Language is powerful. Let's use it wisely. For many
centuries people have fought for freedom and fairness. From olden days, the red
flag was the emblem of the slave rebellions. It symbolised the red blood that
flows in the veins of all humanity, with no distinction as to race or
nationality, sex or social position. The red flag has been pulled down many,
many times, only to be hoisted again. Why? Because it is the flag of the
exploited and the oppressed, the flag of those deprived of their freedom, their
labour, who are forced into slavery and eventually into revolution. It will be
raised again in a thousand places as the workers' struggle for socialist
emancipation revives.
If we keep our economic system it will eventually destroy us
all. The more of the same will only speed up our demise regardless of
technological abilities. It’s necessary to be aware that the 1% has about the
same wealth as the rest of us, that’s due to legal robbery; that unfairness
dates back to the first warriors who took over community’s resources. But
instead of the theologians, it’s now the ‘economists’ who rationalises the
theft and disseminate it through educational institutes and the media.
The whole of human history has consisted of a sequence of
systems for social interaction, each with its own effects on the people living
at that time and in that way. But we can, through careful historical and
anthropological observation, reach certain conclusions about what it is to be
human. Some of those key constants are social interaction and co-operation:
homo-sapiens is, like most animals, a social being. We also plan, review,
analyse and practise ways of becoming more and more in control of ourselves and
our environment. The present, capitalist system of society is working against
the most natural human instincts, inclinations and needs. It stifles and
frustrates the human need to co-operate, to solve problems and even to
collectively and individually meet all of our needs for good food, shelter,
health, education, travel and recreation. Socialism is technically feasible in
terms of the supply of food, energy, and so on; moreover, it is humanly
feasible, in that people are not naturally lazy, greedy or selfish.
An alternative to capitalism requires an organised movement
with a clear vision of what it wants in order to obtain them. The Socialist
Party aims to create meaningful common ownership of the means of production and
distribution. The most important feature that distinguished the Socialist Party from the other so-called socialist
groups is that it is “revolutionary”. Not in the sense that it is insurrectionary
but by revolutionary we mean that the aim is the total transformation of
society to the socialist mode of production.
Under capitalism the allocation of labour happens in a
deeply impersonal, but nevertheless social, way. Instead of relying on
interpersonal relationships, we rely on mediation through money, in markets. We
try to find organisations which will pay us a wage so we can buy the things we
need and want, and these organisations are responsible for allocating our
labour in order to produce one or some of these commodities which are then sold
on the market.
Those of us who happen to be capitalists will attempt to
arrange socially useful labour by finding firms which can produce at profit, or
simply invest in organisations who will do this for us.
The means by which the new society can be achieved are
determined by its nature as a society involving voluntary co-operation and
democratic participation. It cannot be imposed from above by some
self-appointed liberators nor by some well-meaning state bureaucracy but can
only come into existence as a result of being the expressed wish of a
majority—an overwhelming majority—of the population. In other words, the new
society can only be established by democratic political action and the movement
to establish it can only employ democratic forms of struggle. Because the
present system is, as a system must be, an inter-related whole and not a chance
collection of good and bad elements, it cannot be abolished piecemeal. It can
only be abolished in its entirety or not at all. This fact determines the
choice as to what we must do: work towards a complete break with the present
system as opposed to trying to gradually transform it.
A key element of socialism is meaningful participation and
control of daily life at work and in the community (workers’ and community
self-management), with administrators (where needed) elected by and responsible
to workers and community members. This is incompatible with the current system
of private ownership and control of the economy, and requires various forms of
social ownership of the means of production and distribution — in other words,
the abolition of the capitalist system. Instead of understanding socialism as a
movement for the liberation of humanity many of its supposed adherents
understood it as being exclusively a movement for economic improvement by
government reforms and through state ownership. Thus what passed for socialism
became the vehicle for the workers to attain their place within the capitalist
structure rather than transcending it. The leaders of the labour movement considered
as their most radical measures the nationalisation of certain big industries.
Only to have many discover that the nationalisation of an enterprise is in
itself not the realisation of socialism, that to be managed by a ministerial-appointed
officials is not basically different for the worker from being managed by a board-appointed
directors and CEOs. A change in the formal ownership of industry does not end
the basic social exploitation and alienation of the employee. So distorting has this development been that
the average worker has little conception of what really is socialism. The
problem for socialists now is how to move people towards independent political
action without creating, or contributing to, the illusions about a
state-managed capitalist economy and that workers aspirations can be achieved
by reforms. Our objective is now to make authentic socialism a matter of
urgency.
The working class is the social force in the struggle to
replace capitalism with socialism. For socialism to be more than an idea it has
to be a political movement of the working class. This proposition is at the
heart of Marx’s theory. The crucial place of wage workers in the productive
process gives them the social power to overthrow capitalism. No other social
class or group has the power to achieve this. All the necessary material
conditions exist for this social revolution. But the existence of the necessary
material conditions is by itself insufficient. Unlike all previous social
transformations, the socialist revolution demands conscious action by the
working class. Socialism can only be achieved through the united action of
millions of working men and women conscious of their social interests and take the
steps necessary to realise them. Unlike the capitalist class, which carried out
its social revolution after it had developed considerable economic power the
working class can only realise its potential economic power after it has
overthrown the old social order. And to do so it has to overcome a very
powerful and influential capitalist ruling class. The main tool of the working
class in its fight against capitalism is the potentially immense power of its
collective action. The working class is capable of reaching the level of class
consciousness necessary to create a mass socialist party suitable for challenging
the capitalist class on the battlefield of politics to acquire political
supremacy. We admit no such mass workers’ party exists today. The current
Socialist Party is just the beginning of a new party.
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