The Goal of the Socialist Party

The Socialist Party’s  aim is socialism, because socialism is the only way to solve the problems of working people and end the class divisions in society. We never stop work for world socialism. We do everything we can from limited resources. We never miss any opportunity of presenting the socialist case. The fact that all other parties are reformist is fundamental to the case of the Socialist Party. This means they seek not to abolish capitalism with its class division, wages system, state and frontiers, but to modify it a little this way or that in a futile effort to legislate away its problems and inhuman consequences. Poverty is produced by capitalism. It is glib and cynical nonsense to promise to end it while retaining the system. Reformers want capitalism without its economic consequences. The Socialist Party stands alone in this country as the one party which rejects the system the others want to reform and retain. Socialism depends upon understanding. Only a conscious majority gaining political power can achieve a world of common ownership where production will be solely for use with free access. One of our earliest, and one of our wisest decisions of policy, was that we allow our opponents access to our platform. Having heard our case, and subject only to the common usages and decencies of debate, we offer any opponent the right to oppose us, on our own platform. We have nothing to hide, no secrets to keep, no leaders to apologise for, nothing but straight socialism to advocate. So we have nothing to fear from debate. We have everything to gain by discussion. 

The technological conditions for establishing socialism, the capacity for a society of free access, have existed throughout the twentieth century. The task of the Socialist Party is to advocate it. Although, we strive to replace capitalism by socialism, we believe that it is essential to fight now, within capitalism to defend and improve the immediate lot of the working people. But that task is performed more effectively by workers’ organisation other than our own, such as trade unions. Wars, poverty, hunger, slumps and mass unemployment have been the lot of working people. But the billionaires and the industrialists have made their fortunes out of the people’s labour. Nine-tenths of the wealth is owned by one-tenth of the population.

 Workers should study their own position in the modern world and ask themselves why, with powers of production growing at an enormous rate, with the workers slaving harder than ever, with their actual situation grows steadily worse, while the insecurity of life becomes more pronounced than ever. When a worker goes to work it is always for somebody else (even the so-called self-employed are usually subcontractors to bigger businesses). Why? Because a worker cannot obtain the raw material, cannot use the machinery, cannot carry out the processes or move the finished articles without the permission of someone else. When workers looks around they can see the fact existing in every branch of production and distribution. The general situation thus revealed is that in society the section who perform all the work— useful or other—are shut out from any control of the means of producing wealth, that is, from the means of living itself. The other section, performing no necessary function in society, own and control these means of life. But if one section in society owns the means of life, the other section must necessarily be slaves to those owners.

And this is exactly the essential fact the organised workers have failed to grasp. Once they do understand it the superstition of common interest between master and slave will be dropped, and taking its place will be the recognition of the fundamental and unbridgeable antagonism between the two classes while capitalism lasts. Then will the organised workers start to fight the master class in earnest and build their organisation upon a class basis instead of splitting up into crafts, industries, or any other anti-working-class division. Understanding also that the masters' centre of power rests in their control of the political machine, they will enter the ranks of the Socialist Party for the purpose of capturing political power from the masters and establishing socialism in the place of wage-slavery.