The struggle for socialism cannot be postponed

 

The Socialist Party advocates the social revolution. Do we try to make it, to accelerate it? Not so. Rather we strive to prepare for it. No person can make this revolution any more than a person may prevent it. Nor can any person tell the day of its coming. But we do incessantly call out “The Revolution comes.” Socialism is essentially revolutionary, politically and economically, as it aims at the complete overthrow of existing economic and political conditions. We should organise and be prepared for what might be described as a revolutionary outbreak. So let us be aye ready. Let us by education and by organisation prepare ourselves and one another.

Socialism neither altruistic nor egotistic; they are intrinsically neither selfish nor unselfish. Socialism presupposes a condition of things in which the good of all will mean the good of each; and a society so constituted that the individual cannot serve oneself without serving society, and cannot injure society without injuring oneself. Thus there will no longer be altruism and egoism, selfishness and unselfishness.

The members of the Socialist Party want the cooperative commonwealth to come as quickly as possible and believe that the world will never have permanent peace and prosperity until its economy is transformed and founded on socialist principles. But socialism cannot be established in any country until the majority of the people are ready to establish it. Presently, the fact remains that the great majority of the people are not ready to take the necessary steps to secure the change. Socialism is still in its advocacy stage. We have not arrived at the moment when the peoples are convinced that fundamental changes are necessary to achieve social well-being.

With a socialist society the means of production will be free to provide for the needs of the people. The capitalist profit-makers will have passed into history. The working people will be in control of industry. Perhaps all will not be smooth sailing on calm waters. A little confusion here, a little stupidity there, may well occur. However, not as  they are characteristic of capitalism; but merely as the natural mistakes made by human beings on the road to a better life.

 A socialist society, as such, with its production for the use of all its members and not for the profit of the few, implies the requirements of life being equally within the reach of each and all. In such a society, therefore, the bogey over the amount paid in wages will disappear since the wage-system itself will have disappeared, the whole wealth of the socialised world being created for the needs of the inhabitants of that world. Some may require more of the “good things of life,” others less. But whatever the requirements of the world socialism will afford abundant means of satisfying each and all. The real job today is to spread the ideas of socialism, organise the workers to wipe out capitalism with its waste and be able to plan production for need. PLENTY FOR ALL.

 The Socialist Party embraces the aspiration to transform private property in the means of production,  into common property, and to achieve this through the political struggle, to the conquest of State power.

Working class unity makes it impossible for the capitalists to go on in the old way of divide and rule. Working class unity enables us to combine our tactics for defending our class with the strategy of liberating our class. Working class unity is revolutionary. The position of the Socialist Party is one of hostility to the existing political order. That order is based upon private property in the means of production, and its function is to maintain and defend that property in the interests of the dominant class. Socialism cannot be achieved as a result of a series of reforms within the framework of the capitalism. Socialism cannot be introduced piecemeal. 

PLENTY FOR ALL

 If you stop to think of it, you really know nothing of socialism. Your masters  have taken good care that you shouldn't learn the truth about it. Why? Because as long as they can keep you busy shouting against socialists, the masters are safe in their saddle upon the backs of the working people. Any vision of the possibility of better things makes the present misery more intolerable, and spurs those who suffer to the most energetic struggles to improve their lot. An exploited wage worker, who catches a glimpse of what work and life might and ought to be, finds the drudgery and the squalor of existence almost unbearable. For the bosses it is better to distort what socialism means.

That is what the Socialist Party advocates. Socialists do not preach and practice violence and murder. On the contrary, the socialists hold life as sacred. The Socialist Party values human life. In fact, no one values it more. Socialism means opposing violence, by whomever committed, even if it be by the government. The government has no more right to murder than the individual. 

That's why we wish  to change the present order of things where everyone is divided, and where there is wholesale slaughter in the pursuit of the dollar, with blood shed in the field, factory and workshop. The poverty, misery and bitter warfare, the crimes, suicides and murder committed every day of the year should convince any person of intelligence that in present society we have plenty of Law, but little order or peace. Crimes of every kind happen every day. Is it not rather misery and desperation that drive people to commit such acts? Does a millionaire go out on the street and  rob you of a few dollars? Oh, no. Instead he builds a factory and robs his workers in a way that is much safer, more profitable and within the law.

 According to the mainstream media socialism stands for destruction.  Socialism does stand for the destruction of those institutions that are keeping humanity in bondage and that are robbing mankind of the right to the use of the necessities of life. Viewed from the standpoint of the capitalist whose aim in life is wealth and power caring only for cents and dollars, socialism is  impracticable. But measured by its true and real usefulness to society, socialism is the most practical proposition. It is a theory of human development which lays stress upon the economic  aspect of social relations granting that the cause of society’s evils is a material one. The Socialist Party sincerely aims at a radical change in society and strives to free humanity from the scourge of dependence and misery. 

What does the Socialist Party seek? When you understand that, you will then be able to decide for yourself who are your enemies and who are your friends. The Socialist Party says that it is not necessary to have poverty, war and widespread disease in the world. It says that we are cursed with these evils because a handful of people have monopolised the planet and its wealth. But who produces that wealth? Who builds the roads, railtracks and runways, who mines the ores, who toils in the fields and sweats in the factories? You know the answer yourself. It is the workers who produce all that we have in the world.

