The British Road to Socialism (1968)

There are two ways open to the people of Britain today. We can continue under capitalism, state monopoly capitalism, or we can take the socialist road.

The Communist Party invites firm support for the policies which will take our country along the road to socialism.

We have explained why we believe this to be essential and in the interests of the great majority of the people. We have outlined what we think should be done to open up the way, and what in our opinion socialism would mean for Britain.

We have affirmed the need to extend democracy on the political, social and industrial fronts, and our belief in the open promotion of mass understanding and mass action to win socialist policies.

We have not hidden the difficulties, but have tried to show how they can be overcome. We have said that in the process of overcoming them new strength and understanding can constantly be achieved.

We have shown that in Britain today there are not only significant limitations to freedom, but growing encroachments on rights which have been won in the past. Modern monopoly capitalism, controlling the key points of the British economy, the key positions of the state, of the mass media and education, dominates the peoples' lives in countless ways.

As we have underlined, it is the mass struggles of the past that have won us our present democratic liberties. These the British people owe above all to the working class, to the labour movement, which fought for decades, under the most difficult conditions, to win rights which we have all since enjoyed. Now we must fight to defend and extend these rights as we move on the road to socialism, to the rule of the working people, where all that has been won must be preserved and carried further, where democracy must be extended in every field - political, industrial, social.

We have shown that the unity of the labour movement can be the heart of a broad popular alliance of the working people, the vast majority of the population. We have outlined the type of programme of struggle for peace, living standards and democracy, that can unite the working people, and begin to undermine the power of monopoly capitalism. We have shown too the urgent need to secure working class unity, end bans and proscriptions, defeat the influence of reformist ideas. We have explained the need to win the working people, in the course of struggle, for socialist ideas and socialist policies, and the key role in this task of Marxist theory and the Communist Party.

There are deep differences in our country between rich and poor, between the privileges accorded as of right to birth and wealth and the limitations of the lives of those who produce the wealth.

It is our aim to remove these limitations from the lives of the majority, to use the political freedoms which we have won and shall win to achieve social and industrial freedom, to break down this class structure. It is our aim to build a society in which all are able to live a full life, free of class distinctions and divisions which condition development along prescribed lines.

But we do not believe that this can be done for the people. It can only be done by the people. To this end we work for the widest possible mass movement in the course of which a new understanding, new relations, can be forged.

We have tried to indicate how we can end for all time the aggressive reactionary role that Britain, British imperialism, has so long played; to show that there is a fine future for Britain, with a respected place in the world, when Britain ends its colonialism, works for peace, throws its influence and efforts on the side of those states and peoples fighting against imperialism, and co-operates to the full with the socialist countries.

We have described in the broadest outline what socialism could mean for Britain, indicated the most general features of a socialist programme, which, with the aid of a socialist government, the people would struggle to fulfil. With all the difficulties that we are bound to face in building socialism it is easy to see how great an advance it would mean on our present capitalist conditions.

Socialist countries do not claim to be utopias, free of problems. They are countries in which difficulties occur and have to be overcome in the best interests of the working people. But they are countries which make full use of their material and spiritual resources, which are free of economic crises and unemployment, countries in which progress can be continuous, and where it is directed towards the satisfaction of human needs and aspirations.

The achievements of socialism, once a distant dream, are now a reality for all to see, in many countries of the world. But we are not claiming that Britain should copy others exactly in the way it advances to socialism and establishes socialist institutions. On the contrary we have outlined a British road to socialism.

We have traced this road in the light of the particular history that has shaped the institutions and outlook of the British people, of the relation of class forces in Britain today, and in the world. These latter have now radically changed with the successes of socialism in the Soviet Union and other countries, with the advances of the national liberation movement, and of the socialist and progressive forces within the remaining capitalist world. We reaffirm that through the unity, socialist understanding and mobilisation of the labour movement a popular alliance can be built and maintained strong enough to end the power of monopoly capitalism and establish the rule of the working people led by the working class. Under this rule, the rule of the majority in the interests of the majority, the people can establish socialism.

We see socialist society as the first stage in the advance to a higher, communist form of society. As productive forces begin to supply an abundance of products, as the last remnants of classes vanish, as education spreads, leisure expands, and work becomes skilled and a pleasure, we will move into the realm of a truly human society, where the watchword is from each according to his ability to each according to his needs,‘ and where, in the words of the Communist Manifesto "the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all".

Such is the policy and perspective of the Communist Party of Great Britain.