The Socialist Party exists to substitute knowledge for ignorance and organisation for chaos. So long as the wages and profits system lasts no section of the workers can afford to abandon trade unionism, but it is equally true that the trade union movement holds out no possibility of solving the problem of working-class servitude. Many of our political and industrial opponents claim that the “day-to-day struggle,” i.e., the succession of work-to-rules and strikes, even occupations leads of itself to the workers’ emancipation. So long as the workers in the main regard their affairs from the so-called “immediate” standpoint, defeats are inevitable. The “immediate” interests of the workers are invariably sectional interests. The political party of the workers can only express the general interests; the interests the workers have in common, irrespective of local or industrial variations;, in other words, the interests of their class as a whole. As such it stands for solidarity between the different sections and the rendering of mutual support wherever possible in the defensive warfare waged by means of strikes. Its special function,, however, is to point out the limited value of this warfare, and to emphasize the fact that the fight carried on along these lines only is a losing one. So long as the workers are content to struggle for a subsistence wage only, that is the most they will obtain, with their security growing ever less. The Socialist Party summons them to struggle for possession of the means of life. Instead of voting sectionally every now and again for a cessation of work, we counsel the workers to vote as a class for the abolition of the system whereby they are compelled to work for the profit of a few, the present owners of the means of life. We call upon our fellow-workers to organise to obtain control of the political machinery, which has served their masters so effectively. Socialist education is the only solution of working-class difficulties. When the workers realise that, in spite of all the differences in their respective conditions, they are one as slaves, then only will they feel the need and possibility of emancipation, and act accordingly.
Although owing to such bad conditions which exist among the workers, one is much tempted to devote undue attention to reforms, it cannot be too often or too strenuously asserted that all and every reform possible in capitalist society would do next to nothing in the end as the capitalist class has always shown that it knows full well how to force back with one hand what it is compelled to pay out with the other. It is surely significant that after all the years occupied in obtaining reforms, that it should be even now a debatable point as to whether the workers as a class are any better off to-day than they were at the beginning. Even in the case of such apparently obviously desirable reforms as state maintenance - or, as it is watered down to, state feeding of the children and the relief of the unemployed, it is fairly clear that the capitalist class will take care to benefit more itself than the workers by the greater exploitation of the young, by reason of their more fit condition making them better producing mediums, and from having their reserve army kept by the state for them. And it must not be lost sight of that a reserve army of unemployed is a necessary condition of capitalist society.
Brutal as it may seem to say so, it is clear to us that the only purpose of reforms is to put off the day when the workers will come by their own. The workers will always be badly fed, housed and clothed so long as they are robbed, and robbed they will be so long as capitalism lasts.What interest we had in reforms has vanished. We have been disillusioned by watching its effects and results. The failure to get any substantial gain from these sources is not accounted for by the good or bad actions of individuals but by the conditions of the problem itself. The Labour Party is in our opinion but a bulwark against the real movement — the only one of any use to the proletariat — i.e., the socialist movement.
The Socialist Party disdains to conceal our principles. We proclaim the class war. We hold that the lot of the workers cannot to any appreciable extent be improved except by a complete overthrow of this present capitalist system of Society. The time for Social tinkering has gone past. The Socialist Party knows that reforms or measures palliative of capitalism can only be obtained while the master class rules in so far as capitalist interests are thereby served; and since capitalist interests are directly opposed to those of workers in all essential points of wealth and leisure, it is obvious that the measures passed by capitalist representatives will have for object the maintenance or extension of their system or the intensification of the robbery of the workers upon which they depend. It is then a fraud for a candidate to pretend to be able to obtain measures in the workers’ interests from the capitalist class in power. The workers can get nothing of their own until they are able to take it. No person is a socialist who throws out such fraudulent sops or promises as bait to prospective voters, for besides that it must lead workers to disappointment and apathy and aid their enemies, it is obvious that as far as sops or promises are concerned the master class can, and does when it needs to, always out-sop the would-be member. Hence it is of supreme importance that the workers rely upon themselves and concentrate all their energies on the capture of political power for socialism, for all else is illusion.
There is a law of capitalist production which ordains that human labour-power shall be in constant competition with machinery, and shall as constantly be displaced and defeated by its formidable rival. And there is a law that, notwithstanding that the result is bitter as blood to the great working class of the world, yet must working-class intelligence and working-class strength go on improving and developing this machinery of production, to their own undoing, as long as the capitalist system of profit production shall prevail. There is a further law—a law of wages—under governance of which wages are determined by the cost of subsistence under certain prevailing conditions. There are many other stated laws controlling the economic movements of man, and much more, doubtless enough, awaiting human recognition and enunciation. The knowledge of these laws is of vital importance to the workers. Such knowledge alone can explain to them how, and in what circumstances, the wealth of the world is produced— and who can it more closely concern than those who produce it all and who enjoy so little of it? Such knowledge is the only sure foundation of Socialist faith—our pillar of fire by night, our pillar of cloud by day—the one unerring index where all else is confusion. The reformer is a reformer only because he is ignorant of the existence of the laws governing social growth, or because he fails to realise their universal applicancy, and the unbending potency with which they reduce all human wishes, as far as they are in opposition to them, to merest empty vanity.
In their ordinary everyday life the workers sell their labour power to the capitalist class who own the means and instruments of production. The wages they receive in return are very often not enough to live on. What the workers produce over their wages enables the capitalist class to live in luxury and idleness and increase their investments, and is the primary purpose of capitalist production. To increase their profits the capitalist class use every device; they install labour-saving machinery, appeal to social feelings and national prejudices to get as much work as possible from the workers at as low a wage as possible. To improve their standard of living, even maintain it, the workers must struggle continually. Between the working class and the capitalist class, there is a fundamental conflict of interest. To sell their goods the different sections of the capitalist class come into conflict over markets. They also come into conflict over sources of raw materials and strategic points controlling trade routes. The experience of the recent natural calamities around the world has shown that people have not lost their energy or their impulse to cooperate under adversity. These forces can be harnessed to everyday jobs by abolishing the private ownership of the means of production—the source of the conflict of interest in modern industrial society—and establishing the common property of the means of living. Then there would be a community of interest: the many would not work in the interest of the few; everyone would be working for the benefit of all—as during the floods—for the benefit of humanity. A society based on a community of interests instead of on an antagonism will be conducive to co-operative behaviour and not, as at present, place obstacles in its way. Only with the establishment of such a system will wars and crime lose their purpose and hence their existence.
