The socialist movement is almost suffocated by reformers.
Every crying evil of capitalism has its devoted band of would-be reformers.
What a vast and formidable force would they be if they united for the abolition
of the wages system. The horrors of capitalism are world-wide and ever growing,
they cannot be cured a bit at a time. All over the world, in all the great
cities, are horrible and indescribable slums. People are mentally and
physically starved, and repressed in a thousand different ways. All the means
of production lie in the hands of private holders. The motive of industry all
the time is profit-making, not the supplying of things for the people’s use.
Yet it is possible to produce everything that we need in spacious surroundings
and decent buildings, and for people to enjoy life to the full. Socialism means
a system of society where men and women organise together to produce the things
they need, and having produced them in co-operation enjoy them freely. This
does not mean a stilted uniformity, but a satisfaction of individual
requirements. Socialism means that all men and women will become individuals
for the first time and will have individual expression of thought and feeling.
The Socialist Party seeks a new world, a class-free world, a peaceful world, a
world without poverty or misery. There is only one thing in the way of
realising this wondrous state of things, and that is the realisation of its
possibility by the rest of the workers. Help us to spread the knowledge and
waken our fellow-workers so we can transform this hell of capitalism into a cooperative
commonwealth for the beneļ¬t of all. Working people, wake up! The time has come
to open your eyes and see things as they are. You have been hoodwinked and
robbed and enslaved long enough. Line up with your class in the great struggle
for freedom. Transform the whole world into one cooperative commonwealth, and
bring about real human freedom and Brotherhood of Man.
The theory of the Socialist Party is based on Marxism:
Marxian economics, the theory of the class struggle and the materialist
conception of history. Marx supported certain wars. The Socialist Party does
not.? Is the Socialist Party not Marxist or was Marx wrong? One of the dangers
of dogmatism, of going by quotations, is that the historical context is lost. Mid-nineteenth
century Europe was a different place from the modern world. Marx’s support for
wars and nationalist insurrections must be seen against the background of
Europe a hundred years ago. Socialism grew out of the European revolutionary
democratic movement which the French Revolution had triggered off. Marx and
Engels, in Germany in 1848. had played an active part in this movement and they
shared many of its assumptions. Socialism is only possible on the basis of
large-scale industry as developed by capitalism. However, at this time. Europe
was in danger of being dominated by powerful feudal forces — the Holy Alliance
of Russia, Prussia and Austria. These powers had already been used to crush
uprisings in Italy, Hungary, Poland and Germany. Marx felt that in these
circumstances there was a very real danger that Europe might be overrun by
these feudal powers, particularly Russia, thus putting off the social
revolution for decades. This fear of Tsarist Russia explains Marx’s support of
the Franco-British side in the Crimean War and also of Polish nationalism. An independent Polish nation, was supposed to
be a shield against Russia for a revolutionary Europe.
The task of the Socialist Party is to spread socialist
understanding among the working class. This is not done by suggesting that
“defensive” wars should be supported by workers, nor by confusing the interests
of the working class and bourgeoisie. It was a mistake for the socialist
pioneers to entangle themselves in the international power struggles between
the capitalist class and feudal nobility. Apart from anything else, they
provided an opportunity for the leaders of the social-democratic parties, when
they supported the slaughter of the First World War, to claim that they were
following a precedent set by Marx and Engels. This made the task of the Socialist
Party all the more difficult when it sought to explain that there were no
interests at stake which could justify the shedding of one drop of working-class
blood. Marx’s position on war was thus mistaken. Looked at in the context of
the historical conditions of the nineteenth century, it is understandable how
he arrived at this point of view. But, although we can see the reasons for his
error, this makes it no less an error. As it happened the feudal powers did not
overrun Europe. They grew weaker and were destroyed completely as a result of
the First World War. By the turn of the century capitalism had conquered the
world and there was no danger of a feudal reaction. All wars were now purely
capitalist, disputes between rival imperialist powers. The purpose of the Socialist
Party is quite clear: to struggle uncompromisingly and consistently for the
establishment of socialism throughout the world.
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