Political action demands as much elaboration of probable consequences as we can reasonably accomplish under the given circumstances. A detailed blueprint is possible only where we have comprehensive knowledge of all relevant facts but as we cannot predict future events other than make some educated guesses, the most we can do or need to do, therefore, is to lay out a general rough sketch. We learn more about the details through cumulative experience, modifying, shifting, adapting, filling in the outlines provided by the rough sketch as we go along. If we are reasonably sure of the main outlines, we go ahead and find out what happens, adjusting ourselves flexibly to experience.
Now is the time to imagine a better world. The Socialist Party platform is the transformation of capitalist property into the collective property of society - The CO-OPERATIVE COMMONWEALTH.
The transformation of modern civilisation into the co-operative commonwealth, involving the greatest change known at least to history, must necessarily result in a corresponding change in the content of mankind’s behaviour. We must do more than show our destination but we have to indicate the path to take towards it. We are political party dedicated to fighting for the cooperative commonwealth. Our doctrine demands the abolition of individual ownership of the natural wealth of the world—the soil, the mines, the inventions and creations of industry which are the means of production, as well as of the machinery of the world. This wealth, furnished by nature or created by the genius of humanity, is to be made collective property of society for the equal advantage of the whole body of the people. Socialism is the emancipation of Labour, its emancipation from ignorance, vice, servitude, insecurity, poverty.
Socialists must end capitalism, erase state boundaries, transform the whole world into one cooperative commonwealth, and bring about real human brotherhood and freedom.
As long as capitalism pursues its mission of exploitation, there will socialism, fed by misery, watered by tears, and vitalised by agitation be also found, unfurling its class-struggle banner and proclaiming its mission of emancipation.
We are pledged to the principles of world socialism. The interests of the world’s workers are separated by no national boundaries. The condition of the most exploited and oppressed workers, in the most remote places of the earth, inevitably tends to drag down all the workers of the world to the same level. The tendency of the competitive wage system is to make labour’s lowest condition the measure or rule of its universal condition. Industry and finance are no longer national but international in both organisation and results. The chief significance of national boundaries, and of the so-called patriotisms which the ruling class of each nation is seeking to revive, is the power which these give to capitalism to keep the workers of the world from uniting, and to throw them against each other in the struggles of contending capitalist interests for the control of the yet unexploited markets of the world, or the remaining sources of profit. The socialist movement, therefore, is a world movement. It knows of no conflicts of interests between the workers of one nation and the workers of another. It stands for the freedom of the workers of all nations; and, in so standing, it makes for the full freedom of all humanity. The Socialist Party comes with the only proposition for the common good of all.
Socialism means that all those things upon which the people in common depend shall by the people in common be owned and administered. It means that the tools of employment shall belong to their creators and users; that all production shall be for the direct use of the producers; that the making of goods for profit shall come to an end; that we shall all be workers together; and that all opportunities shall be open and equal to all people. The Co-operative Commonwealth will be inaugurated by the mass action of the workers.
We all want the Cooperative Commonwealth. We all agree that capitalism is preparing the industrial running machinery thereof with marvellous rapidity and skill. We don’t need to trouble ourselves about that part of it. Our part is to get control of the political power in order to complete the transition to the socialism peacefully and systematically. In whatever way socialism comes, we must have a majority of the people in favour of it. We are not believers in the “small, well-disciplined minority” theory. It is our work to clarify and educate the vast amount of vague, undeveloped socialist sentiment existing in this country today, and crystallise and organise it into something palpable and definite.
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