The Socialist Party of Great Britain

“ The capitalist-class has for centuries been in possession of the political machinery and knows all the tricks of the trade. The capitalist-class has men of wealth and men of leisure at its disposal for the control and manipulation of the machinery of government, and in the contest of political trickery the workers cannot cope with the strategy of the professional prize fighters and trained tricksters of capitalism. The only true position for a genuine working-class party is that of open hostility to all who support capitalism in any shape or form. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This political party of the workers can only be a Socialist party, because Socialism alone is based on the facts of working-class existence. Socialism alone can free the worker from the necessity of selling himself for the profit of a master. Socialism alone will strip him of his merchandise character and allow him to become a full social being. Then, with the removal of the many artificial restrictions to production, those producing wealth, owning and controlling it for their own well-being, will be interested in the further development of the productive powers ”

“ They now refuse, we understand, to accept the Party's decision, and still pose as members of the Islington Branch. This is ludicrous enough, but when at the same time that they are asserting their membership, they proclaim to the world that the Party is rotten and corrupt, the matter becomes sheer farce. We regret exceedingly that our late comrades should place themselves in so deplorably ridiculous a position, but that is their business, not ours. ”

“ Here we have the worker entirely dispossessed of the means of getting a living except by selling himself as an article of merchandise to the owners of the means of living. This is wage-slavery. Society is to-day divided into two classes with opposing interests, one class owning the means of life and the other nothing but their power to work. ”

“ Our delegates thereto found such organisations as the Independent Labour Party, the Labour Representation Committee, the Social-Democratic Federation, and the Fabian Society claiming and obtaining admission as Socialist organisations. Thus were seen the defenders of Capitalism, the upholders of Child-slavery, the friends of Compromise and Reform, and the cats paw of the Bourgeois reaction generally, masquerading as Revolutionists, prostituting the name and spirit of Socialism, and confusing the workers on questions of vital importance. ”

“ To the working-class history has committed the mission of transforming society from Capitalism to Socialism.
A glance over past history shows that every class that emancipated itself had to commence with the capture of the political machinery, that is, with the power of government. It is, therefore, necessary for the workers to organise a political party having for its object the capture of political power. ”

“ Under those conditions, and coupled with the absurd idea of the mutuality of interests between Capital and Labour, trade unions upon their present base are little more than benefit societies which save the capitalist-class some amount out of the rates and taxes they would otherwise have to pay towards the support of their disabled slaves. Before the trade unions can become effective factors in bringing about a change of society, they must give up the superstition that the robbers can be friendly to the robbed. ”

“ The basis of the action of the trade unions must be a clear recognition of the position of the workers under capitalism, and the class struggle necessarily arising therefrom: in other words, they must adopt the Socialist position, if they are going to justify their existence at all. Does this mean that the existing trade unions are to be smashed? That will depend upon the unions themselves. All actions of the unions in support of capitalism, or tending to side-track the workers from the only path that can lead to their emancipation, should be strongly opposed ”

“ It has, however, proved that the membership of the S.P.G.B., much though it may appreciate and love its public champions, loves the Principles of Socialism more, and that herb worship, or on the other hand, personalities, can have no place '• in its propaganda.
Knowing this, we are confident that many of those with whom we have had so recently to differ will soon be with us again, fighting in the ranks where all are fighters but none are leaders. ”

“ The so-called Independent Labour Party is independent only that it is free to sell to the highest bidder. The I.L.P. is in reality run by a set of job-hunters whose only apparent political principle is to catch votes on varying pretexts and by still more varying means. ”

“ Over two-thirds of the wealth is therefore retained by an eighth of the population. It is, indeed, computed by Carroll D. Wright, Commissioner of Labour to the United States Government, that the worker in that country gets only 121⁄2 cents out of each dollar’s worth of wealth he produces, that is an eighth of his product.
To-day production is social, but ownership and distribution individual. Production is co-operative and no man can claim that he produces a single article, for he has only carried out one operation of a whole series necessary to the final product. ”

