Tell no lies – claim no easy victories

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.