At the outset, we wish to make it quite clear as to the exact aim and object of the Socialist Party. We are socialists, wishful above all things to advance socialism, and by socialism we mean the common ownership of all the agencies of wealth production, and this involves the complete supersession of the capitalist system, and the conducting of all industrial relations on a co-operative basis. We are working for the common good and for the co-operative commonwealth. We engage in helping for the overthrow of capitalism, and the building up of the socialist co-operative commonwealth.
That the present social system has failed must be apparent to all who have studied it. It has rendered the many subservient to the few; it has checked the best human endeavours, and facilitated every method of exploitation; it dispossesses and disinherits the vast majority, and foreordains their lifelong misery before they are even born; it makes one man dependent upon another’s caprice,; it is a premium of idleness, and an incentive to plunder; it creates jealousies, hatreds, and mutual injustice. All our political institutions are destructive and reactionary; the opportunity to control the actions of one’s fellow, which lies at the base of every governmental system, tends surely and certainly to make those in power self-seeking, dishonest, and tyrannical, and ever ready to dominate and oppress those over whom they exert authority; and not only does it corrupt those who rule it, but its evil effects extend to those whom they govern, for every extension of governmental function assists in decreasing and dwarfing the energies a self-reliance of the people themselves and making them more helpless, cowardly, and servile than before. Our social system, by its politically-fostered monopolies, is continually driving men to poverty. No political machinery can destroy the evils which the political machinery has brought into being; for it is the nature of ruling institutions to conserve the bad, to support and extend conventional and reactionary opinion, and to check all progressive thought in religion, sociology and philosophy. Laws are made to be obeyed – not to be repealed for the public good. They are essentially conservative of privilege. All law is made to protect property and proprietors alone. There is no law for the poor. Legal victory is a luxury which it requires money to purchase. If you have no money, you cannot go to law; or if you manage to, you may safely reckon on coming out on the wrong side of the ledger. The justice of a thing has little to do with a legal decision – that decision has previously been inscribed on the Statute Books on the basis of property and its right of exploitation. Plutocracy rules the world. The existing evils of society are too gigantic to trifle with. Elections can offer little more than a choice of masters elected to carry on a system of destruction. It is useless to preach thrift to those who have nothing to save or to hope for universal prosperity when the enrichment of the few is caused by the plunder of the many. Speculations in investments in stocks and shares are all speculations on the possible future of losses of labour. Dividends do not create themselves – they are all filched from labor. If the labourers ceased to be plundered, there will be no dividends.
The slavery of the workers by the politically-created and politically-fostered monopoly of property, and the robbery of the laborers by rent, interest, profit, and taxation, must be abolished – abolished peacefully, expeditiously, and permanently. And to do so, we must start from where we now stand. All the ignorance, all the bigotry, all the intolerance, and all the debasement and cowardice which characterize the down-trodden millions, we must place aside.
Plain facts ought to show to workers that there is something wrong in the very basis of existing society and more especially in that section of it known as property, or the system regulating the use and possession of things. It is also sufficiently evident that the more a man owns, the more he owns you. The capitalist class, who own most of the land and the tools of production, own the Government and govern the working class, not for the well-being of the working class but for the well-being and profit of the capitalist class. It is only by using their political power that the capitalist class make their exploitation of the working class legal and the oppression of their system constitutional. And it is only by using their political power that the working class can make their own exploitation illegal and their own oppression unconstitutional. It is only by the use of their political power that the working class can abolish capitalist class rule and privilege, and establish a planned form of society based on the common ownership of all the land and the tools of production, to be shared by all. The working class can, through the ballot box, abolish the capitalist system with its accompanying class rule and class oppression, and establish in its place socialism — an industrial democracy.
“Nothing for the State, nothing within the State and everything against the State!”
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