Socialists – Makers of a New World

People know that capitalism is no good but few can see a way forward to a better type of society. Peace and prosperity is the common aspiration of humanity. Socialists seek the unity of the people throughout the world and cooperation among them for the victory of their common cause of creating a new world. Today, the Socialist Party is working hard to build a genuine society for the people in which men and women’s complete independence will be realised. But we live in a world dominated by capitalism, a system which allows a small minority of capitalists to oppress and exploit the great majority of humankind.  It is capitalism that brings about great inequalities in living standards with more poor people now in the world than ever before, starts murderous wars to steal the resources and causes the devastation of our natural environment.  Either we get rid of this outmoded system or it will destroy humanity.  The only way forward is a revolutionary struggle to achieve socialism, a class-free and state-free society on a world scale where people do not oppress and exploit each other and where we live in harmony with our natural environment.  To create world socialism it is necessary to replace the rule of capitalism and this can be done only through revolution and establish a system of real, popular social democracy that sets about the reconstruction of society. It is essential to generate interest in revolutionary Marxism. This can happen only if you join us in the struggle against capitalism and for revolution. The hour is late. The Socialist Party expresses its solidarity with the struggles of their fellow-workers all over the world for the end of the exploitation of man by man.

Class struggles arise out of a form of production which divides society into classes, one of which carries out the actual process of production (slave, serf, wage-worker), while the other (slave-owner, lord, capitalist employer) enjoys a part of the product without having to work to produce it. Marx saw the aim of the working-class as the preparation for and organisation of revolution – the overthrow of the ruling class of capitalist – and the organisation of a new system of production, socialism. But when the working class takes power it does so in order to end the class divisions – to bring in a new form of production in which there is no longer any class living on the labour of another class; in other words, to bring about a class-free society. There will be no class conflict because there are no classes with separate interests, and therefore there will be no need of a State – an apparatus of force – to protect one set of interests against another. The State will “wither away”. As Engels put it: “Government over persons is replaced by the administration of things and the direction of the processes of production.”

A revolution is the work of a class which has gained political power in order to transform society to suit its interests; a reform is carried out only within the framework of the social system. Reforms cannot end capitalism; they can modify it to some extent, but they leave its basis untouched. To establish socialism, a revolution—a complete transformation of private property into social property—is necessary. We do not deny that certain reforms won by the working class have helped to improve our general living and working conditions. Indeed, we see little wrong with people campaigning for reforms that bring essential improvements and enhance the quality of their lives, and some reforms do indeed make a difference to the lives of millions and can be viewed as 'successful' (we also recognise that such 'successes' have in reality done little more than to keep workers and their families in efficient working order and rarely managed to remove the problem completely.) What we are opposed to is the whole culture of reformism, the idea that capitalism can be made palatable with the right reforms, We oppose those organisations that promise to deliver a programme of reforms on behalf of the working class in order that they gain a position of power (some groups, especially those of the left-wing, often have real aims quite different to the reform programme they peddle. In this, they are being as dishonest as any other politician, from the left or right.) The ultimate result of this is disillusionment with the possibility of radical change. The struggle for reforms cannot alter the slave position of the working class, it ends by bringing indifference to the workers who look to reforms for emancipation.