We can create a new politics

The class struggle and class warfare continue under all circumstances in capitalist society and it breaks out in different forms on many fronts. Radicalisation is a condition of changing attitudes, shifting beliefs, rejecting previously accepted values. It is a subjective response to social crises. Working-class radicalisation is fueled by unemployment, technological changes in industry, the uncertainty of job security, low wages, government cutbacks in welfare and social services , lack of educational opportunities in short, the challenging of authority and the desire for a complete change to something better seek ways to bring change about. These are the expressions of a radicalising of the working class. 

The callousness of the needs of capital accumulation and the subservience of governments to it cries out for us to replace this system and socialism is the answer. The basic question for the socialist revolution is that of capturing of state power. Unless this question is understood, there can be no conscious participation, not to speak of guidance of the revolution. Experience has shown that without anger and indignation, without burning enthusiasm, without an urgent desire to change the world, it is not possible to construct socialism. Revolution and socialism come about as a necessary and regular part of the social development of humanity. We are talking about a change that will involve the vast majority of fellow-workers consciously acting to change the entire society and all the relationships in it, from the way people relate to each other, to the way people relate to their jobs.

The Socialist Party aims to get a majority of the people to accept its ideas. Do we advocate violence? No. We want a peaceful transformation. Socialism can be introduced through parliamentary means. The existence of political democracy offers a chance to achieve socialism in a peaceful manner. 

The Socialist Party has one great principal and that is to tell the truth to the people. The working class must overcome a number of basic weaknesses. Most importantly, it must overcome the racial and nationalist divisions which, for centuries, have prevented the development of a unified working class movement. Yet despite their seeming strength, the capitalists are not as strong as the people who will eventually abolish the system of capitalism, and build in its place a socialist society. 

The Socialist Party is an organisation of revolutionaries. That means that we feel that all the problems people experience in the context of our present society — war, poverty, pollution, economic crisis — flow from a cause, the nature of this profit-oriented society. We see that there are no real solutions to these problems until the entire society is changed. We're out to change the whole system. We see that all the problems of Britain are intimately tied to the problems throughout the whole world. If you are serious about changing the system, about changing the world, it is necessary to confront the system where you find it. 

To be effective you have to build an organisation capable of doing that. That is one of the important reasons why a number of us decided to join the Socialist Party. It offers the opportunity for socialists to coordinate their struggles across the country and around the world. What is necessary in order to bring all these struggles together into one common fight that can overthrow capitalism is some sort of organisation that has an understanding of why the struggles are being fought in the way they are.

Capitalism is chaotic and antisocial, intensifying the process of extracting surplus value from the labour of the working class, curtailing the development of productive forces, extending racism and nationalism, promoting sexism, wreaking untold destruction on the environment and debasing people through the furthering of a culture of decadence and alienation. The working class is the only revolutionary class in society. It is the producer of surplus value (capitalism’s profits) and of all classes under capitalism, it stands in the most direct contradiction to the ruling class. Mobilised into ever more developed forms of socialised production by the capitalist system, the working class forges its underlying unity precisely in the great factories, on the assembly lines, in the mines, in the workshops and offices where it has been brought by the capitalists in their pursuit of profit. 

Only the working class can overthrow capitalism and reorganise society for the benefit of all oppressed classes and sectors. Class struggle is the motor force of history.