Who we are

Marx and Engels held that there would be no state in socialist/communist society. The Socialist Party is probably the closest Marxists to Marx and Engels in the UK. The Socialist Party agree with Marx and Engels that universal suffrage equates to the political power of the working class and that it can be used by socialists to capture the state, which would then quickly wither away.

In keeping with the tenet that working class emancipation necessarily excludes the role of political leadership , the Socialist Party is a leader-free political party where its executive committee is solely for housekeeping admin duties and cannot determine policy or even submit resolutions to conference (and btw all the EC minutes are available for public scrutiny with access on the web as proof of our commitment to openness and democracy. ) All conference decisions have to be ratified by a referendum of the whole membership. The General Secretary has no position of power or authority over any other member being a dogsbody. Despite some very charismatic writers and speakers in the past, no personality has held undue influence over the SPGB. Although some wag can wise-crack that we are "museum marxists" , the longevity of the SPGB as a political organisation based on agreed goals, methods and organisational principles and which has produced without interruption a monthly magazine for over a hundred years through two world wars is an achievement that most left organisations can only aspire towards .

There are common misrepresentations and parodies of the Socialist Party positions, particularly on Parliament and trade unions. The sole purpose of the Socialist Party is to argue for socialism and put up candidates to measure how many socialist voters there are. We await the necessary future mass socialist party as impatiently as others and do not claim for ourselves the mantle of being or becoming that organisation. The function of the SPGB is to make socialists, to propagate socialism, and to point out to the workers that they must achieve their own emancipation. It does not say: “Follow us! Trust us! We shall emancipate you.” No, Socialism must be achieved by the workers acting for themselves. We are unique among political parties in calling on people NOT to vote for them unless they agree with what they stand for. Contrary to rumour, The Socialist Party does not insist that the workers be convinced one by one by members of the party

"... if we hoped to achieve Socialism ONLY by our propaganda, the outlook would indeed be bad. But it is capitalism itself, unable to solve crises, unemployment, and poverty, engaging in horrifying wars, which is digging its own grave. Workers are learning by bitter experience and bloody sacrifice for interests not their own. They are learning very slowly. Our job is to shorten the time, to speed up the process." - Socialism or Chaos

This socialist majority will elect socialist delegates to whatever democratic institutions exist (and these may be soviets or workers councils in some places), with the sole objective of legitimately abolishing capitalism. The Socialist Party consider that a democratic mandate would smooth the transition and we are also aware that the socialist majority might in certain circumstances have to use force to impose its will, but consider this an unlikely scenario.

The difference between the Socialist Party and anarchists is not with the aim of abolishing the State but over how to do these Anarchists say that the first objective of the workers' revolution against capitalism should be to abolish the State. Socialists say that, to abolish the State, the socialist working class majority must first win control of it and, if necessary, retain it (in albeit a suitably very modified form) but for a very short while just in case any pro-capitalist recalcitrant minority should try to resist the establishment of socialism. Once socialism, as the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production by the whole people, has been established (which we have always claimed can be done almost immediately ), the State is dismantled, dissolved completely We are not talking years or decades or generations here, but as a continuation of the immediate revolutionary phase of the over- throw of capitalism.

In 1844 Marx wrote that:

"the existence of the state and the existence of slavery are inseparable" - "The King of Prussia and Social Reform",

Again, as Engels wrote in a letter to Bebel in March 1875:

"Marx's book against Proudhon and later the Communist Manifesto directly declare that with the introduction of the socialist order of society the state will dissolve itself and disappear".

Then, in a circular against the Bakunin prepared for the First International in 1875, Marx wrote:

"To all socialists anarchy means this: the aim of the proletarian movement--that is to say the abolition of social classes--once achieved, the power of the state, which now serves only to keep the vast majority of producers under the yoke of a small minority of exploiters, will vanish, and the functions of government become purely administrative"

Concerning the hostility clause 7 , "That as all political parties are but the expression of class interests, and as the interest of the working class is diametrically opposed to the interests of all sections of the master class, the party seeking working class emancipation must be hostile to every other party" it only commits the Party to opposing all other political parties, defined as organisations that contest elections and/or make demands on governments to enact reforms. There needs to be only one working-class class party and that this must be opposed to all other parties which can only represent sections of the owning class and if there were two groups of organised socialists, with more or less the same principles, then it would be their duty to try to unite to further the coming into being of the single "ideal" socialist party, opposed to all others, mentioned in Clause 7. They would both want socialism; they would both favour democratic revolution to get it; they would both be democratically organised internally; they would both repudiate advocating or campaigning for reforms of capitalism. There would no doubt be differences over tactical questions (which presumably would be why there were two separate organisatiions), such as over the trade union question, the attitude a minority of socialists should adopt in parliament, even over whether religion was a social question or a private matter. But it would be the duty of the two groups to find a solution to this and form a single organisation.

In 1904 the Socialist Party raised the banner for such a single, mass socialist party and proclaimed itself, as the basis or embryo of such a party (Clause 8, "The Socialist Party of Great Britain, therefore, enters the field of political action determined to wage war against all other political parties, whether alleged labour or avowedly capitalist, and calls upon the members of the working class of this country to muster under its banner to the end that a speedy termination may be wrought to the system which deprives them of the fruits of their labour, and that poverty may give place to comfort, privilege to equality, and slavery to freedom."). Not only did the working class in general, or in any great numbers, not "muster under its banner" but neither did all socialists. So we were left as a small propagandist group, but still committed to the principles set out in our declaration of principles.

But we have never been so arrogant as to claim that we're the only socialists and that anybody not in the Socialist Party is not a socialist. There are socialists outside the Socialist Party, and some of them are organised in different groups. That doesn't mean that we are not opposed to the organisations they have formed, but we are not opposed to them because we think they represent some section of the capitalist class. We are opposed to them because we disagree with what they are proposing the working class should do to get socialism -- and of course, the opposite is the case too: they're opposed to what we propose. Apart from the Socialist Labor Party and its offshoots, nearly all the others who stand for a class-free, state-free, money-free wageless society ( "the non-market, anti-statist sector") are anti-parliamentary. For us in the SPGB, using the existing historically-evolved mechanism of political democracy (the ballot box, parliament) is the best and safest way for a socialist-minded working class majority to get to socialism. For them, it's anathema. For us, some of the alternatives they suggest (armed insurrection, a general strike) are anathema. We all present our respective proposals for working-class action to get socialism and, while criticising each other's proposals, not challenging each other's socialist credentials (engaging in comradely criticism). In the end, the working class itself will decide what to do.

At a later stage, when more and more people are coming to want socialism, a mass socialist movement will emerge to dwarf all the small groups and grouplets that exist today. In the meantime, the best thing we in the Socialist Party can do is to carry on campaigning for a world community based on the common ownership and democratic control of the Earth's natural and industrial resources in the interests of all Humanity. We in the WSM/SPGB will continue to propose that this is established by democratic, majority political action; the other groups will no doubt continue to propose their way to get there. And we'll see which proposal the majority working class takes up. It's not our handful of socialist today who's going to establish socialism, but the mass of people out there. Until they move, we're stymied. Until then we agree to disagree. Those who want to argue that such a society should be established through democratic majority political action based on socialist understanding, and who want to concentrate on arousing this, will join ourselves. Those argue that it will come about some other way, or want to do other things as well, will join some other group. bIn the main, it remains true that no other organisation or group comes anywhere near the comprehensive case which the Socialist Party sets out. If there was one, many members would be joining.