Fifty Years Ago

TALKS AT THE SUMMIT

The snows of the Cold war are melting. The Soviet Premier, Bulganin, and the Communist Party leader, Kruschev, are to visit Britain next spring. They will be feted by the Queen. Even the Daily Mail welcomes the visit – with some reservations.

During the war the Russians were our friends, our “gallant allies,” our “comrades in arms.” But since 1945 they have become the villains of the piece. They have become our potential enemies. Whilst our old enemies the Italians, the Japanese and the Germans (the Western Germans, of course!) are now our friends, our allies in a possible future war. But now, since the Geneva “Talks at the Summit” the Russians – for how long we know not – are almost our friends again; or at least our politicians have “agreed” to differ with the Soviet rulers.

To most people, who think that all these differences and antagonisms are due to differences of systems or ideologies – to “Communism” or “Fascism” – these changes are quite bewildering.

( . . .) [T]he reasons why the rulers of Russia, America, or Britain fall out is not any so-called difference of ideologies, of Democracy, or Communism; or differences of social systems or ways of life. For we know that their social systems are not basically different; that American “free enterprise” is not fundamentally different from Soviet “Communism.” We know that in Britain, America – and the U.S.S.R. the same problems exist; we know that the workers of these lands are poor, that they live insecure lives, whilst their employers are rich; we know that in the Soviet Union, as Stalin admitted just before he died, the ruling class is being forced more and more to look for markets for its goods – outside its own frontiers. We know that the Soviet leaders are as much concerned with protecting their property interests as are the Americans or British. That is why we are not surprised at the antagonisms the Cold War, the changing alliances, the “Talks at the Summit,” and the temporary patching-up of differences.

(From an article by Peter E. Newell, Socialist Standard, September 1955)

This declaration is the basis of our organisation and, because it is also an important historical document dating from the formation of the party in 1904, its original language has been retained.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