| From the Award-Winning Author of 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents |
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Socialist Party Platform—1948
PREAMBLE
Mankind is haunted by new fears. In the crowded metropolis and on the distant farm, men ask
uprooted.
Starvation stalks much of the world, and in our own land men dread the insecurity that tomorrow
may bring. While millions go in rags, the world's looms are again knitting the uniforms that will
shroud new victims to be offered on the altars of nationalism, imperialism and tyranny.
In 1948, we face the elemental question of survival. The atomic revolution has burst upon the
world and a new unity has been forged among the human race: men who have refused to be
brothers one of another may now become children of a common doom.
. . . Unless we learn to reorganize our society for survival and not for mutual extinction;
. . . Unless we learn new techniques of cooperation to replace the old policies of competition;
. . . Unless we move rapidly toward socialization by which alone the individual can be preserved in
the inter-dependent world of the turbine, the plane, the steel mill and the uranium pile;
. . . Unless we move rapidly to a world order without greed, profit and hate.
The American people, because of the accidents of geography, will make the decision for mankind.
Our mines and factories were not devastated by the physical havoc of the last war. For America,
and consequently the world, it is not too late.
Three forces today are competing for the loyalty of men. And in this race, the stakes are the
survival of mankind.
On the one hand, an economic system calling itself "free enterprise" asserts that it can lead to the
salvation of humanity. It has brought us repeatedly to depressions and wars, yet its spokesmen in
the Democratic and Republican Parties still pretend they have solutions.
They have, in fact, betrayed the promises with which they woo the American people every four
years. They offered prosperity and delivered de¬pression. They pledged peace and delivered war.
They promised to increase our standard of living and are now raising the cost of living. They
promised freedom to organized labor and hobbled it with new bonds.
They have sought partisan advantage and jeopardized national welfare. The dominant wings in
their parties have combined to destroy price control and give us inflation, to undermine restraints
on greed and give us shortage, to favor the rich and deny the poor, to cut the taxes of the wealthy
and insult the common man with a crumb.
There is a second force in the world—which promises security and speaks of freedom but
de¬livers only economic bondage and dictatorship. It is the force of totalitarianism. Yesterday its
most sinister front was Fascism; today it is Communism.
In the United States, it marches under masked banners. It calls itself a "new party" and has pushed
into the forefront well-meaning liberals who do not know the purposes of their Communist allies.
And this alliance, though speaking for civil liberties at home, defends the most powerful tyranny in
the modern world. It speaks of peace but is blind to the most aggressive imperialism of the present
day. It speaks of one world but works for two spheres of influence. It urges the brotherhood of
man but sanctifies the divisive principle of national sovereignty.
As against these forces, the Socialist Party of the United States speaks for the Third Force—
democratic socialism, the principles of democratic planning and international order. This socialist
program for the United States today includes these major goals:
BASIC SOCIALIST DEMANDS
1. The natural resources of the nation—minerals, oil, electric and atomic power—are the property
of the people. Their preservation for future generations and their management by the people for
social purposes can be achieved democratically under socialism.
2. The basic industries, public utilities, banking and credit institutions—all the economic facilities
needed for the satisfaction of the fundamental requirements of the people—must be socially owned
and democratically managed.
3. Socialism will democratize the economic life of the nation by the joint representation of workers,
the working management and the consuming public, in the management of socialized enterprises;
by the guarantee of popular control of enterprise through the maximum decentralization
economically feasible and the use of various types of organization, particularly the public
corporation and the voluntary cooperative; and by the preservation of the freedom of labor
organization and of consumer choice.
With such control we can have democratic planning. The lessons of the last war have taught that
only by planning, by large-scale government investment, by decisive national action, can
production be increased to meet the goals set by the nation. In place of the destructive ends sought
in wartime, the nation must now fix its peacetime goals—food for the ill-fed, clothing for the ill-
clothed, homes for the ill-housed.
A nation that could fill the skies with planes and the oceans with warships can fill its streets and
avenues with homes, schools and hospitals; swell its granaries and storehouses; bring joy to its
people and the world. In the light of this Socialist program for democratic planning, we offer this
platform to the American people in the 1948 elections. It can be achieved.
DOMESTIC PROGRAM
1. Raise the Standard of Living
It must be the constant task of the nation to raise the standard of living of its people. This can be
effected only by a continually rising trend in production and wage levels, the stabilization of prices,
and the immediate elimination of profits as the determining factor in production. In a period of
inflation wage increases without price controls are delusions.
2. Expand the Productive Facilities of the Nation
The American standard of living and the needs of world economic rehabilitation make it essential
that our national production be rapidly expanded. An economy based on profit will not expand so
long as scarcity is profitable and inflation an easy road to gain.
The Socialist Party calls for government action to assure investment in new plant capacity through
the establishment of public corporations for the production of ever-mounting quantities of steel, oil
and other raw materials, and the utilization of the nation's water resources for the development of
cheaper and more abundant electric power. A far-flung program of Tennessee Valley
Administrations, Missouri Valley Administrations and Rural Electrification Administration
cooperatives can effect the electrification of whole areas that are lagging far behind their
agricultural and industrial potential. Only by planned growth in our national output of civilian goods
can we end the menace of inflation, which is now dangerously in¬creased by our enormous
expenditures on arms.
