We live in a world torn by economic crises, environmental emergencies and wars. We see little future in this society. We live in a society which puts a price tag on everything. But now, working people seek new paths, new roads forward. We search for social change. New movements are being formed, new directions are being tried. The world can be changed. For humanity’s future it has to be changed. As socialists we believe that all this ferment can be harnessed to the great task of transforming society and building a new world.
The Socialist Party stands for a world which can eliminate poverty and hunger and war; a world in which freedom is more than a word in a textbook; a world in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the producers themselves and the products of man are available to all. We stand for socialism! Around the world working people are saying "Enough" and are beginning to move. Though our lives and conditions might differ; though we live in different parts of the world; though our struggles take different forms; ours is a common goal—to end exploitation of man by man. Only when we have economic democracy, when production is planned for use and not for profit, when the right of all to share in the abundance of our planet is established - only then will democracy be truly established.
Those who doubt that socialism will ever come about are challenged today by the existence of anti--capitalist movements, The world’s peoples are clearly on the road to accomplishing social change. A new world is being created—a world which will put people before profit, which will create a participatory democracy at every level. The potential of mankind is virtually limitless, if it is freed from economic and social oppression.
The Socialist Party is not a reform party, but a revolutionary party. It does not propose to modify the capitalist system, but abolish it. An examination of its Declaration of Principles shows that it stands unequivocally for the common ownership and democratic control of all the means of production and distribution — in a word, socialism.
The Socialist Party is necessarily an world party. It is everywhere and always stands for the same aim, first, last, and always for the common ownership of all the means of production and distribution, and will press forward unceasingly until they secure them, thereby liberating humanity.
There was only one way to destroy the wage system, and that is the determination of the workers never to sell their labour for wages. Let workers stop political action that is aimed merely at mitigating the evils of capitalism. The Socialist Party, wishes to advance the Socialist Co-operative Commonwealth, by which we mean, the common ownership of all the agencies of wealth production for the common good.
The Socialist Party has no intermediate nor immediate demands. Socialism is not state ownership or government control of industry, two things that are purely capitalist. The kind of “socialism” is not what the Socialist Party means by socialism. Not at all. What the advocates of nationalisation mean is that the capitalist governments will have to make themselves responsible for the organization of production. The workers will remain just where they are – sweating in the factories and toiling in the fields and piling up the profits for their masters. The language of “socialism” is only a manoeuvre to fool the working class. Socialism struggles for the abolition of the state, not the enlarging of its functions. Socialism, in the words of Engels, is not the government of persons, but the administration of things. The state disappears. It is time for workers to organise themselves into a socialist party for the purpose of ending private and state property. The path to socialism is not through “public” ownership but through a fundamental change in class relations. The Socialist Party is opposed to all forms of reformism and “gradualism” or “evolutionary socialism.”
The Socialist Party is a party of revolutionary socialism. The Socialist Party believes in the organisation of the working class for the overthrow of capitalist society as the only cure for the problems of capitalism. Socialism will not fall from the skies. Neither will it be gained by any appeals to the good will and compassion of the capitalist exploiters, as some people still seem to think. Socialism can be achieved only as the outcome of the class struggle of the workers. The Socialist Party has declared over and over again its sense of the futility of socialists wasting their time in getting such palliative measures passed, which, if desirable to be passed as temporarily useful, will be passed much more readily if they do not mix themselves up in the matter, and which are at least intended by our masters to hinder Socialism and not to further it. Over and over again it has deprecated socialists mixing themselves up in political intrigues; and it believes no useful purpose can be served by their running after the votes of those who do not understand the principles of socialism, and who therefore must be attracted by promises which could not be fulfilled by the candidates if by any chance such candidates were returned to Parliament.
We are part of the world community of socialists. We have no illusions that the way will be easy, no visions of quick success. But the future belongs to humanity and socialism.
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