All around us are the signs of a world in crisis, yet men and women seem unable to do anything about it. Homelessness, unemployment, inadequate education and health care, and mass alienation have become facts of life. For the first time in history, present and future generations are confronted with the reality that they will be worse off than their parents. No wonder many are in despair. But all is not lost. Those fellow-workers who seek a way out of a world of poverty and environmental destruction must look to socialism. Under capitalism, a small section of the population controls production and is not answerable to the rest of the community. This section is competing within its own ranks and with similar classes abroad. We are living in the most revolutionary period in the history of mankind. We are now entering an epoch in which the course of history has to take a decisive turn towards world socialism for planetary survival. So long as workers resist alienation and oppression they will revolt. And these revolts will emerge, as they always have, with remarkable power and suddenness. But those class explosions that are still to come are likely to have the appearance of new revolutionary forms, organisations which are not simply organs of struggle but organs of control of production. They are a sign of the future. Rest assured, whatever new organisations emerge, the struggle will continue.
Socialism is not a reform, it is a revolution. However, to use the word without explanation is to get one’s self and one’s cause seriously misunderstood. We need to distinguish us as socialists from those who merely wish to patch up the present system and keep it. The other political parties, every one, old and new ones, really do advocate mere reform measures. All reforms that stop short of overthrowing the capitalist system become co-opted by that system and turned to its advantage (but not necessarily to the advantage of any particular capitalists). If the system isn’t overthrown it continues to function. We are not reformists — we are revolutionists. The Socialist Party stands opposed to joining in a demand for palliatives, and assert that such a line of agitation is liable, to obscure the higher ideal, the complete overthrow of the wage system.
Let it be clearly understood everywhere that by revolution the Socialist Party does not mean violence or bloodshed. If any violence should arise, it would be not the result of the teachings of socialists, but rather the result of the refusal of the rulers to accept the will of the majority. For the Socialist Party offers a possible peaceful solution through the ballot box and the capture of political power. Socialism is not government ownership or control of industry. Socialism struggles for the abolition of the state, not the enlarging of its functions. Socialism is a struggle to place the management and control of industry directly in the workers through the overthrow of capitalism. Socialism, in the words of Engels, is not the government of persons, but the administration of things. The Socialist Party holds that the economic emancipation of the worker requires the conversion of the means of production into the common property of all society.
Capitalism is tremendously wasteful and destructive of men and women, goods, energy, land. The ultimate destiny of all useful goods is to be consumed. Yet under capitalism goods are not produced to be consumed, but for profit, and if a greater profit can be made by destroying the goods, the destruction takes place. While production is a social act, the appropriation of the product, under the present system, is individual. As capitalism develops, larger and larger factories are built, thousands of laborers co-operate in the production of a single article, yet the article does not belong to them but to the owner of the means of production. The laborers are merely paid wages for the use of their labor power, wages which constantly grow less and less a part of the total product as the total product ever increases. Within the factory a rigid dictatorship, a terrible “rationalisation” where the dead machine rules living labor, where the man is transformed into a cog of the machine, where labor becomes wage-slavery. Outside the factory dictatorship is replaced by economic chaos, man is ruled by prices which he cannot control, by the wild forces of the market of which he can be only the victim. It is only through the hectic fluctuations of supply and demand, it is only through the frantic rush of “successes” and bankruptcies that society “decides” and “plans” the division of its labor. Simultaneously the owner of the industries becomes progressively more divorced from the productive process. As small partnerships become big corporations or are driven out of business by the trusts and monopolies, the original entrepreneurs and organisers become mere rentiers, mere dividend receivers. The corporation also develops, becomes more and more a public utility. The state begins to take a hand, and to run the industry. The former individual owner now becomes a purely parasitic hanger-on, his dividends paid regularly by the state apparatus which he controls. While the productivity of man is unlimited and increases in geometric ratio, the markets are limited, increase in arithmetic ratio, later do not increase at all and even decrease. The greater the productivity of labor, and the greater the amount of production, the greater becomes the surplus product in the hands of the owners, the greater the need for markets, the greater, therefore, the competition among the capitalists, and the greater the tendency to lower the rate of profit, the greater the lowering of the wages of the workers, the larger the army of unemployed and paupers, the more vigorous the drive for foreign markets and colonies for exploitation, and the more violent the military struggles to control the world. The greater the globalisation of markets, the greater the need to have a military machine to defend the market interests, the greater grow the oppressive burdens of the state apparatus. The only solution for capitalism is another world war greater than the preceding one. The motto “Bigger and Better” certainly prevails for capitalist wars and crises.
Is capitalism able to find the way out? What solutions do the capitalist leaders propose?
The Socialist Party takes the attitude that what's necessary for the working class is to understand the world we liv in; the working class is faced with the problems of poverty, insecurity, and war, and the working class could not remove these problems until it understood the cause of them. Unfortunately, at the present time, the overwhelming majority of the workers did not understand the system of society in which they lived, and in which they were exploited.
Under capitalism, wealth took the form of commodities, articles which are produced solely for sale on a market with a view to profit The means of producing wealth—the land, factories, railways, etc., were owned by a small minority of the population, the capitalist class. The working class owned none of the means of production and consequently, was forced to work for those who do own. The worker, in order to live, had to sell the only commodity which he possessed—his power to labour. However, the commodity labour-power had a peculiar characteristic not possessed by any other commodity—it could produce a value greater than its own. That value which was produced by the working class, over and above what it was paid in the form of wages, was appropriated by the capitalist class and distributed in the form of rent, interest, and profit.
Because the working class was tied to the wages system, it received only the value of its labour-power, which was determined by what was required to maintain it as an efficient working class and to reproduce the next generation of wage-slaves. Hence, the worker’s lot was one of poverty amidst plenty. Moreover, the worker was only employed as long as the capitalist could make a profit from his employment. If there was no profit, there was no production, and the worker was out of a job. In order to realise the profits on the wealth produced by the workers, the capitalist class was brought into conflict with the capitalist class in other parts of the world and periodically, therefore, the capitalist world was plunged into war.
The only solution to these problems lay in the abolition of their cause, which was the class ownership of the means of life. Socialism is defined by the Socialist Party as being a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means of producing and distributing wealth by and in the interests of the whole of society. This would enable society to produce things solely for use and thus, remove the exploitation of the working class and the social problems which flowed from that state of affairs. Socialism could only be introduced when the working class understood and wanted it. They would act upon their understanding by, first, gaining a majority in Parliament. There had been people, including the so-called Communists, who had denounced Parliament as useless. However, Parliament controlled the forces of repression, and any alternative action in defiance of the capitalist control of the armed forces was suicidal and doomed to failure. Socialists, in Parliament , would be controlled by a socialist working class which knew what it wanted and how to get it. When the working class understood its position in society, it had no need for leaders, and could not be misled or betrayed.
Until capitalism was removed the working class could not solve its problems—and where the wages system existed, capitalism existed.
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