We need a socialist party

The Socialist Party is the political expression of the interests of the workers. The Socialist Party seeks to organise the working class for independent action on the political field for the revolutionary aim of putting an end to exploitation and class rule. Such political action is absolutely necessary to the emancipation of the working class, and the establishment of genuine liberty for all. To accomplish this aim of the Socialist Party is to bring about the common ownership and democratic control of all the necessary means of production — to eliminate profit, rent, and interest, to change our class-riven society into a society of equals, in which the interest of one will be the interest of all.

The economic basis of present-day society is the private ownership and control of socially necessary means of production, and the exploitation of the workers, who operate these means of production for the profit of those who own them. The interests of these two classes are diametrically opposed. It is the interest of the capitalist class to maintain the present system and to obtain for themselves the largest possible share of the product of labor. It is the interest of the working class to improve their conditions of life and get the largest possible share of their own product so long as the present system prevails and to end this system as quickly as they can. In so far as the members of the opposing classes become conscious of these facts, each strives to advance its own interests as against the other. It is this active conflict of interest which we describe as the class struggle or the class war. The capitalists control the powers of the state and use them to secure and entrench its position. Without such control of the state, its position of economic power would be untenable. The workers must wrest the control of the government from the hands of the masters and use its powers in the building of the new social system, the cooperative commonwealth.

 Struggle after struggle develops of the workers against capitalism for the needs of life. The Labour Party and the trade unions offer no answer. For if capitalism itself is the cause of our miseries, no policy of patching up capitalism can avail. Policy after policy is desperately tried by capitalism and thrown aside in failure. There is no future on the basis of capitalism. Unless we overthrow capitalism, perhaps only the destruction of the planet await us. The battle between the workers’ needs and capitalism grows ever fiercer. It can only end in social revolution. Capitalism has no solution. Only the working-class, only socialism can bring the solution. Only Socialism can cut through the bonds of capitalist property rights and organise production to meet human needs. Once capitalism is overthrown, then and only then can production be organised in common for all, and every increase in production bring increasing abundance and leisure for all. This is the aim of the Socialist Party. Only the organised working-class can fight and destroy the power of the capitalist class, can drive the capitalists from possession, can organise social production. 

The first necessity is the working-class conquest of political power. Without power, no change. But what do we mean by “power”? Do we mean simply a change of government? No. What is in question is not simply a change of government on top, but a change of class power; since our purpose, is not simply to carry through one or two legislative measures, but to change the whole class-nature of existing society. The capitalists own the means of production; the rest of us live at their mercy, depend on them for the means of life, we are in literal fact wage-slaves in their daily lives. The change from a Conservative Government to a Labour Government does not affect this one iota. What is needed is a change in class power. The capitalists and their propagandists try to frighten the workers from revolution by holding before them the spectre that revolution means “starvation,” that the workers depend on capitalism for their existence. The contrary is the truth. That the workers can by the method of social revolution rapidly reconstruct and extend production and win prosperity for all.