3. Expand Social Legislation
The intricacies of twentieth century living and the potentialities of modem technology have at last
made it possible to guarantee a national minimum standard of living for the population. The
Socialist Party advocates:
a. Expansion of unemployment insurance and social security. Millions of workers are as yet
uncovered by the unemployment and social security provisions. The present law discriminates
against farm labor, domestic servants and other working groups despite the constitutional
guarantee of the "equal protection of the laws." Even so, the Democratic-Republican coalition in
Congress has been whittling down the number of workers protected by the existing law at a time
when ex¬tension of coverage should be the order of the day.
The age at which workers become eligible for old age pensions should be promptly reduced to 60,
and the system should be financed by net progressive income taxation rather than by the regressive
payroll tax. The benefits—now drastically cut by the current inflation—should be raised.
The Social Security law should be amended to include family allowances. The proper care of
children is at least as important as the care of the aged.
b. Minimum Wage. The present legal mini¬mum wage under the Wage-Hour Law should be
immediately raised to the 75 cents an hour demanded by organized labor, with progressive
in¬creases to occur periodically.
The number of employees protected by the Act must be increased by a redefinition of coverage,
and the present reactionary drive to reduce the coverage must be defeated.
c. Health services. Legislation for comprehensive medical and hospital care, financed by a national
contributory system of health insurance, must be enacted by Congress. The Democratic-
Republican coalition has successfully blocked the health insurance bill. In contrast, the Taft health
bill will not provide comprehensive medical care nor remove the economic barriers now depriving
millions of proper medical service.
Only a national health insurance program can guarantee free access to medical care, freedom of
doctors' choice and freedom for the medical profession within a framework of public responsibility.
Neither a fee-for-service system nor voluntary prepayment plans can bring the benefits of modern
medical science to all the people, regardless of race, color, creed, geography or economic
condition.
Federal tax funds should be used to supplement an insurance program in creating a fully rounded
national health service.
Public health services must be increased; the construction of new hospitals and clinics must be
pushed. Federal action must be taken to stimulate research and public preventive medicine in
cancer, heart diseases, mental illness, alcoholism and other ailments, as was done in the field of
atomic fission. The maternal and child services provided by the Social Security Act must be
extended.
d. Education. It is a national disgrace that the richest nation in the world does not have the best
possible educational program from the nursery school to the university. America has subjected its
children and youth to a shameful chronic emergency in this field. Higher standards of teacher
training, enlarged and improved facilities, curricula better designed to meet pupil needs, adequate
salaries, attractive conditions for superior professional work—all require that Federal contributions
to public education be vastly multiplied without reducing local community initiative and existing
State responsibilities.
At the same time, legislative efforts to divert public funds to private sectarian schools must be
defeated. The principle of separation of church and state must be consistently applied in the use of
public educational funds.
We propose passage of State and Federal laws aimed at eliminating racial, cultural and religious
discrimination and segregation in education.
e. Veterans. Because of the special hardships war worked upon the veterans and conscientious
objectors, we favor legislation to provide them substantial and adequate benefits in the form of
education, medical care and loans; and full care for the families of those who did not return. We
demand immediate steps to end the vicious discrimination and outright fraud now being practiced
against Negro, Nisei, Spanish- or Mexican-American veterans by prejudiced local employees of
the Veterans Administration, particularly in the South and Southwest.
4. Expand the Nations Housing Facilities
Private enterprise has failed dismally to meet the challenge of housing the American people. Its
boast that the lifting of controls on new construction would stimulate large-scale building has
proved hollow. The lower income groups most desperately in need of housing, the young people—
particularly our veterans—and the inhabitants of our ever-growing slums, are not in a position to
buy or rent the facilities that private contractors are willing or able to erect.
The Taft-Ellender-Wagner Bill should be passed—but only as the merest fraction of a beginning,
precisely because its major reliance is on the private construction industry.
The Socialist Party proposes the creation of a Home Loan Bank to finance the purchase of homes,
a Public Supply and Fabricating Corporation to set up factory units needed to produce materials
and to develop large-scale prefabricated housing; the expansion of public housing activities in the
field of low-income multiple dwellings; the expansion of publicly built, cooperative tenant-operated
housing; the integration of national and local housing plans, including revision of municipal building
codes; the development of a government program of bona fide collective bargaining with the
building and construction unions, providing for a guaranteed annual wage to remove one of the
worst evils of the building industry and for the development of apprentice-training programs.
We favor the extension and strengthening of rent control for the duration of the housing
emergency. The people of America must call to account those legislators who are destroying rent
controls, permitting eviction of tenants by subterfuge and so contributing to disastrous inflation in
the field of housing.
5. Protect the Nation's Title to Atomic Energy Pending Internationalization
The United States has made a good beginning in reserving to the nation, rather than ceding to
business, the ownership of atomic energy. But this principle is already being undermined by cost-
plus contracts, granted to private corporations to exploit this new storehouse of power for profit
as coal, oil and other resources have been in the past. Nuclear fission was not the product of
private enterprise. It was financed by the nation and was achieved by cooperative scientific effort
operating in complete disregard of the profit motive. As the peace-time uses of atomic energy
begin to emerge, it becomes increasingly important that the constructive applications of atomic
power be utilized only through non-profit public corporations.
