Venue: The Quaker Hall,
Victoria Terrace (above Victoria Street),
Edinburgh EH1 2JL
There are many political parties professing to exist only for the purpose of assisting the working class if the workers would only trust them and vote for them. The Socialist Party of Great Britain is opposed to all parties who ask the workers to support a reformist policy. Reform of capitalism would still leave workers in their wage-slave position. Reforms, apart from the fact that in many cases they had proven worse than the evil which they set out to remedy, are the normal features of capitalism. Capitalists and their representatives have been busy reforming the capitalist system since it had been established but in spite of all their reforms, the condition of the working class has not substantially improved. The Labour Party, with its ever-changing lists of palliatives and ameliorations, should be an example to the workers of the futility of wasting valuable time and energy attempting to reform a system which can not be reformed in the interests of the working class. This refusal to advocate reforms has been the other distinguishing feature of the Socialist Party though one that has been less understood by other working-class militants and by the working class generally.
Actually, we do not oppose to reforms as such - how could a party composed of workers and committed to the working-class interest be opposed to any measure that improved, however marginally and temporarily, conditions for workers - but to reformism in the sense of a policy of actively seeking reforms. Our policy is not to advocate any reform, but to advocate only socialism, argueing, as did William Morris in his Socialist League days, that if it’s reforms you want the best way to get them is to go for revolution as, faced with a strong movement demanding socialism, the capitalist class will offer all sorts of reforms in a futile bid to buy off this movement.
Socialism is the only hope of the workers, all else being illusion.
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