What the Socialist Party begins with is an examination of the capitalist system as it exists. We try to understand and explain what is happening in society in order to play a role in changing it. We look to the working class as the major force with the power to transform the existing disorder and create a new social order on a planet-wide basis, to meet the needs of all humanity and to oppose the tiny number who profit from the exploitation and oppression of the vast majority. Our function as a political party is defending, maintaining, enriching and applying the principles of revolutionary socialism. Humanity is marching forward to socialism and freedom, not backward to barbarism and slavery. The Socialist Party faces the struggle for this future with full confidence and unshakable optimism. The gloomy prophets of the eclipse of civilisation and even the obliteration of human society, ignore the history and the evolution of mankind, which demonstrates above all else its unconquerable will and capacity to survive and go forward.
It is true that humanity, threatened with environmental destruction, is indeed confronted with a problem of survival on this planet. But the we will survive. Against the ideology of pessimism, despair and "fate revolutionary optimism will overturn the whole world and in order to survive, people will do away with the social system which threatens its survival. Socialism will win the world and change the world, and make it safe. It will not only a new economic system which has been born. A new culture will be born. A new science will be born. A new style of life will be born.
Socialists hate capitalism with our heads and with our hearts. We believe that in order to advance to socialism it is necessary for the working class majority to take political power out of the hands of the capitalists. Socialism is a society where the means of production and distribution are socially owned in the hands of the working people. An absence of this understanding has been the Achilles’ heel and a long standing weakness.
The task of the Socialist Party is to give our fellow-workers a socialist perspective, socialist consciousness, to help the working class to understand the capitalist system under which they live; how to end it by winning political power, and to replace it by a system of socialism.A revolution means a change in political power, it does not mean a violent bloody insurrection. Revolutions can be peaceful and legal if permitted to be so. The stronger the movement, the more certain becomes the possibility of a peaceful transition. We do not stand for violence, but if violence should be used by the old ruling class against the people, then the people themselves will find appropriate methods to deal with it.
The Communist Manifesto ends with this ringing call to action:
"Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
"Workingmen of all countries, unite!"
Such a mighty clarion call for revolutionary worldwide action has yet to be surpassed. The words are even more true today. Workers in alliance can lay the political and social foundations for worldwide solidarity based on planning and the common ownership of the means of production.
We workers cannot obtain plenty and security, deliverance from misery and war, by trying to reform the capitalist economic system. We have to abolish it. And we cannot abolish it except by the revolution. With socialism there will be no aristocracies of birth or wealth. No individual or group was to be allowed to exploit and oppress others. Not for a favoured few, but for all the population there will to be abundance, security, an equal voice in democratic decision-making. The material and technical resources for such a society, unquestionably exist today. Everybody can have a comfortable home, ample food, decent healthcare and security against accident, sickness, and old age; opportunity for recreation and education and the sense of independence and self-respect that goes with all these things.
Instead under capitalism we actually have widespread poverty and mass misery. This appalling contrast between what might be and what is does not, arises from the nature of the economic system – capitalism – under which we operate.
A revolution in technology has occurred where goods and services are produced and distributed not by individuals in individual enterprises, but through socialised enterprises. Ownership and control, however, of these enterprises, and with it the right to make profit from them, to exploit the labour of those engaged in them, is still on the same individual basis. It is impossible for this antiquated system of private ownership and profit to function, to supply the needs of the population today. The system acts as a brake upon production so that, as the phrase goes, we have “want in the midst of plenty:” The socialist revolution will end immediately private ownership and control over natural resources and over the plant for production, distribution and communication which the toil and skill of working people have built. Ownership and control would be vested in society as a whole.
Scientists and technicians will work freely and with adequate resources in order to plan for still greater efficiencyand bring greater abundance of leisure as well as goods. Socialists envisage planning on the global scale. National boundaries are as artificial and restrictive and socialism is a world economy. Every effort to establish “planned” production under capitalism breaks down, since the warfare between rival capitalists, within a nation and between capitalist groups in different nations disrupts such efforts. The removal of the brake of private ownership which shuts down factories, wastes raw materials and stultifies the scientist and technician, and putting in its place the social use of natural resources and the productive plant, will mean an immediate and substantial improvement in the standard of living of the masses. That improvement can be continuous. The spectre of insecurity will disappear. The undemocratic economic domination of the few over the many will be at an end.
This is the choice – capitalism which means chaos or world socialism which means a higher level of civilisation and culture.
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