Revolution is the Only Way

Today the struggle of all the people of the world is reaching new heights. Nothing is more fundamental to the politics of the Socialist Party than the working class, because only the working class can get rid of capitalist society and bring about socialism. There are reformists who deny that workers can act as a class to bring it about. A working class revolution differs from all previous revolutions. The workers revolution is the first revolution aimed at a consciously planned overthrow of existing society. Like other revolutions, the working class revolution grows out of class antagonisms, overthrowing all existing human relationships. Unlike previous revolutions that have taken place within national frameworks, the proletarian revolution can only conclude with the construction of a worldwide class-free society. Marx remarked that the dominant ideology in any society was the ideology of its ruling class, this is not static. Ideological control by the ruling class is not simply exercised by education, television and the press but continually flows from the daily reality of working class life, as everything is produced and judged for its profitability. Class consciousness can and does develop out of the class struggle in spite of, and against, the ideology of the ruling class.

For many years debate has raged in the workers movement as to which road the revolution should take. Capitalism is beset with an immense political and economic crises. The capitalists have more and more begun to shift the brunt of their problems onto the backs of workers. Fighting for partial solutions or a few piecemeal reforms never has and never will end these conditions. Only a total overthrow of the existing system–a revolution– can solve this, not a vague culture of reformism.

The Socialist Party makes it crystal clear where we’re coming from. If we were not for the goal of revolution this Party would have no reason to exist. We believe that events every day show the rottenness of this system and the need for revolution. We lay bare the ugly truth of capitalism behind them all and point the need to hasten along to its grave. We are talking about a social revolution by the class of people who are the enslaved class under this system, forced to sell their ability to work in order to live and who really and truly have nothing to lose but their chains by overthrowing this system. There is only the working class, that can go on and build socialist society. This is the type of organization that really serves the interests of our class, helping to accomplish the historic task of the working class–making socialist revolution, freeing all of mankind and to put an end to the present system of capitalism, where the first and last issue is profit. Profit and more profit. Today profit rules, not the needs of the people, which are put in first place under socialism, the rule of the working class.

Capitalism is a system where those who have ownership of the factories, the mines, the mills, the land they sit on, the machines, and so forth have everything. It’s a system where those who have no other way to make ends meet except to sell their ability to work to the bosses, must labor to enrich the capitalist, and can work only so long as they do so. When the capitalist finds no further use for a worker, when he finds it unprofitable to continue paying his workers, the wage slaves are thrown out into the streets as a statistic on the unemployment figures. Under their system, democracy is for the rich, justice is for the rich, a good education is for the rich, and healthcare is based on your pocket book. This is exactly why people formed the Socialist Party to build an organization which would help get rid of this system, and build socialism where the people’s needs will be in the first place. The Socialist Party is an organization which firmly stated it was Marxist and stood with the working class, and that the only road out of this hell hole was revolution, socialism(class-free society). The only solution to this most basic problem is to overthrow the existing system–a revolution. This is exactly why the main glue that holds the Socialist Party together, an organization to turn the system right-side up, not to fight particular problems of capitalism. It recognizes that to wipe out this mad house system requires not piecemeal solutions but one major thorough-going solution.

The Socialist Party says we should try to educate people about socialism boldly at every step and refute that we would scare people away and turn them off. When all was said and done, it is like telling a person dying of thirst that he or she is not ready for a drink of water–not quite yet anyway. People are being messed about in a thousand and one ways by the capitalist system. Are we to fight the capitalists individually? Are we to fight them sectionally and not united as a class? Are people are only interested in those issues which affect them personally, that people will only support a struggle if it can be proved that they will gain some immediate return? People can see a bigger picture. This fight against the whole capitalist class must be supported by all the people. People do support the broad struggles being waged against the capitalists by all different kinds of people. If is the task of socialists to take this even further and point to the broadest and biggest fight of all: that against the capitalist class for control of this society. The most important thing for people to understand is that the only way to do away with the misery and oppression which capitalism breeds is to build a united and organized movement against the capitalists and for revolution, targeting the capitalist system as the problem, and pointing to the solution, socialism, where the working class completely changes society in their interests, removing capitalism as we would a cancerous tumour.