Revolutionary politics

The working class has a great responsibility and a great mission: to carry out a revolution which, once victorious, will be like lifting a giant bone-crushing burden off the backs of the people of the whole world. The international working class can emancipate itself only by emancipating all humanity; it can achieve socialism only by eliminating the rule of capital,breaking the chains of exploitation and ending the class-divided society everywhere. The struggle against the capitalist class is a struggle against all who live by the labour of others, and against all exploitation. It can only end in the seizing of power by the working class, and the transferal of all land, instruments, factories, machines and mines to the whole of society for the organization of social production under which all that is produced by the workers and all improvements of production must benefit the working people themselves. The socialist revolution is to create a society where the wealth is produced not for money-sale but for the direct satisfaction of the needs of the whole community which involves a complete change in every detail of social life. It is the reason why the Socialist Party say that the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself. At every stage it will require understanding, judgment, discernment, sympathy, and the goodwill of the working class. The socialist revolution is the most profound of all revolutions in history. It initiates changes more rapid and far-reaching than any in the whole experience of mankind.  It cannot be done by legislative decrees.

Belief this can be accomplished by evolution, the gradual and painless tactics of small reforms, is an illusion. The so-called Labour governments are only a part of the capitalist strategy in concealing these facts from the workers. To the socialist, whose objective is the Social Revolution – the abolition of capitalism and wage slavery – and the emancipation of the working class, the end is everything but so are the means. Parliament is not the only means. In democratic countries we use parliamentarism, because it is there to use. But in doing so the imperative object is to win the people to socialism – to make socialists, in short – and to organise the working class for the social revolution. That being so, the winning seats in any election is of secondary importance. What is important is to win votes – not merely as votes, but as evidence of the growing strength of the movement. Parliamentarism is simply a means to the end, and that the means must always be subservient to the end. Socialists do not campaign only the abolition of the monarchy and of the House of Lords, but the abolition of the House of Commons likewise.

The Socialist Party has not wish in any way to decry or to condemn parliamentary action, but simply to place it in its proper perspective. If acquiring MPs is to be an end in itself, and not a means to an end; if it is simply to mean a conservation of existing conditions, and a co-operation with other classes to make those conditions tolerable, it is scarcely likely to inspire in the working class. The Socialist Party enters into politics hostile to all other parties and to the existing regime. It regards the present class society as only a passing phase in social development, and works to hasten its destruction. Its objective is not the maintenance or the palliation of existing conditions but their termination by the abolition of class domination and the emancipation of the working class.

The Socialist Party is often criticised because  a list of “immediate” demands fail to appear on our election manifestoes. The overthrow of capitalism, that is a DEMAND, it is THE demand and it is our IMMEDIATE demand. Anything less than demanding the goal, will lead to a reform demand being confused with the goal itself. A political party that sets up “immediate” demands blurs its goal.

It is to workers of all countries, that we address ourselves. The objective conditions, in the shape of scientific knowledge and the means of creating material wealth, are already at hand in sufficient measure to do away with shortages and deprivation. It is now capitalism that stands as the great barrier to social progress. Socialism releases the productive forces to provide plenty for all. The utopians have speculated about and planned ideal worlds and they sensed mankind’s capacity for a higher social life. Socialism is now a reality and a possibility. In a socialist society  technology will be used on the broadest scale possible to produce the necessities of life in the great industries, transport systems and communication services. It would be the sheerest nonsense and quite impossible not to take advantage of every labour-saving device. But socialists  will also be artistic. Where the creative impulses of the people are not checked by poverty and slavery, where the arts and sciences are not hamstrung by the profit-making motive, where we are not poisoned by anti-social codes of morals and ethics, and where every assistance of the free community is given to the maximum cultivation of the intellectual and artistic powers of everyone —we need not fear that socialism will turn us into robots.

The majority of the workers at present “believe in” Parliament and see the necessity for the disciplined, planned and purposeful struggle which will be necessary if they are ever to be freed. In other words, we count heads instead of breaking them.  The Socialist Party holds that in the workers’ march to emancipation Parliament must be treated as an enemy castle to be taken and dismantled. The hundreds of millions of workers s, striking off their age-old chains of wage-slavery, will construct a society of liberty and prosperity. Socialism will inaugurate a new era for the human race, the building of a new world.