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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