6. Strengthen Civil and Political Liberties
Civil and political liberties are in serious danger today. The Socialist Party calls for greater
vigilance and specifically demands:
a. Repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act which undermines the right to strike, the right to organize, the
right to sign contracts guaranteeing union security and furthering the economic interests of
organized workers; and which permits the power of the state to be used in behalf of employers
and against workers with just grievances. The Socialist Party pledges its full support to organized
labor in its effort to repeal the Taft-Hartley Act and similar state laws.
b. Elimination of the Committee on Un-American Activities which has pursued the dis¬honest
tradition of the Dies Committee. The Committee has abused the legitimate democratic function of
Congress to investigate and collect data on matters of national importance.
c. Defeat of any legislation that would force the Communist Party further underground and that
would appear to give moral justification to its conspiratorial policies. The right to free expression of
political views must not be impaired. But the existing laws against overt acts should be vigorously
enforced.
d. Elimination of poll taxes and opening of the ballot to citizens regardless of income.
e. Full amnesty and restoration of civil rights for war objectors, several hundred of whom are still
in prison and thousands of whom have lost citizenship.
7. Establish Racial Equality
Democracy cannot tolerate two classes of citizenship. Complete political economic and social
equality, regardless of race, religion or national origin must be established.
a. Segregation must be abolished in the armed forces, in all public institutions and in housing.
b. Legislation for a Fair Employment Practices Committee, long overdue, should be passed.
c. Anti-lynching legislation must be enacted to wipe out the worst blot on the American scene.
d. Naturalization rights should be granted to Japanese immigrants who have demonstrated their
loyalty, and indemnification should be given to Japanese immigrants and their American
descend¬ants who suffered property losses because of government policy during World War II.
e. All forms of discriminating barriers against immigration on grounds of race, color or national
origin must be abolished.
f. Guarantee the right to vote to many citizens now robbed of suffrage. The 14th Amendment of
the Constitution, depriving states of representation in Congress in proportion to the number of
citizens deprived of the right to vote by virtue of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,
should be promptly enforced.
8. Safeguard American Agriculture
The Socialist Party opposes the absentee ownership of farms and its attendant tenancy in America.
We reaffirm our position that occupancy and use should be the only rightful title to farm¬land.
Where conditions favor family farming, the security of such farmers should be strengthened through
cooperative credit purchasing and marketing, aided by government financing. Where modern
techniques and specialization require large-scale farm enterprises, we call for social ownership and
cooperative operation to replace the corporation farm which threatens both the security and
freedom of farm workers.
We disapprove of the New Deal idea of agricultural scarcity, aimed at keeping prices up by
limiting production. Our domestic needs and those of the world require an agricultural program
based on maximum production.
We urge the continuation and expansion of the present conservation program to check destruction
by floods, erosion of topsoil and depletion of farm fertility. Our obligation to our grandchildren
demands a greater concern with the heritage we leave in productive farmland.
The proper distribution and marketing of food and fiber does not require gambling. Our present
Board of Trade pricing of farm produce, with its poker game practices of buying on futures, must
be ended.
9. Establish a Progressive Tax System
The Tax Law of 1948 is legislation for the direct and immediate benefit of the wealthiest group in
the country. Their taxes have been drastically lowered without any real assurance that
corresponding economic benefits in the form of additional equity capital for new production will
result. The tax reduction for those in the lower income brackets is petty, and will disappear
altogether after November if a Democratic or Re¬publican Congress is elected.
We Propose:
a. Raising the present exemption levels to equal the amounts necessary to sustain minimum
standards of living.
b. Restoring the earned Income Credit in such form that it grants a tax benefit (with an appropriate
maximum) to income from wages and salary in contrast to income from investment.
c. Tightening of the provisions of the Estate Tax section of the Internal Revenue Code by
increasing the rates, lowering the exemption and plugging the loop-holes by which inherited wealth
can be passed on for two and sometimes more generations, by means of trusts, without paying
succession taxes. Corresponding changes must be made in the Gift Tax section.
d. Modification of the Internal Revenue Code's favored treatment of speculative and gambling
profits, and encouragement of new equity capital for production by revision of the treatment of
Capital Assets.
e. Financing of extraordinary government expenses through a capital levy, especially on the
increase in private capital since 1939, so that those who benefited directly from World War II will
bear the burden of the nation's war deficit.
f. We condemn the fraudulent Joint-return pro¬vision of the new tax law as a device which
enables the wealthy to minimize their share of the tax burden.
10. Financing the Socialist Program
The American people will be told that it is impossible to finance this program for economic
security. The cost of World War II to the American people was some 350 billion dollars. It is
fantastic to assert that we cannot afford to devote a fraction of that sum to the peace and
happiness of the nation. On the basis of the program submitted to Congress by the Armed Forces,
it is apparent that our military budget alone in 1952 will equal the present total national budget. The
path to plenty lies in expanding our production and in reallocating our budget in the service of life
and peace.
FOREIGN POLICY
Victory by the U. S. and its allies in two world wars has not established justice or peace. A third
world war fought with atom bombs and bacteria will complete the ruin of mankind.
The major, but by no means the only threat of war, lies in the aggression of the Soviet empire and
the international communist movement. That aggression has been invited and encouraged by the
blunders of American policy from the Cairo and Teheran through the Yalta and Potsdam
conferences. Disregard for those principles of peace which the Socialist Party has steadily urged
since the campaign of 1944 has contributed directly to the present crisis. The problem of peace
cannot be solved by any attainable superiority of American military might. The bi-partisan effort in
Washington to achieve such superiority and the hysteria which accompanies it make war more
likely, and threaten our internal democracy with a dangerous American militarism.
