Why Support the Socialist Party?

Once again the various political parties are seeking your support at June the 8th General Election. Are you planning to vote for a politician that you don't trust? Are you planning to abstain from voting altogether? The politicians do what they must get elected, and when elected they do what they must to appease the capitalist class. You are a human being. But today you are a second class citizen. With the accelerating degradation of the environment, with real and expected job losses from automation, with global out-sourcing of jobs, how secure is your life? How long will you continue to vote for capitalism? Capitalist "truths" are losing credibility by experience on the ground and people are educating themselves to the reality of today's world.

Your masters are seeking your vote in this election because upon their control of the political machine their supremacy depends.   Labour and Tory alike are out for the maintenance of this system, which means for you a continuation of your wage-slavery.  They are united as one against you when you try to better your lot. You cannot take sides with any section of the capitalist class because it is to their interest to maintain this system which means luxury for them. Your emancipation can only be achieved by converting the instruments of production from the property of the few into the common property of society so that they can be used to produce the requirements of life in abundance for all; in a word, socialism must be established.

The Socialist Party is the only political organisation in this country that consistently works for this end: and as the realisation of socialism depends upon the conversion of the workers, your place is within our party, striving to hasten the day when the fratricidal warfare of capitalism is supplanted by the fraternal co-operation that socialism alone can ensure. The Socialist Party does not present policies for capitalism's salvation or offer a better capitalism. It isn't just this form of capitalism or that version we oppose, but the capitalist system as such itself. It isn't just who profits and by how much that we oppose, but it is the entire concept of profit, which is always generated from the appropriation of surplus labour extracted from the working class by wage slavery.  The Socialist Party does not want you to follow anything, or anyone, blindly. The Socialist Party wants you to open your eyes, and your mind, to something that has been the subject of vilification and distortion for over a hundred years — socialism.

The Socialist Party cannot predict the future, nor does it wish to lay out some "set-in-stone" blueprint for future society, but the following are features of what socialists envision:
Common (not state) ownership of the resources of society, such as mineral wealth, land, factories.
Democratic control of society by everyone, without leaders, instead of by the dictates of the profit system and a privileged minority.
Free access to all the goods and services of society — no money and no market.
Voluntary labour according to ability.

All of this is completely practical and attainable. All of it is unlikely as long as you continue to support the current system that creates all the problems that the government cannot solve.The immense productive powers of capitalism have long since reached a stage where the establishment of socialism has been possible but because of the fetters of the financial market and the profit system, it is unable to deliver what socialism can.
The Socialist Party does not advocate reformism, i.e. a platform of palliatives with the aim of gradually reforming capitalism into a system that works for all. While we are happy to see the workers’ lot improved, reforms can never lead to the establishment of socialism and tends to drain away energy, ideas, and resources from that goal. Reforms fought for can, and frequently are, taken away or watered down, as we are seeing with current austerity policies, with more cuts on the horizon. Rather than attempting the gradual transformation of the capitalist system, something we hold is impossible, we hold that only socialism can end forever the problems of our present society such as war, poverty, starvation, inadequate health care and housing, insecurity, and environmental degradation. The working class by brain and brawn will usher in the socialist commonwealth, a society wherein poverty, privilege, and oppression will find no place, and wherein all may lead a full, free and joyous existence. Yet, so far, only a tiny fraction of people understand the need for the alternative – socialism - a society with no private property, no classes, and no state. The real opposition to capitalism is still struggling to be born.