Class Unity or Chaos

 

The times are ripe for socialism. We live in a world torn apart by crises and wars. Everywhere, capitalism is permanently mired in the bog of its own creation. Unemployment increases, poverty, undernourishment and sickness spread, prices rise and wages sink. As the world economic crisis deepens we can see the burden of the crisis being dumped increasingly on the shoulders of the working class. We can see government after government in the capitalist world enacting legislation with similar ends: to make the working class pay for the present crisis of capitalism. The basic struggle in society rages between the working class and the capitalist class, who are the enemy of the working people. Capitalism, while having developed the highest level of production, is a system of waste and inefficiency through useless competition and the alienation of men and women. Yet the working people remain outside the organisations for socialism. Why?

We live in a society that puts a price tag on everything. In order to bring about positive changes, we need a party that acts in our interests. The World Socialist Movement seek to change the economic laws governing society and human relations, by bringing order and plan into production. We would establish a genuine and meaningful democracy, collectively in control of the means whereby we live. There is no limit to the productivity of new technologies. But production is shackled by the capitalists who are guided by their lust for profit and not by the wants and needs of working people.

The workers must organise their forces for the complete overthrow of the system of wage slavery. Parliamentary activity, important though it be, is not enough. Our struggle must be carried on with the view of complete liberation from the profit system. The only power that can save humanity from the peril of barbarism is the working class. It must free itself of all dependence on the possessing classes. It must cease all collaboration with the exploiters and embark on the road of class struggle.

Civilisation forever hovers at the edge of an abyss. Socialism is the solution. The private property system is the enemy. Production must be released from the fetters of private property and profits. The resources of the world must pass into the possession of working humanity. All other problems, the problems of nationalism and of race and colour will be solved once society is freed from exploitation and class divisions. 

To maintain their class rule the capitalists have a number of political parties to defend their interests. These parties have different names, defend different policies, and use different rhetoric, but all serve the ruling class to maintain its domination over the workers. One of the most important tasks of the Socialist Party is to wage a determined struggle to expose these bourgeois parties and win the workers from their influence and to the cause of the socialist revolution.

It is a party of which the elected delegates will remain the servants – not become the masters. We stand for a world that can eliminate poverty and hunger and war, a world in which freedom is more than a word in a dictionary. For most people democracy remains a word without meaning.  We seek a world in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the producers themselves and the products of mankind are available to all. Around the world humanity is saying "Enough". The potential of mankind is virtually limitless if it is freed from economic and social oppression.

The SPGB stands for socialism. We have no illusions that the way will be easy, no visions of quick success. But the future belongs to humanity and the socialists.