Saturday, June 15, 2019

The class war is for the existence of humanity.


Then for a’ that and a’ that, man to man the world o’er, shall brithers be for a’ that.

The mission of socialism is so to organise the mechanism of production that wealth can be so abundantly produced as to free mankind from want and the fear of want, from the brute’s necessity of a life of arduous toil in the production of the brute’s mere necessaries of life. Socialist philosophy has made this clear. The Socialist Party is the only party that is or can be truly representative of the interests of the working class, the only class essential to society and the class that is destined ultimately to succeed to political power, “not for the purpose of governing men,” in the words of Engels, but “to administer things.” Between private ownership and common ownership there can be no compromise. One produces for profit, the other for use. One produces millionaires and mendicants, the other economic equals. One gives us palaces and hovels, robes and rags, the other will secure to every man and woman their full product of his or her toil, abolish class rule, wipe out class distinction, secure the peace of society, and make of this earth for the first time a habitable place. In the wage system you and your children, and your children’s children, if capitalism shall prevail until they are born, are condemned to slavery and there is no possible hope unless by throwing over the capitalist and voting for socialism. Now, what you want to do is quit every capitalist party of every name whatsoever. What you want to do is to organise your class and assert your class interests as capitalists do the interests of the class that is robbing you. Your lives depend upon the control and ownership of the means of production and distribution. Arise, ye wage-slaves! Declare war, not on the capitalist, but on the capitalist system. What is wanted is not a reform of the capitalist system, but its entire abolition. 

Socialism will give humanity a new world. Let us work so that the socialist revolution may come in peace. The Socialist Party is organised to pave the way for its peaceful culmination. We declare then, that the time has come when working men and women should open their eyes, when they should have an understanding of socialism and pave the way for its triumph and the abolition of capitalism from the face of the world. We are educating, we are agitating, we are organising, that is to say we are preparing for socialism.

The Socialist Party is founded in the bedrock principles of socialism. It understands the process of social evolution. It deludes itself with no promise of premature victory. It has no desire for political office. Spoils and privilege hold no temptation for it. The Socialist Party has but one mission and that is the political unity of the working class to wrest the State from the capitalist class as the necessary means of abolishing the capitalist system and achieving industrial freedom and social justice. This party knows no such word as fusion with our class enemy. The merest hint of compromise is rejected. No concessions that any capitalist party might offer would turn the Socialist Party the breadth of a hair from the clear-cut course through which it is hewing its way to ultimate victory. The Social Party is composed of working men and women who have come into consciousness of their class interests. It is a party of thinkers and the only party in which he rank and file are supreme. This party has no use for a political saviours and can never be misled or sold out by corrupt leaders. Private ownership of he means of life has reduced millions to hopeless poverty, ignorance, vice, and crime. Capitalism and competition have had their day. Socialism and cooperation are next in order. This will mean society free from class rule and all the world at peace. Then exploitation of class by class will cease — rent, interest, and profit will be no more. Wealth will be produced by social labour in such abundance as to satisfy all human wants. Then leisure, light, virtue, and joy instead of idleness, darkness, misery, and death.

In spite of worsening economic conditions, nothing can be accomplished until the people hold a vision of where they want to go and what they want to be. Creating and imbuing them with such vision is the foundation of our organisation. Destruction of the environment, the continual threat of nuclear war and looming pandemics are calling the very existence of the human race into question. Yet we in the Socialist Party face the future with confidence.

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