The Socialist Party – A Voice for Change

All questions shall be answered. All confusion shall be eradicated.

Socialists are working for a different and better world. Are YOU fed up?

• Fed up with the failures of this dreary system

• Fed up with leaders and the false promises of career politicians

• Fed up with poor hospitals, poor schools, poor housing and a polluted environment

• Fed up with having to live on a wage that hardly pays the endless bills

• Fed up with serving the profit system and seeing poverty amidst luxury

What happens individually and locally depends mainly on what happens in the country and in the world. That is why socialists are working for a different world. But it can't happen unless you join us. The job of making a better world must be the work of all of us.

The world we want is a one where we all work together. We can do this. Co-operation is in our own interests and this is how a socialist community would be organised – through democracy and through working with each other.

To co-operate we need democratic control not only in our own area but by people everywhere. This means that all places of industry and manufacture, all the land, transport, the shops and means of distribution, should be owned in common by the whole community. With common ownership, we would not produce goods for profit. The profit system exploits us. Without it, we could easily produce enough quality things for everyone. We could all enjoy free access to what we need without the barriers of buying and selling.

Politicians blame our problems on the lack of money, but this is not true. Money doesn't build hospitals, schools, houses or a healthy environment. The things that make a good community can only be created by the work of the people. We have an abundance of skills and energy. If we were free from having to work for the profits of employers we would be able to work for the needs of everyone.

The profit system dominates our lives. It plagues us with bills. The rent and mortgage payments, council tax demands, the food, gas, electricity, phone bills. Money is used to screw us for the profits of business. If we don't pay, we don't get the goods or the service. Without the capitalist system, a socialist community would easily provide for all of its members.

The challenge now is to build a world-wide movement whose job will be to break with the failures of the past. It won't be for power or money or careers. It will work for the things that matter to people everywhere – peace, material security and the enjoyment of life through cooperation. This is the challenge that could link all people in a common cause without distinction of nationality, race or culture.

We in the Socialist Party reject the view that things will always stay the same. We can change the world. Nothing could stop a majority of socialists building a new society run for the benefit of everyone. We all have the ability to work together in each other's interests. All it takes is the right ideas and a willingness to make it happen.

Our call for your vote is to show support for the ideas of socialism. We make it clear we are not seeking to 'represent' anyone nor promising to do anything for anybody. We are not would-be leaders, just names, a legal requirement for standing in an election, for people to put an X against if they want a class-free, state-free, money-free world of common ownership and democratic control. At most, in the unlikely event of us being elected, we'd just be the mandated delegates, the messengers, of those who elected us, who would be convinced of the need to replace capitalism with socialism and would have instructed us to speak up for this. An SPGB candidate for election is a member who has accepted our Party rule that "Candidates elected to a Political office shall be pledged to act on the instructions of their Branches locally, and by the Executive Committee nationally".

The SPGB of today are not the socialist "party" that founding members once envisaged it becoming, i.e. the mass of the working class organised politically for socialism. At the moment, the SPGB are not much more than a propaganda society or educational club and can't be anything else (and nor should we try to be, on principle). Possibly, we might be the embryo of the future mass "socialist party" but there's no guarantee that we will be (and it’s more likely we may just be a contributing element). But it is such a mass party that will take political control via the ballot box, and since it will in effect be the majority organised democratically and politically for socialism, thus it will the majority, not the party as such as something separate from that majority, that carries out the socialist transformation of society. But who cares? As long as such a mass socialist party eventually emerges.

Without having any delusions of grandeur, we try to organise ourselves today in our small party in the same way we think that a mass socialist party should organise itself: without leaders and with major decisions being made democratically by a referendum of the whole membership ratifying decisions made by conferences of mandated delegates or by elected committees.

At some stage, for whatever reason, socialist consciousness will reach a 'critical mass', or in other words when militancy becomes the norm, at which point it will just snowball and carry people along with it. It may come about without people even giving it the label of socialist.

We have had the internal debate within the SPGB of the Big Bang theory put forward by some members. They argue that a growing socialist movement would have an economic impact on the operation of capitalism before the overthrow of the capitalist class and the formal establishment of socialism. Socialists would use their influence politically encouraging the growth of the non-monetary, voluntary sector of the economy and should be instrumental in developing support networks for cooperatives. The capturing of political power would merely be a mopping-up exercise, designed to dispense with the remaining capitalist areas of the economy. It was fully acknowledged during the ensuing discussions that the growth of the socialist movement would have profound and perhaps unpredictable impacts. The SPGB does not hold that the growth of the socialist movement will leave capitalism completely unchanged until a cataclysmic revolution occurs. But we cannot now predict in any meaningful way the various ways in which capitalism will change as socialist ideas spread, so we do not think it is possible or advisable to incorporate some version of these changes into our political position.

Not many in the SPGB will find fault with the assumption that all aspects of our daily life, from neighbourhood to work, will be re-organised democratically and acquiring control over the State is complementary to that. It has always been the Socialist Party position to be organised on the economic front as well as the political front so to ensure the smooth change-over of production and distribution from capitalism to socialism. Our case is that political organisation must precede the economic, since, apart from the essential need for the conquest of the powers of government, it is on the political field that the widest and most comprehensive propaganda can be deliberately maintained. It is here that the workers can be organised on the basis of socialist thought and action, not on sectional interests as in the situation of trade unions.

If some of our critics are correct in surmising that even with an upsurge of class-consciousness  only those who supported reforms would be elected then can we equally assume that sectionalism would plague the industrial front , that struggle would be based on self-interest since what you seem to be implying is that workers are not capable of surmounting the intellectual challenge of differentiating between reformist parties presenting palliatives for the continuance of capitalism and revolutionary socialist parties taking advantage of concrete situations to obtain beneficial reforms. Let’s not forget that the Impossiblist tradition does have some parliamentary experience from the past. The Socialist Party of Canada did get elected to state legislatures. When people want something and where elections exist they will organise to contest elections as well.

As recounted in Desmond Greaves's biography of James Connolly about what happened when Connolly left the De Leonist SLP of America (which was committed to using the ballot box) to join the IWW (which wasn't) he said:
“He was asked if he approved of its repudiating the principle of political action. He laughed, 'It will be impossible to prevent the workers taking it”

Connolly also said:

"I am inclined to ask all and sundry amongst our comrades if there is any necessity for this presumption of antagonism between the industrialist and the political advocate of socialism. I cannot see any. I believe that such supposed necessity only exists in the minds of the mere theorists or doctrinaires. The practical fighter in the work-a-day world makes no such distinction. He fights, and he votes; he votes and he fights. He may not always, he does not always, vote right; nor yet does he always fight when and as he should. But I do not see that his failure to vote right is to be construed into a reason for advising him not to vote at all; nor yet why a failure to strike properly should be used as a gibe at the strike weapon, and a reason for advising him to place his whole reliance upon votes."