The Socialist Party has thought long and hard about the state and its repressive forces. Many assume that bringing capitalism to an end will require violence. But workers can paralyze the capitalist class without armed insurrection or riots in the street. The Socialist Party embraces a vision of a non-violent society. In our literature, we have laid bare the roots of violence in our capitalist society. Socialists are not worshippers of violence. Above all do they try to guard against the sporadic, meaningless and inevitably self-defeating violence that suffering and resentment are so likely to prompt.
Civil resistance does not succeed because it melts the hearts of dictators and secret police. It succeeds because it is more likely than armed struggle to attract a large and more diverse base of participants and impose unsustainable costs on a regime. Nonviolence allows a movement to mobilize a greater number of participants and supporters. In other words, there are fewer barriers to participation than in an armed conflict, so a wider stratum of society is more likely to take part. And, needless to say, the larger the movement, the more difficult it is for a government to forcibly suppress it. when large numbers of people engage in acts of collective nonviolent resistance, a regime’s repressive apparatus becomes overstretched. Nonviolent movements can initiate a wider variety of tactics than is possible in an armed movement; not only demonstrations and strikes but other forms of non-cooperation that make it clear that the legitimacy of the rulers has dissolved. What was necessary to defeat a police-state is not greater violence, as some seem to think, but the mass power of workers to effectively disarm that apparatus of violence: overwhelming it with numbers, dissolving its legitimacy, and winning over fellow-workers, particularly those from the “establishment” such as security forces.
Even the most repressive regime relies upon a degree of cooperation and consent from the population. When that legitimacy among the citizenry has dissipated, the state’s use of violence becomes increasingly difficult or even counterproductive. When large sectors of society withdraw their cooperation from the opponent government, it's extremely difficult for that government to maintain its hold on control. When the majority of the working class withdraws its cooperation from the capitalist class, it would be extremely difficult for that class to maintain its hold on power and its pillars of support will begin to crumble. The capitalist class in such a situation hardly lacks firepower as they always outgun the workers. But unleashing that coercive armed force against a rebellious working class could backfire, adding fuel to the fire. The police and soldiers (workers themselves and with family and friends on the other side) might refuse to carry out the orders or even turn their guns against the rulers.
Non-violence can play an important role in moving forward from limited political democracy we possess now to the full social democracy. Not as a substitute for electoral and constitutional action, but as an additional guarantee that the socialist majority will achieve its goal under any conceivable circumstances. Socialists are convinced that the success of a revolution depends on a majority of the working class coming to have an understanding of and desire for socialism. This is the key issue; much more important than the specific tactics socialists employ to surmount this or that obstacle along the way. Our own our strategy for achieving our own goal of a new class-free, border-free, money-free society of common ownership society is for more and more of our fellow workers to understand and consciously aim for this new form of society, until the point of critical mass is reached where replacing capitalism with socialism is a real, concrete task for the working class. At that point, the question becomes how best to take that final step. And we believe that, once socialism has majority backing, a nonviolent, democratic transformation is possible and preferable. Violence is an effective means for a minority to hold on to power, or for another minority group to topple them and become the new rulers. When the majority of workers are moving steadfastly toward socialism, the violence of the minority ruling class would be unable to stem the tide, at least not for long. The Socialist Party does not advocate violence because it is inconsistent with the end in view—a classless society of free labour and production for use. The end itself determines the means. The Socialist Party does not seek to impose its object on unwilling participants but aims rather at facilitating our fellow-workers to freely arrive at ideas.
Socialist society cannot begin until the vast majority of the dispossessed realise that capitalist property relations and the division of labour which arises from it are the real barriers which hamper and frustrate the development of the individual in the widest sense, out of the energising of their knowledge and experience they will act accordingly. In a fundamental sense, the abolition of capitalist property relations is merely the necessary condition which makes possible the releasing of men and women's energies, capacities and will to re-integrate themselves in the new society. But there will be no enlightened few, politically and economically directing the uninitiated many, because the many will have gained the social experience to direct society along the path it wishes to go. There may be in the building of socialist society much to learn, and some things to unlearn. One thing history will have taught, however, is that love, goodwill, the rights of the individual, can only have real meaning in an equalitarian and humanist society. It is only through peaceful means that we can develop better understanding between people.
The Socialist Party is not specifically a pacifist organisation. We consider that a socialist majority that has won control of political power democratically should reserve the right to use armed force, if necessary, to deal with any armed resistance to the establishment of socialism by some recalcitrant pro-capitalist minority should this occur. After the majority have democratically declared their intention to abolish capitalism, it is just conceivable that a minority might take up arms to prevent the introduction of the new social relations in some small localities. In such circumstances, the majority may democratically decide to use force. The Socialist Party is not pacifist.
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