Why join the Socialist Party?

No worker should join the Socialist Party without carefully considering and understanding our case for socialism. When we say our party is “revolutionary” we mean, on the one hand, that its aim is revolutionary and on the other hand that we believe in the revolutionary method. We do not believe that the masses can be delivered from poverty, unemployment, degradation, war, by any reform of the capitalist system under which we live. That system must be abolished, wage slavery must be done away with altogether. The workers must own and control the machinery of production. We do not believe that the workers can cure their ills by reforming capitalism. Under capitalism the general trend is toward greater misery for the workers. Doubt and discredit are being thrown upon the entire socialist movement, confusing the workers with disillusionment and cynicism. Nobody outside an insane asylum any longer believes that the Left is going to put an end to the capitalist system and usher in the cooperative commonwealth. Nor can their platforms of “soak-the-rich” be considered radical. The fact of the matter is that the policies of taxing big incomes, big corporations and inheritance does not “soak” the rich at all and have long since had to accept as a price for keeping the capitalist system on its feet. The Left immediate demands are fake solution of capitalism’s problems. It is not necessary to dwell upon the conservatism which has now come to characterise the Left.

We, in the Socialist Party, however, defend the assertions of our Declaration of Principles as the basis of the liberation of our fellow-workers. We are nowhere infallible and we make no claim to finality but we do declare to be in possession of the clearest, straightest Marxian thinking. We of the Socialist Party thus claim to have some of the answers to the question of political and economic freedom in the modern world. We offer a sign-post on the road to genuine social democracy, a direction for our fellow-workers to take. In presenting this course we are championing the interests of humanity. Only the workers themselves, united and organised, will be able really to solve the problems which the present age creates and to free themselves from poverty and insecurity and the frustration of spirit to which they are subjected to.

Capitalists make their profits by paying the worker in wages a smaller value than he or she creates by labouring. The capitalist thus gets what Marx calls surplus value. It is the only way profit can be created. Under modern conditions, expensive plants and equipment are increased, but the work is done with fewer workers. Thus they must be exploited ever more fiercely in order that surplus value – profit – may be squeezed out of their labour, the only possible source of profit. The working class, however, has demonstrated a remarkable tenacity in clinging to their trade unions. Whatever may happen to this or that union or any number of unions, the workers do not wish to abandon the union movement but to broaden it, increase its militancy, etc. So long as capitalism endures, organisation of some kind on the job to deal with the boss is indispensable. Instinctively the masses fight to defend the unions, the right to strike, etc. Nevertheless, the trade union organization as such, while drawn into battles with their employers and government, are not the medium of revolutionary action. The unions are after all primarily economic rather than political.

Reformism and gradualism mean ruin for the workers’ movement. The idea of running a capitalist and a socialist, a profit and non-profit, system side-by-side is crazy. It is like trying to ride  two horses going in opposite directions. Why? Because capitalism must drive the standard of living lower all the time. If any trade union no matter how weak or meek they will offer resistance. The workers cannot save themselves or their movement by being humble and cautious. We cannot use the capitalist state to bring improvements. We can only begin to build a new society on new foundations. Workers cannot obtain plenty and security, deliverance from misery and war, by trying to reform the capitalist economic system. We have to abolish it. And we cannot abolish it except by a social revolution. Abundance and security can be had but first workers must become convinced that capitalism cannot be reformed and should be abolished.

The material and technological resources for such a society, unquestionably exist that everybody could have a comfortable and attractive home, abundant food, decent clothing, opportunity for recreation and education, security against accident, sickness, and old age; and the sense of independence and self-respect that goes with these things. What we actually have, however, is widespread poverty and mass unemployment. This appalling contrast between what might be and what is does not arise from the nature of the economic system – capitalism – under which we operate. It is impossible for this antiquated system of private ownership and profit to supply the needs of the population today. The system acts, obviously as a brake upon production so that, as the phrase goes, you have “want in the midst of plenty.” The removal of the brake of private ownership which shuts down factories, ploughs under crops and stultifies the scientist and technician, and putting in its place the social, that is, scientific, use of natural resources and the productive plant, will mean an immediate and substantial improvement in the standard of living of all. The spectre of insecurity will be removed. The despotic domination of the few over the many will be at an end. No one can predict the advances which may follow this release of the human spirit when liberty, equality, and fraternity are truly realised under the modern conditions.

Profits can be made only by fiercer exploitation, cutting down the living standards and taking away even such concessions as were previously made. Since capitalism must keep pushing the standard lower and lower, it must seek to destroy every means of resistance. To maintain their system, the capitalists will resort to patriotism and nationalism. The idea that it is “our” country – i.e. everybody’s alike, that there is such a thing as nation or community to which we all belong and which protects us, is cultivated by the ruling class for the purpose of hiding the fact of class cleavage and of exploitation for the purpose of making the worker think that he is working for “his” country rather than for the capitalists. We call upon the workers throughout the world to determine where their allegiance belongs, country or class.

This is your choice – capitalism and chaos or a world for the workers which means a higher civilization. There exists no more appropriate way to carry forward the revolution than mustering under the banner of the Socialist Party. Only if capitalism is destroyed can the creative energies of mankind be expressed.