The Socialist 2-4-1906, p4

The New Party

In making our bow to our readers, we desire to say that we make no apology for our appearance. We could wish there was a much greater demand for a Socialist paper in Victoria that is the case at present. But we know that Socialism is spreading here as elsewhere, and it is our determined intention to do all in our power to spread the principles throughout the whole of Australia.

At the outset we wish to make it quite clear as to our exact aim and object. We are Socialists, wishful above all things to advance Socialism, and by Socialism we mean, as all scientific Socialists do, the common or public ownership of all the agencies of wealth production, and this involves the complete supercession of the capitalist system, and the conducting of all industrial and trading relations on a co-operative basis.

We do not pretend that we are the only people in Australia or in Victoria who are working for the common good, but we claim a kinship, and express our genuine sympathy with all effort making for the Co-operative Commonwealth

Being Socialists, we are therefore Labor men, but our Labourism always includes Socialism. We are trade unionists, and value unions very highly, but we should never side with unions who adopted an anti-Socialist attitude. We are Labor men politically, but we shall at all times urge the necessity for all Labor men and women being straight-out Socialists, and it will be part of our work to use the nest influence we can in getting the Labor movement to the straight-out openly-avowed Socialist track

Many of us are Australian born, and others are of British parentage, but we are all Cosmopolitans, endorsing in the fullest sense International Revolutionary Socialism.

As regards our attitude politically, we shall always back what appears to us to be the shortest road to the Socialist millennium. To provide for the unemployed will not be a solution of the social problem, but we shall work might and main to secure chances of work for the workless, and therefore food for the foodless. To see that children of school age are well fed and clothed will not in itself solve the social problem, but we shall make it our work to demand and obtain life’s necessaries for the children.

To reduce working hours, and to impose a tax on land values will still leave the capitalists in possession of the essentials of life and well-being, but whilst ever aiming at the Socialist ideal, we shall help every effort for reducing the hours of toil and for intercepting some of the unearned increment now wrongfully going into the pocket on non-producers. With the Socialists of America and of Europe we are in entire accord, and declare with them that the most important work that men can engage in is that of helping on the overthrow of Capitalism, and the building up of The Socialist Co-operative Commonwealth.