We are the SPGB

For some people the day for socialist struggle never seems to come around. The time for the struggle for socialism never arrives. Time and time again the struggle for socialism has been sidetracked by the so-called radical parties who have held out the promise of immediate salvation for the people. Again and again people believed in the false prophets and voted him into power, only to reap a heavy harvest of bitter disappointment. It is in the light of this fact that the importance of the Socialist Party must be measured. Not a party of mere patchwork reform, nor a party of sham revolutionary phrases, but a socialist party, rooted in the working class movement, based upon principles of education and organisation, both indispensable for a party that is a socialist party in the true meaning of the term. The soul of our party is to be an effective instrument for the coming social reconstruction. We call upon workers to join the Socialist Party, the party of revolution. We stand before them as the party of the fellow workers, of the poor and oppressed. We stand for no economic, political or social privilege, but consider that the oppressed of the world must act together to gain peace, prosperity, security, equality; with abundance for all but special privilege for none. This is the only way to save the world from the catastrophes unleashed by capitalism. The Socialist Party has never under any circumstances forsaken or subordinated the needs of the struggle in the interests of alliance with class enemies.

Workers’ labour power is purchased on the market by the owners of capital. On average in half the working week it produces value sufficient to cover wages to maintain workers and their families. The value produced in the remainder of the working week constitutes surplus value, the source of profit. The goods and services produced by workers’ socialised labour are privately appropriated by capitalists. They will continue to be produced so long as they can be sold for profit on the market. The system of capitalist production leads inevitably to the alternating cycle of boom and bust and periodical crisis under capitalism. It is inevitable that sooner or later these social conditions will impel people to organise to end the conflict between the socialised labour process and the private ownership of the means of production, the big factories, mines and farms, by the establishment of socialism. With socialism, production is planned and rational, and takes place for peoples’ use. When socialists speak of a society organised on the basis of planned production and distribution we mean doing away with production for profit.

Capitalism is a system based on production for profit, not for human need. This system is driven by the necessity to accumulate profit, which means that capitalists compete with one another, both nationally and internationally. The capitalist class is a ruling class whose ownership and control of the means of production is based on the exploitation of the working class. Thus, a small minority rules society. The contradictions between competing capitalists, produce war, poverty and crisis. The struggle between the classes will produce the overthrow of capitalist society. The working class has the capacity to end exploitation and oppression. It is a law of capitalism that capital moves to wherever the rate of profit is highest. Capitalism is a system of production for profit: for the accumulation of more capital. Companies therefore produce only the products that give them the greatest profit, and they try to set up their enterprises whenever the most favorable conditions for making maximum profits are to be found. The welfare of the people is simply trampled on by the profit-hungry monopolies: their search for profits is a ruthless rampage that leaves a trail of misery, ruin, hardship and poverty. This is how capitalism works. Capitalism needs the working class; the working class does not need capitalism.

Every state is the dictatorship of some class over another. It is a body of armed men organized by the class in power to carry out that class’ will unrestrained by any laws and to suppress the rights of those classes opposed to the continued rule of the dominant class. The present state, which claims to be a “democracy” of all the people, of all classes, is no such thing. It is a special body organized by the capitalist class to protect that class’s property and to keep the workers subserviant in the factories of the rich. All the laws passed have as their purpose the enslavement of the masses and the protection of the unjustly acquired wealth of the wealthy, who produce nothing of value, but appropriate the product of the sweat and blood of the workers. No matter how fine-sounding these laws they were only written to deceive the people rob them. We can count on nothing but their own numbers. Socialism will be possible only when the workers, those who meet the needs of society, decide that they are determined to lay the living conditions of mankind on a new foundation. The whole future of humanity rests on the working class.