Power to the People

 The Socialist Party recognises the class struggle that exists between the capitalist class and the working class, and the necessity of the working class organising itself into a political party for the purpose of obtaining the common ownership and democratic administration of the means of production and distribution. The Socialist Party is hostile to all political organisations that support and perpetuate the present capitalist profit system and is opposed to any form of horse-trading or a united front with any such organisations. The Socialist Party declares its aim to be the organisation of the working class into a mass political party, with the object of conquering the machinery of the State and using its powers to dispossess the capitalist class and transform the present system of private ownership of the means of production and distribution into one of common ownership by the entire people. Private ownership of the means of production and distribution is responsible for the ever-increasing uncertainty of livelihood and the poverty and misery of the workers, and it divides society into two hostile classes — the capitalists and wage workers.  The possession of the means of livelihood gives to the capitalists the control of the government, the press, the pulpit, and to schools, and enables them to keep working people in a state of intellectual, physical, and social inferiority, political subservience, and virtual slavery. The economic interests of the capitalist class dominate our entire social system; the lives of the working class are recklessly sacrificed for profit, wars are fomented between nations, indiscriminate slaughter is encouraged, and the destruction of whole races is sanctioned in order that the capitalists may extend their commercial dominion abroad and enhance their supremacy at home.

But the same economic causes which developed capitalism are leading to socialism, which will abolish both the capitalist class and the class of wage workers. And the active force in bringing about this new and higher order of society is the working class. The workers can most effectively act as a class in their struggle against the collective powers of capitalism by constituting themselves into a political party, distinct from and opposed to all parties formed by the propertied classes. While we declare that the development of economic conditions tends to the overthrow of the capitalist system, we also recognise that the time and manner of the transition of socialism also depends upon the stage of the intellectual development reached by our fellow workers.

The trades union movement and independent political action within a socialist party are the emancipating factors of the wage working class. The trade union movement is the natural result of capitalist production and represents the economic side of the working class movement. We consider it the duty of socialists to join the unions and assist in building up and unifying labour organisations. We recognise that trade unions are by historical necessity organised on neutral grounds, as far as political affiliation is concerned. We call the attention of the trade unionists to the fact that the class struggle so nobly waged by the trade union forces today, while it may result in lessening the exploitation of workers, can never abolish that exploitation. The exploitation of the working class will only come to an end when society takes possession of all the means of production for the benefit of all the people. It is the obligation of every trade unionist to realise the necessity of independent political action on socialist lines, to join the Socialist Party and assist in building a strong political movement of the wage-working class whose ultimate object must be the abolition of wage slavery and the establishment of a cooperative commonwealth, based on the common ownership of all the means of production and distribution. Here is a system of industrial democracy, a true democracy, where the rule of men over men gives way to the administration of things. It will be a system of common ownership and all the good things of life will be produced in plentiful supply and distributed to whoever needs them, as much as he needs them, just as now a person may borrow books from the public library. We are now poor and enslaved not because of lack of reforms made by politicians, but because the employing class own and control the means of production, without access to which we cannot live. So long as others control the means whereby we live so long shall we be slaves. Only by taking common ownership of the means of distribution can people be free.