The Object of the Socialist Party

The more seeds sowed now, the greater will be the harvest of conscious working class support for socialism. It is not within our power to give details of how socialist society will arrange its daily affairs. However, we can show the broad scope of possibilities for human development when production is for use and people, without exception, have free access to what they require from what is socially produced. Socialism is not just about providing basic needs it is essentially a “whole life” concept.

Capitalism requires perpetual economic growth in order to avoid economic crises. More specifically, in order to stave off mass unemployment and economic misery, capitalism requires increasing commodity production, escalating resource extraction, increasing trash and toxic dumping, and ever-increasing energy production. Capitalism, by its very nature, must expand unendingly and it has already surpassed the limits of sustainable growth.  Capitalism is not only incapable of responding adequately to the environmental crisis, it is the very cause of the crisis and can only make matters worse. It is not enough just to oppose capitalism. We also need to create something better: an alternative system of human relations – socialism. It is not only desirable, it is imperative. It is essential that environmental activists begin to focus on ending the economic system of capitalism itself. The survival of life on this planet depends on it. The only way to rationally reorganise the economy sustainably is to collectively and democratically own, control and plan the world’s industrial productive forces. All manner of useless, wasteful and polluting industries must be eliminated while developing and expanding others. Achieving climate change goals agreed in Paris is unlikely to be achieved under the capitalist market economy.

Revolution alone is the hope of the toiling masses, and not reform. For reformism —whether political or social —does not affect the cause of the workers’ troubles. Change the entire conditions of social life and labour by the capture of the political machine by an educated and organised working class, and use it to abolish wage-slavery forever, and to establish society upon a basis of common ownership in the means and instruments of production and distribution. Thus only can, then only will, the ills and anxieties of the wealth producers cease.

It is true that the word "socialism" has become distorted this century to mean state capitalism even for most of those who consider themselves socialists, the word still does convey, better than for instance "moneyless society" which suggests a mere economic change, what we stand for: a society where productive resources are commonly, (i.e. socially,) owned and where people cooperate. i.e. act socially, to produce what is needed. After all, we say that humans are social animals, and what better name for a society where humans can develop their social potential to the full than "socialism". We certainly do not believe in "pre-determinacy": that all we have to do is sit around and wait for socialism to come. Capitalism certainly paves the way for socialism, but people make history and it is people who will have to make the transformation from capitalism to socialism. What socialists can— and must—do is accelerate this. Our general political activities consist in propagating the idea of socialism. This involves publishing leaflets, pamphlets and a monthly magazine, holding meetings, debating with other groups, contesting elections, and campaigning via the internet and the World Wide Web, all with the aim, at the moment, of spreading a knowledge of what socialism is and of inciting a desire for it. Later, when a majority have come to want socialism, the aim will be to dislodge from power, through democratic political action, the supporters of class privilege and the profit system. The answer we give as to what a socialist minority should do is that socialists should seek to “agitate, educate and organise" workers for socialism. This is based on the assumption that not only can workers understand socialism but that a majority of them must before socialism can be established. It follows from this that seeking to be a leadership cannot advance the cause of socialism, only the spread of socialist knowledge can. It also follows that socialists should organise themselves, not as an elite general staff, but as an open democratic party, so prefiguring the mass socialist party they expect to emerge and indeed so prefiguring the inevitably democratic nature of a socialist society.

Rally to the ranks of the Socialist Party, for it has one Object—Socialism; one method—Revolution. Is the idea of a world-wide revolution realistic? Why not? After all, capitalism is already a world-wide system, in fact, it is now more than ever a single world system. Even theorists of capitalism are beginning to recognise this with their talk of "globalisation". They are right. What it means is that if global capitalism is to be replaced it can only be replaced globally, by another global system, world socialism. As all socialists know, the only people who can alter the society in such a way as to remove the causes of poverty, not merely to lessen it, but to remove it once and for all, and with this the cause of war in the world, are the workers. They will do this as quickly as they understand the basis of the system of the society in which they live. It is therefore incumbent upon Socialists to spread this understanding, and anything short of this is a waste of time, which soon leads to a waste of lives, by malnutrition, and sooner or later, by war or global warming.