Everything is possible

The dominant capitalist interests are not concerned primarily with the development or the welfare of people. The opposition to the dominion of capitalism is confronted by its global power.  When the industrial crisis was raging throughout the world, when factories and plant were standing idle, when machines rusting, when the wholesale destruction of “superfluous” foodstuffs was taking place while millions of people were starving, it becomes plain that capitalist development had led humanity to the brink of a precipice. Is there an alternative? Either we have change or we have barbarism, economic collapse and moral decay where climate change and war may well destroy civilisation. This then is the alternative which the ruling classes may bring about. The mission of building society on a basis of social justice to-day rests with the labour movement. Fundamental change is imperative. Our vision is of a better, socialist society and to end the days where the poor and needy – the billions of them – have to endure drab and dismal lives. The quest for solutions — sometimes irrational, always erratic, never coordinated — dominates world politics.

The working class require a shift in consciousness, and need to reject the old values fostered by the ruling class through its social and political institutions and to gain a general awareness that these values do not serve the interests of working people It is an awakening to the fact that have interests separate from and opposed to those of the employers and the government that sides with the employers. Workers are locked in the two-party political system, where they remain to this day, the greater and lesser evils. The unions have been under sustained attack and there are no signs of any let-up. The only weapon embattled workers have is their ability to strike, and the employers have extracted a heavy toll for the small concessions they have been obliged to make. The unions are composed of workers, were created to represent the interests of workers, and cannot exist without worker support. Under pressures of the economic crisis and the heavy blows of the employers, the unions will have to be transformed by their members in the struggle against the employers, or they will be neutralised by the combined assault of the employers and government. This can only be accomplished by action, and it may well not be accomplished at all.

The principal task of the Socialist Party right now is to try to restore the credibility of socialism in the minds of millions of men and women having had decades of distortion from mistaken interpretations of the Russian Revolution and Lenin. Our starting point starting point in our engagement and exchanges with our fellow-workers should have been their immediate needs, to eliminate hunger, house the homeless, to give a dignified life to everyone, to save the lives of those who die for lack of proper medical attention, to generalise free access to necessary goods and services. None of this is dogmatic or utopian although fellow-workers are not yet ready to fight for the socialist revolution. We have spent much of our energy and resources in correcting misconceptions rather than presenting the genuine socialist vision. To-day, the stakes are literally a question of the survival of humanity. Hunger, epidemics, nuclear power, environmental destruction and climate change are the fundamental reality of capitalism’s new world disorder.

We defend socialism as being totally emancipatory in all areas of life. The producers must hold the real decision making power over what they produce. This power must be exercised in a completely democratic manner; that is, it must express the real aspirations of the working class.