 The Socialist Party say: The products of labour should belong to the producers. The industries should be to satisfy the needs of the people instead of ministering for profit, as at present. Abolishing monopoly in land and in the sources of production. Do away with capitalism and introduce free and equitable distribution. That, in turn, would do away with laws and government, as there would be no need for them, government serving only to conserve the institutions of today and to protect the masters in their exploitation of the people. It would abolish war and crime, because the incentive to either would be lacking. It would be a society of real freedom, without coercion or violence, based on the voluntary communal arrangement of "To each according to needs; from each according to ability."

This is the way forward

 The Socialist Party declares itself to be the only genuine socialist organisation in the UK, and acting on that belief, it opposes every other party, and fights them at every election. The Socialist Party state clearly that society is made up of only two classes — that of the workers and that of the bosses. It clearly demands that the land, the instruments of production (machines, factories, etc.), and the products of labour become the common property of the whole people. Socialism properly implies the co-operative control by the workers of the machinery of production; without this co-operative control the public ownership by the State is not socialism – it is only state capitalism. 

The goal of the working class is liberation from exploitation. This goal is not reached and cannot be reached by a new ruling class of government officials substituting the capitalists. State ownership takes all control away from the workers and leaves them at the mercy of unsympathetic civil servants and irresponsible cabinet ministers. As Engels explained, “State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution...neither the conversion into joint-stock companies nor into state property deprives the productive forces of their character as capital...The workers remain wage-earners, proletarians. The capitalist relationship is not abolished.”

State capitalism emphasises the fact of the state, of government, being an economic agency of the ruling class. State and capitalist industry, government and ruling class, become one and indivisible.  State capitalism is not an abandonment of capitalism. It is not socialism by the “instalment plan.” State capitalism is not socialism and never can become socialism.

Socialism is not state ownership or management of industry, but the opposite: Socialism dissolves the state. Industry is not transformed into the state.  Socialism rejects the policy of state ownership, rejects state capitalism as a phase of socialism, and insists upon social democracy through common ownership. We need to understand that complete emancipation of men and women will come only with the abolition of private property.

The “progressive left” are openly committed to the support of capitalism and the rule of the capitalists. They are openly committed to the appeasement policy of the “lesser evil.” 

The Socialist Party, part of the world-wide movement appeals to you to join it in the noble fight for working-class emancipation and socialist freedom. We claim the right to call upon you to enter our Party, for we have never flinched from the struggle against capitalism and never forsaken the principles, of socialism.

Capitalism Must Be Abolished

 

The Socialist Party is the only political organisation that today comes before the workers and advocates the abolition of leadership, of control of the organisation by its members, the only organisation that correctly understands the message that the working class cannot be led. If the workers can be led anywhere not knowing the why and wherefore, by any particular brand of leaders, they certainly can be led anywhere else by any particular brand of leaders. A blind leadership leading the blind will get us nowhere. When the working class desires socialism, we will have socialism.

Few can deny that the world today is in a state of chaos.  The Socialist Party has repeatedly demonstrated the cause is that the capitalist system  does not and cannot work in the interests of the majority. It is a social system in which society is divided into two classes—a capitalist class and a working class. The capitalist class consists of a tiny minority—the wealthy few who own and control the instruments of production and distribution. The working class consists of the vast majority who own no productive property and must, therefore, seek to work for the class that owns and controls the means of life in order to survive. The relationship between the two classes forms the basis for an economic tyranny under which the workers as a class are robbed of the major portion of the social wealth that they produce. Against this insane capitalist system the Socialist Party raises its voice in emphatic protest and unqualified condemnation. It declares that if our society is to be rid of the host of economic, political and social ills that for so long have plagued it, the outmoded capitalist system of private ownership of the socially operated means of life and production for the profit of a few must be replaced by a new social order. That new social order must be organised on the same basis of social ownership and democratic management of all the instruments of social production, all means of distribution and all of the social services. It must be one in which production is carried on to satisfy human needs and wants. In short, it must be genuine socialism. Accordingly, the Socialist Party  calls upon the workers to rally under its banner for the purpose of advocating this revolutionary change, building class consciousness among workers and projecting a programme of organisation that the workers could implement toward this end. 

Despite the many threats to workers’ lives, liberty and happiness today, despite the growing poverty and misery that workers are subjected to, a world of peace, liberty, security, health and abundance for all stands within our grasp. The potential to create such a society exists, but that potential can be realised only if workers act to gain control of their own lives by organising, politically and industrially, for socialism.

Join us in this effort to put an end to the existing class conflict and all its malevolent results by placing the land and the instruments of social production in the hands of the people as a collective body in a cooperative socialist society. Help us build a world in which everyone will enjoy the free exercise and full benefit of their individual faculties, multiplied by all the technological and other factors of modern civilisation.

Workers Can Build a Better World

Capitalist Crises

 

Society is always in crisis. Capitalism cannot reform itself; it cannot be reformed. Humanity can be saved only by the socialist revolution. Production must be under common ownership. If an industry is municipal-wide, the municipality is possessed of the ownership of that industry. If an industry is state wide, in its nature, the state is going to be possessed of that industry. If socialism means that the capitalist state is to acquire all the industries — municipal, and national — thus establishing a bureaucracy with its with its oppression, with its obligation to the investors and the banks, it would be nothing short of State Industrial Feudalism, against which every socialist should fight, and fight hard. But socialism does not mean that.