Our Purpose

We live in capitalism where the world has been divided and the working class is oppressed and exploited. There is no escape from the problems of our time. We cannot remain inactive about issues which affect our daily lives.

 The creators of all wealth, workers; obtain in wages only the minimum necessary to live and raise children so that capitalism has a steady supply of labour-power. All means of production, whether factories, machines or mines, are owned by the capitalist class. Workers possess only their own labour-power which they must sell in order to live. Capitalist society is 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. Put to work on average in half the working week, it produces values sufficient to cover wages to maintain a worker and family. The value produced in the remainder of the working week constitutes surplus value, the source of profit. The commodities produced by workers’ socialised labour are privately appropriated by capitalists. They will continue to be produced so long as they can be sold for profit on the market. This factor is the cause of the alternating cycle of boom or crisis of capitalism.

Simply stated, the working class (or proletariat) is defined as all those who:
1) Do not own the means of production;
2) Have to sell their labour-power to the capitalist class to make a living;
3) Directly, or indirectly, create surplus value...

Which is expropriated by the capitalist class and this exploitation, or expropriation of surplus value, creates a struggle for supremacy. The working class is not a small, narrow class. They  constitute the majority of the population. The working class is composed of the industrial workers, agricultural workers, and non-production workers such as clerical, transportation and service workers.

It is inevitable that sooner or later these social conditions will impel people to organise to end the conflict between the socialised labour process and private ownership of the decisive means of production, the big factories, mines and corporate farms by the establishment of socialism. With socialism, production takes place for people’s use. The class interest of the workers is to eliminate capitalism entirely and to build a socialist society. We live in a world dominated by capitalism, a system which allows a small minority of capitalists to oppress and exploit the great majority of mankind. Either we get rid of this decrepit system or it will devastate humanity.

The only viable way forward is  to achieve socialism, a classless and stateless society on a world scale where people do not oppress and exploit each other and where we live in harmony with our natural environment.  To create a socialist world it is necessary to overthrow the rule of capitalism and this can be done only through revolution and establish socialism, a system of real, popular democracy that sets about the reconstruction of society. People know that capitalism is no good but few can see a way forward to a better type of society. It is essential to generate interest in this aim. It is through political action that we reach out with our message which is as Marx and Engels conceived: that the advent of classless society will be as the result of the real movement of self-organisation and self-emancipation of the vast majority. “The emancipation of the working class must be conquered by the working class themselves; proletarians of all countries unite!”

The Labour Party is committed to make capitalism work indefinitely. The great majority of its leaders don’t believe socialism is coming and cling with blind faith to capitalism, hoping against hope that something is just round the corner waiting. “Let us not talk about the socialist revolution–the working class is not ready for socialism”. “Let us not act or talk in a manner that is revolutionary; above all, let us not provoke. Let us become respectable.” “Resurrect the Labour Party of 1945!” Labour leaders because they lack faith in their own cause spread their pessimism like a poison into the workers themselves. They do not see a revolutionary transformation of society as the way to solve the problems capitalism has shown itself incapable of solving. They do not want power to pass from the existing state to the workers to dispossess the capitalist class and create a classless society.

 Described in a variety of ways, the Labour politician advocates some form or other of “people’s capitalism” (before we were all share-holders, now we are stake-holders). With such reasoning accepted, the socialist struggle of the working class for the abolition of the capitalist system can be postponed until “tomorrow and tomorrow”. Yet, whatever version of “peoples capitalism" is on offer, capitalism remains essentially what it has been from birth: a system of exploitation of the many for the enrichment and aggrandisement of the few. The fact, also, is that the exploited and the oppressed have rebelled, are rebelling and will rebel against their unbearable conditions, whatever the politicians might think and predict about their chances of success. The duty of every socialist, of every man and woman who loves humanity, is to fight with them and try and increase to the utmost their lucidity and chances of success. Calls for unity of the Left ignores the fundamental conflict between capitalism and socialism, obscure the difference between reformist politics and class struggle and has led to abandonment of a Marxist standpoint as the price of winning recognition and becoming respectable.

A workers’ party is either a pro-capitalist party or it is a socialist party. It is the one or the other. It cannot be both. We all know that the division of society, and that today it consists mainly of two economic classes, the capitalist class upon the one hand and upon the other, the working class; and these two classes, whether you admit it or not, are pitted against each other. These two classes can never be permanently harmonized or reconciled. It is called the class struggle. Political parties are the product of the class struggle. In a classless society which has rid itself of the remnants of class interests  there will be no political parties. They will be unnecessary. But we have not yet reached the classless society.

If workers find it necessary to unite upon the industrial field, to unite and strike together, how can they consistently fight each other at the ballot box? Politics is simply the expression in political terms of the economic interests of certain groups or classes. The bosses realise this fact and they are in politics to protect their interests. They are deeply involved in the stinking depths of “practical” politics. The efforts of their retainers to appease and placate their pay-masters resulted in the main burden of the economic recession being placed upon the working class.

 The disillusioned and now often rebellious mass of the population had lost all faith in reforms but unfortunately have not so far progressed to call for the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of socialism. Nationalism or religion has instead been substituted for the united socialist struggle against the capitalist class. Rather than submit to the chauvinistic campaigns and seek scapegoats we shouldn’t view the world as a “have-not” world, but recognise the reality that natural resources and productive capacity flood the world with the products making it entirely self-sufficient. We shouldn’t accept racial prejudice and religious bigotry who scream about the menace of foreign immigration or the idle scroungers on welfare. In good times the capacity of reformist measures to give some relief to the miserable conditions of workers may have been  insufficient to solve the basic economic and social ills afflicting the great mass of the population but suffice to allay unrest and discontent. Accompanying a recession is the reduction of profits which prompts the political machines of the capitalist parties to withdraw patronage and protection and having made workers more vulnerable to their austerity policies, the blame has to be allotted elsewhere, those who are without an effective voice to protest and lack organisation to resist.