The road to peace lies neither through the policy of appeasement laid down at Yalta and now
supported by Henry Wallace, nor through the confused military commitments of the Truman
doctrine. Neither of these contradictory policies can defeat international communism or the
conditions that breed it.
A far better approach is the European Economic Recovery Program. It is a significant recognition
that cooperative economic action must be taken if the European continent is not to pass into chaos
and so into communist hands. But the helpful economic cooperation necessary to peace cannot be
confined to Western Europe. In Europe itself vigilance is necessary lest the Recovery Program be
subverted into an attempt to re-establish capitalist reaction or fascism, or to promote an American
economic imperialism.
In addition to the proper conduct of the ERP a policy looking to the winning of lasting peace must
include the following proposals:
1. Conscription
The representatives of the United States should immediately propose to the United Nations that
peacetime conscription be outlawed by all nations. We are opposed to all forms of peacetime
conscription in the U. S. Conscription contributed greatly to the growth of totalitarianism in Europe
and has been sharply criticized as unnecessary even from the military standpoint.
2. Disarmament
The United States should propose the rigid limitation and international control of all armaments, to
be followed by universal—not unilateral —disarmament; all such measures to be accompanied by
the unlimited right of inspection through an authorized agency of the United Nations. The principle
of unlimited international inspection must be recognized as a fundamental safeguard of world
security.
3. World Government
The achievement of true democratic federal world government is the ultimate structure of peace.
The U. N. as we have repeatedly pointed out is not by its nature such a government. Yet in the
critical years before us it may serve a great interim usefulness if its constructive agencies are
strengthened and if it is given power to deal with aggression by abolition of the veto in the Security
Council. To the rapid achievement of these ends the Socialist Party pledges itself.
4. Atomic Control
The United States should renew its efforts for United Nations adoption of the Majority Plan,
based on the Baruch proposals; a campaign of unceasing world education on the contents of the
plan should be launched immediately; and mean¬while production of atomic bombs should be
halted.
5. Raw Materials
All peoples of the world must be assured access to the raw materials now controlled by
international, private, and state monopolies. For this, the area of operation of the world Food and
Agriculture Organization, in cooperation with the International Trade Organization where
necessary, must be extended. At the same time, world planning is necessary to allocate materials in
short supply on the basis of need. World production must be planned to meet the needs of world,
not national, markets.
6. International Waterways
The United States should offer to join in the internationalization and demilitarization of the strategic
waterways of the world, e.g. Panama, Suez, the Danube, the Dardanelles, Gibraltar, the Baltic, the
Black Sea, the Arctic, etc., as part of the general program of world disarmament.
7. Police Force
The organization of world peace requires the existence of an international police or security
force. Along with the principle of unlimited inter¬national inspection, an international police force is
indispensable for the solution of such problems as Palestine, Kashmir, and other crises which may
arise.
8. Colonialism
The United States should urge immediate action to begin the permanent liquidation of all
colonial¬ism—whether resting on military might, economic domination or political infiltration. The
United Nations should establish commissions to supervise an early transition to self-government.
9. Trade Barriers
The United States should support all efforts to establish customs unions as a first step in the
direction of a world-wide outlawry of trade barriers.
10. Refugees
The United States, whose greatness has been built by the creativity of generations of immigrants
from all parts of the world, must open its doors to those displaced persons who have no home. At
the very least, 400,000 such persons can be admitted under unused immigration quotas from the
war years. Full support for the Inter¬national Refugee Organization is essential as long as the
present emergency exists, but the goal must be the free and unrestricted movement of peoples,
according to their own choice, throughout the world.
11. Palestine
The present disastrous situation has been precipitated by the monstrous Nazi terror, conflicting
promises to Jews and Arabs, and repeated betrayal of a pledged word. It is now the duty of the
United Nations, with the wholehearted support of the United States, to establish order, to
guarantee to the Jewish community in Palestine full self-government, and to protect the right of
immigration since it has not reached a saturation point. Whether the political structure necessary to
establish these rights is partition or a federation of cantons somewhat on the Swiss model, the civil
rights of minorities must be preserved within each district. In no event can immigration into
Palestine be considered a complete and adequate answer to the problem of anti-semitism. Every
country must be made a desirable homeland for those who live in it, regardless of race, creed or
color.
12. Occupied Countries
Military occupation of conquered peoples is by nature inimical to democracy. American armies are
now in occupation in Germany, Japan, Korea and various island outposts. Any attempts to use
such occupation for economic advantage to American businessmen or for strategic military moves
and counter-moves must be defeated. The encouragement of democratic self-government and
functioning economies controlled by the people is the responsibility of occupying government, and
as soon as this is done it must withdraw. Plans for fifty-year occupations have been mentioned;
they must be defeated and dates for withdrawal set.
13. Economic Rehabilitation
The American government must increase its economic aid in the rehabilitation or development of
all countries accepting the principles of political freedom, irrespective of the economic direction
they choose for themselves in a free expression at the ballot box. Not only Europe but Asia, Africa
and Latin America are in need of U. S. assistance.
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION
Above all, it is essential that the United States use its great resources to hasten the world on the
road to democratic international organization. Even if any other power rejects the concept of a
world sovereignty and continues to assert the outmoded principle of individual national
sovereignty, the United States must continue to press toward the goal. It should invite all nations
that agree with the program described here to join in a close and effective organization, leaving the
door open to the others to participate at a later date.
In 1948, the American people will decide their course. A spirit of defeatism now will result only in
defeat. A willingness to vote for your convictions and hopes can start America and the world on
the road to peace, to freedom and to plenty.
