“Study because we will
need all your intelligence.
Agitate because we
will need all your enthusiasm.
Organise because we
will need all your strength.”
Gramsci
Despite the absolute need for a party of socialism we are a
long way off from such a party. By this, we mean a party that has
thousands of members and ultimately, we need to be thinking in terms of a party
of millions of members. But to be a real socialist these days is to be a
political anachronism, a fossilised relic. The central tenet of socialism is
the assertion that the working class is the sole historical agency for the
achievement of socialism. For Marxists the possibility of revolution rests upon
the conscious and free acceptance of socialism by the working class. Gramsci’s
conception of the need for the working class to develop a hegemony
consciousness presupposes the existence of a mass-based socialist movement. In
the absence of such a movement socialist theory is placed in a vacuum.
All those within the working class movement must awaken to
the need to fight our class enemy. We
aim to replace the present capitalist system, with its inherent injustice and
inhumanity, by a social order from which the domination and exploitation of one
class by another will be ended. Our goal is world socialism, a new social system
based on common ownership of our resources and industry, cooperation,
production for use and genuine democracy. Only socialism can turn the boundless
potential of people and resources to the creation of a world free from tyranny,
greed, poverty and exploitation. Capitalism has failed, and so have efforts to
reform it. That failure puts a campaign for the socialist alternative on the
immediate agenda. The needs of people, not profit, are the driving force of a
socialist society. We believe in the ability of people to manage their own
productive institutions democratically. Producing for ourselves, the needs of
the people, living standards would leap forward rather than being cut for the
interests of a tiny minority and their “special interests”. Under capitalism,
labour is a commodity. Workers are used as replaceable parts, extensions of
machines—as long as they provide dividends. Employers use their power of
ownership to devastate the lives of workers through redundancies, out-sourcing and
neglect of health and safety. Trade unions, despite their courageous efforts,
have encountered difficulties eliminating even the worst abuses of management
power.
No matter how long and how hard the struggle, we shall win. The
Socialist Party is the party of the dispossessed and the exploited striving to build a new world and we support all struggles against the injustices of
capitalism. We do not offer a blueprint to a better future. Instead we
invite fellow workers to join us to eradicate a social system based on
exploitation, discrimination, poverty and war. The capitalist system must be replaced
by social democracy. That is the burning issue of our era, the only hope of
humanity. As we have already explained Marxists have a basic starting point to
all of their struggles and ideas – that the working class is a revolutionary
class and as such is capable of overthrowing the capitalist system and
establishing the socialist order. It is a fundamental truth from which we draw
the strength to face the daily struggle. It is an outlook which gives socialists
something unique – an unshakeable confidence in the working class as a
revolutionary force. It is something we have to defend every day against those
who tell us that the working class are so imbued with the ideas of capitalism
that they can always be diverted from the real revolutionary objective. Our
confidence springs not from romanticism but from Marxist theory. That we see
the working class as an exploited class, driven by the realities of class
society into conflict with their exploiters at the point of production. It
means that when all the conditions are present, the overwhelming power of the
working class, as the producers of all wealth, can be harnessed to make a real revolution.
But that as everyone knows is easy to say but very difficult to accomplish in
practice. The Socialist Party wants to build a mass party with its roots in the
working class and its sights set on social revolution. To do this it has to be
a fully democratically structured party, not an authoritarian organisation
controlled and directed by leaders. There is a difference between us and those
vanguard ‘workers’ parties that call themselves ‘socialist’ and we make no
bones about it. We are Marxists. We are revolutionaries. Our strategic goal is people
power. We will not go just a part of the way – or even half of the way – we are
going all of the way and we are going to build a movement and party to do it.
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