WHO WE ARE

 

Socialists welcome critical and searching questions. Thinking is not and never has been a violation of socialist discipline. Socialists are not dogmatists and sectarians who are blindly and religiously faithful to socialist conclusions despite the lessons of unfolding experience. Should an examination of the real world prove the case for socialism to be invalid, it would be a serious reflection on those who continued to be socialists. That is why socialists are open-minded, in contrast to being broad-minded. They do not tolerate exploded myths and superstitions. Yet they should be patient with individuals groping to find out what the score is. Especially is this true in a day and age when the material conditions of existence are ripe for socialism with the sole exception of maturity of social and political thinking. The only thing standing in the way of socialism today is the lack of socialists.

The problem today is that of socialist education.  By its very nature, socialism is inherently democratic, i.e., it requires a conscious socialist majority. This cannot be overemphasiSed for it is the clue to socialist tactics and programs on the basis of historic necessity. Socialists are wary of the word, “radical.” Actually, socialists are not radicals in the common usage of the word. We are, rather, revolutionary. Under the heading of “radical” must be included a hodge-podge collection of confusions worse confounded with the added burden of being just nebulous, vaporous discontent based on blind misconceptions. What a company is included in the term “radical”. Of course, there is no question whatever that there is a need for “some sort of unity of understanding,” but that is the function of a socialist organisation, i.e., a socialist party. The nature — the very heart and core — of a socialist party is that it is not for the workers. The party is not going to emancipate the workers or do anything for them. There is no dichotomy or separation of the workers and the party. 

Abraham Lincoln was on the flimsy ground when he spoke of “government of the people, by the people, and for the people,” because all governments are rooted in antagonisms of interests, it would be quite valid to say that the socialist party is the party of the workers, by the workers, and for the workers. The real socialist party cannot be apart and distinct from the working class; it has to be comprised of the whole human community. That is the general nature of any socialist party.

Without in any sense implying that quoting The Communist Manifesto is, of itself, proof of anything, nevertheless, the Manifesto phrases this matter very well: Section II starts off that (the party) “always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole” and ends with “the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy.” 

In other words, the work of emancipation, the transformation of capitalism into a socialist society, the transfer of the means of living from the hands of the parasites into the hands of society as a whole, is the conscious, majority, and political action of the working class — the socialist party. The state does exist; it is the central organ of power. Title and deed to its ownership rest in the political control by the ruling class. The state is the instrumentality of class control. When the workers finally wake up, they will use their party to change the “civitas” of propertied society into the “societas” of communal society.

Today, working-class understanding is at a very low ebb, therefore the membership in the SPGB is puny.