PREAMBLE
Mankind is haunted by new fears. In the crowded metropolis and on the distant farm, men ask
uprooted.
Starvation stalks much of the world, and in our own land men dread the insecurity that tomorrow
may bring. While millions go in rags, the world's looms are again knitting the uniforms that will
shroud new victims to be offered on the altars of nationalism, imperialism and tyranny.
In 1948, we face the elemental question of survival. The atomic revolution has burst upon the
world and a new unity has been forged among the human race: men who have refused to be
brothers one of another may now become children of a common doom.
. . . Unless we learn to reorganize our society for survival and not for mutual extinction;
. . . Unless we learn new techniques of cooperation to replace the old policies of competition;
. . . Unless we move rapidly toward socialization by which alone the individual can be preserved in
the inter-dependent world of the turbine, the plane, the steel mill and the uranium pile;
. . . Unless we move rapidly to a world order without greed, profit and hate.
The American people, because of the accidents of geography, will make the decision for mankind.
Our mines and factories were not devastated by the physical havoc of the last war. For America,
and consequently the world, it is not too late.
Three forces today are competing for the loyalty of men. And in this race, the stakes are the
survival of mankind.
On the one hand, an economic system calling itself "free enterprise" asserts that it can lead to the
salvation of humanity. It has brought us repeatedly to depressions and wars, yet its spokesmen in
the Democratic and Republican Parties still pretend they have solutions.
They have, in fact, betrayed the promises with which they woo the American people every four
years. They offered prosperity and delivered de¬pression. They pledged peace and delivered war.
They promised to increase our standard of living and are now raising the cost of living. They
promised freedom to organized labor and hobbled it with new bonds.
They have sought partisan advantage and jeopardized national welfare. The dominant wings in
their parties have combined to destroy price control and give us inflation, to undermine restraints
on greed and give us shortage, to favor the rich and deny the poor, to cut the taxes of the wealthy
and insult the common man with a crumb.
There is a second force in the world—which promises security and speaks of freedom but
de¬livers only economic bondage and dictatorship. It is the force of totalitarianism. Yesterday its
most sinister front was Fascism; today it is Communism.
In the United States, it marches under masked banners. It calls itself a "new party" and has pushed
into the forefront well-meaning liberals who do not know the purposes of their Communist allies.
And this alliance, though speaking for civil liberties at home, defends the most powerful tyranny in
the modern world. It speaks of peace but is blind to the most aggressive imperialism of the present
day. It speaks of one world but works for two spheres of influence. It urges the brotherhood of
man but sanctifies the divisive principle of national sovereignty.
As against these forces, the Socialist Party of the United States speaks for the Third Force—
democratic socialism, the principles of democratic planning and international order. This socialist
program for the United States today includes these major goals:
BASIC SOCIALIST DEMANDS
1. The natural resources of the nation—minerals, oil, electric and atomic power—are the property
of the people. Their preservation for future generations and their management by the people for
social purposes can be achieved democratically under socialism.
2. The basic industries, public utilities, banking and credit institutions—all the economic facilities
needed for the satisfaction of the fundamental requirements of the people—must be socially owned
and democratically managed.
3. Socialism will democratize the economic life of the nation by the joint representation of workers,
the working management and the consuming public, in the management of socialized enterprises;
by the guarantee of popular control of enterprise through the maximum decentralization
economically feasible and the use of various types of organization, particularly the public
corporation and the voluntary cooperative; and by the preservation of the freedom of labor
organization and of consumer choice.
With such control we can have democratic planning. The lessons of the last war have taught that
only by planning, by large-scale government investment, by decisive national action, can
production be increased to meet the goals set by the nation. In place of the destructive ends sought
in wartime, the nation must now fix its peacetime goals—food for the ill-fed, clothing for the ill-
clothed, homes for the ill-housed.
A nation that could fill the skies with planes and the oceans with warships can fill its streets and
avenues with homes, schools and hospitals; swell its granaries and storehouses; bring joy to its
people and the world. In the light of this Socialist program for democratic planning, we offer this
platform to the American people in the 1948 elections. It can be achieved.
DOMESTIC PROGRAM
1. Raise the Standard of Living
It must be the constant task of the nation to raise the standard of living of its people. This can be
effected only by a continually rising trend in production and wage levels, the stabilization of prices,
and the immediate elimination of profits as the determining factor in production. In a period of
inflation wage increases without price controls are delusions.
2. Expand the Productive Facilities of the Nation
The American standard of living and the needs of world economic rehabilitation make it essential
that our national production be rapidly expanded. An economy based on profit will not expand so
long as scarcity is profitable and inflation an easy road to gain.
The Socialist Party calls for government action to assure investment in new plant capacity through
the establishment of public corporations for the production of ever-mounting quantities of steel, oil
and other raw materials, and the utilization of the nation's water resources for the development of
cheaper and more abundant electric power. A far-flung program of Tennessee Valley
Administrations, Missouri Valley Administrations and Rural Electrification Administration
cooperatives can effect the electrification of whole areas that are lagging far behind their
agricultural and industrial potential. Only by planned growth in our national output of civilian goods
can we end the menace of inflation, which is now dangerously in¬creased by our enormous
expenditures on arms.
