Despair, worry, and anxiety about the future are taking a toll on millions. An economic recession and the accompanying deterioration of the working and living conditions for people fosters the potential renewal of the combat readiness of the workers in the class war and represents a favourable terrain for the birth of a political class consciousness. But the absence of a strong solid socialist movement creates a vacuum and facilitates the diversion of workers into the cul-de-sac of reformist palliatives. Even worse, it can permit a rise in nationalistic racism and xenophobia. In this way workers militancy and the potential of increased class consciousness is dissipated and political policies misrepresent the real interests of the workers. Communicating with fellow-workers is clearly a priority for socialists. Class unity cannot be realised by any chance fashion. It must be carried out through a long process of debate and discussion. It is essential to determine political objectives and an orientation, and no less essential to develop correct tactics and strategies. We require to build bridges to connect us with our fellow-workers. Linking with our fellow-workers is a necessity. The struggles they are primarily involved in are economic struggles or struggles of social resistance. Our role as a political party is to instill the consciousness that their struggles are only part of the class struggle, which has to be political. A socialist party’s participation is to clarify and provide an ideological explanation of work-place and community struggles. It is a job of agitation and propaganda.
The Socialist Party has nothing to retract, nothing to apologise for, in connection with our stand over the many years of our existence. Our opposition to capitalism and war has been as consistent and emphatic. We are not a party of mere patchwork reform, nor a party of sham revolutionary phrases, but a party of social democracy, with our roots firmly in the working class movement, and conducting a campaign of education and organisation in the economic and political struggle. Socialism is not inevitable. What has been termed its “inevitability” consists in this - that only through socialism can human progress continue. But there is not and cannot be any absolute deterministic inevitability in human affairs since man makes his own history and chooses what to do. What is determined is not his choice, but the conditions under which it is made, and the consequences when it is made. The meaning of “scientific” socialism is not that it tells us that socialism will come regardless, but that it explains to us where we stand, what course lies open to us, what is the road to life.
The Socialist Party is as yet an insignificant factor in the political and social life of our fellow-workers. Its importance lies in the future. We are criticised for our supposed sectarianism and dogmatic principled stand but over the decades we have witnessed the merging and unification of political parties and seen the futility of such ventures. We are fully convinced of the correctness and soundness of the Socialist Party principles and tactics, and therefore most emphatically disapprove of and condemn any attempt to lead our Party into fusion and confusion with so-called “socialist” reformist parties, thereby disrupting the Socialist Party. Better to have rival numerically small organisations, each homogeneous and harmonious within itself, than to have one big party torn apart by dissensions and squabbles, an impotent monument built upon foundations of clay. Let the comrades on all sides do the next best thing and freely without rancour organise and work in its own way, and make such contribution to the socialist movement as they can. Yet unfortunate that the energies of the workers’ movement should be dissipated in acrimonious and fruitless controversies over events of a hundred years ago that have long been dissected and disowned by all.
Millions of working people in every corner of the world know that they can solve the fundamental problems of their class only by making a revolution. History shows the story of how they have struggled to rid themselves of the social ills of capitalist society. Socialism would not be an idea on the workers’ agenda today without the international socialist movement of the past 150 years, and the titanic class battles against capitalist exploitation. We are socialists out of conviction because we see capitalism as damaging to the vast majority of the world’s people and harmful to our environment. Capitalism is a destructive system that hurts, divides and exploits the vast majority of our people for the sake of profits and power for the few. This system we live under, by its very nature, grinds working people, sets one group against another and acts violently against people when they resist. We see in socialism the seeds and the method of achieving a more just, more cooperative and more peaceful society. Socialists offer an alternative which can meet basic needs of people and which is based on cooperation and general, productive and fulfilling employment. Socialism offers a future free from the fears of poverty, sexism, racism, dog-eat-dog competition, joblessness, and the loneliness of old age. As our movement grows, we will be nearer to creating a society that allows each person to create and produce according to her or his ability and to obtain what she or he needs.
The Socialist Party advocates and works only for socialism – that is, common ownership and collective control of the means of production (factories, fields, utilities, etc.). We want a system based on cooperation, where the people build together for the common good.
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