Why the SPGB?

In 1904 a small group of workers got together and formed the Socialist Party of Great Britain, aiming to bring the message of the necessity of a socialist solution to the gathering world crisis. That small group did have a few things going for it. They knew where to start and based their principles on the experiences of Marxist thought and action. The Socialist Party named the enemy—the capitalist profit system organised around the world. While supporting the workers’ organisations, the trade unions, the socialists in the SPGB saw their task as advocating action to establish socialism, the need for a socialist revolution, and for politically conscious working class to be the agent of social change. Members of the Socialist Party still hold that revolution is required if humanity is to survive the ever-present threat of extermination. There is nothing more threatening to the rule of the corporate oligarchs and plutocrats than the prospect of a party of hundreds of thousands that fearlessly tells the truth to the people. Only such a movement can in time become millions, then tens of millions and eventually win.

The Socialist Party can and will win the hearts and minds of people when they see us as reliable and unshakeable if we stand our ground. In due course, it will lead to respect and then support. Truth can only be ascertained upon the battlefield of ideas. The Socialist Party does not consider itself a substitute for other movements, such as peace groups and other single-issue organisations but seeks to unite people around one specific platform – the establishment of socialism. We continue along the road of political independence, building a party of, by and for the people. We disown the most well-trodden path of “lesser evil” politics. Those who call for a “lesser evil” make possible the greater evil. It has always been a dead-end strategy for working people.

In modern times the privileged groups are neither capable enough nor numerous enough to do the work of suppression themselves and so they beguile sections of the oppressed into the belief that the interests of all are identical with the continuance of privilege and they endeavour to weaken the movement for change by setting other sections at loggerheads. Such being the position the only thing that will combat capitalist movements is clearness of understanding—the spread of knowledge among the workers. Temporary expedients that give a movement size without solidity only raise false hopes and leave the way open for the inevitable disillusionment and collapse. While parties claiming to be “socialist” ally themselves with capitalist groups to gain temporary ends, working men will not draw a line of fundamental distinction between any of the groups that solicit their support. While their votes are asked for in support of reforms that do not make any fundamental difference in their social position, the workers naturally tend to support the group that makes the most enticing promises, whatever be the label—in fact, the newer the label the better. Those who do not fulfil their promises are temporarily deserted. The capitalists know this quite well, hence, their misuse of the term "socialist” so much lately.

Capitalism was born and flourished on brutality, both at home and abroad. As far as Britain is concerned, what a record of brutality is contained in the history of the treatment of its factory and agricultural slaves during the last century, of the treatment of the Irish, the African and the Indian. While there is no justification for a conclusion that capitalism can be knocked down with a feather, there is more and more evidence that people no longer hold their old confidence in capitalism. All around us all around the World, we have signs of a changing attitude towards capitalism. But there is an undeniable gulf between the objective revolutionary conditions and the political consciousness of workers that requires being bridged. Agitating for minimum demands realisable within the framework of capitalism has now outlived its usefulness, if it ever had one but we can affirm with absolute certainty, the working class will meet with disillusionment.  Our task is to build the socialist movement. The central issue is the burning need to replace the present profit system with socialism — a society geared to human needs. The Socialist Party uses its election campaigns to explain causes of the fundamental problems confronting working people today. It is the irrationality of the profit system.