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The
Uses of Monarchy
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50
Years
Ago
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The
present Royal Family comes as close as any capitalist politician
could desire to the modern monarchical ideal. No interference in
politics, but a worthy interest in science; admirably suited to
gather prestige abroad; most of all, a continual and absorbing
attraction to the working class. There have been hints recently that
the publicity has been overdone, that there have been too many
chambermaids’ reminiscences and news items like the Sunday
Pictorial’s announcement that the Queen’s bust-line had
improved to maintain the essential dignity of royalty. Nevertheless,
the Crown today as never before embodies the national ideals—the
ideals, that is, of the national ruling class.
But
does monarchy serve any interest for ordinary people, beyond giving a
holiday and a pageant now and then? It may be said that if it does
them no good, it does them no harm either. If it were true that to
fill people’s heads with nonsense did no harm, that might be so;
and most of it is nonsense. There is no reason for thinking
that the Queen and her husband are not pleasant, decent people. If
things were otherwise, however, the truth is that they would still be
presented as paragons. Some monarchs have been cruel, irresponsible
and contemptibly low, but their subjects have still been asked for
reverence. Within a week of Edward VIII’s abdication his
shortcomings were common knowledge, and Sir Charles Petrie (in the
book already quoted) hinted at a strain of abnormality in Edward from
the Hanover ancestry; would those things have been said if
Edward had remained the King?
It
is not the monarch that is at fault in all this, but the social
system which needs a shining symbol; where there is no monarch,
something else has to be held up to dazzle the dispossessed. The man
with the flag and the girl admiring the pictures in her magazine have
the light full in their eyes just now—but they need only look away
for a moment to see who holds it up, and why.
(From
front page article by Robert Coster, Socialist Standard, March
1958) |
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Declaration
of Principles
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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historical document dating from the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 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 slaver to freedom. |
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