Can the working class change the world? Yes

The Socialist Party exists as a result of the war between the classes —the antagonism of interests between the class of wage-workers and the class of property-owning employers. Its work, at present, lies in its efforts to arouse the workers to a conscious recognition of their wage-slavery. The need for such a party is felt when one realises the amazing lack of class consciousness existing amongst the working-class. To-day, the workers give their support to capitalism because they are saturated, quite unconsciously, in the majority of cases, with the ideas of the ruling class. They oppose socialism because they do not understand it. Not understanding it, they do not desire it. These capitalist ideas amongst workers have to be fought, and their opposition to socialism has to be removed before we can organise effectively for the abolition of the capitalist system. The work of spreading socialist knowledge—and we are the only party that is doing this work—is a big job, and we are in need of many more members to help along this campaign. The larger the organisation, the more widely known can we make our object and principles? We make a special appeal to our fellow-workers and ask “Why not join us now?” We want your support to help us in the fight against working-class political ignorance and apathy, and for the spreading of Socialist knowledge   We want to grow and forge ahead, and as quickly as possible and make our name and activities a mark of fear amongst those anti-working class organisations. Socialism is the only hope for the working class—all else is an illusion. But Socialism will only come when a majority of workers understand it and desire it. Recognise their own interests, and instruct their delegate to pursue it.  Class-consciousness is the first essential. Organisation to help in furthering it is the next. We are that organisation.

Come join us now. The Party welcomes everyone who sincerely believes in the establishment of the socialist commonwealth as the only means of evolving order from the present social chaos. We exist to convert the great mass of workers to the socialist point of view. We are a section of the world socialist movement, and our great mission is to trail the way to economic freedom, our task is to end wage slavery.  We have a clear aim and a political case which is on the right lines.

Those who criticise leaders, but continue to believe in the need for leadership, usually fasten upon the personal defects of the man they condemn. What the workers want, according to these critics, is better leaders, leaders who can be trusted. Our case is that the working-class movement will never succeed until the workers put all of their trust in themselves, with a full recognition that the responsibility for success or failure must rest on their own shoulders, and cannot without grave danger be placed on those of leaders.

Trade unions are useful and necessary within capitalism, but can they abolish the wages system which of necessity involves the exploitation and poverty of the workers. Obviously, no! To do so requires the acquisition for society of the means of wealth production, and this, in turn, can only be done when the majority of the workers become socialist and decide to obtain control of the machinery of government for the express purpose of depriving the present propertied class of all their property privileges. A minority of workers cannot by either political or economic action stand up against the forces of the State. A majority can obtain control of those forces through control of Parliament. Economic organisation can aid, but it cannot substitute political organisation. Trade unions, both from the point of view of progress to socialism and in the day-to-day struggle will gain, not lose, by severing their connection with the Labour Party. In fact, while their members are politically divided, as at present, the trade unions would gain in cohesion and effectiveness by concentration on trade-union objects, leaving politics alone until the organised working class is ready to use Parliament for socialist instead of reformist purposes.

 The workers can solve their problems only by gaining control of Parliament for THE EXPRESS PURPOSE OF INTRODUCING SOCIALISM. A party which seeks to gain political control for any other purpose must therefore be anti-socialist and anti-working class. The Labour Party seeks to gain control for a variety of reforms, including such capitalist schemes as nationalisation. Some reforms may in themselves be good, most are indifferent and some, like nationalisation, are for the working class wholly bad. But whether good, bad, or indifferent, they are not socialism, and do not, and cannot, aid in hastening socialism. Socialism presupposes a socialist working class. The propagation of reforms does not make socialists. First, it makes reformers and then drives them through disillusion to despair. The Labour Party has not socialist aims. Its guiding belief is in its ability to administer capitalism better than the capitalists themselves. This may be true, but it is not socialism.

 As we are Marxists who can see in capitalist nationalist movements nothing but capitalist nationalism. We urge workers everywhere to oppose their own capitalist class from the outset and build up their own independent organisations.  The Irish workers have gained nothing by helping the republican movement. There are yet hardly the beginnings of a genuine working-class movement in Ireland. The war for independence has only embittered the relations between the Irish workers, and workers outside, by stressing racial and religious divisions, and by strengthening the illusion of a common bond between the classes in the Irish Republic. Workers  will fight and die in any cause but their own. It can be said in their defence that they are too inexperienced to know that it is unsafe to trust to the gratitude of governing classes, when gratitude conflicts with class interests. A slave-owning class will be kind, but it will not free its slaves.

Socialists want a society based on common ownership and co-operation and where human needs come first. Socialism will be a society without money. People will work as a social duty, All work is voluntary (‘from each according to their ability’) so wages are unnecessary and cash no longer needed to acquire goods (‘to each according to need.’) Socialism is a system without the market where prices will not exist and where everyone has equal rights to have their needs met with equal access to goods and services. It is a society where all have equal control over decision-making. Socialist society will certainly, for planning how much to produce, need a rough figure for what people are likely to consume over a given period, but this only needs to be measured globally for any district – as, for instance, by a computerised system of stock control or by sample polling – not at the level of each and every individual. Certainly, particularly in the very early days of socialism and perhaps later after some unexpected natural disaster, there could be shortages of some things that might necessitate recourse to some system of rationing for those things. But this would only be exceptional and temporary, the normal situation being free access to goods and services according to self-determined needs.