Onward, fellow workers

Capitalism has failed, and so have efforts to reform it. The Socialist Party thinks a working peoples’ industrial democracy can displace the dictatorship of capital and organise society on values of human solidarity and dignity. The rulers say they’re rich because they’re smart, but the truth is they’re rich because they exploit us. The working class produces all the wealth, and we can become confident and strong enough to run all of this society. Our society is based on money, but we are worth so much more than we make in a paycheck. The working class is capable of using its intelligence and capacities to take the road to socialism. The needs of people, not profit, are the driving force of a socialist society. It is becoming increasingly apparent that our political system is not run by the majority, but controlled by a network of economic elites and private interests. The well-being and needs of the people must replace the accumulation of capital and profits.  The Socialist Party’s mission is to raise awareness of social, economic and political issues through dialogue with fellow workers, creating the foundation for wide-scale change. Knowledge is a torch of freedom and the fundamental step towards liberation begins with education. We aim to build a peaceful, people-powered revolution of conscientious active participants. Our objective is to help shift public perception towards true socialism, a society that benefits the many and not the few. It will take a collective effort of shared resources and ideas to restructure our world into one that is founded on economic security and equal opportunity. Tyranny and oppression cannot be challenged until we unite and act to reclaim our power. The dominance of capitalism has blinded us to the alternative – socialism. Much needs to be done to open the minds of our fellow workers to the new possibilities beyond capitalism and to redirect their energy from remedial campaigns to social revolution.

The campaigns to improve our lot under capitalism are endless. Once one form of oppression is dealt with, there’s always another left to tackle, but while engaging in that new fight, the former is bound to return because no progress is ever permanent under capitalism. Rights are won, and the next day they’re under attack. We put much of our energy into defence instead of offence. The fight against exploitation and oppression is never-ending, but does that serve to focus our attention away from the larger fight; from the fight to overturn capitalism and the oppressive structures it perpetuates? As we seek to reverse inequality, reduce poverty, achieve equal rights for minorities, fighting so hard for basic human decency, our minds become stuck in a frame of capitalist realism instead of challenging the very core structures that create the problems against which we fight. Until the structures that create this oppression are dealt with, the fight will never be over. Racism, sexism, and the class system will always return unless the structures responsible for them are destroyed. Instead of placing the focus on the battles for legislation and regulations that will most likely be eventually be overturned or side-stepped, the fight needs to be brought to the system as a whole. Humanity is in a very precarious place right now. It's time to take action in order to survive.

The task before us is to understand the world and how we relate to ourselves. In facing up to the many profound crises of our time, we face a conundrum that has no easy resolution: how are we to imagine and build a radically different system while living within the constraints of an incumbent system that aggressively resists transformational change? The Socialist Party challenge is not just articulating the socialist alternative, but identifying credible strategies for actualising them. The Socialist Party is focused on reclaiming our “common wealth,” in both the material and political sense. We want to roll back the pervasive property system with its profiteering from our natural resources and to assert participatory control over those resources and community life, to seek effective social control rather than abusive, unsustainable market behaviour. Socialism generates people’s social connections with each other and with nature. It helps build new aspirations and identities. The world socialist movement seeks to change our very conception of the economy.