Making the Co-operative Commonwealth

The Socialist Party is not a reform party, but a revolutionary party. It does not propose to modify the capitalist system, but abolish it. The Socialist Party stands for the common ownership and control of all the means of wealth production and distribution — in a word, socialism. The Socialist Party is necessarily a worldwide party. It is everywhere and always the same. . It refuses to be flattered, bribed, stampeded, or otherwise deflected from the straight course mapped out for it by Marx and Engels.

The Socialist Party teaches that the state, its apparatus as a whole, is the executive committee of the dominant class in society, the task of which is to maintain existing social relations, and thereby to ensure the rule of the class whose state it is. This applies to the capitalist state, whose task is to maintain capitalism and the rule of the capitalists. The task of the Socialist Party is to eliminate the bourgeoisie as a class, and guide the transition to a socialist, class-free society. The political aim of the revolutionary movement, consequently, is not to “reform” capitalism, not to “take over” the capitalist state. All reformist parties – no matter how grandiose their verbal allegiance to “socialism” and socialist ideals – conceive of their political aims as lying within the framework of the capitalist state: as winning reforms from capitalism, winning a majority in the capitalist government, or even as “transforming” the capitalist government into a “socialist government” (i.e., requesting the capitalist state to commit suicide). All reformist parties act in all crucial situations as an agent of the ruling class within the working class. A reformist party is powerless to defeat either war or end poverty. The reason is obvious: a reformist party will not overthrow capitalism, since it functions within the framework of capitalism; and consequently it cannot stop war or solve the poverty problem, both of which follow necessarily from the continuance of capitalism. A reformist party, is not merely non-revolutionary, but anti-revolutionary. It is a device for preserving capitalism, not a means for its overthrow. It is an obstacle in the path of the revolutionary movement, not a way forward.

 The Socialist Party has expressed over and over again the futility of socialists wasting their time in palliative measures. As socialists we base our political policy on the class struggle of the workers, because we know that the self-interest of the workers lies our way. That the self-interest may sometimes be base does not affect the correctness of our position. The constructive work of the Socialist Party is to develop the class consciousness upon which depends the overthrow of capitalism.

The Socialist Party is not afraid of being isolated. There are times when to remain true to our principles, have no other alternative. We have endured smears and slander. We survived. We retract nothing and repent nothing. We will move towards becoming a  mass socialist party when conditions open the way for such a step, bringing to it all our heritage and all our ideas. With our tradition, we urge all workers to add their energies to ours in a common struggle to build a potent party of socialism. 

The Socialist Party today remains more than ever the rallying point for all those who have remained faithful to socialism. We look to the working class as the major force in the modern world with the power to transform the existing disorder and create a new social order on a planet-wide basis, to meet the needs of all humanity – all, that is, except the tiny number who profit from the exploitation and oppression of the vast majority. Because we see the working class as the force for fundamental change in society, we carefully observe what is happening to working people and how they respond to their conditions of life and labour. We reaffirm that a mass socialist party is required to challenge the most powerful ruling class in the world. There are many parties today striving to be the party of the coming revolution or claiming to represent the best interests of workers. They are all competing with each other for influence in the working class. We are socialists, wishful above all things to advance socialism, and by socialism we mean the common  ownership of all the agencies of wealth production, and this involves the complete supercession of the capitalist system, and the conducting of all productions relations on a co-operative basis.