Every four years, the Democratic and Republican parties meet in convention to adopt a national platform. With memberships ranging from Joseph Lieberman to Paul Wellstone and from Pat Robertson to John McCain, it's not surprising that their national platforms end up as vague attempts at being "all things to all people." Although their platforms often say little while maintaining an image of mutual hostility, those two parties are united on fundamentals.
They are united in upholding a system euphemistically called "free enterprise," in which a relative handful of people control the largest corporations in America and in the world, thereby wielding enormous economic and political power and subverting the functioning of political democracy.
Between the two of them, the Democratic and Republican parties today exercise a near monopoly of political power in the United States. If they wanted a redistribution of wealth and power in this society, there would be such a redistribution. If they wanted more democracy in our economic institutions, we would have more economic democracy. If they wanted an end to the arms race and to a foreign policy based on raw militarism, there would be an end to the arms race and to militarism. In short, if the Democrats and Republicans really wanted change, there would be change.
In contrast to the Democratic and Republican parties, the Socialist Party has an underlying philosophy that is both coherent and radical. It is coherent in the sense that members of the Socialist Party differ on details, but are united on certain fundamental principles. It is radical in the sense that all members of the Socialist Party recognize the need for fundamental change in our society. Socialists believe that the problems facing America and the world, such as environmental despoliation, the systematic waste of public resources for private profit, persistent unemployment concentrated among women and racial minorities, and the maldistribution of wealth, power, and income, are not mere aberrations of the capitalist system - they are the capitalist system.
This is why Socialists are not impressed by political appeals based on the personal qualities or "charisma" of any individual politician. Socialists believe that it is the system - and the institutions which make up that system - that must be changed. Socialists differ fundamentally from liberals in this regard. Socialists critically support liberal reform measures (such as increases in the minimum wage) not as ends in themselves, but as guideposts pointing to the need for a fundamental transformation of our society.
Membership in the Socialist Party implies a clear agreement with and commitment to the fundamental points of the party's statement of principles, Socialism As Radical Democracy. There are many different points of view within the Socialist Party, but all of them are in agreement with these basic points of democratic socialism.