The Socialist Party, being a voice of the needs and
aspirations of the working class, takes as its aim the emancipation, by means
of class struggle, of the whole working population from the yoke of capitalist
society. To this end, the Socialist Party, linked to the World Socialist Movement
is carrying on the struggle for the total transformation of society. The working
class will take possession of the means of production (land, mines, factories,
means of communication), which in the hands of the capitalists are the means of
exploiting and oppressing the working masses, and will make them into social
property. By suppressing the division of society into classes, workers will put
an end to the exploitation of man by man, and will make it possible for all people
to enjoy the fruits of their own and collective labour.
Nationalism is a bourgeois ideology which developed with the
emergence of nations and the rise and development of capitalism. Nationalism
serves the bourgeoisie in the sense that they are seeking a market for their
goods, and their national market is always primary as capitalism develops. And
nationalism serves to help that bourgeoisie secure its national market. It is
nationalism that can divide the workers so that the workers of one nationality
are struggling against the workers of another nationality for a few illusory
crumbs the rulers throw out exactly for that purpose! It is nationalism that
can pit groups of workers against each other with the most hideous rage, while
their mutual oppressors skip off with both their purses for a little sun and
fun. Nationalism means exclusivism and isolation. Any nationalism finally
implies that those people are better than all others. We are the victims of
nationalism that preaches superiority and inferiority. We have seen its obscene
terror and oppression. We are not fighting so that we can put these on somebody
else. Nationalism ultimately does not serve the real interests of the masses of
that nationality. As ironic as this sounds, nationalism does not even ultimately
serve the nation. This is true and has been proven correct time and again. Nationalism
after a certain point isolates the oppressed people from their allies and
delivers them into the hands of the exploiters and reactionaries of their own
nationality. Zionism should teach us this more forcibly than anything else, how
even the most “justifiable” nationalism, taken to its logical conclusion, can
end up justifying the repression of almost anybody else outside the nation. The
struggle that unifies the working class completely must be the struggle to abolish
capitalism forever.
Despite recurring crises of the capitalist economy,
capitalist society will not collapse spontaneously. Capitalism requires the
conscious actions of the people to over-throw it. The victory of the working
class, the destruction of the economic and social bases of the possessing
classes, the putting into practice of the principles of the planned socialist
economy – all these will lead to the creation of the classless society, where
there will be no exploited or exploiters, nor class struggles, and all the
efforts of society will be deployed to the common good. From the moment of the
revolution and the establishment of the classless society it will make possible
the complete achievement of socialist democracy and the abolition of the State.
Society will then determine for itself the forms of its confederations and its
organisational structure. The victory of socialism means the emancipation of
all humanity. Socialism will create not only the new economic and social order,
but also the higher civilisation of free mankind.
Religion is a social phenomenon in present-day society.
Hence no amount of merely negative and critical propaganda can destroy it. Hence,
to seek to abolish religion in a society founded on exploitation is futile. The
ancient Greek and Roman freethinkers such as Epicurus and Lucretius demolished
every theological argument as well as their modern successors have done, but
when Paganism passed from the scene it was Christianity, not Atheism, which
took its place. Only the positive achievement of a classless society can do
that by abolishing its causes. It follows that religion cannot die out or be
abolished in a class society, it follows equally and by the same reasoning that
it could not survive inside socialism. Once a socialist society is fully
established the twin foundations of religion, ignorance and fear, will be torn
up by the roots. Socialism, by doing away with class exploitation and by
developing to the fullest possible extent the unfathomed productive
potentialities of the modern-age, hitherto hardly touched under capitalism,
would make poverty and insecurity absolutely meaningless terms in an age of
universal plenty. Whilst war, the third partner in the unholy capitalist
trinity, would necessarily pass into oblivion along with the competitive
capitalism and imperialism which is its sole efficient cause. All the social
roots of religion would thus simultaneously disappear. And, of course, it goes
without saying that the last remains of barbaric ignorance and superstition
which still survive from pre-civilised eras would vanish before the impact of
universal free education based on the scientific humanism that is inseparable
from socialism, and no longer twisted as today by class domination into a mere
machine for producing standardised wage-slaves, mechanical minders of machines,
and servile robots. Whosoever therefore is capable of reasoning scientifically
from cause to effect must realise that socialism means inevitably the
definitive end of religion; which, deprived of all reason for existence, would
become a mere anachronism in such a society. Religion becomes ever more
obviously a parasite. With world socialism we shall arrive at that pleasing
state of things where the Social Revolution will destroy religion by abolishing
its effective causes and humanity itself takes the place of god.
In the meantime, the Socialist Party continues its necessary
propaganda against all manifestations of capitalism, including those which
belong to the sphere of religion. Whether it is necessary to attack religion
specifically depends on local and on particular circumstances, but every
reactionary movement of the Churches in our current society should be exposed.
In all fairness we must draw attention to such movements as those of the
Lollards and Anabaptists which were anti-ruling-class, and in some cases, even
‘communistic’ in their tenets. It is undeniable that such movements existed,
that they reflected their contemporary class antagonisms and were, even, to a
certain extent, revolutionary in their relation to contemporary states and
society. To that extent accordingly they must be excempt from the strictures
passed above on their official counterparts, the ‘orthodox’ churches. We must also add, however, that their
‘communism’ was pre-scientific and therefore backward -looking: ‘When Adam
delved and Eve span where was then the gentleman?’, as the Lollards phrased it:
viz, in the beginning class distinctions did not exist. In all such Utopian
‘Communism’ history chases its own tail. Moreover, most of these movements were
dominated by clerics—for example, John Ball and Thomas Munzer, etc. Had they
succeeded they would have inevitably become themselves theocracies. Voltaire
has summed up, once for all, the social character of all theocratic communism
in his satirical description of the clerical ‘communistic’ state founded by the
Jesuits in Paraguay (eighteenth century): ‘In Paraguay perfect communism
existed: the Jesuits shared the wealth; whilst the Indians shared the work!’
What has been said of Christianity is equally true in
respect of other religions also. For example, Islam has always stubbornly
opposed even the modernization of the bourgeois revolution: Saudi Arabia and
Afghanistan, still strongholds of Mohammedan clericalism, are almost completely
feudal. Whilst Hinduism, by means of its doctrine of reincarnation, has
cleverly allayed the discontent of the Indian masses with their frightful
conditions in this life! Even the originally rationalistic Buddhism had in
Tibet become an obscurantist and oppressive monastic despotism. As far as the
class struggle is concerned, official religion is, and always has been, on the
side of the exploiters. Indeed, granted its social background, it could not
have been anything else. And the same is true today.
The war against the gods is equivalent to the class war for
a socialist society: Forward to the Social Revolution! Banish gods from the
skies and capitalists from the Earth.
