Our aim is World Socialism, a system based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of life by and for the whole community. With Socialism, production will be for use and distribution direct. The working class must establish socialism itself. This cannot be done for them. Thus we reject leadership. Self-styled leaders cannot lead the workers to socialism, but they can, and do, lead a cosy life on the backs of the working class. We also reject the view that socialism can be legislated into being by a majority of MP's over a passive and non-socialist working class. We do, however, believe that the way to socialism lies through revolutionary political action. Before socialism can be established the working class must gain control of the machinery of government Then, being also organised economically for socialism, they can use it to effect the change from capitalism to ocialism. We hold that only a consciously socialist working class can establish socialism. Thus we place extreme importance on socialist understanding. Our primary task is to help to bring about such understanding and we believe the way to do this is to campaign for socialism and socialism alone. Otherwise, we would get the support of those who merely want a reformed capitalism and eventually cease to be a socialist party. Thus we have no reform programme. This does not mean that we are opposed to all reforms. We are not. But we are against a reformist policy. A socialist programme can contain only one demand: Socialism.
We accept, and act on, the doctrine of the class struggle between the capitalist class and the working class and we are therefore opposed to all other political parties whether they claim to be socialist or not. In our view the Labour Party is a capitalist reform party. Its policy of piecemeal reforms cannot lead to socialism. When in power. Labour parties have always acted as faithful caretakers for capitalism and against the interests of the working class.
Under capitalism trade unions are necessary and inevitable. We are not against trade unionism when it is used to improve workers' wages and conditions, but we say that trade unionism has its limits and cannot be used to overthrow capitalism. So long as this lasts—and it will last as long as the capitalist system of society—it will not be possible for the workers of any trades union organisation to more than slightly modify their condition, and their power in this direction is becoming every day more limited by the combinations among employers to defeat the aims of the working class.
Religion acts as a delusory escape from the misery of capitalism and is thus a buttress of this system. Nationalism, too, is an illusion which help to maintain capitalism. It obscures the class struggle and leads the workers into actions which are altogether against their interests. A socialist working class can have no use for nationalism. The most pernicious of these illusions is perhaps racialism. Scientific evidence shows that all race theories are so much nonsense. The colour of the skin has no connection with intelligence. No group of people sharing particular characteristics is inherently inferior to any other. The interests of all the workers of the world are one; they should not be led by the delusions of religion, nationalism and racialism to think otherwise. Nor do we back the so-called anti-colonial revolutions or national liberation movements. It is our view, and experience confirms this, that these independence revolutions are mere changes of rulers, equally cruel taskmasters to the workers of the territories concerned.
Modern war is the product of the capitalist system. So are the horrifying methods of prosecuting it, including nuclear weapons. We have opposed, and are opposed, to the shredding of a single drop of working class blood in capitalism’s wars. The articulate opposition to war is often the pacifist, to poverty the philanthropist, to suppression the libertarian. These people may be very sincere. But because they treat their problems in isolation, because they regard the problems in terms of idealistic defects in society, they are doomed to failure.
Anti-capitalism with its emotional platitudes are not enough. Nobody in their senses likes the effects of capitalism— nobody enjoys war or poverty or suppression. But what to do about them? Up to the present, these problems have provoked, in the main, apathetic grumbling on one hand or emotional idealism on the other. Both are ineffective. The sterility of simple discontent is obvious. What really counts is understanding the effects of capitalism, linking those effects to their cause and explaining this whole process in consistent materialist terms and in a scientific manner.
We reject capitalism. We reject its inhumanities, its inadequacies, its values. We know that human beings are capable of something better than a society in which millions of people suffer varying degrees of poverty and outright destitution, a society which periodically divides itself into armed camps which proceed to smash the life out of each other. Capitalism is abundant in the hypocrisy of its platitudes.
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