The Demand is for Socialism

 

The essence of socialism is cooperation, organisation, concerted effort and united action on the part of the working class for their own advancement and their own emancipation.

The Left’s attitude toward reforms, in general, does not differ essentially from that of the out and out capitalist reformers. In its anxiety to capture political office, it seizes upon everything that agitates the mind of the people, regardless of whether it concerns the workers as a class or not. The Socialist Party does not refuse ameliorations offered by the capitalist class, but contends that the more revolutionary the workers become, the stronger they make their economic and political organizations, the more ready and more anxious, will the capitalist class be to throw sops to them in order to keep them contented

The Socialist Party holds that the working class the world over is indivisibly one; that as victims of the capitalist class their interests are common, regardless of nationality, colour or gender.

Many on the Left maintain that immigrants cause a keener struggle and lower wages for the workers already here. The fact remains that while immigration does add to the number of workers, and to that extent increases competition among the workers, it is a drop in the ocean compared to the real cause — the introduction of labour-saving machinery and concentration of capitalism. Even if every foreigner from now on were excluded, the misery of the workers would remain. Since this is so, and realising that injecting the question of racial superiority or inferiority foments racism, and to that extent prevents the organising of the workers, the Socialist Party condemns such a stand  as anti-unsocialistic

Taxes are paid by the property-holding classes out of that portion of wealth, produced, true enough, by labour, but which labour never pocketed. In other words, taxes are paid out of those values, produced over and above the wage which the worker receives and which are generally known as surplus value.

 Whether it be in the environmentalist movement or anti-war work, women’s and labour organisations, civil rights groups or what have you, socialists must look beyond the immediate situation and outline a vision of a future society. The issue is how goods are produced and distributed, who owns the means of production and how work is organised and administered,  overcoming scarcity and meeting people’s elementary material needs for food, healthcare, shelter, etc.

The planet cannot possibly sustain this wasteful, toxic capitalist consumer lifestyle on a global scale. People themselves have become commodities, reduced to little more than another expendable raw material. We must transcend the growth model of capitalism itself to adopt a model of socialism based not on ever-expanding production’ and consumption but one that establishes a new ecological relationship between human needs and the environment. In other words, a socialism that is not only democratic, non-exploitative, egalitarian, and internationalist but one that thoroughly replaces the expansionist model of capitalism. Struggles need to be linked up with a vision of a new economy, democratically structured to answer to people’s needs instead of the profit imperative. If you like that idea, then welcome to the movement for socialism. A better future will not come about automatically or simply because many people want it. It will only come about if we are able to draw enough people into the struggle to create it. But the effectiveness and success of that struggle are not predetermined. Those who are serious about socialism must be serious about the principles and programmes to achieve it.  

The Socialist Party seeks a democratic and revolutionary alternative to the reign of capital and profit. The fundamental aim of socialism is the creation of a class-free society. Socialism is about working people desiring a society free of exploitation and oppression. If socialism is not about creating a society without oppression and exploitation then it is merely another version of capitalism. And if working people do not understand or are not willing to organise for such a society then socialism is unattainable. Most of what the Socialist Party has achieved is to keep together a determined political party, committed to the goal of socialism that has not given up on the prospect that the class struggle would create conditions of anti-capitalism and anti-reformism.