True to Revolution

The word “socialism” is often used as a political trick. Every other day in the newspapers or on the TV there is something about socialists. It is suggested that countries with large welfare state programmes are socialist or that nationalised industries are socialist. These have nothing to do with the socialism dealt with here. The constant stream of unfavourable publicity that the concept of socialism receives from the various sources of information (or misinformation)  creates in the minds of many people preconceptions which are very far from reality. People are treated daily to a barrage of propaganda emanating from one class, the smallest class but the most powerful in determining public opinion and what governments should do. This small class is the class of the extremely wealthy owners of industry and controllers of commerce who by the power of money and particularly of the power of monopoly, do as they like. Of all political parties or groups the Socialist Party is the most open and frank about their aims and objectives. Most other political parties disguise their real objectives using names for their parties which hide their real character. For instance,  the mis-named “Labour”, whose MPS scarcely include an honest labourer in its ranks but instead is full of Oxbridge lawyers and we have the  “Liberal Democrat” Party, neither “liberal” nor “democratic” but now an appendage of the Conservative Party government. These parties have chosen these inappropriate names in order to deceive people, to get votes under false pretences. They have the same attitude towards political programs. They make promises during elections which they have no intention of carrying out. The Labour Party is not a socialist Party, does not set out to abolish capitalism and to establish socialism but tries to prove that it can administer capitalism better than the Tories in the interests of  the rich. Although the Labour Party was created by the workers and, without workers’ support today, would be nothing, it serves the wealthy class  and are the enemies of the workers. Nowhere have the reformist parties advanced the case for  socialism, nowhere have they lessened the grip of the  bankers and industrialists.

The Socialist Party does not stoop to using cheap election tricks to get votes. It states frankly to the voters what it considers should be done with a policy that declares  what is blocking the way to social progress is the prevailing economic system of profit-making, the ownership and control of industry by a few for their own gain and not for the benefit of the people and that the solution for the ills of present day society is the common ownership of the industries and the production for the common good, instead of profits for the few. “From each according to ability to each according to needs.”

A demand for production for use and not for profit has revolutionary implications and presupposes revolutionary action for its realisation. Today capitalist ownership of the means of production and its legal right to exploitation of labour determines all political relations; which is another way of saying that those who own and control the means of production are those who rule. The mere change to government ownership or public ownership does not suffice for these capitalist relations remain in effect. It is nonsensical to assume that production for use, which pre-supposes the expropriation of the means of production and the transfer of the ownership thereof to the producers, can find its realisation without the overthrow of capitalist rule. In other words it can  only be accomplished through the socialist revolution. The aim of the Socilist Party  is socialism.

 No small groups of insurrectionists can bring about the changes we believe are necessary; this will take the power of the great majority of people organised and determined to make a change. Some who describe themselves as socialist believe that the people are an unintelligent mass who can’t think for themselves, who will never move against the injustices that beset them daily, and that the fate of the people rests in the hands of a small number of the most intelligent or most courageous and active who will take action themselves without waiting for the “common herd”.

According to such leftists it is “heroic party cadres” who who make history and not ordinary men and women. The Socialist Party opposes such ideas. We recognise, of course, that some individuals  have played a big part in making the history of the world, and there have been and are great men in the socialist movement, but their ideas have only been effective when the people have been convinced that these ideas are correct, are beneficial for them. So all our efforts are directed towards getting the great majority of the people to right their own wrongs, to take action themselves in their own interests and we trust in the ability of the people to do this. We  have always fought against those who have a contempt for the people and who take “short cuts” by acts of terrorism which we know from bitter experience do not advance the peoples’ interests but hold them back.

Socialism will not come of its own accord. It must be campaigned for and so we are also opposed to the “arm-chair philosophers” who sit back and wait for the people to “wake up”.