Out of the Dark and into the Light

The capitalist system is an exploitative system whose rotting carcass has to be removed by social revolution to allow humanity a new lease on life. The accumulated wealth of the capitalist class is wealth the workers produced but never got. Let the working class merely decide to use its labour and life for a better purpose than to sustain the capitalist and socialism will have a reasonable chance of being achieved and socialism in our time will be realistic. The SPGB seeks to win a majority of workers for socialism.

The solution to repressive laws is not better government but no government. The SPGB advocate socialism. Most who use this term understand by it a society which may (and usually does) include a coercive state, but the SPGB intend a society without the state. “The achievement of state power has never had any place within socialist thought. The state could never exist within socialist society” (Socialist Standard).

The socialist revolution will only be possible when there are enough convinced socialists who want it. the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself.The social revolution must not lead to the dictatorship of the proletariat but to the abolition of classes. The state, the executive committee of the ruling class, exists to maintain this condition; replace private with common ownership and the state, losing its function, will disappear. People will work freely together to produce what they need, the productive power of modern technology enabling free access without the restrictions imposed by money or exchange. Reformism (the belief that society can be substantially changed by piecemeal palliative policies) has to be opposed. There can be no transitional period between existing society and the society aimed at. Superficially, socialism is a movement of the Left, but this is not strictly so, since it implies being part of the political spectrum. Socialists reject this, asserting that there is more in common between Right and Left political parties (including the struggle for power) than between even Far-Left political groups and the socialists. The SPGB represents the interests of the working class. We have never flinched from the struggle against capitalism and never forsaken the principles, of socialism.

The Socialist Party has neither a leader nor a hierarchy of committees, and it repudiates the principle of leadership. Organised as local branches, the members of each electing their own officers independently of Head Office (which serves as hardly more than a clearing-house) and sending delegates to the annual Conference, it works throughout on one person one vote and simple majorities. Subject to a minimum of procedural rules any branch can bring any issue before Conference and Conference decisions bind the Executive Committee (which, like the Party officers, is elected annually by vote of the whole Party). A majority of the members controls the organisation and its officers. It emphasises that socialists must think for themselves and control their own affairs, stressing that the society intended, being class-free would also be state-free. It would use Parliament to do away with both Parliament and the state, carrying out the change from government of people to administration of things by majority vote.

Many men and women have contributed to the great body of socialist theory. Among these certain names stand out for their exceptional contributions – for example, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels who built the massive foundations of scientific socialism. There are others as well, giants who in knowledge, practice, and organisation advanced the revolutionary movement immeasurably: for example, Joseph Dietzgen, Anton Pannekoek, and Rosa Luxemburg, as well as lesser known such as Paul Mattick. . Each of these was a creative contributor to socialist theory and organisation, and from them we have learned, as well by their disagreements as by their agreements, the method and meaning of Marxian principles.

Capitalist society is rushing headlong into a form of barbarism. So long as the mad struggle for profit in this private property economy exists, and it must exist as long as capitalism exists, economic chaos is forever the prospect of life and environmental destruction are forever the reward of the overwhelming majority of the peoples of all countries. Then there are the vultures who gorge themselves on profit in war, as in peace, whose main occupation is to exploit workers for their own class benefit. While all the capitalist nations are incapable and unwilling to produce in the interests of the common good of the people, while production is organised solely in the interests of profit, technology in the interests of society as a whole remains stagnant. Automation and robotics which could lighten the lives of the people and produce enough to have plenty for all, is impossible in an economy where the main aim of those who own the industries, mines, transportation and utilities is production for profit.