Conclusion
THE SOCIALIST
PARTY has a record of being consistantly correct on a number of
important issues over its seventy or so years of activity. We warned
about the dangers of advocating reforms long before the shameful
collapse of European Social Democracy in the first world war. We said
in 1918 that the Bolsheviks could not set up Socialism in Russia, and
it was we who in this country pioneered the view that Russia was
developing State capitalism. We predicted the inevitable failure of
Labour governments both as a way to Socialism and as a means of
improving workers' living standards. From the start we realised that
nationalisation was no solution to the workers' problems. We have
always exposed the false and divisive nature of nationalism, racism and
religion. In two world wars we declared and kept an attitude of
socialist opposition.
The Socialist Party has also made its own
contributions to socialist theory, in the light of further
developments, going beyond some of the theories of socialist pioneers
like Marx and Engels. We set out below a number of these contributions:
1.
Solving the Reform or Revolution dilemma, by declaring that a socialist
party should not advocate reforms of capitalism and by recognising that
political democracy can be used for revolutionary ends (see Gradualism
and revolution, p. 25).
2. Realisation of the world-wide (rather
than internaticnal character of Socialism. Socialism can only be a
united world community without frontiers and not the federation of
countries suggested by the word 'international'
3. Recognition
that there is no need for a 'transition period' between capitalism and
Socialism. The enormous increases in social productivity since the days
of Marx and Engels have made superfluous a period, such as they
envisaged, in which the productive forces would be developed under
State control and in which consumption would have to be rationed.
Socialism can be established as soon as a majority of workers want it,
with free access.
4. Rejection of any further progressive role
for nationalism after capitalism became the dominant world system
towards the end of the last century. Industrialisation
under
national State capitalism is neither necessary nor economically
progressive (see Socialism and the less developed countries, p. 61).
5. For the same reason, rejection of the idea of "progressive wars".
Socialists oppose all wars, refusing to take sides.
6.
Exposures of leadership as a capitalist political principle, a feature
of the revolutions that brought them to power and utterly alien to the
socialist revolution. The socialist revolution necessarily involves the
active and conscious participation of the great majority of workers
thus excluding the role of leadership.
7. Advocating and
practising that a socialist party should be organised as an open
democratic party, with no leaders and no secret meetings, thus
foreshadowing the
society it seeks to establish.
8.
Recognition that capitalism will not collapse of its own accord, but
will continue from crisis to crisis until the working class consciously
organise to abolish it.
We
have
refused to compromise our socialist principles by uniting with
reformist organisatons, and have firmly insisted that the only road to
Socialism is through democratic organisation and political action based
on class-conscious understanding. |
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