Saturday, June 01, 2019

West London Branch Meeting (4/6)


June 4 at
Committee Room, 
Chiswick Town Hall, 
Heathfield Terrace, 
London W4 4JN

Not sure whether you should join the Socialist Party or not? The Socialist Party wants only free thinking, committed members who understand what socialism will mean for them. We don’t seek to sign up as members everyone who comes to our meetings or who buy the Socialist Standard. If you show some interest in socialism we’ll discuss things with you, offer you our literature. When you want to take part in helping to achieve socialism, we’ll invite you to discuss membership with us. We are not a narrow sect who demand faithful allegiance to every dot and comma of our beliefs. We don’t agree with each other about everything although we do share a set of principles that we expect all members to agree with. Because we are a democratic Party all our meetings are open and our propaganda meetings organised to allow open debate. To this end visitors are given ample opportunity and encouragement to ask questions or state a contrary opinion.

There are many people who complain about the multiplicity of left-wing parties and call for unity. They keep urging all the small political bodies which claim to be socialist to merge themselves into one. Yet, they rarely trouble themselves to understand the principles of the parties they criticise, and the underlying causes of political antagonisms. They seek to reconcile opposites into one apparent whole.

There exists an undemocratic internal organisational structure within the Left, where a self-perpetuating leadership dominates with the ordinary members playing the passive role of followers. A party line is handed down from the Central Committee whereupon the branch cadres organise and deploy and orchestrate the rank and file's activity. A Leftist party simply reproduces and institutionalises existing capitalist power relations inside a supposedly ‘revolutionary’ organisation: between leaders and led, order givers and order takers; between specialists and acquiescent and largely powerless party workers.

There is no mystery about the principles, policy or internal organisation of our party; there are no cliques or job-hunters. The party’s methods are too democratic to allow that to happen. We are a group of men and women who hold a set of principles and a policy that are clear and definite, and are carried out by methods that leave no room for the careerist to achieve any privileged position. There are no puppet-masters pulling the strings. All our meetings are open to the public, because we have nothing to hide. We are not “intellectuals”; we are just informed and know what we want and determined to get it. We are neither intolerant nor bitter towards our fellow-workers. We are only intolerant and bitter against the existing social system. We know that most who support the Labour Party and other parties are honest, sincere, and self-sacrificing in their efforts. It is the policy of the other parties that is wrong, and that allows self-seekers to climb on the backs of their fellow-workers and to turn the enthusiasm of people to their own private ends. There are some who are genuinely sincere albeit misguided, but, in the main, it is the trickster who flourishes in politics.

Our political enemies charge the Socialist Party of indifference, of detachment, of sectarianism. of refusing to join the bread and butter struggles for the betterment of our fellow-workers. In other words, we are accused of being mere talkers and theorists—armchair Socialists. We plead not guilty. We have never had to go back on our policy, we have never had to betray our principles, we have never had to compromise. Our analysis of capitalism remains valid. The capitalist social system still produces a mass of terrible problems; human beings still suffer, are still deprived, suppressed, degraded and killed—because of capitalism. And the solution to it all is, still, the setting up of a socialist commonwealth. There are many protest movements and we must be clear that we do not stand aloof from lack of sympathy with the motives which motivate the protests. We, too, are affected by capitalism, and we do not like it. We are also moved and indignant at the countless injustices of capitalism. We don’t join for the simple reason that the demonstrations are a waste of time. The first thing which is clear is that, after decades of protest about the effects of capitalism, the system goes on throwing up the very problems which the protest industry exists on. In all this time, a few problems may have been disappeared—although demonstrators would have a hard job to prove that they were responsible for this—but in their place more have appeared. Protesters have marched and shouted slogans, scuffled with the police, shown up in court and paid their fines. The problems are still there. Capitalism cannot exist without war. It cannot function unless people live in poverty. Nor can capitalism survive without raping the environment. It is a system which produces glaring anomalies and contradictions. It has millions of people starving while it destroys the food which would keep them alive. It wastes a huge part of its resources on destruction. It condemns its people to compete against each other when the need is to co-operate.

The only effective protest against the effects of capitalism is to protest against the entire edifice of the system itself. The choice is plain. We can have capitalism, with its problems and its never-ending parade of protests. Or we can build a new society of freedom and dignity. We can have capitalism or socialism. But we won’t have Socialism by urging people to keep up their support for capitalism. We won’t have it by protesting that capitalism can be tamed by the right reforms, or by the right leaders, or by the right sort of demonstration. All of these have been tried and in the end it has been capitalism which has done the taming. It is because the demonstrators are confused and contradictory that the Socialist Party will not join them. This does not remove us from the struggle; we are committed to attack capitalism at its roots—to attack the ideas which feed and nurture the system. We stand—and we protest and we demonstrate—for the new, better, saner world.

The aim of the Socialist Party is to win the majority of the working class for the socialist revolution. What about joining us and helping the work towards socialism? We offer you, among other things, comradeship in a cause that is worth your best efforts and enthusiasm. We are going to win the CLASS War. Join us and do what you can.


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