Most people have a feeling that the system isn’t working for them and a big part of that is at work because of the way that your employer is so incredibly advantaged over you. Workers arrive at their jobs with no power. The Socialist Party insists that there is an alternative to capitalism and devotes its energy and efforts to building up an international socialist working class with the consciously-held aim of putting socialism in the place of capitalist wage-slavery.
The Socialist Party does not anticipate an overnight revolution because socialist consciousness, unlike reformist moralising, is not best developed in the dark. Socialism will be the result of social forces within capitalism driving workers to the conclusion that the present system does not operate in their interests and that only a society of common ownership of the means of production. democratically organised by themselves, can.
The Socialist Party is one among many of these forces. We do not think that our efforts alone will bring socialism, but that the whole range of workers’ experiences (including contact with ourselves) will prepare them for it. If to some people this preparation seems a tedious process and our progress seems slow, we must say that we too would like to see the socialist idea spreading more quickly. However, important ideas in human history have always taken quite some time to become popular and have only seemed credible to the majority after once being accepted by a sizeable minority. Then they have spread very quickly. Historically speaking the socialist idea has only been around a brief moment. Capitalism has not been around long either. We hope it won’t be with us much longer, but we may have to live under it for some time yet. This we must be realistic about and accept.
Socialist education is necessary, but we do not think that it is best to educate workers about the alternative to capitalism by feeding them with illusions about how it can be made safe and peaceful. We agree that the revolution in consciousness may take time, but we do not imagine that it will take any less time if workers who agree with us refuse to join with us because they think that the rest of the working class cannot understand our case.
The Socialist Party has never urged workers to sit back and wait for socialism. Those who merely wait for socialism, and occupy themselves in the meantime with illusory and futile “short-term measures, are the ones who are perpetuating the cause of the many social problems we face today.
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