“ Acting under rule XXII, the only rule in the Party's constitution governing Delegate Meetings, the delegates proposed a resolution calling for a vote of the Party as to whether the members of the Islington Branch supporting its attitude should be expelled the Party. Every delegate present voted for this except the Islington delegate. The resolution was submitted to the Party vote and an overwhelming majority voted for expulsion. ”

“ With increasing powers of production the worker’s share, and therefore his purchasing power, grows less, and this leaves an ever increasing mass of wealth for the capitalists to endeavour to consume, resulting in a constant glutting of the markets. ”

“ Production and distribution are becoming more and more out of harmony, and it is a sociological as well as a biological fact that an organism living out of harmony with its surroundings must readapt itself in order to continue in existence. To bring about this re-adaptation it is necessary to make ownership and distribution harmonise with production, that is, to make them social. ”

“ The grouping of large numbers of workers in factories, and, later on, the introduction of power driven machinery, rendered necessary the employment of capitals far too large for the workers to save out of their wages. Thus the workers remained workers all their lives, and the close communication between them in industrial centres, enabled them to interchange ideas regarding their various positions, with the result that unions began to be formed, based upon the recognition of the fact that the worker remained a worker during his life. ”

“ From that day onwards there has been a ceaseless application of large and small inventions to machinery, increasing its power, speed, and productivity. The worker, however, lost his skill as craftsman, and now became a machine minder. Owing to machinery doing away with the need for great physical strength, women and children were next harnessed to the car of Commerce, so that the worker was brought face to face with two sets of competitors: the machines on the one hand, and his wife and child on the other. ”

“ While the employers were numerous and competing, the workers’ unions were able to wring advantages from them and make employment a little less like the hellish slavery it had been, but now the growing combination of the capitalists in every branch of industry has rendered the chances of winning a fight by the old methods exceedingly small. ”

“ There are generally more workers in the market than are actually required by the employers, and this fact serves to keep wages from rising for any length of time above the cost of subsistence. Moreover, machinery and scientific applications are ever tending to render labourers superfluous, with a consequent overstocking of the labour market, decrease of wages, and an increase in the number of the unemployed. ”

“ Fourier pointed out at the beginning of the last century that this competition could only end in monopoly, and we see concentration and trustification going on in every branch of industry, more notably in the United States, the most advanced of capitalist countries. The present system contains within itself the germs of its own destruction. ”

“ We see the result to-day, in that both here and more particularly in America there are “he towns” and “she towns,” while even where men and women are employed the home life is destroyed, and the woman works during the day and the man at night. By a wise dispensation of capitalist Providence the workman sees his wife regularly each day – at the factory gate. ”

“ The other superstition, that the employer is an enemy on the industrial field but a friend on the political field, must also be abandoned. The spectacle presented by the Engineers in voting for Sir Christopher Furness, Parliamentary candidate for York, at the very time they were out on strike against him, could only arise out of ignorance of the antagonism between the worker and the master in the political no less than in the industrial field. ”

“ Yet this political imbecility just instanced is supported by almost all the “labour leaders” and trade union officials as “practical politics.” Defeated on the industrial field, the workers are advised by their “leaders” to place the only weapon left, the political weapon, in the hands of their enemies. ”

“ They openly repudiate the class struggle, the basis of Socialism, but nevertheless seek admission to the International Socialist Congress, where they acquiesce in what they call “a merely glorified animalism dangerously akin to bestiality” in order to pass muster in the presence of the assembled delegates of the international proletariat. The Independent Labour Party is evidently not a party of the workers. ”

“ It is, indeed, composed of “middle class” men, who naturally deny the class struggle, profess to believe in permeating the capitalist-class with Socialism and hold that the tendency of society is towards government by the expert. ”

“ Soon Watt’s application of steam as a motive force for machinery revolutionised production, and enabled the capitalists to forsake hill and dale and bring the workers together in industrial centres, where the raw material, coal and iron were convenient. ”

“ The latter become more and more restricted as each country in its turn produces for itself and then joins the scramble for the markets of the world. By this process the small manufacturer and trader are being eliminated and wealth is concentrated in ever fewer hands. ”