The Socialist Party's purpose is to move the concept of socialism itself from the possible to the plausible. Notwithstanding our significant achievements, we are still falling short of our aspirations for system change. The aspect of our work to transform from an educational advocacy group to a mass socialist party has remained elusive. We hold a practical vision for the structural change of the basis of our society.
We have reached a turning point in planetary history. Our planet produces more than enough food to feed everyone and has for a number of years. However, food is unequally distributed and far too much is wasted. Some have access to much, while others not enough. The current capitalist system is untenable, and a future of instability, mass unemployment, and ecological breakdown lurks on the horizon. We don’t have the luxury to procrastinate. Socialist action is like sailing: we know our destination, but the winds and the currents keep changing, and we must tack to adjust to real-world conditions. Integrated, systemic thinking is urgently needed. Catalysts of change may emerge unknowingly, depending on circumstance. We may not recognise,the forces of systemic change, but we can help create the preconditions for their crystallisation. We need to touch the heart as much as the head.
The focus on symptoms rather than causes would not achieve the necessary transformative change. The time is now for a mass movement of people saying “We want something different.” The aim of socialism is to meet the needs of all human beings while operating within ecological limits. It seeks to maximise the well-being of all. We, humans, have much more in common than most people assume, unable to see beyond contemporary divisiveness in so many parts of the world. Our common humanity provides the foundation for a global movement.
Apart from the political dictatorship—which they could study in the past of Britain and Western Europe—where are or ever were these so-called Socialist features of Russia? Commodity production, the production of goods for sale and profit, the existence of a great propertyless wage-earning class, the huge national debts and bond-holding, the banks and insurance institutions, the inequalities of income and the complex taxation systems, the preoccupation with Capitalist investment, foreign trade and the military struggle for territories and the control of trade routes—these are the features not of Russia as such or America or Britain as such, but of world-embracing Capitalism.
The many defences of capitalism were the unsupportable notion that Russia in the form of the great nationalised industrial monopolies was socialist. State capitalism is not socialism and cannot be shown to be anything else, but a form of capitalism and one familiar enough in all countries. The more sophisticated critics retreat to an indefensible position as their second line of defence, i.e., that “socialism” now means “state capitalism,” anyway because they and so many others profess to think that it does. What has happened in Russia is not the mere continuation of Russian tradition under another name, nor the development of a different “socialism” (which would be like deciding to call chalk, cheese), but the emergence of capitalism, growing more marked with the passage of time, in place of feudalism. Russian evolution is Russia’s delayed version of the Revolution which brought capitalism to supremacy in France a century and a half ago. The turn of events in Russia is not the failure of socialism or its corruption by Russian tradition, but the total failure of the Bolsheviks to impose socialism on an unready country, against the wishes of the population who were not and are not socialists.
Marx, in his writings, predicted that someday the capitalists would have to take care of their slaves; that they would be forced to feed and otherwise keep alive an ever-increasing army of unemployed workers. Modern capitalism with the Welfare State an all its social services has fulfilled this prediction with a vengeance. Nevertheless, it was not accomplished by the full agreement of all the capitalist class. Many f the master class dispute the necessity and have endeavoured to minimise the State's intervention. They believe that unemployed workers and their dependents must be left to survive on their own and oppose relief expenditures by the government as “wasteful extravagance”,“harmful to business’, as well as “demoralising the recipients and creating a dependency culture. While the more enlightened employer believes in giving hand-outs as the order of the day because the exploiting class cannot kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Experience demonstrates that the old method of private charity can no longer cope with the conditions resulting from widespread unemployment, and thus the government is forced to administer relief. Buying off the discontent of hungry workers is more efficient than maintaining an enormous police force or employing other repressive apparatus to keep the workers in subjection. Disorders, riots, and possible insurrections of desperate workers are thereby averted.
Despite the realisation by the property owners and their political representatives of the need of government-welfare to maintain the status quo, their efforts are always directed toward the reducing the cost. Economy measures are continuously pushed in an effort to reduce the amount welfare claimants are eligible for, tending to bring the payments down to the bare subsistence level. Added to this is the old attempt to discourage the taking of welfare by enforcing red-tape regulations and placing a moral stigma upon those applying...scroungers and fraudsters. The result of these constant attacks is to impair the precarious and already too low economic standing of the workers. The tendency is to drive the standard of living towards and below the subsistence level. Yet, at the same time, for obvious reasons, they must see to it that this standard of living does not fall below the starvation level. The concessions of reforms given to the workers under capitalism may temporarily alleviate but will never eradicate the misery of the working class. The continuation of capitalism will only serve to perpetuate the hardships and suffering of the workers, both employed and unemployed
There does arise, however, a point where the workers must and do resist. Through the limited trade unions and various NGO organizations worker attempt to weather the pressure of austerity. This determination not to submit is inevitable and is the result of necessity and experience. Temporary respite can and has been obtained by resistance. But real victory for the working class depends upon capturing control of the state, which now strives to keep the workers in subjection and attempts to allay their discontent by offering reforms and ameliorations, which are insufficient. The capture of “political power”, rather than the resisting of "state pressure”, must become the object of the workers. Ridding society of capitalism is the only solution. It can be seen that no amount or variety of reform will ever be able to abolish the workers' discontent. On the day that this discontent becomes crystalised into socialist understanding, we will see the end of capitalism and all its evil effects.
Councillor Joe Mihevc said, ''Respite centres are really a bandage on a bandage.''
