Freedom will not be given to us.

Everywhere people are now waking up to the oppression and exploitation which is a daily fact of their lives. The lies of the ruling class about “prosperity” are being further exposed more and more everyday. There is prosperity – but it is for a handful of rich capitalists – the conditions of the working people are getting worse and worse. Austerity casts all the burden on the workers – wages stay the same, but profits continue to rise. The source of all these conditions and injustices is capitalism. 

This system of capitalism is set up with one thing in mind – to make the most profits possible for the handful of people who own the big banks and corporations. It is the system under which we, and our parents and grandparents before us, have done all the work. We mine the mines, build the buildings, manufacture all the products: and then get just enough to live on – if we fight hard enough for it! On the other hand the small capitalist class builds up huge fortunes off of our labour and do no work themselves, except running all around the world spending the money that we made for them. The Socialist Party stands for the complete overthrow of the capitalist system. 

Rising out of conditions that have long become unsupportable and the oppressive conditions under which the vast majority of wage workers must live is forcing the members of that class to seek a solution. It is said that our ideas are impractical, from the standpoint of old institutions, interests and their beneficiaries, that is true. There can be no common interests between those who own the tools, the machines, factories, mines, mills and land, with the workers who do all of the producing. One class does all the work, produces all, suffers all the hardships necessary to accomplish the task. The other class owns, but does not know, nor cares to know, how to produce wealth. One class works long hours under conditions generally and necessarily established by and suitable to the masters of industry, receives low wages, so that there may be high dividends and profits for the masters. For it must be borne in mind longer hours mean greater wealth produced, low wages mean greater profits for the capitalists. Shorter hours mean less production by each worker or group of workers, therefore the expense to the masters is greater to produce a certain amount of wealth. High wages, shorter hours, better shop conditions that will protect life and limb are objected to by the capitalist for a thousand and one “reasons,” but really because it all means greater cost—thus less dividends. Who can be so foolish as to talk of peace between these two classes?

The Socialist party is the only party which honestly represents the working class. The Socialist Party being the political expression of the rising working class stands for the absolute overthrow of the existing capitalist system and for the reorganisation of society into an industrial and social democracy. We are not asking you to give your votes to ourselves but only that you its policies, and satisfy yourselves as to what its principles are, what it stands for, and what it expects to accomplish. This will mean an end to the private ownership of the means of life; it will mean an end to wage slavery; it will mean an end to the army of the unemployed and it will mean an end to poverty. It will mean the beginning of a new era and the dawn of happier days. It will mean that this earth is for those who inhabit it and wealth for those who produce it. It will mean society organized upon a co-operative basis, collectively owning the sources of wealth and the means of production, and producing wealth to satisfy human wants and not to gorge a privileged few. The Socialist Party, the first and only international party is the party of the dispossessed and the impoverished. It is the party of emancipation. It stands for a world-wide democracy, for the freedom of every man, woman and child, and for all mankind.

 The Socialist Party is the only party which stands unequivocally for the working class on the political field. Its object is to overthrow the capitalist system of private ownership, abolish wage slavery and achieve the freedom of the whole working class and, in fact, of all humanity.