For or Against the System?

The object of a Socialist Party is socialism. To that end the education and organisation of our fellow-workers and their persuasion to socialist principles is essential. We cannot have socialism without socialists. Therefore, the first duty of the Socialist Party is propaganda, in order to make socialists. In doing this the Socialist Party also champions every movement of the working class towards improving its condition such as through their trade unions even under present circumstances. When our men and women go to Parliament they want to go with a direct socialist mandate, and if they cannot go with that they will stay outside. It is of no matter to us that this personality or that individual should be elected. It is of importance however, that a socialist should be elected and a seat won for socialism. It is the case not the face, as we often say. From our standpoint, therefore, it is better for a socialist to fight and be beaten as a socialist than to fight and win under any other manifesto or election promise. However successful we may be at the polls we must necessarily be in a small minority for some time to come in Parliament. While that is the case our most important work is to be done, not in the House of Commons but in the constituencies and country at large. The value of our presence in Parliament would be agitational than legislative. We shall not regard ourselves as statesmen and politicians , elected to take part in the government of a country that is not ours. Rather than advocating legislative palliatives, Parliament will become our forum for agitation, appealing to people outside it, a platform for publicising the socialist case and, when necessary, helping to defend and protect working class interests. We will not ally with non-socialists, opposed to our aim.

When the Socialist Party speaks of the “inevitability” of socialism, it is only in the sense that capitalism creates all the conditions which make the advance to socialism possible; and secondly, in the sense, that the advance to socialism is a necessity for the further progress of society itself – even more, the only way in which to preserve society. We speak of the historical necessity of socialism, since without it human society cannot continue to develop. If society is to continue to develop, socialism will inevitably come. We are no shepherds bringing our sheep to the promised land. We are no Moses delivering our people to the land of milk and honey. 

Our goal is for mankind to take that step necessary for that “association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” Our choice is not one just merely between between capitalism and socialism but between socialism and barbarism. It may be fashionable for liberals and progressives to talk of a new capitalism, a compassionate capitalism, a regulated capitalism, different from our predatory capitalism, but no new version of old capitalism will exempt it from the merciless laws of capital accumulation, market expansion and insatiable drive for profits. Such idealised hypothetical models of a “better” capitalism need not be treated seriously. The foundations of capitalism remain the same despite various cosmetic and superstructure changes capitalism has undergone but without profound effects upon the foundations themselves.

Working people are presented with two doors one of them opens into socialism and the other into the a catastrophic apocalypse. Regardless of nationality, race, colour and political and religious creeds, the working class has always been inspired by one idea—the overthrow of capitalist society, built on slavery, exploitation and violence. In this struggle of labour against capital, the working class can win only by mustering all their forces against the common enemy, the capitalist class. So long as the capitalist system continues there is the merciless struggle for supremacy between the conflicting vested interests of competing groups of exploiters will, as in the past, eventually evoke a new crisis, plunging the workers of the world into another disastrous war. There is but one power that can save mankind from being plunged into another universal catastrophe. There is but one power which can defend the workers of all countries against political and economic oppression and tyranny. There is but one power which can bring freedom, welfare, happiness and peace to the working class and to humanity. That power is the working class if well organised and determined to fight all who would oppose and prevent its complete emancipation.