The aim of the Socialist Party is to offer ideas in simple terms to guide workers in their struggle for their interests, to teach them that the economic demands of labour, while important and necessary, are insufficient. The economic struggle of the working class must be joined to a political struggle against the political rule of the capitalist class. To aid in the political development of the working class, to help break it away from dependence, on capitalist politics and capitalist politicians. The Socialist Party is blazing a trail toward the socialist future. We have only just begun; a long and winding road lies ahead. But we are prepared for it by the conviction that there is no hope for a new and better world except through the achievement of the new social order of socialism, a world of peace, freedom and plenty for all.
What stands in the way? The capitalist class wolfs the greatest share of the fruits of this productive capacity. The working class, the men and women who actually produce the goods of life, has been fighting on the picket lines to raise its own share of the national income at the expense of the share ALREADY received by the idle capitalist parasitic class. The capitalists, on the other hand, fight like the wolves they are to guard every ounce of their unearned share. If the workers were defenceless and without unions and democratic rights, the capitalist class would rejoice in the ability to buy labour as cheaply as possible. Then they could pay the workers only enough on which to live and to raise new families of workers. But the working people are NOT defenceless. They have formed powerful and aggressive unions. Socialists will wipe out capitalism with its waste and be able to plan production and PLENTY FOR ALL.
Capitalism must expand – or die! “The earth is divided? Then it must be redivided,” say the hungry industrialists and greedy financiers. The “normal” life of capitalism is the REAL enemy of civilisation.
What is the future of mankind? Do we stand upon the threshold of death and destruction for the whole of mankind? Or do we stand at the threshold of a new age of unparalleled peace and plenty? What is the future of humanity? That is for men and women to decide. It must not be decided by those in power, the bankers, the CEOs, the politicians, It must be decided by the working people. They must organise and speak out with one voice: We demand life under socialism before death under capitalism overtakes us all!
Men and women! Act! Act now! Join in the fight for socialism. The fight for socialism has become the fight for the very existence of mankind. It is solely by the independent action of working people, those who produce the wealth of society, that power and privilege can be eliminated and a world of peace and plenty for all be built.
The most important question is this: is it possible for capitalism, a society organised in the interests of profits for a handful of people who live off the exploitation of the overwhelming majority of the people of the world to use this discovery for constructive purposes in the interests of mankind? The answer is, of course, no. Capitalist vultures gorge themselves on profit and whose main occupation is to exploit workers for their own class benefit. Science and technology which can be of such benefit to society, is, under capitalism, the slave of the financial and industrial bandits who rule society. A class society which lives by exploitation can only subordinate such discoveries to the interest of private profit. Let them understand that when the media talk about the destruction of civilisation, they are not joking at all. The destruction is a grim reality unless the social order of capitalism is abolished and replaced by socialism, the society of all the people.
Britain to-day, as always, is in the hands of billionaire-owners of the biggest corporations and the biggest banks. These capitalists, not only own or control the chief means whereby we work and live, but, in fact, control the whole government machine. They pull the strings. And they use their power to make themselves richer and richer—at our expense. They hire workers to make profit out of their labour; their capitalist production is for profit, not for use: and to get more profit they slash wages, carry through speed-ups and worsen conditions. This mad race for profit inevitably ends in a crisis; and then they try to get out of the crisis—at our expense. Poverty, insecurity and malnutrition making their inroads in the homes of millions of workers: low wages, increased productivity, to the point of physical exhaustion, is the lot of the workers in the factories, mines and shipyards: increases in the number of accidents and sickness. This is Britain to-day for working men, women and their families. Unless we put an end to capitalism, the lot of our fellow-workers will become worse and worse.
