What Does the Socialist Party Hope to Accomplish in Elections?

You are being asked by all the other parties to support their Leader. And yet disillusion with Westminster politicians has never been greater. We all know that the leaders – Cameron or Miliband, and Blair and Brown before them – never meet expectations. This isn't always because they are bad people but because the system we have doesn't allow politicians to do what they want much of the time. This is whether it is raising wages or passing progressive laws.

Private profit always comes before the needs of the majority, no matter what promises are made by the politicians.

By standing in this election, we in the Socialist Party are opposing the system of leaders and politicians, but also opposing the economic system that always makes them fail.

If you – like us – believe in real democracy without leaders, who break their promises, and if you recognise that the problems we have are caused by the profit-driven nature of the economy, then consider voting for us: a genuinely democratic party without leaders that believes in a classless, moneyless society without profits for the few and poverty and insecurity for the many.

Many people are completely disenchanted with the institutions of government. They see little way of achieving meaningful change that will benefit them through the elections of politicians. People see most mainstream politicians closely tied to corporate interests. What does the Socialist Party say about elections? We believe that the voice of the working class needs to be heard in an electoral arena that is dominated by pro-capitalist parties. The Socialist Party is running candidates in this general election so that the arguments of business interests can be challenged and debated. The Socialist Party’s case is if we want to create a decent, sustainable life for all, it is not enough to reform capitalism. The entire system must be removed root and branch. At this particular moment in history, we do not expect to succeed when we engage in electoral politics. This is for the moment a time of building for the future.

There is a theory that it is possible to push the Labour Party into more radical positions by supporting and voting for them. For decades time and energy have been wasted struggling to manouvre the Labour leadership left-wards. Despite all the efforts, nothing has ever come of it and now the cheer-leaders for the Labour Party are once again reduced to reciting the weak cry that “Labour aren’t as bad as the other lot!”, a “lesser evil” charade in which one party is portrayed as more sympathetic to working people than the other and which has given rise to a massive rejection of traditional politics. The Labour Party is a capitalist party, not a party representing the working class. The cold truth is that Miliband is no more a real champion of the people and the poor than Cameron is. The only real difference between the Conservatives and the Labour Party is their marketing strategy. The Labour Party embraces capitalism, and because capitalism functions better if there is a relative amount of industrial peace, and for this reason, many sections of the capitalist class support Labour leaders who are successful in dissipating workers’ discontent.

 In his 1850 Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League, Marx firmly rejected supporting “progressive” bourgeois or “democratic petty bourgeois” candidates but urged workers to run their own candidates. “The democratic petty bourgeois,” he argued, “far from wanting to transform the whole society in the interests of the revolutionary proletarians, only aspire to a change in social conditions which will make the existing society as tolerable and comfortable for themselves as possible.” Marx insisted that workers must “work for the creation of an independent organisation of the workers’ party;” otherwise they would simply be swindled and that “Even where there is no prospect of achieving their election the workers must put up their own candidates to preserve their independence, to gauge their own strength and to bring their revolutionary position and party standpoint to public attention.” 

Don’t spend another five years being disappointed by the failures of the Labour Party if they are elected. Political activists must begin to challenge the capitalist system. Presenting the truth about the economic functioning of the world and disputing the false image created by defenders of the status quo designed to camouflage the daily theft from working people is a not an unimportant issue. The Socialist Party policy position is one of not doing things for working people but, instead, encouraging working people to do things for themselves and by doing so, building a real working-class movement. The Socialist Party uses electoral politics so that socialist ideas can be disseminated to a broader audience so it can be imbued with a sense of their potential political power. We hope to inspire workers to become politically engaged and take a step in establishing a real movement. For change to come will take more than a gentle nudge at the powers-that-be. It will take putting some serious anti-capitalist muscle into a movement. The first step towards socialist revolution is for you to get involved, if you’re not already.

The Ten Genuine Candidates

Jacqueline Shodeke - Brighton Kemptown;

Howard Pilott - Brighton Pavilion;

Robert Cox - Canterbury;

Steve Colborn - Easington;

Andy Thomas - Folkestone and Hythe;

Bill Martin - Islington North;

Kevin Parkin - Oxford East;

Mike Foster - Oxford West and Abingdon

Brian Johnson - Swansea West;

Danny Lambert - Vauxhall.

IT IS YOUR CHOICE