The Socialist Party concerns ourselves with pointing out its defects and advocating the replacing of the capitalist system by the common ownership and democratic administration of the means of production and distribution. The success of the socialist movement and the pace of its progress will depend very largely on the education and the political tactics of the Socialist Party. Mere class struggle in itself cannot bring the cooperative commonwealth. We want a world freed of the war-breeding struggle for capitalist markets, a world in which goods are produced for the use of the producers and not for sale with a view to profit. We want a world in which technology and automation will become a blessing to multiply our output and give to the producers leisure in which to study, travel and enjoy the product of our labour. We want to live full lives relieved forever of want and fear of want. Socialism means the abolition of the political State with its hordes of politicians and bureaucrats and instead the establishment of the ownership and operation by the workers of the means of wealth production -- the land, the factories, the transport and communications network. It means an end to exploitation and the inauguration of true democracy, the establishment of industrial democracy.
When automation does all the work, who will own the machines? The answer, of course, is that the capitalist class will continue to own them unless the working class acts to establish an economic democracy in which the means of production and distribution become the property of society. Unless that is done, the modern technology that could be used to provide economic security for all will only benefit a few. It will bring more unemployment than we have ever known, and more economic insecurity and human misery than we ever thought possible. Technology has only accelerated the rate at which labour's share of its product is reduced and the pace at which workers are removed from the productive process. The Socialist Party have long taken the position that the working class must come to grips with this problem unless it is prepared to be reduced to a state of abject poverty and economic ruin unlike anything experienced since ancient times when the majority of people were either chattel slaves or dispossessed entirely from the economy. We refuse to believe that the working class will allow this to happen. To prevent it, however, workers will have to make a conscious effort to organise their economic and political strength to resist capitalism's anti-social misuse of new technology and to assert their revolutionary right to determine their own destiny.
The socialist movement has always been recognised as an internationalist one, despite the most intense nationalist and chauvinist conflicts this spirit of international solidarity remains alive wherever workers raise the banner of world socialism. It is a powerful antidote for some of capitalism's most vicious and virulent ideologies, including racism, nationalism and patriotic chauvinism of all kinds. A clear view of the commonality of interests of the working class throughout the world provides a powerful bulwark against the bellicose, propaganda which issues daily from ruling-class. Recognition of the shared interest all the exploited have in ending the systems of class rule which dominate the world is a big step toward exposing and withdrawing support from the nationalist aims of their respective ruling classes. Nationalism is employed by the capitalist class deliberately to submerge the class struggle and to blind the workers to their own class interests. Even though the calls for "international cooperation" is used by the ruling-class to mask their pursuit of material interests, they reflect an inescapable awareness of the global scope of nearly every major social problem. But reorganising and developing the world's productive forces to solve these problems, to feed its people, to protect its environment and to put an end to class oppression and human misery, are tasks only world socialism can meet. Because the overthrow of capitalist class rule and a socialist reconstruction of society remain the sole solution for the working classes of the world, the resurgence of international cooperation is inevitable. For the internationalist spirit will grow step by step with the march of the workers of the world toward a socialist future. For workers loyalty to one's class is patriotism.
"The nationality of the toilers is neither French nor English nor German; it is toil, free slavery, sale of the self. His government is neither French nor English nor German; it is Capital. His native air is neither French nor German nor English; it is the air of the factory. The land which belongs to him is neither French nor English nor German; it is a few feet under the ground." - Karl Marx
"High treason is the veriest nonsense for an international socialist. He knows no hostile power which he could even think of 'aiding and abetting.' He is just as revolutionarily disposed toward every foreign capitalist government as he is against his own. Not 'to aid and abet an enemy power,' but to 'damage all imperialistic powers at the same time in international cooperation with the socialists of other countries' is the quintessence of his endeavors. He fights in the name of the international proletariat against international capitalism. He attacks it where he finds it and can effectively strike it; that is, in his own country. In his own country, in the name of the international proletariat, he fights his own government and his own ruling classes as the representatives of international capitalism. In this logical manner, through the national class struggle against war, the international class struggle against war becomes a reality." -- Karl Liebknecht
"In proportion as the exploitation of one individual bv another .is put an end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to." -- Karl Marx
"The emancipation of labor is neither a local nor a national, but a social problem, embracing all countries in which modern society exists, and depending for its solution on the concurrence, practical and theoretical, of the most advanced countries." - Karl Marx
"Past experience has shown how disregard of that bond of brotherhood which ought to exist between the workmen of different countries, and incite them to stand firmly by each other in all their struggles for emancipation, will be chastised by the common discomfiture of their incoherent efforts."-- Karl Marx
"The proletarians in all countries have one and the same interest, one and the same enemy, and one and the same struggle.... Only the awakening proletariat can bring about fraternization between the different nations." -- Frederick Engels
"In a class society, 'the nation' as a homogeneous socio-political entity does not exist. Rather, there exist within each nation, classes with antagonistic interests and 'rights.' There literally is not one social area, from the coarsest material relationships to the most subtle moral ones, in which the possessing class and the class-conscious proletariat hold the same attitude, and in which they appear as a consolidated 'national' entity...The historical mission of the bourgeoisie is the creation of a modern 'national' state; but the historical task of the proletariat is the abolition of this state as a political form of capitalism, in which they themselves, as a conscious class, come into existence to establish the socialist system.... The interests of the proletariat on the nationality question are just the opposite of those of the bourgeoisie. The concern about guaranteeing an internal market for the industrialists of the 'fatherland,' and of acquiring new markets by means of conquest, by colonial or military policies -- all these, which are the intentions of the bourgeoisie in creating a 'national' state, cannot be the aims of a conscious proletariat....Therefore, considering the matter from this point of view, the 'nation'-state, as an apparatus of the domination and conquest of foreign nationalities, while it is indispensable for the bourgeoisie, has no meaning for the class interests of the proletariat." - Rosa Luxemburg
"Workingmen of all countries, unite!" - Karl Marx
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