Friday, June 07, 2019

Where there is hope, there is a future

Hope is an essential attribute to human existence. There's a saying: "where there is life there is hope" to which the converse might be added: and "where there is hope there is also life." The two thoughts are actually interconnected so that when a situation is declared hopeless it means we are done for.

Most people look forward to something: either a better job, more schooling for their children; in general, towards a betterment in life. Some even cling to the “American” dream of their "ship coming in”. Others look towards an early comfortable retirement. 

 Despite endeavours to dehumanise the people a new spirit of hope is abroad in the world, to the horror of the owner-rulers and their “liberal” apologists. Despite everything – and because of everything - workers condemned by a system of capitalism awakens. Their own living experience teaches them – teaches us – the urgency of reclaiming the world for the people. Revolutionary hope of the people, is once more found in the workplaces and the streets. The period of awakening, with its stirrings of renewed struggle, are upon us. The moment of opportunity must be seized or it will not be realised. If the hopeless system that dooms us to despair and impoverishment is itself to be buried, we must act now. The people’s needs require revolution. The people’s dreams demand revolution. But revolution needs organisation, an organisation of revolution – a revolutionary organisation which will unite the people in winning the future. Never say there’s no hope

But we do live in dark days. The right-wing feeds off wars, recessions, poverty, unemployment, hunger, bad housing, race hatred. Nations and peoples are at each others throats, crises and wars are a constant threat. Fear is everywhere. A world in economic decline, ridden with racial conflict and oppression, given to war-making, and saddled with a dysfunctional political system this characterisation of contemporary society would be accepted by many people who can project no way out and nowhere to go.

 It is in the light of this fact that the importance of the Socialist Party in politics must be measured. Its present strength counts for little. We are making a little progress — just a little progress every day, and we trust in the future, because we hold faith in the people. They are coming around to believe in the necessity of acting. Its ability to build for the future is of tremendous significance. Our membership is the preservation of the integrity and the effective instrument for the coming social reconstruction. It is vital and indispensable that our party be preserved as a socialist party in the true meaning of the term. Not a party of patchwork reform, nor a party of sham revolutionary phrases, but as a militant party, rooted in the working class movement, organising education in the economic and political struggle. More than ever today a strong organisation of the people is required in their fight for survival. Without an organisational form of the opposition to capitalism there is no hope. But the movement suffers from the absence of workers’ self organised politics. The tasks before us will not be easy, but we have shown in the past that we can rise to the occasion. We can and we must do it again. Otherwise the hate that surround us will conquer us.

 Can workers be drawn to a socialist alternative? The common-sense answer of the intellectuals to that question is no. Nevertheless, the Socialist Party would answer that there is everything to play for. The task for the Socialist Party shall be to ruthlessly reveal all those wrongs, which are inherent in the present state of society. We shall fulfill this task by showing the means and ways, whereby we can reach big goal: the working class liberation from the ball and chains of wage slavery, which restrain its development in social, political and cultural sense. We must educate. Only an enlightened and awakened working class is powerful enough to form a counter-weight to the ruling class. Without organisation nothing can be accomplished. The Socialist Party is thus organisation of the most numerous class in society, for the injured and suppressed working people.

The Socialist Party believes that capitalism can only continue to exist at the expense of the increasing misery of the working class. We also believe that only by loyalty and solidarity and organisation, can the workers triumph. 


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