But it is not only poverty and insecurity and unemployment which threatens the majority of people. For the great capitalist employers, the great financiers and bankers have one last use for us all, even after it has become unprofitable for them to employ us; and that is to recruit us for war. The cause of capitalist war is the attempt of each national capitalist group—British, Russian, French, Chinese, American, etc.—to beat its competitors on the world market and to win bigger and bigger profits for its own wealthy. For capitalism war is inevitable. Global capitalism means that the big multinationals and big banks are dominating through their investments abroad, and that the developing and undeveloped nations countries have been divided up amongst the Great Powers. Therefore they are rivals of one another in the world market. This rivalry becomes fiercer and fiercer. This competitive struggle is carried out, firstly by tariffs, and other protectionist measures, and then finally by war. Daily the capitalists are preparing for this bloody option. The most fearsome, ghastly and deadly armaments are being piled up. Science and inventive genius are prostituted to discover and perfect the means of death and destruction of millions, in order to win new markets, territory, and spheres of profitable capitalist investment, to bring rent, interest and profit for a handful of employers, bankers and landlords.
There is no need for a single worker to be overworked or in dread of losing his job; no reason why an unemployed worker should lack the necessaries of life, or why he should not be brought back into employment. All over the world millions of workers are year by year coming to realise these facts and to see that nothing except the existence of capitalism prevents them building up for themselves a decent and secure world. Everywhere the workers are becoming less and less willing to put up with an entirely unnecessary state of semi-destitution. They are showing themselves more and more determined to insist upon their right to food, clothing and shelter for themselves and their families. But to get this, capitalism must be overthrown. To get this is only possible by the building up of socialism, giving peace and prosperity, happiness and new life to the whole working population. The workers need to end capitalism.
The unity of the working class in struggle makes the capitalists retreat. They give ground. They quarrel amongst themselves. Beaten back in their attack on the working class, they begin to prey on one another. Conflicts arise and the capitalist class as a whole gets into a state of crisis. The authority of the capitalists disappears. The fight against poverty is the fight against the capitalist class. The revolutionary struggle of the workers can, and will, open the way to a new epoch of human progress better than anything the world has yet experienced. The workers have the power to overthrow capitalism. It is the capitalists who are powerless, powerless to move a single inch towards the essential reconstruction of society. It is the workers who are strong from the very moment that they unite and resist.
Socialism will mean that the capitalists will be deprived of their ownership and control of the factories and workshops, mills and mines, shipyards and transport. All these means of production which they have used and misused only to pile up profits for themselves and poverty for the workers will be taken from them. The workers’ revolution will be the end of production for profit and will carry on production for use. The needs of all will be met, and new needs and pleasures now denied to the working class will be created and satisfied by a socialist organisation. For every worker of the new society becomes a citizen, and, because there is then no longer any class division, the need for dictatorship of one class over another disappears.
We have to-day ample resources for producing all the things we need. Today we are both unemployed and unable to get the things we need. The two things go together. For we are unemployed because the capitalists want to have their profits and will not let us produce what we need. Destitution and unemployment can only be cured simultaneously by taking over and running the industries. To achieve all this a vast work of reconstruction will have to be undertaken. The workers will produce far better and more willingly under their own management than they do now. For the first time workers will know that greater productivity will no longer be a threat to their livelihood but will make it possible to raise the whole standard of living and shorten the hours of labour.
The ending of capitalism in this country will put an end at the same time to the threat of wars, to the maintenance of armed forces in preparation for wars abroad. Not only economic security, not only ever increasing comfort and leisure, not only the day’s labour turned from useless grinding toil into useful work—but a far wider prospect is opened up. For these new material conditions will be but the basis for the most rapid intellectual and cultural development of the whole population. The new generation of children will be born into a new world. The building of world socialism will lead the whole human race forward towards a new world. This is the new world of which the workers are already laying down the foundations. This is the new world for which many generations of workers have struggled. It is for us in our generation to bring this new world into being. Revolution becomes possible when there is a complete breakdown of the authority of the ruling class, when the working class is not prepared to live any longer under intolerable conditions and has a will to overthrow capitalism.
The Socialist Party has no interests apart from those of the working class as a whole. The Socialist Party is the bitter enemy of the capitalists. If every person who believes the Socialist Party’s principles are correct, will join with us and help in the vitally important work of organising and preparing the working class or socialism, the effectiveness of its work will be enormously increased, and the fight against capitalism will enter a new stage. We therefore appeal to every class-conscious worker to join the Socialist Party without delay, knowing that by taking this step they are strengthening the only political organisation that can help the working class to victory.
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