RESIST THE MASTERS!

The mainstream candidates in this upcoming General Election waffle on about services, jobs, crime, and how things will improve, if only they are put in power. They all talk about money – spend more, spend less, tax it, borrow it, lend it, find it - but they never talk about where it comes from. They never talk about the basic rules by which it is used. They just assume that money is being made, and that they can adapt their policies to the rules of the money-making game. That is, they assume capitalism. They defend a society in which the majority of the population must sell their capacity to work for the tiny handful who own most of the wealth. They defend a society in which things can only happen if there is a profit to be made. In short, they subscribe to the law of no profit, no production. Whichever party wins brings about no significant changes to the way things are.

What the Socialist Party urges as the alternative to this insane set-up is a truly democratic society in which people take all of the decisions that effect them. This means a society without rich and poor, without owners  and workers, without governments and governed, a society without leaders or the led. In such a society, people could cooperate voluntarily to run all of the world's natural and industrial resources in their own interests, freeing production from the artificial constraints of profit and establishing a system of society in which each person has free access to the benefits of civilisation. Socialist society would consequently mean the ending of buying, selling and exchange, an end to borders and frontiers, an end to force and coercion, waste and want and war. Today we have the technology, the resources and the know-how to satisfy everyone's needs. That fact is well established. However, we cannot utilise society's assets sensibly because of the profit-driven requirements of the market-system.

You may consider that the society we urge sounds nice, but that we are demanding the impossible. In truth, all we are asking is that you, fellow-workers, think for yourselves, value yourselves and your fellows higher, expect more for your children and grandchildren. Is it not the case that our world would be a better place to live in if we had a real democratic say in the decision-making process and real democratic control over the means and instruments for producing and distributing the things we need to live in comfort? Is it not high time that we took back control of our destiny from the profit-mongers and the masters of war?
 

The capitalist class has for centuries been in possession of the political machinery and knows all the tricks of the trade. The capitalist class has men of wealth and men of leisure at its disposal for the control and manipulation of the machinery of government, and in the contest of political trickery, the workers cannot cope with the strategy of the professional prize fighters and trained tricksters of capitalism. The only true position for a genuine working-class party is that of open hostility to all who support capitalism in any shape or form. This is the safe, sure and scientific position. Realising that the economic forces working through the development of capitalist society demanded the formation of a revolutionary Socialist party; believing that the emancipation of the working class can be accomplished only by the members of that class consciously organised in a socialist party; and recognising that the class struggle can alone be the basis of such a party, a small but determined band of workers assembled in London on June 12th, 1904, and founded the party of the workers, THE SOCIALIST PARTYOF GREAT BRITAIN, a party based on clear and unmistakable principles interpreted in plain and unequivocal tactics. Realising that, as in the order of social evolution the working class is the last class to be emancipated, the emancipation of the working class will involve the abolition of all class distinctions and class privileges, and free humanity from oppression of every kind, and resolved to adhere to the only position marked out by past experience as impregnable, THE SOCIALIST PARTYOF GREAT BRITAIN enters the political arena, and, in full faith that the members of our class will work out their historic mission, hurls defiance at all the forces of reaction. Generated by capitalist society, heir to the slavery of ages, outcast of civilisation, the working class will prove a fitting instrument of the movement of history, and by the brain and sinew of Labour will arise 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.

All political parties are but the expression of class interests, hence the working-class party cannot ally itself with or support any section of the capitalist party, for any alliance or bargain between them can only serve the interests of the ruling class by perpetuating the present system. The working class party must be opposed to all other parties. There are much more or less well-intentioned persons who contend that the workers have something to gain by playing off one section of the capitalist party against the other and that in this way a political footing can be obtained by the working class. Of two evils choose the lesser, we are told, but these good people do not realise that between the Labour Party and Tory the choice is between arsenic or cyanide.