Principles First, Methods Afterwards.

During elections the capitalist class put up ventriloquist dummies who carry out its orders and engage in sham battles with supposedly rival capitalist parties. No politician is capable of stemming the tide of misery and suffering of millions of workers whose standards are being brutally lowered. The truth is that the capitalist politicians represent the system which produces the unemployment, exploitation, wars and misery, and are cynically unconcerned about the sufferings of the workers except insofar as it gives them arguments against those in office and for those who want to get their greedy snouts into the trough. Pro-capitalist politicians’ chief aim is to attract votes with quack reforms and not to advance the class interests of the workers. At the ballot box the employer counts only as one vote against his workers; so if workers properly used theirs, it would ensure the triumph of labour as certainly as on the industrial action field the power of the master’s wallet will nearly always win. When will the workers learn that the political power they could wield as an organised body is the greatest weapon in their hands, that the field of politics is the only field upon which the workers can win emancipation from the domination of capital? When will the workers copy their employers who, not content with their tremendous economic power, unceasingly still strive to secure every bit of political power in order to entrench and strengthen their class in its position of supremacy. Let the workers organise to capture political power. Let the workers direct their energies toward the only object worth striving for- to wrest the ownership and control of the mean of production from the hands of a robber class to prepare the way for socialism.

The real strength lies with the working class, not in the conferences and resolutions of the misleaders of the trade union movement. There is no lesser evil; it is time for a new start. The only solution for the working class, the only way they can attain all their political and economic objectives is by the revolutionary overthrow of the ruling class. The Socialist Party conception of the use of force is one where we neither exalt it into a principle nor repudiate it as something not to be thought of. Our position towards it is that the use or non-use of force for the realisation of the ideas of progress always has been and always will be determined by the attitude of the capitalist class opposed to the popular movement. If the time should arrive when the Socialist Party finds its way to freedom barred by the stubbornness of a possessing class entrenched behind the barriers of law and order and if the Socialist Party has convinced the people at large of the need for new of society and is therefore representative of the will of a majority, if it has exhausted all the peaceful means at its disposal for the purpose of demonstrating to the people and their enemies that the new revolutionary ideas do possess the will and support of the majority; then, but not till then, the Socialist is justified in taking steps to assume the powers of government, and in using the weapons of force to dislodge the usurping class or government in possession, and treating its members and supporters as usurpers and rebels against the constituted authorities always have been created. In other words, socialists believe that the question of force is of very minor importance; the really important question is of the principles upon which is based the movement that may or may not need the use of force to realise its object. Here, then, is the difference between the Socialist Party and those advocating insurrectionary minority action. The latter, stifle all discussions of principles to gain the following of an unthinking multitude while the Socialist Party insist upon a thorough understanding of its basic principles. It is the difference between a riotous mob in revolt and class-conscious workers organising under the banner of the Socialist Party, strong in their knowledge of economic truth and firmly grounded in their revolutionary principles, resolute and undivided, set towards their only hope of emancipation – the complete control by the working-class democracy of all the powers of state. Let us learn from history. If the advocacy of physical force failed to achieve success when the majority were unenfranchised and the secret ballot unknown, how can it be expected to succeed now that the majority are in possession of voting power and the secret ballot safeguards the voter? The ballot-box may have been given us by our masters for their own motives but let us use it for our purpose. Let us demonstrate at that ballot-box the strength and intelligence of the revolutionary idea; let us make the election hustings the platform from where we advocate our principles; let us capture political power in the interest of the disinherited and the dispossessed class; let us inspire the world-wide revolt of the workers and prepare for the coming of the day when the working-class, through its elected delegates, present its demand for freedom from the yoke of a ruling master class.

The Socialist Party exists not to reform the system. It is here to overthrow it. And that is the only possibility left to save our planet. If we fail, we are doomed.