Use your Vote the Revolutionary Way

The Socialist Party regards socialism not as a purely political theory, nor as an economic doctrine, but as one which embraces every phase of social life. We argue that the political arm of capitalism rules the economic body of the system. What gives title and deed to ownership of the factory? It is the state, the central organ of power (which explains the chief reason why the capitalist class concern themselves so much about political action.) The highest expression of the class struggle is the political phase. On the economic field, the working class is impotent. What do they possess, aside from their brawn and brains? They are propertyless. All that the workers can do on the economic field is to attempt to slow down the worsening of their condition. Thus, the political organisation of the workers for socialist purposes is the primary priority. The Socialist Party, in aiming for the control of the State, is a political party but we have an economic purpose which is the conversion of the means of living into the common property of society. We have on more than one occasion pronounced ourselves in agreement with the need for an economic organisation acting in conjunction and in association with a political party.

The easiest and surest way for such a socialist majority to gain control of political power in order to establish socialism is to use the existing electoral machinery to send a majority of mandated socialist delegates to the various parliaments of the world. No doubt, at the same time, the working class will also have organised itself, at their various places of work and in their communities, in order to keep production going, but nothing can be done here until the machinery of coercion which is the state has been taken out of the hands of the capitalist class by political action.  The political machine is the real centre of social control – not made so by capitalist rulers but developed and evolved over centuries and through struggles. It is on the political field that the widest and most comprehensive propaganda can be deliberately maintained. It is here that the workers can be deliberately and independently organised on the basis of socialist thought and action. In other words, socialist organisation can proceed untrammelled by ideas other than those connected with its revolutionary objective.

The Socialist Party case is that, regardless of flaws, the institution of parliament is not at fault. It is just that people’s ideas have not yet developed beyond belief in leaders and dependence on a political elite. Control of parliament by representatives of a conscious revolutionary movement will enable the bureaucratic-military apparatus to be dismantled and the oppressive forces of the state to be neutralised, so that socialism may be introduced with the least possible violence and disruption. Parliament and local councils, to the extent that their functions are administrative and not governmental, can and will be used to co-ordinate the urgent immediate measures to transform society when socialism is established. Far better, is it not, if only to minimise the risk of violence, to also organise to win a majority in parliament too, not to form a government, but to end capitalism and dismantle the state. Political democracy is not just, a trick whereby the capitalist class gets the working class to endorse their rule; it is a potential instrument that the working class can turn into a weapon to use in ending capitalism and class rule. It is not merely a formal majority at the polls will give the workers power to achieve socialism. By constitutional methods the workers can win their freedom; they have no need to go outside the Constitution until they finally destroy it.  It is the quality of the voters behind the vote that, in the revolutionary struggle, which is decisive.  It is an illusion to think that the workers in the factories can institute socialism while the political machinery remains in the hands of the capitalist class. The revolutionary political struggle for power is not to be confused with parliamentary efforts to reform the effects of capitalism. The very essence of scientific, revolutionary socialism is that the political struggle for power is the highest expression of the class struggle. In the factories, co-ops, unions, we are fragmented, sectionalised and tied to our own interests, but on the political field, we can make our numbers tell in a way win which they cannot use the State to strangle.

On the 8^th of this month even though there is no local Socialist Party candidate to vote for, use the ballot paper to signal your rejection of capitalism and write on it “world socialism.”