that are usually reserved to describe a fully developed communist society.
The WSPUS condemns other parties that call themselves "socialist" for supporting causes within capitalism (such as the interests of labor within capitalism), which they see as being but one side of the same coin. The WSPUS criticizes them for being reformist and for abandoning the long-term goal of building socialism in favor of maintaining the capitalist mode of production tempered by a welfare state. The World Socialist Movement also criticizes "democratic socialists" and labor unionists for coming to define socialism as political struggle within capitalism as opposed to defining it as a system to replace capitalism. For instance, they criticize the Socialist Party USA for advocating policies like full employment instead of dealing with the structural issues of capitalism like questioning the need to retain wage labor in the first place. The WSPUS also contends that nationalization, state ownership and even decentralized-public ownership of industry is not socialism because capital, monetary relations, exploitation, wage labor and bureaucratic hierarchy still exist in such organizations, and in most cases state-run organizations are still structured around generating profits.
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