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Foreword
A pamphlet with the same title was first published in 1932. In addition
to reprints, new editions were issued in 1942, 1953 and 1969, some
sections in the earlier editions being omitted and new ones added as
fresh issues presented themselves. Four new sections have been added to
this edition.
The purpose of the pamphlet is to give in handy form
statements of the attitude of the Socialist Party of Great Britain
towards important problems and happenings about which questions are put
to us. It includes a section on the founding of the Socialist Party of
Great Britain in order to show what were the reasons that led the
founder-members to draw up the DECLARATION OF
PRINCIPLES (see below) that has
remained unaltered as the basis of the Party, and of our Companion
Parties in other countries.
For fuller treatment of some issues the reader is referred to
other pamphlets advertised at the back of this pamphlet and to the
Party's monthly journal the SOCIALIST STANDARD.
Executive Committee
SOCIALIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN
March 1978
THE
SOCIALIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN
OBJECT
The establishment of a
system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic
control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing
wealth by and in the interest of the whole community.
DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES
THE SOCIALIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN- HOLDS:
1
That society as at present constituted is based upon the ownership of
the means of living (i.e., land, factories, railways, eic.) by the
capitalist or master class, and the consequent enslavement of the
working class, by whose labour alone wealth is produced.
2
That in society, therefore, there is an antagonism of interests,
manifesting itself as a class struggle, between those who possess but
do not produce, and those who produce but dlo not possess.
3
That this antagonism can be abolished only by the emancipation of the
working class from the domination of the master class, by
the conversion into the common
properly of society of the means of production and
distribution, and their democratic control by the whole people.
4
That as in the order of social evolution the working classl is the last
class to achieve its freedom, the emancipulion of the working class
will involve the emancipation of all mankind without distinction of
race or sex.
5
That this emancipation must be the work of the working class itself.
6
That as the machinery of government, including the armed forces of the
nation, exists only to conserve the monopoly by the capitalist class of
the wealth taken from the workers, the working class must organise
consciously and politically for the conquest of the powers of
government, national and local, in order that this machinery, including
these forces, may be converted from an instrument of oppression into
the agent of emancipation and the overthrow of privilege, aristocratic
and plutocratic.
7
That as all political parties are but the expression of class
interests, and as the interest of the working class is diametrically
opposed to the interests of all sections of the master class, the party
seeking working class emancipation must be hostile to every other party.
8
The Socialist Party of Great Britain, therefore, enters into the field
of political action determined to wage war ;against other political
parties, whether alleged labour or avowedly capitalist, and calls upon
the members of the working class of this country to muster under its
banner to the end that a speedy termination may be wrought to the
system which denies them of the fruits of their labour, and that
poverty may give place to comfort, privilege to equality, and slavery
to freedom. |
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