THE ROAD AHEAD – SOCIALISM

We have no illusions. We know our task seems insurmountable, at times. All around us are the signs of a world in crisis, leaving the men and women of the Socialist Party feeling unable to do anything about it. Resources that should be used to feed the hungry are squandered on ever more costly weapons and destructive wars. We will do our best. All is not lost. There is no mystery about the development of socialist ideas. They will arise from what exists – from battles against capitalism. Each new wave can and will continue and elaborate upon what preceded them. If their thought and action are in accord with the needs and aspirations of the working class, they will be honoured by playing a useful role in transforming society. The class struggle itself is a form of war, social war, and class power decides the issue. As our class emerges to consciousness it throws off the domination of the ideas of the ruling class.  For most of its existence, socialism has been confined to a small minority in the working-class movement. But at times of great upheaval, when the mass of workers are thrown into a confrontation with the system, socialists can win mass support from fellow-workers who seek a way out of a world of poverty, unemployment, and destruction.

Parliamentary activity is an expression of the proletarian struggle, it is a form of expression of class power. Politics is the field in which all issues of the class struggle are in action. It is not a single issue, but the totality of issues arising out of the antagonisms of capitalist society that workers must struggle against. It is not through ownership of industry alone that the capitalist maintains his rule but also by his control of the State machine. The parliamentary struggle, waged in a revolutionary spirit, challenges capitalist supremacy. It is not through securing better wages and better working conditions that the working class conquers social power, but by vanquishing capitalism in all the issues that maintain its ascendancy. Parliamentary action centers attention on all these issues and it realises the futility, however, of solving these issues through reforms and palliative legislation. By concentrating on all issues that are vital to capitalism, revolutionary socialist parliamentarianism emphasises and intensifies the antagonism between workers and capitalists and awakens the consciousness of the working class. Both industrial and political action develops class consciousness. Socialists in Parliament, accordingly, will use it as an empty means of protest or a futile means of “democratizing” the state and “growing into” socialism, but recognising its limitations and usefulness will transform into class power to appropriate and dispossess the owning class.

 Outside Parliament, the mass action and general struggle against capitalism will present sharp, definite expression of the revolt of the workers. Mass action is the class itself in action, dispensing with leaders and intellectuals and, instead, acting on its own initiative. The process of revolution consists in the dissipation of the class power of the ruling class as against a strengthening of the class power of working people. It consists of undermining the basis of the power and legitimacy of the capitalist state, a process that requires extra-parliamentary activity through mass action. Capitalism trembles when it faces the impact of one strike of a vital basic industry. Capitalism will more than tremble when it meets the force of a general mass action involving a general strike of many industries against the whole capitalist regime. It demonstrate to both the workers and the bosses the power released by the energy of a conscious working class majority. Either it compels the capitalists to rely upon the brutal physical force of the military and legalised terrorism. Or accept their defeat and succumb to the inevitable. The socialist revolution is a test of power in which the proletariat requires a flexible method of action, a method of action that will not only concentrate all its available forces but which will develop its initiative and consciousness, allowing it to seize and use any particular means of struggle in accord with a prevailing situation and necessary under the conditions.

There is no alternative for our fellow-workers: Class war becomes social revolution. The old relations of capitalist production are torn asunder.