LONDON

PUBLIC DEBATE
Thursday, 4th February, 7.00pm

CAPITALISM OR SOCIALISM?

The Socialist Party (Richard Headicar) versus Adam Smith Institute (Eamonn Butler)
Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London. WC1 (nearest tube: Holborn)

LONDON

SUNDAY EVENING FILM PROGRAMME

6pm at 52 Clapham High St, London SW4

14 February - Why We Fight (documentary about military/industrial complex) (98 mins)
28 February - Comrades Part 1 (film about Tolpuddle Martyrs)
14 March - Comrades part 2.
MANCHESTER

Monday 22 February, 8.30pm

Discussion on the Labour Party

Unicorn, Church Street, City Centre


NORWICH RADICAL FILM FORUM

Saturday  27 February, 2-5pm

THE STORY OF STUFF + MANUFACTURING CONSENT

Saturday 20 March, 2-5 pm

ZEITGEIST III

The workshop, 53 Earlham Road, Norwich NR1 3SP
More information: http://radicalfilmforum.wordpress.com
WSM Forum



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“You’ve never had it so good”

What is really astounding about Macmillan's boast is that, at least on average, it contains an element of truth, remembering however that the rich too are in the average figures. The state of most British workers really is a little better than it has ever been before. Of course there are large numbers of clerical workers (including most of the civil service, bank clerks and others) who are worse off than they were before the war, and some industrial workers, including London busmen, are also worse off. But with fewer unemployed and several million married women enjoying the dubious advantage of doing two jobs, home and away, working class purchasing power has gone up. But what a commentary on capitalism that this small advance can be hailed as a social revolution and set the church worrying about the corrupting influence of working class "riches"!

Just about the turn of the year agricultural workers advanced to £8 a week for 46 hours toil. Hundreds of thousands of other men in industry and transport are on much the same level. The average earnings of women of 18 and over in manufacturing industry is £6 17 0 a week —hardly a corrupting level of affluence. And there are over 2 million people who in the course of a year are poor enough to qualify for National Assistance—with wives and children the number is much larger.

(from article by H, Socialist Standard, February 1960)


Object and Declaration of Principles

This declaration is the basis of our organisation and, because it is also an important historical document dating from the formation of the party in 1904, its original language has been retained.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 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.

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    Socialist     Standard Online edition                                 February 2010