The Enemy Is Capitalism, The Fight Is For Socialism!

Working people are waging and will continue to wage struggles on many issues, including wages, health,  social services, unemployment, political rights, etc. These struggles put them in direct opposition to various sectors of the ruling class– this or that capitalist, manager, government minister or civil servant, municipal officer, police force or whatever. Workers know very well they have an immediate enemy and realise where their immediate interests lie in such conflicts. It is not the job of the Socialist Party to co-opt or direct these specific struggles. The role of the Socialist Party is to point out what all these struggles have in common, to point out that the cause of these problems and the misery that workers have to endure under capitalism is one and the same. The role of the Socialist Party is to identify the class enemy hiding behind each specific struggle. The role of the Socialist Party is to indicate that the only path that will enable us to solve these problems once and for all is the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of socialism (the Socialist Party never accepted that the Soviet Union represented or had developed a “socialist” economy and society.) In opposition to those who promise “socialist” reforms as a way of eliminating the exploitation of man by man, the Socialist Party puts forward the overthrow of the dictatorship of the capitalists and the establishment of an industrial democracy. Instead of the vanguard political parties The Socialist Party defends the slogan, “The emancipation of the workers will be accomplished by the workers themselves”.  Saying that workers must be rallied to the socialist revolution is to say that we want to build a revolutionary party, not a reformist party. It means that we want an organization that will work to channel all the various mass struggles towards a definite goal – the revolution for socialism. We think that this struggle should be waged in an open-minded way, so as to clearly distinguish the true Marxist position from opportunism. Rallying workers to socialism does not mean rallying them to supposed short-term solutions for each particular problem that they encounter. Under capitalism, there is no better solution than socialism, and that applies to all specific issues. We must make Marxist ideas known among fellow-workers, and organise class-conscious workers on this basis. Experience has proven that unless socialist ideas triumph in the working-class movement, socialist revolution is impossible.

People should be demanding an answer to the simple query: why not socialism now? The Socialist Party is based upon the recognition of the existence of a mass desire and an active popular revolutionary movement. The Socialist Party does not repudiate the history of the socialist movement. We are part of it. We study it and defend it in order to develop it further. Naturally, we cast aside all that is negative while we cultivate all that is positive. We make no claims as to being the first and only true socialist party in history. Terms have frequently given rise to bitter disputes and when occasions get heated there is generally some conflicting idea. A socialist means a man or a woman who recognises the class war between the proletariat and the possessing class as the inevitable historic outcome of the capitalist system and of the direct economic and social antagonisms which it has engendered and fostered. They recognise antagonisms can only be resolved by the complete control over all the great means of production and distribution by the whole people, thus abolishing the class State and the wages system, and constituting a Co-operative Commonwealth or a Social-Democracy. A socialist is anxious to use political institutions and forms to educate the people and to prepare, as far as possible, peacefully for the social revolution and holds that the methods of giving legal expression to socialist change should be completely democratic in every respect.