Socialism is first of all a political movement of the working class, clearly defined and uncompromising, which aims at the overthrow of the prevailing capitalist system by securing control of the national government and by the exercise of the public powers, supplanting the existing capitalist class government with socialist administration - that is to say, changing a republic in name into a republic in fact. The present system of private ownership must be abolished and the workers themselves must be made the owners of the tools with which they work, and to accomplish this they must organize their class for political action and this work is already well under way in the socialist party, which is composed of the working class and stands for the working class on a revolutionary platform which declares in favor of the collective ownership of the means of production and the democratic management of industry in the interest of the whole people. -- Eugene V. Debs (Unionism and Socialism, 1904)
