Capitalism's problems are not an aberration

It is therefore our task as the Socialist Party to help build that genuine working-class party to provide the opportunity to unite working people who have been bamboozled into supporting capitalism, and shown that their interests lie with the socialism. The Socialist Party challenges the capitalist system and proposes to remove it, as if it were a cancerous growth on human society. Socialism means a society of peace and plenty, instead of a society of war and hunger. Only the working class, which has nothing to gain and everything to lose under capitalism, can create a socialist world. Meanwhile, the working class is under attack. The lords of Big Business, throughout the world, are eternally seeking ways and means to undermine and destroy the workers’ own organisations, the trade unions. They want to convert the workers into helpless serfs, unable to defend their hard- won rights and living standards. Capitalist politicians are devising new blows at organised labour. The labour movement can survive only by militant struggle against the offensive of the bosses and the boss politicians. To defend itself with its united power in every field where it is attacked, labour must break for all time with the capitalist political parties. There are no “friends of labour” in the capitalist parties. Labour’s only true friend is its own muscle. Great battles are breaking out between labour and capital on every front of the class struggle. The workers must build their own socialist party. Capitalism offers only food-banks. 

 We believe that the present system, of capitalism, is not part of an eternal “natural order” of things, not a consequence of “human nature”. It is a recent arrival in man’s history. The problems we face – unemployment, poverty, slump, inflation, are not some “illness” of capitalism, an aberration but are an essential part of how it works. All these evils are the direct result of the private ownership of wealth, and the consequent exploitation by a few of the mass of the population, the workers who produce all wealth – and whose reward is a tiny pittance. This disproportion is increasing as more and more wealth is concentrated into the group of fewer capitalists and fewer corporations. This tiny minority of the population holds complete control of the economy and political power, and effectively controls all the machinery of the state, the armed forces, the police, judiciary and upper rank of the Civil Service. The economic and political power of the capitalist class has its counterpart in the domination and control of the production of ideas, through which it maintains the acquiescence of workers in the repressive machinery of the state.

What do we mean by socialism? Not the phony socialism of the Labour Party and its attempts to organise the working class to make capitalism work. Nor is it the “socialism” of the former USSR which uses pseudo-socialist phrases but where in fact one huge capitalist monopoly, the state, exploits the mass of Soviet workers and peasants on behalf of a small ruling elite of Party and State bosses. The Socialist Party is fighting for a social democracy in which the producers of wealth, the working class will own the factories, the land, the hospitals, the schools, etc. and will run them themselves according to the will of the majority in a the class-free society in which classes and therefore the state have finally disappeared. It cannot be brought to workers from outside, but grows through our own struggles to survive. How we build our future depends on us workers on historical experiences and traditions. Workers are not isolated and are part of the struggles for human progress in a world struggle. So the experiences and struggles of the world’s workers form part of our traditions, giving us invaluable, indeed indispensable lessons on the conduct of our struggle. In the industrialised countries such as Britain, the consequence of the recurring economic crises is placed squarely on the shoulders of the working class, with the soothing palliative balm of reformism to dampen the workers resistance. The ruling class seeks every means to mislead and confuse the forces of revolution. Their aim is to weaken, divide, and defeat the revolution, desperate  to hold their decaying system together and find a resolution to the crises that plagues them. Failing to destroy the workers’ movement, every section of the capitalist tries to use it.

We aim at destroying the present capitalist system to its very foundation. We intend to destroy the machinery of capitalism such as various institutions, organisations, and all other accessories to the capitalist system. In order to create a true standard of life appropriate to a man or woman, we intend to realise a society that is without classes, a society whose members can all secure their food, clothes and dwelling. There is but one aim for us—the overthrow of world capitalism. For the majority of working people there is no other escape, no real salvation except through socialist revolution. From the beginnings of capitalism, the drive for profits and accumulation have set the capitalists not only against the working class but at each other.