3. Expand Social Legislation
The intricacies of twentieth century living and the potentialities of modem technology have at last
made it possible to guarantee a national minimum standard of living for the population. The
Socialist Party advocates:
a. Expansion of unemployment insurance and social security. Millions of workers are as yet
uncovered by the unemployment and social security provisions. The present law discriminates
against farm labor, domestic servants and other working groups despite the constitutional
guarantee of the "equal protection of the laws." Even so, the Democratic-Republican coalition in
Congress has been whittling down the number of workers protected by the existing law at a time
when ex¬tension of coverage should be the order of the day.
The age at which workers become eligible for old age pensions should be promptly reduced to 60,
and the system should be financed by net progressive income taxation rather than by the regressive
payroll tax. The benefits—now drastically cut by the current inflation—should be raised.
The Social Security law should be amended to include family allowances. The proper care of
children is at least as important as the care of the aged.
b. Minimum Wage. The present legal mini¬mum wage under the Wage-Hour Law should be
immediately raised to the 75 cents an hour demanded by organized labor, with progressive
in¬creases to occur periodically.
The number of employees protected by the Act must be increased by a redefinition of coverage,
and the present reactionary drive to reduce the coverage must be defeated.
c. Health services. Legislation for comprehensive medical and hospital care, financed by a national
contributory system of health insurance, must be enacted by Congress. The Democratic-
Republican coalition has successfully blocked the health insurance bill. In contrast, the Taft health
bill will not provide comprehensive medical care nor remove the economic barriers now depriving
millions of proper medical service.
Only a national health insurance program can guarantee free access to medical care, freedom of
doctors' choice and freedom for the medical profession within a framework of public responsibility.
Neither a fee-for-service system nor voluntary prepayment plans can bring the benefits of modern
medical science to all the people, regardless of race, color, creed, geography or economic
condition.
Federal tax funds should be used to supplement an insurance program in creating a fully rounded
national health service.
Public health services must be increased; the construction of new hospitals and clinics must be
pushed. Federal action must be taken to stimulate research and public preventive medicine in
cancer, heart diseases, mental illness, alcoholism and other ailments, as was done in the field of
atomic fission. The maternal and child services provided by the Social Security Act must be
extended.
d. Education. It is a national disgrace that the richest nation in the world does not have the best
possible educational program from the nursery school to the university. America has subjected its
children and youth to a shameful chronic emergency in this field. Higher standards of teacher
training, enlarged and improved facilities, curricula better designed to meet pupil needs, adequate
salaries, attractive conditions for superior professional work—all require that Federal contributions
to public education be vastly multiplied without reducing local community initiative and existing
State responsibilities.
At the same time, legislative efforts to divert public funds to private sectarian schools must be
defeated. The principle of separation of church and state must be consistently applied in the use of
public educational funds.
We propose passage of State and Federal laws aimed at eliminating racial, cultural and religious
discrimination and segregation in education.
e. Veterans. Because of the special hardships war worked upon the veterans and conscientious
objectors, we favor legislation to provide them substantial and adequate benefits in the form of
education, medical care and loans; and full care for the families of those who did not return. We
demand immediate steps to end the vicious discrimination and outright fraud now being practiced
against Negro, Nisei, Spanish- or Mexican-American veterans by prejudiced local employees of
the Veterans Administration, particularly in the South and Southwest.
4. Expand the Nations Housing Facilities
Private enterprise has failed dismally to meet the challenge of housing the American people. Its
boast that the lifting of controls on new construction would stimulate large-scale building has
proved hollow. The lower income groups most desperately in need of housing, the young people—
particularly our veterans—and the inhabitants of our ever-growing slums, are not in a position to
buy or rent the facilities that private contractors are willing or able to erect.
The Taft-Ellender-Wagner Bill should be passed—but only as the merest fraction of a beginning,
precisely because its major reliance is on the private construction industry.
The Socialist Party proposes the creation of a Home Loan Bank to finance the purchase of homes,
a Public Supply and Fabricating Corporation to set up factory units needed to produce materials
and to develop large-scale prefabricated housing; the expansion of public housing activities in the
field of low-income multiple dwellings; the expansion of publicly built, cooperative tenant-operated
housing; the integration of national and local housing plans, including revision of municipal building
codes; the development of a government program of bona fide collective bargaining with the
building and construction unions, providing for a guaranteed annual wage to remove one of the
worst evils of the building industry and for the development of apprentice-training programs.
We favor the extension and strengthening of rent control for the duration of the housing
emergency. The people of America must call to account those legislators who are destroying rent
controls, permitting eviction of tenants by subterfuge and so contributing to disastrous inflation in
the field of housing.
5. Protect the Nation's Title to Atomic Energy Pending Internationalization
The United States has made a good beginning in reserving to the nation, rather than ceding to
business, the ownership of atomic energy. But this principle is already being undermined by cost-
plus contracts, granted to private corporations to exploit this new storehouse of power for profit
as coal, oil and other resources have been in the past. Nuclear fission was not the product of
private enterprise. It was financed by the nation and was achieved by cooperative scientific effort
operating in complete disregard of the profit motive. As the peace-time uses of atomic energy
begin to emerge, it becomes increasingly important that the constructive applications of atomic
power be utilized only through non-profit public corporations.
