Our Struggle is for Socialism

Socialism is the direct opposite of the capitalist system. It is no more possible to have "a little bit of socialism" within a world based on minority class monopoly of the means of wealth production and distribution than it would be to be a little bit pregnant. A "little bit” amounts to a programme to reform capitalism and these efforts have repeatedly come to very little except cosmetic superficial changes. Such hopes are illusory. Progressive liberal left-wingers if elected to run capitalism cannot but bow to the needs of profitability. If the only feasible road to socialism is through reforms, and if, after seven decades, capitalism is still here, where is the evidence that the road is anything but a dead-end? The naive plans to reform capitalism through cooperatives are merely to decentralise and democratise capitalist exploitation. There will be no wage labour-capital relationship in socialist society. It would be ludicrous to envisage world socialism as a command economy run by a bureaucracy on a central plan. Clearly, common ownership will require a democracy organised by the majority, where decisions about society by its citizens are made on the basis of full information and consultation.

You are the men and women who run society from top to bottom; who belong to class which produces wealth but does not posses it. We address you for two reasons:

Firstly, because it is only by spreading ideas to the majority that we will ever achieve real social change – leaders can’t do it for us; and

Secondly, because socialists know that only when workers raise their political sights will they achieve a society capable of satisfying human needs.

The struggle against the exploiters is part of the class conflict endemic to capitalism. As socialists, we recognise that the task before all workers is not to win this or that skirmish or gain a few concessions which the capitalist class can well afford; our objective in the class war is to win it. Capitalism is a worldwide social order and workers of all lands have a common interest in joining together against the common foe. The ownership of the land and the means of production and distribution gives the capitalists their power. The only way to break that power is to force them to relinquish their hold upon the means by which all the people live. The capitalist class are irreconcilable enemies, not only will we have to fight them as such always but we will have to end their existence absolutely, before we can all enjoy of the full fruit of our labour.

What is a job, fellow workers, but wage slavery? Fighting to be exploited – to be dependent on a wage at the end of the week – having to sell your labour-power to the highest parasitical bidder. Is that really the most that we can ask for? As Marxists, we fight not for jobs but for emancipation from a system which turns useful work into wage slavery. There will never be fair capitalism. There will still be a class-divided society, with the wealth-producing majority living in an economically inferior condition. The fact is that there is a bigger battle to be won.

The Socialist Party does not put forward any already devised blueprints, but will leave it to the workers who establish socialism to make the plans. We agree that most plans can be made locally but, under capitalism, workers’ initiatives are constantly inhibited by the fetters of the profit system. We have a policy which is to abolish capitalism and establish a world free of class division, exploitation, property relationships, poverty, war and wage slavery. Those aims are urgent and we are not going to be deterred in struggling resolutely for them by those who tell us we should unite with the opportunists on the Left who only seek to eradicate the “nasty little bits” of capitalism and leave the rest of it intact. The Socialist Party appeals to our fellow-workers join the party which defines socialism with clarity, fights for the new system with enthusiasm and remains uncompromisingly hostile to the apologists for capitalism. Work with us for the capture of the political machinery as the necessary preliminary to the capture of all the machinery of wealth production.

There are no answers short of social revolution will do if the problems of the working class are to be abolished from the face of the earth. Society should be run for the wealth producers, but under capitalism that can never happen. One thing our fellow-workers can be sure of: when employer and employee are in open conflict, the Socialist Party takes the side of the robbed against the robbers. For it is only through the conscious solidarity of workers, that the system of legalised robbery will be compelled to make way for the reign of united humanity.