Politics is the business of government, i.e., the control and management of people. Workers should know that all the results of capitalist production spell trouble and conflict of interests between worker and worker.
The Socialist Party shows that present-day society is divided, in the main, into two distinct classes—the workers on the one hand, by whose labour, applied to the nature-given material, all wealth is produced, and on the other hand the capitalist class, who own and control the wealth and the means by which it is produced. The workers have to sell their labour power in order to live, to those who own the means by which alone that labour-power can be applied to wealth production. The interest of the workers is to get as much by the sale of their labour-power as they can. To achieve this result they organise in trade unions. Seeing, however, that the workers produce all the wealth, and yet remain poor and are denied the opportunity of living when they are, through no fault of theirs, unemployed, the question arises why such an unreasonable state of things exists. To understand an effect the cause must be sought. The cause of all present-day social evils lies in the root of the capitalist system—private ownership and control of the means of living. In this ownership they are secured by the political power given to them by a politically ignorant working class. This political power enables them to control the armed forces, which are used to conserve the interests of the ruling class. The workers, therefore, have to deprive their masters of this political power as the first step toward their freedom, and only knowledge and organisation can enable them to do this, therefore, the Socialist Party exists to bring that necessary knowledge to the workers and to organise them in a political party for the conquest of political power by and for the working class. We point out to fellow-workers the difficulties and anomalies of the capitalist system of wealth production. We point out the hopelessness of reforming a system of society that is rotten to its foundations.
The Socialist Party understands that the workers are wage-slaves, and that their position in society must necessarily be a servile one. That being the socialist's conception of the working class, nothing can be done to permanently better their condition. Economic freedom can only be realised when the workers organise and capture political control. It is consequently hostile to all other political parties, and claims to be the only party in this country worthy of working-class support.
The Socialist Party looking at all phenomena in the light of socialist knowledge, sees that until the present system of private property ends, the majority of the people—the working class, that is—will remain in their present condition of penury, sordidness, and degradation, dependent upon another class for their very existence.
We look towards our own class—the working class— for help in our task of making socialists. We ask for their co-operation so that when capitalism falls, out of the wreck the working class will rise, phoenix-like, from the ashes of an outworn and unregretted order, into a new world of freedom and happiness.
To non-Socialist Party member the present outlook is, without question, bleak and black. Only when one hears the lessons taught by socialists, that it dawns upon us that capitalist society is doomed by its governing laws and that we will eventually progress to a different and, as we believe, a superior society, will hope appear and allay ones fears and disappointments.
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