Whose side are you on?

The Socialist Party has not and never has been “left-wing.” Its position is unique, being totally opposed to capitalism and all its political adherents including the Left. It is the only political party to consistently advocate and work for the establishment of socialism to the exclusion of everything else.  Other parties talk about “socialism”, but when you analyse the realities behind their words it is clear that they are no more interested in socialism than are avowedly capitalist parties. The left acts as a kind of guilty conscience for capitalism. A kind of safety-valve which always has plenty of steam and hot air to let off.

The word revolution is almost as misused as the word socialism. If a government is changed, a political leader is replaced, a coup takes place, the media shout “revolution!” 

Revolution means a transformation in the object to which the term is being applied. If it is being used about society, then it means a total change in economic relations. The easiest example to understand is the revolution that took place to transform feudalism to capitalism. In feudal society, the majority were tied to their superiors. Over and above what they produced for themselves and their families in order to live, the serfs were compelled to produce for their feudal masters and The Church. That form of society was transformed by a revolution into a society—capitalism—where there is no direct ownership of the lives of people by other people in the same way.

In all forms of society, minorities have owned the means of living, with the result that the other classes have had to submit to the dictates of the minority whilst that particular form of society existed.  Feudalism depended on agricultural production and personal subservience by the majority to the aristocracy. Whilst in feudal society by and large it was birth that determined into which class one fell, in capitalist society it is purely a question of ownership of wealth however obtained. Privilege in capitalism depends not on accidents of birth (though these can be of importance to the individual) but on the ownership of capital.

The revolution that will change capitalism into socialism will involve the replacement of all the relationships of capitalism. Instead of the primary characteristics of capitalism—production for profit, the buying, and selling of all things including labour-power, and private (or state) ownership of wealth, society will be characterized by common ownership and of free access to that wealth. Production will be for human satisfaction only, hence no money nor all the paraphernalia that goes with it, and will be based upon voluntary co-operation by all in the interests of all. To get to that form of society involves a transformation—a revolution. It is only in Socialism that man will solve the major problems he now faces. That is why the Socialist Party is a revolutionary party. Because the next revolution must be the work of the majority consciously co-operating in the work that it will entail, a transformation in mankind’s ideas is the pre-requisite to its successful implementation.

 Class consciousness is greatly determined by social experience, but social experience includes ideas. In fact, mankind is the only species which has been able to accumulate knowledge, systematize it and hand it on culturally, making it unnecessary for succeeding generations to re-learn anew everything which has gone before. It has been pointed out many times that capitalism brings into being its own grave-diggers; the working class. The inability of capitalism to create conditions which would enable the working class as a whole to live full and harmonious lives in line with social potentialities will lead inevitably to the realisation of the need for a new social system. This process needs the intervention of the accumulated knowledge of human society systematized into ideas; not ideas which interpret everything in terms of what is necessary for the continued existence of capitalist society, but the ideas, on a class basis, of what is necessary for the emancipation of the working class; in other words, socialist ideas.

An existing social system cannot be destroyed unless it is at the same time replaced by another, otherwise, this would mean that society would cease to exist altogether. Working-class consciousness means, therefore, a realization of a positive as well as a negative understanding, and this can only be developed by the spread of socialist ideas. When the working class as a class adopts these ideas and brings into being socialism as a working system of society, this will be the beginning of changes in human behaviour in line with the change in social relations.

 Everywhere there is much to do, much to learn, and much to gain.   Vote, then, for socialism. Vote for the Socialist Party, the only party that keeps the revolutionary banner unfurled.