The Socialist Party proposes that the working class take the state-power into their own hands, to establish socialism, a class-free society. The workers will be convinced of this necessity by socialist education, driven home, unfortunately, by bitter experience. Thereafter the State will “wither away.” the need for its existence ended, never to return. It is quite possible to feel the hard knocks caused by a class division of society, without appreciating their theoretical significance or the action which should follow that appreciation, i.e., a determination to spread the knowledge that alone, when sufficiently widely diffused, will enable the workers to take the essential step of overthrowing the capitalist system in its entirety and replacing it by its logical and evolutionary successor—Socialism — a society where the whole of the means of production and distribution are the property of the whole of the people and operated democratically for the benefit of the whole of the people.
We sympathise with our fellow workers’ endeavours to improve their conditions and it is possible that there will be a greater realisation of the necessity for organisation and action by them to obtain better conditions. But it is still true that organisation and better conditions cannot do away with the booms and slumps which are inseparable from capitalist society, so that eventually workers, will finally reach the point of understanding that it is the system of society itself which is at fault.
Workers ask themselves why is it, despite the most glaring of capitalism’s evils, i.e., poverty, hunger and war the emancipation of the worker is no nearer its achievement. Some suggest it is the lack of political unity among those described as socialist and the Socialist Party often receives such criticism. We are told that we should disregard our disagreements and differences with the Labour Party, the Trotskyist left-wing and with the anarchists. Success would soon arrive by the merging of these separate groups and it would so increase the effectiveness of campaigns and the socialist movement would rapidly grow. Our reply is that would only be an illusory agreement. They do not mean the same thing as we hold by the term “capitalism,” and their “socialism” is fundamentally different and irreconcilable to our understanding. If unity occurred it would be a confusion of contradictory voices and opposing messages.
Workers’ industrial organisation, whether in trade unions or other bodies, is necessary as long as capitalism lasts even though it is only defensive since as long as the owning and employing class control political power they are in the end in the stronger position. The Unions will, and should, fight state legislation that limits their ability to defend their hard-won economic gains is obvious, and socialists will be, and are, helping in that fight as individual members of trade unions.
The Socialist Party is composed of people who have been attracted to our ideas and practices just because they are revolted and fed up with the failures and hypocrisy of the capitalist system. Our ability to exist as a socialist group is based on the fact that we represent a concept of socialism which has nothing in common with Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky or Mao.
There is the struggle of the people to make ends meet with frozen wages and rising prices. There are empty places in the fridge and in the wardrobe due to being unaffordable yet found in plenty in the supermarket. The mounting cost of living is becoming more and more acute with no real relief in sight.
Replace the system of production for profit with the system of production for social use and the lives of working people becomes transformed into greater leisure, better health and happier, fuller life for the vast mass of humanity. Socialism is based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and distribution, upon production for use as against production for profit, upon the abolition of all classes, all class divisions, class privilege, and class rule, and upon the production of such abundance that the struggle for material needs is completely eliminated, so that humanity, at last, freed from economic exploitation, from oppression, from any form of coercion by a state machine, can devote itself to its fullest intellectual and cultural development. Much can perhaps be added to this definition, but anything less you can call whatever you wish, but it will not be socialism.
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