Founded in 1904[2] as a split from the Social Democratic Federation (SDF), it advocates using the ballot box for revolutionary purposes and opposes both Leninism and reformism.

[4] There have been some event-specific debates, such as over the party's precise attitude to the Spanish Civil War in 1936, to the Hungarian Uprising of 1956 and then to the movements for political democracy in the Soviet bloc states in the 1980s.

They endorse the theory of impossibilism and favour achieving this objective through the use of elections via an uncompromising policy agenda for socialism, although in the current situation their main function is as a propaganda group to try to raise consciousness and "make socialists".

This object is the following: 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.

[8]Unlike similar formulations such as the Labour Party's original wording of Clause IV, it deliberately excludes the means of exchange.

They claim this can be achieved through calculation in kind (i.e. technical planning based on real physical units of demand), a system of regulated stock control—much like that used in supermarkets—to ensure goods are replenished after they are taken and used by members of the community satisfying their self-defined needs and the principle of the law of the minimum.

However, they do often challenge the use of the term Marxist in the media, specifically when used to describe guerrilla and terrorist movements that have nothing to do with what the SPGB considers to be working class socialist emancipation.

[9] They initially praised the Bolsheviks for pulling Russia out of the Great War, but warned that given the development of political consciousness in the largely ill-educated peasant based society, it could not be a socialist revolution, saying that "the franchise presents to the workers the way to their emancipation.

[11] The theory developed over time, emphasising the continued existence of wages and money in the Soviet Union to indicate that capitalism had not been abolished.

Rather than formulating it as the last refuge of capitalism organising to defend itself against the working class, the party's writers and speakers tended to view it as a particular type of reform movement.

The SPGB therefore declined to join anti-fascist fronts or to make a particular issue of anti-fascism, arguing that the pro-socialist case was the necessary remedy for fascism.

The common argument used by SPGB members is that nationalism simply means favouring one set of rulers over another and that socialism is the only route to meaningful emancipation: Before almost all else we Socialists are internationalists.

[14]The SPGB extended this internationalism to a rejection of national liberation struggles as futile wastes of workers' lives while world capitalism remains unscathed.

The party thus does not enter in discussion over proportional representation, reforms to Parliament, or the House of Lords, because there is enough means within the current system for the working class to assert its will.

Arguments such as these were used to oppose the suffragettes and further that the precise reform that they called for meant the extension of the existing franchise to women, along with the then-existing property qualifications.

It refuses to engage in direct action or to co-operate with political parties that do not agree with the ideas set out in its founding document, the Object and Declaration of Principles.

Several people who became members sent letters to Justice, the journal of the Social Democratic Federation,[18] attacking trade union leaders and bureaucracy for their compromising stance, a line of criticism echoed by other impossibilists such as Daniel De Leon.

At the second conference of the party, a resolution was passed forbidding members from holding office in trade unions—although this was overturned by the EC as ultra vires and contrary to the declaration of principles.

Later, disputes arose as to whether trade union struggle could result in positive gains for the working class, or whether their role was purely defensive—the former view being taken by some members of the Ashbourne Court Group.

Second, that while the press and politicians tried to call for strike moderation, the capitalists would continue the class war despite hostilities, forcing down wages and up consumer good prices.

All applicants for membership are required to undertake a short written or verbal 'test' designed to enable them to demonstrate an understanding of – and agreement with – this Object and Principles and also of the Party's basic political positions not otherwise directly covered in the Declaration.

[citation needed] The SPGB is vehemently anti-Leninist and protects its identity against the Socialist Party (SPEW), as the Trotskyist Militant group is now known.

[36] Debates between the SPGB and other groups helped to bring the party's case to an outside audience without the sometimes off-putting rhetoric of platform speaking, or the one-sidedness of educational talks.