The Revolutionary Vote

If they won't vote for socialism, they won't die for it

The capitalist system fails to supply the needs of the vast majority of people and it must be overthrown before the workers can have freedom. The ruling class is never going to solve its problems through the capitalist system, therefore, the objective conditions for revolution are going to crop up over and over again. But there is considerable difference of opinions as to the means by which this can be accomplished. Some advocate the ballot, or parliamentary action; some armed insurrection, or military action; and some the general strike, or industrial action.

Armed insurrection to have any reasonable chance of success the workers would need to have as large and well equipped an army as the capitalists. Yet the working class are unarmed and most unskilled in the use of weapons. They have no military organisation. They have no means of securing arms. An untrained, undisciplined and badly equipped army of workers going forth to overthrow the system might as well be committing suicide. As long as the means necessary to equip, supply, and transport armies remains in control of the capitalists, it is impossible for the workers to gain military power. The revolutionary army would be slaughtered like sheep. The best tactics on the part of the workers is to avoid armed insurrection unless it is actually forced upon them andworkers should beware of those who urge them to armed insurrection.


There are those who promote confrontation and urge that “We’ve got to fight them on the streets!” What they are looking for is a shortcut. They think that if the vanguard arms itself and takes on the power structure, then they can change society. But they’re not going to change it by themselves. You can’t change it without the people. And you certainly can’t change it against them. They are merely expressing their frustrations rather than have the patience and the understanding of the need to win people over, and involve them in the socialist movement. Even if a minority should manage, by violence, to take over power, this minority would the day after be brought down by the counter-attack of the forces of capitalism.

The general strike is present to be the cure-all that will overthrow the bourgeois society.The general strike will stop war or stop the welfare cuts. Theoretically capitalism could be overthrown peacefully and the revolution accomplished without bloodshed by industrial action. But such is not likely to be the case. When the capitalists feel their control slipping they will probably bring about an extensive shutdown of industry, a lock-out, and try to starve the workers into submission or goad them into premature uprising. An attempt at general strike would be condemned to failure, through working-class divisions. Strikes can only be successful under certain definite conditions and with certain definite objects. A peaceful universal strike is hopeless, since hunger of the strikers first of all would compel their capitulation, while a violent strike would be mercilessly suppressed by the ruling class. An effective successful general strike presupposes an effective economic and political organisation of the working class. So long as strong organisations do not exist the general strike is doomed to failure. An unorganised general strike would simply be an opportunity for the bourgeoisie to suppress the strikers through force of arms and destroy the work of generations.

The Socialist Party believes we can win a majority of the people in this country to support a change in the system. Many people have a stereotyped picture of what a revolution is like. What they do is they confuse revolution with insurrection. The vote is revolutionary when a political party and its candidates organises labour against capital as a class. Parliamentary action, however peaceful it may be, is revolutionary when it calls out to the discontented in the work-place. The class struggle in the factory and on the industrial field must be fought out at the ballot box. The role of the Socialist Party is to avoid as all snares that would benefit our class enemy, which would uselessly exhaust our resources. Instead we will use parliament, as we use the press and the meetings, in order to complete the education and organisation of the working class and to bring to a conclusion the revolution.

The Socialist Party carries out the struggle on to the political field in order to challenge the power which the present ruling class wields through its control of the State which it wins at the ballot box. By its victory at the ballot box, and its consequent political domination, the capitalists are able to subjugate labour through the state ministries and departments which determine industrial conditions. These State departments are in the hands of unsympathetic bureaucrats and civil servants who are appointed by our masters. They often have no direct connection with industry and are unable to understand working-class problems. Being appointed by the capitalist class the bureaucrats can only maintain their jobs by serving those who control them. The destruction of bureaucracy can be solved if the revolutionary industrially organised workers defeat their masters at the ballot box.

We are convinced that the present political State, with most of its institutions, must be swept away. The political State is not and cannot be a true democracy. It is not elected according to the industrial and social wants of the community. It is elected because the wealthiest section of society can suppress facts through its power over the press. By its money the capitalists can buy up the media and these trump up false election issues. The electorate is not asked to vote upon facts but only upon such topics as the TV and press, representing capital, puts before the workers. The political issue confronting the working class is the preservation of civil liberties and the destruction of the political State. All other questions, such as EU membership are merely traps to catch the unwary workers and to persuade them to vote to preserve capitalism.

We cannot build up our industrial muscle and leave political control in the hands of the ruling class. We have seen what power the conquest of the State gives to capital in its struggle with labour. It is through its political strength that the capitalists can deprive us of civil liberty the loss of which would make the peaceful agitation for the revolution impossible. The maintenance of civil liberty is part of the political struggle of revolutionary labour.

The more powerful the socialist movement becomes so the capitalist will resort to the use of force and other violent methods of suppression. The control of these forces flow directly from capital’s control of the State which it secures by elections. Therefore, in order to achieve a peaceful revolution. workers must capture the powers of the State and prevent the capitalist class from using the nation’s trained military against the emerging socialist movement. This function is the revolutionary role of political action and is necessary in order that the constructive element in the revolution may not be thwarted.

The Socialist Party is a revolutionary political organisation and advocates revolutionary political action. It urges the workers to use their votes to capture political power— not to play at politicians or pose as statesmen, but to use their votes to uproot the political State and to hand to the working class the constructive task of building up the administration of socialism. To think that Parliament can be used as the means of permanently improving the conditions of Labour, by passing a series of acts, is to believe in parliamentarism. The Socialist Party is not a parliamentary party. It believes in entering Parliament only as a means of sweeping away all antiquated institutions which stand in the way of the working class owning and controlling the means of production. Elections affords the workers the opportunity of overthrowing all political institutions standing in the way of their emancipation.

We cannot bring about the transformation of the means of production into the possession of society without coming into possession of the political power. To turn this battle of the working class into a conscious and united movement, and to point out its natural and necessary goal, is the task of the Socialist Party.We do not dismiss the power of the General Strike but it is a weapon of last resort to warn the ruling class that if they dare to touch universal suffrage and its mandates, then the economically organised workers will set their economic power in motion to prevent any such an infringement on civil liberty. For when the suffrage is threatened, the right of unions are equally endangered.