The Time is Now

The Socialist Party is political organisation which believes that the present form of society, with its inequalities and periodic crises must be replaced by one in which the wealth and the means of production should commonly owned and democratically controlled. The need for the Socialist Party still exists to arouse the apathetic from their passivity, to gain the attention of the indifferent, to inspire the faint-hearted, and to indicate the way to industrial and social harmony. There can be no be any slackening of effort in the exposing the terrible evils arising from capitalism and its fierce competition for trade. Children still die for lack of food and other health-giving conditions. Mothers and fathers still sigh because they know not how to provide for the children’s requirements. Despair is overtaking our communities. While these conditions remain the Socialist Party's task is to agitate, agitate, agitate. The workers have no real means of escape from this humiliating position short of revolutionary change.

 The socialist revolution represents the progress for all of humanity. The path of the socialist revolution, however, is not an easy one. Socialism is not some distant dream. It is the only road out of exploitation and oppression for our fellow-workers. Reformists preach reform as an end in itself. They prop up the rule of the capitalists. The reformists say that capitalism isn’t what it used to be. Marx was no doubt right in his time, they say...but that was years ago. But exactly what has changed in terms of the exploitation of the working class since Marx wrote of capitalism? Has capitalism lost its fundamentally exploitative character? There is still social and economic inequities. here can be only one conclusion. Today, like yesterday, to build socialism we must first make revolution. Many groups, organisations and parties supposedly dedicated to the struggle for socialism seem to be receiving a receptive hearing. Even those who have been almost completely silent for years have re-surfaced again with their same old bastardised solutions for things. 

All are dream peddlers.

Capitalism, the private or state ownership of the means of production, is responsible for the insecurity of subsistence, the poverty, misery, and degradation of the ever-growing majority of our people; but the same economic forces which have produced and now intensify the capitalist system will necessitate the adoption of socialism, the common ownership of the means of production for the common good and welfare. Our political liberty is of little value unless used to acquire economic freedom. The working class should cut connection with all capitalist and reform parties. It is the solidarity of labour uniting the millions of class-conscious fellow-workers throughout the world will lead to world socialism.

The Socialist Party has the only hopeful answer to these gloomy facts of life under capitalism. Only socialism can end war and armaments and thus stop that waste of production. Equally important, only socialism can secure that the labour force and the materials now devoted to the financial, trading, and other activities necessary to capitalism but needless in a socialist system of society, can be freed for the production of useful articles and services. In this, socialism offers the certain prospect that the output of useful articles could in short time be doubled. But this involves the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of socialism in its place. For a socialist world, we summon the workers of city and country, all who are oppressed by capitalism. 

Only a socialist world can give us peace and plenty. The capitalist parties are as rotten and bankrupt as the system they uphold. They can maintain themselves and their social order today only by piling additional burdens upon the people. For the future they offer only poverty, war, continued insecurity and increasing destruction of the environment. The myriad evils of capitalism will disappear only with the ending of capitalism and the building of socialism. The workers will do away with the anarchy of capitalism. Democratically-elected councils of working people in every industry and district will run the factories and public services. Freed from the fetters of production for profit the vast technological and natural resources of our planet will be devoted to construction with sustainable factories manufacturing their products without interruption to provide almost undreamed-of plenty. No longer will farm produce be ploughed under and foodstuffs dumped to keep up prices. The workers will be released from back-breaking toil by every labour-saving technical device that scientific ingenuity can devise to serve a truly human civilisation. The hills, the beaches and countryside will become a playground and habitation for the people.

The Socialist Party delegates in Parliament against the staunch supporters of the capitalist parties, will be veritable “tribunes of the people” – calling upon our fellow-workers to struggle against the daily hardships imposed upon them and to rally their forces for a new society. We, socialists, refuse to join the reformists in leading the workers into the camp of capitalism. Now is the time for the working class to overthrow capitalism. The road to that task does not lie through support of capitalist governments. The only path is the socialist way. Forward, workers of the world, forward to the new world that awaits us? Today it is the ballot that we use against capitalism. Vote, then, for socialism. Vote for the Socialist party, the only party that keeps the revolutionary banner unfurled and urges unremitting struggle for world socialism.