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also an important historical document dating from the formation of the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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