Why is the working class unable to use this recession of capitalism to make, or at least to prepare, for the road to socialism? It appears as if the acceptance of this capitalist society is a fact of life that the workers mostly no longer question. We socialists are up against the reality that another new generation has to be convinced afresh that socialism does, in fact, represent a better social system for people, that Marx’s idea of the eventual withering away of the state is not a pipedream, but a realistic sketch of the future state of human society. To produce a new socialist movement it is as necessary to re-educate a new generation. Only by intelligent debate and discussion and by cogent reasoning and intelligent reasoning and demonstration can we hope to convince them. It is impossible to blindly stumble into socialism. It will have to be organised and directed by the people themselves with, at their command, all the theory, knowledge, resources, and lessons accumulated by the world working class. Its know-how and organisation in politics and action must match and surpass that of its enemies. The socialist revolution consists of an entire process, on a global scale. Nothing less than the fate of humanity hinges upon the self-emancipation of the working class.
The Socialist Party is a revolutionary political organisation which seeks to educate the workers in order that they may organise to combat capitalism in every field of its activity. We emphatically insist that capitalism’s control of the political machine must be challenged at the ballot box. Capitalism is a social system which breeds conflicts. It is a seething jungle of struggles wherein individuals, classes, nations, and empires fight against each other. Individual wage-earners vie with each other for jobs; capitalists outbid one another for markets; classes struggle against each other in the economic and political arenas, and nations are prepared to wipe each other off the map for the sake of imperial conquest. But the struggle, international in its extent, which looms larger than all others, is the conflict between capital and labour. In this struggle, the former fights with ability and consciousness of aim, while the latter fights with great confusion and without a knowledge of its own strength. Because the political weapon is used by the capitalist class against labour, and because the political State is a machine to maintain class rule, there are some who contend that working class political action is futile. The task of socialists, therefore, is to educate and assist the transfer of power from capitalists to working-people.
The Socialist Party declares that as political power is used by the capitalists to enforce its economic power, for that very reason the workers must meet the capitalist class on the political field. The Socialist Party takes the political field with one plank upon its programme—Socialism. It emphasises that only socialists must vote for its candidates. The Socialist Party is a weapon of class struggle in the hands of the working class, transforming their consciousness into a material force for the capture of state power. If we turn towards the future, we must grasp the fact of that often misconstrued conception “the dictatorship of the proletariat” simply means the democratic rule of the overwhelming majority, which means that the people themselves take the running of society into their own hands and control it in their own interests. The aim of socialism is truly in accord with the sentiment for democracy and liberty. Socialists work towards the development of democratic rights to a degree never achieved under capitalism.
Capitalism is solely a profit-making system. The capitalist has no interest in the useful quality of the goods produced in his factory; the only thing that interests him is their selling quality because profit is only realised after commodities are sold. Thus it matters nothing to the capitalist what the nature of the commodity his capital is producing, or in what part of the world it is produced. The first and last essential of production for the market is profit. Capitalism reduces the worker to the same category as other merchandise to be bought and sold on the world’s markets. He or she is a commodity. He or she is a wage slave.
With socialism we have the basis for a complete emancipation of men, women and children as the government over persons is transformed into the administration of things. Goods are no longer sold for a market but are produced for use. There being no class struggles, there is now no need for a State, and the State withers away. When all the wants of life easily can be easily obtained, the cause for crime disappears and so police disappear. The essence of the State is its function of coercion but inside a socialist society the less is the exercise of this function required. The disappearance of coercion was just what Marx and Engels meant by ‘the withering away of the state’. Socialist revolution will accomplish the elimination of classes, class divisions and class contradictions, and the elimination of social and political inequality. Socialism means the ending of exploitation of man by man, a society without class antagonisms, in which the people themselves control their means of life and use them for their own happiness. To use the word “socialism” for anything but working people’s power is to misuse the term. Nationalisation of mines, railways, steel, etc. is not socialism. Neither Marx nor Engels taught that the nationalisation of the forces of production by the State signified the establishment of socialism. That’s not stated by Marx and Engels anywhere. Such nationalisation is simply a degree of state capitalism, with no relation to socialism. In rejecting such “socialism”? fellow-workers show their sound common sense.
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