Capitalism Must Be Abolished

The Socialist Party lays great stress on the need for the working class to understand what socialism is and the role the people must play in establishing it. In fact, promoting an understanding among workers of both what capitalism is and what socialism is and convincing them of the need for their explicit rejection of the former in favour of the latter is the main content of the Socialist Party’s political activity. Despite the poverty and misery afflicting billions of workers and their families, a world of peace, liberty, security, health and abundance remains within our grasp. The potential to create such a socialist society exists. However, that potential can be achieved only if workers act to gain control of their own lives by organising for socialism. The Socialist Party’s task is to convince workers of those facts. To do so effectively, it requires the conscious and active involvement of its members in widespread agitational and educational activities among workers. A political party that presumes to speak and work for a revolutionary socialist reconstruction of our society must have members who are convinced of the correctness and timeliness of that objective; who are dedicated to that cause; and who are willing to work for it. Accordingly, among the fundamental requirements for membership in the Socialist Party are the recognition and acknowledgement of the existence of the class struggle, a perceptive understanding of its social, political and economic implications, and a meaningful commitment to support the workers in that struggle. Aside from that, the Socialist Party’s membership requirements and admission policies, while specific in several respects, are minimal.

The Socialist Party’s goal is a class-free society based on common ownership and control of the industries and services, to be administered in the interests of all society. This revolutionary change from capitalism to socialism can only be achieved through the class-conscious action of the working class itself. The Socialist Party is the political party of the working class because it is the sole protagonist of the principles that the working class must adopt if it is ever to achieve its complete emancipation from wage slavery and, at the same time, save society from catastrophe. The Socialist Party is the only organisation demanding the abolition of capitalism and advocating the socialist reconstruction of society. The Socialist Party purpose is to serve and advance the interests of the working class. The Party has no meaning, no reason for existence outside that fact. As such a party, the Socialist Party embodies a Declaration of Principles that it is convinced fellow-workers must adopt if they are to emancipate themselves from wage slavery and the related economic and social horrors to which the present social system—capitalism— subjects them and their families. the Socialist Party is a working-class revolutionary party, a class-struggle party, an organisation of individuals who have come to a common understanding and conclusion regarding the cause and cure of our present society’s persistent social problems and have freely joined together for the common purpose of convincing our class—the working class—of the need to organise their latent political and economic powers to accomplish a socialist reconstruction of society. To pursue that objective in an effective manner, they have adopted a set of organisational policies and principles and agreed to be bound by a collective discipline. We not only want socialism for our class and for humanity, we also seek it for our families and for ourselves.

Deprived of ownership of land and the tools of production with which to work the lives, liberty and the fate of the workers are in the hands of the class that own those essentials for work and production. Ownership of the means of life is today held by a tiny minority in society, the capitalist class, a system of economic despotism that is essentially destructive of the happiness of the majority. Against such a system the Socialist Party raises the banner of revolution and demands the unconditional surrender of the capitalist class. While supporting the working class in its day-to-day battles with the capitalist class, at every appropriate opportunity we also insist upon the urgent need for workers to organise for a revolutionary change to socialism.

It should also be clear that the Socialist Party rejects the concept that socialism can be established by “socialist” politicians taking control of and operating any or all of the political state apparatus, or by gradually reforming capitalism. It should be equally clear that the Socialist Party just as firmly rejects the Leninist/Trotskyist concept that socialism can be established by a “vanguard party” of elite revolutionaries substituting itself and its own political state apparatus for the capitalist class and the capitalist state apparatus. It should be clear that the Socialist Party’s concept of socialism had nothing in common with the so-called “socialism” that was once proclaimed to exist in various parts of the world. The fact is that no nation in the world today is a socialist nation. That is to say, there is no nation in the world where society itself owns the economy and where the workers control and administer it in the collective interest. That to accomplish the socialist goal the worker majority must form its own political party to advocate the change from capitalism to socialism; to articulate the need for workers to organise into a class-wide economic organisation; to challenge the political power of the ruling class; and, finally, to capture the existing state machinery in order to dismantle it.  Neither nationalisation, The Welfare State, kibbutz-style communal living, cooperatives, party-run bureaucracies nor reforms are socialism or even stepping stones on the path towards socialism. Our understanding that socialism means the elimination of the wages system, the elimination of economic or social classes, the elimination of the state, the complete abolition of capitalist economic relations, and the transfer of all social power—political and economic—to the workers.