END TO THE POLICY OF CRUMBS

The Socialist Party aims at eliminating the class struggle by destroying the classes themselves and making the economic struggle of individuals impossible and unnecessary by abolishing commodity production. Socialists in all countries acknowledge the international character of the present-day working-class movement and proclaim the principle of international solidarity of producers.

We, the exploited, are the overwhelming majority. And yet the exploiters have the power and dominate us! Wherein lies their power?

It is rooted in their ownership of the greater part of the land, the mines, the factories, transport– in one word, in their ownership of the means of life.

It is maintained through their control of and command over the State, the armed forces, the police, the Courts, and the whole coercive machinery, with which they keep us on our knees.

It is rooted in their ability due to their command of the media to stupefy us.

We were given the right to vote, but the right to the sources of wealth, the right to the mines, to the factories, to their great estates, they keep for themselves. Ours is the voting power; theirs the wealth, the profits; such is democracy that we keep voting for the parties of the exploiters. Most of the law made in Parliament is destined to serve the interests of the exploiters. To us they throw the occasional bone, some crumbs, in order to hide their policy of roguery. The Labour Party demand from our masters are bigger crumbs. The Left preach socialism in fine phrase, but the mines, the factories, the large estates – they leave to the bloodsuckers. Open your eyes, ye poor and downtrodden. The Socialist Party want to show you, on every question or measure which comes before Parliament for consideration, that the Conservatives and the Labourites care for nothing except the moneybags of the exploiters. We want to show you that they deceive you at every turn. Only by sending men and women into this Parliament who will have no other aim but the ABOLITION OF THE WHOLE SYSTEM OF PRIVATE PROPERTY IN THE MEANS OF LIFE, will your interests be served, and will you be able to organise production on a new basis, in the interest of all. If you want to free yourselves from the oppression of capitalism, then you must break the power of the exploiters by common revolutionary action. Victorious revolutionary action presupposes a CLASS-CONSCIOUS working class. You will therefore have to remove the blinkers from your eyes.  It is for the purpose of making you see, in order to expose the daily practices in the political arena – the lies, the deceit, the humbug, and the misleading ways and intricacies of this sham democracy that we want to get into Parliament. Written right across every page of human history is the declaration that no people can be free so long as the private ownership of the means of production and distribution endures.

THE MEANS OF WEALTH PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION TO THE ORGANISED COMMUNITY. The decisions which effect the whole of society, such as what to produce, how much to produce, when and where to produce it, and how to use and distribute it are the decisions which affect the total resources of the economy, and the lifestyle and opportunities of everyone within society. Control over these resources and decisions, that is workers’ management of the economy, is the socialist alternative to capitalism.

The Socialist Party is necessarily a revolutionary party and its basic demand is the common ownership of the means of production and distribution and the operation of all industry in the interest of all the people. This will mean an economic democracy. Economic freedom can result only from common ownership, and upon this vital principle the Socialist Party differs diametrically from every other party. Between private ownership and common ownership there can be no compromise. One produces for profit, the other for use. One produces billionaires and beggars, palaces and hovels, the other abolishes class rule, wipes out class distinction, secures peace, and makes of this earth for the first time a harmonious habitable planet.