A
socialist is not the ordinary average person-in-the-street who is
saturated with ignorance and prejudices pumped into him or her on a
daily basis. The socialist thinks about social problems and comes up
with explanations and the solution. In the struggle between
capitalism and socialism we have a struggle between two different
social systems. Socialists have no intention or desire, nor need, to
abandon the fight for socialism. We fight for the workers and
oppressed peoples everywhere who are sick to death of insecurity,
exploitation, subjection and increasingly abominable wars, who aspire
to freedom, peace and equality. We never promised that we would bring
policies to their relief but only be able to help organise them into
an independent movement, acting in their own interests and not of the
capitalists. The only way we know how to do this is: tell the truth
about capitalism and socialism; help make those we can reach
conscious of the problem of society today and how to solve it, and
increase the clarity of those who are already partly conscious of it.
We will do everything we can do to deepen the understanding of
capitalism and become rallying point of resistance. We will continue
in our way even if we are alone for a time. To build the foundations
for hope in the future required not only opposition to capitalism but
also exposing those who falsely claim to be standing for socialism.
You can spot the fake from far off, for sure. He will always say, in
one way or another, that the working class must follow the leadership
of somebody else; that the working class is not really suited to make
decisions and need someone clever for them to follow. He teaches the
workers NOT to rely on their own class strength, NOR to rely on their
own class organisation. “The emancipation of the working class is
the work of the working class itself,” said Karl Marx. Workers are
not academic theoreticians and they are not Utopian dreamers but
practical people, well capable of control themselves. You
can’t replace the old order with the new society of socialism
unless the people are freed from dependence on leaders and as a
class.
We
will try to teach the misguided and mistaken this principle better as
they deserve to be answered. The voice of
socialism among the left-wing is silent or reduced to a whisper.
Within the Socialist Party, it remains clear and resolute. It will be
heard, and it will be echoed. To
declare that world capitalism is overripe for socialism is to repeat
a fundamental truth. Not democracy but private ownership and profit
are the basis of capitalism and the capitalist class. But while
democracy is not indispensable to capitalism, it is absolutely
indispensable to the working class. The world socialist movement
cannot even hope to be reborn without democracy.
State-capitalism
is command economy based on the state ownership of the means of
production. The state owns industry and either government officials
“own” the state as a bureaucracy or controls it on behalf of the
government bond-owners. Socialism, on the other hand, is the common
ownership of the means of production under the democratic control of
the working people themselves. A vast difference. When the state is
asked to take over industrial enterprises and to plan economic
activities as just another capitalist state, surrounded by a
competing and hostile rival trading nations, it could plan and
administer enterprises only in order to strengthen itself on the
world market as an international strong competitive power. Such
social reforms, where they were effected, had nothing to do with
socialism. If attained, they could only be maintained to the extent
to which the nation became a successful economic power and could take
advantage of the global capitalist market.
We
will not be issuing pious
platitudes about “democratic socialism” (as though there were any
other kind of socialism) and promoting a list of palliatives for
making capitalism operate better (if that is possible.) We ill not
present a programme of class collaboration, class “peace” and
surrender to the capitalist exploiters, the working class. The
Socialist Party proclaims its adherence, without apologies or
compromise, to the platform of class struggle, to socialist
revolution, to Marx and Engels. Our immediate demands are to free
humanity from war, starvation, ignorance, and misery. We seek a
working class that stands erect on its feet; refusing to be forced to
its knees. A working class resorting to class war. A working class
fighting for socialist freedom for all mankind. The aim of the
socialist movement is a just one: it expresses the legitimate
aspirations of the people for political and economic freedom from
exploitation and oppression. Reformists and gradualists often sneer
at what they call the “utopian”, “impractical” aims of the
Socialist Party. We are not impressed. The results of the “feasible”
politics pursued by the reformers are all around us, poverty, hunger,
disease and wars. The results of the same policies in the future will
be no better. The only war to end wars is the class war of labour
against capital. The Socialist Party possesses a sure vision and
steadfast conviction of its eventual victory. We strive, brothers and
sisters of the world for that not distant day when, over every land,
one single flag, the red banner of socialist freedom, will fly high.
When this day comes – and never doubt for a moment that it will
come – we shall declare from the depths of our hearts: The
Day has Arrived
No comments:
Post a Comment