Capitalism has become a very complicated affair, far too complicated to allow of the personal management of the capitalists. Hence various institutions necessary to their maintenance have come into being. The most important of these institutions is Parliament, through which all the other institutions are controlled—for example, education, the media, and the armed forces. The capitalists propose certain representatives for Parliament, and the workers, carefully educated by the capitalist media to believe that they really represent working-class interests, obediently vote them in. These capitalist henchmen— Tory or Labour, it makes not the slightest difference—proceed to pass laws for the safeguarding of their employers' interests.
It should be quite obvious that the whole power of the capitalists lies in a government that can summon the inevitable deciding factor, force, when needed. Therefore the only logical thing for the workers to do is to capture that government, and so in a constitutional manner gain control of the armed forces. This can only be accomplished when the majority of the working class have reached class-consciousness—in other words, when the bulk of the workers have arrived at a complete understanding of their position as wage-slaves under the existing system of society. They will then utilise their powers of voting to further their own interests instead of the interests of a class that has always ruthlessly oppressed them.
Socialism can only be realised by the success of the working class in its struggle against the owning class. The socialist movement is built upon the facts of this class struggle, a struggle to uphold the interests of their class in the daily conflict with employers.
It does not depend upon the workers’ state of mind. The struggle is bound to exist whether it is recognised or not. The existence of a body of the population with no means of living but that of working for the group of owners —that fact alone denotes a class struggle. The workers cannot take action to seek work and wages without displaying the conflict of interests between them and employers, and the inevitable struggle that is involved in it. The never-ceasing battles over details of wages and hours are the actual result of the conflict of interests, and are inseparable from the struggle of the working class to live as wage-slaves in a society which allows them no other way of living as a class. Around the question of the job and work-place conditions, the workers are always compelled to struggle, and always will be while there is a working class dependent upon employers for existence. The economic battleground of the class struggle is limited to a guerrilla warfare. The employing class maintain their supremacy in the struggle because they have control of powers which enable them to defeat the workers. That power is political.
The workers are in the class struggle, but are not conscious of their interests. Hence they fight, blindly and vainly to improve their condition. Inside the unions, in political parties and in their everyday actions they do things which work to the capitalists’ advantage. They continue to act on lines which perpetuate the system that enslaves them, and support leaders and parties that work against the workers’ interests. The workers must recognise that the class struggle exists. They must become aware of their slave position, and the way out, if they are to prosecute the struggle to a victorious conclusion for themselves. If the working class become conscious of their class interests and welfare, they will refuse to take actions which injure them.
Class consciousness was never more needed than now. To the Socialist Party, class consciousness is the breaking down of all barriers to understanding. Without it, militancy means nothing. The conflict between the classes is more than a struggle for each to gain from the other: it is the division which reaches across all others. The class-conscious worker knows where he or she stands in society. Their interests are opposed at every point to those of the capitalist class; their cause can only be the cause of revolution for the abolishing of classes. Without that understanding, militancy can mean little. It is not mere preamble that the Socialist Party’s principles open by stating the class division in capitalism: it is the all important basis from which the rest must follow.
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