Who are the revolutionaries?

Maximising profit and maintaining social control are the two priority tasks of the ruling class. Centuries of struggle and sacrifice were required to wrest the vote from the clutches of the landed gentry and the big business bosses and to place it in the hands of workers. It has now become fashionable amongst so-called socialists to denounce democracy, parliamentarism and democratic forms of government as obsolete. All manner of schemes for the“reform” of the democratic machine has been devised to not simply supplement but instead to supersede Parliament. Yet it has been the abuse and not the use of its power that has been responsible for the faults of parliamentarianism. The political ignorance of working men and women forged their own chains and they have been the unconscious authors of their own misery.


Workers fall victim of the false promises of the capitalist parties and their campaign publicists and lobbyists who snare the votes of deluded and unthinking workers. Professional politicians of whatever party are very much alike and they all serve the interests of their masters. Their stock in trade is the credulity of the masses. Capitalist parties stand for the capitalist system, and such differences as there are amongst them involve no principle but are just the outcome of the differing interests and policies of the various large and small capitalists.The politicians play one section of society off against the other and playing upon prejudice is the rule that governs their campaigns for votes among the workers. The competition for the votes of the wage-workers is the distinguishing feature of every election campaign. The supposed party of the “common people”, the Labour Party, long ago adopted policies that served employers and not the employee. There are no longer any distinctly different political parties. These have all merged in the same party and it is the Capitalist Party, by whatever name it may be known.

 At each and every election members of the working class are voting in their enemies. The mainstream political parties reek with corruption in their servility to the capitalist class, torn with strife in their mad scramble for the spoils of office. Political schemers and opportunists will turn parties to their personal ends to satisfy their egotistical lust to be hero-worshipped. Political posers will stand upon the shoulders of workers imagining their towering position is the result of their innate ability as they call to the rest of us to see what great men they are. A mistaken belief in the need for leaders emasculates the workers own confidence in themselves.

Election platforms and programmes are filled with empty platitudes and meaningless phrases, but they are discreetly silent about the millions of unemployed, about the starvation wages of factory slaves, about the women and children who are crushed, debased and slowly tormented to death by capitalism, about the bitter poverty of people and their hopeless future, and about every other vital question which is worthy of an instant's consideration by any intelligent human being. The capitalist parties are without principles and without ideals. Wage-slavery, the legalised robbery of workers, is never mentioned, much less acted upon.

Socialism is not reform, it is a revolution. When the word “revolution” is spoken people think of violence and of bloodshed. Therefore to use the term without explanation is to risk getting seriously misunderstood. The Socialist Party would regard it a calamity to the socialist cause, as well as to humanity, to have a violent upheaval in society. The campaign of the Socialist Party is essentially educational; an appeal to intelligence and reason. It may well happen that in the future we could see violence and civil war, but if such should be the case it would not be the result of the socialists, but rather the result of the refusal of the ruling class to accept socialism. For socialism offers a possible peaceful solution by a willing majority. .

Whoever holds firmly to the necessity of the organisation of the working class into an independent political party, distinct from and opposed to all pro-capitalist parties to capture the powers of government” in order to carry out the principles of socialism is a revolutionary.

“Those who repudiate political revolution as the principle means of social transformation, or wish to confine this to such measures as have been granted by the ruling class are social reformers, no matter how much their social ideas may antagonise existing social forms. ” - Karl Kautsky, The Social Revolution: