The process of overcoming the overwhelming conditioning of capitalism is itself a long hard struggle. We do not underestimate the potential of the working class when we say that the majority of workers are at present imbued with support for capitalism. There is a great potential for workers to make the transition to understand and want socialism instead, but we would be kidding ourselves and others if we believed that the revolution was imminent. The key precondition for a socialist revolution is that a majority should be socialists, fully conscious of their class position and their interests as workers in ending capitalism. But that simple condition, of a majority of genuine socialists, still stands as an indispensable precondition for the revolutionary change we seek, and we continue to work with great determination to build up such a majority. Many on the Left find it hard to face up to the harsh fact that capitalism, in all of its forms, does depend on the acquiescence and/or apathy of a majority of workers themselves. The Socialist Party policy is one of spreading revolutionary ideas amongst the workers, organised and unorganised, in order that capitalism shall be abolished and Socialism established. That is the work of a mass movement
As a political party standing unequivocally for socialist revolution our role, which we carry out to the best of our abilities, is to put to our fellow-workers the most urgent choice facing the entire human race. Are we, the deprived majority, going to allow the world's resources to remain in the hands of about 1 per cent, or are we, at last, going to act on our true interests. and organise politically, consciously and democratically for the overthrow of capitalism, and the establishment of world socialism? It would be nice, but naive, to believe that workers in any country can achieve almost anything if they just go out, en masse, demonstrating. This is just not true. What is necessary is that the state forces do not resist.
In a world of political opportunism, the Socialist Party occupies a unique position, a position that has never been challenged by even its most inveterate enemies—it still adheres with unremitting persistence and firmness to the principles on which it was originally founded. Its Declaration of Principles remains, word for word, exactly the same to-day as it was when first drafted and adopted. Is there in this country any other political party of which it can be said that it knew from the first the impregnability of the basis on which it stood, and that the test of time and experience has only gone to prove the sure judgment of those who, at its inception, conceived the idea of such an organisation being in fact what it claimed to be in name? This strict adherence of the Socialist Party to its original principles irritates many on the Left. We are criticised, reproached and admonished for being “narrow-minded" and likened to dogmatic religious sects for our refusal to swerve aside from our business of socialist propaganda into any of the numerous side tracks —such as the advocacy of reforms or nationalisation. They dislike our disbelief that a socialist society can be achieved by the application of reforms in homeopathic doses to the body politic, and thus cure it of the systems chronic ills.
The workers' past bitter experiences of the value of their labour leaders' promises seem at times to have left the workers in very much the same position of blind trust. However many times they may find their confidence misplaced yet once again they are somehow able to assure themselves that at long last a leader will appear who will fulfil his or her promises, will justify the faith placed in him or her and will miraculously lead them to the promised land of plenty. They are too little informed to realise that most of their leaders' promises could not be fulfilled in any case and that their leaders would cheerfully promise the moon or the millennium to anyone who could and would assist them in their rise to place and power. And then these trusting beings, still retaining faith in the faithless, and hoping for what they should know is hopelessly impossible, will in one breath take us to task for holding firmly to the principles of socialism, and in the next make the statement that any Socialist Party member elected to Parliament would do as the rest do, would forswear principles and seek only to further his or her own ends. Such people have not yet realised that it is simply because of their own weakness and ignorance that the political leaders whom they trust continually fail them; that the wisdom and strength of the electorate is the only guarantee that can be given for the honesty and integrity of the men and women elected.
The Socialist Party will continue its business of making real socialists and exposing the sham socialists. One day the veil will be lifted and the political charlatans revealed. They will discover that capitalism is a system of society based upon the robbery of productive labour and learn socialism is a system that will have for its basis, the return to labour of the fruits of its industry. Capitalism and socialism are so fundamentally different as to be entirely incompatible; that the replacing of the one by the other, necessarily involves the complete change we term a revolution. That revolution may be peaceful or otherwise. It can be peaceful only by the majority of people realising the nature of society, the supreme need for the change, and the overwhelming necessity for capturing the political machinery by a clear and conscious effort.
The Socialist Party has no wish for a bloody revolution. That is why we have had to devote so much time to the denunciation of the vanguard leftists whose Leninist policies can only result in that catastrophe. Parties who claim that minority revolts will create socialism are either lying or foolish. Nevertheless, some left-wingers flourish upon working class credulity with a mixture of sentimental slosh and political trickery. Our policy is less romantic and consequently, our growth is slower. Our appeal is to the head rather than the gut. We want people to think and leave capitalism to see to it that they feel the pain of the profit system. The Socialist Party teaches the working class to understand the class struggle and the causes of their slavery with the object of organising them as a class for the abolition of capital, and the establishment of socialism.
No comments:
Post a Comment