The Socialist Party and revolutionary socialism.

The Socialist Party favours active participation in election campaigns. It does not deceive people into believing that socialist freedom can be achieved by nothing more than a ballot. But it seeks to use every election campaign to acquaint workers with its principles and ideas. Socialism cannot be achieved, and the workers cannot effectively promote their interests, without class consciousness. Class consciousness means an understanding working class, a self-confident and self-reliant working class. The left-wing vanguard parties seek to substitute themselves for the self-reliance of the working class and rely on bureaucratic manoeuvres in order to control the workers “for their own good,” in place of the conscious, mass action of the workers themselves. It seeks to preserve their leadership by curbing and stifling the workers and preventing them from acting independently with their organised strength. The Workers Party is not a sectarian organisation but it confines itself to the advocacy of the socialist ideal. The Socialist Party is opposed to all exploitation and oppression.

Wars are inevitable under capitalism. Only socialism will bring permanent peace. Socialism means peace and freedom for the entire world. It is the party of peace, not war; of the brotherhood of the peoples, not the slaughter of the peoples. Capitalist society is based on violence and war and cannot exist without them. Pacifists preach a doctrine which thinks they can turn wolves into lambs. The Socialist Party is internationalist. Capitalism is a world system, and it can be thoroughly destroyed only on a world scale. It is internationalist because it understands that the class-free socialist society cannot be established within the framework of one country alone. If capitalism has developed a world market and become the dominant world order, socialism cannot conceivably be restricted to one country, no matter how big it is. Socialism is world socialism, or it is not socialism at all. Just as socialist economy could not c0-exist side by side with a capitalist economy in one country, so a socialist nation could not co-exist side by side with capitalist nations in one world, one or the other would have to win in the end.

 It considers nationalisms as regressive and reactionary and instead promotes the brotherhood and equality of all peoples of the human race as the highest social aim. It is internationalist because it considers that national frontiers have become a obstacle to further social progress and a direct contributing source to conflicts and wars. The Socialist Party endeavours to promote the worldwide organisation, unity and solidarity of the working class. The Socialist Party itself is only the link, in the UnitedKingdom, of a chain of similar parties and organisations that aim to establish an international union of revolutionary socialists - a World Socialist Movement.

The Socialist Party is champion of democracy. We are critics of capitalist democracy only because it is a class democracy. Genuine democracy is possible only upon the basis of economic democracy. It does not follow that the Socialist Party is indifferent to democracy under capitalism. Nothing of the sort is true. The struggle for socialism can best be conducted under conditions that are most favourable to the working class. The most favourable conditions are those in which the working class has the widest possible democratic rights. Hence, it is to the interests of socialism and of the working class to fight for the unrestricted right to organise, the right of free speech, free press and free assembly, the right to strike and the right to vote, the right of representative government, and against every attempt to curb or abolish these rights. The more extensive and less restricted the democratic rights, the greater the opportunities for the Socialist Party to speak, to write, to meet, to organise. The same applies, of course, to the working class as a whole. The social position of the workers, and their class interests, make them the most democratic class in society. It is the capitalist class which is, by the very nature of its position in society, anti-democratic. Its monopoly of wealth and power denies the common people real equality. . The more critical the position of capitalism and the sharper the class struggle, the more the capitalist class seeks to restrict even the formal democratic rights. It fears the consequences of the workers being able to meet freely, speak and write freely, organise, vote and demonstrate freely. To keep itself safely in power, it is compelled to reveal its fundamentally dictatorial rule more openly by cutting down political democracy and resorting to naked force.

The road to freedom is marked out by the principles of the Socialist Party and revolutionary socialism.