6. Strengthen Civil and Political Liberties
Civil and political liberties are in serious danger today. The Socialist Party calls for greater
vigilance and specifically demands:
a. Repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act which undermines the right to strike, the right to organize, the
right to sign contracts guaranteeing union security and furthering the economic interests of
organized workers; and which permits the power of the state to be used in behalf of employers
and against workers with just grievances. The Socialist Party pledges its full support to organized
labor in its effort to repeal the Taft-Hartley Act and similar state laws.
b. Elimination of the Committee on Un-American Activities which has pursued the dis¬honest
tradition of the Dies Committee. The Committee has abused the legitimate democratic function of
Congress to investigate and collect data on matters of national importance.
c. Defeat of any legislation that would force the Communist Party further underground and that
would appear to give moral justification to its conspiratorial policies. The right to free expression of
political views must not be impaired. But the existing laws against overt acts should be vigorously
enforced.
d. Elimination of poll taxes and opening of the ballot to citizens regardless of income.
e. Full amnesty and restoration of civil rights for war objectors, several hundred of whom are still
in prison and thousands of whom have lost citizenship.
7. Establish Racial Equality
Democracy cannot tolerate two classes of citizenship. Complete political economic and social
equality, regardless of race, religion or national origin must be established.
a. Segregation must be abolished in the armed forces, in all public institutions and in housing.
b. Legislation for a Fair Employment Practices Committee, long overdue, should be passed.
c. Anti-lynching legislation must be enacted to wipe out the worst blot on the American scene.
d. Naturalization rights should be granted to Japanese immigrants who have demonstrated their
loyalty, and indemnification should be given to Japanese immigrants and their American
descend¬ants who suffered property losses because of government policy during World War II.
e. All forms of discriminating barriers against immigration on grounds of race, color or national
origin must be abolished.
f. Guarantee the right to vote to many citizens now robbed of suffrage. The 14th Amendment of
the Constitution, depriving states of representation in Congress in proportion to the number of
citizens deprived of the right to vote by virtue of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,
should be promptly enforced.
8. Safeguard American Agriculture
The Socialist Party opposes the absentee ownership of farms and its attendant tenancy in America.
We reaffirm our position that occupancy and use should be the only rightful title to farm¬land.
Where conditions favor family farming, the security of such farmers should be strengthened through
cooperative credit purchasing and marketing, aided by government financing. Where modern
techniques and specialization require large-scale farm enterprises, we call for social ownership and
cooperative operation to replace the corporation farm which threatens both the security and
freedom of farm workers.
We disapprove of the New Deal idea of agricultural scarcity, aimed at keeping prices up by
limiting production. Our domestic needs and those of the world require an agricultural program
based on maximum production.
We urge the continuation and expansion of the present conservation program to check destruction
by floods, erosion of topsoil and depletion of farm fertility. Our obligation to our grandchildren
demands a greater concern with the heritage we leave in productive farmland.
The proper distribution and marketing of food and fiber does not require gambling. Our present
Board of Trade pricing of farm produce, with its poker game practices of buying on futures, must
be ended.
9. Establish a Progressive Tax System
The Tax Law of 1948 is legislation for the direct and immediate benefit of the wealthiest group in
the country. Their taxes have been drastically lowered without any real assurance that
corresponding economic benefits in the form of additional equity capital for new production will
result. The tax reduction for those in the lower income brackets is petty, and will disappear
altogether after November if a Democratic or Re¬publican Congress is elected.
We Propose:
a. Raising the present exemption levels to equal the amounts necessary to sustain minimum
standards of living.
b. Restoring the earned Income Credit in such form that it grants a tax benefit (with an appropriate
maximum) to income from wages and salary in contrast to income from investment.
c. Tightening of the provisions of the Estate Tax section of the Internal Revenue Code by
increasing the rates, lowering the exemption and plugging the loop-holes by which inherited wealth
can be passed on for two and sometimes more generations, by means of trusts, without paying
succession taxes. Corresponding changes must be made in the Gift Tax section.
d. Modification of the Internal Revenue Code's favored treatment of speculative and gambling
profits, and encouragement of new equity capital for production by revision of the treatment of
Capital Assets.
e. Financing of extraordinary government expenses through a capital levy, especially on the
increase in private capital since 1939, so that those who benefited directly from World War II will
bear the burden of the nation's war deficit.
f. We condemn the fraudulent Joint-return pro¬vision of the new tax law as a device which
enables the wealthy to minimize their share of the tax burden.
10. Financing the Socialist Program
The American people will be told that it is impossible to finance this program for economic
security. The cost of World War II to the American people was some 350 billion dollars. It is
fantastic to assert that we cannot afford to devote a fraction of that sum to the peace and
happiness of the nation. On the basis of the program submitted to Congress by the Armed Forces,
it is apparent that our military budget alone in 1952 will equal the present total national budget. The
path to plenty lies in expanding our production and in reallocating our budget in the service of life
and peace.
FOREIGN POLICY
Victory by the U. S. and its allies in two world wars has not established justice or peace. A third
world war fought with atom bombs and bacteria will complete the ruin of mankind.
The major, but by no means the only threat of war, lies in the aggression of the Soviet empire and
the international communist movement. That aggression has been invited and encouraged by the
blunders of American policy from the Cairo and Teheran through the Yalta and Potsdam
conferences. Disregard for those principles of peace which the Socialist Party has steadily urged
since the campaign of 1944 has contributed directly to the present crisis. The problem of peace
cannot be solved by any attainable superiority of American military might. The bi-partisan effort in
Washington to achieve such superiority and the hysteria which accompanies it make war more
likely, and threaten our internal democracy with a dangerous American militarism.
The road to peace lies neither through the policy of appeasement laid down at Yalta and now
supported by Henry Wallace, nor through the confused military commitments of the Truman
doctrine. Neither of these contradictory policies can defeat international communism or the
conditions that breed it.
