You can’t compromise your way to your goal

There are some who doubt the revolutionary potentiality of the workers and the validity of the struggle for a socialist society. The capitalist class itself, however, are not at all lulled by the apparent passivity of the workers and they constantly strive to disorient and confuse their thoughts. Socialism has been attacked throughout its existence. To prove socialism irrelevant, socialists are reproached with every kind of smear and slander. The learned men of history speak so disdainfully of socialism’s past and contemptuously of its future by caricaturing socialist thought so to present their case that socialism is sentenced by history as an unachievable utopian aspiration. But socialists are practical and realistic men and women.

Capitalism created the conditions and forces for the socialist movement: the necessary material basis and the working class itself.  Capitalism has created a world market, a world division of labour and world productive forces, it has also prepared the world economy as a whole for socialist transformation. Capitalism provokes the working class into action and is the involuntary promoter of the class struggle. Whilst capitalism dominates the world economy as a whole, inter-capitalist rivalry creates contradictions which aid the struggle for socialism. One capacity the working class has shown to the present day is that it can absorb the hardest blows and snap back after a while from the most terrible defeats. This is no mystical quality; its resilience and stamina spring from the material conditions of life in modern society. Capitalism creates the working class and depends upon it, as a parasite depends upon its host. Yet it cannot satisfy the demands or solve the problems of the working force it exploits and oppresses. Even in good times workers display their discontent and protest against insecurity by strikes and similar demonstrations; at more critical turning points their will to combat capitalism and cut through to a better life flares into insurrections and rebellions. The workers’ movement draws its inexhaustible strength from the indispensable part it plays as the principal force of production, the creator of all wealth and profit. It enhances that strength by its growing industrial organisation, by its political formations, by its cohesiveness and solidarity in struggle, by its developing awareness of itself as a decisive social power of growing importance compared to other classes. Finally, labour asserts itself as the only creative force in society that carries the future along with it as it rises. Having gained nothing but misery from capitalism, they are ready to fight it, instinctively, as a man is always ready to throw off someone who is sitting on his back and squeezing his life away.

The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working-class themselves. There is no other way, they cannot be emancipated against their will. It is the direction of building up a class-conscious working-class that the Socialist Party bend our efforts. Agitate, Educate, Organise. Let us look to and eliminate the faults of our own organisation, for it may not be free from them. The causes of which have operated to prevent our success in rallying the whole working-class to our banner do not supply the reasons for the fact that so many avowed, earnest and active socialists remain outside our party. Let us enquire into the reasons and if possible remedy them. In some cases, doubtless, they are purely accidental, but this is not always the case. Are we, as is sometimes alleged by our critics, too narrow, too sectarian, too intolerant, too dogmatic? Are we too hostile, not to enemies, but to would-be comrades? Does the style of our criticisms antagonise people rather than win them over? These are searching questions to which it may be worthwhile to give some consideration. There should be no heresy-hunting; no nosing out of non-essential points of difference but rather a seeking for essential points of agreement – “In things doubtful, liberty; in things essential, unity; and in all things, charity.”

To strengthen our organisation we are required to muster fellow workers to our banner; to bring together all comrades into a united Socialist Party, an active, vigorous tool for the realisation of socialism - the emancipation of humanity. The Socialist Party holds to a great and far-reaching purpose; a purpose not immediately understood by everyone; a purpose which, in fact, is often misunderstood and therefore has to meet opposition, prejudice and hatred which can be overcome only through extended educational propaganda. When the mass of the workers themselves come into action the dividing line between the political and industrial methods of struggle disappears; they march upon the field of battle to a single, undivided warfare against capitalism, armed with the class-consciousness, the discipline, the intelligence and the power of action gained in all previous conflicts. The attitude of the Socialist Party toward the trade union movement, broadly endorsing and commending it, but stopping there, and allowing it to manage its own internal affairs is, without doubt, the correct one, as any meddling must result in harm with no possible hope of good.

The socialist revolution consists of the entire process, on a world scale, through which the socialist mode of production is established and supplants earlier modes of production. he goal of the socialist revolution – the abolition of capitalist private property, the abolition of all exploitation of man by man, the social ownership of the means of production and their planned use for the benefit of the whole of society, leading to abundance. The Socialist Party does not put forward this goal as a utopia, as a mere vision of what would ideally satisfy people’s needs and make them all happy, but as a goal the practical attainment of which is made necessary by the actual conditions of modern society. The goal of socialism is placed as a practical objective, that is because only under a socialist economy can the contradictions of modern capitalist society be solved and the great modern forces of production be fully utilised. Socialism will only be gained by waging the working-class struggle and to wage this struggle and achieve the conquest of power, the working class must have its own independent political party. It is clear to conclude that we my face new facts we have perhaps to guard against fixed ideas about the means for gaining socialism and for building it, that is, fixed ideas about the methods of working-class struggle. We may well have to review the application of some of our policies. The true aim of socialism is profoundly in accord with the sentiment for democracy and freedom – is, indeed, the only aim in which this sentiment can find fulfilment. The word ‘socialism’ is more than the name merely for a new system of economic relationships. So to restrict the meaning would be to kill the idea and aim. Socialism means the ending of exploitation of man by man, a society without class antagonisms, in which the people themselves control their means of life and use them for their own happiness. These are things we must above all make clear, breaking with and condemning everything which has contradicts our aim. Ideas cannot be produced to order; they must achieve their own growth in the minds and hearts of men and women. Nurtured and allowed to grow, they will truly and adequately express the experiences and aspirations of the people, the arguments, conflicts, sentiments and conclusions of people on the move for a better way of life.

The banner of world socialism is now carried on the shoulders of the World Socialist Movement which carries the slogan: “Workers of all lands unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains, you have a world to win!” Socialism is not inevitable. What has been termed its ‘inevitability’ consists in this, that only through socialism can human progress continue. But there is not and cannot be any absolute deterministic inevitability in human affairs, since man makes his own history and chooses what to do. What is determined is not his choice, but the conditions under which it is made, and the consequences when it is made. The meaning of scientific socialism is not that it tells us that socialism will come regardless, but that it explains to us where we stand, what course lies open to us, what is the road to take .