We have said many times that studying the past is only meaningful if it enables a better understanding of the future. More precisely, a knowledge of the laws that have governed the evolution of societies in the past should enable us to have a clearer and more certain understanding of how society is likely to evolve in the future, and therefore how we can act to make these laws work towards progress, in the interest of the workers, who are the vast majority of the world’s population. Socialists did not invent people's aspirations for a just, egalitarian and free society; mankind has cherished this dream for a very long time. What Marx and Engels did was to take these aspirations and shape them into a revolutionary project. They undertook to discover the laws governing the evolution of class society so as to use this understanding to achieve the better society to which mankind aspires.
After decades of socialism being not being present in political debates, most people simply are not familiar with the term itself. The Socialist Party vision is of a society in which people have a real voice in the choices that affect their lives, having a say in the decisions that affect them It is a vision of a free, democratic and humane society. Socialism means taking power from the few and giving it to the many. The people who make society run ought to run society, that is, the working class majority who should take political and economic power. Of the myths today, probably the one least questioned is that the capitalist rulers are indispensable to the continued existence and functioning of society. The truth is just the opposite. There is only one class that is indispensable for human survival, and that is the working class, the class of labour. The task of the Socialist Party is to foresee a rebirth of mass radicalism and to prepare its advent by developing and disseminating the ideas of Marxism.
The key to understanding the present economy can be found in the fact that, in the main, unless capital can be invested at a profit, production ceases. This is a fundamental law of the capitalist system. It is no matter that raw materials and labour, the sole requirements for wealth production, are available in abundance without the prospect of profit, production ceases. In a socialist society this restriction would be removed. Wealth would be produced solely to satisfy human needs—and in the modern world we have the potential to produce wealth in abundance. Will the people continue to permit the small fraction of wealthy proprietors to own all the land and its wealth, to ravage the national resources, and exclude the majority of the population from rational management and enjoyment of the land and resources?
The capitalist owning and employing class are the barbarians of modern society, resorting to their desperate struggle for survival to the most fiendish weapons and practices. To remove them from the seats of power is the task of the Socialist Party. Mankind cannot continue its evolution until civilisation is rescued from capitalist barbarism. Industrial democracy will wrest the earth from its exploiters and its vast and inexhaustible storehouse will yield abundance for all.
We in the Socialist Party do not advocate reforms. We do not oppose those individual reforms that may benefit workers, but never advocate reformism as a route to resolving the plight of the working class. To do so would attract the support of non-socialists who sideline all with reforms that workers don't need. We hold that regardless of any benefit reforms may have for workers, they are more often than not beneficial to the capitalist class who gain by propping up their parasitism within a class-based society. Reforms do not and never can change the fundamental base of capitalist society from which all social ills flow. Our aim is to foster majority change to achieve a society of equal social access to the means of life for all. Discarding our illusions is not a once and for all task. It is a continuous activity. The current state of the world and the system we live in makes us prone to fall into the trap of creating and remaining in convenient illusions. Yet by reminding ourselves that we have the responsibility of tomorrow in every step we take today, we can make better choices and leave behind us a world at least a little bit better. We in the Socialist Party care, but we also understand nothing really changes under capitalism. Only by changing our conditions through the establishment of a society where the world's wealth is owned commonly, where production meets human need instead of speculation for profit, will the above problems be resolved – a resolve that can happen as soon as people collectively decide they want it.
As socialists, we understand the rhetoric political parties make in their speeches to the working-class to incite support "Lower taxes!”, “Better wages!” This resonates with most working-class families, but ultimately fails to deliver as the socio-economic bureaucracy of the parties loyalty lies with the corporate 'welfare state', and their ties within the economic system to ensure only the wealthiest can benefit while creating misinformation and misconception with the voters giving the visage that "Our party, is your party". As long as workers take this 'easy way out" and not think for themselves, and allow the professionalisation and depoliticisation and personalisation of politics, the working-class will never reach a state of prosperity. 
No comments:
Post a Comment