A far better approach is the European Economic Recovery Program. It is a significant recognition
that cooperative economic action must be taken if the European continent is not to pass into chaos
and so into communist hands. But the helpful economic cooperation necessary to peace cannot be
confined to Western Europe. In Europe itself vigilance is necessary lest the Recovery Program be
subverted into an attempt to re-establish capitalist reaction or fascism, or to promote an American
economic imperialism.
In addition to the proper conduct of the ERP a policy looking to the winning of lasting peace must
include the following proposals:
1. Conscription
The representatives of the United States should immediately propose to the United Nations that
peacetime conscription be outlawed by all nations. We are opposed to all forms of peacetime
conscription in the U. S. Conscription contributed greatly to the growth of totalitarianism in Europe
and has been sharply criticized as unnecessary even from the military standpoint.
2. Disarmament
The United States should propose the rigid limitation and international control of all armaments, to
be followed by universal—not unilateral —disarmament; all such measures to be accompanied by
the unlimited right of inspection through an authorized agency of the United Nations. The principle
of unlimited international inspection must be recognized as a fundamental safeguard of world
security.
3. World Government
The achievement of true democratic federal world government is the ultimate structure of peace.
The U. N. as we have repeatedly pointed out is not by its nature such a government. Yet in the
critical years before us it may serve a great interim usefulness if its constructive agencies are
strengthened and if it is given power to deal with aggression by abolition of the veto in the Security
Council. To the rapid achievement of these ends the Socialist Party pledges itself.
4. Atomic Control
The United States should renew its efforts for United Nations adoption of the Majority Plan,
based on the Baruch proposals; a campaign of unceasing world education on the contents of the
plan should be launched immediately; and mean¬while production of atomic bombs should be
halted.
5. Raw Materials
All peoples of the world must be assured access to the raw materials now controlled by
international, private, and state monopolies. For this, the area of operation of the world Food and
Agriculture Organization, in cooperation with the International Trade Organization where
necessary, must be extended. At the same time, world planning is necessary to allocate materials in
short supply on the basis of need. World production must be planned to meet the needs of world,
not national, markets.
6. International Waterways
The United States should offer to join in the internationalization and demilitarization of the strategic
waterways of the world, e.g. Panama, Suez, the Danube, the Dardanelles, Gibraltar, the Baltic, the
Black Sea, the Arctic, etc., as part of the general program of world disarmament.
7. Police Force
The organization of world peace requires the existence of an international police or security
force. Along with the principle of unlimited inter¬national inspection, an international police force is
indispensable for the solution of such problems as Palestine, Kashmir, and other crises which may
arise.
8. Colonialism
The United States should urge immediate action to begin the permanent liquidation of all
colonial¬ism—whether resting on military might, economic domination or political infiltration. The
United Nations should establish commissions to supervise an early transition to self-government.
9. Trade Barriers
The United States should support all efforts to establish customs unions as a first step in the
direction of a world-wide outlawry of trade barriers.
10. Refugees
The United States, whose greatness has been built by the creativity of generations of immigrants
from all parts of the world, must open its doors to those displaced persons who have no home. At
the very least, 400,000 such persons can be admitted under unused immigration quotas from the
war years. Full support for the Inter¬national Refugee Organization is essential as long as the
present emergency exists, but the goal must be the free and unrestricted movement of peoples,
according to their own choice, throughout the world.
11. Palestine
The present disastrous situation has been precipitated by the monstrous Nazi terror, conflicting
promises to Jews and Arabs, and repeated betrayal of a pledged word. It is now the duty of the
United Nations, with the wholehearted support of the United States, to establish order, to
guarantee to the Jewish community in Palestine full self-government, and to protect the right of
immigration since it has not reached a saturation point. Whether the political structure necessary to
establish these rights is partition or a federation of cantons somewhat on the Swiss model, the civil
rights of minorities must be preserved within each district. In no event can immigration into
Palestine be considered a complete and adequate answer to the problem of anti-semitism. Every
country must be made a desirable homeland for those who live in it, regardless of race, creed or
color.
12. Occupied Countries
Military occupation of conquered peoples is by nature inimical to democracy. American armies are
now in occupation in Germany, Japan, Korea and various island outposts. Any attempts to use
such occupation for economic advantage to American businessmen or for strategic military moves
and counter-moves must be defeated. The encouragement of democratic self-government and
functioning economies controlled by the people is the responsibility of occupying government, and
as soon as this is done it must withdraw. Plans for fifty-year occupations have been mentioned;
they must be defeated and dates for withdrawal set.
13. Economic Rehabilitation
The American government must increase its economic aid in the rehabilitation or development of
all countries accepting the principles of political freedom, irrespective of the economic direction
they choose for themselves in a free expression at the ballot box. Not only Europe but Asia, Africa
and Latin America are in need of U. S. assistance.
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION
Above all, it is essential that the United States use its great resources to hasten the world on the
road to democratic international organization. Even if any other power rejects the concept of a
world sovereignty and continues to assert the outmoded principle of individual national
sovereignty, the United States must continue to press toward the goal. It should invite all nations
that agree with the program described here to join in a close and effective organization, leaving the
door open to the others to participate at a later date.
In 1948, the American people will decide their course. A spirit of defeatism now will result only in
defeat. A willingness to vote for your convictions and hopes can start America and the world on
the road to peace, to freedom and to plenty.
