Towards the Revolution

Members of the Socialist Party are not motivated by greed for money or envy of power but by the yearning for a full and free life. As socialists we are out to destroy the present intolerable capitalist system, and to substitute a better. A socialist revolution, then, is the necessity of the times, and it is essential to get prepared now. The Socialist Party has always stated that the future belongs to socialism despite its present dim prospects when the very idea of socialism has almost disappeared from working people’s political agenda. For many of our fellow-workers socialism has sadly become synonymous with state tyranny. What an unfortunate fate for an ideal linked always with freedom and liberty. However, there are promising signs of a re-awakening of interest in socialism. Many working people deep down realise that there is something very rotten with this system and are beginning to look elsewhere for an alternative that makes better sense. The political parties of the status quo are being rejected. The Socialist Party’s purpose is to show our fellow-workers hope and that it is possible to build another sort of society. It is ironic that nowadays many people no longer deny the likelihood of a global catastrophe, but are yet dubious about the prospect of a better society coming about. Maybe this is measure of our failure to explain our ideas adequately. Maybe we spend too much of our time calling for the end of what is, and not enough time explaining what might be. Working men and women seek assurance that instead of an imminent, apocalyptic collapse of civilisation there will be a speedy creation of the new socialist society. 

This is our time.

Capitalism has brought us disaster. Yet right-wing, populists and nationalists never stop telling us that they have make “us”“ great again, feeding on fears and anxieties, spreading racism and xenophobia. World socialism will protect and nurture our natural resources for future generations. To achieve our goal of creating socialism we need to resist all power. We cannot defeat global warming and a global pandemic with a divided world. If our planet is not to succumb to catastrophes, humanity must engage in revolutionary change.  

Many find aspects of capitalism morally repugnant: the degradation, misery and exploitation that continually flow from a class society throw-up impassioned voices of protest. People have two choices. They can go beyond the promises of politicians and the hollowness of reformism and organise politically to abolish capitalism. Or they can resign themselves to a lifetime of wasted effort working in charities, signing petitions, attending marches or writing harrowing books exposing this or that acute social problem. To do so will condemn us to stumble from one crisis to another and brutalise, degrade and maybe even kill us in the process.

Except for perhaps war It is not profitable to prepare for future catastrophes. Warning signs for a very probable coronavirus pandemic should have been heeded years ago. Medical experts outlined various ways to tackle it but neither pharmaceutical corporations nor government departments acted on it. The coronavirus pandemic has brought the tyranny of our economic system into sharp focus. There will be an eventual recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic but can the same be said for global warming and climate change. The threat of the survival of civilisation is intensified.

Today all the contradictions in society are sharpening, here and throughout the world. The world today is a very good place to make socialist revolution. It is precisely at such a point in history that the need for working class unity is greatest. Racism has long been a bulwark of all political reaction. It is a weapon systematically used by the capitalists to try to divide the workers of different races and nationalities and thereby to weaken the workers' movement and keep down the entire working class. The history of capitalist rule is a history of the most savage racial oppression. The capitalist rulers and their state are racist to the core. Their much-vaunted 'freedom' and 'democracy' stand exposed as nothing more than hollow and hypocritical lies. Brutal racism has been the way of life in capitalist America. However, the people have never taken their subjugation lying down.  U.S. history is filled with examples of the valiant struggles of the long-suffering masses. The reformist policy of tokenism has long been encouraged by the capitalist rulers of the U.S.A. It was promoted through a variety of programs, such as the promotion of 'black capitalism'. But while some African Americans are relatively well-off, at most, the black bourgeois have grown to become millionaires, but are not included in the list of billionaires.  In brief, the well-to-do African Americans have been given some crumbs.

 The aims of the capitalist drive against foreign-born workers are plain. First, the exploiters want to lower the standard of living and the conditions of employment of millions of our workers who happen to be foreign-born. Then they will blame and attack these worse oppressed and more ruthlessly exploited foreign-born working people to the native workers for the degrading conditions they themselves have forced upon these laborers. The capitalists are thus hoping to sow dissension in and divide the ranks of the working masses in order to crush more easily all the workers — native and foreign-born alike. The workers are divided amongst themselves into foreign-born and native. We must pit the unity of the labouring masses against the unity of the exploiters and oppressors. We must match the solidarity of the working class whose ideal is freedom, with the solidarity of the employing class whose aim is exploitation and tyranny.

 Our aim is the class-free society of world socialism. The Socialist Party is aware of the fact that today the overwhelming majority of the working class is not yet sufficiently class-conscious or convinced of the necessity of socialism.