Socialist Standard
August 2005
Page 18  |
|
|
Swansea
Monday 8 August, 7.30pm
POST-WAR
LABOUR GOVERNMENT 1945-51: HOPE AND BETRAYAL
Speaker: Steve Trott
Unitarian Church, High St, Swansea
|
Norwich
Saturday 20 August, 12 noon
Welcome and informal chat for new visitors
1pm: Meal
2pm: Question(s)/discussion on theory
3-4pm: Question(s)/discussion on practice
The Conservatory, back room of
The Rosary Tavern,Rosary Road, Norwich
|
Chiswick
Tuesday 16 August, 8pm
THE
COMMODIFICATION OF CULTURE
Speaker: Adam Buick
Committee Room, Town Hall, Heathfield Terrace
(corner Sutton Court Road), W.4 (nearest tube:
Chiswick Park).
|
Central
London
Bank Holiday Monday, 29 August, 8pm
THE CASE FOR
SOCIALISM
Speaker: John Bissett
Upstairs Room, Carpenters Arms, Seymour Place (nearMarble Arch),
W1 (nearest tube: Marble Arch). |
|
This declaration is the basis
of our organisation and, because it is also an important historical
document dating from the formation of the party in 1904, its original
language has been retained.
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,
etc.)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 do 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 property 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 class is the last class
to achieve its freedom,the emancipation 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 organize 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 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 the field of
political action determined to
wage war against all 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 deprives
them of the fruits of their labour, and that poverty may
give place to comfort, privilege to equality, and slavery to freedom. |
|
|
To contents  To next
page
To
Socialist
Party
|
|