We perform no miracles – We promise none.

‘Who are the oppressors, but the Nobility and Gentry; who are oppressed, is not the Yeoman, the Farmer, the Tradesman, and the Labourer? Your slavery is their liberty, your poverty is their prosperity.’ Laurence Clarkson 1647. 

WORLD SOCIALISM? No way! Face it. Every country that used to be socialist/communist has gone capitalist. We say socialism/communism has never been tried

The Socialist Party says to the workers: Unite into your own economic organisations, free from the control and influence of your class enemy. Organise your own political party. Challenge your enemy not only on the economic field but also on the political. Send your own representatives into Parliament to fight for your interests. We say, with Engels, that “universal suffrage is the best lever for a proletarian movement at the present time”. We say, with Engels, that “universal suffrage is the gauge of the maturity of the working class”. We will therefore do everything we can to raise the red line in that thermometer which measures the maturity of the working class. “On the day when the thermometer of universal suffrage reaches its boiling point among the labourers, they as well as the capitalists will know what to do.” The Socialist Party wants to make sure that on the day the thermometer boils over – not today, not tomorrow, but on that day – “the labourers. .. as well as the capitalists will know what to do”. We want to make sure that on that day the workers not only have enough votes in their hands, but enough power to enforce their will.

We are fighting for socialist freedom, and in this fight we are now on the defencive. The working class is on the defencive all over the world. The Socialist Party rejects the panaceas of capitalism. Society is in constant recurring crises. As Marxists, we understand that the underlying causes of this crisis lie within the capitalist system itself. The various economic difficulties cannot be “reformed away” through Keynesian or monetarist economic policies, because they flow from the fundamental contradiction of any capitalist society: the fact that production is social in character, yet the appropriation of social wealth is in private hands. As long as there remains capitalism people will suffer from unemployment, low quality social services, high military budgets, racial and sexual oppression, devastation of the environment, and all the manifestations of the chaos of production under the capitalist system.

As Marxists we understand that the real solutions to the economic and political difficulties of society lie in overthrowing capitalism and establishing a socialist system, that force in the revolutionary process must be the working class, owing to its position within capitalist society, and its objective interests in destroying the system which exploits and dominates it. Yet the working class remains incapable of playing its revolutionary role. The working class remains seriously divided, and dominated by ruling class ideas of racism, nationalism and sexism. The basic economic organisations of the working class are seriously under attack. Not only is the working class weak in its economic position in relationship to the bourgeoisie, but in the political field it is weak as well. On the whole the majority of workers are still under the influence of the pro-capitalist parties, primarily the British Labour Party and the Democratic Party in America. The awareness of the need for socialism will not come about spontaneously as a result of people’s disillusionment. It is the task of the Socialist Party, continually propagate for the socialist alternative. We argue for socialism not as a Utopian alternative to the evils of capitalism, but as the next logical step in human development. We continually try to show now the people’s problems are rooted in capitalism and that only a rationally planned economy, run by and for the working class, can overcome the present difficulties. The question arises as to how can the worker be transformed from a wage -slave, taught to obey the orders of his master, to can develop class-consciousness. A worker may live in extreme misery, yet his experience will not make him conscious of his own social status and of the necessity for class action. The conditions under which the worker becomes more or less receptive to notions of revolutionary class-consciousness vary greatly. When the worker opposes his or her exploiter and the state it makes it easy to open the workers' eyes and they become more susceptible to the socialist message that they are part of a social class of exploited and suppressed workers.

We have listened to the capitalists' promises for years and years. We shall listen no longer. Economic democracy and social justice are our demands based, first and foremost, upon the abolition of the capitalist system and exploitation, fully laying bare the innate rottenness of that system. The Socialist Party spread the hope of a world dedicated to peace and plenty.