THE WORKERS AGAINST THE BOSSES

There is a theory of good and bad capitalists and good and bad capitalism, and we are asked to support the former and to struggle against the latter. This theory of the "lesser evil" takes various forms. It is false to conclude that the workers must support the "good" exploiters against the "bad" exploiters. We must oppose all exploiters. A working class divided by nationalism, sexism or racism does not fight a strong, united battle. Capitalism must go. Industry must be under common ownership. If socialism means that the capitalist state is to acquire all the industries — municipal, state, and national — thus establishing state capitalism, it would be nothing short of state feudalism, against which every socialist should fight, and fight hard. Socialism is not government ownership or control of industry, two things that are purely a capitalist expression. Socialism struggles for the abolition of the state, not the enlargement of its functions. There was a period when workers were seduced by the idea of beneficial state and saw in parliamentary legislation the means of expressing its class interests. But as workers acquired political maturity, there was the realisation that the state increases the powers for shackling the working people. Socialism, in the words of Engels, is not the government of persons, but the administration of things. The State, and its authority masked as democracy, disappears.

The only hope lies in revolution—the sweeping away of this rotten system of exploitation. Socialism is the conscious and determined struggle by a whole class to realise objectives clearly perceived and understood. The objectives are not the artificial creation of the socialists; they arise out of the development of capitalism itself. The more the workers unite their forces and commence to struggle against the capitalist offencive, the more the struggle becomes a political struggle, not between the workers and any group of capitalists, but between the workers and the capitalist state representing the capitalist class as a whole. Although the global capitalist system constantly plunges into crises we cannot therefore conclude that it will collapse on its own. Capitalism will not grow into socialism.

The Socialist Party's aim is not to “improve” conditions or gain reforms or stop corruption or accomplish any other end within the framework of existing society. Its aim is to overthrow existing social relations, to capture then abolish the existing state, and to establish a new society. Capitalism is no longer a progressive but a retrogressive force. Capitalism offers the people the prospect of only continued and increasing poverty, hunger, unemployment, war, insecurity, and political tyranny. The dominant class under capitalism is the retrogressive and reactionary class. Unemployment, hunger, war – follows necessarily from EVERY reform which presupposes the continued existence of capitalism. Revolutionary change comes about only by the overthrow of capitalism.

The domination of the capitalist mode of production has posed before humanity the alternatives: Socialism or Barbarism. The uncontrolled disruption of the environment by anarchic capitalism poses a threat to the continued existence of humanity itself. The only solution to these problems is the elimination of capitalism and its institutions, and the establishment of common ownership of the means of production with rational economic and social planning. The fundamental task of the Socialist Party is to build a revolutionary movement capable of the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of socialism. Capitalism has developed as a world economic system. It is illusory to believe that the much higher development of the productive forces that socialism entails can be achieved within the framework of a single country. The construction of socialism can be completed only on a world scale. The victory of the revolution can occur only through the active participation of the overwhelming majority of the population. Thus the Socialist Party rejects all militarist, putschist, and terrorist illusions. The actions of a small revolutionary minority cannot substitute for the revolutionary mass action of the working class. Not only does the State wither away with socialism but the necessity for a political party of the workers ceases with the complete abolition of classes. The Socialist Party will disappear when socialism ceases to be an object of struggle, and the whole of society becomes socialist.