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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