Look to the Future

The Socialist Party seeks to help build a workers movement. This

kind of movement cannot be instituted from the top-down, and cannot be led by party bosses. All those who think themselves powerless in this capitalist society must work together to forge a new one. We must move towards a common vision of a new social system. The Socialist Party rejects the panaceas of the reformists and stands for the establishment of a socialist society

Capitalism's inequality, unemployment, overwork, poverty, lack of democracy and environmental degradation are necessary results of its structural features. A differently structured system which we can call socialism, communism, social democracy, cooperative commonwealth, or industrial democracy is the viable, practical alternative to capitalism. As long as capitalism dominates people will suffer from all the manifestations of the anarchy of production under the capitalist system. The Socialist Party understand that the real solution to the economic and political difficulties of society lies in overthrowing capitalism. Although capitalism faces a serious crisis, it will not collapse on its own.

The question arises as to how the worker who has been transformed into a wage-slave and taught to obey the orders of his or her masters can develop class-consciousness. After all, there is not an inevitable development of such consciousness. A worker may live in extreme misery, yet the experience will not make oneself conscious of his or her own social status and of the necessity for class action. These ideas can be brought through labour organisations, education and propaganda.The development of the subjective factor of class-consciousness seems a hopeless task under capitalism. For how can an enslaved worker develop class-consciousness?

The working class must be sufficiently unified, and guided by the common goal of socialism, in order to overthrow this obsolete system. More and more people are coming to realise that the present society offer no hope for the future. Day by day it is becoming increasingly clear that capitalism is incapable of solving the most basic human needs. But the consciousness of the need for socialism, and the spread of Marxism will not come about solely as a result of people’s disillusionment. It is the task of the Socialist Party to continually educate and promote the socialist alternative. We argue for socialism not as a Utopian alternative to the evils of capitalism, but as the next step in human development. We continually try to show now the people’s problems are rooted in capitalism and that only a rationally planned economy can overcome the present difficulties.

Poverty, homelessness, joblessness, crime, illiteracy, ill-health, ecological rape, racism, sexism, homophobia, domestic and random violence, addictions, ad nauseam. There is less of everything for everybody except stress. Reformers preach the hope of a world dedicated to sustainability without preaching the necessity of the revolutionary transformation to achieve such a condition.

There is a group of people who propagate the view that the working class are an ignorant lot, incapable of deciding what form of society is best for them, or, in the event of a new form of society coming into existence, running such a society. To such people leadership is an essential idea. Knowledge is the only safeguard for the workers against trickery and false advocates, and it is also the only doorway by which society can pass through to a society based upon common ownership. If those who seek a new arrangement of social affairs do not possess knowledge of what they want and how it is to be attained, then a new society can only be a new chaos.