For Ourselves

Marxists do not fall back upon what Marx said here or there, but apply his principles to each set of circumstances as it arises. “Thus spake Marx” is not the Marxist but the anti-Marxist method. No Marxist, therefore, attaches any importance to the clever method of quoting “Holy Scripture”. The method of Marx is to examine whether the issues in question are fighting in the interest of the wage-earning class.

The word  “socialism” still carries the distortions of those who usurped the term. There are people still fearful of the word. But anyone can see that huge numbers agree on what should be the fundamental elements of a decent society: guaranteed food, housing for all, medical care for everyone; bread and butter rather than guns and bombs; democratic control by all citizens; equal rights regardless of race, gender, and sexual orientations and  the rejection of war and violence as solutions to tyranny and injustice. We can now reintroduce the genuine meaning of “socialism” to a world feeling the destructive consequences of capitalism - nationalist hatred, perpetual war, riches for a few, and hunger, homelessness, insecurity for everyone else. Now is the time to recall that socialism is production for use instead of profit, a social and economic system for liberty and equality offering solidarity with all our brothers and sisters all over the world.

The aim of the Socialist Party can be described as the "liberated human being". Our task is not to convert the workers to socialism if conversion means manipulation to introduce consciousness into the working class. Our activity is to affect the practice of the workers, not just their thought, so they themselves begin to organise and take action, to take their own steps in their self-emancipation. Education without action is fruitless. We must get the people to act.

The capitalist class and the working-class stand openly opposed to each other. The class lines are clearly defined. There is no mistaking who is a capitalist and who is a worker, who is rich and who is poor, who has power and who is powerless. The capitalists are banded together in their Chambers of Commerce and trade associations. Working people are organised in our trade unions. Who can deny the existence of the class struggle? Social revolutions are not called into existence by organisations. Social revolutions are not the same as coups d’etat, mere alterations at the top of state and society. They alter the fundamental relations of people in social production, and they alter the very goals of that production. We may not be on the threshold of revolution, but the fact that the idea revolution simply refuses to go away even when we are not in a pre-revolutionary situation speaks volumes.

Working class self emancipation lies at the heart of socialism which teaches people to rely upon themselves, and upon themselves alone, and teaches them also that dependence upon forces outside themselves is emasculating in its tendency, and has been, and will ever be disastrous in its results. How long will it be until workers realise that the socialist movement is a movement of the working class as whole? Workers have to trust in their own power to achieve their own emancipation. If the class must rely on itself, it must be united. Hence its internationalism. Socialism from below can only be achieved if working people themselves inspire it, create, develop and strengthen it. Their own consciousness and self organisation is the only possible basis for socialism. Socialism must be democratic, involving the mass of workers in taking over and running society in their own interests, under their own control. Socialism from below is the only socialism worth fighting for. And, of course, it is the only realistic socialism. A weak working class looks to an agency outside and above them to solve their problems for them. We argued that socialism is not about a  leader or a vanguard party doing things on behalf of the masses. The agency for socialist change can only be the working class and not the existing state apparatus no matter how benevolent it may appear nor how dress up in the language of socialism the ‘progressive’ rhetoric may be.

Socialists strive for a world without exploitation or oppression, in which men and women developed their human potential as free individuals in a free society, without the distortion of money or state power. We support the liberation of humanity and hold that the working class will liberate itself. Socialists have no time for any centralised, hierarchial political organisation, operating behind the backs and over the heads of working people. We utterly oppose the idea of self-appointed leaders, regardless of how well-intentioned, setting up a strong state. The socialist movement is beyond the parties which want to lead. Social revolution – great masses of people in motion, in a spontaneous, forward movement – is not something that can be implemented from above.

The Socialist Party’s goal is to end the present system of capitalist ownership of the land and the means of producing wealth and substitute in its stead the common ownership and democratic control of these means of production. At a certain stage of development all human communities  had common ownership of land. Common property is the foundation of every early social organisation. Only by the rise and development of private property and the forms of rulership connected with it, has common property been abolished and usurped as private property, and as we have seen in history, not without severe struggles. The robbery of the land and its transformation into private property formed the first cause of oppression. This oppression has passed through all stages, from slavery to “free” wage-labour of the capitalist system. Now is the time for the oppressed to again convert the world’s wealth into common property.

In the present society people are haunted by insecurity. Their mental well-being is undermined by fear for their future and the future of their children. They are never free from fear that if something happens, if they have a sickness or an accident for which they are not responsible, the punishment will be visited upon their children; that their children will be deprived of an education and proper food and clothing. In the socialist society of shared abundance, this nightmare will be lifted from the minds of the people. They will be free from fear. The present over- crowded, soulless cities will be no more. With socialism people will not fear to love their neighbour lest they be taken advantage of, nor be ashamed of disinterested friendship, free from all self-interest and calculation. The softer, kindlier side of men will no longer be known only to their wives and children. The dependence of one sex upon another for livelihood, which now poisons love and gives lust its opportunity, will be forever at an end.

 There will be no more private property, except items for personal use. Consequently there can be no more crimes against private property—which are 90% or more of all the crimes committed today—and no need of all this huge apparatus for the prevention, detection, prosecution, and punishment of crimes against property. No need of jails and prisons, policemen, judges, probation officers, lawyers, social workers, bureaucrats; no need for guards, bailiffs, wardens, prosecutors.

The natural wealth of the land, the heritage of the people, is being wasted by the recklessness of corporate greed. The forests are ravaged, the fisheries of river and sea destroyed, the fertility of the soil exhausted.  With the establishment of socialism, the despoilation of the people's heritage will cease, the forests will be re-planted, the rivers and seas re-populated, and fertility restored to exhausted lands. The natural resources of the country will be cared for and preserved as a common estate, and one to which the living have title only as trustees for the unborn.

Work in socialist society will not be warfare, but fraternal co-operation toward a treasure house in which all will share. Human effort, no longer wasted by class conflict, will create an abundance previously impossible. There will be neither rich nor poor; all will be equal partners in the product of the  industrial organisation. Wage slavery will be replaced  by free access to all the goods necessary to the satisfaction of the needs of the producers. Only in a society which ensures to humanity such an abundance of goods can a new social consciousness be born. “Free access”, not only to certain health or educational services, but to all needs in foodstuff or clothing and housing. Such abundance of goods is in no way utopian but is emancipated from the contests of competition, the hunt for private enrichment, and the manipulation by advertising intended to create a state of permanent dissatisfaction among individuals.

The people will explore the universe and unlock its secrets. The new knowledge and new resources will be for the betterment of all the people. Socialism would be the realisation of the essential, creative powers of human beings.