Our Objective

We are often told we do not work hard enough nor long enough. Facts, however, prove the contrary to be true. The more we work, the greater our poverty becomes; the more we work, the greater the wealth of the master class becomes. Fellow-workers, you have the power to alter all this; you have the power to make life well worth living, by gaining control of the means of living. You have this power because the numbers of the working class far exceed those of the capitalist class. Riots, strikes, and bloody revolutions of the past have not given workers control of the means of living. To-day, these methods are still useless. But we have one method which is a sure method—the vote. To be able to use the vote to advantage requires knowledge. Workers, study socialism, fight for socialism, and bring about the socialist commonwealth which will free you from your chains and give a full and happy life to all.

 The simple fact that socialism can only be established by a socialist working-class is ignored. The leaders are criticised not because they are leaders, but because, in the eyes of their followers, they are not "good” leaders. The bewildered following look around for other leaders, but do not realise that similar results must follow. All leaders are "good” (i.e., make extravagant promises) so long as they are still on the climb. Their intentions may be benevolent or merely ambitious, but in the long run, their actions are determined by the conditions of their existence. These conditions are capitalist society, and a blind following, which, though dissatisfied therewith, does not understand how to overthrow it. Ignoring the necessity for socialist education of the workers has led, and can lead, to nothing more than the elevation of a series of "leaders” to office and favour with the master-class. If working-class history is any guide, it is only a matter of time before each little group of "leaders,” as it arises, follows its predecessor along the path to "responsibility” to the capitalist class and practical inability to reduce Utopia to a working formula. A knowledge of the economic laws of capitalist development would prevent the workers indulging in day-dreams about "a living wage,” and would impel them to organise for the abolition of the wages system.

The Socialist Party advocates the conversion into the common property of all industrial undertakings which are indispensable for the provision of the wants of the workers, and we see no reason why the workers are obliged to pick and choose, in a piecemeal manner, the industries to be dealt with. That process is only necessary to the "Labour” politicians who know that they have no mandate for socialism, and are thus obliged to frame a programme which will suit the interests of some section or other of the capitalist class. Any attempt to introduce socialism with a non-socialist electorate is foredoomed to failure, and it is only the dupes of the "Left Wing ” that imagine otherwise.

The Socialist Party was formed with a definite revolutionary objective expressed in unswerving tactics. Marx and Engels have been a guide. Hence for us, there has been no wandering in circles; no futile attempts to advance before we have accumulated the army for the attack. That we are satisfied with our rate of progress we do not, for one moment, pretend; but we have at least the satisfaction of knowing that if the workers exhibit the signs of confusion, it is not due to our educational campaigns. When the workers learn to see in socialism their only hope, when they realise that it can only be gained by their own efforts in the teeth of the opposition of their masters, then we know that they will march forward as one body, blundering neither to right or left, till their emancipation is achieved.