Life moves and changes. Marxist philosophy holds that the material world – matter – is primary. Ideas – consciousness – are the reflection of this objective reality. Marxism is a guide to action, based on practice. It recognises all things in nature and society as constantly coming into being and passing away. One social system grows into another. A new social order is in the making. We put Marx's concept of the association of free and equal producers to the forefront of our conception of socialism and the administration of economic life. This is the basic standpoint the Socialist Party of Great Britain. Our aim is a world where every region may have its own particular and distinct customs, but are still a part of a world-wide system, based upon a society where everyone owns and everyone has the equal right to control the natural wealth, the factories and plants in which this natural wealth is processed, and the transportation networks (such as roads and railways) and store-house and outlets centres where this wealth is distributed freely on the principle of to each according to needs.
The essence of the capitalist system is the ownership and control of the materials and machinery of production and distribution by a small class whose legal title to the industrial and commercial utilities and plants gives them control over the lives of the working majority. The workers suffer in a new form of slavery, wherein their labour power is paid for by wages, and their lives are dependent upon employment by some capitalist master. capitalist society characterised by production for profit. Profit is derived from unpaid labour time. Workers’ labour power is purchased on the market by the owners of capital and employment depends upon the production by the worker of a margin of value over and above what received for the labour power. The commodities produced by workers’ socialised labour are privately appropriated by the capitalists so long as they can be sold for profit on the market. The capitalist employer has no responsibility the wage-worker, except that of paying for the labour-power.
In capitalist society the state is sometimes democratic in appearance. The workers are permitted to take part in elections and seemingly the government is the expression of “the will of the people.” The capitalist government is none the less a class government, the organ of the capitalists for the control and coercion of the workers. Capitalist democracy with all its pretensions to equality, is merely a disguise for the rule of an oligarchy. So long as the capitalists dominates the power of the media, the pulpit, the schools and colleges; so long as millions of workers are subject to their propaganda, the capitalists can well afford to allow the workers the empty privilege of periodically voting to confirm their rule. It is the control of the state power where lies the strength of the capitalist class. This control places at its command the military, the police and the judges for the protection of its class interests. While this power remains in the hands of the capitalists the working class cannot achieve its emancipation.
The Socialist Party proposes to secure control of the capitalist state through electing a majority of the legislative and constitution-making bodies, to use the position thus achieved to transform capitalism. It proposes to capture political power through the popular suffrage, the power of the vote. Socialist delegates to Parliament will not introduce reform measures. They will make clear that such measures are of no fundamental significance to the working class. At best they are belated parliamentary acknowledgments of defensive gains won by the workers in their industrial struggles.
The Socialist Party rejects the conception, as advocated by the IWW and other syndicalists, that it is only by the industrial struggle in itself that are the means through which power can be transferred from the capitalists to the workers. The socialist revolution cannot be achieved by direct seizure of industry by the workers, without the workers first having conquered and captured the power of the State. We maintain that the class struggle is essentially a political struggle. (We, however, do acknowledge that industrial unionism offers more efficient methods of struggle than conventional trade unionism.)
The workers can become emancipated only when capitalist economic relationships are broken
and production is controlled by the workers and the community. The technology invented to serve humanity has become the instruments for enslavement of the producers. Socialism will release all the productive energies for the common welfare of all the people. Instead of profit for a few being the driving force of production the needs and enjoyments of the vast majority of people will be the motivation. The working class will have at its disposal all that civilisation can offer for the enhancement of individual and social life.
There is but one solution for the ills of capitalist society, but one way for the workers to achieve freedom and human life — the way of the Socialist Revolution.
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