The Socialist Party seeks to build a workers’ movement which believes in political action and also in economic organisation. Both these methods go side by side. What the workers need is political education, class consciousness and trade union solidarity. When it comes to a showdown between the working class and the capitalist class, these are vitally necessary. Until we break the power of the state, nothing else can be accomplished. When we proclaim the abolition of the capitalists’ property and the establishment of common property, that in itself is a political act. And the socialists believe that it is necessary, as a matter of strategy, to attack the capitalist at his only accessible point, his government. We regard the state as a very efficient weapon in the hands of the ruling class. Until it is taken over no attempt at a social revolution will be safe for the working class. With the armed power of the state out of the way, then we shall be in a position to inaugurate a co-operative commonwealth, and we shall be ready to set it in motion. And when that time comes, it will be done through the activities of the economic organisation of the working class.
The wages system, under which labour has been reduced to a commodity is to be supplanted by the cooperative system under which all may engage in useful occupation and work together in harmonious cooperation for the emancipation of labour, the uplifting of humanity, and the advancement of our civilisation. By uniting at the ballot box, political control of the State can be secured, and the cooperative commonwealth established. The Socialist Party is not content with piecemeal, incremental improvements in the conditions of the working class, but instead advances the need for a revolutionary transformation of society that would result in a cooperative commonwealth where workers would democratically determine their working conditions. We shall unite all our energies to destroy the present capitalist system.
The time has come for social regeneration, and this is only possible through a new and worldwide change of system.
We therefore call upon all to muster under the banner of the Socialist Party, so that we may be ready to conquer capitalism by making use of our political liberty and by taking possession of State power, so that we may put an end to the present barbarous struggle, by the abolition of capitalism, the restoration of the land, and of all the means of production, transportation, and distribution, to the people as a collective body, and the substitution of the cooperative commonwealth for the present state of unplanned production, commercial competition, and social strive — a commonwealth which, although it will not make every person equal physically or mentally, will give to every worker the free exercise and the full benefit of his or her abilities , multiplied by all the modern factors of civilisation and ultimately inaugurate the universal brotherhood of mankind. The Socialist Party will make democracy, “the rule of the people,” a truth by ending the economic subjugation of the overwhelmingly great majority of the people. The cooperative commonwealth is the inevitable, inexorable product of the evolution of society. There is no power in capitalism, nor in the universe, that can prevent the consummation of a united and harmonious socialist movement in the cooperative commonwealth.
Private ownership of the centralised means of production and distribution — an industrial despotism, or common ownership and an industrial democracy? It must be one or the other — which? Socialism will wrest the earth from its exploiters and its vast and inexhaustible storehouse will yield abundance for all. The growth of socialism is the promise of freedom. Socialism means a more perfect and equitable distributions of the products of labour; cooperation instead of competition; common ownership of land, capital, and all the means of production and distribution. It proclaims the coming of the cooperative commonwealth to take the place of wage slavery.
The present economic system is not only a failure, but a colossal aggregation of crime. It robs, it degrades, it starves; it is a foul blot upon the face of civilisation. It promises only an increase of the horrors which the world deplores. There is no hope for our fellow-workers except by the path mapped out by socialists, the advocates of the cooperative commonwealth.
As we have witnessed in the recent American election, it will then make no sort of difference to capitalists, or to the working class either, whether the Republican or the Democratic Party be in control of government; for capitalism will be in possession of both parties. The perpetuity of the capitalist system depends upon its having two political parties, about equally matched, to play off against each other, and to shuttlecock the proletariat behind blind issues. America]s electoral process have long been a sort of Punch and Judy show; and it has been all one to the working man, whether he was looking at Republican Punch or Democratic Judy. The strings of both parties were in the capitalists’ hands.
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