For socialism! To this inspiring task, we summon all workers. Only a socialist world can give us peace and plenty. The three main capitalist parties (Tory, LibDems and Labour) are as rotten and bankrupt as the system they uphold. They can maintain that system today only by piling additional burdens upon the people. For the future they offer only the continued insecurity and more austerity cuts.
A restlessness and discontentment is permeating the working class. It is beginning to awaken. It is not only feeling the scourge of unemployment, but the radical lowering of its living standards in a dozen different forms: wage cuts, lengthening of the working day through the insistence of unpaid overtime or reduced to zero hour-contracts and part-time working, intensification of labour and the like. Directing the hostility at the boss, it also commences to discern behind the capitalist government the hazy figure of the capitalist class. The investors and share-holders are again confident. Profits are miraculously returning. They are again impatient of state restraint: the ropes which helped them out of the hole of the recession have become shackles. It seems to them that the country is headed back to the good old days. They wish to run along in the uncurbed race for profits. They feel now able to handle the working class, and toss aside thought of any possible social consequences. ConDem and Labour politicians tell the people that they must put up with worsened conditions, do without wage increases, and accept new sacrifices.
The myriad evils of capitalism will disappear only with the destruction of capitalism and the building of socialism. The Socialist Party dedicates itself to advocate socialism which will do away with the chaos of capitalism. Democratically-elected councils of workers in every industry and district will manage the factories and public services. The vast technological and natural resources will be freed from the fetters of production for profit. the productive forces will pour forth almost undreamed-of plenty.
The Socialist Party made a decision to participate in the Euro-election campaign and the odds are indeed overwhelmingly against us when it comes to electioneering on our slender resources. The real source of the party’s vitality lies in its conviction of the need for a socialist society. Whatever may be our shortcomings in parliamentary activity – and they are undeniably many – our party has demonstrated its socialist credentials over every other party. Indissoluble bonds unite us with the working class. In the struggle against capitalism’s wars we stood alone with an unblemished record. We were the only ones who still continue to challenge and expose its wars.
Our business as sociaists is to understand that in this election it is an opportune time to present revolutionary ideas in an educational campaign, not to submit a wish-list of unachievable and ineffective palliatives to the problems of capitalism. We in the Socialist Party refuse to join the reformists in leading the workers up the path into the camp of capitalism. The only road is the socialist road. Today it is the ballot that we use against capitalism. Vote, then, for socialism, for the Socialist Party and the reorganisation of society on a socialist basis.
The politics of the Socialist Party is utterly different in kind from all other politics. Its aim is not to “improve conditions” or gain reforms or stop corruption or accomplish any other end within the framework of existing society; nor does it aim to win a parliamentary majority in “the government.” Its aim, the expression of the interests of the revolutionary class, is quite precisely to overthrow existing social relations, to found a new mass movement that will undertake the task of establishing a new society. Politics of all other sorts revolve within the framework of the existing order. Non-revolutionary political parties, supporting the status quo, contend for votes and office, represent different sections of the ruling class struggling for the major share of profits and privilege, different groups seeking the lucrative control of the governmental bureaucracy, different theories of how best to maintain the existing order and keep for it the support or tolerance of the voters, different organised attempts to secure this or that reform or concession for this or that section of the population. They all presuppose the continuance of the existing order in its fundamental structure: that is to say, capitalist property relations, the exploitation of the masses by the propertied minority, the class domination of the bourgeoisie, and the maintenance of the state.
The chief function of the mainstream political parties is to deceive the masses as to the real and central issue which confronts them. So long as the masses believe that their significant political choices lie WITHIN the capitalist order, capitalism itself, no matter what internal shifts take place, is not threatened. Every device serves: two or more avowed capitalist parties, to stage periodic “life-and-death struggles” for “the fate of the nation”; when that sham is seen through, a populist party to slough off mass dissatisfaction into safe channels within the limitations of the capitalist state. Socialists must break through the deceptions. They must push aside all secondary and reformist distinctions, and pose directly the central issue: the class struggle for socialism.
The central political issue of our time is the issue of the class struggle for workers’ power and for socialism. Every other question is of altogether minor importance, since its answer can be found only in the solution of the central issue. Our success in this election campaign is not to be measured in votes won, but in the extent and the depth to which they have succeeded in bringing the central issue before the consciousness of the masses.
In the Local Council and European Parliament elections vote Socialist Party/ World Socialist Movement
VOTE - ORGANISE - FIGHT BACK
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